2-Alder

A Chapter by Brianna Wagner

A pack of Cousins, intermediaries between the human and animal world, pick up an injured drifter.

Synopsis: The Cousins are intermediaries between the natural world and the human one. Lena is a Cousin to the black wolves, an extinct variety of Florida red wolf. After her family was abducted from the nature reserve St. Vincent's island when she was a child, she lived in Florida foster care until she aged out of the system. Alienated from both humans and her own kind, Lena traveled north to Appalachia, where she's been eeking out a quiet living in the wild. After a bad injury, Lena is forced to seek help in a city with a pack of Cousins like herself. When the organization that kidnapped her family all those years ago are tipped off to her location, they're all thrust into danger.

2-Alder

The day we met Lena, Reed and I had been fighting for three days straight. It reminded me of when we were teenagers back at the ranch, when our year first arrived and everyone was trying to get on top of everyone else. Everyone wanted to prove himself. Every boy wanted to be an alpha, we were at that age, and we knew we couldn’t all be.

When we first got to the ranch, Reed was sixteen and I was fifteen, and we fought constantly. We were bunked in the same group and something about him just pissed me off. Even back then, he was huge and square-jawed like a linebacker. There was something so contemptuous about him, and I was always going out my way to rile him. The fire of our rivalry blazed strong for almost two years. We were learning wilderness survival, hunting, fighting, nursing, all the skills we would need when we were sent out to a territory. We slept outside in hammocks on clear nights and hung tarps on stormy ones. We learned to build our own fires and cook our own food, although we knew, in theory, cooking meat would be a luxury in a survival scenario. We knew that nomadic Cousins of other families"less progressive than our own, we told ourselves"stripped and ate their meat straight from the carcass. And all the time, Reed and I were competing over everything. We raced, swam and climbed, all of it in a bid to be top dog, so to speak. We competed for friendships and girls’ affections. Fern and Reed were good friends from the start, and so I befriended her just to make him jealous. You might think this would be an unhealthy start to a relationship, but we really pushed each other.

At first, the sight of him lit me up with anger. The arrogant twist of his mouth, his dark glaring eyes, muscles that seemed to taunt me in comparison. It was as if he already knew he would be chosen as an alpha and was simply biding his time. Reed at sixteen was more conceited than I could bear. I could have ignored him in those days, pursued other ambitions and left him to himself. No one else wanted to get close to him either, either out of jealousy or intimidation. But I kept at him. The burning irritation turned to a heat I couldn’t understand.

Then one night, after our friends had gone to bed and we were still out sparring on the pitch, something happened. I had pinned him, something that almost never happened because he was so big, and suddenly I was grabbing the sides of his face, smudged with dirt, and pulling it up toward mine. I was always more impulsive, him more planful. He told me later that he’d thought out everything, right up to my besting him, but had left it up to me to make the first move. He knew I would. And that’s how it started.

These days it was much the same. I still chafed under his leadership, and he seethed over my stubbornness and general disarray. Only now we made up in much more spectacular fashion.

We’d just gotten done making up and were lying together in bed when we got the call from Fern about the wounded mutt in town. She didn’t say mutt, Reed did. He took a lot of that family purity bullshit to heart back at the ranch, even though it’s sort of racist and an unclaimed Cousin can’t help it if she’s unclaimed. But I can see his point. Unclaimed wanderers can be something of a wild card. Some of them go crazy living alone in the wild, especially in areas where their bonded species is endangered or eliminated. Linking with coyotes and foxes in remote Appalachia for twenty years could drive anyone a little barmy. So I knew we had to be cautious, especially since Fern implied the girl was wounded and we didn’t know from what.

Holly and Sage had both slipped out, presumably to avoid our noisy f*****g, so it was just the two of us taking the car down to town. The van was a company car, so to speak, provided by the family on the basis that we kept it up and didn’t crash it. Because of that Reed rarely let me drive. I liked going fast; I could get us killed on the curvy mountain roads.

Fern had really underplayed the situation in her brief message. Probably didn’t want to scare the girl. She was in bad shape, grey in the face and bleeding pretty profusely, when we stepped out of the car.

