Part 4
The cabin key stuck halfway into the lock. Nora had to warm it in her gloved hand and try again while Denise waited behind her with a box of supplies.
Inside, cold had settled into everything: the bunk frame, the iron stove, the handles of the cupboards. Nora set down her bag and opened the stove door. Ash sifted onto her boots.
They had reached the field station in the latter part of March, after Nora arranged leave from the store and put the house in a neighbor’s care. The nearest town was three difficult hours away by the mountain road. Beyond the clearing lay a broad wooded rehabilitation tract, with enough distance and cover for the wolves to disappear from sight while remaining under the program’s control.
Vesper and her sons arrived in a reinforced transport vehicle. The pups were about fourteen weeks old now, long-legged and startlingly large compared with the two bodies Nora remembered carrying inside her coat.
She didn’t go to their crates.
Denise noticed, but said nothing until the transport crew had finished.
For three days, she taught Nora how the place worked. There was a radio for scheduled contact and emergencies, a generator that needed more patience than fuel, and a woodstove that smoked if Nora tried to rush it. Denise showed her how to keep records of food, tracks, behavior, and distance from the cabin.
The hardest instructions came on the porch.
“They’ll come looking for what they remember,” Denise said. “You can’t give it back to them.”
Nora watched Flint nosing along a fallen branch beyond the clearing.
“No touching,” Denise continued. “Don’t call them over. Don’t sit out here talking to them. Put out what the plan requires and withdraw. We’ll move the feeding sites as they progress.”
“What if Reed comes right up to me?”
“Go inside.”
Nora nodded without looking at her.
Denise rested her hands on the porch rail. “Affection would be easier on you. It could cost them their release.”
The first morning after Denise left, Nora’s alarm sounded at five. She lay still under the blankets, listening to the stove settle, then swung her feet onto a floor so cold it hurt through her socks.
The day’s food waited in the covered storage area. Using a small hauling sled, she moved the heavy portions of deer meat the department supplied along the assigned route. By the time she returned, she had covered nearly five miles through snow and trees.
At first, Vesper refused to search. She waited near the cabin, guarded the pups, and ate only when Nora left food close enough for her to collect without venturing far.
Denise adjusted the plan over the radio. Nora moved the next offering a short distance beyond the clearing. Then farther. She laid scent trails, crossed shallow water where it was safe, and tucked the meat under brush or on ground that required the wolves to work for it.
Every instinct Nora had urged her to make it easier.
She would see Reed pause near the porch and have to turn away from the window. Once she had her hand on the latch before she remembered the rule. She stood there until he left.
The work tired her in places she had forgotten could ache. Her palms grew sore from the hauling rope. Damp gloves stiffened overnight if she forgot to hang them near the stove. She learned how long she could leave the generator running before the fuel supply became a problem, and how much wood an apparently mild night could consume.
Her notebooks filled with small observations.
Vesper searched beyond the first drainage.
Both pups followed.
Supplement taken after dark.
Food untouched.
That last entry frightened her the first time she wrote it. Denise asked her to look for fresh tracks and signs of a kill before drawing conclusions.
One cold morning in April, Nora stretched out on a ridge with binoculars pressed against her eyes. Below her, Vesper moved along the trail Nora had laid. Flint rushed ahead, lost it, and veered toward a pinecone. Reed followed his brother until their mother stopped and turned.
A low sound brought them back.
Vesper put her nose down again. This time the pups did too. When Flint wandered, she nudged him firmly into line. Reed watched, tried, and found the turn in the trail before his brother did.
Nora lowered the binoculars long enough to rub feeling into her fingers. When she raised them again, all three wolves were moving in the same direction.
Later that month, she was returning at dusk with an empty hauling harness over her shoulder when a howl carried through the trees. She stopped and listened. The sound had none of the strained quality she remembered from the clinic.
She left the harness beside the trail and moved quietly toward it.
From behind a trunk, she could see them through the night-viewing binoculars Denise had supplied. A rabbit had been cornered near broken timber. Flint sprang too soon and missed. The rabbit doubled back, and Reed held still while his brother scrambled to recover.
On the next opening, Reed moved.
Nora saw the quick, clean success, then Vesper’s head rise. Her call traveled above the clearing, and both sons answered with voices that had deepened since the clinic.
Nora covered her mouth with her free hand. She stayed hidden until the wolves had moved away.
As the thaw reached the higher slopes, her feeding rounds grew less frequent. Some offerings remained where she had left them. Vesper stopped bringing the pups near the cabin. The three of them bedded farther into the woods and passed through the clearings at hours Nora would have missed without her observation notes.
She had wanted this. She checked the untouched food and recorded it, then carried it away with tears slipping down her face.
By late May, the evenings held enough light for her to sit on the porch after the stove was banked. One night she stepped outside with her mug and found Vesper at the trees.
The wolf stood well beyond the clearing. She wasn’t waiting beside a feeding place. Her nose lifted once, and then she looked directly at Nora.
Nora kept her feet where they were.
After a while, she raised one hand.
Vesper watched for another second, turned, and passed between the trunks. Nora listened, but couldn’t hear where she went.
She set the mug on the rail before she dropped it.
There would be no visits once the work was done. Denise had been clear from the beginning. No looking out of the cabin window to count three gray backs. No records to reassure her that Reed had eaten or that Flint was staying near his mother.
Nora sat on the porch step and cried until the mug had gone cold. Then she carried it inside, washed it, and entered the sighting in her notebook.
Denise returned in early June for the final behavioral evaluation. For two days, the women observed from separate locations, comparing what they saw only after they were well away from the wolves.
The family avoided unfamiliar human scent. Vesper hunted effectively, and the young wolves followed with increasing skill. Nora watched Denise make a final notation without asking what it said.
That evening they sat beside the outdoor fire. Denise held her hands near the heat, then looked across at her.
“They’re ready, Nora. It’s time to let them go…”
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