Something nudged the back of her legs. This time she did turn. Three wolflings stood there, one for each of them.
“You may be considering shooting your way out of this,” said Annie, still keeping her voice as calm as she possibly could. “Consider, however, the alternative: don’t. They aren’t attacking us. They appear to be herding us. Perhaps we should go with them.”
“They’re beasts,” hissed Hal.
“Yes, and we’ve just killed a wendigo. We’re beasts in our own right, if looked at the right way.” The wolfling nudged her legs again. Annie gritted her teeth. “I want to live to see my daughter again, sir. Let’s do as the giant wolves wish.”
“I’m scared,” whispered Sophia.
“We’re all scared, dear,” said Annie. “It’s just a matter of being more angry than afraid. Once you can accomplish that, anything is possible.”
The wolfling nudged her again. She started walking. Sophia moved with her. Hal did not. Annie glanced back, once, to see two more wolflings moving toward him. She turned her eyes resolutely forward after that. It was simple math. There were too many wolflings for him to shoot them all: even if he tried, he would miss one, or two, or more, and that would be enough to put all three of them into the ground. Going along with the creatures might seem more dangerous than fighting them, but it would keep them alive for longer, and as long as they were alive, there was a chance.
Hal hurried up next to her. Annie glanced at him.
“I see they convinced you,” she said.
He scowled, and said nothing at all.
Walking through the forest in the company of great white wolves was oddly soothing. Yes, the creatures were potentially dangerous, and yes, they could all die at any moment, but while the wolflings were there, nothing else was going to make its presence known. Even the shadows were behaving themselves, acting more like ordinary shadows, cast by ordinary trees, than the thick, fear-fueled things they had been since the circus arrived in Oregon. It was almost a relief. Yes, she was being herded through the woods by wolves larger than any she had ever seen, but at least if they decided to have her heart, she would die breathing easy and at peace with the world.
But what of Adeline?
The thought was chilling. She stumbled, earning a growl from the wolfling behind her. She hadn’t thought of her little girl since fleeing the wendigo mountain. It had only been a handful of minutes—surely no more than ten, fifteen at the very most—and yet it still felt like a betrayal, like she had done something she should never have been able to do. She had forgotten, if only for a moment, that she was a mother. She had been thinking of herself as an independent creature.
Of all the wicked things she had encountered in the wood, forgetting her child somehow seemed the wickedest of them all.
Sophia’s footing was unsteady, her leg weakened by the time she had spent with it crushed between the stones. The bones seemed to be unbroken, but still, she limped and staggered and required constant assistance to keep her from falling. Annie tried to focus on Sophia, and not on the fact that she was being herded by creatures that were almost but not quite wolves, or the thought that she had forgotten her daughter, even for an instant. Even for a second.
“They’re going to eat us alive,” said Hal.
“Why haven’t they done it, then?”
“Probably didn’t want to spill blood that close to the wendigo. Wendigo and wolflings, they don’t hunt together. They don’t share their kills.” Hal shook his head. “What one takes, the other cannot have. Both are smart enough to covet.”
“That means they’re smart enough to sin, and whatever’s smart enough to sin can be redeemed,” said Annie sharply. “Let them have their moments of redemption, and for God’s sake, stop encouraging them to eat us.”
“Don’t need no encouragement,” Hal muttered darkly. But he quieted after that, and that was all Annie could have asked.
They walked for what seemed like miles, crossing several small clearings, before the woods dropped away and another mountain rose out of the ground. This one, unlike the mountain of the wendigo, was alive: its slopes were covered in growing green, in briars and brush and scrubby pine trees. More wolflings lounged on low rocks and around the mouth of a cave. Smaller ones—adolescents and cubs, from the size of them.
“My God,” breathed Hal. “There’s a whole damned pack of the things.”
Annie said nothing. Her heart felt as if it had stopped in her chest, becoming a small, dead thing trapped between the straining billows of her lungs. Her throat was dry and tight, not allowing her to breathe in.
