The Taking Read Free Page A

might not have turned the knob. At the
thought
of turning it, however, she felt a curious calm descend. Her pulse rate declined, although each beat knocked through her with jarring force.
    In some Chinese dialects, the same word is used to mean either
danger
or
opportunity.
In this instance, as never before, she was in a Chinese frame of mind.
    She opened the door.
    The coyotes, perhaps a score of them, neither attacked nor growled. They did not bare their teeth.
    Amazed by their behavior and by her own, Molly crossed the threshold. She stepped onto the porch.
    As if they were family dogs, the coyotes made room for her and seemed to welcome her company.
    Her amazement still allowed a measure of caution. She stood with her arms crossed defensively over her chest. Yet she felt that if she held a hand out to the beasts, they would only nuzzle and lick it.
    The coyotes nervously divided their attention between Molly and the surrounding woods. Their rapid and shallow panting spoke not of exhaustion after a long run, but of acute anxiety.
    Something in the rain-swept forest frightened them. Evidently, this fear was so intense that they dared not respond to it with their customary snarls, raised hackles, and counterchallenges.
    Instead, they trembled and issued soft mewls of meek submission. Their ears were not flattened to signal an aggressive response, but remained pricked, as if they could hear the breathing and the subtle footfalls of a fierce predator even through the crash of rain.
    Tails tucked between their legs, flanks trembling, they moved ceaselessly back and forth. They seemed ready, at any moment, to drop as one to the plank floor and submissively expose their bellies in an attempt to forestall an attack by some ferocious enemy.
    Brushing against Molly as they swarmed the porch, the coyotes appeared to take as much comfort from contact with her as they did from their pack mates. Although their eyes were strange and wild, she saw in them some of the hopeful trust and need for companionship that were qualities common to the eyes of the gentlest dogs.
    Her amazement gave way to astonishment as a humbling flood of emotions never experienced before—or never experienced this strongly—swelled in her. A sense of wonder, childlike in its intensity. An almost pagan feeling of being one with nature.
    The humid air thickened with the odor of damp fur and with the smoky ammonia scent of musk.
    Molly thought of Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, whom artists often depicted in the company of wolves, leading a pack in pursuit of prey, across moonlit fields and hills.
    A profound awareness of the interconnectedness of all things in Creation seemed to arise not from her mind, not even from her heart, but from the smallest structures of her being, as if the microscopic tides of cytoplasm in her billions of cells responded to the coyotes, the unusual storm, and the forest in much the way that Earth’s oceans were influenced by the moon.
    This extraordinary moment was supercharged with a mystical quality so supremely grand in character and so formidable in power, so unlike anything Molly had known before, that she was overcome by awe and trembled with a peculiar exhilaration that was almost joy. Her breathing became quick and shallow, and her legs grew weak.
    Then, as one, the coyotes were seized by a greater terror than the fright that had driven them from the woods. With thin, desperate bleats of panic, they fled the porch.
    As they swarmed past her, their wet tails lashed her legs. A few looked up entreatingly, as though she must understand the cause of their fear and might be able to rescue them from the enemy, real or imagined, that had chased them from their dens.
    Fast down the steps, into the storm, they traveled in a tight defensive pack, not hunting now, but hunted.
    Their rain-soaked coats clung to them, revealing lean forms of bone, sinew, and stringy muscle. Always before, coyotes had looked aggressive and formidable to her,