by Jenny Nimmo
"Gotcha!" he cried, grabbing one of the strangers by the scruff of the neck.
Charlie wasn't quite sure what happened next, because the street light above Uncle Paton suddenly exploded and glass fell in a silvery shower over all three figures.
A howl of fury echoed down the street, followed by a cry of pain from Uncle Paton.
"Ye gods, it bit me!"
"We are not 'its', Mr. Yewbeam," hissed a voice. "We are human."
"Who... ," Uncle Paton began.
But the two creatures had vanished into the shadows.
8
HUNTING THE WILDERNESS WOLF
Up and down Filbert Street, doors and windows began to open, some boldly, some cautiously. Voices called into the night.
"What's going on?"
"Who's there?"
"It's Mr. Yewbeam from number nine."
"You all right, Mr. Yewbeam?"
Someone said, "Was it the wolf?"
Before Paton could reply, Agnes Prout, the Yewbeam's next-door neighbor, cried, "It must have been the wolf! It's come into the city."
At this, several doors were hastily slammed shut.
Clasping his wrist, Uncle Paton reeled back down the road. As Charlie ran to meet him, Benjamin and his mother rushed across the road, led by an excited Runner Bean.
"Are you OK, Charlie?" Benjamin cried.
Yes, I'm OK, but my uncle's not."
Mrs. Brown stared in horror at the blood seeping through Paton's fingers. "Paton, what happened? Can I help?"
"It's nothing," Paton said gruffly. "Maisie will patch me up."
"But you're covered in glass!" Mrs. Brown picked helplessly at the glittering splinters on Paton's shoulders.
"Please, Patricia," Paton begged. "You'll cut yourself." He began to mount the steps of number nine with Charlie supporting his elbow.
Benjamin's mother refused to go home. She stood resolutely on the sidewalk, determined to get to the bottom of a mystery that was almost on her very doorstep. "It was the beast, wasn't it?" she said gravely. "Everyone's talking about it. They call it the Wilderness Wolf. You can hear it howling every night. It must live in the wilderness across the river."
"Patricia," Paton said firmly. "I was not attacked by a wolf."
"What, then?"
"It was HUMAN!" Without looking back, Paton strode into the house.
Charlie thought he should apologize. "Sorry," he said, turning to Benjamin and Mrs. Brown. "My uncle's hurt. Night, Ben. Night, Mrs. Brown."
Night, Charlie," Benjamin said anxiously. His mother was getting one of her I'm-going-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-this looks.
Mrs. Brown marched purposefully back to number twelve with Benjamin and his dog at her heels. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this," she said.
"Whatever's happened?" cried Maisie as Uncle Paton lurched into the kitchen.
"Uncle Paton's been bitten." Charlie helped his uncle into a chair.
Paton rolled up his sleeve. "Can you get me a bowl of clean water, Maisie, and some disinfectant?"
"You've never been bitten by a dog!" Maisie rushed to the sink and began to fill a bowl. "You could get rabies, Paton."
"It wasn't a dog," Paton said wearily. "No, it most certainly wasn't a dog."
"Thank goodness for that." Maisie came to Paton's side with her bowl. Taking his wrist she began to dab it with a clean cloth.
Charlie flinched when he saw the teeth marks. Maisie's constant dabbing was having an effect. As the blood was wiped away, the wound on Uncle Paton's wrist could clearly be seen.
"Looks like a wolf bite to me," Maisie observed as she examined Paton's wrist. "Those marks, like fangs they are - it's not the front teeth that went the deepest, it was those two on either side, the canines."
"I can't explain it." Paton allowed Maisie to bind his wrist with a length of white muslin. "The creature spoke to me. What's more - it knew my name."
"Well, I never." Maisie straightened up and took her bowl back to the sink.
All this time, Billy had been sitting perfectly still, hugging Rembrandt to his chest. He looked frightened, but also puzzled.
"What is it, Billy?" asked Charlie. "Do you know something about those beings?"
"Not exactly." Billy's frown deepened. "I was just thinking."
"Thinking what?" Charlie sat beside him.
"Well, I was wondering, really."
"Wondering what?"
"It was the voice; when it howled it sounded like the voice we hear at night. It's difficult to explain, but it was using the same kind of language."
