The Spring Between Us

Chapter 88: Nora's Old Letter

The Chancellor did not answer at once.

She sat with her hands flat on the table and the paper from the canyon in front of her and she looked at me the way a wolf looks at a door she is not sure is locked. Then she said, "The hall will recess for one hour. The Luna and the Alpha will come with me to the small room behind this hall and we will settle the matter of the declaration before the Council sends a single soldier into that canyon."

The small room behind the Council hall was narrow and hot and had one window and a table and four chairs, and the Chancellor sat down at the table and put her hands on the wood and said, "Sit. Both of you. And speak plainly, because I have been Chancellor for six years and I have signed forty rulings I did not believe and I am tired of it."

We sat. Hank beside me, his shoulder touching mine.

"Chancellor," I said. "The declaration in the open hall is a thing in the first volume. The pair is declared once and once only, in the open hall, in front of the Council and the packs. After the declaration the Council shall not sit in judgment on the pair again."

"I have read that line," the Chancellor said. "I have read it four times since the old clerk came to my house last night and told me what was in his own report. And I am going to tell you what it means to a Chancellor who has to sign the ruling. It means that if I let you declare the pair in this hall, the pair is beyond the Council. It means I give up the last thing the Council has over that canyon."

"It means the Council gives up the last thing it should never have had," I said. "The canyon is not the Council's. It never was. The pact says so and the spring says so and the first volume says so. The Council has been holding it with soldiers and pumps and false reports and it has been holding it against the law it was made to keep."

The Chancellor looked at me for a long moment.

"Show me the letter," she said. "The old clerk told me there is a letter. A letter from the Luna's mother to the Çöl Luna, written four weeks before she died. He said the Çöl Luna has been carrying it since the canyon. I want to see it before I rule."

I turned to Hank. He got up and went out and came back in a minute with Nora behind him.

Nora had the letter in her hand. It was folded and refolded and the creases had gone soft, and she put it on the table in front of the Chancellor and said, "I have carried this since the night she gave it to me. I have never shown it to anyone. It is her hand and it is her voice and I have not had the courage to read it out loud."

"Read it now," the Chancellor said.

Nora unfolded it. She read it out loud in the small hot room with the one window and the table and the four chairs.

Derya. If you are reading this then I am dead and my daughter has found the letter and you have kept it for her. You have been a good friend to me and a better one than I deserved and I am sorry for the thing I am going to ask you.

The water was never going to last. I have known that since the winter. I went up to the spring house in the autumn and I measured the gauge and it was eleven inches down and the creek was low and the cistern was low and I told the pack it was the dry years and I told myself the same. And then in the spring I went up again and there was a plate on the welling hole.

I have been a Luna for nineteen years and I know a plate when I see one. It was iron and it had a mark on it and I had seen that mark before, in a Council file, in my mother's time. I wrote to the Council and I told them what I had found and I told them I was going to bring it before the full Council at the autumn gathering.

Four days later the rider came back with a letter from the Council man. It said that if I took the matter to the Council he would see the pack dissolved and the south section given to the company and every wolf in the canyon put off their land. And it said a thing I did not understand until this week. It said, tell your daughter to keep her arm covered.

Derya. The water was not cut off in the spring. It was planned. I have been going through your father's papers and there is a letter in his hand from three years before he died and it says the Council man came to the mine and asked for a survey of the deep line under the quarry. And there is a second letter from two years after that and it says the Council man had come again and that your father had refused him and that the man had laughed and said the Council has a long memory.

They have been planning this for six years. The plate and the pump and the channel under the quarry. Your father knew and he was killed for it and I have been living in his house for eighteen years and I did not know.

I am going to the spring house tonight. I am going to take the gauge and the notebook and I am going to measure the plate and write it down and take it to the Council myself if I have to walk there. If I do not come back, the box is behind the stone under the chamber floor and the corner of the map is in it.

Do not trust the Beta. She is frightened and frightened wolves sell what they love. I am sorry I did not tell you sooner. I thought I had more time.

Nora put the letter down on the table.

The small room was very quiet. The Chancellor was looking at the letter and her hands were flat on the table and her face had gone grey.

"Six years," she said. "The water was planned six years before it failed."

"Yes," Nora said. "The old clerk and his son planned it and they paid the Beta and they killed the Luna and they killed the Alpha and they have been taking the water and the ore out of that canyon for twenty years while the Council wrote reports that said the packs were savages who could not govern themselves." She put her hand on the letter. "And the Council has been reading those reports and signing those rulings and never once sending a wolf to look at the water."

The Chancellor stood up. She went to the window and stood there with her back to us and her hands behind her back.

"The letter is dated four weeks before she died," she said. "It is in her hand. It says the sabotage was planned six years before it happened and that her father knew and was killed for it." She turned around. "I am going to ask you a question and I want the truth, Luna, and I want it plainly. If I declare the pair in this hall and the pair stands beyond the Council, what does the canyon do with the Council's law? Does it keep it or does it throw it out?"

"The canyon keeps the law," I said. "It throws out the Council's reports and the Council's pumps and the Council's trustees and the Council's lies. It keeps the law and it keeps the pact and it keeps the spring. And it will answer to the pair, which is two wolves born in that canyon, and not to a Council four hundred miles away that has never sent a wolf to look at the water."

The Chancellor looked at me for a long moment.

"Then I will declare the pair," she said. "In the open hall. At dawn tomorrow. In front of the Council and the packs and the whole of the autumn gathering. And I will write the ruling myself and I will sign it and I will send a copy to the capital and I will not be Chancellor of a Council that has been eating a canyon for forty years." She sat down again. "But there is a thing you have to understand before I do it. The old clerk is going to be tried in the capital and the Council in the capital is going to hear what I have done and it is going to say I have given away a Council territory. And there will be a vote in the capital and it will be close and I do not know which way it will go."

"Then we will go to the capital and speak to the vote," I said.

"Then you will go to the capital and speak to the vote and the pair will be beyond the Council and the Council will be angry and the canyon will be free." The Chancellor picked up her pen. "But first we go to the spring. Tonight. The letter says the sabotage was planned six years before the drought and the spring has gone dry and the pair is the only thing that can call it. So we go tonight and the Council goes with you and we see what the water does."

She wrote on a paper and signed it and gave it to me.

"Take it to the clerk," she said. "The hall will sit at dawn and the pair will be declared and the Council will witness it. And then we go to the canyon."

I took the paper. The Chancellor stood up and went to the door and stopped with her hand on the latch.

"Luna," she said. "There is a thing I have not told you. The old clerk came to my house last night and told me the whole of his report. And at the end of it he said a thing that I have been thinking about since. He said the pact was broken twice and the Council's law was rewritten to hide the first pair, and that the rewriting is in the Council's own records and that it goes back a hundred and forty years. And he said if the pair is declared and the Council is set aside, the first thing the pair should do is find the rewritten law and put it back the way it was."

She went out.

The small hot room was quiet. Hank put his hand on mine.

"Tomorrow at dawn," he said.

"Tomorrow at dawn." I looked at the paper in my hand. "And tonight the spring. And after that the rewritten law."

Nora folded her letter and put it in her coat and said, "Luna. The rewritten law. I know where to look."