Page 2 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
and then led her down a short alley, to where a small huddled form was curled into a blanket.
“See?” the girl asked, clamping down hard on Lila’s fingers in her excitement.
“Yeah, see?” the boy, presumably her brother, added. “She’s right there!”
“Isn’t this a school night?” But she bent over the small figure, blinked as her brain tried to process the image, gently touched it on the shoulder, then pinched her own leg
(Nope. Not dreaming.)
and looked up at the kids. “All right, first, that’s not a kid, it’s a bear cub for some reason. Second, I’m not a vet. Most important, I’m not an EMT, either.”
Instead of answering, the girl whacked the boy on the arm and hissed something that sounded like, “Unstable!”
“My high school guidance counselor would agree.” Lila bent back over the curled up mass of black, fluffy, whimpering fur that cowered away from her and glared with dark eyes. “I’m not sure what it is you think I can do.” She looked back up only to see the children’s expressions had transformed; they were actually edging away from her. “Why are you doing that? You guys luredmehere. If anyone should be uneasy, it’s me. Shouldn’t you have picked my pocket by now?” She looked around the utterly deserted alley. For the first time, she realized she couldn’t hear anything: no bugs, no birds, nothing. And not much light from the lone streetlight. Downright creepy.
She checked the mouth of the alley for the wolf and was again disappointed to see nothing.
“You’re right, sorry,” the boy said.
“Yeah, sorrywebotheredyougoodbyenow.”
Lila sighed. She was in it the minute she’d stepped down from the vehicle that wasn’t an ambulance. “Goddamnit. Okay, so, just because I can’t help doesn’t mean someone else can’t.” She stood, only to see the children take several steps back. “Maybe call animal control?” She had to, she realized. You couldn’t just leave a random bear cub in a random alley after random kids flagged down a random adult.
But in the time it took her to fish out her phone and begin looking up Lilydale Animal Control—or would that be Saint Paul?—the children had (cue the dramatic music) vanished. Like the wolf, her patience, and her faith in the good people at Apartment Guide.
“Nice quiet neighborhood,” she muttered to the Realtor who wasn’t there. “Lots of families. It’s in the middle of a national park. Bargain.”
She’d been a Lilydale resident for fewer than eighteen hours and had no idea who to call. And after a day of unpacking, she was standing in an alley at 8:00 p.m. After hitting a wolf. The one thing she did know: she—they—couldn’t stay there indefinitely.
“You’d tell me if you were a metaphor, right, teeny tiny bear cub?”
She scooped it up, surprised by how light it was, given that it was the size of a small golden retriever
(it must be mostly fur, the way birds are mostly feathers)
then checked for the wolf one more time, and headed back to her nonbulance.
* * *
He had her, he had the cub’s scent, he had to
(make her safe)
do his job, he had to
(keep her safe)
and that was fine, he could and he would but then
YOW!
the big noisysmellything bit him and sent him tumbling and here came the Stable so he crouched down down down
(don’t see me)
in the dark hollow by the ditch and here she came
(don’t smell me)
