Wild Read Free

line.
    When he moved, she stilled—there was intelligence there. Sharp. Innate. The boy with her was blind to it all. But she knew something was in the woods. She realized something was following her. And he had been for a couple of days now.
    Cade was fascinated by the way she moved over the land. She carried a box around her neck. It clicked when she held it to her face. Most of the time, she let it hang. But when a flash of color or shadow caught her eye, she followed it. Down ravines, into creek beds, beneath the old mill road that looked like nothing but stone arches from below now.
    Fearless, curious, she had found the pond where the spring frogs had spawned. Hundreds of tadpoles squirmed in the water. She sank onto her side to watch them at play. It was a well-hidden watering hole, shielded by mossy rocks and overgrowth. Somehow—by listening? By looking?—Dara found it effortlessly.
    Then she basked in it before she made her black box click. It was like she was filling herself with every long look. Drinking up details and secrets.
    So Cade wasn’t surprised when Dara stopped in the silence now, turning slowly within it. Her eyes keen, she searched all around her. Arms held wide to keep her balance, she breathed in relief when she finally made it all the way around. She hadn’t seen anything on the ground, so she kept going.
    That was a good way to get hurt or killed.
    It was too early for snakes in the trees, but just the right time of year for bears. Coyotes, too, though they were more likely to spring between the trees than out of them. Cade might have been dangerous too, up in the canopy. He wasn’t; all he wanted to do was study her.
    The last woman Cade had seen was his mother. Dara was nothing like her. Mom had kept her hair in a thick brown braid. Her skin was brown, too, baked and freckled from the sun. And her eyes—she always looked up first when she heard an unfamiliar sound. Aware. That was the best way to describe her.
    Dara wasn’t aware, but she wasn’t oblivious. She didn’t hear Cade twist a hand in the thick bittersweet vines that clung to the oaks. She had no idea he ran above her head, anticipating her path. She never heard his feet, silent, running along thick branches as easily as she did the earth.
    When she reached the river, she didn’t know he watched the pale expanse of her neck as she bowed her head.
    â€œGetting some water,” she sang.
    She pulled a huge water bladder off her shoulder, dumping it on the bank. Then, she walked back and forth, leaning down to look at the shore. She twisted the cap from the bladder. Tipping its mouth into the water, she frowned.
    Puzzled, Cade slipped from his perch to a lower branch. His skins camouflaged him against the tree’s trunk. If Dara looked up with the right eyes, she’d see him. But he was brown hair and deerskin against a dark and barely budding forest. He was hidden from her.
    And it was better that way. She fascinated him, but she frightened him, too. His mother had told him few of their kind remained. The ones that did were poison.
    â€œAvoid them as if your life depends on it,” she’d told him. “Because it does, my little wolf.”
    Dara didn’t look like poison. She fascinated him; her lips were pretty. Her hands flashed like swimming fish when she talked.
    But as he watched her gathering water, she confused him.
    â€œCome on, come on,” she muttered.
    Her distress made no sense at first. Her lips moved. She talked to herself, just loud enough to hear. Bending, she splashed water at the mouth of her bottle, then sighed. It took him a moment to realize the bladder wasn’t filling fast enough for her.
    If she’d followed the silty riverbank a ways upstream, she would have found a deeper pool. Animals had trampled this bank smooth, creating shallows. It was obvious. Or it should have been.
    More proof she didn’t belong there. She should have known.