Once There Were Wolves Page 4

  He considers, then starts for his truck again. “You’ll never find it in the dark. Come on.”

  * * *

  The Burns farm is huge, I’m told, and there is a dirt road to reach the house and then another to the stables. That’s about as much conversation as we manage in the car. That, and: “I’m Duncan MacTavish.”

  “Inti Flynn.”

  Duncan has an old two-seater truck filled with dust and cobwebs and grubby tools. We have to travel with the window down because a rat died inside the engine somewhere so it stinks, and his air system doesn’t work. My nose is icy by the time we arrive. Duncan’s amusement from this morning seems to have vanished. He is silent now, preoccupied.

  The stables are lit from within, glowing eyes under the shadow of the mountain.

  Three people are standing outside the horse’s stall, and she is very much still alive, her eyes darting uneasily. I introduce myself to the Burns couple. Stuart is tall and carries a paunch that threatens to burst through the buttons of his shirt. Massive shoulders, fleshy, likable features, dusty blond hair under his flat cap. Lainey Burns is as small as her husband is large, but her grip when I shake her hand is stronger than I am expecting. The third I know already—Amelia, our vet—and she’s holding a bag in which I can clearly see a syringe. They greet Duncan, who hangs back, and he tells them he is just my chauffeur, that he has no business here. “Inti’s the one who rode your mare out of the ravine today.”

  Their interest kindles.

  “Then we owe you a debt,” Stuart says. “This one didn’t latch the pen gate properly”—he gestures to Lainey without looking at her, and Lainey blushes—“and now we’re down a mare. But at least thanks to you, Miss Flynn, we got some dog food out of it.”

  “That’s why I’m here. There’s no need to put her down.”

  “Amelia says the ligament in the foreleg is done for.”

  “That’s not exactly what I said, Stuart,” Amelia corrects. “I said it’s torn.”

  “She can’t be ridden, correct?”

  “Not for a good while.”

  “Would she recover with rest and rehab?” I ask.

  “Maybe,” Amelia says. “She’ll likely never run, or carry much load, and her emotional damage might mean she can never be ridden at all…”

  “I’m sorry to say it,” Stuart says, and he does indeed sound sorry, “but we don’t have the time or the manpower to rehab a horse that may or may not ever work for us. Now if you’ll excuse us, love, we’d best put the poor beast out of her misery.”

  My pulse is a whitewater rapid, rushing and uneven and filling my ears so I can’t think straight.

  Stuart is moving to the stable, Amelia reluctantly following. Lainey turns away, not wanting to watch, unwilling to argue.

  “I’ll buy her,” I say.

  “What’s that, love?”

  “How much do you want for her?”

  “You want to buy an unusable horse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Because fuck all of you, that’s why.

  When I don’t answer, Stuart looks to Lainey, then Duncan, and there’s something suspicious in his gaze, like he thinks maybe he’s missing something. But he shrugs. “Three thousand.”

  Amelia bursts out laughing. “Come on, Stuart.”

  He doesn’t take his eyes off me and I realize he is much shrewder than he seems. “That’s a prize mustang there, and I put a lot of time into her breaking.”

  Good job he did of it, too.

  “And she’s useless to you,” Amelia reminds him. “To anyone.”

  “Doesn’t make her worthless,” he says. Because he can see I want her.

  “One thousand,” I say.

  He turns back to the stable, motioning for Amelia.

  “Fine. Three.”

  Stuart smiles and offers to shake my hand again. I don’t have three thousand pounds. I shake anyway.

  “I’ll be out to pick her up in the morning.”

  “Lainey and I’ll have coffee and cake waiting for you,” he says cheerfully, as though he has not just swindled me outrageously. Lainey has nothing even close to a smile on her lips. I thought she’d be relieved and it disconcerts me.

  “Everyone happy, then? Stuart?” Duncan asks.

  “Over the moon,” the big farmer replies.

