The Wolf Road

by Beth Lewis

  Penelope couldn’t take the pace. She heaved in breaths and leant up ’gainst a tree. I rested a minute on a rock, let my ribs stop screaming.

  “We need to find cover. Storm’s comin’,” I said.

  Penelope looked up at the sky like she knew what she was seeing. “There should be a town along the road, we should—”

  She shut up when she heard me laughing. Hurt to laugh but it didn’t matter. I cursed that devil and angel on my shoulder.

  “Next town you’ll see is Halveston,” I said, and took a little pleasure in seeing her face turn gray.

  “You mean…?”

  I set my eyes level with hers and pushed up from the rock. “Thunderhead’s comin’.”

  I weren’t in no mood to talk to her. I weren’t in no mood to look at her. I weren’t in no mood to do nothing but walk. I’d spent too long in a crate and too long on a boat. All I wanted was to find an outcrop or cave to shelter in afore the thunderhead found me.

  I didn’t know these woods and a chill was getting deep in my skin. It helped my aching ribs but put me in a foul mind. Penelope had naught but a lacy cotton dress and useless shoes. She walked a few steps behind me, arms across her chest, trying to hold in all the warm she could. Heard her chattering teeth following me. Heard her stumbling. She tried to speak to me once but I didn’t say nothing back and she didn’t try again.

  Didn’t complain though. Not once. She didn’t say “I’m so cold” or “I’m so hungry” or “How much farther?” She just trudged on behind, look a black storm on her face.

  I quick found an overhang what was perfect for shelter. It was on the other side of a stream fattened up to raging by the rain. Penelope looked at that water, mouth open, like it was wide as the Mussa. City folk don’t got a brain or eyes for the wild. They see a thing so much worse and bigger and angrier than it is. They see a skeeter taking its meal out their arm, they slap that bug with all they got and they moan for days ’bout the itch. Itches worse when you slap them. Wild folk just brush them skeeters off, gentle and kind and don’t pay no mind to a red bump here or there. We know there’s worse things in the wild than an itching elbow. After all, when a grizzly’s chasing you, you don’t remember to scratch.

  “Step where I step,” I said to Penelope, and she swallowed hard. “That water is just a sniff up from icy; you fall in you might as well not bother gettin’ back out.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she said, as hoity-toity as I’d ever heard. “I can’t cross that.”

  I kept my temper, didn’t grab her hair and force her on like I wanted to, just said, “Then die here in the thunderhead.”

  She huffed out her nose, a sound what set my teeth on edge, but didn’t say nothing else. I took that to mean she would step where I stepped.

  The stream was all white water and jagged rocks not used to the beating.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  Sundown was less than an hour and I felt the thunderhead in my bones. It was coming in quick, bearing down on me like a mad god what I forgot to pray to. I had to find a way across this stream what both me and Penelope could handle. Time was, I’d a’ waded across no questions, just let the water hit me wherever it wanted till I got to the other side. I didn’t have the strength in me to do that. The thought a’ the water buffeting ’gainst my ribs and belly set me shaking. A ways upstream I found a tree what had fallen clean across the river, giving us a bridge and a death trap. I looked at it with a wily eye. Wild gave me this, but it never gave nothing for free.

  Rain had made the tree bark, covered here and there with moss, slick and slimy. The log had been there a while and made a kind of dam behind it. A calmer pool what we might be able to wade through. I grabbed a stick and tested the depth from the bank. Waist-high, maybe a step deeper in the middle. Ran my hand over the log to see if we could walk it, but it was like stroking ice. I weren’t too happy at the thought a’ being up to my nethers in that water but same I didn’t want to be falling off that log onto the rocks.

  Down the bank, Penelope stood where I left her, shivering like a foal just been spat out its momma. Water kept her attention, she weren’t looking for me. Even this far away I could see the fear in every bit a’ her. Her shoulders tensed and her eyes kept head-on, flitting every few minutes left and right. She lifted her heel. Shook her hair. I saw a deer flicking its ears, legs like coiled springs, ready to run at a twig snap. Neck long and slender, ripe for slicing.

