“This won’t spoil you, will it. Shadow? I’ve been reading more about wolves. You’re only a pup and still learning to hunt with your family.” She grinned conspiratorially. “But if you’re like me, you’re always hungry!”
Shadow squeaked and plopped down beside her, throwing all four paws up in the air.
That was the beginning of the magic summer. Magic because of Shadow, because all of nature conspired to make their friendship perfect. When it rained, it rained briefly; the humidity never grew unbearable, and the mosquitoes fled Shadow’s vicinity as if he were a spirit creature and not a wolf at all.
Shadow took her to places she never would have found on her own. That first day when he rose, shook himself, and started off into the forest, Alex followed. He led her to dells full of wood sorrel and blue violets and showy orchids, almost too perfect to be real; showed her the half-buried hollow log where the lynx denned her litter and the meadow where the black bear sow foraged with her half-grown cub. She almost expected him to lead her to the place where the Fairy Queen held court. Granddad was Irish, and he’d told her the old tales every summer since she was small. Mother had done the same.
Old tales she was almost too grown up to believe in. Until now. Now anything was possible, and all the world was made of spun dreams.
They ran together through stands of pine and splashed in lakes still cool with the memory of winter. Alex would tumble to the ground, laughing, and Shadow would stand over her, licking her face until she had to get up again.
At the end of each day, when Alex and Shadow were tired, they would return to the secret place and wait until Shadow’s pack summoned him home.
Never once did she see another wolf. It came to her in time that that was part of the unspoken bargain she’d struck with Shadow: only here was time suspended, the outside world forgotten. They must return in the end to their own separate worlds. No matter how much she might pretend, the forest could never truly be her home.
Alex often thought of telling her grandparents about Shadow. Granddad would understand; at least he wouldn’t laugh. But her friendship with Shadow was a secret; like anything magical, it would surely vanish if she ever revealed it to another living soul.
So she took what she’d been given. On lazy afternoons, she lay beside Shadow and told him about home: how different it was in San Francisco, the big restored mansion on Steiner Street and her room with its antique dolls and beautiful furniture. She told him about the private school she attended and her friends there, going shopping with Mother and the way people said they looked so much alike.
“They say I’m going to be beautiful, like my mother,” she said matter-of-factly, running her fingers through the fur of Shadow’s chest.
He yawned, patently unimpressed. Rows of white teeth flashed.
Alex laughed. “That doesn’t matter to you, does it? What I look like or that my parents have lots of money. You don’t even know how beautiful you are.” She sighed, stretching her hands high above her head and staring up through the trees to the slivers of blue between branches. “I can have anything I want in the whole world, almost. Except you.”
She rolled over to face Shadow. Somehow his eyes seemed sad, as if he knew the summer would only last a few more weeks.
She thought about her friends back home, all girls and boys from families like hers. They had fun, but it was never like this. Never like it was with Shadow. At the end of every summer in Minnesota, she’d been ready to go back. She missed Mother; that was the only thing she didn’t like about summer. That had always been enough to call her back to San Francisco.
Now she couldn’t imagine what it would be like without Shadow. He was… some wild half of herself.
“Do you think when I’m grown up I’ll understand, Shadow?” she asked softly.
He stretched his chin out on his oversized paws. With no effort at all she could imagine him a big black dog, sleeping beside her canopied bed in her room back home.