Wild Sign

CHAPTER 3

Anna found herself, not unexpectedly, at the wheel for the California trip. Charles actively disliked driving, and Tag . . . Tag drove with a joyous abandon that probably had not been as hazardous when the most common mode of transportation had been horses. A horse could decide not to run off a cliff or into a tree no matter what Tag did or failed to do. Automobiles tended to rely on their drivers to avoid accidents, so it was best if Tag didn’t drive.

They borrowed an SUV. Charles’s single-bench-seat truck would have had a hard time containing the three of them. Charles was a big man and Tag was even larger, nearly seven feet tall and wide as an ox. Tag currently drove a Ford Expedition that would have held them all with room to spare if it weren’t for the territoriality plaguing all dominant males. Tag could have ridden in Charles’s truck, had they all fit, because Charles was easily more dominant than Tag. But Charles could not ride in Tag’s vehicle—except, possibly, if he drove.

Anna had long since quit fretting about dominance issues except to be thankful she, as an Omega, was outside all of that. Bran had a small fleet of automobiles owned by the pack, and he made it available to them. The pack Suburban was neutral territory and plenty big enough for all of them. Charles rode shotgun and Tag stretched out in the backseat and went to sleep for most of the drive, for all the world as if he were a cat instead of a werewolf.

The first day had been mostly interstate, and they’d stopped shortly after crossing the California state line, staying in a hotel in Yreka. The second day, Anna found herself driving on a narrow highway barely two vehicles wide as it twisted through mountains only a little more civilized than those at home.

When she’d first moved to Montana, she’d driven these kinds of rural highways with a white-knuckled grip. Some of the roads around pack territory were little more than two ruts through the woods, so the narrow highway now only bothered her when they got stuck behind slow-moving RVs or semis.

They traveled along the edge of a mountain valley where the only sign of civilization was a few fence lines. She hadn’t realized that California had places that were so isolated. The road followed the edge of a mountain, so she had no warning when they rounded a curve and found what looked to be a gas station, though it was hard to tell because it was all but buried in trees.

“Pull in at this stop,” said Tag. His voice was high-pitched for a man as big as he was, and when he sang, he had a beautiful Irish tenor. Uncharacteristically he’d been upright and watching the scenery for the past half hour. The urgency in his voice made her wonder if he’d been keeping an eye out for a bathroom break.

Pulling into the gravel parking lot, Anna got her first clear view of the place. The battered, flat-roofed building sported a ruff of cedar shakes like a tonsured monk on top, and cheap paneling everywhere else. The siding was painted a blue that had once been dark but had faded to a blue gray.

There was a pair of old gas pumps out front wrapped in battered yellow caution tape, indicating that part of the business was no longer in service. The lighted beer signs in the small dirty windows obscured what lay beyond.

Despite the dilapidated appearance of the business, six cars filled the parking lot: four late-model SUVs, a pickup truck, and a dented, ancient Subaru. It might have been silver a few accidents ago but was now mostly primer gray. Anna pulled in on one end of the lot, her left wheels on grass instead of gravel.

“Is this a bar?” asked Anna.

“Sometimes,” Tag admitted, pulling on his boots and beginning to lace them up without hurry. “Was a gas station when I was here last.”

“You know this place?” asked Charles.

Tag grunted.

A Native American man opened the door of the business, whatever it was, and stepped out, staring at their SUV. He looked to be somewhere in his midfifties, though his short hair was still glossy and dark.

He was not overly tall, but when he stopped, folded his arms, and squared his stance, he looked pretty badass. Anna softly whistled the opening notes of the theme song of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

At the sound, Tag paused, looked up, and saw their observer. “Good. I was worried it might have passed to other hands.”

Apparently they weren’t here for a bathroom break.

Tag slanted a quick glance at Charles. “Do you mind if I go talk to him first? I think these folks might be useful, and they know me.”

Charles, his gaze pinned on the waiting stranger, said, “These are friends of yours?”

His tone was odd, something Anna couldn’t quite read. He’d seen something Anna had missed—or he knew something she didn’t.

