Hannah and the Wild Woods

by Carol Anne Shaw

  I realize just how much I take for granted. How awful it would be if I were limited the way that Kimiko is. This past Christmas, I got to spend time at 100 Mile House, with Max and his family. We stayed at his uncle’s ranch, and I rode an appaloosa gelding named Buckshot every one of the five days I was there.

  “A kitsune can never truly have a trusted friend. And it’s even worse for a half-kitsune like me, because I am nothing more than a burden for everyone to bear—half-human, half alive.”

  “So don’t go back,” I tell her. “You’re not a burden here. Just stay! I bet you could work for Ruth for a while. Or in Tofino?”

  “Don’t you see? That would never work. I have so little control over my shape-shifting. I never know when it’s going to happen. And then … there’s the Okami.”

  “The O what?”

  “The Okami. That is our Japanese word for wolf.”

  “Wolves?” My pulse begins to speed up. “There are wolves in Japan?”

  “There were a long time ago. They lived in Honshu, my home. The Okami spirit has always watched over kitsunes, and she is here. I’ve seen her several times with my own eyes; twice when I was in fox form. She is so beautiful.”

  “But,” I say. “What does that mean?”

  “The Okami always shows up with some sort of message. She must have one for me, but, because I am so useless, I am unable to understand what it is.

  Sitka. Is that why she’s been hanging around, because she has a message for Kimiko?

  “I’ve seen her, too,” I say. “I’ve been calling her Sitka.”

  Kimiko nods. “I will shame her if I can’t understand her message.” She draws the blanket higher up around her shoulders and then shakes her head, clearly frustrated. “I shouldn’t have said anything about any of this to you.”

  “But I already knew!” I say. “I knew everything!”

  “And now you know even more,” Kimiko says, “and I have broken one of the most important rules among kitsunes everywhere. You see? You see how inept I am? I am nothing but a huge mistake!”

  Kimiko slams her hand down on the slick metal railing of the balcony. “And your bird friend, Jack. He has seen too much, too. Oh, I have been so very foolish. It is so wrong that I have told you so much.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” I say. “Jack understands magic.

  He’s not your average raven. Trust me on that. He can help you. You just have to let him.”

  “Pffffft. Ravens are tricksters, too. And magic isn’t always a good thing, Hannah,” Kimiko says. “Things can get very complicated very quickly.”

  I kind of resent this, her assumption that magic is too complex a subject for me to comprehend. Well, maybe I don’t understand kitsune magic, but I do know what I’m talking about when it comes to Jack. I decide to switch tacks. I reach up to touch the shining piece of abalone around my neck. “Do you see this?” I say, holding up the piece of iridescent shell between us. “This was given to me a few years ago by a very special friend. Jack delivered this to me from her, and believe me, it was all about magic then, Kimiko. I’m talking big-time magic! I couldn’t tell anyone about it afterwards, because no one would have believed me, so I know how you feel. I know how lonely it is to be alone with a secret, but whether you like it or not, you’re my friend, Kimiko, and friends help each other. That’s just the way it works.”

  “You’re wrong,” Kimiko says in a flat monotone voice. “I can’t be a friend with a human being, and there’s nothing left to talk about.”

  “So … that’s it? You’re not even going to try? What’s here for you then? Are you going to hide for the rest of your life? Are you just going to randomly shape-shift and run around in the woods starting random fires?”

  Kimiko looks as though I’ve slapped her. “I told you! That was an accident! I only meant to start a small flame in the shavings.” She slumps against the rail. “I needed a flame! I needed strength. But then I saw the Okami watching me from the spruce tree, and I wanted to wait for her message. I didn’t know the whole woodpile would go up in flames.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I—”

  “No. You’re right,” Kimiko says. “I can’t hide forever. I know I must face my fate.”

  “What does that even mean?” I say. But Kimiko pushes past me to the door. Our conversation is clearly over.

  “No,” I say. “Don’t walk away!” But she does.

  “You know why you don’t have any friends?” I hiss as she opens the door. “It’s not because you’re half-kitsune, Kimiko. It’s because you’re scared.”

  “I’m not scared!” she says indignantly.

  “Yes,” I say through clenched teeth. “You are. You’re scared of making mistakes, so you keep people away.”

  “It’s different for me! I told you that already!”

  “Not that different,” I say. “Human beings make mistakes all the time. We call it screwing up! It’s what makes us human!”

  She pushes aside the curtains and slips through the door, her white nightgown billowing out behind her like a cloud, and I’m left alone on the balcony, squinting into the dark.

  I lean over the railing, my hair whipping around my face in the wind. I stare out at nothing, just an inky darkness as far as the eye can see. Which is why it’s so easy to see the pair of yellow eyes staring up at me from the ground below.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wake up at dawn. The beach is desolate. There are only a few gulls at the waterline pecking at whatever goodies the high tide has left behind, and any animal tracks that were made during the night are now long gone.

  I tiptoe downstairs and make some tea—the herbal kind that’s supposed to relax you—then check for messages on my phone. There are a couple of texts from Max; I guess he found cell service after all. One of his texts is about surfing, and the other is about his sister, Chloe, getting food poisoning from eating a bad fish taco.