“About time,” Fern said, calm, but I could read worry on her face.

Reed stared at the girl. “Is she going to get blood on the seats?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll lay down a towel.” I lowered my voice. “Is she going to be okay? She looks bad.”

“I’m okay,” the girl slurred. She was lying on the park bench with her eyes closed. “I think I’ll just need stitches.”

“Her name is Lena. She fought a mountain lion, isn’t that right? Here, help me with her.” Fern slipped her arm under the girl’s shoulders and Reed hurried over to help her. I went to open the car door from the inside and manhandle her into the backseat.

“You guys have a car?” Lena said, slumped against Fern as we started back up the mountain road.

“Yeah, you get one for your pack if you get sent to the territories.” Reed gripped the steering wheel. “For long distances and emergencies.”

She seemed skeptical. “Is this an emergency?”

“No, as long as you keep still ‘til we get home.”

The cabin was not too far from town, but it sat on the other side of the mountain, facing away. It looked out green on the national park in the clear day, but by now the sun had begun to sink, setting the valley on fire with orange and red. Reed shielded his eyes from the glare as he pulled into the driveway. The wheels of the sedan crunched over the gravel. In a moment, he was out and hefting the girl out of the car and into the house.

“Lay a blanket over the kitchen table,” Fern ordered.

I took a folded flannel from some musty closet and spread it out. Reed and Fern gently maneuvered the girl on top of it, Fern cradling the gashed arm.

“Where did you find a cougar so close to town?” Fern asked as she rustled through the kitchen drawers. We’d gotten the place fairly well stocked, less with cooking utensils and more with basic medical equipment. The family couldn’t care less about our ability to strain pasta or spear shish kabobs, but they made sure we were equipped to handle minor medical emergencies. The idea was that none of our kind be showing up at a hospital and inviting questions. It was a huge pain for one of the “family friends” to have to come in and keep things quiet.

“Took down a doe and it wanted a piece,” Lena said. She sat up, braced on one elbow, head leaned back, eyes closed. Cold sweat ran down the back of her neck from her thick mop of blue-black hair. “It wasn’t so close, though. I was five or six miles out of town.”

“You walked that far?”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t that bad at first,” she snapped.

I could practically see Reed’s hackles rising. The girl wasn’t worrying me though. She was getting weaker by the second, and I knew she was probably afraid. The wolf would take over any minute, and then things might get a little messier.

Fern went right to work cleaning and stitching the gash, no fuss, no muss, while Reed sulked in the doorway. The girl growled a little when the needle went in but otherwise kept quiet. When Fern was done, she closed her eyes and laid her head back. I got a good look at her while her guard was down: her hair was thick and black, tied back with what looked like a piece of leather, clean but tangled. Her brown hands were caked black with dirt under slivers of fingernails. She was wearing worn out, grimy moccasins, probably deer skin; they looked crude and handmade, wrapped with more dirty twists of leather. Her clothes seemed unusually clean considering the rest of her, probably stolen. Bloody and coarse as she looked, you could tell she was probably trouble. Reed could probably tell too, but he also seemed threatened, and I wasn’t. Who knew what she might do. I liked her right off.

Fern was back rattling around in the kit. “Could still be infected. We’ll have to wait and see. The site looks clean for now though.”

Reed cut in. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Her name is Lena,” Fern said.

“Lena. You’re welcome to stay the night until you get on your feet again. We have an extra cot. Food, medicine, whatever you need.” But the limit was implied. One night only, then pack your bags and be on your way. The husbandry between Cousins encouraged friendliness and generosity, particularly to our own kind, but Reed could not be persuaded past the bare minimum. Patience and understanding weren’t either of the things I loved about him.

“Thanks.” The girl stood up gingerly and Fern took her to the couch to sit down. She seemed on edge, no wonder from the chilly welcome she’d received. Reed’s gaze met mine and we went outside. I’m thinking that he wants to have one of his trademark Reed tense conversations about the girl staying.

