The Wolf Gift (47 page)

“Yeah, I’m glad we came too,” she said. She held him close, looking into his eyes. “You are all right, aren’t you, Baby Boy?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m just worried about Stuart.”

Reuben promised to call her in the morning as soon as he’d been to the hospital.

A
WILD BOAR HAD COME
into his woods—a lone male. He heard the boar about two in the morning. He was reading, fighting the change. Then came the scent and the sound of the male, hunting on its own, the family left behind somewhere in a makeshift den of broken branches and leaves.

How his senses told him these things he could not quite grasp. He stripped, heart pounding, spasms rolling, and entered the forest in full wolf-coat—taking to the heights and then plummeting to the forest floor to track the thing on foot as it was on foot, gaining on it, and at last bringing it down, powerful hairy brute, fangs chomping deep into its back, and finally into its throat.

This was a feast, all right, a feast he’d been hungering for. He took his time, feasting on the boar’s belly, and other soft innards, and devouring the dripping heart. The great white tusks gleamed in the dimness. What a fierce thing it had been. He glutted himself with the juicy and fragrant flesh.

A sleepiness came over him as he devoured more and more, chewing the meat now more slowly, draining the blood juice out of it, and feeling an immense satisfying warmth throughout his chest and stomach and even his limbs.

This was heaven, the soundless rain all around him, the scents of the fallen leaves rising, the boar’s scent intoxicating him, the flesh more than he could possibly consume.

A scream shocked him. It was Laura, screaming for him in the darkness.

He raced towards the sound of her voice.

She stood in the clearing behind the house, in the glare of the yellow floodlights. She was calling and calling, and then she bent her knees and let out another scream.

He bounded out of the forest towards her.

“Reuben, it’s Dr. Cutler,” she cried. “She can’t reach your mother. Stuart’s broken out of the hospital, broken out of the second-story window, and disappeared!”

So it had happened. It had happened to Stuart in half the time. And the change was on Stuart and Stuart was alone.

“My clothes, the big clothes,” he said. “And clothes for the boy. Put them in the Jeep and drive south. I’ll find you around the hospital or wherever I can.”

He took off for the forest, determined to follow it all the way to Santa Rosa, heedless of whether he had to cross busy roads or freeways, or grasslands—soon certain that he was traveling infinitely faster towards Stuart than he might in any other way—praying to the gods of the forest, or the God of his heart, to please help him reach the boy before anyone else might.

By the highways of the world, the distance was about ninety miles.

But there was no accounting for the way that he traveled, taking to the canopy of the forest when he could or racing by foot when he had to, traversing any fence, road, or obstacle in his path.

Only one thought governed him, and that was to find Stuart, and the abandon he knew in the name of that cause was sublime. His senses had never been so acute, his muscles as powerful, or his direction so certain.

The forest never failed him, though at times he smashed branches in his path, leapt huge distances, and crashed noisily through the underbrush or risked exposure as he bounded over open fields.

The voices of the populated south rose to meet him, the mingled scents of humankind deepening the spell of the woodland, and at last he knew he was now traveling through the parklands of forested yards of the city, the wolf-mind and the human-mind scanning for Stuart, for the sounds of Stuart or the scent of Stuart, or for whatever voices had called Stuart to wherever he’d gone.

It was futile to hope that Stuart had not been seduced by the scent of evil, as Reuben had been seduced by it, or that his newfound strength hadn’t carried him into realms where he might be discovered, even caught.

The night was alive with sirens, with crackling radio voices, with the pulse of the sweet city of Santa Rosa awakened to the shocking news of violence.

Bewildered, maddened, Reuben circled the hospital, then moved east. He caught the scent of terror, the scent of pleading, and desperation, a voice rising over the inevitable tide of petty prayers and garden-variety complaint.

Further to the east he bounded, when his instincts as well as his all-too-human brain told him: head for the boy’s home because where else can he go? Head for Plum Ranch Road.