  “Lainey, you all right there, love?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she replies and there is her smile, radiant and sudden, and it strikes me that she’s good at smiling when she doesn’t want to. “If I hadn’t been such an idiot we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “No mess,” I say.

  “I’ve left pen gates unlocked a thousand times,” Amelia says. “Everyone does it.”

  “Not on this farm we don’t, do we?” Stuart asks his wife.

  Lainey shakes her head.

  We bid them farewell and walk to the cars, boots crunching. Infinite stars above.

  “I’ll be out to see you tomorrow,” Amelia tells me.

  “Cheers.”

  “How they looking?”

  “Six and Nine have mated.”

  She lets out a whoop that scares the crap out of me, and then we both laugh before she waves goodnight and drives off.

  Duncan and I climb into his truck, following Stuart and Lainey up the dirt path to their house. They disappear inside as we drive past. But instead of carrying on, Duncan stops the truck and turns off the engine and lights.

  “What are we doing?”

  He doesn’t reply, just settles himself in as though for a stakeout.

  It’s confounding.

  Until it’s not.

  Because there is a way of being that whispers fear and there is a way of being that has the hard edge of anger in it, and I saw both of those tonight. Since Alaska I have felt them both more than the breaths I’ve taken.

  “Is she in danger?” I ask.

  Duncan says nothing.

  “If he sees us it’ll make it worse.”

  When I am met with silence I say, “I’m going in.”

  My hand on the seat belt, his hand on mine. I search his face for some answer. Why wait here if we intend to do nothing? We sit silently in the dark for a long while anyway. I strain to hear sounds from the house and fail. It isn’t until the lights are swallowed that we assume the couple has gone to bed and it’s safe to leave. But all I can think is that they will hear the engine start up again, see the headlights, know we were lurking out here. It will embarrass Stuart that we were here.

  My hands move, signing. Turn around, go back.

  But Duncan doesn’t know this silent language. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  I promised never to do this again, to bite my tongue. To sit still.

  Duncan drops me at my car in town. The stench of the rat has started to nauseate me and I’m relieved to climb out.

  “I live a little way down the road from you,” he tells me. “In fact I’m your only neighbor, in case you need anything.”

  “Thanks.” I can’t help thinking it’s a creepy way of putting it. “You headed home?”

  “I’ll pop into work for an hour or two.” His gaze has already turned away, his mind on the night ahead.

  “What’s your work?” I ask.

  “Police chief.”

  My mouth falls open. Then I laugh. “’Course you are.”

  He smiles. “You wanna report that numpty from this morning?”

  I nod. “Tell him there are precious things hiding beneath the snow. It’s easy to forget they’re there.”

  He inclines his head. “Aye, I’ll do that then.”

  I’m about to hop in my car when I pause. “So then why didn’t you—with Stuart…?”

  “Arrest him?”

  I nod.

  “For what?”

  * * *

  In the morning when I return for the horse, the farmhand is the only one there to greet me because Lainey has had an accident and been taken
to hospital.

  4

  When we were twelve Mum occasionally started taking us to watch the court cases she was called to testify in. When they got bad we would wriggle down onto the floor and have entire silent conversations with each other, dictated usually by the signs Aggie had made up most recently. She was building us a vocabulary, an entire language spoken with our hands. When she made up the sign for “dragonfly” we had silent discussions about how many we could legitimately catch and what colors they would be and how it was likely one day scientists would work out how to grow them to a rideable size. When she made up the sign for “universe” we considered what that contained and after placing just the two of us within it we decided that was enough for one universe. When she made up the sign for “sex,” which was a rather crass index finger poking through the hole of her opposite index and thumb, I pointed out that that sign already existed and we both cracked up laughing so much we got scolded by the judge and then in deep shit with Mum when we got home. But honestly—what did she expect? Why did she keep bringing us here to witness the absolute worst in people?

