Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Tell the Wolves I'm Home Read Free

Book: Tell the Wolves I'm Home Read Free
Author: Carol Rifka Brunt
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to walk until you can’t hear any cars at all, and that’s what I do. I walk and walk until all I can hear are the little cracks and snaps of branches and the swish of the brook. I follow the brook to a place where there’s a crumbling dry stone wall and a tall maple tree with a rusted-out sap bucket nailed just above head height. That’s my place. That’s where I stop. In the book
A Wrinkle in Time
, it says that time is like a big old rumpled blanket. What I’d like is to be caught in one of those wrinkles. Tucked away. Hidden in a small tight fold.
    Usually I put myself in the Middle Ages. Usually England. Sometimes I sing snatches of the
Requiem
to myself, even though I know the
Requiem
isn’t medieval. And I look at everything—rocks, fallen leaves, dead trees—like I have the power to read those things. Like my life depends on understanding exactly what the forest has to say.
    I make sure I bring along an old Gunne Sax dress of Greta’s from when she was twelve. It’s way too small for me, so I have to wear a shirtunderneath and keep the buttons open at the back. It looks more like something out of
Little House on the Prairie
than anything medieval, but it’s the best I can do. And then there’s my medieval boots. Anyone will tell you that shoes are the hardest part to get right. For the longest time I only had plain black Keds, which I would try hard not to look at, because they ruined the whole thing.
    I got the boots, which are black suede with crisscross leather laces right up the front, at the medieval festival at the Cloisters with Finn. It was October, and Finn had already been painting the portrait for four months. This was the third time he’d taken me to the festival. The first time it was his idea, but the other two were mine. As soon as the leaves started to brown and curl, I’d start pestering him about it.
    â€œYou’re becoming a regular medievalist, Crocodile,” he’d say. “What have I done to you?”
    He was right. It was his fault. Medieval art was Finn’s favorite, and over the years we’d spent hours and hours looking through his books together. This third time at the festival, Finn was already getting thin. It was chilly enough for wool sweaters and Finn was wearing two, one on top of the other. We were drinking hot mulled cider, and it was just the two of us, alone with the greasy smell of a pig roasting on a spit and lute music and the whinny of a horse about to go into a fake joust and the jangling of a falconer’s bells. Finn saw the boots that day and bought them for me because he knew I’d love them. He stayed with me at that bootmaker’s stall, tying up rough leather laces for me again and again like there was nothing he’d rather be doing. If they weren’t right, he’d help pull the boots off my feet. Sometimes his hand would brush my ankle or my bare knee and I’d blush. I didn’t tell him this, but I made sure to choose a pair two sizes too big. I didn’t care how many pairs of socks I’d have to wear with them. I never wanted to grow out of those boots.
    If I had a lot of money, I would buy acres of woods. I would put a wall around them and live there like it was another time. Maybe I would find one other person to live with me there. Someone who was willing to promise they’d never speak a word about anything in thepresent. I doubt I could find anyone like that. I’ve never met anyone yet who might make that kind of promise.
    There’s only one person I’ve ever told about what I do in the woods, and that’s Finn, and I didn’t even mean to tell him. We were walking back to his apartment from the movie theater after seeing
A Room with a View
. Finn started talking about how all the characters were so enchanting because they were so tightly wrapped and it was so beautiful to watch them try to unwrap one another. So romantic, he said. He

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