Summer of the Wolves (26 page)

 

Standing in the stone-floored post office, she sorted through the mail for Little Berry Island and found a letter with her name on it. She knew it! Olivia had written just in time! She put the rest of the mail back into the box, along with three envelopes that she pulled from her backpack. One for Ian, one for Randall, and one for Pearl. Last night it had seemed like the right thing to write letters. Now she wished she'd written one to Thomas, too, and Elinor. Oh well, she could always write from California. She left her key inside the P.O. box and snapped it shut. When she looked more closely at the letter she'd received, she saw Meg's swirly handwriting. It wasn't from Olivia, she thought with disappointment. But it would be great to have Meg's letter to read on the bus. Maybe Meg was feeling better. She stuffed it in the front flap of her pack.

She probably should have tried calling Olivia, but she would have had to call from the Center, and she hadn't wanted anyone to overhear her plans. If it turned out that she couldn't stay with Olivia and her mom very long, or Meg, she could probably stay with Zach's family. Olivia's mom was really nice, though. She'd always hugged Nika and joked with her. She was sure it would work. Then, later, she could go back to Meg's. Nika was old enough not to need actual parents anymore. She just needed a place to stay. And to finish school. When she thought about it, it all seemed perfectly sensible.

 

The silvery-tan wolf surveyed the humans from her greeting rock as they stirred in and out of the black wolf's pen. Energy sparked in the air. What would happen now? At last the tan wolf could not stay still and raced into the deep trees of the pen and back again. The black wolf that she wanted to know stood watching her, then looked at the humans, then watched her again.

There was one last thing to do. Nika carried her heavy backpack into the Center and placed it under a desk. She had to say goodbye to Khan, and she had to be there when Khan joined Luna.

She ran into Ian as he and Elinor were heading out to the pens. “Good, you're here. It's time.” She nodded and the three of them clanged into the holding pen.

“We'll slide the gate open, and the wolves will decide what to do,” Ian said. “Luna can come into the holding pen or Khan can join her. Then Elinor and I will spend time in the pen with them, to make sure everything's okay.”

Did Khan know he was saying goodbye? Nika wondered. When she moved to leave the holding pen, he leaped up on her, reaching high with his paws, saying
wowrrr
almost as a howl, then spun toward the closed gate where Luna stood, her ears pricked forward.

After everyone left Khan's pen and the gate rolled open, Luna rushed in, scrambling to a stop in front of Khan. For a moment both wolves became statues. Khan rolled in submission. Luna buried her nose in his fur. Then she bent her front legs in a play bow, her rump high, and streaked into the large enclosure. Khan raced at her side, grabbing at the fur of her shoulder.

The older wolf ran to the top of the mound above the den, where she watched the young black pup approach. Ian had reminded Nika that at this point, if Luna chose to hurt Khan, which could happen, there was nothing anyone could do.

Khan sniffed around some bushes, urinated in a squat, and finally walked closer to the mound where Luna stood. His ears were tipped forward. He stood very tall, looking intently at Luna. Even with his gangly, halfgrown body, Nika could see the adult wolf beginning to emerge in his posture. Ian had said in three more months he would be nearly the size of Luna.
A very big pup,
she thought, looking at Luna. He was beautiful but she missed the round-bellied baby pup that had snuggled up to her.

Suddenly Luna leaped to zigzag and dash across the enclosure. The lameness in her leg didn't show at all now when she ran, reminding Nika what Ian always said, that wolves are tough. Streams of sunlight caught in Luna's coat, bringing out the colors of her fur, all the colors of wolf. Why were they called gray wolves, Nika wondered again, when they came in so many colors—black, golden tan in spots, tweedy gray, lighter tan, white? Luna was very light, but she still had a saddle of gray across her shoulders. Watching them run, Nika kept swallowing down the lump in her throat.

Khan raced behind her, and then they stopped to sniff each other's faces. Again Luna bounded away, this time until she was out of sight in the trees. Khan followed her in a rolling lope and disappeared as well. In a few minutes the two of them came racing full speed, shoulder to shoulder, circling the open area and disappearing back into the trees. Once when they skidded to a stop, Nika saw Luna loop her front leg over Khan's back.

When she did that, both Elinor and Ian laughed. Apparently all the right wolf language was being expressed and understood.

Nika stood watching the two penned wolves splayed side by side on the mound atop the new den, as though they'd been together forever. It was about as happy and sad a scene as Nika could imagine. She turned away from them and left quickly. She couldn't let anything soften her resolve now.

In the office, she found Ian at his computer. “I'm going into town for a bit,” she said. She noticed a newly framed photo on his desk beside his computer. It was a picture of the three of them at Serpent Lake with a giant pot full of blueberries. They were all laughing because he'd had to reset his camera timer three times to catch the shot.

“Be back here by six,” Ian said, tapping away.

“Okay, well. 'Bye, Ian,” she said, grabbing her backpack on her way out the door. He didn't even seem to hear her. He seemed happy today. Like all was well with the world.

 

They ran shoulder to shoulder. With her controlled bite, she held his fur. She held his muzzle in her mouth, then sniffed him when he rolled. It was as though he had always been with her. And when they waited and watched, they waited and watched within the territory of each other's sight or smell or hearing.

