“Listen, Wolf. I don’t know where you live or how long you’ll stay here. Granddad said your packs move around a lot. But I’m going to be here all summer.”
She knew she was being silly. Wolves didn’t understand people. They weren’t meant to be pets. But the thought of being separated from the wolf—her wolf—so soon was an unbearable prospect. Not when she had the whole summer ahead of her.
And maybe, just maybe, her wolf was different.
She held out her hand, not quite touching him. “I’m going to come back here tomorrow, wolf. And tomorrow and the next day. Right here to this same place.”
She looked around. This was a good place. She’d never run across it before, but it was made to be a hideaway, the kind she’d always wanted to make her own. A fallen pine had formed a framework across a hollow between two jutting rocks; dogwoods and ferns had grown to fill in the open spaces between the dead branches. Two yards away a stream bubbled, nearly hidden by the undergrowth.
Alex looked back at the wolf. “I know you can’t tell me your name. But I want to give you one anyway, in case… in case you come back.”
It was ridiculous to expect any such thing. She waited for the wolf to vanish like the wraith he was. Slowly he sat down, ears flickering forward and back in clear uncertainty. And then he nodded again; she didn’t know what else to call the gesture. He dipped his head and looked up, watching her.
She needed to find a name. A name for such a wonderful creature, one she could hold in her heart forever.
“Shadow,” she breathed. “You were my shadow today, weren’t you? And you’re dark like one.”
Her smile widened. “You’re like a shadow, Wolf, because you’re something people are afraid of until they see it up close.”
Shadow opened his mouth in a grin. Alex stepped toward him and held out her hand. With grave deliberation, Shadow lifted his front paw and set it gently on her palm, dwarfing her hand. The leathery pads of his toes were rough and warm.
Tears pricked her eyes. She closed her fingers as far around his paw as she could reach and then let it slip back to the ground.
“I know you have to go now. Shadow. Your family is looking for you. But I’ll be here every day, waiting. In case you can come back. You… you won’t forget me? My name is Alex. Alexandra.”
Shadow whined again, and Alex could see the answer in his face and body. She watched as he turned away and trotted into the tangle of brush beneath a stand of quaking aspens. Once he looked back, a flash of yellow eyes glimpsed and then gone.
Silence settled around her. The squirrel, forgotten, resumed its raucous scolding. Until the howl came again, far away, circling back on the warm wind and bearing a promise in its wake.
The tightness in Alex’s throat eased. She lifted her head, drew in a deep breath, and let it out on a soft and hesitant howl.
* * *
Shadow came again the next day.
Alex lay on the bed she’d made for herself, one of Grandmother’s old blankets spread over the pine needles in the hollow under the fallen pine. A single shaft of sunlight cut down through the trees overhead, teasing her face and making her sneeze.
She was thinking of the wolf when the sunlight stopped and cool wetness touched her cheek in its place.
“Shadow!” She sat up and flung her arms around the shaggy neck without thinking, forgetting he was a wild creature. When she remembered, she went very still and waited.
Shadow wriggled in her arms and licked her face, his tail waving from side to side.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I just knew it.”
She let him go and sat back on the blanket. “I brought something for you. Leftover fish from last night’s supper. I knew Granddad wouldn’t mind.”
Unwrapping the foil bundle she’d brought, she laid the fish out for Shadow’s inspection. He sniffed it and then, with gluttonish enthusiasm, wolfed down the entire portion. Alex struggled to keep the foil from disappearing the same way.