Sister Wolf by Ann Arensberg Page B

afraid, but the woods were no longer familiar. He passed by a tree whose roots had straddled a boulder. There were rocks in his path, so he walked with his eyes on the ground. Damp seeped through the soles of his shoes and the earth felt spongy, as if there were springs running under this part of the wood. As he walked, he let his left palm drag across the bark of a row of pines, bark that was sharp enough to scrape but not pierce his skin. The alley of pines led him downhill into a clearing carpeted with moss that was as white as tundra lichen. He tore a moist clump of moss to hold in his smarting palm, put his face up to the moon, and closed his eyes. The warmish breeze stirred his hair and caressed his neck. Then a cold current shocked his eyes open—December air that might be sweeping down from a lunar plain. In the trees ahead he saw streaks of light, like a moonbeam running. The flash circled back beyond the right-hand edge of the clearing, and he watched it until his head could swivel no farther. He thought it might be marshfire, so he pushed on into the grove to see if he could find the bog that had sparked the lights.
    The grove was so dark, after the moonlit clearing, that it made his ears ring. He felt his way forward, groping for support. Both hands fell on coarse, dry tufts. Strange vegetation, springy like fur, long enough to tangle his fingers in. Then the fur bushes, thigh-high, lurched and bumped him, penning him in tight, making snarling and whirring sounds, breaking into a trot, and driving Gabriel between them.
    He made his mind as blank as the moon, which shone brighter now, as he ran in that narrow, fur-bounded channel, out of the dense grove of birches and onto the meadow. He held his head up for fear of what he might see. Once he tripped and lost his gait. He felt a nip on his ankle: in the real world no bush has teeth. He looked down to identify the biter; he saw two yellow eyes. A nip on the other ankle. They were on a countdown. They herded him back in line, jostling him from flank to flank, two doglike creatures or creaturelike dogs, with plans of their own.
    When they reached the short grass, they raised a low, broken cry, whining or pleading. Above the lawn loomed a house. Someone stood at the top of the double staircase to the terrace, calling back in the same plaintive tone. They barked twice, and were answered by two barks. Gabriel had been running with his arms locked across his chest. Since the shape on the landing was human, he dropped his hands onto the back of each animal to balance him during the last sprint toward the house. Now they were his guardians, not his captors.
    Gabriel knew the house from his afternoon walks. It belonged to Marit Deym, a woman close to his age, who had a private zoo. He had heard the townspeople grumbling about the animals. He had never seen the owner of the house, who was descending the outside staircase, holding up two clean white bones.
    “Who are they?” asked Gabriel. He flinched, watching them lunge at the food she threw, growling and slavering as if the bones were small carcasses.
    “‘Who’ is good,” said Marit Deym. “I could weed people out by ‘who’ or ‘what.’” She called to one of the animals. “Swan! Take off.”
    The greater male, with the silver ruff, dropped the bone at his feet. The young male rolled over and lay with his paws upraised. They were sending a signal to their mistress, who knew the code and walked into their midst to scratch their ears and stomachs. She gave up scratching before they were ready, so they pulled her down with them, pinning her between their bodies and yipping for more. At one point Gabriel lost sight of her completely; she was buried under fur. Then she struggled free and clapped her hands smartly, three times. When the animals were on their feet, she shoved them forward. They loped away over the lawn and down the meadow.
    “Timber wolves,” thought Gabriel, but he was thinking out loud. He moved