The Dire Wolf's Mate (2 page)

This time Jamie looked as though he were scowling, and Rain felt herself give a silent chuckle. "Well, it's true," Jim defended.

Rain couldn't keep her eyes off of him. She thought she was being somewhat rude, nearly staring at the large animal her hosts must keep as a pet, but every time her eyes focused on something else - their faces, the dishes she helped to clear, the whittled animals displayed proudly on a shelf - her gaze seemed to find it's way back to Jamie in no time, and Myra smiled at her, knowing.

"Would you like to pet him?" she asked.

"Myra," Jim warned.

"Fiddlesticks," Myra said, and led Rain over to Jamie's couch. "You aren't blind, old man," she said, and Jim chuckled.

"No, I guess not."

Rain crouched beside him without bidding, her eyes bright and her face flushed. Jamie's head, larger than her own, cocked to the side as he regarded her curiously. His breath blew hot in her face. His eyes were stunningly alive and intelligent. Without warning, he opened his mouth, pink tongue spilling from his maw and lapping a stripe over her neck and up the side of her face. She shivered.

Myra stepped back, allowing Rain access to reach up with her right hand and gently stroke over the dark fur. At such close range, she could see that he wasn't all black, as she had assumed. His coat was mottled, black and deep, dark browns, charcoal greys. His fur was both coarse and silky, and after a moment where he seemed frozen, petrified if she were to judge by the look in his eyes, he relaxed under her hand, and if he was a cat, she would have sworn he was purring.

His tongue lolled out from his mouth again, dipped forward to touch that same place on her shoulder he'd begun to lick her at before. Her face was still damp from his earlier saliva, and it was itchy, but Rain made no move to wipe it away.

She was utterly fascinated.

*

Rain stayed in the village.

At first it was because Myra wanted to show her how to bake biscuits, and then it was because Millie was having trouble with the spring planting while she also ran the general store and cafe. So Rain baked biscuits and planted a spring garden and helped out in the store.

Then other people started to get to know her, and by the time a month had passed she was babysitting children and helping out in odd jobs all over the village in exchange for foodstuffs. She'd brought up the issue of her use of the guest cabin with Jim, who waved her off. "It's only a guest cabin because we haven't found another member of the community," he told her. "Once you move in for good, we'll erect another guest cabin somewhere. Unless you don't like the cabin? We can always build you a little place deeper in the forest."

"You assume that I'll be staying," Rain pointed out, the McGoolihan baby bouncing in her arms.

"Aren't you?" Jim asked her, a twinkle in his eye.

So Rain lived in the cabin, and Millie talked her into starting a vegetable plot in the yard behind it, and before long she knew everyone by name.

There was still something strange about the village, though. It wasn't anything she could directly put her finger on. She still thought she was seeing things out of the corners of her eyes - a shimmering scaled hand, a pair of wings. She started writing fanciful fairy tales about the things she saw, disguising them, of course, so that when she told them to the children, she wouldn't be run out of town for slandering the people who lived there.

And always, always, she was shadowed by Jamie. He rarely approached her directly. He would sit at the edge of the forest while she was working the garden plot, or she'd catch an ear poking out from under the porch when she helped Millie in the cafe. The other villagers knew him by name, though they didn't approach him; the children were allowed near him with impunity, climbing over him and ordering him to take them for rides, but Jamie flattened his ears and held his tail ramrod straight when most adults got too near him, the barest hint of a snarl curling his lips in.

She wondered why it was. The other adults in the village didn't think it strange at all that he should be following her, even though he clearly slept on that couch at Jim and Myra's and had been friendly with them long before she rode into town. She caught some looks, occasionally, first at Jamie and then back at her, pitying looks, and then the person in question would open their mouths to say something before closing it in regret.

It ought to have made her afraid, she thought one day. After all, Jamie was massive, and he could crush her with one bite of his fierce jaw. But it didn't make her feel afraid. Jamie made her feel safe, like someone was watching out for her, and even though she'd had friends in all of the places she'd lived and traveled, she hadn't felt that way in so very long.

*

"Rain, will you read me a story?"

The little girl had her thumb tucked into her mouth, pinky finger erect with blonde hair coiled around it. The other hand held a large, leather bound book, and the edge of it just scraped the ground when she walked.

Rain smiled. She was adorable.

"What does your mama say?" she asked, and the little girl dropped the book to point off in the other direction, where the girl's mother was sitting in the sunlight with a few other women, sewing up what looked to be a wedding dress. She looked at her daughter and shrugged, and Rain smiled and waved.

"Okay, then," she said, and she moved her notebook off to the side and made room for her to sit. Then another little child ran up, a boy, with hair fiery red like she had never seen.

