Chapter 4: Stay at the Gate

Hattie's cottage had one bedroom and one couch.

Its freezer was full of casseroles nobody had ever seen her cook.

She put me in the bed and herself on the couch and stood a kitchen chair against the front door.

"It won't stop a wolf," she said.

"No."

"It'll make a loud noise when they knock it over, though."

I laughed, and then my chin shook.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and held my hand.

She let me cry for ten minutes and never once told me to stop.

Godfrey came at dusk.

He knocked with his cane, three slow raps.

When Hattie opened the door, he was standing on the step in the blue light with a thermos in his hand.

"Ginger," he said. "It's Sunday, child. I wasn't going to let a drowning get in the way of that."

I took it.

It was how I'd taken it for eight months.

He sat in the armchair and told me gently not to worry.

The elders would put a guard on the cottage, he said, whether Cade liked it or not.

"There is one thing," he said. "The light in the pool. Don't speak of it."

"Why not?"

"Because every elder on that shelf saw a moon-born spark in an unborn pup."

His pale eyes were kind.

"It's very old blood," he said. "Old blood makes the council hungry. Say nothing, and let me carry it for you."

"All right," I said.

He squeezed my fingers, and left.

When the door closed, Hattie lifted the thermos lid and sniffed it.

"Ginger," she said, surprised. "Just ginger."

"Were you expecting something?"

"No," she said, and she looked unhappy about the fact that she had checked.