The Spring Between Us

Chapter 62: Cal's First Shift

I got down on the ground beside him and put my hands on his shoulders.

"Cal. Look at me."

His eyes came round to mine. They were going yellow at the edges and his hands were shaking and the bones of them had started to move under the skin, and his breath was coming fast and shallow like a wolf that has been run.

"Luna," he said. "It hurts."

"I know it hurts. The first shift always hurts. Do you remember what Mira told you when you were a boy? About the first shift?"

"She said it was like a door opening." He got the words out between his teeth. "She said you have to go through it and not fight it."

"Then go through it."

"I am frightened."

"I know." I put my hand on the back of his neck the way Hank had put his hand on mine in the pasture. "So am I. But I am right here and I am not going anywhere and neither is Mira and neither is the Alpha. You go through the door and we will be on the other side of it."

He went through it.

It was not like my first shift and it was not like the pasture. It was slow and ugly and it took three minutes, and the whole time he was on his knees in the dirt with my hands on his shoulders and Mira's hands on his back and Hank on his other side, and the crowd outside the tunnel went back and the men went back and the whole of the canyon stood in a ring and watched a boy become a wolf for the first time.

When it was over there was a wolf on the ground in front of me.

He was not big. He was young and lean and his fur was the sandy colour of his hair, and he was lying flat on the dirt with his sides heaving and his tongue out and his eyes shut. He was the colour of the dust and the colour of the mesa and the colour of the sun on the red rock, and I put my hand on his side and felt his heart going under my palm like a hammer.

"He is all right," Mira said. "He is all right. His heart is strong."

The crowd made a sound. Somebody clapped and somebody laughed and a woman near the fence put her hands over her face and cried. The Çöl wolves were pounding their hands on their thighs and the Kızıltaş wolves were shouting his name, and Cal lifted his head off the dirt and looked at them with his yellow eyes and his ears went back.

"He is frightened of the noise," I said. "Get back. All of you. Give him room."

They gave him room. Cal got his legs under him and stood up, and he stood there swaying with his head down and his tail low, and then he took three steps and came and pressed his head against my chest.

I put my arms around his neck and held on.

"You did it," I said. "You went through the door."

He made a sound in his throat that was not a growl and not a whine. It was a small, surprised sound, the sound of a wolf that has just found out what it is.

Hank came and crouched down beside us.

"Cal," he said. "You have just shifted in front of the whole canyon with a head wound and a mine collapse behind you. There is not a wolf in this yard who is not looking at you. So I am going to ask you a thing and you are going to have to answer it as a wolf, because you are one now, and a wolf answers with his body and not his mouth." He put his hand out. "Do you want to run?"

Cal lifted his head. His ears came up. He looked at the open mesa beyond the tunnel and the long slope down to the creek and the sun going down behind the western rim, and he made a sound that was the first real wolf sound he had ever made.

"That is a yes," Mira said. "Alpha. He is a new wolf and a new wolf needs to run on the night of his first shift. If he does not run he will be sick with it."

I stood up. My shoulder was not working very well and my hands were cut and my face was grey with dust and the hall was behind me and the hearing was waiting and the tank was in the yard.

"Sten," I said. "Take Cal and four wolves and run him down the creek bed and back. Not fast. Do not let him out of your sight and do not let him near the fence line. And Sten." I looked at him. "You bring him back to me in one piece."

Sten came forward. He had a smear of dust on his face and his sword was in his hand and he looked at the sandy wolf standing at my side, and he said, "Luna. I will bring him back."

They went down the slope at a walk with the four wolves around him. And then Cal broke into a run and the four wolves ran with him and they went down the long slope toward the creek bed with the sun behind them and a sound came up off the mesa that I had not heard in a month. It was the sound of a pack running, and it was good.

I stood at the tunnel mouth and watched them go.

Hank came and stood beside me. He did not touch me. There was a whole canyon watching and the hall was behind us and the hearing was waiting.

"He is going to be a good wolf," he said.

"He is going to be a good wolf." I turned. "Now. The hall."

We went down the slope to the yard. The packs were there and the town was there and the tank was on the cart where we had left it and the hall doors were open and the clerk was standing on the steps with his gavel and his face grey. Silas was standing beside him with his hat in his hands.

"Luna," the clerk said. "The hearing."

"The hearing," I said. "The hearing was called for sundown and sundown was three hours ago and the mine has come down on six men and a boy has shifted for the first time in front of the whole canyon. So I am going to stand in that yard and say what has to be said and then we are going to bury the tank under a lead sheet and a stone and go home."

Silas came down the steps.

"You cannot bury a Council exhibit," he said.

"It is not a Council exhibit. It is a radium tank that has been poisoning a town for six years." I turned to the yard. "The hearing is over. The Council will write whatever it likes in its report and the Council will send whatever it likes to the autumn gathering. But this canyon is done with Council reports. There is a pact that is older than the Council and a pair that stands at the head of it and a spring that is running and a town that has seen what is in that tank. And I am going to read that pact aloud at the spring at moonrise tonight, in front of both packs and the town and every wolf in this canyon who wants to hear it."

The yard went silent.

Silas looked at me.

"You will not read the pact," he said.

"I will read the pact."

"You will not read the pact because the Council has ruled that the pact is void and the bond is void and the seat is void, and a Luna who has been ruled void cannot read a pact in front of a pack." Silas put his hat on. "And because the two rings you are carrying are not the rings of the first pair. They are copies. The real rings were taken by the Council forty years ago and they are in a vault in the capital and I have seen them with my own eyes."

The yard was silent.

I put my hand into my jacket and brought out the two iron rings and held them up.

"These are the rings," I said. "I have had them in my hands and my mother wore one around her neck for nineteen years and Nora wore the other for forty. They are worn thin at the back and they have the crescent on the bezel and they fit my thumb." I looked at him. "If there are rings in a vault in the capital then somebody has been sitting in a vault for forty years with two pieces of iron and telling himself he has the pair."

Silas's pleasant face did not change. He said, "Luna. You are a girl with two rings and a pact and a mark on her arm and a Council ruling against her. And the Council has the law and the soldiers and the vault. So I will ask you one question and I want you to think about it before you answer." He came a step closer. "If you read that pact at the spring tonight, and the spring answers, and the whole canyon sees it, what do you think the Council will do to this canyon tomorrow?"

I looked at him.

"I do not know," I said. "But I know what the canyon will do to the Council."