Michael carney's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The wolf slept at the foot of Michael's bed. He woke to its breath on his hand and remembered, all at once, that the summer revel was six days off and he could not walk into a fae court with a wolf the size of a pony at his heel. He sat up. The wolf opened one pale eye. His cat, a white and orange stray he called Storm, watched from the top of the wardrobe, tail flicking against the homey flowered wallpaper. Storm had not come down since the wolf arrived. "You cannot come with me," Michael said. "The noble will think I brought a weapon." The wolf thumped its tail once. He tried the door first. He opened it wide, stepped out, and waited. The wolf followed. He walked to the well and back. The wolf followed. He shut the wolf in the shed and got two streets away before he heard the shed door splinter. The wolf trotted up beside him, a strip of pine still caught in its teeth. The herb woman at the crossroads would know. He walked the road with the wolf beside him. She saw them coming and set down her basket. "That is not a wolf," she said. "It followed me out of the wood." She went inside her hut and came back with a dark, worn book. Two wolves were stamped on the cover in faded gold. She pressed it into his hands. "Read the third chapter," she said. "Then decide if you still want to shake it off." He read on her step. The book named them. It named the choosing, the laying of a gift at the feet, the walk across a border. It called the bond a claim, and it said the claim did not break by scolding or by locked doors. It said the wolf would take one form when the moon was right, and that form would be a woman. Michael closed the book. The wolf sat in the road and watched him with the pale, steady eyes he remembered from the fern hollow. "You have to understand," he said. His voice came out thinner than he meant. "I am going to the revel. I am going to marry someone else." The wolf did not move. He could not lose it, and he could not bring it. So he chose the third door. He walked with the wolf to the tall house at the edge of town, the pale stone mansion with the iron balconies, where a distant cousin kept kennels and a stable and asked few questions. He paid her in coin and in the truth, or most of it. He said the animal was tame. He said he would return for it after the revel. The wolf let him fasten a rope. It did not let him walk away easy. It watched him from the gate until the road turned. He went home with the book under his arm and a claim on his back he had not agreed to.