“‘Friends’ would be stretching it a bit,” Tag said judiciously as he got out of the SUV, bringing a leather over-the-shoulder pack with him. “But we know each other.”

He didn’t bother to close his door as he strode over to the man who waited, so neither she nor Charles had to strain to hear, even with the sounds of the nearby river.

“Carrottop,” said the stranger. “Long time since you came this way.”

Tag said something in a liquid tongue Anna couldn’t pinpoint, and the other man laughed.

“Call me Ford,” he said, sounding a lot friendlier, as if Tag had spoken some sort of code when he’d switched languages. “And it is rude to talk in a language everyone doesn’t speak. Your accent is atrocious anyway.” He looked over at their SUV.

Charles opened his door, so Anna climbed out, too.

“Call me Ford,” said the stranger again, this time to Charles. He wasn’t looking at Anna, but she felt like he was very aware of her.

“Charles Cornick,” Charles said after waiting long enough Anna could have spoken if she wished. “And my wife, Anna.”

Ford rocked on his feet, looking at Charles a little differently than he had before, less welcome and more wary. He glanced at Tag. “You keep dangerous company, Carrottop.”

Tag didn’t lose the goofy smile designed to draw attention away from his cool gray eyes. “So do they.”

Ford grinned appreciably, and the tension in the air dropped back to where it had been before Charles introduced himself.

“Welcome to the Trading Post,” said Ford.

THE TRADING POST was a lot of things stuffed into one building. The room smelled of tobacco, coffee, and cinnamon, all overlain with a strong smoky scent, as if someone was smoking meat nearby. She’d smelled a little smoke outside—it was fire season—but this smelled less like burning trees and more like a cook fire.

The carpet was threadbare, with the floorboards peeking through here and there. Four card tables, of the folding sort, were squished together in one corner with chairs that looked like the same kind Anna’s high school orchestra had used—cheap, easy to stack, easy to clean.

Roughly half of the space not dedicated to tables was stocked like a tiny grocery store, with refrigerated goods stored in a double-sided, glass-fronted fridge. One of the walls consisted of a big walk-in freezer. A hand-lettered sign on the freezer door advertised locker space available above a price list for beef, pork, and venison sold in quarters, halves, or whole.

The remaining space was a very basic clothing store carrying jeans, blue T-shirts, a variety of flannel shirts, and brown leather lace-up boots. A glance at Ford showed he had done his clothing shopping here, and his boots looked suspiciously like black versions of the ones the store had for sale.

Along the back wall, shelves offered enough ammunition to arm a good-sized militia. In the corner next to the shelves was a huge old metal safe that looked very much like it belonged in a Hollywood Western-and-bank-robbery movie. Anna suspected it was more likely a gun safe than a bank safe, but there were no signs, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

There were two other people in the store, neither of them Native American. One of them was a woman of about Anna’s age with reddish-brown hair, and the other was a towheaded boy who looked about five. Both of them had also gotten their clothing from the store. Anna wondered where the drivers of the other cars were—and why people with cars didn’t drive the hour or so to Yreka to get clothes.

Without a word to the others in the store, Ford escorted them to one of the tables. Charles pulled out a chair for Anna. Tag pulled out another and looked at it doubtfully. Anna got it—he was a big man for such an insubstantial chair.

“Sit,” advised Ford. He glanced at the woman—but she was already bringing a glass water pitcher foggy with cold in one hand and four glasses in the other.

As Tag sat gingerly on the edge of the chair, the boy opened a door in the back and left the building. Anna caught a glimpse of him running as the door swung shut behind him. No one seemed worried about such a young child running out where there was nothing but forest, highway, and the river Anna had heard but not seen when she’d gotten out of the car.

“Here you are,” the woman said, setting the glasses around before bustling back into an alcove Anna’s first impression of the building had missed.

Tag opened his mouth, but Ford held up a hand. “Wait.”

The woman brought out four plates, each holding a mammoth slice of berry pie. Beginning with Anna, she placed the plates around the table.

