Raised by Wolves

Chapter 58

CHAPTER 58

“TELL ME EVERYTHING,” Wendy says, over steaming plates of the food we gathered. Her long brown hair has come loose from its ponytail, and she brushes it away with lean, tanned fingers. “It’s been real lonely here without you.”

The three of us are sitting around a wobbly handmade table in a small, one-room cabin. Pale spring sunlight shines in the window, illuminating the dried flowers and herbs that hang from the ceiling. The rough walls are covered with ten years’ worth of drawings: my wolf portraits, Wendy’s sketches of elk and willows, and the crazed scribbles of Holo, aged four.

Suddenly this room seems like the most beautiful one I’ve ever been in. I didn’t realize how much I missed it—and how much I missed Wendy—until now. My heart feels so full it aches. I’m home .

“Well?” Wendy prods eagerly.

“Where do I even start?” I say.

“Tell her about the Grizzly,” Holo says with his mouth full.

“You saw a grizzly?” Wendy said. “Was it Sheena? Did you see her cubs?” Wendy has a name for pretty much every animal in the forest.

“Actually, Holo’s talking about a grocery store we broke into,” I admit.

“And stole from,” Holo adds brightly.

Wendy lifts her eyebrows so high they disappear under the bangs she cuts with a pocketknife. “A store’s a little different than a campsite,” she says. There’s a hint of reproach in her voice.

Sometimes, when Holo and I were littler and didn’t have the stomach for the blood and stink of gutting a deer, Wendy would let us go “camp hunting.” That meant sneaking into people’s campsites and helping ourselves to whatever food we could snatch. We were good at it—silent and untrackable. And people always brought so much more than they needed.

“The consequences are different, too,” I say wryly.

Wendy’s eyes search my face. “What do you mean? Did you get c—”

“It’s a long story,” I interrupt her.

And it involves a person I need to stop thinking about.

Wendy nods. Spears a piece of trout with her fork. She can tell I don’t want to talk about it right now. And she’s always let us say and do—and also not say, and not do—what we want. As long as we keep ourselves safe. That’s all she’s ever asked of us.

“Are you glad you went?” Her voice is quieter now. Like she wants to give me the chance to pretend I didn’t hear.

Holo answers for me. “Yeah, we are. Right, Kai? We had to find out what was out there! We needed to see the world. Meet other kids. And figure out what regular people were like.”

“And Holo needed to learn about light switches,” I say dryly.

Wendy laughs. “It’s not like you’ve never seen electricity before, Holo.”

“Yeah, but we use candles and run stuff off of car batteries,” he points out. “And our TV only ever got one channel.”

“I told you to build a better antenna,” Wendy exclaims. Then she adds, “Even though PBS is the only channel worth watching.”

“I don’t need to watch Outdoor Idaho ,” Holo says. “My whole life is Outdoor Idaho .”

“But you adored that show.”

“Because it was the only show I’d ever seen!”

I smile at their familiar bickering. Holo and Wendy have always loved arguing with each other, and if I don’t change the subject, I’ll wind up refereeing some ridiculous debate—like about which is cuter, the ground squirrel or the meadow vole—for the rest of the day.

“I promise to tell you everything later,” I say to Wendy. “In the meantime, let’s just say that we went into the world to see what it was like. And now—well, now we know.”

Can I leave it at that forever?

“Honestly, it wasn’t the funnest time we ever had,” Holo says, his voice serious now.

“Funnest isn’t a word,” I tell him.

“Doesn’t matter if I’m not in school.”

The kid has a point.

“You know what was fun, though?” he asks.

“What?” says Wendy.

“We convinced everybody we were raised by wolves.”

Wendy stares at him in surprise for a minute. And then she starts to laugh. She laughs so hard that tears run down her narrow, lined face. “And they believed you?” she gasps.

“They couldn’t figure out what else to believe,” I say. “They’re not really in the habit of solving mysteries in Kokanee Creek.”

Holo puts his hand out and covers Wendy’s with it. “We said it because we wanted to protect you,” he says. “Like you’ve always protected us.”

“Thank you,” Wendy says. “I’m glad you did that.”

Neither Holo nor I mention that the FBI agents somehow know her name. I understand that I need to tell her, but first she needs to know about Ernie.

“Somebody shot Ernie,” I say softly. I feel the ache of sadness in my throat.

Wendy’s shoulders slump. “I knew he was gone,” she says quietly. “But I didn’t know what happened to him.” She pushes away her plate. “Without Ernie, I’m afraid that Beast has been forced to look for… easier prey.”

Worry floods me. It even overpowers the sadness. Wendy didn’t say smaller prey, like rabbits or fawns. She said easier prey. Like sheep. Calves. “Do you really think Beast is kill—”

Wendy holds up a hand as a shadow crosses her face.

“What?” I whisper.

She presses a finger to her lips. Listening.

She knows the sounds of these woods. She’s been listening to them for nearly forty years.

Her mouth tightens. Somewhere there’s a wrong note, and she hears it.

I close my eyes to hear what she did. At first there’s nothing. Then: A rustle of leaves. A snap of a branch.

“There’s someone outside,” I whisper.

Wendy shakes her head. Fear sparks in her eyes. “There’s a lot of someones.”