by Sharon Sala
Mesmerized by the sight, he watched as the light grew in such measure that it began to flow from Jonah to Lucia, then pulse throughout her body.
Caufield felt the peace and forgiveness within it. She wanted to be closer—needed to find the blessing that she sensed was in it. But when she tried to crawl toward the light, she fell to her side. In despair, she began to weep.
The light was around them and within them; then suddenly it was over. Lucia was aware of nothing but Jonah’s arms around her, then a weight lifting from her body. When she heard Jonah’s voice, she looked up.
“Lucia…”
She couldn’t take her gaze from his face. His eyes were glittering as he brushed his lips across her forehead, then ran the edge of his thumb along her lip.
“Know that you are well.”
Bourdain couldn’t believe this. It was as if he wasn’t even there.
“Damn it, Gray Wolf. Step aside.”
Jonah cupped Lucia’s face, making sure she looked at no one but him.
“Go to the cabin.”
She walked out of his arms and started across the yard without looking back.
Bourdain swung his pistol up and took aim at her back.
Jonah stepped into his line of fire.
Bourdain’s hand wavered. But he was still the one holding the gun.
“You come with me—now—or I’ll kill her where she stands.”
Suddenly, D. J. Caufield began to shriek. Her struggles increased a hundredfold as she tried to get up, but it was no use. She pointed at Bourdain.
“Behind you! Behind you!” she screamed.
Bourdain turned, and a warm stream of urine spilled down the inside of his leg.
Four cougars crouched behind them. They were silent, unblinking, their tails twitching, their eyes fixed on Jonah’s face.
“Oh, Jesus,” D.J. whispered, and then looked at Jonah in disbelief. She’d read all the reports, but she hadn’t understood. Not really. Not until now.
“Come on, Gray Wolf…do something,” she begged.
Jonah looked at her then, and felt no empathy for her wounds or for her fear.
“I told you, you shouldn’t have hurt Lucia,” he said, and turned his back on both of them.
Bourdain began to beg. “You can’t leave. I’ll kill her.”
Jonah pointed. “You better quit worrying about Lucia and worry about them.”
The cougars snarled.
Bourdain tried to shoot, but the gun wouldn’t fire. He hit it against the side of his leg, then pulled the trigger again and again, but it was dead metal in his hand.
“Call them off! Call them off!” Bourdain begged.
“If you do, we’ll talk. Anything you want. It’s yours. Just name it.”
There was a long moment of silence, then Jonah’s eyes narrowed.
“Anything?”
Bourdain was near tears as he began to laugh. He’d known it all along. All they needed to do was talk face-to-face.
“Yes. Yes. Anything. Name it, and it’s yours.”
“You know what I want?” Jonah asked.
“No. What?”
“I want you to die.”
The smile slid off Bourdain’s face as the reality of Jonah’s words soaked in.
“But you’re a healer. You don’t kill people,” he mumbled.
“Oh, yeah, right. That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Jonah said.
The cougars snarled. One screamed a warning that sent Caufield into hysterics. She didn’t understand it. It was her arm that was injured. What was wrong with her legs?
Bourdain didn’t have the guts to look over his shoulder again. He didn’t want to see them and know what their presence meant.
“Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Don’t. I’m begging you. Don’t,” Bourdain cried.
“Shut up,” Jonah said. “Did my father beg for his life? Did he? Did he beg for mercy before your hired guns put a bullet in his head?”
Bourdain flung the gun at Jonah’s head and started running toward Caufield’s car. The cats took him down in two leaps. One bite and Bourdain’s neck was broken. He never made a sound.
Caufield took her gun out of her pocket and put it in her mouth. If she was going to die, she was going out on her own terms. But the chambers clicked without firing, and she remembered again that she’d emptied the gun into the dog and never reloaded.
She was sitting in the snow, sobbing and begging and trying to reload her gun with one hand, when the cougars hit. Like Bourdain, she was gone in seconds.
The cougars chuffed softly.
“Thank you, my brothers,” Jonah said.
Suddenly the distant sound of sirens could be heard.
The cougars’ ears flattened. They hissed, then slipped away, swallowed up by the trees and the snow.
