The Spring Between Us

Chapter 33: Mira's Warning

I did not take Ruth's hand.

I stood in the yard with the whole pack watching and her hand out and her grey eyes steady and I said, "You saw skid marks at the narrow place the day before my mother died and you rode home and told nobody."

"I told myself it was a horse that had shied."

"A wolf does not see skid marks at the edge of a rim and call them a shied horse. You are not a fool, Ruth. You have never been a fool." I looked at her. "So what did you tell yourself really? What did you decide, in your own head, on the ride home?"

Ruth's hand came down. She looked at me for a long moment and then she looked at the pack around us and then she said, quietly, "I decided that if I said anything about it I would be the one who found the body and the one who made the accusation, and I would be the one the Council looked at. And I decided that your mother was dead and that I could not bring her back, and that the pack needed a Beta more than it needed a scandal." She lifted her chin. "I have thought about that ride every day for four weeks. I have not had a good night's sleep since. That is the truth and it is not a pretty one."

The yard was silent. Old Tomas had his hand over his mouth. Helle had turned her face away.

"You will say all of that at the inquiry," I said. "In front of the Council, in front of both packs. Every word."

"I will."

"Then we will talk about the rest of it when this is over." I turned away from her. "Go back to the hall. All of you. The pack has work to do and so do I."

They went. Slowly and in twos and threes and looking back over their shoulders, but they went. Ruth stood in the middle of the yard for a moment longer and then she went up the steps and into the hall, and I watched her go and I did not feel any better.

Mira was at her door with her arms folded.

"Come inside," she said. "You have had a morning and you need to sit down."

I went inside. She shut the door and put the kettle on and I sat on the stool with my jacket off and my mark bare and my wolf awake behind it, and I looked at the eleven beams of the ceiling.

"She saw the skid marks," I said.

"She did." Mira set two cups down. "And now you know that, and now you will want to ask me the thing you have been not asking me for a week."

I looked at her. "What thing?"

Mira poured the tea. Her hands were steady and her round face was set and she poured the tea the way a woman pours tea when she is trying to decide how much to say.

"Derya," she said. "I have been the healer of this pack for thirty years. I have seen wolves die in the mine and in the creek and at the border. I have seen old wolves go in their sleep and young wolves go in the circle. And I have never in thirty years seen a wolf go over a rim by accident." She set the pot down. "Your mother did not fall. I told you that four weeks ago and you believed me. But I did not tell you the whole of it, because I was frightened, and because a frightened woman tells half a truth and thinks it is the same as a whole one."

"What is the whole of it?"

Mira sat down across from me. "The night your mother died, she came to my hut. Not in the afternoon. At night, after the hall was dark, and she stood in that doorway with her cloak on and a lantern in her hand and she said, 'Mira, I need you to keep something for me.'" Mira's mouth worked. "I said of course. She gave me a bundle wrapped in oilcloth and she said, 'If I am not back by morning, give this to my daughter. If I am back by morning, burn it.'"

I sat very still. "What was in the bundle?"

"I do not know. I did not open it. I put it under the floor of this hut and I have not touched it since." Mira's voice had gone low. "I have been sitting on it for four weeks, Derya. Every night I have thought about lifting that board and every night I have told myself that if I lift it I will be the next one over the rim."

"Mira."

"And now the Council man is in the yard and the Beta has taken the seat and the inquiry is tomorrow at sundown, and I have decided that I would rather be the next one over the rim than sit on it one more night." She got up and went to the back of the hut and knelt down on the floorboards and counted along the wall with her hand and lifted a board.

The space under it was shallow and dark and there was a bundle in it wrapped in oilcloth and tied with string.

Mira lifted it out and set it on the table and stepped back.

I untied the string.

Inside the oilcloth there was a small wooden box, and inside the box there was a folded paper and a ring. The paper was in my mother's hand and it was not a letter. It was a list. Names, dates, and beside each name a sum of money and a place. I read the first three lines and my hands went cold.

"What is it?" Mira said.

"It is a ledger." I turned the paper over. "It is her own list of what the Council took out of this canyon and who took it and where it went. Nineteen years of it. Names of Council men and names of company men and dates and sums." I looked up. "Mira. She was building a case. She was not going to the Council to report a theft. She was going to the Council with the whole of it and she was going to put it in front of them in the open hall."

"And someone found out."

"Someone found out." I picked up the ring. It was a plain iron ring, old, worn thin at the back, and there was a mark cut into the bezel: a crescent with the horns turned up. The same mark that was on my arm.

Mira sat down heavily on her stool. "That is the ring of the first Luna," she said. "My mother told me about it when I was a girl. The first pair swore the pact and each of them wore a ring, and the rings were lost when they died, and the Council has been looking for them for two generations."

I put the ring on my thumb because it was too big for my finger, and it was cold and heavy and it fit as if it had been waiting for me.

"Derya," Mira said. "There is one more thing and then I am going to swear you to silence and you are going to do as I say. The night your mother gave me that bundle, she said one more sentence. She said, 'Do not tell the Beta.'" Mira looked at me. "Not 'do not tell the Council' and not 'do not tell the pack.' She said, do not tell the Beta. She knew something about Ruth and she did not have time to say what it was."

I sat in Mira's hut with the list in my hand and the ring on my thumb and the kettle cooling on the stove.

"What do you want me to swear?" I said.

"I want you to swear that you will not tell Ruth about the bundle. Not tonight and not at the inquiry tomorrow. Not until you have stood in front of the Council and put that list on the table and read it aloud. If Ruth knows about it before then, it will be gone or it will be burned or you will be." Mira took my hand. "Swear it."

"I swear it."

"Say the words."

"I swear it, Mira. I will not tell Ruth about the bundle until the inquiry."

Mira let go of my hand. She sat back on her stool and her round face was grey and her hands were shaking.

"Now go," she said. "I have a thing to do and I need to do it alone."

"What thing?"

"I have to write down everything I know about the night your mother died and every word she said to me, and I have to put it in a place where it will be found if something happens to me." Mira got up and went to the shelf. "Go on, Derya. Go back to the hall and hold your wolf awake and let the pack see you doing it. And when you go into that inquiry tomorrow, you go in with the list and the ring and your wolf awake and you do not let go of any of them."

I stood up. I put the list inside my jacket and the ring on my thumb and I went to the door.

"Mira," I said. "If something happens to you."

"Then you will find what I have written and you will use it." Mira did not turn around. "Go."

I went out. The sun was going down over the mesa and the yard was full of the ordinary end of the day, women carrying water and warriors cleaning their boots and old Tomas by the fire, and I walked across the yard with the list against my chest and the ring on my thumb and my wolf awake behind my mark.

At the hall door Cal was waiting for me.

"Luna," he said. "There is a rider at the gate. He says he is from the Council hall at the quarry and that he has a message from the clerk. He says there is a letter in a drawer that was put there four weeks ago and that it has your mother's hand on it, and that he will give it to you tonight if you come down alone."

I looked at him. "Alone."

"Alone. He says if you bring anyone else he will burn it."