Chapter 22: The Cold Store

Hedda's POV

"I love you!" Torin shouted, from the top of the Ridge Stone, at the full strength of his lungs.

The valley gave it back to us twice.

I laughed until I had to sit down on the rock.

He sat down beside me and put his forehead against mine.

We stayed there until the sun cleared the hills.

Then I said, "I want to go home."

His whole body tightened.

"The shore," I said. "I want to open the cold store. Come with me."

"You're asking?"

"I'm asking."

He nodded and put his arm around me.

"I'll drive," he said.

We came down the coast road at noon with two hundred wolves walking behind the truck.

My grandfather rode on the roof of the cab with his horn in his lap, shouting at the gulls.

The cold store sat in its cut in the cliff, behind the old cannery, with its iron door shut.

I stood in front of it for a long moment.

I could not hear it.

It was still a hole in the sound, a place where the sea and the wind and the hearts of the wolves just stopped.

My mother came up beside me.

"I'll go in first," Liv said.

"No."

"Hedda."

"We'll go in together. All of us."

I put my hand on the door and pushed it open.

The air that came out was cold and still, and it smelled of ten years of closed breath.

Nobody moved.

I took one step in, and then another.

Behind me my pack took up the same step.

It was a long cavern, cut out of the rock, with low ceilings and rough walls.

Long tables stood in rows, and the candles were dead in their sconces.

My father's chair sat at the end of the room with its back to the stone.

I stood in the middle of it and filled my lungs.

I yelled my own name.

It went into the stone and died.

I yelled it again, and the pack yelled it with me, three hundred voices, and the walls shook.

We yelled until the dust fell from the ceiling.

It was only noise.

It was only a hole in the world, and we filled it.

Somebody took a hammer to the plaster over the vents.

Somebody else pulled the wool hangings down off the walls, and the sound of the sea came in through the vents, and a woman cried.

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