Jonah didn’t spare the bodies a second glance. They’d chosen their own fate, while he’d been trying to deal with his own.
Sheriff Mize’s patrol car was coming up the driveway, followed by Earl’s.
Jonah’s shoulders slumped as he turned away from the carnage and headed for the cabin.
The sirens were in his ears now, swallowing the sound of his breath and the wail of the wind.
He looked up.
Lucia was standing in the doorway as both patrol cars slid to a stop, sending snow spraying into the air.
Jonah kept on moving, needing to feel her in his arms. It wasn’t until he was holding her that the world settled back on its axis.
Behind him, he could hear the Sheriff and his deputy talking. Within moments, their time together was going to be limited until Mize was satisfied with what had gone down.
Lucia took him by the hand. “Jonah?”
“Yes?”
“Is it over now?”
He sighed wearily, then managed a smile as he cupped the side of her face.
“No, my love…it’s just beginning.”
Epilogue
S pring had come to the high country. Tiny flowers were poking their heads through small crusts of lingering snow, while the birds that had gone south were returning in full force. The sunshine was new and still weak, but warm against a man’s face.
It was on just such a day that Harve Dubois began circling the Snow Valley hunting camp in his old Bell Jet chopper, returning from Seattle with the first of the season’s visitors.
Much had changed in the ten years since Jonah had been gone. It wasn’t just hunters who came to the camp now. Artists and photographers had caught on to the beauty of this tiny part of Alaska, and reservations were filling up faster each year, which suited old Silas Parker, the camp owner, just fine.
Word around the camp was that Harve was bringing in someone special, and all kinds of theories abounded, from the possibility of a nature photographer from National Geographic to a psychic who wanted to investigate her pet theory regarding the life cycles of people who were exposed to the aurora borealis.
Small children were running about, chasing a dog who had run away with their kite.
A woman was standing in the doorway of her home, shading her eyes against the skyline as she watched Harve begin his descent. A middle-aged man stepped out of his toolshed and then leaned his ax against the woodpile to watch.
It was always a point of curiosity to see what kind of people would pass through their lives each year. It didn’t matter to the Inuit, because they had been here first. For them, Alaska wasn’t a place to visit.
It was home.
But as they watched, something else began to happen on the hillside above the valley.
Something that brought old Silas up out of his chair on the porch and had him running out into the road.
Something that made Marie Tlingtik put down her laundry and walk to the edge of her yard with her hand over her heart.
Something that made Wilson Umluck’s face break into a huge, happy smile.
There were wolves—at least twenty, maybe thirty, of them—coming out of the trees at a lope, yipping and
howling in what sounded like joy, like the sound of small children who’d been let out to play.
It was then that Silas knew who was in Harve’s chopper.
He started down the dirt road toward the landing pad. It occurred to him as he hobbled along that he should have brought his cane. Then he rounded the corner of the last cabin, and when he saw a tall Indian man standing beside the chopper, with long black hair hanging loose about his face and shoulders so broad they stretched the fabric on his shirt, he began to cry. Huge, gulping sobs that burned his throat. He hadn’t believed he would ever see him again—at least not in this lifetime. But here he was. He’d come home.
The wolves were running now, at breakneck speed, spilling down the hillside in fluid motion, with their heads up and their tongues hanging, still yipping, calling back and forth to each other as they ran to greet the man.
From the moment Harve had flown them in to Alaskan territory, to this moment, when Jonah stepped out of the chopper, he’d felt different. Lighter. Free. Knowing he had the possibility of a home, now, and a future.
A future with Lucia.
Bridie Tuesday had long since been settled into a house down in Little Top, and Jonah had been satisfied in knowing she would never be alone again.
At the thought, he turned toward the chopper. Lucia was standing inside, waiting for him to help her out. He put his arms around her waist and lifted her down.
She was smiling. It was all he needed to see.
Lucia was stunned by the majesty of the mountains and the beauty of the low valley between them. She’d already made a lifetime friend of Harve Dubois and was anxious to meet the rest of the people from Jonah’s home. She didn’t know that Jonah had already set one surprise in place for her.
Something he’d had Harve do before he’d come to pick them up.
Something that would settle them into a perfect rhythm as they began the rest of their lives, living in one of Silas’s new cabins.