  There’s a message from Izzy, too, with a photo of Poos and Chuck curled up on my bed next to the giraffe stuffy I’ve had since I was six. It makes me smile, and miss home. But what it makes me most, is angry with my dad all over again. It’s hard to believe we’re actually going to do this moving thing. Cowichan Bay has been our happy place for as long as I can remember. I really do like Anne; she and Dad seem good for each other, but it’s worked out fine the way it is for a while now. Why fix it if it isn’t broken? The expression makes me think of Ben back home; it’s one of his favourite sayings. I wish he were here right now. He’s pretty wise, kind of like Yoda, and probably just as old.

  I drink my tea and scroll mindlessly through the photos I have stored on my phone. I stop when I see the one of my mother. It’s super old, taken before I was born. In it, she’s feeding a baby seal off the end of dock #5. It must have been taken the year they bought our houseboat. She’s wearing cutoff shorts and a T-shirt, and her hair is even crazier than mine. My dad is standing behind her with one foot poised in the air just behind her as though he’s about to push her into the water. He had lots of hair back then and a really awful moustache. They’re both laughing their heads off. It’s always been my favourite photo of them.

  I look at the photo for a long time and it dawns on me that my dad has way more memories of our home than I do, and for the first time, I wonder if pictures like this are sometimes difficult for him to look at.

  “So, you’ve lived on Haida Gwaii your whole life?” I ask Peter later on. We’ve finished cleaning a huge section of the beach and have moved on to another part, one that we had to drive to. The whole cove is so peppered with dirty little white bits of Styrofoam it’s difficult to tell what is driftwood and what isn’t.

  “Mostly,” Peter says. “Tlell is my home, but I’ve spent a lot of time on the mainland as well. Done tons of fieldwork in the woods up and down the coastline. That’s how I met Jade.” At the mention of her name, Jade looks up from where she’s working and gives him a sappy sm
ile.

  “What kind of fieldwork?” I ask.

  “Well,” Peter says, throwing some empty beer cans (not from Japan, from sloppy campers) into a separate bag, “it varies. Census projects, research studies, tagging animals, data analysis, things like that.”

  “Sounds like work,” I say. “Complicated.”

  “Sometimes it is, but I love it. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

  “What about wolves? Have you ever done any fieldwork with them?”

  He smiles broadly. “Some, and I’m hoping to get over to the Great Bear Rainforest next year. Wolves. Kermodes. Big trees. Can’t wait!”

  “Kermodes? The spirit bears?”

  “Yup. Pretty special bears.”

  I add a few pieces of gnarled plastic into the bag. “Well, I hope you get there.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Peter?”

  “Mmm?”

  “But what about the wolves?”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, I’ve heard howling. I mean, since that first night we heard them. They sound so … I don’t know, sad or something.”

  “They have lots of different songs,” Peter says, “and they all mean something different. They’re pretty complex animals.”

  “Are you afraid of them?”

  “Of wolves? Never,” Peter says. “Wolves are special messengers. Did you know the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation, who live on this part of the island, believe that wolves represent family?”

  I nod, remembering Marcus saying pretty much the same thing in the diner.

  “It kind of makes sense if you think about it,” Peter says. “Wolves live in family packs, they support each other, work together. Stuff like that.”

  “Is there actually such a thing as a lone wolf?”

  Peter places both his hands on the small of his back and stretches. He doesn’t have a ponytail today, and his straight, dark hair reaches past his shoulders. “Yep.”

  “But why? Why would a wolf leave its pack?” I think of Sitka, all alone in the woods, so silent and watchful.

  “Well, there are a few reasons: an older wolf will sometimes leave a pack if the pair of dominant breeding wolves are too aggressive. Or sometimes a young wolf will strike out on its own in search of its own pack. It’s a way of ensuring there isn’t any interbreeding down the road.”

  “Sounds harsh,” I say. “So much for family.”

  “Nature’s funny that way,” Peter says. “But sometimes a young wolf gets lost—separated from the pack. Then they can get disoriented. It happens from time to time around here, because there are so many islands out there in Clayoquot Sound.”

  “They swim?”

  “All the time.”

  “So what happens while a wolf is lost?”

  “They’re pretty vulnerable while they’re on their own,” Peter says. “And if a lone wolf strays into another wolf pack’s territory, it can often end badly. That’s why they aren’t very vocal when they’re loners. They don’t want to blow their cover.”

  I remember the howling that seemed to come from over the water, and the fact that Sitka didn’t answer back. Is that why? She’s playing it safe?

  “Then there’s the food issue,” Peter says. “A wolf on its own can’t bring down a deer by itself. They need to hunt in packs to kill those big ungulates.”

  The Ghost Wolf book said the same thing. “So how do they survive?” I can’t shake the image of Sitka’s very prominent ribs from my memory.

  “They usually end up scavenging, or subsisting on mice and smaller critters. Carrion factors in, too.”

  “Ew. Gross.”

  “Yeah, well, a hungry wolf has to do what a hungry wolf has to do.”

  “But, wouldn’t one of the pack wolves come looking for their lost member?”

  “Lotta islands around here,” Peter says. “It could take a while.”

