Alice pointed to the muzzle and the leash. “Bad. Trap. Smelly.”
Ellie exchanged a worried look with her sister. Last night they’d decided to use the wolf to help Alice find her way back to her old life. It had seemed less dangerous in the abstract.
“She needs him,” Julia said.
“Okay, but I’ve got to keep the muzzle on.” Ellie bent down and unhooked the leash. The wolf immediately nuzzled up against Alice.
“Cave, Wolf,” the girl whispered, and off they went, the two of them, toward the woods.
“Tell me that’s not a damned wolf,” George said, coming up to Ellie.
“Let’s go,” was Ellie’s answer.
By the time the sun crested the trees, they were so far from town that the only noise was their footsteps, crunching through the underbrush, and the silvery bells of the river rushing alongside them.
No one had spoken in more than an hour. In a ragged formation, with Julia and Alice and the wolf in the lead, they kept moving, deeper and deeper into the woods.
The trees grew denser here, and taller, their heavy boughs blocking out most of the light. Every now and then sunlight slanted through to the forest floor; it looked solid, that light, so dappled with motes that you weren’t entirely sure you could walk through it.
And still they went on, toward the heart of this old-growth forest, where the ground was spongy and always damp, where club mosses hung from leafless branches like ghostly sleeves. A pale gray mist clung to the ground, swallowing them all from the knees down.
Around noon they stopped in a tiny clearing for lunch.
Ellie didn’t know about everyone else, but she was uneasy out here. They seemed so small, this band of theirs; it would be too easy to make a wrong turn and simply disappear. The only noise now was the ever constant breeze. It brushed thousands of needles overhead. They heard the rustling long before they felt the cool touch of the wind on their cheeks.
They sat in a rough circle, clustered at the base of a cedar tree so big that they could all hold hands and not make a complete circle around its trunk.
“Where are we?” George asked, stretching out one leg.
Cal unfolded his map. “Best guess? Well past the Hall of Mosses in the park. Not far from Wonderland Falls, I think. Who knows? A lot of this area isn’t surveyed.”
“Are we lost?” George asked.
“She’s not,” Ellie said, getting to her feet again. “Let’s go.”
They walked for another few hours, but it was slow going. Thick undergrowth and curtains of hanging moss blocked their way. At a clearing beneath a quartet of giant trees, they made camp for the night, pitching their Day-Glo orange pup tents around the fire.
All the while, as they set up camp and cooked their supper from cans, no one said much of anything. By nightfall the sounds of the forest were overwhelming. There was endless scurrying and dropping and cawing. Only Alice and her wolf seemed at ease. Here, in all this green murkiness, Alice moved easier, walked taller. It gave them all a glimpse of who she would someday become, when she felt at home in the world of people.
Long after everyone else had gone to bed, Ellie stayed up. Sitting by the river’s edge, she stared out at the black woods, wondering how Alice had made this trek alone.
She heard a twig snap behind her and she turned.
It was Julia, looking worn and tired. “Is this the insomniacs meeting place?”
Ellie scooted sideways, making room for her sister on the moss-furred nurse log. On either side of them fragile green sword ferns quivered at the movement of their bodies.
They sat side by side; at their feet, the river rushed by, almost invisible in the darkness. The night air smelled rich and green. Overhead, the Milky Way appeared in patches between the trees and clouds.
“How’s Alice doing?” Ellie asked. It flashed through her mind that soon they’d have to start calling her Brittany. Another in a long line of things they didn’t want to face.
“Sleeping peacefully. She’s completely at ease out here.”
“It’s her hometown, I guess. Her own backyard.”
“Is she leading us somewhere … or just walking?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope we’re doing the right thing.” Julia’s voice cracked on that.
They fell silent; both of them questioning their choices. Ellie wanted to avoid talking about George, but out here, where there was nothing but her and her sister and the night sky, it was easy to see things more clearly. “Have you seen how George looks at her?” Ellie said the words quietly, in case he was awake and listening. Hopefully the sound of the river would drown out their voices.
“Yes,” Julia answered. There was a pause before she said, “He looks like a man with a broken heart. Every time she ignores him or turns away, he winces.”
“It’s making me nervous. What if we find—”
“I know.” Julia leaned against her. “Whatever happens, El, I couldn’t have handled it without you.”
Ellie slipped an arm around her baby sister and drew her close. “Yeah, me too.”