Anna, aware of undercurrents, waited for someone to do something. Charles glanced at Ford, but then looked at the woman directly as he cut into the pie and took a bite. His eyebrow rose and he made a soft sound.

“Huckleberry,” he said in obvious approval. “I haven’t had a huckleberry pie in a very long time. Thank you.”

Which meant they weren’t dealing with the fae. Charles wouldn’t have said those words to someone who was fae. He would have praised the food, but he wouldn’t have thanked anyone.

Anna was sure by now they were dealing with people who weren’t quite human. The store smelled of smoke, of gun oil, of all the things lining the shelves and filling the fridge. But she couldn’t smell the man who sat at the table with them, or the woman who’d served them—just as she hadn’t picked up the scent of the boy.

The woman flashed Charles a big smile. “You’re very welcome. If you folks need anything else, I’ll be right outside,” she said.

Then she left by the same back door the boy had used.

They ate their pie. Anna had become a fan of huckleberries since her move to Montana, but she wasn’t fond of berry pie. Mostly they were—like this one—too sweet. The flavor was powerful—huckleberries were like that. She thought if they had used half the sugar, she might have enjoyed the pie. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t stop eating it. She glanced surreptitiously at Charles, but he was eating the way he usually did—like a well-mannered starving person who wasn’t sure where his next meal with coming from.

She was the last to finish, her stomach telling her it had been too close to the big breakfast she’d eaten. But she only felt overfull, not sick as she probably should have.

“Thank you,” Charles said again, this time to Ford.

Tag opened up the shoulder bag he’d brought with him and pulled out an earthenware bowl. It was putty colored on the outside and reddish brown on the inside, the shape a little irregular. The bowl was shiny in some places and matte in others, as if the potter had made a mistake with the finish—or as if it were so old the finish had worn off in spots. Anna was pretty sure she had last seen that bowl on the bookshelves in Bran’s office.

Tag set it on the table in front of Ford.

The man raised an eyebrow and Tag nodded. Ford took the bowl up in two cupped hands, turning it so it caught the light. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. He paused thoughtfully and set it, very carefully, back down on the table.

“We’d like information,” said Tag.

Ford nodded at the bowl. “It must be some information if you brought this to pay for it.”

“There was a group of people who had set up camp in the mountains,” said Charles. “They called it Wild Sign. We think there were somewhere between thirty and forty of them. They went there to live away from civilization.”

Ford snorted. Anna couldn’t tell if it was a derisive snort or a snort of agreement.

“Wild Sign is on land owned by my father’s mate,” Charles said. “And two hundred years ago, give or take a decade, something lived in those mountains. We are given to understand the people who settled there disappeared sometime this spring. We would like to know where they went. My father is concerned that a danger in the mountains, one that killed a lot of people a couple of hundred years ago, is waking up again. He feels responsible.” Charles hesitated, but then left that there. “We would appreciate any information you could give us.”

Ford smiled sweetly. “‘The mountains’ is a lot of territory.”

Tag reached into his bag again and pulled out a USGS map folded to display an area marked with a silver marker. Anna couldn’t be sure it was the same map Leslie had brought them, but presumably it was marked to display where the encampment had been.

Ford did not look at the map but gave a sharp nod. “It was a town, not a camp, this Wild Sign you speak of, a town with buildings and a school. It started about two years ago, when four people built a permanent camp up there as soon as the snow was gone. By last winter there were forty-two of them. Or so I have heard—I have not been there.”

“Who told you?” Tag asked.

“My nephew works for the Forest Service. He came upon them by accident—the young seldom have the wits to heed their elders’ warnings. He told me they seemed to know what they were doing and required no help. He also said they were a cheerful and generous people, free with food and drink for wandering forest rangers. They were not on federal land or tribal land”—he gave a wry glance at Charles—“or their own land, but the owner did not come to object, and so they were left alone.”

“Why didn’t you visit them?” asked Anna. That “elders’ warnings” was directed at something—and she wanted to know what it was.

“The mountains are vast, Ms. Cornick,” Ford said. “Why should I have visited them?”

