Chapter 5: The Voice

At dawn Ansel took me down to the creek behind the cabin and told me to stand in the water.

"It's April," I said. "The water is snowmelt."

"Good. It keeps your wolf awake."

Hattie sat on a rock with a thermos and her boots off, watching us.

"The Voice is not shouting," Ansel said.

"It's a pitch, low in the chest, and you aim it at the wolf's spine."

"How do I aim at a spine?"

"You decide the wolf has one, and you decide it's going to bend."

I tried it on a stump.

Nothing happened, except that Hattie snorted into her coffee.

"Lower," he said.

I tried again.

"Lower. Stop pushing from your throat."

He stepped into the creek behind me, boots and all.

"May I?" he asked.

He was asking about the rules I had set him, and I liked that he remembered.

"Yes," I said. "Where?"

"Your ribs. Breathe out."

He laid his hand flat against my side, under my jacket, just below my breast.

I had been touched by plenty of people, mostly by accident.

Nobody had ever held that still against me on purpose.

"Now speak from here," he said, and pressed lightly. "Not up there. Here."

His palm was warm through my shirt, and I felt each of his fingers separately.

I said, "Kneel."

It came out of me low and flat and strange.

It hit Hattie hard.

She dropped off her rock onto both knees in the mud, with the thermos still in her fist.