The Fire Wolf's Mate

ack to the eva

get a bottle of water and a lecture about smoke inhalation. You fill out a form that goes to a file cabinet nobody opens. I did none of it. I walked away from the

top of a ridge, with a map table and a cot and a woodstove with a crack in its door. It had been decommissioned in

own on the floor with my back again

ur eyes since you were twelve, and you have been holding your breath, and you have been pressing the back of your hand to your nose, and you have been telling yourself that if you

omeone were running a thumb down a bead necklace, and I felt my shoulders roll forward and my hips s

because I

in my head: the night my sister died, the door of the clinic swinging on its hinge, and me on the floor with my hands still human and my sis

lawed to get out. I held it until my vision went grey at the edges and I had to put my forehead on

n the valley a helicopter went over and went away. I drank two swallows from the water bottle in my pack, and I did not shift, and ev

d stood at the big window with my hands on the sill and looked out over the vall

y palm along it out of habit, and my finge

ere were scorch m

ad touched the wood and pulled away, and there was a finer trail of them running along the edge of the frame and down to the corner of the wall. I put my face close. The smell was faint and chemical, an

oli

irection. Something had caught fire here, against the glass, and someone had put it out or it had burned itself out. There were two tiny ho

d such a bad job of it that the burn pattern looked like a child's drawing. The investigator had shown me the mark of a propan

tte thrown into dry grass. Someone had opened this l

r. The lookout sits on the ridge above the den. You can see the pack's roof from the north window if you know where to look. Whoever put tho

y, under the mattress of the cot: a folded sheet of paper gone soft at the creases, and inside it, a pic

pphire Mountains. The lin

ng and the smell of gasoline still in my nose, and I felt the gr

nd I said it under my breath the way other people say a prayer. It is not a thing I tell people. My sister knew it.

that anyone in the valley could have said a number. It was a coincidence. Coincidences happen. The paper had been under a mattress for years, probably, and someo

on the ridge had started at the bunker and the bunker sat under the lookout like a coin un

nd find Tessa and put all of this in front of somebody who would listen. I picked up t

ng up at a pace that

nto the habit of saving me from having to answer it. I looked around the little room for something to hold in my hand and found

d the landing. T

he

ars and it had said my name that morning in the

door. "I saw the lantern light. I h

aw

e someone else does. The boy in the ambulance. He woke up on the way to Missoula and tol

ck against the wall and my heart going like

the window, and you and I both know what that means. I have been at the fire all day and I have been thinking about a wo

ded paper in my jacket p

oor," he sa

hand on t