Anna waited.

“No,” said Ford with a hint of a smile fading as he spoke. “We do not go there. None of my people.” He shook his head ruefully. “Not unless we are young fools who work for the Forest Service, we don’t. And his mama has seen to it that he won’t go again. We don’t go to that place.”

“Why not?” Anna asked, and found herself meeting eyes that were deeper than a moonlit night and of no color she could name, though a moment ago she’d have sworn they were the same shade as her husband’s eyes. She felt as though Ford saw all the way through her, whereas she saw nothing she could comprehend.

He looked away from her, smiled at his hands. Then he reached out and pulled the bowl nearer to him, as if the answer to her question was worthy of that gift or payment. “Because there is something sleeping there we do not wish to awaken.” He glanced at Charles and then away. “The creature your father is worried about, I’d reckon. There are not two such in our territory.”

“What can you tell us about it?” she persisted.

He took his napkin and pulled a pen out of his pocket. He drew an upside-down V and three upward slashes on each side. “That’s a wild sign for you,” he said, handing her the napkin.

“Are you referring to the town?” Charles asked as Anna examined what Ford had drawn.

There was a primitive feel to the drawing, almost like a Viking rune, but it didn’t look familiar. When she and her brother had been children, they’d learned a set of runes and written notes to each other. The runes had been real ones—at least the symbols they hadn’t made up. But maybe this was from an older group of runes or from a different culture. Tag held out his hand, and Anna gave the napkin to him. He frowned at it.

Ford answered Charles’s question while Tag scrutinized the napkin. “The town was named after the signs they found in the rocks and trees around there,” Ford said. “They called them wild petroglyphs.” He grimaced. “Even when they were carved into the trees.”

“Who carved them into trees?” asked Charles intently.

Ford shrugged. “None of my people.”

Charles frowned at him. “That was very near a lie.”

Ford’s eyebrows raised. “I am not fae, Marroksson. I am not bound by their rules.”

“You know what that bowl is,” murmured Charles.

Ford laughed. “Yes. And I know if I take it under false circumstances, I will not hold it long.” He looked down and considered his words. “The petroglyphs, I do not know. They have been there for as long as my people have been telling stories. My mother would say they were made by the Before People, but I do not in truth know who they were. Nor does my mother.”

“And the trees?” asked Charles.

“The trees, obviously, are much newer than the petroglyphs,” agreed Ford. “Some of those were carved by the recent inhabitants of Wild Sign.” He held up a hand to ask for patience. “But there are older signs, carved into the forest giants long ago, perhaps as much as two hundred years.” He paused. “There was a village in that location for a brief time, though, again, my people have no other stories about them, as we do not go there.”

Tag handed the napkin to Charles, who studied it.

“That is not the only sign you will find in the rocks up there,” Ford said. “And the trees . . . I think people who want to escape civilization should know better than to carve all over the trees, don’t you? But this sign is the one my mother taught me to watch for. And her mother before her.”

“What is it that sleeps there?” Charles asked, though Anna had already asked that—and gotten the odd glyph for her trouble. Charles’s question was more carefully worded.

Ford shook his head. “We may not speak of it.” He smiled widely, and for a moment his face looked vaguely inhuman, though Anna could not point out what made her think so. “And since we have not spoken of it for generations, I do not, in truth”—he tapped a finger lightly on the rim of the bowl—“know what sleeps there.”

“Do you know about the music?” asked Anna impulsively.

He looked at her for a moment, as if she’d said something very interesting. Then he raised his hands, held together so the thumbs touched, fingers curved as if he cupped something roundish. Then he brought them up to his mouth and blew lightly, as if he was pretending to hold some sort of wind instrument, an ocarina maybe, she thought. The oldest of them were shaped to be played the way Ford was using his hands. Or, she thought, given the rune that he was imitating, something like the ancient aulos, which was a pair of double-reeded pipes played together, one in the right hand and the other in the left. Versions of the aulos had been found all over the ancient world, though not, Anna thought, in the Americas.