  “Found anything?” she shouted.

  Took out my knife.

  “I found something,” I called back, “but you ain’t going to like it.”

  I used my knife to anchor into the log. Stabbed it in there hard. Shudder of the hit sent my ribs splintering. Penelope joined me up by the calm pool just as the first thunder crack split the sky. My toes went cold as deep-winter ice.

  “Listen to me,” I said, “you hold on to the log. Soon as we get to the other side you take off your dress quicklike and start jumpin’ stars.”

  “I can’t…” she said, but I weren’t having none of it.

  I grabbed her ’round the shoulders and made her look in my eyes. “Thunderhead is coming and I know you know what that means. We got to get to cover and if you don’t cross this river right this damn minute, you gonna get swept up in that storm and pulled apart like you’s no more’n wet cotton. You get me?”

  She kept my gaze for a few seconds, then nodded. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be doin’ the same, don’t you worry.”

  I took off my coat and boots and socks and stuffed ’em into my pack. With my good arm, one what didn’t have cracked ribs ’neath it, I held it up out the water.

  “Stay close and move quick,” I said, and dipped my toes into the river. Cold shot right through me, made my side ache. This was really going to hurt.

  Behind me, Penelope hiked up her dress to her waist and took off her slipper shoes. She held them awkward in one hand while her other felt along the log. Heard her gasp when the water got to the top a’ her legs.

  She swore up something unholy when that water got just a few inches higher and I wondered where she heard all them words. Made me smile though. Made me think a’ Trapper when he stuck a fishhook in his thumb, cursing the heavens and all us people on the earth. I laughed all the while I cut that hook out.

  I pulled the knife out the log and used it like a bear uses its claws to climb a tree. Current pulled at me and slippery rocks ’neath my feet did all they could to trip me. I dug my toes in, dug my knife in, and tried to forget about the cold.

  Water was deeper’n I thought, right up to my bandages. I could a’ cried when that chill hit my bruises.

  Penelope kept up that swearing when she got to the middle a’ the stream. She hiked the dress up higher so’s her flat belly was showing. I glanced over my shoulder at her, leaning heavy on the log, more than she would a’ needed if she weren’t holding on to her dress like that.

  Thunder struck and I felt the boom in my bones.

  “Faster,” I said, and drove my knife into the log.

  Drove it in too deep.

  Pulled it out too rough.

  The log rocked. One a’ the stones holding it steady slipped. Sick feeling hit my stomach and I saw it all happen like it was going at half speed. Penelope’s weight on the log helped it shift. I caught her eyes, wide as mine.

  I hurled my pack onto the bank and lunged for her, felt my side rip fresh. She scrambled to get away from the log but it was turning in the flow, pushing her away from me.

  “Elka!” she kept shouting, trying to run in the water, against the log, against the current.

  Thunder crashed above us but I didn’t care none for the thunderhead in that moment. All I cared for was getting that girl out.

  But I couldn’t get to her. The log twisted, rolled, sent Penelope under, pulled her downstream toward them sharp rocks and white water. My heart thudded and the cold stole all my air. Couldn’t shout for her.

  I got ou
t that river fast I could and ran down the bank, eyes on that log. Eyes on the white spray, looking for her white dress. I kept up with the log but the river was quick and I was hurting.

  “Penelope!”

  Found my voice. Found my air. Blood was flowing for the running.

  “Penelope!”

  The log caught ’tween two rocks and I dashed into the water. Second later blond hair burst out the spray, pale arms clung on to the bark. Heard the wood straining ’gainst the river and the rocks. Awful creaking, cracking sound.

  “Penelope,” I shouted, “let go a’ the damn log!”

  I got closer. Creaking sound got louder, like a drumroll reaching its peak. She weren’t letting go. She pressed her face up against the log, hugging it.

  “Goddammit, girl,” I raged, “let go!”

  Stubborn prissy thing she was. The river slammed into my side and set my vision blurring and spinning. The cold and pain and dog-tiredness sent dizziness right through my head. My bare feet slipped but I caught myself. Shook it away. This weren’t no time for wussing out.

  I grabbed Penelope’s arm.

