St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (3 page)

glass necklace around her throat. She was far from

the most affectionate woman on the reservation.

Not only was she the master practitioner of the

Shoshone Reticence Rule; she didn't suffer fools.

I set her loom down by the hearth. I kissed her

cheek, rubbing the dirt from my face onto hers.

She yelped, indignant, and swatted at me. I darted

out the back door, Balto trailing after me, and

didn't bother hiding my grin.

One bath and one change of clothes later and I got

the broom and the dustpan out of the closet. I

swept the dirt from the floor, Granny watching me

with sharp, distrusting eyes. Her friends had gone

home for the evening. Balto opened his mouth in a

wide yawn and tried to climb into the unlit

fireplace, something he'd been doing since he was

a baby. It never worked--there just wasn't room

enough for both him and the timber--but I greatly

admired his fighting spirit.

"Cubby?"

I looked up with a smile. Dad was home.

Dad looked about as different from me as two

people could possibly look. Only recently did I

figure out why that was. Where I was skinny and

fair, he was dark and paunchy. His hair was as

black and as smooth as a crow's, his chin wobbly,

his nose aquiline. The expression on his face was

unchanging: gentle, but somber.

"Cubby," he started awkwardly, glancing toward

Balto. "Do you remember what I told you last

year?"

I had quietly been dreading this day for quite some

time now.

"It's time to return him to the wild."

Balto wasn't a domesticated dog. You can't really

tame a wild animal. They're docile enough while

they're young, but once they hit puberty, they start

acting aggressive; because, of course, they want to

get out into the wilderness and find a mate, maybe

even run a pack if they're so inclined. Coywolves

are like coyotes in that they'll almost never hurt a

human. But that doesn't mean you should tempt

fate.

I hid my crestfallen expression behind a smile.

Dad didn't fall for it, though. Like Rafael, he knew

me well enough to know what I was thinking when

I couldn't say it.

"I'm sorry, Cubby," he said earnestly. "I really

am. But I warned you this would happen."

He was right. I put aside the broom and dustpan.

"It was a good thing you did," Granny said

imperially. "It was very kind of you to take in a

rejected animal."

I wondered whether the world had turned upside-

down. I smiled at Granny, bemused. Granny

didn't usually offer compliments. But I wasn't

allowed to inquire into the matter, because she

waved her hand at me, dismissively, and hobbled

off to the kitchen with her empty teacup. It was

comforting to know that some things didn't change.

"We'll go now," Dad said quietly. "If you're

ready."

With a heavy heart, I clapped my hands. Balto

gave up his fireplace scrawl and bounded over to

me, dutiful as ever. My heart sank even further. I

really didn't want to let him go.

Dad clipped a hunting knife onto his belt, just for

precaution, and we left the house together with

Balto and headed out to the woods, on the lookout

for the coywolf packs that lived among the beech

trees. I thought it was odd that coywolves were

diurnal when both their ancestors were nocturnal.

Dad was really good at topography, something he

liked to attribute to his Apache father. "They

wouldn't be anywhere near the path to the lake," he

told me. "Nor the north; they'll want to steer clear

of the black bears." He led us south--just missing

Annie's

grotto--and

carefully

distinguished

between the natural-recurring detritus and the

kinds caused by the wild animals. He examined

the alder trees; he could tell whether they were

marked recently just by looking at the bark.

Finally he came to a stand-still; he pressed his

finger to his lips and I hung back. He pointed at

what looked like a gopher hole, only much larger.

"Wolves' den," he whispered.

I didn't know whether it was the gray wolves' den,

or the coywolves' den--and I wasn't about to poke

my head inside and find out--but it didn't matter;

Rafael had told me once that gray wolves would

take in any lone wolf they found wandering about,

hybrid or not. My heart wrenched. I didn't want to

leave Balto here. I knew I had to. But in some

ways, he was my best friend, more so than even

Annie or Rafael.

Dad started to walk back to the woodland path. I

turned my back on Balto and felt an almost

physical pain. I followed Dad.

Two seconds later and I realized Balto was

following us, too.

Stay
, I signed to Balto. Coywolves may not be

dogs, but they understand visual cues a lot better

than aural ones.

Balto sat back on his haunches and stared at me

impassively, his eyes ink-black.

No good. I took another step and found him

following me once more.

Stay
, I signed again. I wanted to scream.

"Here," Dad said. He ripped a wild chokecherry

off of a leafy shrub. He bent down and held it out

in offering; Balto sniffed with great interest. Dad

pulled his arm back and threw the chokecherry as

far into the woods as he could muster.

"Let's go now," Dad said to me, when Balto

chased after the fruit.

I was sad, weighted by absence and by gravity,

when Dad and I went home without Balto. I kept

wondering: What if the other wolves don't like

him? What if he gets attacked while he's out in the

wild? I wondered what it must have felt like when

he looked up from his snack, tail held high, and

realized he had been abandoned. It was the second

time in his life that he had been abandoned. I

wasn't supposed to abandon him. I was the one

creature he had known wouldn't abandon him. I

felt cruel, and heartless, and I wanted to punch

myself in the face.

