Chapter 92: The Curse's Origin

We went up to Maeve's cottage at dawn with the letter and the record and the stones in a sack, and Maeve put the kettle on and sat down at the table and read the letter twice.

"Three days," she said. "The Council has called a meeting in Boise in three days and the first thing on the list is the removal of the seven Alphas who sat on this tribunal."

"They are afraid," Ada said. "The Council has been running eleven territories for eighty-five years and in one week a Gamma in a wheat pack has put its register in front of the Alphas and its chief clerk in a cell and its Councilman under arrest. They are going to try to remove the Alphas who heard the evidence and replace them with Alphas who will not."

"Can they?" I said.

"They can try," Ada said. "The Council of Alphas can remove an Alpha for misconduct. It has happened four times in eighty-five years. It has never happened to seven Alphas at once and it has never happened in the middle of a hearing." She put the letter down. "But there is a thing in the code that the Council has forgotten. A meeting of the full Council of Alphas cannot be called by the chief clerk. It has to be called by the Alphas themselves. And the letter is signed by the chief clerk."

"It is not a lawful meeting," I said.

"It is not a lawful meeting," Ada said. "But the Alphas will go to Boise anyway because the letter says the Council has called them, and when they get there the chief clerk will stand up and tell them the tribunal was a fraud and the register was a forgery and the Luna's claim is a story told by a cursed wolf and a suspended Gamma." She looked at me. "And there are forty Alphas on the Council of Alphas. Forty. I have seven. The other thirty-three have been signing the Council's paper for eighty-five years and they have never seen a register and they do not know what the Council has been doing."

I sat down at the table.

"Then we go to Boise," I said. "We take the crates and the register and the photographs and the stones and the record and the knife and the box and we put it in front of all forty Alphas and we do not let the chief clerk stand up."

Ada looked at me for a long moment.

"Beta," she said. "If you go to Boise you will be leaving this territory and the Council company is on the north road and the Council has a warrant for your arrest."

"Then we do not go as a Gamma and a Beta," I said. "We go as the Luna's line. We go as a claim of blood and we ask the full Council of Alphas to hear it and the full Council of Alphas has to hear a claim of blood. It is in the code. It is in the same section Silas read to me in a barn."

Ada sat back in her chair.

"It is in the code," she said. "It has not been used since 1802."

"Then it is due," I said.

Maeve put a cup of tea in front of me.

"Before you go to Boise," she said, "there is a thing you have to know about the curse."

"Tell me."

Maeve sat down across from me and put her hands around her own cup.

"The curse is not a spell," she said. "It is a bargain. The old Alpha went into the circle on the new moon in 1891 and he spoke to the moon and the moon answered him. That is what the record says. The moon answered him and it made a bargain with him and the bargain was this. The founders would have the land but never the heart of it. The wolf would carry the death of the Luna's line in every generation. And the curse would not end until the Luna came home and claimed the land in public at the full moon."

"I know that," I said.

"You know the words," Maeve said. "You do not know what they mean." She put her cup down. "The full moon is when the pack is strongest. It is when every wolf in the territory is in wolf form and the bond between the pack and the land is at its height. The old Alpha chose the full moon because the moon is the witness and the pack is the jury and the land is the thing being claimed. If the claim is made at the new moon, when the pack is blind, the land does not hear it and the bargain does not break." She looked at me. "The claim has to be made in public, at the full moon, with the whole pack in wolf form, in the circle."

The kitchen was quiet.

"The whole pack in wolf form," I said.

"The whole pack in wolf form."

I sat there.

"Then it is not me standing in a circle," I said. "It is the pack standing in a circle."

"It is the pack standing in a circle," Maeve said. "And the Luna in the middle of it. And the cursed wolf in front of her. And the stones in the ground." She put her hand on mine. "And there are twenty-seven days and a Council meeting in three days and a company on the north road and there is a thing you have not done yet that you are going to have to do before any of it."

"What thing?"

"You are going to have to tell this pack what it is," Maeve said. "You are going to have to stand in the square and tell every wolf in this territory that the land is the Luna's and that the curse is a bargain and that in twenty-seven days they are going to have to stand in the circle in wolf form and claim it with you." She looked at me. "And some of them are not going to want to. Some of them have been wolves of the Palouse Ridge pack for eighty-five years and they are not going to want to be wolves of the Luna's pack."

I sat at the table with the tea going cold in my hands.

"Then I will tell them," I said.

The door opened and June came in with her face white.

"Wren," she said. "There is a rider on the co-op road. He has come from Walla Walla and he has a letter for you and he says it is from the Walla Walla pack."

I stood up.

"Halloran's pack," I said.

June put the letter in my hand.

It was not from the Walla Walla pack. It was from a woman named Ruth who lived in Walla Walla and it was dated three days ago and it said: I have read about the trial in the newspaper. My name is Ruth and my mother was Ruth and her mother was Ruth and I think I am the Luna's line. I am eighty-six years old and I have a box that my mother gave me and it has a ring in it and a photograph and a piece of a stone. If you are the wolf from the newspaper, come and get it.

I sat down.

"Ruth," I said. "There is a fourth Ruth."

Elias came in from the back room.

"What?" he said.

"There is a fourth Ruth," I said. "And she is eighty-six years old and she has a ring and a photograph and a piece of a stone and she lives in Walla Walla."

Elias sat down on the chair by the fire and put his hands over his face.