  I knew why, actually, if I admitted it. Because she was trying to break me. To make me admit that she was right. That people were, for the most part, irredeemable. And that if I didn’t toughen up I would become one of the people in those stands, telling a judge what had been done to me.

  But on this I would not be broken. I had a magic power that wasn’t magic. I felt what other people felt, and I knew what lived in those touches and how it was mostly sweetness. You didn’t touch sweetly unless you were good.

  One night on the way home from court we rode in the back seat of her partner’s cop car. This was Aggie’s favorite thing in the world, pretending to be apprehended criminals and trying to wise-talk her way out of custody. Mum’s partner was a guy called Jim Owens who was sort of handsome but also chunky enough to be reasonably called fat and had been obviously in love with her our whole lives. He always bought us ice creams. We liked Jim. I think maybe we even loved Jim. Mum tolerated him. I couldn’t imagine what she would look like in love.

  But even Jim’s dumb jokes couldn’t distract me today. “Why’d that woman—Tara—why was she trying to get her kids away from their dad?” I asked.

  Don’t ask, Aggie signs.

  “You’ll see that bit tomorrow,” Mum said.

  “Can’t you tell me now?”

  She’ll just try to scare you, Aggie signs. She rolls her eyes, too, and it catches Mum’s gaze in the rearview.

  “Words,” she warns Aggie. Then to me she says, “Because he’s been abusing them.”

  “His kids?”

  Mum nodded.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Okay.”

  I shook my head. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’s sick, darlin’,” Jim said.

  “No he’s not,” Mum said. “Don’t teach her that. He’s a cunt, that’s why.”

  The air in the back of the car turned very hot. I went to wind down the window and remembered I couldn’t, they were locked shut.

  Aggie arranged her hands into a diamond shape. “This can be the sign for cunt.”

  The rest of us froze. And then dissolved into laughter. Aggie was good at breaking any tension.

  “I hope that’s the last time I ever hear you say that word, little lady,” Jim said, which didn’t carry much weight because he was still chuckling.

  After a while, though, I couldn’t stop wondering. “Why do you hate people so much, Mum?”

  “I don’t hate them. I’m a realist.”

  “Dad says caring for each other is the only way to care for ourselves and that kindness will save the world.”

  Mum snorted with laughter. “You mean the madman who lives out in the wilderness alone and doesn’t have contact with other humans? That Dad?” I watched her shake her head and look out the window. “I’ve cared for more people in a day than that man will in his whole sorry life.”

  “You don’t care much for us,” Aggie said.

  Mum’s body went stiff. Aggie had no filter. I wanted to catch the words and stuff them back in her mouth because I knew that even though Mum acted like nothing mattered to her she still had feelings, she still got hurt. She still spent her whole life trying to help people.

  But I couldn’t unsay my sister’s words, and eventually Mum just said, “Call me when your husband beats you or your children nearly to death.”

  * * *

  I drive to the hospital. I don’t know why. It’s none of my business but here I am and in I go. A receptionist points me in the right direction. At the end of a long hallway stands Duncan MacTavish. He’s gazing through a window. I walk to stand beside him. And see.

  Stuart is sitting next to the bed, holding his wife’s hand. She only has one hand to hold because the other is in a cast and she doesn’t even look like Lainey anymore: one entire side of her face is swollen so badly that her eye has disappeared in a pulp of blue and black, and the tissue around my own eye begins to tingle and swell and I lose the vision in it, it slips away, leaving me half shrouded in dark, half still looking at the cut on her scalp, the cut that begins to throb along my hairline, still tender from the six stitches they sewed into my flesh—

  I spin away and press my spine to the wall. Here. Here is your body. I re-center myself, I return, let the sensations tingle and fade, slow my gulping lungs. Not your pain. Not your body. A trick.

  “Hey,” Duncan says.

  I open my eyes, vision clear once more.

  “You okay?”

  I nod. The pain never lingers but the adrenaline does. The vigilance. The exhaustion.

  “What did he say happened to her?”

  “Thrown from a horse.”