Ford smiled at her intent look, then he indicated the napkin Charles still held. “It is the sign, is it not? An instrument being played?” He wiggled his fingers suggestively. “Or so I have always thought.”

ANNA WAITED UNTIL they were out of sight of the old gas station before saying, “They didn’t have a cash register.”

“Probably because they mostly don’t use cash,” said Tag mildly.

Anna gave a snort of amusement. Served her right for beating around the bush. “Okay, so what was he? And were the woman and child the same? They weren’t fae, right? I kept thinking they might be like Mercy—descendants of the old gods. But there is a . . .” Her voice trailed away as they passed a homemade sign that read Bigfoot Country Souvenirs—10 miles above the familiar hulking shape popularized by a film clip of a faked Sasquatch sighting.

“No,” she said, glancing at Charles before she had to look at the road again. “No. You did not let me talk to Sasquatch without telling me what he was. I could have asked to see his real form.” She paused. “I could have gotten a photo on my phone and sent it to my brother for bragging rights.” Charles laughed, but Tag drew a quick, appalled breath.

“You don’t want to get on his bad side,” Tag told her. “Really.”

“How would you know that?” Anna asked, because there was a hint of a story in his voice.

“I slept with Ford’s sister once, a long time ago, and he would have ripped me to pieces except she threatened to kill him for hurting me. It was a glorious fight, though, before she intervened.” He paused and smiled softly, distracted from his point.

“You slept with”—Anna changed the ending of her sentence midway through—“Ford’s sister.”

Tag’s smile softened even further. “Breeze. She thought I was one of them, I thought she was who she said she was. We were both surprised.” He sounded amused.

If Tag hunched a little, he would bear a certain resemblance to the hulking Sasquatch on the sign.

Tag laughed, and like his voice, it was unexpectedly high-pitched. It was the kind of laugh that invited listeners to laugh along, even though the joke was on him. He shook his head, and his eyes were a little soft as he continued, “But that’s not why he helped us today. I think he was impressed that the Marrok’s son came with me.”

“And because of the bowl,” Charles said. “How did you happen to bring that?”

“Your father, after informing me I was going to be your backup on a dangerous mission along the Klamath River, where he knew I’d had plenty of adventures—and he emphasized the ‘plenty of adventures.’” Here Tag’s voice grew indignant. “How did he know about that, I ask you? I never told . . .”

When his voice trailed to a halt, Anna glanced at Tag’s face in the rearview mirror and saw him reconsidering.

“I guess I did tell Samuel about it once,” he said sheepishly. “And Asil.” He made a humming sound, and his voice was very cold when he finished, “And Sage.”

Sage had betrayed them all in a thousand small ways before she died. It would be a while before they quit flinching at just how thorough that betrayal had been.

“What is the bowl?” Anna asked to change the subject—though she really did want to know.

Charles shook his head. “I don’t know, and I’m not sure my da does, either. Something powerful that belongs here and not on my father’s bookshelf. My uncle—my mother’s brother—and Da had a rousing argument or six about the bowl. I think if he, my uncle, hadn’t died so soon, he’d have talked my da into letting him bring it back. To them.”

“So it sat on his bookcase,” Anna said.

Charles nodded and gave her a smile. “Da couldn’t bring it back. The Sasquatch avoid him. This was a good way for Da to honor my uncle and get something out of it in return.”

“He might have been a little clearer in his instructions, then,” grumbled Tag, stretching out on the backseat again. “What if I’d taken it to the Karuk tribal elders and given it to them instead? That was what I intended if I couldn’t find Breeze’s people.”

“It would have worked out,” said Charles comfortably.

“You know,” said Tag conversationally, “if I had known how much Anna mellows you out, I would have gone on a road trip with the two of you a long time ago, Charles.”

Charles growled—but they all knew he didn’t mean it.

ANNA THREADED THE Forest Service road like a grandmother, wincing at every scrape on the car’s paint. The road split, the right fork going to a campground with showers, lavatories, and other camping amenities. Next to that campground sign was a fire danger warning sign proclaiming extreme conditions.

