Chapter 11: Lights On

Nobody said a word.

Ninety wolves stared at my face in the plain grey light of a Monday morning.

I walked the whole length of the hall to the kitchen hatch, and I did not look at the floor.

My knees were water.

Elina was standing behind the hatch with her hands pressed over her mouth.

"Perkele," she said, thickly. "Oh, my girl."

"Hi, Aunt Elina."

"Look at you. Look at that hair."

"I'm hungry," I said, because I couldn't say anything else.

She laughed and cried at once and slapped a bowl of porridge on the counter hard enough to crack it.

I turned around with the bowl in my hands.

The she-wolf from the long table, the one who had called me poor thing, was staring at me.

She had a coffee cup in her fist.

For a moment I braced.

Then she stood up and set the cup down at the empty seat on the end of the bench.

She went back to her own place without a word.

It was only a cup of coffee.

It was the first one anybody in that hall had set out for me in seven years.

An old man at the next table cleared his throat.

"Morning, Luna," he said.

I sat down in the seat and drank the coffee, and I let it burn.

That night I turned on every lamp in the lodge.

Niko came in from the Council house at nine and stopped on the threshold.

The big room was lit.

Lamps on the tables, the mantel, the floor.

I stood in the middle of the rug in nothing but my own skin.

"Close the door," I said.

He closed it.

"I want you to look at me."

"Tuuli-"

"Not my voice."

"Not my smell."

"Look."

My throat ached.

"I know it won't stay in your head."

"I know."

"I just need you to do it anyway."

He didn't move for a long moment.

Then he crossed the room, slowly, and stopped in front of me.

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