Saint Peter’s Wolf (31 page)

It was the cold, of course. The cold swirled into the cabin, snow hissing in the fire. The cold was making me shiver as I pinched a match from the floor.

But it was more than the cold.

A Coleman lantern casts a blast of white from its glowing mantle. It is nearly too bright to gaze at directly, and the lantern makes a long, steady breathy whisper. I held the lantern before me, and marched out into the darkness.

The lantern made progress slow, because it illuminated the swarm of white that pulsed and rushed into my eyes. Ice streaked by when the wind blasted, staggering me. Such lanterns are resistant to wind, but the glowing mantle shimmered in the gusts.

It was more than an urge. It was a command: I must find this wolf. I did not question it. I held the lantern high, struggling forward, slipping, nearly stumbling. I did not dare form for myself the hope I was beginning to feel. I was mad. It was impossible.

“Here I am!” I cried, the first words I had spoken in days, and I realized as I called that this was the cry wolves made, and the song birds sang, the first, bright cry that announced life, called friends, and warned away trespassers. “Here I am!”

But there was no answer. I was mistaken. There was nothing out here, no companion searching for me. I called to storm, to ice—to nothing. The light I lifted made the dark around all the more like a wall. Wind tugged at the parka.

I was alone.

More than alone. Forgotten, freezing, all but lost.

Then there was something moving, a fluttering, like the waving of a flag. Something tossed side to side, and I crouched, holding the lantern high. The mantle flickered and dimmed, punished by the wind. Then, as I thought the lantern would falter and die, there was a lull. Snow collapsed around me, and I had nearly decided that there was nothing there but darkness, when I saw it again, waving like a flag.

A wolf was fighting its way through the snow. The flickering flag was its tail, tossing up and down. And this was no ordinary wolf.

The beast was huge and golden, and it was upon me before I could blink to clear my eyes of the snow. It put its paws on my shoulders and panted into my eyes.

No, I breathed. This was impossible!

The wolf was crusted with ice, and even in my confusion I saw how gaunt it was. The wolf gazed past me to the dim flicker of firelight in a window of the cabin. It raced toward the cabin, spun, and fell. It was on its feet, shakily. And then it barked, just once.

The bark was like a tune, a chime, like nothing I had ever heard. The bark, and the feel of the paws when they had rested on my shoulder made me stare, unable to move.

I shaped the word with my lips: impossible.

The feel of the paws had not been like the padded paw of a wolf at all. There had been pads, and the large, round weight of forepaws, but there had been something else—a grip like human fingers.

The wolf collapsed in the snow. I knelt beside it, pulling it to its feet, and felt the ribs beneath the thick, golden fur. Dazed, unable to comprehend what was happening, I knew that this creature sought the refuge of the cabin, and I felt the unsteady thumping of its heart as I embraced its body, trying to steady it on its feet.

We reached the cabin, and the wolf staggered inside, and collapsed again, its great body heaving. I slammed the door against the snow.

And then I could not move.

The wolf struggled to turn, to roll over to look at me. Its eyes caught me, and again I could not breathe. I set the lantern, hissing, its illumination surging unsteadily, on the floor. I was cold, but something else froze me where I was.

The wolf's eyes gazed up at me, and I forced myself to move, wearing my body as I wore the ill-fitting clothing. I knelt beside her. I took a breath, but did not dare to whisper.

At last I had to speak, like someone entrusted with a secret password he has never had to use. I whispered, afraid to say it, all but certain that it was impossible, an illusion, a lie created by desperate hope.

“Johanna!”

When something amazing happens, and something wonderful, I sometimes cast around in my mind for some omen that told me it was going to happen, for some foreknowledge. I had none. I had, I knew, heard a cry from the south in days past, and I had sensed that there was someone coming after me, but I had not been certain whether it was a friend or a deadly enemy. I had been certain of nothing.

Now there was no evolution from one shape to another. One moment a golden wolf starred with snow sprawled before me, and the next Johanna, shivering, naked and human, was in my arms.

She could not speak. I held her, and then wrapped her in the sleeping bag. I stirred the fire with awkward hands, and all the while I was trembling.

