The Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Be Here at Dawn

Cormick refuses to train her, throws her in the river, and sets a dawn deadline she cannot see the end of.

"Late for what?" I asked.

"Dawn. I expected you at dawn."

"I didn't know anyone expected me."

"Your mother did." He pushed off the tree.

He was taller than I'd thought, and he moved easily for a man his size.

"Come on. It's going to get cold."

He turned and walked up the trail without checking whether I followed.

I followed.

I was too tired to do anything else, and the map in my pocket was still warm.

The cabin sat in a notch of the ridge with a rusted stove pipe and a woodpile higher than my head.

Behind it the mountain dropped away into a river gorge, and the sound of water came up from far below.

He pushed the door open.

"Sit."

I sat on a bench by the table.

He stood at the stove with his back to me, feeding it sticks.

He still had the knife on his back.

"My name's Calla," I said.

"I know."

"The Alpha called me wolfless in front of the whole pack last night. You were there. You saw."

"I saw."

He didn't turn around.

"Then you know I'm not who you're expecting."

"I know exactly who you are."

I waited for him to say more.

He added a log.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Cormick Tarn."

"Are you a wolf?"

"Yes."

"Are you in the pack?"

"No."

"Did my mother send me to you?"

"Your mother's dead," he said, flatly. "Drink your water."

There was a tin cup on the table.

I drank it.

"I want you to teach me," I said. "Something is in me. I heard it last night. It talked."

His hands went still on the stove door.

"What did it say?"

"Finally."

For a moment I thought he might laugh.

He didn't.

He turned around slowly, and I got my first good look at his face.

He had a scar through his right eyebrow and a short black beard, and brown eyes with dark, tired shadows under them.

"No," he said.

"No what?"

"No, I won't teach you. Go home."

"I don't have one."

"Then go down the other side of the mountain. There's a town there with a bus."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You're not staying."

I stood up.

My legs nearly buckled, but I locked them.

"I climbed seven hours on blisters," I said. "I'm sleeping on your floor."

"You'll sleep on the floor of the next town."

"Make me."

He looked at me then for a long second.

Something moved across his face and was gone.

"All right," he said, softly.

He took me by the back of the jacket and walked me out of the door.

I swung and missed him.

He walked me around the cabin and across a flat shelf of rock, and I understood too late where we were going.

"Cormick, no..."

He let go.

I went off the ledge.

The river was a long, cold fall below, and the cold hit me all at once.

I went under with my whole body screaming.

My chest burned where the bond had torn, and I swallowed a mouthful of water and came up choking.

I got hold of a rock.

The current dragged at my legs.

"Climb out," I heard him say from somewhere above.

I couldn't see him.

I turned my head.

He stood on the ledge, a long way up, with his arms folded.

"If you can climb out and still stand," he called, "you can sleep in the shed."

"You bastard!"

"Climb."

My teeth were clacking together.

Under my breastbone, the dry voice said, quite calmly, "Left. There's a root."

I looked left.

There was a root.

I got my fingers around it and pulled.

It took me a long time.

I lost a boot to the river, and I tore open both palms on the rock, and twice I slid back down.

Each time, the voice said, "Again."

At the top I fell face first on the flat rock and lay there shaking, water pouring out of my hair.

A pair of boots stopped by my head.

I got up on my hands and knees.

Then I got up on my feet.

I stood in front of him swaying, dripping, with one boot, and I looked him in the face.

"Still standing," I said.

He looked at me for a very long moment.

Then he held out a wool blanket he'd been carrying the whole time.

"The shed's behind the cabin," he said. "Dry clothes are on the nail."

I took it.

"You'll teach me?"

"I'll think about it."

"That's not a yes."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

I stumbled toward the shed.

I was almost there when I glanced back at the cabin door and stopped.

The doorframe was old pine, and a column of thirty short lines ran down it, cut with a knife blade.

The first two were rubbed black with soot.

The other twenty-eight were bare wood.

Someone was counting days.

The second black line was still wet.

"Be here at dawn," Cormick said behind me. "Or don't."

When I looked back he had gone inside.

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