Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

It’s not often she dreams about them. During the day they are elusive, keeping to the tall grass of the Reservation, disappearing from the den site. They are fleet or lazy, moving through their own tawny colourscape and sleeping under logs — missable either way. Their vanishing acts have been perfected. At night they come back. The cameras pick them up, red-eyed, muzzles darkened, returning from a hunt. Or she hears them howling along the buffer zone, a long harmonic. One leading, then many. At night there is no need to imagine, no need to dream. They reign outside the mind.

Now there is snow over Chief Joseph, an early fall. The pines are bending tolerantly; the rivers see white. In backcountry cabins venison stocks and pipes are beginning to freeze. Millionaires’ ranches lie empty: their thermostats set, their gates locked. The roads are open but there are few visitors. The summer conferences and powwows are long over. Only the casinos do business with tourists, with stag parties and addict crones, in neon reparation. Soon the pack will be gone, too — north, after the caribou — the centre will close for winter, and she is flying home to England. Her first visit in six years. The last ended badly, with an argument, a family riven. She is being called upon to entertain a rich man’s whimsy, a man who owns almost a fifth of her home county. And her mother is dying. Neither duty is urgent; both players will wait, with varying degrees of patience. Meanwhile, snow. The Chief Joseph wolves are scenting hoof prints, making forays from the den. The pups have grown big and ready, any day now they will start their journey. The tribal councils are meeting in Lapwai to discuss scholarships, road maintenance, the governor’s hunting quota, and protection of the pack. The Hernandez comet is low and dull in the east, above survivalist compounds.

The night before Rachel leaves Idaho, she does dream of them, and of Binny. Binny is sitting on a wooden bench in the old wildlife park outside the bird huts, wearing a long leather coat and smoking a rolled cigarette. She has dark, short hair under a green cloche hat. It is Rachel’s birthday. This is her birthday wish — a day at Setterah Keep: the ruined Victorian menagerie in the woods of the Lowther Valley. They have walked round the boar enclosures, the otters, the peacocks, to the owls. Binny likes the eagle owl. She likes its biased ears, the fixed orange tunnels of its eyes. She sits quietly and smokes, watches the bird beating its clipped wings and preening. She is all bone and breasts under her coat: a body better out of clothes, a body made to ruin men. Not yet pregnant with Rachel’s brother. Her green nylon trousers tingle with static when Rachel leans against them. The stocky, haunched bird prowls across the pen towards its feed, gullets a mouse whole, up to the tail. Rachel hates owls. They are like fat brushes — a ridiculous shape for a thing. They sweep and swivel their heads and have sharp picky beaks. When she goes inside the hut to see the lunar white one, the darkness hurts her head. The bird shed stinks of lime and feathers and must. Back outside, she sits on the bench with Binny and kicks the ground. Are you bored, my girl ? Binny says. You wanted to come. Go and see the otters again. You can take some ice cream . Binny likes freedom. She likes the man in the sweet kiosk. He makes her laugh by asking if they are sisters. She holds his eye. Off you go, my girl , she says, lighting another cigarette. Be brave .

Rachel walks to the otter pool, unwraps the mint choc chip and licks the gritty dome. The pool has a green-stained moat that moves like a river. The otters paddle round it on their backs, eating fish heads. Their fur snugs the water. They chitter to each other. Under the ice cream is a malty cone. She goes into the snake house, where there are bright insects clinging in glass tanks. The snakes move slower than forever.

Binny is still talking at the kiosk, leaning in. Rachel is allowed to go quite far — she knows all the ways around the village where she lives, the lonnings, the drove-tracks over the moors. She walks past the netted parrots squawking at each other, past the gift shop and toilets, over a bridge over a stream, to a burnt creosoted gate, on which there is a sign, made of red writing. She can’t read it because she’s not yet in school. Through the gate and into the trees. The trees smell of mint too. Wooded pathways with arrows pointing, corridors of shadows either side. Be brave . It is very quiet. Brown needles stream between trunks, and her steps make tiny silky squeaks. Fork to the right. Fork to the left. Into the dark, filtering green. At the bottom of the cone there’s a chocolate stub. Once that’s gone she’s more aware of where she is.

Here. Beside a fence built tall and seriously, up into the trees. The wire is thick and heavy, knotted into diamond-shaped holes. Pinned to it is another sign. Maybe it’s the end of the park. What is on the other side? Hello? She reaches up and takes hold of the wire. She slots the tips of her shoes through and lifts herself off the ground. Beyond are bushes and worn earth. A bundle of something pinkish, with bits of ragged hair and buzzing flies. She leans back, bends her knees, sways and rattles the metal. Emptiness beyond. Flickering leaves. Hello?

It comes between the bushes, as if bidden. It comes forward, mercilessly, towards her, paws lifting, fast, but not running. A word she will soon learn: lope . It is perfectly made: long legs, sheer chest, dressed for coldness in wraps of grey fur. It comes close to the wire and stands looking at her, eyes level, pure yellow gaze. Long nose, the black tip twitching, short mane. A dog before dogs were invented. The god of all dogs. It is a creature so fine, she can hardly comprehend it. But it recognises her. It has seen and smelled animals like her for two million years. It stands looking. Yellow eyes, black-ringed. Its thoughts nameless. She holds the fence but the fence has almost disappeared; she is hanging in the air, suspended like a soft offering. Any minute it will be upon her.

In sleep, Rachel has stopped breathing. Snow is falling on the cabin roof, through acres of blackness; the computer in the office is winking slowly, storing emails and data; elk season is open. The Chief Joseph den has been abandoned and the pack is moving single file through the Bitterroot terrain, winter nomads. Her British passport is in her jacket pocket and her mother, no longer hale or able, is dying, a long way away. Go on, my girl . In the dream, the wolf stands looking at her. Yellow-eyed and sheer. A mystic from the Reservation once asked her to describe the feeling of communion seeing a wolf that first time. What did her heart feel? There was money in it for him he’d hoped — she had only just arrived, maybe she would buy one of his sachets of fur, a leather charm, a tooth. I don’t believe what you believe , she’d said.

How does it feel? Pre-erotic fear. The heart beneath her chest jumps, smells bloody. She unclutches the wire and steps to the ground. Its head lowers: eyes level again, keen as gold, sorrowless. Then it releases its extraordinary jaw. Inside is a lustre of sharpness, white crescents, ridges, black pleated lips. A long, spooling tongue. In her brain an evolutionary signal fires. What a mouth like that means. She steps back, turns and walks carefully along the fence, her hands clenched. The wolf crosses paws, folds round, and walks parallel behind the wire. A blur of long grey, head tilted towards her, one eye watching. She stops walking, and it stops. She turns slowly and walks the other way. It crosses paws, turns, and follows. An echo, a mirror. She stops. What are you doing ? Its ears prick up, twitch forward. She begins to run along the wire, over the slippery forest floor, needles and branches. She is fast. But it is there, running at her side, exact, switching direction when she does, almost before she does, running back the other way. It turns as she turns, runs as she runs. She runs hard through the Setterah woods, along the fence, and it runs with her. Through the trees. To the very corner of the cage, where she stops, breathing hard, and it stops and stands looking at her. What are you doing? she says.