Johanna. I kept touching her shoulder, fearing that she was an illusion. I told myself I had fallen in the snow. I was having the dreams of a dying man. I was in the storm, freezing to death.

Her lips were gray. She was shivering, and her face was thin, her shoulders sharp. “Benjamin!” she whispered, so faintly that I fell beside her.

“I'm here!” I whispered, calling to her, into her, crying to her soul. “Johanna!” I wept, repeating her name, the only word I ever wanted to speak again.

It was plain to me. She had survived in triumph, fueled by her faith, only to reach me and die.

Thirty-Four

She slept, and I was afraid to breathe.

I had that feeling that comes to me sometimes: if I don't move, if no one moves, if nothing changes at all, then everything will be all right.

She was more than thin. She was gaunt, and her breath rasped in her lungs. I felt for her pulse and could not find it.

At last I found a pulse in her throat. It was a dim, unsteady pulse, scarcely the heartbeat to sustain her life. Her hands were gray, and felt frozen. I squeezed them, and breathed upon them in an effort to warm them.

It had killed her to follow me. If only I had realized what she was doing, if only I had trusted her. The mountains and the valleys, and the terrible cold, had taken her life. She had fought hard to find me, and I felt bitterly unworthy. I clenched my fists, groaning. If I had known she was alive, if I had even had the slightest faith, she would be safe somewhere, far from here.

The fire was dying. I clambered out into the now silent darkness, and to my relief found that under one of the drifts nearly covering the cabin was a plastic tarpaulin. Beneath it were a few gnarls of firewood.

She was not real. I told myself that she was only a dream. A drift had buried me somewhere, and I was freezing. If she is real, I thought, she will heal soon. And if she is not real, if this is all the last dream I will have before I die, let me treasure it. This is how I would want to leave life, believing that I held Johanna's hand in mine.

It was dim morning when she stirred, blinked, and sat up. I shrank back, involuntarily, surprised at her sudden waking. Was she a dream, then? Or was she … I stretched out my hand. And touched her.

I held her. “You're safe,” I said when I could speak.

She fell back, attempting a smile, her eyes looking into mine and seeming to see me as I had been, a wolf hunting northward. At last she said, “It was easy to find you.”

“Easy!”

“You left such an easy trail to follow.” She ran her hand over my back, and I flinched, but to my surprise there was no pain. “You fought so well.”

“So did the cat.”

“Cats are so difficult. Are you still hurt?”

“I've entirely healed.” I added, “I thought he would kill me.”

“You were magnificent, I could tell. You were wonderful, Benjamin.”

I took her hand.

I did not have to ask her to tell me what had happened. Her voice unsteady, but eager to share the story, she told me that she had always intended to meet me at Tahoe. “The bullets could not touch me. I am quick. What are bullets to me? And the fire—it was a warehouse of paint thinner, Benjamin, and of course it began to burn.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them and continued. “I'm so sorry, Benjamin. I knew later how worried you must have been. I was out of the building before the fire was half-started. It all made me much later than I thought I would be.”

“I thought—I knew—that you were dead.” I blinked tears.

“It was a busy night for me. Please forgive me for being late. I wanted to help you, and I had a plan. You know how quick I am, how I am one place, and then another, sometimes several heartbeats away. It is a skill I have learned, as you will. The eye is slow, and we can learn to be not so slow. It is an athletic power. I can show you how it works.”

There was something she was reluctant to tell me.

“The fire was so hot, and burned so long that all cars, and all human beings, withdrew and let it burn. It was easy to approach the fire unseen, if you were quick, and I have learned that quickness.”

“What did you do?” I said, not understanding what she was beginning to say.

“Belinda,” she said, reading my confusion.

I still did not understand.

“I can hardly tell you.”

The wind stirred again outside.

“We can move very fast when we have to. I am accustomed to our skills, and so I can move from place to place with what would seem, to a human being, like magic. It was an easy run for me, and I was eager to do anything that would save you, Benjamin. I had planned it, can't you see? That's why I brought her body to your back garden. It was for you that I did it—for both of us, all of us. I flung her poor body over my shoulder. Even with my strength, she was a weight. I carried her to the fire, Benjamin, and hurled her into the hottest part.”