  “What about the wolves around here?” I ask. “They’re not dangerous, right?”

  “There hasn’t been a resident pack around here for a while,” Peter says. “At least not one that I know of. But you’d be lucky to see a wolf anyway. They’re shy animals. It’s too bad Hollywood has given them such a bad rap.”

  “But what if one was hanging around here, though?”

  Peter rests a hand on my shoulder. “Okay, Hannah. You’re obviously freaked out about wolves. Do you think you saw one or something?”

  “Maybe.” I say this tentatively, unsure of how to read Peter, of whether or not I can confide in him.

  “Listen, kid,” he says. “I can almost guarantee that you didn’t. If you saw anything, it was probably Duke, the old malamute that lives a klick or so away. He’s a big old grey sucker, and pretty lazy, too. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s probably what I saw.”

  We carry our bags to the truck, and Peter chuckles and shakes his head. “You think a lot, don’t you?”

  “I’m a writer’s daughter,” I say quickly. “I’m naturally curious.”

  “Well, yeah, I can see that.” He chucks the bags into the bed of the Chevy.

  I’m grateful I hear Jade call out from somewhere behind us on the beach. “Hey Peter! Come see this!”

  He breaks into a jog. “We’re leaving in ten, Red Riding Hood,” he says over his shoulder. “Stop stressing about the Big Bad Wolf, okay?”

  “Hah!” I call after him. “Sure. No worries.”

  But worrying seems to be all I’m doing lately.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A few minutes before we have dinner, Norman woofs outside the back door.

  Then he barks again, even louder.

  When Peter opens the door, Norman bursts into the house, his claws scrabbling across the floor as he makes a beeline for Kimiko in the Big Kahuna. He barks wildly, running awkward laps around the old sofa with the fur on his back all ruffed up.

  We’ve all notice that Norman, usually so mellow, is a different dog around Kimiko. But then, I don’t imagine there’s a dog alive that would be cool about sharing a house with a fox.

  “NORMAN!” Ruth scolds, lunging for his collar. She misses and stumbles, falling against the soft cushions piled at one end of the couch.

  When Peter does a flying leap and gets Norman in a headlock, Kimiko is able to make her getaway. She runs into the pantry room off the kitchen, slamming the door so hard behind her that the windows rattle.

  “What has gotten into that dog lately?” Ruth frowns. “He’s positively demented! I’ve never seen him behave like this in all his eight years!”

  “He hates Kimiko,” Sabrina says with a smile. “He totally wants to chew her face off.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Norman wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Ruth says, but she’s still frowning. “Peter? Could you please take him back outside? Maybe he needs to run off a little more steam or something.”

  “Sure thing.” Peter heads for the front door, dragging a reluctant Norman along behind him.

  “I’ll go tell Kimiko the coast is clear,” I say.

  Kimiko is standing in front of the old oak wardrobe in the pantry. Her eyes are wild, and both of her hands are resting on her chest as though she’s having a full-blown anxiety attack.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I ask. It’s the first thing I’ve said to her since our little conversation on the balcony.

  She tilts her head and sniffs the air a little. “He knows I’m not human,” she says. “I can read him. He’s confused by me.” There is a tawny flash behind her. My eyes skim over her head to the wardrobe directly behind her. Its doors are wide open, and in the full-length mirror on the back panel, I see a fleeting image of my own face. But that’s not all! I see Kimiko’s reflection as well, only it isn’t her dark hair, neatly divided into those eight braids that I see in the dusty mirror, it’s cinnamon-coloured fur, and one sharp, black-pointed ear! Kimiko moves away from the wardrobe, and the image in the mirror disappears.

  “What?” she s
ays.

  “The mirror. I saw your reflection.” I point to the wardrobe and she stands in front of it again. Her face—her fox face—stares back at her. She jumps away, slams the door shut, and leans against it as though she’s afraid that whatever is inside it, might escape. “You see? You see how impossible it is for me?”

  “I get it, Kimiko,” I say. “I mean, I did see your shadow on the beach when you ran to the lodge.”

  “You did?”

  I nod.

  “I feel like that vampire in that book. You know, the one that could never go out in the sun?”

  “I know the one,” I say.

  “Well, it’s no way to live.”

  Ruth sticks her head in the pantry. “Norman’s outside,” she says. “You girls okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. “It’s all good.” I walk casually back through the kitchen, and Kimiko follows.

  A moment later I see Jack perched outside on the concrete birdbath. He’s sitting very still with his head slightly cocked to one side, listening for something. I watch him dip his head lower as though eager to catch a sound. When a sudden gust of wind sneaks up behind him and ruffles the feathers on the back of his head, he’s concentrating so hard he doesn’t even notice.

  I am woken by a piercing sound outside that makes me jump—a high-pitched cry like a baby screeching. It sends shivers up my spine. I look across the room, but Sabrina and Kimiko are both motionless.

  The scream stays with me. It reminds me of when Dad and I were camping on Hornby Island a couple of years ago, and a dog in the campground killed a rabbit just before the sun came up, right near our tent. It was a horrifying thing to hear, like no sound I’d ever heard before. This is the same sound.