WOLVES DON'T TALK

Chapter 5. THE DEVIL LIVES UP THERE

I spent the rest of that day and all of the night next to the fire. The lady gave me a couple slices of flat bread to eat but I couldn't say just when. I didn't complain and greedily consumed them and ate two more later on as well. They tasted very bland but must have been quite nourishing because they filled my stomach right up. She also offered me some water to drink from an old gourd. After gulping it down, I slept.

When I awoke the following morning, the lady and the wolf both sat there by the fire, side by side, staring at me. They were an odd pair: The shaggy black creature and the white, white woman. Looking at the two of them sent shivers through me.

The fog had lifted and the sun shone brightly in the clearing. In its light, my companions looked like a nightmare worth avoiding. A good night's rest and the warm sunshine supplied me with the strength and determination to do so. I stumbled to my feet and headed off for the trees surrounding the clearing.

The white woman called after me.

"Don't leave. Pleassse ssstay," she begged in whispered words that sounded almost like a snake hissing over my shoulder.

"Stay!" the wolf barked loudly. There was no misunderstanding its command. My feet answered its order and stopped short, causing me to stumble and almost fall. A feeling of helplessness crept over me. I had no power over my own limbs, my own actions.

"Please," the lady repeated without a hint of hissing this time. "We need a friend."

Then an astounding thing happened.

"Please," the wolf said, repeating her plea, just asking and not commanding as it had done so often before.

The somber tone of its request convinced my feet to move again, but back toward the clearing and away from the trees. I reversed course and headed toward the odd couple, this time coming not because the wolf's glare was urging me on but because I wanted to help them. They needed a friend. I knew what it was like to need one of those. Mine had all deserted me. They'd left me alone in the forest. They'd left me alone in the gifted class.

"I'll help," I offered, walking over to the lady and laying my hand in her very smooth pale palm. She pressed it eagerly and smiled.

"Let's eat," she said, digging into a hidden pouch in her toga and coming up with some more of that flat bread.

She also produced the gourd again; this time handing it to the wolf and asking it to take it to an unseen stream for filling. It grabbed the makeshift cup gently in its jaws and marched off, clearly intent upon fulfilling her command.

I'd eaten the bread by the time the creature returned and eagerly slurped the water from the gourd. Even though it was somewhat muddy looking, it was cold and satisfying to drink.

Neither the wolf nor the lady ate any of the bread or drank any of the water. I chose not to ask either myself or them why. By this time, I'd decided to ignore how odd the two of them were. There was no use in trying to figure out how a wolf could talk or a lady resembling a marble statue could be real. Frankly, I didn't want to know too much about this pair. Someday, I would get out of this forest and return to my normal, ignorant life. I wasn't going to clutter my head up with a lot of weird stuff.

The wolf interrupted my thoughts.

"This lady is my friend," it said, nodding at the white woman. "I found her wandering in the woods. She is lost. You must help her. She has lost her key and you must help her find it."

"Me!" I blurted out. "I'm the one who is lost," I protested.

"My key is gone," the lady said, ignoring my confusion. "It broke into three pieces and the wind carried them away. And now, I am lost." She gave me another one of her long looks and then glanced anxiously around the clearing like she was looking for some familiar sight.

I gulped a slug of water from the gourd, pausing for sanity as I tried to understand.

"Who are you?" I asked hesitantly, not sure I really wanted to know.

The lady responded quickly.

"I am Pythia, the great oracle," she said, standing straight up with her shoulders thrown back and her head held high, like she was an important person I should know.

"And you, my dear," she added, bending over and grabbing my hand, raising me to my full four-foot ten stature. "You are Car the Wise, the Great Diviner. You will find my key."

This was too much for me. I jerked my hand from her grasp. The whole conversation had exceeded my sense of reality. I knew who I was and no weird lady was going to tell me any different.

"I'm Carmen Pimentel," I stated, maybe a little too loudly; I was so stunned. "And I don't know anything about keys or anybody named Car the Wise. I don't even know what an oracle is. I don't know what a Diviner is either. But I do know how I got here and where I come from and I'm going back there right now."

Then I turned away from that weird pair again and marched off toward the trees.

"Wrong way," the wolf barked at my departing backside. "You're going the wrong way."

It worked. I stopped and spun around to face the hairy black beast. It knew darn well how to handle me but, this time, I wasn't going to let it win. Well, not entirely.

"Shut up!" I barked myself as I reversed my course back to the fire and slumped down on that ratty pile of pine needles again. "You're ugly and YOU DONT BELONG HERE," I snarled at the wretched Canis lupus.

The wolf responded by opening its mouth in a big, wide, toothy grin and glaring at me with a long, deadly look; its eyes flashing bright orange even in the daylight, like it was getting ready to swallow me whole. But it didn't because I gave it my own long, deadly look right back.

"Little girl," it said, grinding its teeth at the sight of my resistance, "Pythia is the great Greek oracle who looked into the future and predicted what was going to happen. She could tell a farmer if he was going to grow a good crop or a girl if she was going to marry a rich man."

"Huh," I responded. What else could I say? I'd never heard of such a thing. It didn't make any sense in my world where I could consult online applications to predict the future of the weather and growing conditions, as well as find a rich man for a girl to chase after, if she were the type.

"A Diviner is a guesser, an analyst of sorts. Pythia thinks you are good at figuring things out," the wolf continued, ignoring my lack of appreciation for the oracle's skills.

"I don't get it," I responded, crunching up my nose and cheeks and eyes, demonstrating my doubt with my face.

"I told her my guess," the wolf said, emphasizing the word guess, is that you're lazy and don't study, but you do okay in school anyway because you can guess and work out answers when you need them.

I felt astounded. It knew me; I guessed a lot of answers on my tests by just putting together information floating around in my head.

"Please, Car, help us," the lady pressed her request as I sat there dumbfounded by yet another startling event on top of all the other ones in the past couple of days. "I've looked and looked but haven't found any of the pieces. You must help us figure it out," Pythia added.

"Where did you lose your key?" I asked, feeling somewhat numb by it all and too tired to resist any further.

"On the mountain," Pythia answered, pointing at a rocky peak overshadowing the entire forest and glittering in the morning sun, reflecting a recent light snow fall on its very top.

"You're sure," I replied, my voice shaking at a piece of news worse than anything I'd met up with so far in the forest.

"Yes," Pythia replied calmly. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing much. It's just that the devil lives up there," I said. They'd told us all about that mountain back at Camp Sequoia and we'd all agreed that we'd never ever go there.

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