I was inconsolable during dinner that night, the

whole tribe gathered around the firepit to share

pan-seared elk and sagebread. Now and again I

looked up at the bull and pinyon pines, waiting for

Balto to arrive. He never did.

"Are you okay?" asked Autumn Rose In Winter, a

ninth grade girl.

I nodded with a quick smile.

After dinner I made a great show of yawning and

trudging tiredly into the house. It must have

worked, because neither Dad nor Granny tried to

stop me when I climbed the staircase up to my

bedroom. I lit the oil lamp by my bed and closed

the bedroom door. I sat on the edge of the

mattress, my head in my hands. I wasn't tired. I

was wide awake.

I bit back a sigh and turned to extinguish my lamp.

That was when I saw the beam of light streaming

past my bedroom window.

My pulse picked up, just a little; my body reacted

on muscle memory. I slid open my window and

glanced at the ground. I knew what I would find

even before I looked.

Rafael turned off his flashlight. He set it on the

ground.

"I'm coming up," he hissed.

I saluted him playfully. I moved over on the bed to

give him some room.

It was a matter of seconds before Rafael thrust his

upper body through my window and slithered onto

the mattress. One of his braids had gotten caught

in his mouth; he spat it out, bewildered. He

righted himself on my bed and I snapped the

window soundly shut.

"I saw you at dinner," Rafael said. "I know you're

upset about something. Spill."

And I spilled; because with Rafael, I couldn't help

but spill. I talked about Balto, and how Dad and I

had left him in the woods. I talked about my

father, who wasn't biologically my father, and I

talked about my mother, who had cheated on him.

I talked about the vision quest. You're not

supposed to talk about your vision quest; there's a

rule that you should only discuss it with the

shaman. I broke that rule, because Rafael already

knew everything else about me; because I didn't

want to hide anything from Rafael. I relied

partially on sign language and partially on body

language and I let Rafael fill in the gaps when I

didn't have a way to articulate them myself. I

could always talk to Rafael. Even when I couldn't

talk. I didn't need words. I didn't need a voice.

He was a part of me in some way I didn't know

how to define.

"Sucks about Balto," Rafael said. "You

remember? He helped me and my sis find you

when they took you away from the reserve. Just

goes to show you he's a smart animal. He'll be

fine in the wild. And I don't see why you keep

stressing out about your dad. He's still your dad.

Doesn't matter what color your skin is."

I smiled at Rafael, subdued. He always managed

to put things into perspective.

Rafael talked for a while about his end-of-year

discussion with Mr. Red Clay. "Says I've gotta

take a course in something called speech-language

pathology," he said. Rafael wanted to be a speech

therapist. "I think my grades are okay. I don't

know if it'll look bad that I repeated a year,

though. Do you have any samosas? I'm starving."

I didn't; but we crept down the stairs together, as

quietly as we could, and stole our way into the

kitchen, where I knew there was ice cream in the

icebox. There was no light in the kitchen but the

moon streaming in through the window. We ate

chocolate ice cream together while Rafael ranted

some more about a new power metal band he

liked, Sonata Something, and I scrunched up my

face because I hated power metal, and we argued

back and forth while he made fun of Cem Adrian.

"He's nothing special," he said acerbically. I

graciously decided not to remind him that he had

never heard of Cem Adrian before today.

I put our used dishes in the wash basin for

tomorrow morning. We went back to my room and

sat on the bed together. Rafael asked me to play

the Song of the Fallen Warrior on my plains flute.

I played as softly as I knew how; Dad was

sleeping in the next room, and I didn't want to

wake him.

Rafael leaned against me and made himself at

home. I liked the way he did that, like it was an

unconscious action, like his body just knew he was

at his most comfortable when we were touching. I

was on the final verse of the song when he gave up

his position. He shifted around on the mattress and

stretched his long legs over the side.

He laid his head on my lap, his fingers toying idly

with the zipper of his gray jacket.

I played through to the end of the song, to the last

quavering note. I let my plains flute hang from its

cord around my neck. The way Rafael went on

with his zipper, I wasn't sure, at first, whether he

had noticed the song was over. But I saw the way

his throat tightened, his Adam's apple bobbing

when he swallowed, and I knew that he had.

I sank my fingers into his coarse hair and combed

them through. I stroked his scalp with my

fingertips; I tickled the tips of his ears. He tilted

his head back, just slightly. His eyes met mine.

You can learn a lot about a person just by looking

into their eyes. You can hear the contents of their

heart.

I bent my head and brushed my lips against his. I

could taste the chocolate on his lips as they moved

against mine; I could feel his hand at the back of

my head, the pilot whale bracelet dangling around

his wrist. I sat up, and he sat with me while I

kissed the corner of his mouth, while he pulled me

flush against him, swallowing me up in his arms. I

shifted on his lap and felt him tense beneath me

and curse against my mouth, and a thrilling,