Chapter 24: Tea

We drove into Cold Fork at noon, in the king's black trucks, with the snow melting off the roofs.

Nobody had told the pack how many vehicles to expect.

They stood along the road anyway, in their skins, bareheaded, as they had stood at Highcrown.

I got out of the front truck in boots.

My daughter rode on my left hip and my son on my right, both in grey wool coats, both awake and staring at the sky.

Dalton came around the bonnet and stood a pace behind me.

He did not take my arm.

He waited for me to say.

"Walk with me," I said.

He fell in at my side.

The road to the infirmary was the same road I had taken on the day I left.

I had gone down it barefoot, in a hospital gown and a grey blanket, with the cold coming up through my soles.

Today the pack parted for me, and the gravel was dry and loud under my heels.

The old woman in the patched coat stood by the infirmary step.

She went down on one knee as I came up the road.

The butcher's sons did the same, and the woman who had brought me soup.

Then the young man who had asked why they should want me back.

Then the rest, all the way to the bend.

Two hundred wolves went down in the snow in a long wave.

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