  “Did she say what really happened?”

  “She hasn’t woken.” He looks at me. “She won’t.”

  “She won’t wake?”

  “She won’t talk. She won’t say what happened. She never does.”

  “So then what are you gonna do about it?”

  He shrugs, turning back to the hospital room. “She breaks in mustangs for a living,” he says. “She does fall. Everyone does sometimes.”

  “You and I sat there in that car and we didn’t do anything. We let this happen.”

  He meets my eyes and says, “She might have fallen.”

  I turn on my heel and stride away so I won’t put my fist through a window. I need to find someone to ask, to corroborate, except that I don’t need that because if I find out he really does beat her up I’m going to want to kill him.

  * * *

  Dad used to tell me that my greatest gift was that I could get inside the skin of another human. That I could feel what nobody else could, the life of another, really feel it and roll around in it. That the body knows a great deal and I have the miraculous ability to know more than one body. The astonishing cleverness of nature. He also taught us that compassion was the most important thing we could learn. If someone hurt us, we needed only empathy, and forgiveness would be easy.

  My mother never agreed. She had no kindred ocean of kindness inside her, no forgiveness. She had a different knowledge of what people do to each other. I shied from it. It felt rough and hard and those were not the instincts I was born with. I chose to live by my dad’s code, and it was easy until it wasn’t.

  It’s obvious now, and has been for a while. Mum was right, she was so fucking right I am embarrassed, and now I have had enough, I have no more forgiveness left.

  * * *

  The deer carcass is heavy. It drops from my hands with a meaty thud. The wolves of the southernmost Glenshee Pack don’t rush to it, they remain at the far end of their enclosure, huddled against the fence. All but one. Number Ten is not the breeding female of her pack, meaning not their leader, or, in outdated terms, their alpha. That title belongs to her sister, Number Eight. But Ten has something that sets her apart. A restlessness. She is more aggressive, less wi
lling to be caged. She has been trying to dig free, the only wolf to attempt escape. She alone crosses the pen to me and never in all my years working with wolves has one of them done this: she meets my eyes, bares her teeth, and growls.

  The hairs on my neck prickle because this doesn’t happen, it really doesn’t. She is sleek and lean. Her coat is shades of browns and whites, a deep orange brown along her flanks, with lighter scruff around her face, almost golden, or Werner’s orpiment orange. Her teeth are very sharp; this is what she wants me to know.

  My boss at the Denali Wolf Project in Alaska warned me on my first day on the job. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can predict a wolf. That’s dangerous. She will always surprise you.

  A deep thrill electrifies me. I love her ferocity. I can feel it in my throat, tickling there. Adrenaline floods me and she can smell it, I know she can.

  The deer carcass is delivered, there’s no need for me to stay.

  I want to.

  I see it now. How I turn to run and she launches for my thigh, tears my femoral, destroys any chance of escape. So I remain facing her and instead she lunges for my throat, for the part of me most vulnerable. The strength in her body lets her fly, the power in her jaws crushes my bones. I am such a simple meal; I have no speed with which to run, no strength to fight her off. My skin is disastrously thin. Does she know this about me? Can she sense it, as the others of her kind don’t seem to? They are fooled by the power in our voices and our weapons, by our ability to cage them. But this one seems to see beyond that, to my fragility. Or perhaps she doesn’t, maybe she doesn’t care that I have a power she doesn’t, so immense is her fury, her fighting instinct.

  I keep my eyes on her as I back out of the pen. Still she doesn’t move, doesn’t rush to devour the carcass like the other five wolves in her pack. She continues to watch me.

  From behind the chain links I finally see her join her pack. There is still warmth in the carcass, and this fills her mouth, my mouth. Our teeth make easy work of the flesh. I am overwhelmed by the acrid iron of blood. I have been worried that they might not take to the meat because it smells of humans, but clearly hunger has won out. My own hunger has come awake and it disturbs me. I turn away from the feast.