  “I got you,” I said, voice loud over the roaring water. “Let it go.”

  She looked at me with wild, red eyes. Seemed to take her a minute to know me but when she did, she let the log go. We struggled out the river, had my arm around her waist, holding her up. Didn’t notice my ribs. Didn’t care if they didn’t like my efforts.

  We got out onto the bank and right away I started pulling off my clothes.

  “Take off your dress, quick,” I said, then noticed, with a bit a’ shock, that she managed to hang on to her shoes. Let myself smile as the shivering set in. Noticed blood spilling down her leg and a nasty cut just south a’ her knee. Wild takes its pay wherever it can.

  Just then I heard a cracking sound what weren’t thunder. The log split right where Penelope was hugging it and it was like a rubber band been released. The trunk shot down the river, struck a rock that sent it end over end in the air. It smashed to kindling and the river swept it all away.

  Neither me nor Penelope needed to say anything. It was all right there, floating down the river.

  Stripped down to our undies, skin all goosey and ice-pale, we jumped stars and ran back up to where I’d thrown my pack. I pulled everything out till I found the reverend’s tinderbox.

  “Find some twigs, dry ones, not ones off a tree, and a few bigger branches,” I said, breathing smoke. Penelope didn’t argue.

  Thunder crashed, felt like it set the whole world shaking. All I could think was quick, quick, fire, get a fire, get your back to the wall, hunker down. Now. Do it now!

  I opened up that box with shaking hands to make sure the striker and wool were dry. Breathed out my thanks that they were.

  I dragged everything over to the outcrop, which, now I was closer, I saw went pretty deep into the hillside. Grabbed all the bits of twigs around and cleared a flat space inside the mouth a’ the cave, out the way a’ the coming rain. In naught but my undies, shivering from head to toe, teeth chattering like nosy birds, I breathed all my warmth into my hands.

  Sun was dropping and the sky was black with thunder. I had one shot.

  I fluffed up the wax paper, set my twigs and bits a’ bracken close, and set the metal rod into the paper. Few deep breaths. Steady hands.

  “Come on, Elka,” I said to myself.

  I scraped the striker down the rod and sent sparks into the paper. Again and again until it caught. Flames burst up and careful as tending a fallen chick, I fed it twigs until it crackled into life. Shaking, Penelope came with kindling and thick branches what had mostly dried after the rain and I raised that fire up to roaring.

  I took off my bandages to dry them along with my clothes, and tears pricked at my eyes. The cold water had taken down the swelling on my side, but it was still ugly. Purple and black bruise reaching from the middle a’ my belly halfway ’round my back. It covered so much a’ me that I wondered if I’d ever get my skin back the way it was.

  I cursed Colby from head to toe.

  Noticed Penelope staring at me. Look a down-deep horror on her face.

  “What?” I said.

  “Those scars…” she said, meaning the reverend’s work across my back. In truth I’d forgotten ’bout them. They weren’t deep, healed quick, and I didn’t see ’em day to day.

  “Long story,” I said, smiling. “Worth the tellin’ though.”

  She got comfy on a flat rock and asked me to tell it.

  “They was the work of a man what got his due,” I said. “Crazy fucker if there ever was one.”

  I told her how I came upon Matthews’s homestead and that fine chili. Told her ’bout the reverend and my thinking that I was in a safe haven with a man a’ God.

  “So when I woke up buck naked in his basement, you can ’bout imagine my surprise,” I said.

  Penelope laughed, first time I’d heard it, like a tinkling bell in the middle of a baying crowd.

  “He cut me elbow to elbow, neck to butt,” I said, “then…someone came in and slit the bastard’s throat.”

  “Who?”

  Picture a’ them legs flashed in my head, smell a’ the woods in my nose, grit-tooth voice in my ears. Still couldn’t right say who it was.

  “Don’t know,” I said, “but I went all the way to Genesis looking to shake his hand.”

  “Genesis?” she said, turned pale.

  “Aye, hick town south a’ that lake.”

  She nodded. “That’s where I met James.”

  I figured as much. “Man’s dead. Can’t hurt you no more.”

