Simon,
Seven blood prophets killed themselves early this morning. The Intuits are in shock. They say they had conflicting feelings about bringing the girls to their village, but they ignored the bad feelings because they wanted to help. Now they say they will keep the young girls but not the girl who was in the room with the dead ones. She has scars and fresh cuts. I think they expect her to kill herself, and they’re afraid of the impact another death will have on all of the children, not just the ones they’re fostering.
The Intuit doctor says the surviving scarred girl is fifteen or sixteen years old. He gave her medicine to make her sleep so that we could move her. We brought her to the earth native settlement at Sweetwater, which is a mile from the Intuit village.
She said she wants to live. We don’t know if she is strong like your Meg, but we were told she came from the same place. How do we keep her alive? Should we keep her alive? Does Meg have answers?
—Jackson
P.S. The Intuits told us the scarred girl is called cs821.
CHAPTER 10
Firesday, Maius 11
At the Addirondak station, Nathan Wolfgard boarded the westbound train. He walked through two cars that were too full for comfort. The third had a few humans clustered near the front of the car but was otherwise empty.
Nathan sighed with relief. He’d hoped taking the earliest available train would reduce the number of humans on board. He’d spent almost two weeks in the Addirondak Mountains, running with one of the packs who guarded that piece of wild country, and he wasn’t ready to interact with humans anymore than necessary.
He stopped at a seat and discovered this part of the car wasn’t quite empty. Across the aisle was a human female scrunched in the seat next to the window.
He thought about moving a few rows farther down, but he had to get used to being around humans again. One small female was a good way to start.
Stowing his carryall in the rack above the seats, he pulled a book out of the side pocket and took the aisle seat. Too easy for a lone Wolf to get trapped if he was in the seat by the window.
He wasn’t due back at the Lakeside Courtyard for another two weeks, but he missed being there. That was a surprise to him as well as the host pack. Even a Courtyard as large as Lakeside’s could feel too small when it was inhabited by terra indigene whose forms were adversaries in the animal world. Earth natives didn’t absorb everything from the forms they had chosen over the long years the sun had risen and set over Namid. They were first and always terra indigene. But they learned from the predators they became, and certain traits were passed down to the young of each form.
Yes, there had been danger, threats, even attacks in the Lakeside Courtyard during the past few months, but there had also been a new kind of fun. Meg Corbyn, Human Liaison and squeaky toy, provided a different kind of interaction with humans. And her presence changed how some other humans approached the Others.
During the day, the Addirondak pack had hunted and played as they usually did. But after dark, after they sang to the world, the Wolves had asked about the Courtyard, about things they’d heard but didn’t quite believe. Sure, the Intuits who lived in the human settlements tucked in the Addirondaks traded fairly with the Others. But none of those humans played with the Wolves. This Meg really played with him?
So at night he told them stories about Meg’s first encounter with him after he’d been assigned to guard the office; about how she had coaxed Sam, Simon Wolfgard’s nephew, out of a cage and how well the pup was doing now; about Skippy, the juvenile Wolf they had sent to Lakeside, catching a mouse and chasing Meg; about how she had met the leader of the Sanguinati—and had befriended Winter and the Elementals’ ponies.
He told them about her sweet blood and the cuts she’d made in her own skin to see the warnings that had saved the ponies . . . and Sam. He told them about cookies that were being made now especially for Wolves. Well, for other terra indigene too, but mostly for the Wolves.
He’d learned more about humans in the past few months than he’d learned in all the time he’d trained to work in a Courtyard and cope with the close proximity of so many humans. He spent as much time in Wolf form as in human form. He ran and played and hunted in the Courtyard just like he could in the wild country. But then he could shift to watch a movie or read a book . . . or play an active, physical game better suited to the human form.