There, on one of the bushes near the mouth of the cave, was a strip of gauzy white fabric, clearly torn from Adeline’s gown.
“Ma’am?” Sophia looked at her in alarm. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
Annie’s knees buckled. The wolflings were still trying to nudge her onward, Sophia still needed her to stand, and none of that mattered, none of that was real, because Adeline was dead. These were the monsters that had stolen her daughter away, and Annie had let her be taken, while she had chased wendigo and whispers through the wood, turning her back on the little girl who needed her. She had failed. She had finally, after years of running, years of struggling for just one more day of peace and freedom, failed.
The ground was hard, studded with tiny stones that bit into her skin when she folded into a kneeling position, hitting her knees so hard that it brought tears to her eyes. That was almost a relief. She should be crying. It was a failure of biology and motherhood that she wasn’t. Something was wrong with her. The treatments Michael had given her, all those years ago, had changed her as surely as they had changed her children, and she had been a fool to think—
Something moved at the mouth of the wolflings’ cave, something smaller than the white wolves but taller at the same time, something with a biped’s stance. That was all the warning Annie had before Adeline burst into the open, legs churning divots from the ground as she raced to throw her arms around her mother’s neck.
Her skin was hot where it pressed against Annie’s cheek, and the part of Annie’s mind that could never stop monitoring her daughter’s health murmured, she needs her medicine, before shutting down, unable to process what was happening. She could feel Adeline’s breathing, feel her chest expanding with each breath she took. Annie looked up. Hal was looking at her.
“Is that the girl?” he asked.
No, the woods are crawling with children who can’t wait to embrace me as their mother, thought Annie nonsensically. Aloud, she said, “Yes. But how…?”
“Martin!” cried Sophia. She took off running, and made it almost five long steps before her wounded ankle buckled and sent her crashing to the ground. The wolflings didn’t chase her. Instead, they sat down where they were and watched, looking almost amused by the antics of these strange bipedal creatures.
Martin, who had followed Adeline out of the cave, albeit more slowly, hurried to kneel and lift his lover out of the dirt, his hands under her arms, his eyes fixed on her face. “Sophia,” he said, voice warm with longing and relief. “They found you.”
“I was so scared,” said Sophia, and threw her arms around him, and held him close.
“We found her, and you found my Delly,” said Annie, stroking her daughter’s hair as she lifted her head and looked at Martin. “How? How did you even get here? We left you in the cabin. I thought—it was my belief that you were going to remain there. To wait for us to return.”
“Well, ma’am, I—” Martin paused as he caught sight of Hal’s expression. The old forester looked grim, resigned even, like he knew exactly why Martin had chosen to leave, and couldn’t find it in himself to blame the man. Martin took a breath. “I got worried, ma’am. I thought, what do we really know about this fellow? How do we know he’s for the good, and not for the bad? Forgive me, ma’am, it wasn’t trusting of me, but you know what Mr. Blackstone says. Never put town over show.”
“And by letting me l
eave with a stranger, you thought you were putting town over show,” concluded Annie. She stood, gathering Adeline in her arms as she did, until the girl was bundled against her hip. The weight of it was reassuring, so familiar that Annie felt her tears begin to well up for real. The only thing that could have made the moment more ideal would have been Tranquility pacing out of the woods and standing by her side, all muscle and menace and fur.
Tranquility did not appear. Some things were too much to even hope for, and there has never been a truly perfect world.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Martin. He didn’t articulate his own fears over Hal’s relationship with the wendigo. It would have been petty, with Hal right there and Annie so clearly unharmed. “I left to try to find you. I guess I got turned around, because these big wolf-things found me first, and they brought me here.”
“Like they brought us,” said Sophia hopefully. “They’re good wolflings.”
