Chapter 5: Highfall

Highfall was three hours north of the city, and by the time we reached it the road had turned to gravel.

I had spent the first two of those hours with my forehead against the truck window.

Tomorrow I would be back at the fence by three, and Dalton had already promised the truck would be too.

He had made no speeches about it.

The lodge sat at the end of the gravel on a hill above a black lake.

It was a long timber building with lit windows, and about forty people were crossing the yard toward the truck.

I got out.

They stopped ten feet away.

A broad woman in a flannel shirt looked me over, then looked at Dalton, then walked up and put a folded blanket in my arms.

"Welcome to Highfall," she said. "He's been cleaning the guest cabin for three days. Don't tell him I said so."

"I'm standing right here," Dalton said.

"I know you are."

I buried my face in the blanket so no one would see me smile.

Nobody here said Luna.

Nobody asked what I was, or why I smelled strange to them, or whose I'd been.

They just told me where dinner was.

After dinner Dalton walked me to the edge of the trees.

"Your wolf has been shut in for six years," he said. "She doesn't have to come out. But if she wants to, the whole forest is yours."

"What if I can't?"

"Then you can't, and we'll try tomorrow."

"What if I can?"

"Then I'll be on that porch," he said, pointing back at the lodge. "And I won't come down unless you call me."

He went.

I stood alone in the dark with the lake smell and the pine smell, and the sound of a hundred small animals going about their night.

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