  But I knew dead didn’t always mean gone. I still heard the hog man’s breathing, still saw his slobbering face when I closed my eyes.

  The sky went black and rumbling and I felt it shake up my bones. Heard the wind thrashing the trees, heard the snapping branches and creaking trunks and I was damn glad of a rock roof over my head.

  Penelope huddled closer to the fire, put her back ’gainst the wall and didn’t say nothing for a while, just wrung out her hair and tried to dry it without setting light to it. She tended to the cut on her leg, wiped up the blood, tied a strip a’ cloth around it.

  “Is that why Magistrate Lyon is after you?” she said out a’ nowhere, and my heart kicked.

  All the forest sounds, the river, the fire, the skittering critters and buzzing insects switched off. All I heard was my blood in my ears and the thunderhead laughing in the sky.

  “James wasn’t the only person I met in Genesis,” she said.

  “Don’t know no Lyon,” I said, gritted teeth. Hand found my knife.

  “Don’t get dramatic,” she said. “We seem to be doing a dance, you and me. You save me, I save you, I save you, then you save me.” She nodded to the river.

  “What about it?”

  Penelope looked at me, saw the wild no doubt. “I saw the posters of you in Ellery. I could have turned you in right there and that giant woman would have locked you up.”

  I didn’t say nothing. Didn’t right know what to say.

  “You know what I did instead?” she said. “I cozied up to a disgusting man so I could steal his ticket. His name was Porter McLeish.”

  I let go a’ the knife but kept it close. “I didn’t ask for it. Why would you do that?”

  She sighed fierce and angry. “Because you saved my fucking life.”

  Sounds a’ the forest came back to me. I looked at this woman, this stranger, with new eyes. Felt a stab a’ shame for thinking bad of her and lying to her not five minutes past.

  “Lyon’s after the person what killed her son,” I said, quiet.

  Penelope lifted her eyebrows.

  “The man what raised me up from a babe did it,” I said. “Found out he was a killer from Lyon. She thinks I been helpin’ him or know where he is but I don’t. I don’t know nothin’.”

  She stayed quiet a moment, taking it all in.

  “What’s in Halveston?” she said
.

  “Real parents went up there, made their fortune out a’ gold and stones.”

  Penelope nodded. Sadness come over her mixed in with a look I’d seen before. Same look I saw on Colby when I told him where I was going. Look a’ pity.

  Thunderhead rocked the sky, wind bent the trees double and whipped out the fire like it weren’t more’n a candle. Penelope shuffled up close to me, white as snow and shivering in the dark. Weren’t no point in trying to get the fire going again, not till the wind died off so I tried best I could to keep her warm.

  Wind was howling worse’n dying wolves, trees was groaning and the ground shook ’neath me. Was like Mother Nature herself woke up raging, storming through the world in hobnail boots, slamming doors and smashing plates. Lightning lit up the skies so we didn’t need no fire to see by and I weren’t fearing no bears or wolves out tonight, they’s as chicken a’ the thunderhead as I was.

  When you’re alone in the woods the thunderhead’s like the end a’ the world come down right on your head. But when you’re with someone what’s got goodness in them, even a useless snip of a girl, it’s just a storm. An awful, life-destroying bad storm, but there ain’t no evil or malice in it. It’s just weather. Weren’t never just weather with Kreagar.

  Strange feeling came over me when I was huddling ’gainst the wall with Penelope by my side. Feeling a helplessness, like I was giving up all my fierce to this woman I didn’t know and she would carry me the rest a’ the way. Scary thing was I wanted her to. Sat ’neath that outcrop in the dark, feeling her tense up with every strike a’ lightning, every boom a’ thunder, I wanted to let go a’ the hardness in me, the stones and grit what Kreagar and the forest had put in my bones and blood. I wanted to give it all up. Next I know I have tears on my cheeks, falling out my eyes like rain out the sky.

  The cave kept us safe when hail ripped up the soil and we didn’t say no more to each other that night. Weren’t nothing I could think of to say. I didn’t sleep, ain’t no sleeping during a thunderhead, but I barely noticed.