Stephen didn’t reply. He only shook his head.
“What do they call this?” Harold asked. “Denial or something?”
No response.
“Okay, up you go,” Harold said, lifting him under the arms and setting him on his feet. “Get moving. I refuse to act as a crutch for long. I sure don’t want you as a dance partner.”
“Sir,” Stephen said quietly.
“Enough with that. How many times have I told you?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“So I keep hearing.”
“I mean, for the woman.”
“Sure, sure.”
“I know, sir. I must face my punishment.”
“Aye, that. Ringing your bell was most of it. Listen up for the remainder. I’m telling you to put on your coat this very moment and go outdoors. You follow?”
“Yes,” he said, sniffing.
“Good enough. Now get those legs moving. Tell your folks to go home and get dressed. Send this here knapsack home with them, as you won’t be needing it. And as for your own self, you can start lugging firewood by the armload from the outside pile. Take it up to the square and drop it there in the snow. Say, leave a good thirty feet from the big spruce. Spread the wood out, maybe six or seven feet, into a nice long fire. Light the middle as well as the ends.”
Stephen kept nodding.
“You hearing me right, boy?”
“Yes,” Stephen said. “But … I don’t understand. How am I to—?”
“Ah, very well. Close your mouth again while I set you straight. We are to reduce our prisoner to ashes and leave the ashes for spring. Abel’s decree. You with me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. In other words, I’m saying you’re all right, boy. Not guilty. That’s according to me, one of the elders. So I say now, as master speaking to apprentice, get moving and make yourself helpful.”
Stephen moved slowly, still feeling heavy with grief and shock, and pulled on his coat and opened the door. The two gray wolves had of course heard everything and stood there wagging and trembling all over with gladness and relief.
“Hurry along,” Harold shouted after them. “Ain’t-a-one-of-us is getting any younger.”
He watched them go off and then started for the back room, muttering and sputtering and smoking as he went. He pulled the blankets tight around the prisoner and dragged her out into the dim and frigid morning.
Chapter 37
Moving east on the road, Abel stopped at the edge of the village and turned to face Evie. All four were winded, their breath steaming and mingling with snow flurries.
“To your credit, you have done well this night,” he told her. “I know that you starve. And, untested though you are, you have issued no complaints. By the hour you distance yourself from being the child of the world you began as. Let this be the beginning of your understanding of your true capabilities. You will be stronger for having endured it.”
With that said he turned again and continued on up the road at a trot.
“That is the nearest to a compliment you will receive,” her grandfather told her. “Take it gladly.”
“Yes,” her cousin agreed at her side.
“I have never felt such hunger,” Evie said. “But I think rest I crave even more.”
They trotted into the square and moved through the crowd. The fire was low by now and the coals were glowing hot. Erica remained there as Evie and Joseph moved on. Then Joseph stopped by the forge, explaining that his clothing had been left inside.
“Will you come to the cabin and rest?” Evie asked him.
“For now I will join the others. But you should go. You have earned the rest.”
There was no need to be told twice. She moved on down the road at an easy pace and found the old cabin. It was just as charming in the daylight. Snow falling. The walkway and railings of the porch freshly powdered.
She changed and stepped in and closed the door quickly. Got her robe on. Warm socks. Her stomach was caved in, but she was so exhausted that she couldn’t consider expending the energy to find food. She felt far weaker as the human. Too weak even to stand there for long contemplating it.
Strange, she thought, recalling Abel’s words as she stretched out on the couch. There really is something special about the bond that comes with sharing hardships. The bond that comes from each living for the other. Willing to kill or be killed for the rest. It’s the strangest comfort I’ve ever known. It would be nice to eat. But this feeling is so warm. It’s more comforting than food.
She felt herself falling fast, her mind awash with all the images of Maine’s frozen woods. There was nowhere safer to let her guard down and rest.
A sound from outside drew her attention. A footstep on the porch. She sat up, hearing a soft knock on the door. Stood dizzily and went to the door. The boy, James, stood smiling back at her. He was breathing hard from running. He held something out to her.
“Breakfast for you,” he said. “Good morning. Your grandfather sent me. I ran as fast as I could, hoping they would stay warm.”
