Part 2
Owen put the knife down where he could find it without looking. He couldn’t cut anything safely while the pup’s own movement drew the wire tighter. Sliding his bare hand beneath its belly, he raised it a fraction, enough to loosen the pressure at its throat.
Metal clicked against a nail.
His elbow locked. For a few seconds he was listening for Specialist Benjamin Haskett, who had been twenty-two and freckled across the bridge of his nose. Owen could summon those freckles more readily than the official photograph Ben’s family had sent afterward.
A damp muzzle pressed into the space beside his wrist. Flint breathed against his skin. In his palm, the pup moved.
Owen bore down against the deck until the board’s edge hurt through his coat. He looked at his hand, at the pale fur between his fingers.
“Stay with me.”
He wasn’t sure which of them he meant.
The frozen net resisted his fingers, but he stopped trying to draw the animal through it. Instead he worked the strands away one at a time. His damaged knee slipped against the frame, sending pain up his thigh. He swallowed it and kept his supporting hand steady.
Years ago his wife had held a gull while he searched for something to carry it in. He remembered her fingers around its folded wings and his own warning that she would never see it again once it could fly.
“Were you planning to send it a bill?” she had asked.
He heard the dryness of her voice as clearly as if she were kneeling beside him. A final loop came loose, and the pup settled fully into his hand.
Owen opened his coat and tucked the small body against his sweater. Some of the net came away with the snare still attached. He bundled it into his bag rather than leave it trailing beneath the deck.
Flint stood while he got his feet under him. On the return climb she stayed behind, close enough that he could hear her uneven steps.
Inside the cottage, he lowered the fourth pup beside the others. Flint closed around the litter before he had quite withdrawn his hands. This one had a dark mark behind an ear; he lay still beneath her nose.
Owen spread newspaper over the table and emptied the wet tangle onto it. A tag struck the wood. He brought the lamp closer and wiped enough thawing ice away to read the stamped name: Veylan cooperative.
Victor Danner’s cooperative.
Its fuel deliveries kept the school bus running when winter shipping became unreliable. Danner’s employees had helped rebuild the public landing. Owen had been paid for engine work in an office with a children’s ball-team photograph above the desk.
Headlights moved across the curtain. Laura came in carrying her medical bag, snow lodged in the folds above her boots. She stopped just inside, looking from the litter to the mother and then to Owen’s dripping coat.
“Under the station deck,” he said, pointing out the dark-marked pup.
“Take that chair. Let her keep you in sight.”
Laura set her bag down slowly. She observed before touching anything, and when Flint stiffened, she waited. Owen wanted her to hurry; instead she handed him a cloth-covered heat pack and gave him a small task he could do correctly.
For a long time there were only practical instructions. Hold the light here. Keep that cloth dry. Tell her if the smallest pup’s breathing changed. Laura used a thermometer, checked what she could, and withdrew whenever the mother warned her.
By dawn the window had gone from black to a washed-out gray. Flint allowed brief contact while Owen sat near her head. One low growl stopped an attempt at the shoulder, but later Laura was able to clean and dress it without forcing the examination.
“There’s rubbing here from something around her neck,” she said. “Older than the shoulder wound. And there’s a puncture that might have been an injection site. I can’t identify it from this.”
She photographed the tagged wire without moving it off the newspaper.
“The duty officer wants the family kept stable here until a safe transfer is approved. Trooper Caleb Sutton is on his way. Leave this exactly as it is.”
A knock interrupted Owen’s answer. Ruth Givens stood on the porch with a sack propped against her hip.
“Clean bedding,” she said. “Laura asked. Dennis helped me load it before he went to check the chapel’s generator.”
She crossed the room without waiting for an invitation. At sixty-four she still had the efficient movements Owen remembered from the lighthouse workshops, though she took care lowering herself when Laura asked for a folded cloth. She spoke to the veterinarian, not to him.
Father Dennis had worked as an electrician in the Navy. If the village lost power, he would see that the chapel had lights. Ruth’s husband, Walter, had cared for the lighthouse before it became automated. Eight years earlier, a storm had taken him from the southern rocks; his body had been recovered two days later.
What remained in the village was a shorter account: the radio had failed, Walter had called, and Owen hadn’t been at his post.
At first Owen had tried to fill in the missing parts. Eventually he stopped. He could explain the antenna, the darkness, the time it had taken, but none of it changed who had come home.
A burst of interference came from the radio beneath the shelf. Ruth stretched a blanket across her knees, pulling the seam taut.
“Walter would’ve caught that,” she told Laura. “He recorded the faults. Filled notebooks with them.”
Owen remembered the recorder on Walter’s workbench. He reached over and lowered the volume.
Before Laura could check the smallest pup again, Flint lifted him. She crossed to Owen on three sound legs and one she barely trusted, then put the pup beside his knee.
Laura handed him a warmed cloth.
“Pick him up in that. Keep his face where I can see it.”
The last time Owen had been so afraid of moving his hands, his wife had been in a hospital bed. Now a faint pulse beat against his fingers. He held still while Laura gave him the next instruction.
Flint returned to the other three. Her eyes closed, opened once, and closed again. Ruth moved Owen’s forgotten tea out of reach of his elbow.
Caleb arrived with his collar full of snow. He had visited the weather station first, taking photographs of the damaged deck and fresh snowmachine tracks near the road. He recorded Owen’s account and secured the wire.
“Danner filed a report,” he said. “Claims a wolf’s been damaging equipment and menacing his crew.”
Laura looked up. “Which crew member?”
“He hasn’t identified one.”
An engine slowed below the bend outside. Flint lifted her head. Caleb listened until it accelerated and faded along the road.
“I had somebody stop down there while I was driving up,” Laura said.
The trooper closed his case. “If Danner comes here, I’ll deal with him.”
Owen was still holding the pup when another vehicle entered the drive. Its headlights swept the entire room. A firm, unhurried knock followed…
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