The Spring Between Us

me out of th

he spring house in a long iron line, and where the elbow joint leaked, the water pattered onto the rock and steamed a little in the cold. Warm water meant the spring was alive. Warm

width every morning, six days of listening to Ruth say the same thing at every meal, in her patient voice, that the c

en years, and she had a way of saying things that made them so

little something Mira had not asked about. Three pinches in the spring house and the Çöl pack would be sic

plan. My mother had been in the ground for three week

mineral smell of wet stone that never quite leaves a riverbed. To my right, the spring house sat in a nest of boulders, low walls of fitted rock, a tin roof, a door

pack had held that spring for forty ye

poison in my pocket, and a plan I had rehearsed

e wind

d the smell of juniper and dust and something underneath both of those, s

swinging his muzzle toward the wind, and I should have taken that as a warning and gone fl

k, and it was in me now, and every part of me that had ever been a wolf was pulling t

. Not this borde

rd the spring house, and the other one stood up, shook

m a distance, both times across a line of armed warriors, both times at enough distance that his face was only a shape. This one was younger and leaner, and he pul

the door

ng enough for my knees to lock and my jaw to ache from clenching. The scent was still in the wind, fainter now, drifting, and I told m

pring house door stood ajar,

n a juniper root, when he came out of th

e watched me come down the last twenty feet of rock, and when I stopped, six paces from him, wi

my pocket and I could not remember a si

or what,

and they were not angry. That was the worst of it. I had expected anger. I had built my whole plan out of the belief that the Çöl Alpha would be furious and

I said.

articular weight. "Luna of the Kızılta

are

ning its warm line down into the dark. "This is my pack's land, and that is my pack's water,

d the hook went through me so hard that I put a hand out and caught the juniper t

m take a breath, and I watched him go still the way a deer goes still, a

been hauling barrels from the creek bed for six days and finding mud. My mother's pack is dri

t

u admi

yself stand my ground. "I also admit that a pack with a spring does not usually let its neighbors dry out, because a nei

e I

, at the pocket, and I saw his nostril

not

n their backs for a month," he said. "The old ones might no

s working, and the warm water pattered on the rock, and my knees had begun

at would happen if the spring ever failed." He said it without heat, the way a man reads a bill of ladi

d cut into my palm and I could feel the blood

nd off the tr

N

ed so hard that my wolf, my late, stubborn, half-wild wolf who had been sleeping all win

ooking

ince you came over the rim, an hour before dawn. I know what I smell. You

ead I stood there with my bloody hand on the juniper and let him come close enough that I could see the small scar

oice had gone strange. "

astern rim where the sky was turning the color of a bruise. "Three months ago," he said. "At the Council gatheri

ehind her chair in a borrowed dress with my hair pinned up and eaten l

e months and you d

ith a claim like that?" He turned back. "Your mother would have had me driven off the mesa. Ruth would have made sure of it. And you would hav

es not

the cup on the wa

se that mome

, and there was nothing there, and then there was a line, thin and pale as a scratch, curling from the base of my thumb toward the pulse. It did no

aught my arm before I

ist, right over the mark, an

a surge that started where his skin met mine and ran up my arm and down my spine and into my teeth. I heard him take a sharp bre

ng me up with one arm and staring at

. My mouth was dry. "Y

oved across the mark, once, and I felt it

re was blood on his cuff now, and the poison was still in my pocket, an

e to ruin y

kno

have the

g to do. I am going to walk to that spring house and bar the door and stand in front of it. You are going to take the poison out of your pocket and hand it to me

hy. It came up out of me like a c

e picked up the cup and held i

debt attached to it. I thought of Ruth at the pack table with her careful voice. I thought of my mother's grave, still

brought out the wax paper pac

Not a favor from the Çöl pack. A share, on pap

in his palm for a long m

e and go home and come back w

a terri

e only on

ing that he seemed to regret almost immedia

olf began to settle for the first time in three weeks. I was not sure I liked that. I was not sure of anything, excep

ore thing. The wolves who saw you come over the rim tonight will talk. By noon tomorrow,

her w

ist, at the mark the lamplight had turned t

g and high and wrong, and another answered it, and another, and Hank's head came up as if someone had shouted his name. The howl broke off. Then a se

the door. "That is n