But as soon as we got out on the front porch, he said, “Al, I’m sorry.”

I never know what’s going on inside his head.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry too I guess.” I scooched up close to him, and he slid his hand around my lower back. It was about as handsy as he got outside the bedroom, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Over the years, I really saw that Reed was as honest as they come. No matter how unbelievable he acted, it was just exactly what he felt with no subtext, and I loved that about him. Growing up, we had to constantly be attuned to body language and social cues to tell us what was expected. The old Cousins on the council rarely communicated in clear statements, and kids like us always were getting in trouble until we could get it right. I know my mother was upset when I told her that our pack was moving so far east, but I was relieved. I couldn’t wait to get away from the council and all their oppressive subterfuge. I wanted to miss my family, my pack, my older brothers, but all I could remember was all the times my father smacked me after I missed the signal to be quiet.

Now with me and Reed, we always said exactly what we meant. We fought a lot, but there was a degree of clarity I never felt at home. And anyway, even though being sent so far away was a blessing in disguise, they did send us away for a reason.

We both jumped and pulled apart when Holly crashed through the brush into our little yard.

“Jesus, aren’t you done yet?”

The knees of her PINK sweatpants were caked with dirt, but otherwise she could have been out jogging. Panting and pink-faced, she huffed past, slamming the front door behind her. Sage followed tentatively, wiping blood and hair from his mouth. They must have been hunting. Well, Holly must have been. Sage never did more than tag along and take the scraps.

“Find anything good?” I called.

He shook off some dry leaves and twigs off his flannel shirt. Sage always looked like he borrowed his clothes from a big brother. This was his favorite shirt, and he was just swimming in it. “Just a rabbit. It’s looking pretty sparse out there. I don’t know how the wild ones do it.”

Reed stepped in front of the door, blocking his way. “Speaking of wild. We got a visitor staying with us for the night.” I nudged him. “Maybe a couple of days. I didn’t get the chance to tell Holly"”

Just then Holly busted back out of the front door. “Who the s**t is bleeding all over the couch?”

“Holly"”

“Come on, Reed, she looks like a goddamn meth head, don’t tell me we’re supposed to leave her in a room alone"”

“Holly.”

She rolled her eyes and slammed the front door. Reed and I exchanged a look.

“How much longer do we have her again?” Reed sighed.

Sage giggled nervously. The two of them were “juniors,” sent to live with Reed, Fern and I out of some misguided attempt to shape them up. The youth council took a couple of kids out of the ranch who seemed like they weren’t getting anywhere and sent them to live with packs in the territories. We got Sage and Holly six months before. Holly’s problems were immediately apparent: she had a huge attitude problem, lots of misplaced aggression, and she took a little too much pleasure in the kill. It took a bit longer to tease out the council’s issue with Sage. He was neat and obedient to a fault. Turns out he couldn’t kill anything, period. No stones, no killing instinct. We were predators, and he couldn’t even bring himself to dismember a rabbit. The bigger game turned his stomach even if he didn’t have to do the killing himself. He’d never be a productive member of a pack unless he got over fussy disposition. We’d have them until either they worked past their issues, or until the youth council gave up on them.

The sky was getting dark by the time we finally headed back in. Holly was holed up in the room she shared with Fern, and Lena was out cold on the couch. The drifter’s filthy moccasins hung over the side of the couch. Fern hadn’t dared done more than tuck the flannel blanket around her, clothes and all. Now she was rifling through the girl’s backpack.

“Find any heroin in there?” Holly called loudly from her doorway. “Maybe some severed fingers?”

Fern hushed her but didn’t reply. When I reached out to take a look, she pulled back.

“We shouldn’t be going through her things,” she said, an odd look on her face.

I shrugged and went back to Reed and my room. While Reed scratched around for something to eat, I packed a pipe and lit up. We passed it back and forth over canned chili before we had sex again. He let go much more easily when he was high, stroking my face and chest, teasing and giggling. I felt so close to him then, so attune to every smile and sigh, that I couldn’t even remember what we’d fought about, until Holly banged on the wall and told us to keep it down.

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