"But it's a wolf we hear at night, Billy love," said Maisie. "People call it the Wilderness Wolf."
"And the one that attacked me was most certainly human," added Uncle Paton, Billy made a politely stubborn face. "They were the same," he insisted.
Uncle Paton gave a huge shrug. "In that case, we must conclude that they are related. In truth, I am too battle-weary to ponder these riddles any longer. I am going to bed. And you boys should be on your way too very soon. School tomorrow." He stood up, wincing slightly as his left hand grasped the back of his chair.
Maisie listened to Paton dragging his feet up the stairs. She shook her head. "Your uncle's not quite right, Charlie, if you know what I mean. I hope that bite wasn't poisonous."
Charlie didn't have a chance to find out if Uncle Paton had recovered from his bite. Monday mornings were always a scramble. Clothes were hastily flung into bags, breakfast was eaten at breakneck speed, and then Charlie and Billy were off, running up Filbert Street to catch the Academy bus.
Maisie waved them off, shouting, "I'll let you know if your uncle's any worse. Take care now, boys."
Academy students were not allowed access to telephones, radios, or televisions. Several homesick children had tried to smuggle in cell phones, but there were spies in the academy, ready to betray a friend just to gain favor with the Bloors. The cell phones were always discovered and confiscated, their owners put in detention.
Cook was Charlie's only link with the outside world, but he wondered if fear of Grimwald would deter her from giving him a message.
Cook didn't appear in the cafeteria all day. At tea time, Charlie leaned over the counter and very quietly asked one of the kitchen assistants if Cook was ill.
"She looks all right to me," said the woman, a friendly person called Valerie. "I expect she's too busy to come out to the counter."
Charlie was worried. "Could you, er, give her my regards?"
"Of course, love." Valerie grinned.
A voice said, "Is Cook a friend of yours, then?"
Charlie swung around. Dagbert had sneaked up behind him so softly, Charlie had no idea he was there.
"N-not especially," Charlie stammered. "It's just that the food is better when Cook's on."
Dagbert's blue-green eyes flashed. "I wasn't accusing you of anything, Charlie."
Charlie hurried away from the counter. He'd lost his appetite. Billy followed him out of the cafeteria.
"Is there any news about your uncle?" Billy asked.
"Of course not," Charlie said impatiently. "I haven't seen Cook, have I?"
Billy walked off, looking offended.
When Cook didn't appear at breakfast time on Tuesday, Charlie began to feel frantic.
Fidelio ran up to Charlie as he marched around the grounds during first break. "You look as if a black cloud has settled right there on your shoulders," Fidelio said, giving him a friendly punch.
"Don't!" Charlie pushed his friend's hand away.
"You're touchy."
Charlie apologized. "I'm just worried about my uncle. He was bitten by a, well - a thing, and I haven't seen Cook, so I'm worried about that, too, because of Dagbert ..."
"Charlie, stop!" Fidelio protested. "Calm down and tell me what's going on."
Fidelio was a great listener. Charlie realized he should have confided in him before. He described his weekend, beginning with the visit to Mrs. Kettle and ending with the attac
k on his uncle. "People kept saying it was the Wilderness Wolf, the one we hear howling at night, but Uncle P. says it was quite definitely human. And - this is the weirdest bit - Billy says their voices are the same."
"Hmmm..." Fidelio stopped in his tracks. "The same?"
Charlie was suddenly distracted by a very interesting scene. Tancred was walking beside an extremely pretty girl; glossy blond hair rippled over her purple cape, falling almost to her waist. Her complexion was flawless, her lips full and pink, and her gray eyes fringed with long, curling lashes. "Hey, is that Tancred's ..."
"Girlfriend," said Fidelio. "Tracy Morsell."
"Really? You know a lot."
"I do," Fidelio agreed. "I keep my ear to the ground. And over there is poor Emma Tolly, whose heart is breaking."
Following Fidelio's gaze, Charlie saw Emma sitting alone on a log in a far corner of the grounds. She had a pile of books on her knees, and even from a distance, Charlie could tell that she was upset.
"Does she... ?" Charlie turned to Fidelio.
"Does she like Tancred? I'll say. Haven't you noticed?"
"I'm an idiot." Charlie slapped his head. "It's obvious, now that you mention it. Poor Em."