Naked and alone in this peopled woods, he’ll hover there, frightened, seeking to make a lair of a basement or an attic known to him in that redwood mansion where he wasn’t welcome, the place that used to be his home. But as Reuben came within sight of the police cars and their swirling lights, of the big rumbling fire trucks and the ambulances, he caught the cacophony of those gathered on the knoll, and the stench of death.

The woman sobbing was Stuart’s mother. The dead man on the stretcher Herman Buckler, and the men fanning out to search the surrounding trees were goaded by the thrill of the hunt. The Man Wolf. There was a mixture of hysteria and glee amongst those gathered on foot for the spectacle.

Dogs barked. Dogs howled.

The boom of a gun echoed over the hillside. And there came the fierce blast of a bullhorn demanding caution. “Do not shoot. Report your position. Do not shoot.”

Searchlights swept the trees, the grassland, the scattered rooftops—revealing cars in unlighted driveways, windows just flashing into life.

He could not get any closer. He was in greater danger now than he’d ever known.

But the night was dark, the rain thick and steady, and only he could see the terrain of twisted tree limbs that stretched before him as he circled and circled the blinking, crackling center of activity that was the family home.

He went as high as he could in the scrub oaks, lay still, paws over his eyes, making himself into darkness when the lights sought him out.

Ambulances were leaving the house. The cries of the mother were soft, broken, fading in the distance. Police cars crawled the dark roads in all directions. Porch lights and yard lights were snapped on, laying bare swimming pools and smooth shimmering lawns.

More vehicles were converging on the knoll.

He had to move out, make his circle wider again. And suddenly the obvious thought came to him: signal. The boy can hear what they cannot hear. In a low growing voice, he called Stuart’s name. “I’m searching for you,” came his muffled, guttural words. “Stuart, come to me.” The syllables rolled out of him, deep, throbbing, elongated so that for human ears they might sink beneath the rumble of tires and engines, the grind of domestic machines. “Stuart, come to me. Trust in me. I’m here to find you. Stuart, I am your brother. Come to me.”

It seemed the backyard dogs were answering him, barking ever more fiercely, yelping, wailing, howling, and in that increasing din, he raised his own voice.

Slowly he moved eastward, out of the orbit of the search, certain the boy would have been clever enough to do the same. To the west lay the dense neighborhoods of Santa Rosa. To the east the forest.

“Stuart. Come to me.”

At last, through the snarled web of branches before him, he saw the flicker of living eyes.

He pitched forward towards those glittering eyes, again sounding the name “Stuart!” like a deep-throated bell in the blackness.

And he heard the boy crying, “For the love of God, help me!”

His right arm flew out and caught the Boy Wolf around the shoulders, shocked to see he was as large as Reuben, and certainly as powerful, as they moved together rapidly through the high thick oak boughs.

Over yards of forest they ran. Finally, in a deep valley of unbroken darkness, they stopped. Reuben for the first time knew the heat of exhaustion in the wolf-coat, and lay back against the trunk of a tree, panting, and thirsting and scanning for the scent of water. The Boy Wolf lingered right beside him as if afraid to move away even an inch.

The eyes were blue, large, peering from a wolf-face of dark brown hair like his own. The Boy Wolf’s ruff was streaked with white. In silence he gazed at Reuben, asking nothing, demanding nothing, trusting completely.

“I’m going to get you away from here,” Reuben said, his voice pitched so deep a human being might not have understood it, as though he knew instinctively what the boy would hear that no one else could hear.

The response came in the same dark low rumbling timbre. “I’m with
you.” Just the faint catch of human pain in that, of human angst. Do animals know how to cry—that is, really cry? What animal breaks into sobs or into laughter?

They moved swiftly down a hillside and into a dark gulley, coming together in the bracken, till Reuben held the Boy Wolf close to him again.

“This is safe.” He breathed the words into the boy’s ear. “We wait.”

How completely natural the Boy Wolf felt to him, these immense hairy shoulders, the soft silken wolf-coat of his arms, the voluminous mane that was glinting now in the pellucid light of the veiled moon. Indeed the light of the moon seemed to slip into the clouds and spread out in them, and then slide into a billion tiny splinters of rain.