She smiled and thanked him, taking a wrapped bundle of cloth from his hands. He nodded briskly and shot off toward the village square before more could be said. The cloth was cold on the outside but still warm within as she set it on the table and unwrapped it. There were two big biscuits, all warm and golden, flakey and doughy. She wondered who had made them.
She ate embarrassingly fast, then leaned back on the couch, contented, crumbs falling down her robe, and just let herself go. Images of Ludlow passed through her mind. The oak house. Family. All the regulars sitting around the restaurant with their coffee. Then she moved on back to the silence of the present. Warm and comfortable. Falling faster. There would be more food after this rest. The village looking like a marshmallow world under new snow. Another afternoon and evening in the great hall, socializing and feasting. And then would follow another glorious night.
End of book 5
Credits roll (with clips of wolves doing awesome wolfish things)
For best results you should be hearing Metallica playing Of Wolf and Man
Don’t Tread on Me is pretty good too
***
Vampire’s Tomb - new pack story now available for free.
https://www.amazon.com/Vampires-Tomb
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NOTES
My thanks for sticking with me, as well as thanks for being patient. Among other influences, you can thank my local pack of coyotes (or coy dogs or eastern coywolves) for sparking my mind.
Back in June (2016) I decided to camp out one night. I had been cutting firewood at my little campsite. After so much time at a desk, it feels good to get outdoors and do something. And I just love being in the woods. So I decided to sleep out one night.
Around maybe 3 or 4 in the morning the coyotes started howling. Fairly close, maybe a hundred yards away. In case you’ve never heard them howl, it’s usually a very high pitched sound. Almost like laughing. And sometimes they can make deeper sounds, and short, lone calls, closer to dog howls.
But then there was one very deep, very loud howl. So deep that it had to be from a large animal. I’m talking Hound of the Baskervilles loud and scary.
I’ve heard coyotes countless times, but I’ve rarely seen one. They’re very sneaky that way. Some people claim to have seen coywolves bigger than most dogs, closer to gray wolves, as large as a hundred pounds. It seems safe to guess that the deep howl I heard was one of those big guys. The king of that pack. There’s no way a fifty pound animal could make a sound that deep and loud without a megaphone.
I love being in the woods. I’ve been very close to black bears on several occasions (a few times the summer of 2016—I even had a staring contest with one good-sized male who didn’t seem to understand why I was out in the middle of the boonies) and I don’t usually get nervous in the woods. Even large animals don’t generally view humans as food. But when I heard that deep howl, it did give me the chi
lls. It’s a spooky sound in the dark, with nothing but a tent between yourself and it.
So, blah-blah, that’s when I got thinking about what I could do with the pack stories. I didn’t have to force myself. It just happened because of the way that deep howl spooked me.
Quick random note.
The Finding Bigfoot team finally came to New Hampshire.
Sadly, shockingly, they didn’t find a thing.
Anyway, hopefully you liked North Woods Law. If you did, please leave a quick review. Here’s the deal on reviews. As far as Amazon is concerned, reviews are not to help authors, they are to help other customers make an informed decision. Unfortunately, without reviews, a book sinks very fast amid the other 4 million books. Meaning it hardly shows up at all to customers in the kindle store.
It’s like watching YouTube content and everyone is asking you to give a thumbs up and to subscribe. They aren’t asking to be annoying, they need the help to get noticed among the ocean of content.
In short, I HATE asking for reviews. It feels like being a salesman or a slimy politician. But they are critical to visibility and success. I’m not the greatest writer ever and don’t expect anyone to say so. I just need your help to stay somewhat relevant. And honestly, even if only five percent of you left reviews, each of my books would have way, way more by now. Currently I’m at less than one percent of readers leaving a review.
As for the pack, I have plenty more ideas. I think this was my favorite of the books to write so far. You can see by the last few chapters that there are endless possibilities for more stories, more digging into the past, and more experiences for the youngsters. It just takes time.
As always I enjoy hearing from people on Facebook and I always consider all the suggestions some of you have made. (Obviously, because several of you have actually typed brief outlines of what you think I should do next.) If you talk to me on Twitter, it may take a day or 50 for me to get back to you. I check FB pretty much daily.
Okay, I guess we’re done here.
North Woods Law (The Great North Woods Pack Book 5) Page 16