In this area, at the tail end of a very hot and dry summer, the fire danger was real. There were active fires in Oregon, just over the border—which was why Charles had not considered hiking in from the Oregon side, though it might very well have been a shorter way.

They took the left fork, and seven miles of rough going later, the road ended at a second campground, this one much less friendly. They drove by several campsites to take an isolated one, far from the primitive toilets.

As soon as Charles got out of the SUV, he could tell the campground was completely empty of ecotourists. The first campground had been full of RVs and bright-colored tents, and it seemed odd this one was deserted. It was the middle of the week and the fires in Oregon might have given people some pause about camping so nearby—he could smell the smoke on the air here even more strongly than he had at Tag’s friends’ business.

He took a deep breath and smelled nothing unusual.

Tag gave him a look as Anna buried herself in the back of the SUV. “Uneasy?” he asked.

“There’s no one else here,” Charles said.

Tag nodded. “It’s isolated, and we’re at the end of camping season. From here on out, campers chance snowstorms and rain. But I’d guess it’s the warning sign we drove by on the way here.”

Charles frowned at him.

“Bear,” said Tag. “Yesterday a ranger found a bear nosing around this campground because someone tried to bury their garbage instead of hauling it out. They advise people not to camp here unless you have an RV.”

Charles snorted. “You wouldn’t get an RV in here.”

“And if you did, you might not get it out,” agreed Tag.

One mystery solved, Charles helped haul camping things out of the SUV.

“Do we need to set up the tents?” Anna asked when Tag started to pull his out. “There’s a lot of daylight left. We might even be able to reach Wild Sign before dark.”

By Charles’s reckoning they were a little over forty miles away as the crow flies. If this area held true to other mountains he’d been over around here, their actual path might be sixty miles or more. If they had been hiking on foot, it would have taken them a couple of days, but on four feet—Anna had it about right.

“No,” he said. “We’ll make camp here today and leave it up while we head in.” He looked into the woods and lowered his lids, letting his senses roam out around them. “I don’t think arriving at Wild Sign as night falls is our best plan. There is no urgency—whatever happened to those people happened months ago, and whatever we need to deal with up there is probably not the only thing roaming these woods.”

“Like the bear,” said Tag.

A grizzly could kill a werewolf or two, but generally left them alone. Charles wasn’t worried about bears, and neither was Tag. These mountains had an uncanny feel—and however guardedly friendly Ford had been, Charles did not want to confront a Sasquatch out here unless he absolutely could not avoid it.

They ate sandwiches and made camp. Anna and Tag played double solitaire, which seemed to engender a lot of yelling, mock grumbling, and laughter. Charles read for a while, then put his book aside, stretched out a bit, and closed his eyes.

Waiting to head out until morning had been a practical decision. But sitting on a camp chair with his feet up on a stump, pretending to be asleep, Charles felt a contentment that had nothing to do with the possible dangers they were going to be facing tomorrow, though it was true Brother Wolf gloried in the adventure.

Cheerful voices echoed in the quiet woods as Anna and Tag bickered about how best to cook their dinner, whose ace got played first, and whether to cook their dinner (because werewolves weren’t picky about raw meat, even if human teeth had trouble ripping through a steak). If anyone else had been arguing with Tag that way, they would end up thrown through a door or into a tree when he decided to take offense instead of laugh. Tag’s temper was a quick switch.

But Anna was an Omega and Tag her devoted follower. She could even tell him the French lost at Waterloo without him going ballistic—or at least, Tag’s ballistic would be more measured. So they squabbled happily until Anna persuaded Tag into a duet.

Tag’s voice was a soldier’s voice, learned on long marches between battlefields, which made it very well suited to the outdoors. Anna’s sweet alto was better trained and she knew how to make her singing partners sound good. Their singing would have benefited from the addition of a baritone or bass, but Charles was content to listen, Brother Wolf lulled into contentment as a prelude to battle by Anna’s presence and the forest setting.

There was no campfire. The fire danger was too high—and he thought they were illegal in California even in the spring. They’d brought a propane stove for cooking.

