The Spring Between Us

Chapter 53: My Mother's Handwriting

We sat in the chamber under the pump house with the lantern and the iron box and the letter, and I read it again.

There was more of it. The first page had been folded over twice and I had read the top of it in the dark with the pick still in my hand and had not turned it over. I turned it over now.

The wolf who has been coming to this canyon for nine years is not who he says he is. His name is Silas and he is the son of the man who broke the first pact and he has been looking for the two rings for twenty years. I do not know how he found out about the rings. I think your father told the Council clerk in the letter he sent the winter before he died, and I think the clerk gave that letter to Silas's father, and I think Silas has been coming to this canyon ever since to find what your father hid.

I have been watching him. He came to the spring house in June with two men and they put a plate over the welling hole. I saw them do it from the ridge and I did not go down because I was alone and I was frightened. I went home and I wrote to the Council and I told them what I had seen 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 that was not from the Council. It was from Silas and it said that if I took the matter to the Council he would see to it that the pack was dissolved and the south section given to the company and every wolf in the canyon put off their land. And at the bottom of it he had written a thing I did not understand until this week. He wrote, tell your daughter to keep her arm covered.

He knows about the marks. He knows about the bond. He has been watching you and the Alpha of the Çöl pack since the spring gathering and he has been waiting for the mark to show. Do not let him see it. Do not let him know the bond is open. If he sees it he will do what his father did to the first pair and what he did to my mate.

I have been to see Ruth. I told her what I had found and I asked her to stand with me. She said she would think about it and she asked me for the letters your father wrote. I did not give them to her. I am writing this down because I do not know who else to tell. Ruth has been taking money from the company for two years and she has been lying to me about it and I do not know whether she is frightened or bought. I have loved her like a sister for eleven years and I do not know what she is.

Derya. If I am dead when you read this, do not go to the Council alone. Go to the packs. The packs are the law in this canyon and the Council is only a paper. And find the second ring. It is behind the second door with the first ring and the proof of what the Council did to the first pair. Your father put it there and he told me where it was and I have never been down that shaft because I could not get the second key until last week. The wolf who had it was Elias and he gave it to me the night before I died.

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.

I love you. I have loved you since the day you were born and I have been a poor mother these last weeks and a worse Luna and I am sorry for it. Be better than me. Be the Luna who does not go alone.

I put the letter down on the concrete floor of the chamber and put my hand over my mouth.

Hank was quiet beside me. Cal was at the ladder with his back to us. Mira was kneeling by the iron box with her hands in her lap.

"She knew," I said. "She knew about Silas and she knew about the plate and she knew about the marks. She knew all of it and she went up to that spring house alone because she did not have anyone to go with her." I picked up the letter. "She asked Ruth to stand with her. She asked Ruth and Ruth said she would think about it. And then Ruth asked her for my father's letters and my mother would not give them to her. Four days later she was dead."

Mira said, "Ruth told me she asked your mother twice whether I had found anything unusual on the body. She asked me in that voice she has."

"And my mother asked Ruth to stand with her and Ruth asked for the letters." I folded the letter and put it in my jacket. "Ruth was taking company money and she was frightened and she was not sure yet which side she was on. And then my mother died and Ruth chose her side and she chose it badly for a month and then she rode down that mesa road and confessed it and Silas put a rope on her wrists."

"The letter says Silas wrote to your mother and told her to keep your arm covered," Hank said. "He knew about the bond before the gathering. He knew about the marks before you and I had ever touched." He looked at me. "Derya. He has been waiting for us. The whole of this. The inquiry and the vote and the seat and the lease. He has been waiting for the pair to show and then he has been moving us around the board like pieces."

"He has been moving us around the board," I said. "But he does not have the second ring. He has been looking for it for twenty years and he does not have it, and now I have the key to the door it is behind." I put my hand on the key around my neck. "And he does not know that we have found this box. Wren was in the attic tonight looking for it and she did not find it and she went back to the hall and told him there was nothing there. So he thinks it is still hidden and he thinks he has time."

"What are you going to do?" Mira said.

I got up. My hands were cut from the concrete and my back ached and my eyes were dry and hot, and I stood in the empty chamber with the lantern and the box and the letter and I said, "I am going to do what my mother told me to do. I am going to go to the packs."

"The packs voted against you," Cal said. "Thirty one to twenty eight."

"Thirty one to twenty eight in a hall with a Council man standing over them and a story about a hanged Beta in their ears. That is not the pack. That is the hall." I picked up the lantern. "Cal. I want you to go to Sten."

Cal's face changed. "Luna. Sten turned his back on you in the hall."

"I know. And Sten is not a fool. He is a warrior who thinks a Luna should kill the wolf who killed her mother, and I did not, and he turned his back, and then his twenty two wolves went down to the creek bed and drank poisoned water and one of them is dead. Sten is sitting at the old ore shaft tonight with twenty two warriors and a dead man's blood on his hands and a story about Wren and a council man that he has not heard yet." I looked at Cal. "Go and find him and tell him I want to talk. Not in the hall. In the open. At the creek bed where Arne died."

Cal looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "I will go."

"And Cal. Tell him one thing more. Tell him the rogue who put the rope on his Luna's mother's wrists is in the Council hall tonight and that I am the only wolf in this canyon who has kept her alive to talk." I went to the ladder. "Tell him I am asking. Not ordering. Asking."

Cal went up the ladder. I stood at the bottom of it with the lantern and the key around my neck and the letter in my jacket and Hank beside me.

"Derya," he said.

"What?"

"Your mother's letter. The last line. Be the Luna who does not go alone." He looked at me. "You have been alone since the spring. You are not alone now. There is a pack out there and a town at the bottom of the canyon and a rogue in the Council hall and a Beta in a closed room and a wolf sitting at an ore shaft with twenty two warriors who does not know yet that he is still yours." He put his hand out. "So let us go and get them."

I put my hand in his. The mark on my arm was warm and bright.

We went up the ladder.