WOLVES DON'T TALK

Chapter 16. DAPHNE LOVES CARMEN

I anxiously bent over and pushed my fingers into the mud and retrieved the golden coin. Right away, I knew I'd discovered another piece of Pythia's missing key. It looked just like the first coin I'd found earlier in the forest, except for the single letter inscribed on it. This one had an H. Just holding it in my hand made me feel like laughing. I'd found the piece without going very far into the deadly clearing. I'd made a good decision and had been rewarded for it. Things were looking up.

Daphne hopped up as I stood there admiring both my new treasure and my stunning intelligence. She peered at me anxiously through her ridiculously long eyelashes.

However, before she could see the treasure, I quickly folded my fingers over the coin and jammed my hand into my pocket under a ratty old piece of red ribbon I'd been carrying with me forever for a reason even I'd forgotten.

"I'm fine," I said, answering her implied inquiry, releasing the coin in my pocket as I spoke.

The rabbit glared at me in response, clearly doubting my sincerity. She seemed to know I was keeping something from her but I didn't feel bad about it. I'd already made a terrible mistake by sharing with the two-faced rabbit and, even though the animals had offered to help me find the rest of the key, I felt leery about sharing any further secrets.

"Hey," I said, trying to divert her attention from the coin, "how come you're here? I thought you were going to wait over by the other side of the fence for me."

The rabbit gave me an odd look, like it could actually understand what I said. Then she sidled up to me and rested her red bunny check right next to one of mine. She'd been worried about me.

"Carmen is just fine," I repeated and gave her a friendly pat on her head between her soft floppy bunny ears. She responded by fluttering her movie star lashes up and down. There was no mistaking her concern for me.

"Well, well, well, I thing you're great, too," I blurted out, not knowing what else to say.

Sylvilagus fluttering lashi, I thought, finally coming up with a scientific name for the rabbit, who'd been a true friend to me. Then, for just a second, both of us stood there grinning stupidly at each other until I decided to break the sweet scene up.

"We'd better get back to the others," I said, leading Daphne out of the clearing and making a beeline for the old logging road.

The sun beamed down on us as we worked our way back down the mountain past the row of dead trees and vegetation. And, even though we stumbled a lot when we reached the rugged old logging road, tripping over the many ruts and all the debris cluttering the way, the trip back to the animal camp went faster than our climb up the mountain had earlier in the day.

I felt a whole lot better than I had earlier as well. I didn't have to worry about devils jumping out and throwing me into a bottomless pit anymore and my fingers kept reaching inside my jeans pocket and caressing the golden coin. My journey had been a success.

But I still had a lot of problems. One piece of the key was still missing and Pythia needed it badly. I shuddered to think about what all those weird animals might be doing to the wolf in my absence as well. I also needed to learn about the clearing filled with all the rusty barrels. I had to understand why the wolf had forbidden me to go there and why the forest ranger had looked so serious when asked about the place so many eons ago back at Camp Sequoia. He'd meant it when he told us no one should go there.

About half way back to the animal clearing, I paused to slurp some water from one of the packets in the tattered blue backpack. The Daphne rabbit nudged me with her nose when she saw me slurping, clearly wanting me to share it. I nodded at a nearby creek, but the rabbit looked offended and shook her head back and forth in a wild refusal. I sauntered over to the creek, trying to understand and quickly got the message as I watched odd green sparkles of light reflecting off the water in the sunshine. The sparkles reminded me of the seeping pool of green liquid back at the chemical dump.