Reuben opened his mouth, and let the rain hit his parched tongue. Again, he scanned for the scent of water, collected water, and found it in a small natural pool formed some yards away in the hollowed-out roots of a rotting tree. He scrambled on his paws and knees towards it and drank greedily, lapping the delicious sweet water as fast as he could. Then he sat back and let Stuart do the same.

There were only the smallest safest sounds around them in the dark.

The sky was slowly lightening.

“What happens now?” asked Stuart desperately.

“In an hour or less, you’ll change back.”

“Out here? In this place?”

“We have help coming. Depend on me. Let me listen now, let me see if I can pick up the scent or the sound of the person who’s coming. This may take time.”

For the first time in all his life, Reuben really didn’t want to see the sun rise.

He lay back against the old rotted tree and listened, urging the boy again to be silent with the firm grip of his paw.

He knew where she was!

Not close, no, but he had caught her scent and her voice.
Oh, Laura, you are so clever
. She was singing that song he’d been singing the night they met:

“ ’Tis the gift to be simple … ’Tis the gift to be free …’ ”

“Follow me,” he said to Stuart and he headed back towards the search parties, yes, and the probing lights, yes, but towards Laura, gaining speed
as she gained speed, gradually closing in until he saw the pale streak of road she was traveling.

They raced along the border of the road together, finally pulling up beside her, and then Reuben dropped down on the hood of the Jeep, his paws clutching at the driver’s window and the windshield, and she brought the car to a sharp halt.

Stuart stood paralyzed. Reuben had to force him into the backseat.

“Hunker down,” he said. To Laura he said, “Drive for home.”

The Jeep rattled as it took off. Laura told the boy there were blankets back there, and he should cover up as best he could.

Reuben commanded himself to change. He lay back exhausted in the passenger seat, letting the waves of transformation pass through him. And never had it been so hard to give up the wolf-coat, to give up the power, to give up the smell of the dangerous woodland.

The sky was suddenly marbled with smoke and silver, the rain drenching the dark green fields on either side of them, and he felt that he might fall into a deep sleep. But there was no time for that. He pulled on his polo shirt and his flannel pants, his loafers, and rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. His skin didn’t want to let it all go. His skin was singing. He felt he was still running through the woods. It was like when you get off a bicycle after an all-day ride, and you walk and you feel like you’re pedaling and still going up and down, up and down.

He turned and looked into the backseat of the car.

The Boy Wolf lay there, a coarse army blanket pulled up over him, his large blue eyes peering up at Reuben, from the sleek shining brown hair of his wolf-face.

“You!” the Boy Wolf said. “It’s you!”

“Yes. I’m the one who did it to you,” Reuben said. “I’m the one who passed the Chrism to you. I didn’t mean to. I meant to kill the men who were trying to kill you. But I did it.”

The eyes continued to fasten on him.

“I killed my stepfather,” said Stuart, his voice deep and rough and vibrant. “He was beating my mother, dragging her through the rooms by her hair. He said he would kill her if she didn’t sign the papers to commit me. She was saying no, no, no. Her hair was full of blood. I killed him. I tore him apart.”

“Figures,” said Reuben. “Did you identify yourself to your mother?”

“God, no!”

The Jeep bumped and jogged along the freeway, swerving to pass a car, and then gained speed again as it sailed into the left lane.

“Where can I go? Where can I hide?”

“You leave that to me.”

They were still speeding along Highway 101 north under the heavy iron sky when Stuart began to change.

It took perhaps five minutes. Reuben timed it. Not even that much.

The boy shuddered, and bowed his head, elbows on his naked knees. His long blond curly hair covered his face. He was gasping in syllables but the syllables didn’t add up to words. Finally, he managed to say:

“I thought I wouldn’t change back. I thought I would be that way forever.”

“No, not the way it is,” said Reuben calmly.

He helped Stuart put on one of the knit shirts that Laura had brought for him. The boy managed the jeans and the running shoes on his own.

He was bigger all over than Reuben was, with a broader chest and obviously longer legs. He had powerful muscular arms. But the clothes were okay. He sat back staring at Reuben. It was the boy face again, with freckles and the big alert eyes, though not the familiar grin.