“They’re man-eaters,” said Hal grimly. “They’re worse than the wendigo, because they hunt in the summer as well as the snow, and they understand how to function as a pack. They take care of their wounded and their weak. They’ve killed dozens of men in the time I’ve lived in Oregon, and I’m sure they’ll kill hundreds more before they’re burnt from the face of the earth. They don’t help lost travelers. Not unless they’re helping them into their own bellies.”
Adeline leaned back until her body formed almost a right angle from her mother’s, trusting Annie to hold her up as she freed her hands and began signing.
‘Wrong,’ she signed. ‘They’re my friends.’
“Can they understand you, Delly?” asked Annie.
‘They sign, some of them. They don’t know many words. Someone needs to teach them more words.’ Adeline wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s hard not to know many words.’
“That’s true,” said Annie. She looked to Hal. “Adeline says they can communicate with her. They speak with their hands.” After everything that had happened, the idea of wolves that spoke with their hands was somehow not unreasonable.
“That’s not right,” insisted Hal. “They’re beasts. They hunt, and they kill. They don’t help.”
“But they’re helping us,” said Martin.
“True,” said Hal. His eyes were on Adeline. “I wonder why.”
Interlude the Third
Closing up the house had been an easy affair: all it required was some sheets over the furniture in the rooms that would be closed until their return, the donation of the majority of the perishable goods to the temple, where they could be distributed among the deserving poor, and the transfer of the projects Michael had been working on for Hellstromme to other labs, where they could be brought to beneficial fruition.
From the beginning of the process to its conclusion, the whole thing had taken less than three days. It seemed like such a small amount of time, when stacked against the enormity of what was to come next. It should have been impossible.
Helen had long since learned that nothing was impossible when Dr. Murphy willed that it be so. He was no god or monster—only a man—but he was possessed of an iron will and an unshakable belief in his own infallibility. Helen thought, sometimes, that a man convinced that he was doing the right thing might be more dangerous than a monster, which was, after all, only convinced that it should fill its belly and continue on its terrible way. Monsters acted because of the way they were made. Men acted because of the way they chose to be.
Choice was almost always more terrifying than the alternative.
The carriage he had commissioned for the journey sat on the road outside of the house, gleaming with steel plates and polished wood. It was a battleship of a conveyance, capable of standing up to all but the most violent of assaults. A vent at the rear was open to allow a thin, constant trickle of steam to escape. The internal mechanisms were working, then; there was a chance that Annabelle would survive the journey. Only that: a chance. Which meant there was a chance she wouldn’t.
“I wish you would let me go with you, sir,” said Helen. “With the complications of the road, it’s possible that Annabelle will require more care than you will be in a position to provide.”
“Are you saying that I can’t take care of my own child?” Dr. Murphy’s question was mild, but not so mild that she couldn’t hear the threat lurking beneath it, like a great worm lurking beneath seemingly calm desert sands. She was walking farther into dangerous territory with every word she spoke.
Still, she pressed on. For Annabelle’s sake. “No, sir, only that—”
“Because my wife has been able to care for Adeline without me. Without any of the luxuries that Annabelle has been afforded by our life here in the Holy City. She has raised our little girl like a dog in the street, barefoot and profane and surrounded by men who are not of her flesh, not of her blood, not of her faith. Would you really claim that Grace, of all people, is better suited to parenthood than I, who has reordered the world for the sake of my daughter?”
Yes, whispered the traitorous voice of Helen’s doubts, deep in the back of her mind, where even Dr. Murphy could not hear or shame her for it.
“No, sir,” she said. “You have been the best of fathers, and I am sure you will only continue to grow in your wisdom and experience. I look forward to your returning with Adeline, who has been too long gone and deserves to know her father.”
“She will be treated like the princess that she is,” said Dr. Murphy stiffly.
“But the road is hard, sir, even for the best of fathers—even for the best of warriors, with nothing but themselves to worry about. I am merely concerned that you might come to harm when you allow your natural concern for Annabelle to distract you from the business of fighting the filthy heathens between you and your goal.”