The sound of the hunting horn echoed across the grounds, calling them back to class, and Charlie ran over to help Emma with the books that had tumbled off her knees. They lay scattered around her feet, their pages flapping like white wings in the icy breeze.
Emma took the books from Charlie with a grateful smile. "Silly of me to try and work out here," she said in a small voice. "I had this crazy idea that if I got all my homework done, I wouldn't have to go to the King's room tonight."
Charlie shook his head. "Wouldn't work, Em. They'd find something else for you to do."
"I know," she said.
Fidelio joined them as they walked back into school. They were the last to leave the grounds.
That night Charlie waited for the sound of distant howling. The grunts and heavy breathing of the sleeping boys around him seemed even louder tonight. And then he saw that Billy was awake, too. Charlie could just make out the white blur of his head as he sat up in the bed beyond Dagbert's.
"Billy?" Charlie whispered. "Can you hear anything?"
"I heard the howling once," Billy said softly. "But it was very faint."
"What did it say?"
"I'm not sure..." Billy hesitated. "It might have been 'father. "
They heard, then, the distant but unmistakable sound of gunfire.
With a little moan, Billy dived under the covers.
Charlie lay back on his pillow. J hope they haven't killed it, he thought.
At number twelve Filbert Street, Benjamin Brown was ^still wide awake. He wished Charlie could have shared the past two days with him. So much had happened. It had all begun with a hastily arranged meeting in the town hall. Mr. and Mrs. Brown decided to take Benjamin along with them. "It will be good for you," said Mr. Brown. "You might learn something."
Benjamin doubted it until he heard that the subject for discussion would be the Wilderness Wolf. And he did, indeed, learn something. He learned that people lied when they were afraid. Fear was rife in the large hall that night. You could see it in people's eyes; you could hear it in their hushed and nervous chatter. Benjamin sat between his parents, right at the front. The Browns liked to observe the minutest details on occasions like this.
There were five people on the platform. They sat behind a long table; each had a clipboard and a glass of water set before them. Benjamin recognized the chairman, Mr. Marchwell, a prominent councilman who often visited his school; he also recognized Charlie's next-door neighbor Agnes Prout.
Mr. Marchwell opened the proceedings with a short speech. He told his audience that they were all there for the same reasons: one, to discuss ways and means of identifying the "unusual utterances" (a long-winded description of howling, Benjamin reckoned) coming from across the river, and two, to decide whether the creature responsible for the utterances was a threat to the citizens.
At this point, Agnes Prout rudely interrupted Mr. Marchwell with a shout of, "Threat? Of course, it's a threat. It's a wolf, for heaven's sake!"
A few people applauded this outburst. Benjamin was glad that his parents kept their hands in their laps.
"We don't know that it's a wolf, Miss Prout," said Mr. Marchwell.
"You bet we do," Agnes retorted. "I saw it. It bit my neighbor Mr. Yewbeam. I saw the wound; a stream of blood poured from his wrist, a positive stream."
Mrs. Brown put up her hand.
Mr. Marchwell leaned forward slightly. "You have a question... Mrs., er... ?"
"Brown," said Benjamin's mother, standing up. "Irish Brown. I would just like to state that Mr. Yewbeam told me he was bitten by a human, a deluded person perhaps, but certainly not a wolf."
Benjamin felt proud of his mother. He felt even prouder when she stood her ground against a torrent of ridicule from Agnes Prout.
"Rubbish, Mrs. Brown. Absolute nonsense! Either the poor man wasn't himself, or you're deaf. That was no human, it was a wolf."
"If Mr. Yewbeam were here... ," began Mrs. Brown.
"Well, he isn't," said Agnes, "so that's that." Mrs. Brown went an angry shade of red and sat down. Mr. Brown patted her back.
"Well done, Mom," Benjamin whispered. She gave him a resigned sort of smile.
Benjamin looked up at the bright lights beaming down from the ceiling. It would have been impossible for Charlie's uncle to attend the meeting. They would all have been plunged into darkness and covered in glass the moment he walked through the door.
The audience had become very lively. Hands were showing up all over the place. People began to shout out of turn. In vain, Mr. Marchwell raised his hand, begging them to be civilized, to allow one another to be heard.
"I saw it down Cruckton Avenue!" "Someone told me it was on Piminy Street!" "I heard it was seen in Cathedral Square!" "A great, gray beast, fangs like knives!"