"Me too!" he said. "I want to hear a story, please."

Rain nodded, and gestured for him to sit down. When she picked up the storybook, she was surprised at the artistry. The cover, bound by thin leather, the inside pages must have been hand lettered. The ink glistened on the pages, little bits of story illustrated in rich colors, and she flipped through it carefully. Where to begin? There were at least ten different stories she could choose from, judging by the contents page, but she had never heard of any of them. She shrugged. If you didn't know where to begin, start at the beginning.

"This is the story of Anwen and the Dragon," she read, and held the book aloft to show them the picture.

It didn't take long for two to become four, to become six, and soon enough she was on the third story and had a whole crowd of children around her, each vying for a better look at the illustrated pages when she held them up. Then, to her surprise, Jamie shouldered his way through the crowd of children, taking especial care not to trample the little ones, and made himself a seat beside her, his head heavy in her lap, her fingers absently coiling through the fur there before she needed both hands to hold the book again.

*

After that, Jamie spent every evening with Rain on her front porch. She sat sometimes on an old rocking chair which she always checked for spiders first, sometimes on the wooden steps, but always he curled up beside her, resting his head on her lap, until the night she sat on the top step and he reached up a paw, firmly pressing her backward. Quick as lightning, he ducked beneath her, and instead of resting her head on the dirty wooden floor, she was leaned back against the massive wolf.

They lay that way for a long time, and Rain started to ramble, speaking of nothing. "You're a smart wolf, you know that? I've never seen an animal as smart as you are." Jamie snorted.

"I probably never will again," she mused. "I don't know why you've taken a shining to me, but I can't say that I don't like it. That's not bad, is it? After all, you're not
my
pet. Though if you ever found a female wolf and had a family, maybe I could raise one of the puppies," she continued wistfully. Jamie let out a huff of air, and she could feel him squirm a little beneath her back until she felt the press of his tongue, wet against her arm in a gesture of comfort.

The sun had long set, and the stars were bright overhead. "This place... It's a little like Wonderland. I keep expecting to see a talking rabbit, or receive an offer to play some chess. I want to stay, but - It's a little lonely, too. I've never realized how lonely I was before. But near everyone is paired off, here. There are families. And I don't know if I can stay if I want to build a family too. What's the chances that another stranger will wander into town? There hasn't been a visitor to town in all the months I've been here, except me."

She twisted around, wrapping her arms around the broad expanse of his back and snuggling her face in his fur. Then she was silent. There wasn't much left to say, even to herself.

*

The phone call came in on a Tuesday. She had been out in the woods, picking some early blackberries with a few of the older children, Jamie making a game of catching them in his mouth whenever they threw one or two (or three or four or five) his way.

She didn't get to hear the message until there were three left in her voicemail, when she brought the phone to the patch on the square that had the best reception for her normal call to Grammy. She could get a little reception in her cabin, but the phone had cut out a few times before, and Grammy didn't always switch over well when Rain called her back.

When she listened to the messages, still chewing on an oatmeal cookie Myra had slipped her when Rain stopped off to deliver her basket of blackberries, she dropped the phone. The cookie slid down her throat in one big, hard lump, scraping her esophagus before sitting heavily in her stomach.

Her knees began to buckle and she fought the urge to settle to the ground. Jamie was there beside her, and she clenched her hands tightly in his fur and allowed him to lead her to Jim and Myra's.

*

Rain had never had to think about Grammy not being there. She was a fixture. Grammy had been there for the death of her parents, for junior prom and senior ditch-the-prom night. She'd been there every Tuesday at seven pm, and on the other end of grainy Skype calls when Rain rung in from places like Rome and Toledo. Rain probably should have suspected that she'd lose her some day, but she buried that, buried it like she'd buried the hurt of the loss of her parents, and so she wasn't prepared for the tinny voice on the other end of the line that said she needed to come quickly.

Jamie nudged at her patiently, herded her to Myra's arms, nosed at the bookshelf until he found the maps there and gently pried at them with his lips and teeth. Jim walked in, a line of fish swinging from his hand, and pulled them the rest of the way out.

Rain was babbling - details of her grandmother, that she needed to go, but how was she to go, all she had was Hiram and she didn't even known where the village was located. How could she have spent so long here and not even know where she was?

Jim set the fish in the sink, spread the maps on the table. Myra retreated to the cupboard, came back with a dropperful of something and Rain opened her mouth obediently.

It helped. She didn't know what it was, only that it tasted faintly sweet, and the chaos filling her mind began to recede so that she could think more clinically. She was still suffused with urgency, but she wasn't at risk of losing her head.