Lucia couldn’t quit looking at the vista and the valley, knowing that this place was going to be their home. Then, as she looked up toward the mountain slope, the smile slid off her face. In a different place, and without this man at her side, she would have been scared out of her mind. But she was here, and so was Jonah.
And so were they.
“Look,” she said, pointing over Jonah’s shoulder.
He turned, and as he did, a smile broke across his face. He threw his head back in a laugh that turned into a howl, and then he started toward them at a lope.
Lucia watched in awe as man and pack met, and Jonah went down in a tangle of legs and tails. She could hear him laughing from where she stood as the wolves licked and sniffed and yipped and howled.
“Oh my,” she whispered, as Harve Dubois sidled close and put his arm around her shoulder.
“He’s a pistol, ain’t he?” Harve said.
Lucia sighed. “Actually, Harve, that’s something of an understatement.”
Finally Jonah pushed his way out of the pack, stood and began brushing himself off. The wolves behaved as if they didn’t want to leave, but then he laid his hands on their heads as he walked among them, and Lucia heard the promise that he made.
“I am here. I am home. I will never leave you again.”
It seemed to be enough. Within moments they were gone, running back up the slope and then disappearing into the trees.
Silas Parker was puffing hard as he finally reached the landing pad.
Jonah saw him and was struck by what the passage of time had done while he was gone.
Silas Parker had turned into an old man. His hair was shoulder-length and as white as new snow. His belly was round, and his knees had started to bow from the pain of age and arthritis. But he was still Silas—looking at him in awe, just as they said he’d done on Jonah’s first arrival.
The story was an old one. One Jonah had heard all his life. When the she-wolf had brought him into the camp, then left him in the dirt, it was Silas Parker who had picked him up and carried him to safety.
And now here he was again, the first member of Snow Valley to come to welcome him back.
His heart was full with emotion as Silas came toward him. Then, over Silas’s shoulder, he saw people spilling out of houses and calling his name. Some were waving. Some were crying. But they were all coming down to welcome him, just as the wolf pack had done.
Silas took him in his arms and then hugged him fiercely.
“Welcome home, son. Welcome home. I didn’t think we were ever gonna see you again.”
Jonah’s vision blurred as he hugged the old man back. Then he remembered Lucia and reached for her.
She clasped his hand as he pulled her to him.
“Silas. This is my wife, Lucia. Lucia, this is Silas. He taught me how to fish.”
Silas beamed as he eyed the small, dark-eyed woman.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said.
“Oh, no. The pleasure is all mine,” Lucia said, and then set her place in Silas’s heart forever when she gave him a hug.
“Look,” Silas said. “They’re all coming to welcome you home.”
A small dog ran ahead of the people in a race of its own. It was brown and white, with a black patch of fur over its left eye, giving it a whimsical expression.
Luce’s heart tugged at the sight. Losing Hobo the way she had still gave her nightmares, and she missed the big dog’s crazy tricks.
When the little pup came to a stop at her feet, with its tongue hanging out and one ear cocked as if waiting for the punch line of a joke, Lucia was hooked.
She dropped to her knees, then held out her hand. “Well, hello, little fellow. I’m very glad to meet you.”
Jonah glanced over at Harve, who nodded.
Jonah knelt beside Lucia. “His name is Howdy.”
Lucia smiled. “Really? So…howdy, Howdy.”
The pup barked, then jumped up and licked her chin before she could dodge the attack.
“I have it on good authority that the little guy is in need of a home,” Jonah said.
Luce rocked back on her heels as her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Jonah.”
He picked up the pup as Lucia stood, then put him in her arms.
But the crowd was growing closer, and Luce could tell how touched Jonah was by their exuberance. She cuddled the pup under her chin as she nudged Jonah along.
“Go,” she said. “The least you can do is meet them halfway.”
Jonah laughed, then kissed her soundly before he started to run.
The crowd was shouting now, calling to him in their native language, yipping like the wolf pack to signal their joy, crying out his name until it was an anthem echoing back from the hills.
“Gray Wolf. Gray Wolf.”
“The healer is home.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1470-9
THE HEALER
Copyright © 2008 by Sharon Sala.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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