"It's been eating cats!"
"And dogs!"
"Next it'll be our babies!"
"Our kids!"
"It's got to be killed!"
It took some time for the hubbub to die down, but Mr, Marchwell was a determined person and he managed to keep the rest of the proceedings under tight control. Only at the end did hysteria begin to creep into a few voices again.
A decision was made. The mayor would be apprised of the citizens' strong feelings about the "thing" in the wilderness, and a hunt would be organized. The so-called Wilderness Wolf would be flushed out and captured or killed. As the creature was silent during daylight hours, the hunt would begin at dusk the following day.
When the meeting broke up, small groups began to form on the sidewalk outside the town hall. Benjamin could hear excited voices. Violence was in the air. He began to think that the people in those angry, grumbling groups were more dangerous than any wilderness wolf.
Mr. and Mrs. Brown walked home in silence. Benjamin looked up at their disapproving faces and decided not to ask any questions. Just as they were climbing the steps of number twelve, they heard a melancholy howl stealing through the cold night air.
Benjamin shivered. "It doesn't sound dangerous," he said. "It just sounds sad."
"Sad indeed," agreed Mr. Brown. "There's something not right about this."
Five minutes later, sitting in his bright cozy kitchen, Mr. Brown put forward a theory. "It's like this," he said. "We hear a sound from the wilderness, right? An animal cry, if you like, but a call of some kind. A call for help. Now this 'thing' that attacked Mr. Yewbeam was human, he says."
"Paton Yewbeam's no fool," Mrs. Brown broke in. "He said it was human and I believe him, absolutely."
"So do I, Trish," her husband said hastily. "So do I. Thing is, it bites, which is an animal trait, so maybe there's a connection between the thing in the wilderness and Mr. Yewbeam's attacker."
Benjamin had been listening intently to his parents' conversation. Havi
ng inherited a double dose of their curiosity, and also their powers of analysis, deduction, and intuition, he was fast becoming an excellent detective himself.
"I've got a hunch," said Benjamin.
Mr. and Mrs. Brown regarded Benjamin's ideas very highly.
"A hunch, Benjamin!" Mrs. Brown said in a thrilled voice.
"What is it, boy? Tell us!" Mr. Brown eagerly studied his son's face.
"Well..." Benjamin decided to prolong the attention he was getting. "Well, it's just that Charlie told me that one of the boys, Asa Pike, hasn't been seen in school this term. He's endowed, like Charlie, only he's a kind of beast at night."
Mr. Brown nodded impatiently. "Asa? Yes, we know about him."
"Well..." Benjamin paused again. The look of anticipation on his parents' faces was very satisfying. "What you might not know is that Asa, who was once a good friend of Manfred Bloor's, well, Asa helped Charlie to find his father, and I reckon Manfred was pretty angry about that, so he might have trapped Asa somewhere as a punishment."
The Browns regarded their son with admiration and delight.
"Benjamin, you might be right," said Mr. Brown.
"Having possibly identified the howl, can you suggest how the howler might be rescued?" Mrs. Brown asked her son.
At this point Benjamin told a white lie. He said, "No," when all along an idea had been forming in his mind. Behind him lay Runner Bean, asleep in his basket. Runner Bean could find anything, Benjamin reckoned. And if he could sniff something belonging to Asa, the big dog could surely find him. Benjamin kept this idea to himself. He didn't want his parents' help. He wanted to find Asa on his own, or maybe with Charlie.
"We'd better do something soon," said Mr. Brown, "or the hunt will kill that poor boy before they realize who he is. I'll go and see the mayor."
"He won't believe you," Mrs. Brown said sadly. "He doesn't hold with all the stuff that goes on at Bloor's Academy. He knows about the endowed children, of course, but he doesn't like to admit it."
"I expect I'll think of something," said Benjamin.
Finding something belonging to Asa wasn't as easy as Benjamin had hoped. He discovered that Asa's parents had never been seen. No one knew where they lived. They appeared to have no friends and no relations. Any item that Asa might have worn or touched lay inside Bloor's Academy, an impossible place for someone like Benjamin to enter. The Bloors certainly wouldn't be happy to assist in Asa's rescue. He had changed sides. They would consider him a turncoat and a traitor.
