Chapter 95: The Field in the Photo

I went out onto the porch and stood at the top of the steps with Elias behind me and Ruth in the door behind him.

“Halloran,” I said. “You are supposed to be in a cell.”

“I am supposed to be in a cell,” he said. “The Council of Alphas has not built a cell in this territory that can hold a wolf of my age and my rank, and the officer they left to guard me was a boy of nineteen who did not know what he was doing.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I am not here to fight you and I am not here to arrest you. I am here to make a deal.”

“Say it.”

“The full Council meets in Boise in three days,” Halloran said. “And when it meets, the first thing it is going to do is remove the seven Alphas who sat on this tribunal and the second thing it is going to do is rule on the claim of blood. And the claim is going to fail, because the Alphas who remain are the Alphas who have been signing the Council’s paper for eighty-five years and they do not want the register opened.” He came up one step. “But there is a way to make it succeed. There is a way to put the register in front of the full Council and to have it read out loud and to have every name in it named.”

“What way?”

“Me,” Halloran said. “I am an Alpha of the full Council. I have a seat and a vote and a voice, and I have been on that Council for thirty years, and when I stand up in that room and say that I signed a claim in 1954 and that the claim was a forgery and that the land was taken from a Luna named Mary Hale, the other Alphas will have to listen.” He looked at me. “Because an Alpha cannot be ignored in the Council chamber. A Beta can be ignored. A Gamma can be thrown out. An Alpha cannot.”

I stood on the porch.

“You wrote the letter that killed my brother,” I said.

“I wrote the letter that killed your brother.”

“And you want me to let you stand up in that room and be the hero who saves the Luna.”

“I want you to let me stand up in that room and tell the truth,” Halloran said. “Not because I am a hero. Because I am an old wolf who has done a great deal of harm and I would like to do one thing that is not harm before I die.” He put his hand on the rail. “And because I am the only wolf in this territory who can do it. The seven Alphas who sat on the tribunal have been named in the Council’s motion as conspirators. Their votes will not count. Mine will.”

I looked at him.

“And if I say no?”

“Then the claim fails and the register stays closed and the Council keeps the land and the curse stays on the wolf.” He looked at Elias. “And the wolf stays cursed and the pack stays stolen and the whole of it goes on for another eighty-five years.”

I stood on the porch with the cold coming up through my boots.

“What do you want in exchange?” I said.

“Nothing,” Halloran said.

“Everybody wants something.”

“I want to be allowed to speak,” he said. “I want my name to be read out in the Council chamber as the Alpha who signed the claim and the Alpha who wrote the letter. I want the record to say what I did. And then I want to go to whatever cell the Alphas have built that can hold me and I want to stay in it.” He looked at me. “That is all. That is the whole of it.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

“Then you will speak,” I said. “And the record will say what you did.”

Halloran nodded.

“There is a thing I brought you,” he said.

He went back to the car and came back with a photograph in his hand.

It was old and brown at the edges and it was a picture of a field with a low stone wall running along the bottom of it and three children standing in the middle of it with their arms around each other.

I had seen it before. It was the photograph in Maeve’s box and the photograph in Clara Renn’s storeroom and the photograph in the founders’ record.

But this one was different.

This one had a fourth figure in it. There was a woman standing at the edge of the field, behind the children, with her hands on the shoulders of the two girls, and there was a fourth child standing beside her.

It was a girl. She was small and she had dark hair and she was standing a little apart from the others with her hands at her sides and she was looking at the camera.

“That is the founders’ field in 1911,” Halloran said. “The three children are Margaret’s children. The woman at the edge is Margaret. And the fourth child is the daughter of the miller’s daughter. She was not supposed to be in the photograph and she was in the field that day and Margaret put her in the picture and gave a copy to the miller’s daughter.” He turned the photograph over. “There is a name on the back.”

I turned it over.

There was writing on the back in a hand I did not know.

Mary’s girl, 1911. She is one of us.

I looked at the girl in the photograph.

“Mary’s girl,” I said. “The miller’s daughter was named Mary. And her girl was Clara Renn.”

“Her girl was Clara Renn,” Halloran said. “And the photograph says she is one of us. That is Margaret’s hand and Margaret is the founder’s wife and Margaret is the Luna’s cousin. She is saying that Clara Renn is the Luna’s line.”

I sat down on the step.

“Clara Renn is the Luna’s line,” I said. “And she is the founder’s line. And she has been sitting in that house for eleven years and she has been the second wolf and she has never told me.”

“She has never told you because she did not know,” Halloran said. “Look at the photograph again. Look at the fourth child. She is standing apart from the others. She is not holding hands with them. She does not know she is one of them.” He put the photograph in my hand. “Margaret knew. Margaret put her in the picture. And then Margaret died in 1932 and the photograph went into a box and Clara Renn’s mother never told her.”

I held the photograph.

“Then Clara Renn is the fourth line,” I said. “And there are five of us. Hannah and Arthur and Ruth and Clara and me.”

“There are five of you,” Halloran said. “And five Lunas in a circle is a thing the old Alpha never imagined.”

I looked at the photograph and the field and the children and the small girl standing apart.

“Where is this photograph from?” I said.

“It was in the Council’s file on this territory,” Halloran said. “It has been in Boise since 1911. I took it out of the file this morning and I brought it to you because I thought you should have it.” He put his hands in his pockets. “And because there is a thing on the back that you have not seen yet. Under the writing. There is a line of numbers.”

I turned the photograph over again.

Under the words Mary’s girl, 1911, there was a line of numbers in pencil.

It said: 11. 4. 7.

I stood up.

“Eleven, four, seven,” I said. “My brother wrote those numbers on the wall of the mill room. E. R. 1954. 11. 4. 7.”

“I know,” Halloran said. “I read the report of the tribunal. Your brother wrote them on the wall of the room where the Luna was held and nobody has known what they mean.” He looked at the photograph. “But they are on this photograph. They were written on this photograph in 1911 in Margaret’s hand and your brother found them and wrote them down.”

I stood on the porch with the photograph in my hand.

“What do they mean?” I said.

“I do not know,” Halloran said. “But they are in the hand of the woman who hid the Luna and kept the stones and sent the record to the Council. And if Margaret wrote them down in 1911, they are a thing she wanted someone to find.”

I put the photograph in my jacket.

“Then we are going to find out what they mean,” I said. “And then we are going to Boise.”