'She's beginning to take me with her,' Wolf said softly. 'Soon we'll be running, Jack. I wish you could, too.'
He turned his head to look at Jack, and the boy saw that while Wolf meant what he had just said, there was a significant part of him that was silently saying: I could run after you as well as beside you, little friend.
'We have to close the door now, I guess,' Jack said. He tried to pull his hand from Wolf's grasp, but could not free himself until Wolf almost disdainfully released him.
'Lock Jacky in, lock Wolf out.' Wolf's eyes flared for a moment, becoming red molten Elroy-eyes.
'Remember, you're keeping the herd safe,' Jack said. He stepped backward into the middle of the shed.
'The herd goes in the barn, and the lock goes on the door. He Would Not Injure His Herd.' Wolf's eyes ceased to drip fire, shaded toward orange.
'Put the lock on the door.'
'God pound it, that's what I'm doing now,' Wolf said. 'I'm putting the God-pounding lock on the God-pounding door, see?' He banged the door shut, immediately sealing Jack up in the darkness. 'Hear that, Jacky? That's the God-pounding lock.' Jack heard the lock click against the metal loop, then heard its ratchets catch as Wolf slid it home.
'Now the key,' Jack said.
'God-pounding key, right here and now,' Wolf said, and a key rattled into a slot, rattled out. A second later the key bounced off the dusty ground beneath the door high enough to skitter onto the shed's floorboards.
'Thanks,' Jack breathed. He bent down and brushed his fingers along the boards until he touched the key. For a moment he clamped it so hard into his palm that he almost drove it through his skin - the bruise, shaped like the state of Florida, would endure nearly five days, when in the excitement of being arrested he would fail to notice that it had left him. Then Jack carefully slid the key into his pocket. Outside, Wolf was panting in hot regular agitated-sounding spurts.
'Are you angry with me, Wolf?' he whispered through the door.
A fist thumped the door, hard. 'Not! Not angry! Wolf!'
'All right,' Jack said. 'No people, Wolf. Remember that. Or they'll hunt you down and kill you.'
No peopOOOWWW-OOOOOOOOHHHOOOO!' The word turned into a long, liquid howl. Wolf's body bumped against the door, and his long black-furred feet slid into the opening beneath it. Jack knew that Wolf had flattened himself out against the shed door. 'Not angry, Jack,' Wolf whispered, as if his howl had embarrassed him. 'Wolf isn't angry. Wolf is wanting, Jacky. It's so soon now, so God-pounding soon.'
'I know,' Jack said, now suddenly feeling as if he had to cry - he wished he could have hugged Wolf. More painfully, he wished that they had stayed the extra days at the farmhouse, and that he were now standing outside a root cellar where Wolf was safely jailed.
The odd, disturbing thought came to him again that Wolf was safely jailed.
Wolf's feet slid back under the door, and Jack thought he had a glimpse of them becoming more concentrated, slimmer, narrower.
Wolf grunted, panted, grunted again. He had moved well back from the door. He uttered a noise very like 'Aaah.'
'Wolf?' Jack said.
An earsplitting howl lifted up from above Jack: Wolf had moved to the top of the gully.
'Be careful,' Jack said, knowing that Wolf would not hear him, and fearing that he would not understand him even if he were close enough to hear.
A series of howls followed soon after - the sound of a creature set free, or the despairing sound of one who wakes to find himself still confined, Jack could not tell which. Mournful and feral and oddly beautiful, the cries of poor Wolf flew up into the moonlit air like scarves flung into the night. Jack did not know he was trembling until he wrapped his arms around himself and felt his arms vibrating against his chest, which seemed to vibrate, too.
The howls diminished, retreating. Wolf was running with the moon.
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