Elinor drove quietly, bumping over just one corner when she cut it too close. Then, as if she were finishing an unspoken thought, she said, “The best thing we can do for wolves is to allow them space and leave them alone.” Nika thought that was a strange thing to say for someone whose job was studying wolves. She was about to ask what she meant when Elinor leaned into the steering wheel, made a sharp turn, and pulled up next to the Center. Ian came strolling out, his face lit up like he’d won the lottery. He leaned into the truck window, very close to Elinor, and the two gave each other a lingering smile.
“I’ve got a surprise,” he said.
The tan wolf sniffed and trotted and marked and scratched. She ran a loop next to the fence, cached a deer leg in the trees, waded in the stream, sat high on her rock. People came to the fence. She danced to see them. But still something was missing. She howled in the night and listened for calls in the wind.
Chapter Twenty
“Scoot in back, Nika,” Ian said, sliding into the driver’s seat and gently pushing Elinor over. The two of them hadn’t stopped smiling. “First we have to stop at the Camerons’ house in town and pick up Randall.”
After they picked him up, Randall sat in the jump seat with Nika while they drove out of town. Minutes later they pulled up in front of a small green house.
“Little Otter Lake. Ours if we want it,” Ian announced, making a circle with his hand to include the small house, the dock in front of it, and the lake beyond. What was he talking about? Was this Ian’s way of telling them a decision had been made about their future? About their home?
“Wow! Nika, look!” Randall exclaimed as he dove out of the truck and ran toward the house, painted the color of spruce trees.
The house was one story with a giant stone chimney right in front and big windows on both sides.
Ian sounded a little apologetic. “None of the bedrooms are very big.” He opened the door to one bedroom that had a sliding window into the screen porch. Across the living room were two more doors, each opening into a room big enough for a bed and not a whole lot more. “We’ll have to find some furniture,” he said, as though he were thinking out loud.
Randall smiled and ran over and grabbed Nika in a bear hug. “Cool!” was all he managed to say in words, but his face said everything else. He took her by the hand and led her to the doorway of a room that was painted bright blue. “Do you like this one?” he asked.
“No, that’s okay. You choose, Randall.”
“The blue one,” he said, walking to the center of the small room. His eyes jumped around as though, in his fantasies, he had already moved in.
Nika walked over to the window beside the fireplace. In front of the house was a narrow strip of sand beach with grandfather red pines standing on either side. Across the small lake chubby clouds curled over the horizon. It looked pretty good. Is this what she wanted? It would mean leaving Pasadena and Olivia and Zach and what she knew. She wished someone had asked her what she wanted. Deciding something for herself for once in the last two years would have felt so good.
Ian came up beside Nika. “It’s a pretty spot, and it’s available for two years. It was a vacation cabin, but it’s been winterized. They put a furnace in the basement, a specially insulated roof, indoor plumbing . . .” He spoke with excitement.
“Yeah, it’s great,” she said with a shy smile. She did appreciate what he was trying to do. And Randall was over the moon.
Returning to town, Ian dropped Elinor and Nika at the Center while he took Randall back to the Camerons’. Nika noticed a brand-new sign. The letters carved in shiny yellow pine were freshly painted dark green and said “Center for the Study of Northern Animals.” It looked so official.
After they entered through the shiny glass doors, Elinor went back to the kitchenette. “Want a Coke?” she called.
“Sure,” Nika answered. She sat down at the big conference table, still thinking about the green house on Little Otter Lake. Everything was all happening so fast. On the table was a memo in Ian’s handwriting. She picked it up and started to read:
ATTENTION: STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS
RE: TRANSFER PLANS FOR KHAN AND LUNA
1. TRANSFER LUNA FROM THE HOLDING PEN INTO THE LARGE ENCLOSURE TO GET HER USED TO IT.
Well, Nika thought, that’s done. She read on.
2. BRING KHAN ACROSS THE LAKE IN HIS PLASTIC KENNEL, COVERED WITH SLEEPING BAG.
Khan would be scared. Someone needed to comfort him. She raced through the rest of the list.
