As silently as he could, he jumped up and arranged the blankets to roughly resemble a person there on the sofa. In the dark, he doubted anyone could see well enough to notice him gone, but he clustered a few lumps and bumps together anyway. Sock-feet silent under the sound of the wind battering the cabin, he hustled across the room on tiptoe. In the kitchen, he eased open the cellar door. The hinges made a faint squall, and he froze momentarily. Then he heard Handy and Renna speaking upstairs. He lifted the heavy door and stepped down into the dark, feeling for the top step with one foot. Once inside, he lowered the hatch door and maneuvered his way to the bottom.
It was pitch black down here, and quiet. Wishing he’d stashed a flashlight, Curran stood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, trying to orient himself to the room as he remembered it from earlier. He might be able to risk momentarily flipping on the lights—and, knowing the switch was right there, what a temptation that was!—but the cabin was so dark that even up in the loft they might notice whatever light filtered up around the edges of the door.
He aimed himself in what he thought was the direction of the radio table and shuffled across the cold linoleum. Thinking he was only halfway across the room, his foot collided with the base of the metal lockers with a muted clang. “Shit,” he muttered, pressing his palms on the locker doors, as if he could stifle the sound they’d already made. He froze, ears almost painfully attuned to the cabin above, but there was no sign anyone had heard him.
Smooth move, dork, he thought. He would have sworn he’d walked straight forward from the bottom of the steps, but he’d obviously veered far to the right. On the bright side, he knew where the radio was now. He reached his left arm straight out to his left and, sure enough, his fingertips touched the cords on the back of the equipment. He felt his way around to the front of the table.
The shortwave came to life with a satisfying flip of a switch, gauges and dials lighting instantly. Red, yellow, and green reflections brought the basement into festive visibility. Throwing a glance at the stairs and the hatch door above, Curran sidled over to the locker that held Tom Wallace’s work clothes and pulled out a quilted parka. He draped the jacket over the radio so that he could still see its face, but the lights were deflected only onto the table in front of him.
He slid the headphones over his ears and smiled at their spongy familiarity. Been a while, he thought. As Kory had shown him, Curran began to move the knobs and listen.
“Careful. They bruise.” Kory and his mother are on ladders, picking apples. This is strange—they only have two apple trees, and they really aren’t very tall. Also, they only have one ladder. But in the dream, they’re in an orchard that grows as far as he can see in every direction. A perfect angle of autumn light breaks itself through the branches. He looks down at the fruit he dropped and sees the trouble: instead of wearing the big canvas picking bag, he has Papa’s rifle slung over his shoulder. Kory looks over at his mother again, meaning to tell her he can’t pick any more, but she’s already looking at the gun, shaking her head. “That’s going to complicate things,” she says. But she’s smiling, giving him a little wink. She’s so pretty, his mama, up there on the ladder with her long hair cascaded down her back. He smiles at her and puts his hands on the rifle. It’s up against his shoulder somehow, and he’s fired it. Panic floods him, but his mother isn’t there. She’s not picking apples. There are no ladders, and the trees are huge around him—not apple trees, but Douglas firs and redwoods and big-leaf maples. It’s dark. Windy. The solid wooden stock of the old rifle is heavy against his shoulder, but he keeps it up. Keeps it aimed.
When the boy made a little moan, Talus turned from the window to watch him. The boy was asleep. Just dreaming. Talus dreamed of finding small good things to eat. Dream-chasing is happy, even when she opened her eyes and saw there was no rabbit, no squirrel, no sharp-toothed weasel. Lying at the window in the dark, her mouth watered and she licked her snout, even though there was no trace of food smell there.
The old woman was sleeping, too. No dreams, though. She smelled of blood. Talus had smelled the blood on her before. Not the blood of mating. The other woman had that smell now, the shedding blood that meant her heat was over. The old woman didn’t have the mating blood. Hers came with the moon, like mating blood, but it was wound blood. Pain blood.
Talus wanted to help, but the wound was layered with people things—rags and clothes and blankets—and she knew from her man that people didn’t allow their wounds to be licked clean.
The trees thrashed, and she looked again at the place where the wolf had been. He was not there now, but Talus growled a low rumble anyway. His scent was all around the clearing, in old places and new places. Interesting, that wolf, but he made her hair stand up. Better if he’s gone back into the trees.
The boy rolled onto his side and pulled the blankets close. She jumped down. Smelled the boy dreaming. Smelled the old woman not dreaming. Smelled the young woman coming up the stairs. Talus went to the head of the staircase, sat nearby. Not too close. Don’t scare her. Ears back. Tongue. Wag tail.
Renna saw her, smiled. No petting though. No scratch behind the ears or under the chin—too bad. “Good dog,” she whispered, and ducked behind the curtain, going to the other man. The woman’s mate.
Talus saw her master hurry across the room downstairs. She loped down in a few easy bounds, but he was gone, already in the place under the floor. She went to the little door and smelled him there. If she whined—only a little whine, she’s a good dog, the young woman just told her that—her man might let her go under the floor with him. Better not though, not with all the people sleeping.
Instead, she went to the front door. Wind pushed in around the edges. Talus bent her head and breathed the outside night smells. Wind confused smells. It stirred everything together so that she couldn’t easily tell what was coming from nearby and what was from far away. She could smell the river and two deer, but the river was not close. Were the deer close? No, deer wouldn’t stay here with the wolf. A porcupine was out, but her den was not far from the clearing. The wolf smell was there—had been there ever since Talus and the people came to the house. It was his marking scent—he’d pissed it in many places around them. But his smell, the true smell of his body, was only a faint whisper.
Nevertheless, good dog Talus lay in front of the door. If the wolf came closer, she would know. Even in the wind, she’d know.
Arie was in deepest sleep. Already the skin at the new wound had begun knitting itself together. Even old cells remember their work. There were a great many scars on her now: the null signs at her wrists and over her left breast, a declaration of intention; the flock of geese running in straight lines down her thighs, each one representing a month since the Pink; and the vast burn across her neck and shoulders, that thick, unyielding reminder of the end of one life and beginning of this one.
There were other scars, too. They were the worst sort, the scrapes and lacerations that mar the heart. Down in the deepest ditch of sleep, even those old blights were quiet.
If anyone were watching her, they’d see that Arie was gone from the world. Her face was placid—not a smile nor a scowl, not even the moving eyelids of a dreamer. Even the rise and fall of her breath was imperceptible. Under the blanket, though, the tip of one finger moved. It was no more than the faintest twitch, repeating and repeating. Start at the outside. Circle in to the center, and out again. Nine times, then nine again. The little redwood labyrinth was up at the spring, lying in the dark, but the body remembers.