“Should I ask how you know this?”
“Probably not. And I was never here.” I nodded toward her pack. “Make sure they know that too.”
“Don’t worry about them. I know you.”
“I doubt that.”
“Who were you talking to in the truck?”
“No one.”
“I heard you.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I looked at her. “When was he here?”
She hesitated. “A month ago.”
I nodded. “Was he alone?”
“No.” She looked off into the trees. “There was something with him. Something bigger. We never saw it. But we felt it. Deep in the forest. It felt like a cancer. It was wrong. Black.”
“Sounds about right,” I muttered. “What did he want?”
The Alpha shrugged. “He didn’t speak much. I think…. Do you know the story of Peter and the Wolf? My mother told it to me.”
I shook my head.
She said, “Peter lived in a clearing in the forest with his grandfather.”
Jesus Christ. “A clearing.”
“He goes out into the clearing, and when he does, he leaves the garden gate open. There was a duck that lived in the garden. It saw the gate open and went through, wanting to go swimming in a pond. There, the duck meets a bird, and they argue about swimming and flying, going back and forth and back and forth. The bird and the duck don’t know that Peter’s cat has also come through the open gate. It’s hunting. At the last moment, Peter sees the cat and warns the bird and the duck. The bird flies away. The duck swims to the middle of the pond.”
“I don’t know what this has to do with—”
“Peter’s grandfather is upset that Peter went into the clearing alone, asking him what would happen if a wolf came out of the forest? Peter says that boys like him aren’t afraid of wolves. His grandfather, seeing his grandson is foolish, locks the gate.”
Her pack sighed around us. It sounded like the wind.
The Alpha said, “Soon after, a wolf comes. It’s big and gray. The cat, seeing the wolf, manages to climb a tree and escape back into the garden. The duck, not seeing the wolf, leaves the pond. The wolf comes for it. The duck runs. But the wolf is faster and swallows the duck whole. Peter, seeing the beast eating his friend, makes a decision. He gets a rope and climbs the tree. He tells the bird to fly over the wolf’s head and distract him while he lowers a noose to catch the wolf by his tail. He succeeds. The wolf struggles to get free, but Peter ties the rope to the tree and it only makes the noose tighter.”
I didn’t speak.
The Alpha tilted her head back toward the sun. “Hunters come. They’d been tracking the wolf, and they want to kill it. Peter doesn’t want death, even if the wolf had eaten the duck. He convinces the hunters to help him take the wolf to a zoo. There is a parade, led by the hunters and the bird and the cat and Peter, dragging the wolf by the rope. The grandfather is there too,
and though Peter was successful, his grandfather says, ‘What if Peter hadn’t caught the wolf? What then?’” She looked at me. “In its hurry, the wolf swallowed the duck whole. If you listen very carefully, you’ll hear it quacking in the wolf’s belly.”
“That… was certainly a story you just told me.”
She snorted, and for a moment she wasn’t an Alpha. She was a young woman exasperated by someone who didn’t understand what she was saying. “You’re trying to catch a wolf by the tail. But what if you can’t catch it? What then? Will you be swallowed whole?”
I said, “Sometimes I think the noose is already around my neck. I can’t breathe because it’s being pulled tighter and tighter.”
“By your own choice. You left the gate open. You’re inviting the wolf inside. I’ve heard things. We all have. Rumors. Of the destruction of Caswell. Of a great and terrible beast that cannot be killed. Of a pack unlike any other, led by two Alphas, one of whom is a king. The other a savior. This pack has suffered again and again. And yet they still go on.” She smiled. “Have you ever heard of such a pack? It’s a miracle. Even here, so far away from everyone, we know things. Secret things.”
I was very tired. My head hurt, and my palms were sweaty. “He’s important.”
Her smile took on a melancholic curve. “He would have to be. Though I hope you don’t take offense when I tell you it only cements my belief that men are the stupidest creatures alive.”