Vision In Silver

CHAPTER 44

Firesday, Maius 18

Not only had Jackson returned her drawing of the Wolf song; he and Grace framed it and hung it in her room. They brought her more paper and more pencils in different colors. They spent time telling her that this shade of green was grass and that shade was tree that shed its leaves when Autumn walked the land and that shade was pine. They described, as best they could, the shades of water, but they knew water as shallow and sun warmed versus the coolness of a deep pool, not the color of the water.

She listened, soaking up what they said and wondering what was outside her room. Jackson and Grace weren’t the only Wolves here. She knew that from the song. But she wasn’t brave enough to ask if she could leave her room.

She thought about her new keepers. They refused to call her cs821. Once each day, they asked if she had chosen a name. They didn’t punish her for not choosing. They fed her, cleaned her clothes, made sure she had what she needed to wash herself and use the toilet. And they seemed pleased that she liked to draw.

Jackson and Grace. But as she thought of them, she didn’t see Grace. She saw Jackson and . . .

Taking a clean sheet of paper, the girl began to draw.

Jackson walked into the scarred girl’s room with a plate of food for the midday meal.

She sat at the head of the bed, her arms wrapped around tucked-up legs, her chin resting on her knees.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, only realizing how sharp he sounded when she winced. He set the plate on the desk and approached the bed, sniffing lightly so that she wouldn’t know he was trying to catch the scent of blood.

No blood, but something was wrong.

“I wanted to draw a picture for you and Grace, but I drew that.” She pointed to the paper at the end of the bed.

Holding it carefully by one corner, he turned it around. Then he sucked in a breath.

“Have you ever seen these places? Seen . . . images?” he asked.

She shook her head.

She’d never seen him in Wolf form, but she’d drawn his head, muzzle raised to the sky, the Rocky Mountains in the background. That filled the top left section of the paper. The bottom-right section was filled with the head of another howling Wolf. Filling the center of the paper was a human dwelling like nothing he would find around his home territory, an Eagle’s view of an island, and the thundering water known as Talulah Falls.

“That other Wolf isn’t Grace,” she said, sounding worried.

“No, it’s my friend Simon. He lives in Lakeside, a place on the eastern shore of Lake Etu.” He studied the girl. Her shaggy hair was a golden brown, and her eyes were green with flecks of gold. If she were a shifter, he’d think she belonged to the Panthergard with her coloring. “You drew this for me?”

She nodded. “It means something.” She looked at the desk, at the drawer where she kept the razor. Then she looked away.

“It means something,” he agreed. “A strong friendship always has meaning.”

She looked surprised, then relieved.

No, Jackson thought. I won’t ask you to use the razor.

He picked up the drawing, careful not to smudge it. “Thank you.” Then he saw the drawing under it.

“It confused me, so I didn’t finish the picture.” She hesitated, then added softly, “I used up a lot of my blue pencils.”

“I’ll go down to the Intuit village later today and see if they have more.”

There was power in the drawing she’d made of him and Simon, but this other one disturbed him. A wheat field. He knew it was wheat because she had drawn stalks with ripe grain in the foreground. But it was underwater. Sharks swam above the wheat field, and in the background, at the edge of the paper, was something that looked like a sunken ship.

He took that drawing too.

“Eat your food,” he said.

“Wheat doesn’t grow underwater. I remember that from the training images.” A glance at the drawer that held the razor.

“You don’t have to cut. You’ve given us answers. It’s up to us to figure out the questions.”

Jackson left the room and closed the door. Then he listened.

Soft footsteps crossing to the desk. A drawer opening.

He counted to ten before the drawer closed again and the chair scraped over the floor. When he was sure she was eating instead of using the razor, he silently stepped away.

Only one telephone in the terra indigene settlement. There wasn’t any need for more. The phone, along with the computer, was in the cabin at the edge of the settlement, next to the road that led to the Intuit village. Mail and packages were delivered there as well because there were too few who lived in the settlement who could pass for human.

He looked at the drawing of two Wolves who lived in different parts of Thaisia but were connected by more than friendship.

He would show the drawings to the elders, then leave them with Grace for safekeeping while he walked to the cabin with the phone and placed a call to Simon.