He fell asleep surrounded by the sounds of the evening: the wind in the trees, his wife’s sweet voice—and the crackle of a campfire that wasn’t there. It did not surprise him to find himself engaged in a game of chess with his uncle, who had been dead for two centuries, more or less.

BUFFALO SINGER’S FOREFINGER, which he tapped lightly on the edge of the table, was twisted from a fall when he’d been a boy, and he had a faint scar on the corner of his mouth. Charles had remembered the finger, but he’d forgotten about the scar. His uncle, only fifteen years older than Charles, had not been an old man when he died.

Buffalo Singer had been the one who most often took the boys on teaching expeditions or trained them in fighting, endlessly patient with the youngsters. He was the youngest of Blue Jay Woman’s brothers, and though he never played favorites, he had a softness for his dead sister’s son.

Bran Cornick had taught Buffalo Singer chess and found in him a worthy opponent. Buffalo Singer had taught Charles. Bran had taught Charles what he needed to know about being a werewolf and a little about dealing with being witchborn; he did not play with his son.

The battered chessboard balanced on a folding table made of sticks and buckskin—a device his da had fashioned for the purpose. Charles and his uncle sat on either side of it, staring at the board and thinking about possible moves. Charles had always thought those long evenings of motionless attention were how he had learned patience.

A commotion behind them had Buffalo Singer rising to his feet, a welcoming smile on his face—and Charles realized what day in the past his dreaming had returned him to.

Da was home, riding into camp with a strange white woman riding beside him. Horses were rare still, and his father had left on foot. These two were both chestnuts, and one of them had a great splash of white on her face that came down over one eye—and that eye was blue.

Bran dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to Charles, which surprised him. After a long journey, his da usually avoided noticing his son for as long as possible. But today he gave Charles a nod of thanks and then took the reins of the blue-eyed horse and gave them to Charles as well.

The woman slid down, landing lightly on her feet. Charles had time to notice both of her eyes were as blue as the horse’s eye—and Charles had never seen anyone with blue eyes—then his da spoke to him.

Charles knew it was to him because Bran used English. Charles was the only one besides his da who spoke English in the whole camp.

“This is Leah, my mate.”

Then he turned to the rest of the camp and introduced her again. Charles looked up at the woman who would, the dreaming Charles knew, never be his mother and saw indifference. It didn’t matter, that boy told himself. He had his uncles and aunts and his grandfather, who all loved him. He did not need this woman as his mother.

The dreaming Charles saw something else. He saw Leah’s cheeks were gaunt and her hands shook when she wasn’t paying attention. He saw the wildness of the wolf in her eyes—and a bottomless, aching, unassuageable grief too deep for tears.

He remembered his da had told him one of the children he and Sherwood had buried had been Leah’s.

In the way of dreams, Charles found himself seated on the ground, once more facing his uncle. But there was no camp, no Bran or Leah, no other people at all. The forest closed around them, dark and endless—but not dead. He could hear the birds and squirrels chittering at each other, feel the insects going about their business. Far away an eagle cried out.

Buffalo Singer’s clever, callused fingers slid a pawn over to capture Charles’s queen. He tapped the fallen piece with a finger.

“You be careful of her,” he told Charles. “If you lose her, you lose the whole game.”

Charles took a careful look at the rough-carved queen who only vaguely resembled a woman. His da had many talents, but carving wasn’t one of them.

He looked up at Buffalo Singer and asked, “Who is she?”

But his uncle merely shook his head.

Charles turned his attention to the chessboard and studied the game, trying to see where he’d made the mistake that had caused him to lose. It felt like it was important to see where he, where Charles, had gone wrong.

His uncle reached over with a bent finger and tapped Charles on the forehead. “Keep a sharp eye out. The story is about her.”

“Dinner!” called Anna cheerfully from somewhere.

His uncle looked up, a quick grin crossing his face. “I like her,” he said. “She’s feisty.”

Charles looked up into Anna’s face. “I like you, too,” he told her.

She laughed and kissed him. He liked that, too.