3. IN THE HOLDING PEN, KEEP KHAN KENNELED UNTIL SIGNALS ARE GOOD BETWEEN THE TWO WOLVES, THEN LET KHAN LOOSE IN THE HOLDING PEN, WHERE THEY CAN MEET THROUGH THE FENCE.
4. AFTER A FEW DAYS, WHEN THEY SEEM EXCITED ABOUT EACH OTHER, RELEASE KHAN INTO THE BIG PEN.
5. THERE WILL BE A CERTAIN DANGER FOR KHAN, BUT OUR ASSUMPTIONS ARE THAT THINGS WILL GO WELL. AT THIS POINT ELINOR AND I WILL BE THE ONLY PEOPLE TO GO INTO THE LARGE PEN WITH THE WOLVES.
Number five gave Nika chills. Was she really never going to be allowed to have contact with Khan again, except through a fence? This was the first she’d heard that Luna could possibly hurt Khan. How could they put the wolves together if they didn’t know for sure Khan would be safe?
“Okay, so when’s this happening?” Nika asked, waving the paper, when Elinor came in with the Coke. Elinor took the paper from her. As if they hadn’t wanted her to see it.
“As you know, Luna has already been transferred. We plan to move Khan next week. Depending on the weather, maybe Wednesday or Friday.”
“A week from now!” Nika stood up. “That’s too soon!”
“Actually, the timing’s just right. Khan will be just over forty pounds, small enough for Luna to think of him as a pup, big enough to stand up to rough play.”
Just then Ian came through the door and walked directly to his desk, where he grabbed a ringing phone. While talking, he shuffled through some papers. His movements were quick and businesslike. He seemed preoccupied.
Elinor leaned closer to Nika, saying, “It’s really best for Khan and Luna. You’ll see.”
For a minute Nika felt her throat tighten. She gave Elinor a weak smile, then went out the back door to the pens.
Luna was stretched on the ground in the large enclosure. The tan wolf looked bigger in her new space. Nika plopped against the fence. Never being able to be with Khan, to touch him, to rub his feet, to run with him? Tears filled her eyes to the rims, but she wiped them away. She felt exactly the way she’d never wanted to feel again in her life. Losing a beautiful picture of how things could be. A gentle nibbling on her hair distracted her. She turned to find Luna pressed against the fence behind her, her eyes on Nika, as though she understood.
That night was very hot. Ian wasn’t back from town, and Pearl invited Nika to go down with her for a sleepover in the coolness of the screen house by the dock. They carried snacks and blankets, a gas lantern, and books to read. Even on a night like this, they brought hot tea in a thermos. They made their beds on the cots built into the walls of the screen house, unrolling the mattresses that were kept covered when no one was using them.
As they got ready for a swim, with a faraway look Pearl said, “I’ve been doing this every summer since I can remember. Taking a cooling dip and sleeping in the screen house on hot nights.”
When they slipped off the dock, the water seemed cold at first because the air was so hot, but soon it was like no temperature at all. As Nika was treading water, pillows of cold surprised her feet and stars reflected in the glassy water around her. She lay in a back float, amazed by the stillness.
They watched the moon come up like a giant pumpkin, washing out the stars. Moonlight rippled and scattered as they splashed. After they got out and went up to the screen house, the moon climbed the sky, shrinking as it rose.
Soon they settled down on their cots, sharing the wavering light of the gas lamp to read. Nika put down her book and thought for a minute. Pearl had known Ian for a long
time.
“Pearl,” she said, “do you think Ian is really going to settle down?” After all that had happened, she could easily imagine Ian hitting the road again, given his his tory.
Pearl answered, “Oh, well. Yes, I think that’s what he wants to do.”
“Does he really like Elinor?” Nika asked, thinking if he married Elinor, wouldn’t they want their own kids?
“I think he does, don’t you?”
“Um . . .” It was so complicated.
Just then they heard Ian’s boat pull up to the dock, then the creaking sounds of the boatlift, and then soft footsteps coming up the path.
Ian stood by the door of the screen house for a minute. “A perfect night for a moonlight swim. I think I’ll take a dip myself.”