Dr. Murphy’s face softened, enough so that Helen thought, for a moment, that he might be listening to reason. He was a brilliant man. Surely he could understand the sense in what she was saying.
“Dear, sweet Helen,” he said. “Truly, you are an honor to your father and to your family. I could not take you into the world outside Deseret. Someone as fine and good and unsullied as yourself would never survive there. Annabelle possesses all those qualities, but Annabelle has no choice. If she is to survive, she needs her sister. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Helen whispered.
“Go home to your family. Your wages will continue until I return. If, when I come home, you find that you do not wish to return to my service, we will discuss the matter of your replacement.”
“I would never want to leave your service, sir.”
“Come now, Helen. You are a young woman in the prime of your life. One day a clever young man will steal you away from me, and I’ll be glad to let you go, for what better duty can a woman have than motherhood?” He reached out and touched the top of her head paternally. Helen managed, somehow, not to flinch away. “You have been an excellent helpmeet. I will see you soon.”
“Yes, sir,” whispered Helen, and ducked her head, so that she wouldn’t need to watch him walk away.
As for Dr. Murphy, once he had turned and started for the waiting carriage, he did not look back, not once; did not even feel the urge. Yes, the house he left behind was his home, and the people who stood watching him go were his servants. He felt toward them a casual possessiveness, as he might feel for any of his replaceable tools. Break a hammer, purchase a new one. Fire—or accidentally incapacitate—a servant, hire another. There were always bodies, eager and willing to work in the house of a great man, prepared to risk their own health and safety for the sake of their families. The poor had so many mouths to feed.
(That he classed even those who would have seemed unfathomably wealthy by the standards of Junkyard as “the poor” was perhaps more telling than he intended it to be. In the world of Dr. Michael Murphy, people were either useful, useless, or dangerous. There were few gradations within those categories. The world was either for him, against him, or there to b
e exploited.)
Three large men stood beside the carriage, waiting for him. Dr. Murphy nodded to each of them in turn as he continued onward toward the front, where a woman in brown leather sat, her feet propped against the running board, the reins held loosely in her hands. A wide-brimmed hat blocked her face from the sun, less out of vanity than practicality. If she couldn’t see where she was going, she couldn’t shoot, or keep the wagon on the narrow path to their goal.
“Laura,” he said stiffly. It was odd, addressing a woman who only technically worked for him without honorific or civility. But it was her preference, and he was not going to go against it: not as long as he needed something from her. “The house is closed. The servants have been sent home. Dr. Hellstromme knows that we’re to depart today.”
“That’s all true,” said the woman he called Laura, still lounging with her back against the carriage, shoulders slightly bowed, like she hadn’t a care in the world. “Trouble is, he hasn’t given me the go yet, and I’m his dogsbody, not yours. Until he drops the hammer, this is where I sit, and since I’m your driver, this is where you sit. Get comfortable, doctor-man.”
“Time is of the essence.”
“You’re not wrong. You’re not right, either.” Laura sat up, stretching languidly, allowing the reins to drop from her hand. The motion exposed the supple length of her body, forcing Dr. Murphy to turn away, feeling his cheeks flare red. His wife might be a harlot and a Jezebel, running away from her duties, stealing from her husband, but she was still his wife. As long as she lived, he was a married man, and looking at another woman—even a stained unbeliever like this Laura—was a sin.
“Explain,” he said, voice tight.
“The rattlers are at their most active this time of day. We drive this pretty little rig of yours out there right now, I’d lay even odds that we’re devoured before we have time to engage the steam engines—and the house always wins that sort of a gamble, Murphy. The house always wins. Wait an hour, let the sun drop a bit, deploy the decoys, and hit the road. We can be out of their range before they realize there was something tasty on that wagon.” Laura smiled at the back of his head. “I’ve made this run before. You haven’t. You may be a genius, but part of genius is admitting it when you’re not the smartest man in the room.”
Boneyard Page 23