Nika tapped her foot nervously on the gray painted concrete floor as she waited on one of the yellow plastic chairs. Her ticket stuck out of a pocket on the side of her backpack, right where she could keep her eye on it. Every few minutes she glanced at the door, half expecting Ian to storm in and point a finger, directing her to his green truck. Finally she heard the rumble of the bus. The time had come to line up in front of the small, sand-colored building.

Several people carried bags from the parking lot, tickets in their hands. Nika found herself in a line of seven or eight people. When it was her turn, she gave her ticket to a short man in a uniform shirt, his large middle folding over his belt. He tore the ticket and gave her back a stub.

“Want me to put that bag somewheres?” He nodded toward the underside of the bus, where bags were being loaded.

“No, thanks,” she said, and climbed into the half-empty bus, clutching her bulging backpack to her chest.

“Take a seat, everyone. This ain't a trolley!” chanted the uniformed man as he swung into the driver's seat. Going down the aisle, Nika passed a man in a baseball cap with his head bent over a newspaper, an elderly woman in a pink and yellow dress unwrapping a dripping sandwich, two middle-aged couples.

She couldn't make herself choose a seat. She just stood in the aisle toward the back, looking around at these people she didn't know.

The bus driver squeaked the door shut and shouted back, “Once more, everybody. Take a seat or take your chances!”

The long seat across the back looked okay, behind a mother and her two kids. Nika bumped her way down the aisle and sat just as the bus lurched and groaned out of the parking lot. The engine whined up and down through the gears as it stopped at cross streets. As it left the edges of the town, it picked up speed, humming down the highway. She would really miss Khan. But in a thunderclap sort of way, she understood. Maybe she'd always known what had to happen but just didn't want to admit it. Still she was deeply sorry he wouldn't get to live in a faraway forest with his own pack, sorry they couldn't always run together on the Big Island.

It seemed to Nika they were going awfully fast. They passed the Log House just beyond the edge of town. Ian had taken them there for homemade ice cream. Next was the egg farm, where they always got organic eggs. The eggshells were green or brown, the yolks almost orange. Past the egg farm was a turnoff to a waterfall, where Ian had taken them to swim. It was strange. She hadn't been here that long, but everything along this road was as familiar as her home street in Pasadena, except everything here was far apart with spruce bogs and stands of trees in between.

Nika realized she was clutching her pack so tightly, her hands hurt. She released her grip and set the backpack beside her on the empty seat. She reminded herself again why she was riding on this noisy bus with strangers, leaving a place she had begun to love. Randall had a home now and didn't need her anymore. Luna was safe from Bristo. Khan would bond with Luna. Ian and Elinor would live happily ever after. No one here needed her.

As the bus settled into a monotone hum, they passed more familiar sights: the burned-over area from a forest fire, the swamp where the spruces looked like old wornout toothbrushes, the turnoff to the casino on Halfway Bay.

She tried to relax into the rhythms of the bus. Soon she noticed that a girl was staring over the seat in front of her. She was maybe seven years old and leaned both arms on the back of the seat. The girl's mom and brother were sitting one seat ahead of the girl. Nika had passed them when boarding, so they must already have been on the bus when it stopped. The little girl shifted to dangle a ragged teddy bear from one hand, fingering its worn ears and sucking the thumb of the other hand. The brother shot the girl mean looks from time to time over the back of his seat, and the mother was in some kind of hysterics, rattling on nonstop and talking at the girl about talking when she shouldn't, making them late, being a tattletale. Nika couldn't hear everything the mother said, only the words when she turned her head. The girl never looked at her family but stared at Nika, curling downward until only her eyes and the bear showed over the seat back.

Suddenly, the girl jumped up and came back to the bench seat and plunked down hard a little distance away from Nika still clutching the bear. Nika wanted to comfort her, to tell her to be strong. She smiled at the girl and said, “That's a nice bear. What's his name?”

When the girl turned and looked at her, there was angry fire in her eyes. She said, “Stop looking at me.” Her forehead wrinkled, and her eyes reminded Nika of the cougar at Bristo's. Nika felt sad for this girl who seemed so alone at such a young age. Her dark eyes and neatly pulled-back black shiny hair would have made her pretty, but she wasn't. Her face was an angry mask.

Nika wondered what she could do for her. She offered the girl a chocolate chip cookie from her backpack. “Here, do you want one of these?”

The girl pinned Nika with her eyes again and said, “Leave me alone.”

Nika was confused. Why had the girl moved to the bench seat next to her, then acted like Nika had taken a swing at her with stick?

She placed the cookie on a clean napkin she'd found in the pocket of her pack and gave the girl a little smile. She pushed it halfway, like you would put out seeds for a nervous chipmunk.

She took out a cookie for herself, then remembered Meg's letter in the pocket of her backpack. Hopefully Meg was better. Perhaps Meg had talked to Olivia's mom.

 

Dear Nika,

 

It was so good to get your letter describing how you helped raise the little wolf puppy. You have obviously found a new and exciting world to explore. I would love to see that pup, although, he's probably not very small anymore. I loved the pictures your friend Thomas took of him and have put them on my refrigerator.