chapter SIXTY-FIVE
• SAM •
I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake. I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.
I burst into the woods at a gallop. My paws pounded the rocks; my strides ate the ground. Every nerve inside me was on fire. I was holding my thoughts like an armful of paper cranes. Tight enough to keep them. Not tight enough to crush them.
I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake. I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.
There were one thousand things to hear. Ten thousand things to scent. One hundred million clues to countless forms of life in these woods. But I didn’t need countless. I needed one.
She was leaning back against me, breathing in the scent of a candy shop. Every color that I couldn’t see now was painted on the walls and labels around us.
I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.
The night was bright underneath a half-moon; the light reflected off a few low clouds and ragged strands of mist. I could see endlessly ahead of me. But it wasn’t sight that would help me. Every so often I slowed, listening. Her howl. It was for me, I was certain.
The wolves howled; I stood at her window, looking out. We were strangers and we knew each other like a path we walked every day. Don’t sleep on the floor, she said.
I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them.
There were other voices now, responding to her calls. It wasn’t difficult to pick them apart. It was difficult to remember why I needed to pick them apart.
Her eyes, brown and complicated, with a wolf’s face.
I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves.
I faltered as my paws slid on wet clay, sending me slithering. I heard something drop into water, close by.
A voice hissed at me in the back of my head. Something about this was dangerous. I slowed, cautious, and there it was — a massive pit, water for drowning at its base. I minced around it before listening. The woods had fallen silent. My mind tripped and stumbled, aching for — I tipped my head back and howled, a long, trembling bay that helped ease the ache inside me. A few moments later, I heard her voice, and I set off again.
I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves.
A flock of birds exploded in front of me, startled from their roost by my progress. They burst into the air, white against the black, and something about the multitude of their forms, the identical stretch of their wings, the way they suspended above me, fluttering in the wind, stars lit behind them, reminded me of something.
I struggled and struggled to grasp it, but it slid away from me. The loss seemed crushing, though I could not think of what I’d lost.
I am finding Grace.
I would not lose that. I would not lose that.
finding Grace.
There were some things you could not take from me. Some things that I just could not bear to give up.
Grace