“How’s Luna doing?” Nika asked of his profile in the silvery light of the moon.
“She still likes her new pen, I think. And her shoulder is recovering nicely.” Ian took a few steps, then stopped.
He turned and said, “Oh, Nika. One more thing. Sheriff Dunn says he wants to meet with us in the morning. With Thomas and his dad, too.” His voice was stone steady, as if he were giving a weather report.
“Okay.” She swallowed hard and waited for more. But there wasn’t any more. He turned and left. She heard his steps start down the path. In spite of the warm night, she began to shiver.
A minute later she heard the squeak and bang of Ian’s cabin door. Soon came another bang, then splashes in the water.
She lay quietly in the light of the hissing lamp, wrapped up tight in her sleeping bag to stop the shivers. The rising and falling notes of a blues guitar coming from Ian’s cabin mixed with a riot of loon calls from the lake. Water lapped soft percussion against the rocks.
But the questions started swirling and wouldn’t stop. Now what? Would she and Thomas have to go to court? What would happen then?
The next morning, as the big boat cut through the waves, Nika and Thomas sat in the back giving each other brief looks. Randall perched on the edge of Ian’s pilot’s chair, looking straight ahead, except once when he smirked back at Nika. She found this new side of Randall irritating—he seemed pleased that she was in trouble.
After Ian pulled into his official boat slip in town, Nika and Thomas helped him tie up, then waited for directions. “Now you two go up to the sheriff’s office and wait for us.” Ian was looking into Nika’s eyes. “Jake’s coming over from his office at about nine-thirty.”
Side by side Nika and Thomas trudged slowly up the hill. When they were out of Ian’s hearing, she turned to him. “What do you think will happen?”
“I don’t know.” Thomas seemed to be thinking. It was one of the things she liked best about him. He was calm and always thought things through his own way. Like when Nika heard about hunters baiting bears with piles of food, she thought it was very unsportsmanlike. But Thomas said he thought it was okay because fewer bears were wounded that way. It helped her think in a new way. Thomas was like that.
“Mom said someone saw us leaving Bristo’s that day,” said Thomas.
Inside the sheriff’s office was a row of wooden chairs beneath a bulletin board bristling with notices tacked up with colored pins. A woman behind a glass shield nodded toward the chairs. They sat down, as keyboards clicked and printers whirred.
It seemed like an hour before the door opened and Thomas’s dad, Jake, and Ian came in, talking comfortably together, even laughing. They stopped talking the minute they saw Thomas and Nika on the chairs. Did Ian and Jake know yet what they’d done?
Seeing the men, the woman behind the glass opened a heavy door and waved them through. They found Sheriff Dunn in a crowded office in the back, his windowsills filled with leggy geranium plants and his chairs and desk covered with files and loose papers.
“Sorry,” he said, scraping off two chairs. The woman brought two folding chairs and handed them to Ian, smiling sympathetically. She bustled back in with three cups of steaming coffee on a tray.
Sheriff Dunn had longish eyebrows, red hair, and a sandy beard. After looking at Ian and Jake, he pulled a set of wire cutters from a drawer and put them on the desk. He leaned toward Nika and Thomas. “So, am I wrong in guessing that you two were the ones who released Bristo’s animals earlier in the summer?” he said.
Ian shot to his feet. Jake rubbed his eyebrows with one hand and said, “Thomas?” Sheriff Dunn held up his hand to the two men like a traffic cop. Ian sat back down.
Thomas spoke first. “Except for the wolf. Luna. We don’t know how she got out.”
Nika sat up straight. “It was all my idea. I think it’s wrong to keep wild animals in cages.” Even though she was scared, the words just came out. She looked into the eyes of the sheriff.
Sheriff Dunn took a sip of his coffee. “You know, Bristo gets all worked up about things. He can’t totally help the way he is. And you’re right—he doesn’t treat animals very well.” His voice was low and firm. “Authorities have been dealing with him for years.” He paused, then stood and moved some papers aside and perched on the edge of his messy desk. “Probably Bristo wouldn’t be in jail right now if you kids hadn’t released his animals.”
