جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 80

I read the paper twice and then I put it down on the table and looked at my sister.“She is going to stand up in that hall in the morning and say that Declan is a false mate,” I said. “She is going to say she made the bond between us the same way she made the one in December. And there is not a wolf in this village who is going to be able to tell the difference, because she made the false one in December and the whole co-op watched it break and they have no reason to believe that the thing in front of them now is any different.”Ronan was on his feet.“There is a way to tell the difference,” he said. “I am the healer of this pack and I have been in this village for eighty years and I have seen a false marking once in my life and I know what it does. A false bond has a mark that does not sit right. It is in the wrong place and it is the wrong colour and it does not answer when the healer puts his hand on it. A true bond has a mark that comes up slowly and sits under the jaw where the w

Mairéad stood up at the head of the table and put her hands flat on the wood and looked at the weight.“Say the words again,” she said.“I claim the seat,” I said. “I am the daughter of Maeve’s daughter and I hold the weight of forty one and I put it on the table in front of the enforcer and the co-op and the Alpha.”“And you know what a claim means.”“I know what a claim means.”“Then say it for the co-op,” Mairéad said. “Say the whole of it, because there are wolves in this hall who have never heard a claim made and who are going to hear one this morning and I am not going to have it said afterwards that the woman from Dublin did not know what she was doing.”I turned round and looked at the whole hall.“A claim means a challenge,” I said. “The Alpha answers it or forfeits the seat. If she answers it, it is on the headland at the full moon and it is between the two of us and no other wolf. And if she forfeits, the seat is vacant and the co-op chooses a new Alpha by vote.”The hall w

I sat at the table with the page in my hand and the whole of the afternoon in front of me.“Four wolves from the north,” I said. “In this village for a week before the fire. They set it and they went out in a boat the night after and they have never been named.”“They have never been named and they were never looked for,” Padraig said. “The village had a fire and a dead Alpha and a new Alpha in the morning and not one wolf in it asked who the four strangers were.” He sat down across from me. “And there is a thing about the north that you already know. The woman Eileen has been in the north for twenty years building a pack out of wolves this territory has thrown out. And before her, her mother was in Galway and before her there was a family in the north that took children out of this village and brought them up to be claimants.” He put his hand flat on the table. “There has been a family in the north taking wolves out of this village since 1961. They took Eileen in 1975 and they took t

The room above the hall was very quiet.“Deirdre,” I said. “Declan’s mother. The woman who went off the cliff in 1981.”“The woman who was pushed off the cliff in 1981,” my sister said. “And the woman who took the girl in 1975 and gave her to Eileen who was going to Galway. And the woman who took my boy in 1976 and gave him to a family in the north.” She put her hands in her lap. “I have been carrying it for twenty one years and I have never said it out loud. I gave my son to Deirdre because Deirdre was the only wolf in this village who had ever taken a child out and brought it up somewhere else and kept it alive. She took the girl in 1975 and the girl is in the north and she is called Eileen and she came down that shore road this morning. And she took my boy in 1976 and I do not know where he is and I do not know what he is called and I do not know whether he is alive.”Ahern put his pen down.“Then there is a thing about the record of 1975,” he said. “The parish record that was burn

I ran up the pier with the ring in my hand and Declan behind me and the fog came with us and swallowed the village.The green door of the hall was open. The stairs were empty. The room above the hall was open and the lamp was on the table and the old woman was asleep in the bed in the corner and Ahern's case was on the table open and empty and the wolf on the door was on the floor with his hands behind his head and his eyes on the ceiling.“She came up the stairs,” he said. “The Alpha came up the stairs with a wolf behind her and she said, I am going to sit with my aunt, and she went past me and she was in the room and then she was out of it and she went down the stairs and I did not stop her because she is the Alpha.”“And the case?”“She opened the case and took a thing out of it and put it in her coat and went out.” He sat up. “She was not alone. There was a wolf with her in a hood and he did not speak and he did not take his hood down.”I stood in the room above the hall with the