After a quarter mile she recognized a cluster of boulders that she knew were close to the reservation’s border. Behind it lay a pond with which Alex was familiar—a large one with a boggy edge, fed by a small spring. The spring’s current made the ice thin and particularly chancy, and the weather had been unusually warm for February.
Julie had asked Deanna to take the twins out to the pond. If it were this pond, if the children had been out walking on it, believing it to be solidly frozen…
Another scream came, and Alex threw the last of her energy into a final dash around the boulders. She skidded onto a patch of icy ground that crackled under her feet. The pond was just ahead; Deanna huddled on the bank with Liz. The two girls stared out into the center of the ice. “Deanna!” Alex cried. Deanna turned, lurched up, and pitched into Alex’s arms.
“Tracy!” the girl gasped. “She fell through the ice on the pond. We can’t get her out!” Deanna grabbed at Alex, her hair sticking to her tear-streaked face. “It’s my fault!”
Alex had no time to comfort Deanna. She set the girl aside and stumbled to the very edge of the ice. Where was Kieran? The sick feeling in her stomach redoubled.
And then she saw everything, an image silent and frozen and dark as if in an old photograph. The hole in the ice was a blemish marring the expanse of white, haloed with jagged cracks. A small figure lay half submerged, her upper body sprawled across the solid surface. Above her crouched a dark shape, furred and four-legged, the girl’s sodden jacket hood clutched in powerful jaws. Shadow. Kieran had shifted.
“Oh, God,” Alex said. “Oh, my God.”
Liz and Deanna clutched each other. Their very silence was unnatural, yet they were not screaming in terror that a huge black wolf should be trying to save their sister. Alex dropped to her knees beside them, tugging her pack from her shoulders.
“Listen to me, girls. I want you to run back home and get your family.”
Deanna shook her head, whipping dark hair around her face. “I won’t leave her—”
Alex spun and grabbed her by the shoulders. “You can’t do anything here. Go. Now. Tracy is going to need help. You have to bring dry clothes and warm blankets and something hot for her to drink.” She kicked off her snow shoes. “I promise she’ll be all right.”
All at once Deanna seemed to snap out of her hysteria. She grabbed Liz and flung herself homeward, desperation turned to a single driving purpose.
Alex turned back to stare across the pond. Shadow had braced himself on the fragile ice. His claws scrabbling for purchase. He tugged back with short, sharp jerks, dragging Tracy toward him. The soaked fabric of her hood seemed to give; Alex thought she heard it rip, and Shadow’s teeth flashed as he sought a new grip.
Alex forced herself to breathe one heartbeat at a time, preparing to crawl out after them. But the ice gave suddenly, a long crack spearing out from beneath Shadow’s hind paws. He never once stopped his tugging. A sob echoed across the pond, and Tracy reached up to clutch at the fur on Shadow’s chest.
Shadow yelped. The girl lost her grip and began to slip back. He sprang after her, his forepaws almost plunging into the black water. His jaws fastened on the back of her jacket.
Alex jumped to her feet, remembering prayers she hadn’t used since childhood. Shadow performed a strange maneuver, snapping his head to the side. The girl lurched up out of the water, skidding belly-down on the cracked ice, and lay there sobbing. Crouching low, Shadow nudged her. His tongue flicked her face, and his whine reached Alex’s straining ears.
“Come on, Tracy!” Alex yelled, unzipping her jacket. “You can do it. Come to me, honey!”
The girl looked up, her face a pale blur. She began to crawl toward the bank. Shadow stood where he was, ears pricked, following the girl’s progress only with his brilliant amber eyes.
Tracy had just reached the safe edge of the pond when the ice beneath Shadow gave way.