WOLVES DON'T TALK

Chapter 3. NOTHING MAKES SENSE

A wolf sat calmly licking one of its paws right next to where I lay on my nest of dried up debris. The thing looked half-starved and pretty mangy. A few tuffs of gray fur mixed randomly in its mostly coal black and very shaggy coat. Drool streamed freely out of its mouth, seeping between its sharp white teeth. Its eyes didn't look so orange in the morning light. They'd lost their glow and seemed more of a yellowish green. I figured it to be a timber wolf because my father had lectured me about wolves just days earlier.

"Canis lupus," he'd said, identifying the wolf by its official scientific name, one of his biologist tricks. "The only ones in the Northwest are timber or gray wolves, but they are rare," he'd told me. "Maybe just a few in the Oregon mountains but none in the California redwood forest where you'll be at Camp Sequoia."

"Good morning," the wolf said in a soft, deep, confident voice.

I nodded at the skinny black creature, sat up, and looked it straight in the eye. I didn't feel so afraid in the morning light. Witches, zombies, vampires and all sorts of monsters stalked my regular world, starring in TV shows and the movies, and even books, all the time.

Every kid living in the 21st century knew how to manage these creatures or, at least, how to avoid them. One ratty talking wolf didn't amount to much of anything. Even Little Red Riding Hood had survived one and she couldn't have been much of a genius because she'd confused it with her grandmother. (She must have had one strange grandmother.)

"You don't belong here. My father is a wildlife biologist and he says there aren't any Canis lupus in these woods," I responded to its morning greeting.

"He must know," the animal said, clenching its teeth as it spoke.

I didn't bother arguing with the creature and shivered, suddenly becoming aware of the damp cold in the forest for the first time since getting lost. August didn't mean anything to this place; no warm sunshine here. A heavy fog hung around the trees and an icy breeze whistled through the overhead canopy. My blue jeans and denim jacket weren't very warm, but it seemed strange that I hadn't noticed before. I'd slept all night without feeling the least bit cold.

The wolf watched me shaking.

"Humans don't have much fur," it said, looking me up and down with a leer that made me nervous. "Do you want me to lay by you again?"

"Wha ... what?" I choked out, not wanting to believe I'd heard right.

"And not much brains either, I suppose," it replied coolly. "I kept you warm all night. I kept you," then it stopped in mid-sentence and shut its toothy mouth tight.

I shut my mouth, too. I didn't feel like thanking it for its services. The thought of having spent the night snuggled up next to such a shaggy beast was more than my brain wanted to handle just then. Following Brock into the forest and getting lost was bad enough but talking and sleeping with a ratty Canis lupus was too weird for real life. So, for a while, we both sat there on the damp ground beneath those towering trees in that wretched foggy place, trying to pretend like the other one wasn't there.

Finally, the wolf broke the silence.

"You don't belong here either," it said.

"No kidding," I replied.

"Why don't you leave?" it asked.

"I'm doing that right now," I said, jumping to my feet. Then, without further ado (as they say in books), I turned my back on that hairy old wolf and marched off through the trees.

"Wrong way," it barked after me.

I paused and glanced anxiously around. The forest surrounding me stretched far off in the distance, way beyond what my diminishing vision could see. Overhead, the thick canopy rose so high into the sky that I had to stand a long way back from any one tree to see where it stopped and the thick black clouds covering the sky started. With them hanging overhead, the sun had little chance of filtering any of its light into the misty woods.