Hitchhikers (Wolf Point #1)

-65-

Lurking in the shadows, I watch the ashes of my house crumble into a pile. The firefighters have given up at this point. Maybe they never cared to begin with. Maybe by the time they got up here, it was too late, and all they cared about was preventing a forest fire. No one is here, crying for the loss of their home, no neighbors to explain anything. The firemen and cops stand around, occasionally spraying at embers, talking in small groups.

Darkness descends, creeping in from the trees and stealing over the charred remains of the house. I wait for the fire trucks to lumber off, for the police cars to wander away and attend to more pressing business, leaving behind ribbons of bright yellow caution tape to keep the onlookers at bay. And there are onlookers, backcountry people from further up the mountains, hungry for a taste of someone else's misery or a possible usable object from the ashes. Once the officials leave I watch these people pick through the remains of my old life. The ashes must still be too hot, for they stay on the edges and drift off.

After so many days and nights of running, I am at a loss. This was my goal, my only destination, and now that it has turned into a dead end, I'm not sure what to do next. The exhaustion settles over me like an iron blanket, and I lie down in the frosty leaves and fall asleep, the scent of smoke as my blanket.

* * *

In the morning I blink awake, shaking off what I first believe is snow on my eyelashes and fur. Then I realize I am covered in ash. Black smudges mar the snowy ground and mark my pelt.

Where to go from here? Somewhere a war is being waged, a war in which I am supposed to be the heroic warrior who saves his beloved and his faithful sidekick. Too bad I can't even find the battle ground.

The black scorch mark on the earth hasn't left much of a trail for me to follow. I can't tell if my mother was here when the fire began, or if she escaped. Surely there would have been a trail leading away if she had, but I can't find one – the smoke is clogging my nose and making it impossible to scent anything. I nose around the wreckage hoping to find something, some relic of my childhood to carry away

(how would I carry it I'm a wolf now)

There's nothing. A howl of sadness erupts from deep within me, echoing through the mountains. It trails in my wake long after I've left Wolf Point, headed south.