When I reached the shed, I found it was bigger than I’d thought. I glanced back at the main building and noted all the broken windows in the daylight. It was a good thing the shed was big; we would need many of the boards.
I scanned the men around me and patted one of the shed’s walls.
“These boards,” I said. “If you pull them off carefully so they don’t crack, I want to use them to board up some of the broken windows. Actually, if you can take apart the whole shed, I’m sure we can find a way to reuse all the wood.”
The men nodded, and Anton went inside the building.
“Don’t break the glass in the window,” Mary said from somewhere behind the men. “We want to reuse the unbroken panes, too.”
I was glad she’d followed. I stepped away from the building and heard the screech of nails pulled from dry wood. A board popped away from the wall, and I caught a glimpse of Anton before he moved out of sight again.
A younger man with light blonde hair stepped in front of me, stealing my attention.
“Is there anything else?”
“Um...” I tried to find Mary in the bodies crowded around me but couldn’t. The urge to start backing away took hold. Yet, I remained where I was. I didn’t have a choice. Another man stood behind me.
“Yeah,” Mary said, her voice floating around us. “The rest of you can go to the junk yard and look for useful things.”
The men shifted so I could see Mary. She reached through, wrapped a hand around my wrist, and pulled me out of their circle.
“Like what?” one asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Useful things. Like...a bathtub. She doesn’t wash in a stream.” She tugged me toward the main room’s door as she spoke.
“A bathtub?” I asked under my breath.
“Ask Winifred,” Mary said over her shoulder as she nudged me through the door. I wasn’t sure if she was telling me to ask Winifred or the confused men behind us, but as she quickly closed the door, I didn’t care.
I breathed a sigh of relief, turned, and threw my arms around her. “Thank you.”
She awkwardly returned the hug. “Wini suggested the bathtub.”
I pulled back, confused. “Is she listening to everything?”
“No. I’ve been talking to her, so she knows what they’re doing,” she said nodding toward the closed door. “When they started crowding you, she suggested we send them to the junk yard since this place could use a few things, and you don’t like stealing. They’ll reach out to her, and she’ll help them figure out what’s needed.”
“How exactly does that work? Her connection to everyone, I mean. Is it like little mental strings that connect her to everyone?”
Mary was quiet a moment. “She says it’s like a two way radio. You just need to know the right frequency.” She gave me a puzzled look. “What’s a two way radio?”
I grinned. “Your head, apparently. It’s far out you can talk to her like that. But doesn’t it get a little noisy in her head?”
This time Mary laughed.
“No. It’s usually pretty quiet for her. We keep to ourselves unless there’s a problem our leaders can’t resolve.”
“Leaders?”
“Yeah. Men like my dad. Typically, heads of families. I don’t know if there are any non-family packs. Wait. Wini says there aren’t.”
I had no idea what she meant but didn’t ask any further questions. I didn’t want to know about their hierarchy. Not yet anyway.
“Let’s go start on the windows,” she said after I remained quiet for a moment.
We went upstairs, split up, and started looking for windows that had one or more whole panes left in them. Sometimes, just one of the four panes had a thin crack; those windows we left alone as they would still keep out most of the wind and rain. Usually, though, the glass was missing from at least one of the window’s four squares.
Any window missing glass, we removed altogether and brought the frames to the main room. There we puzzled over how to remove the good glass without any tools. The cracked glaze that held each pane in place barely clung to the wood and was easy to pick away. But the little metal pieces stuck into the wood to pin in the glass were much trickier than the nails that had held the frames in. Mary had been able to pull the frame nails out with just her fingers.
“We’ll have to ask for help,” Mary said after trying to remove one. “I don’t have enough control to just change my nails or I could do it.” She glanced at the closed door. “You want to ask?”
I totally didn’t want to but moved to the door anyway. It opened with a creak and drew everyone’s attention.
A pile of neatly stacked boards lay on the ground to the right of the door. Anton was in the process of setting another on top and looked up at me. It relieved me that someone I knew was nearby.
“We need a hand for just a minute,” I said to him and stepped back.
One of the wolves in the yard softly growled as Anton stepped through the door. The men who had been removing additional boards from the shed stared at me. Did I sound too demanding?