“Except what would have happened to those animals? Their cages were cramped. They looked starved. He was mean,” Nika blurted. She surprised herself, speaking up like this.
“Protecting those animals wasn’t a job for you kids.”
Nika glanced to see Ian’s arms crossed in front of him.
She looked down and said more quietly, “It seems to me, no one has ever done much about his mistreatment of animals.”
“You should have shared your concern!” Ian said abruptly, leaning forward. He and Jake met each other’s eyes.
“And what would have happened if I did?” Her voice thickened in her throat. Why wasn’t he standing up for her? Hurt rose within her. “Isn’t Bristo the one who shot Khan’s mother? Why didn’t someone arrest him then?”
The sheriff shifted to look directly at Nika. “Well, now someone has arrested him. And the charges are serious—shooting the wolf and endangering you kids. We’re hoping the judge will order treatment this time.”
He continued on with his quiet, steady voice. “So. For restitution for the vandalism, it’s all set up for both of you to do community service at the Greenstone Home for Seniors. I’ll decide the number of hours. How does that sound?”
Both Nika and Thomas nodded silently.
“Okay, then.” He emptied his cup and nodded at Ian and Jake. “Sound okay to you?”
Both men leaned back and nodded.
Nika’s feelings were helter-skelter. At least mopping floors and sorting magazines was better than going to court. On the other hand, it scared her to be around people who were really sick or old. She was afraid something might happen to them. But Thomas was sort of smiling. What was that about?
“All right, then. Just the thing.” Sheriff Dunn pounded his paper-covered desk with his fist. He gave them a quick smile and reached out to shake hands with Nika and Thomas. Jake and Ian stood but made no effort to leave the office.
“Nika, why don’t you head back to the Center? Elinor and Randall should be there,” Ian said.
“Thomas, go straight to the dock,” Jake said. “I’ll be down in a bit. You’ve got jobs to do at home.”
When they burst out of the door, Nika grabbed Thomas’s arm to slow him down. “You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?”
Thomas said, “Just ’cause we lucked out, I guess.”
“So what’s so great about working in the nursing home?” she asked.
Thomas held out both hands palms up and shrugged with one shoulder. “I just like old people.” He snatched a glance at the pies in the window of the Busy Bee, then looked at her and smiled. “He could have asked us to clear prickly invasive plants from the roadsides, haul rocks, or dig outhouses,” he said. “Think of that.”
Nika thought clearing invasive plants might be okay. The two o
f them didn’t talk much as they continued back through town.
When they neared the tall trees at the edge of the Center’s property, Thomas stopped. “I’ve got some stuff to do. See you later.”
“No, no,” Nika pleaded. “Come with me.” Right now she didn’t want to be alone.
“Uh-uh. Sorry. You heard my dad,” Thomas answered, accelerating into a jog.
Suddenly the air was filled with scents that the silvery-tan wolf knew deep in her body’s memory. She sorted the layers of her senses and trotted over to peer through the fence. There she saw the familiar humans huddled together looking at something, their backs to her. The tan wolf scraped the ground, parted her lips, then sniffed again.
Chapter Twenty-One
After the meeting in the sheriff”s office, Ian seemed even more intent on keeping Nika busy with her project, or with jobs at the Center. Maybe he was trying to get her used to life without the growing black pup. A routine developed. Each morning after she fed Khan, she had to meet Ian in front of his cabin for their ride to town. Volunteers were spending more and more time with the pup. Ian thought it was important for Khan to accept care from a variety of people. In Nika’s opinion, too many people. Khan was slipping away from her, Ian was still pretty mad about Bristo’s, and now everyone in town would know that she had been ordered to do community service in restitution for vandalism.
When she arrived at Ian’s cabin on Tuesday morning, he was still inside. She knocked and peeked in. He was at his laptop writing.
“C’mon in,” he said. She opened the door and stepped inside.
It had been almost a week, and she still hadn’t brought up number five from Ian’s list. She’d wanted things to settle down a bit after their visit to the sheriff.
Summer of the Wolves Page 17