She turned away, unable to continue. Then she turned back again. “That was the moment of greatest danger, when I flung poor Belinda high into the air, and into the brightest part of the fire. There was a moment when I think someone saw me. There was a cry, and a spotlight hunted for me. But I escaped again.”

I saw that to be as she was—as we were—changed the way we thought. We thought of spoor, of backtracks, of false scents. And we were able to deceive.

“Do you think … do you suppose what I did was right?”

Her cunning made it hard for me to answer at once. “It was brilliant. Belinda would have wanted to help us.”

“Poor Belinda. I felt her spirit bless us as she burned. I still miss her so.” She did not speak for a while. “Before dawn, when I had escaped and all was done, I tried to call you on the telephone. But there was no answer. So I drove, and when I reached the lake, there was Mr. Laurel, repairing the window. I saw what had happened, the smashed television, the swept glass. He said you had been there, looking drawn. That was his word—‘drawn.' ‘Drawn and real preoccupied.' He is really a kind man, in his way, Mr. Laurel. He was worried about you. He said you were gone.”

I took a long, deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I knew—as much as I knew anything in my entire life—that you were dead.”

She paused for a moment while her strength gathered. “A trail dies quickly in winter,” she began, and then she let herself breathe for a while. “And so I had to be fast. Each marking left a signal, like typed notes, that was easy for me to pick up. Your footprints were hardly subtle. And jays, chipmunks, were shaken after your passage.” She laughed weakly. “You left a hush that I could sense as easily as following a highway.”

“I thought I was at least occasionally delicate.”

“Swift. Even powerful,” she smiled. “But never delicate. Besides, I guessed what you wanted to do. Or, what you thought you wanted.”

I leaned toward her and spoke intently. “I still want it. We can live as wolves here.” We kissed. I was so happy I could only hold her. “We'll live as wolves, and nothing will ever separate us again.”

She ran her hand over my hair, and along my cheek. “But surely you have learned. What I learned, and what every other creature like us must learn.”

I did not want to hear what she was about to say, although I had guessed it already myself.

“At first,” she said, “the human in us wants to use the new beast-clothing to kill. It loves the power, and the human in us pleasures in the kill. Then we are repulsed by this savagery, and want to be harmless. We seek to join our wolfen brothers. Because no matter what you feel, you are a wolf. A sacred wolf, Benjamin, beloved of the spirit. But finally learn a cold lesson. We cannot live here.”

Her voice was ragged. I kissed her, and begged her to rest. She would, I felt, slip away from me yet. She was too weak to shiver. “You do see this, don't you, Benjamin? We cannot live as wolves.”

She was right, but her words made me turn my face away. The truth has that quality sometimes—we cannot endure it. Words returned to me slowly, and eventually I was able to ask, “The fangs made it back to Zinser?”

“He's such a kind man. He said he was happy to have them back, but I could tell he does not like them at all. He handled the box as if it held plutonium.”

“He'll destroy them?”

“He said he would do it with pleasure.”

She tossed her head as she slept. She seemed to dream, and in her dreams she was running, her hands, her feet twitching under the goosedown quilt. She was sweating, like someone falling behind in a marathon. Sometimes she whispered, although I could not make out her words.

I held her cold hand. Live, I thought. Just live, and all will be well.

But later that day each breath became a long, slow dragging in of air, and a struggle to push the air out once more. I kept her hand in mine, and from time to time heated some of the freeze-dried packets into a soup and roused her enough to let her eat.

Then she fell back again, smiling, unable to keep her eyes open. When she began to cough I knew what had happened. The thought was a curse, but I could not repress it.

She had pneumonia.

The hunt for firewood was not easy. My feet numb within the worn boots, I dragged myself through bleary sunlight, struggling toward a black copse of firs. Once among the trees, I wrestled whole green branches, tearing the smaller ones free. The smell of pitch was like perfume, but I knew this would not burn well. There were a few half-submerged branches that I wrenched from the ice. These would have to do.