To: Tolya Sanguinati, Urgent

Officer Debany is concerned because Barbara Ellen is moving into a house with a male named Buddy. Do you know him? Is he a suitable mate for her? Please reply as soon as possible.

—Vlad

To: Vladimir Sanguinati, Urgent

Buddy is a suitable roommate for Barbara Ellen, but he is not a suitable mate. Buddy is a parakeet.

—Tolya

Dear Meg,

These are sketches of my friend Amy Wolfgard. Whenever I’m outside drawing, she tries to steal my pencils. I thought she was going to chew on them, like Wolves chew on twigs to clean their teeth. Then, just this week, she shifted to (mostly) human form, and I discovered she’d been trying to indicate her interest in what I was doing. She wants to draw too, and trying to take a pencil was her request for me to play, to share. I want to show her how to draw, but I don’t know how. I can’t explain what I’m doing or how she can do the same thing. No one taught me; I just hold a pencil and things get drawn on the paper.

Grace Wolfgard went down to the Intuit village here at Sweetwater to see if their little bookstore had any books about how to draw, but they didn’t. Jackson and some Intuit men even went farther down the road to Endurance, the human town. What’s left of the human town.

Where do the people who survived the Elders go if they want to leave the place where they live now? Jackson said the people in Endurance were fools for packing up their cars and sneaking off in the middle of the night. He said they should have left at dawn and traveled during the daylight hours because all the humans had been warned that there is no safety in the dark. But some of the people didn’t listen, and now the Ravens and Eagles are flying over the roads and telling the Wolves and Intuits where to find the cars—and what’s left of the bodies.

The people who remained in the town are going to stay. They told Jackson and some of the Intuits that this was never a kind place to humans, but they would endure as their ancestors endured. That’s what I overheard Jackson tell Grace.

Nothing feels different in the terra indigene settlement. Well, Jackson and Grace have decided all the youngsters should have some book learning. They’ve hired an Intuit teacher to come up to the settlement to teach everyone who wants to learn how to read and write and do sums. So every morning, the Wolves haul a rolling blackboard to a shady spot, and youngsters from all the gards—Eagles, Ravens, Hawks, Wolves, even one of the Panthers—gather to listen to the teacher. Most don’t shift to a human form; I don’t think most of them have ever tried. But we all listen. Grace said that even if this is simple for me and something I learned before, I need to pay attention because I need to set an example for the rest of the youngsters about how to behave during school. I think I’m doing a good job most of the time, but sometimes when I’m listening to the teacher I slide to a different place where I still hear her voice but it’s far away. And then I blink and there’s a drawing filling a page of my notebook and everyone is watching me, including the teacher. But no one says anything. No one threatens to cut off my fingers like they did when we lived in the compound. Jackson just comes over to where we’re having class and removes the drawing from my notebook, and the teacher starts talking again.

Grace says the young cassandra sangue who are living with the Intuits are doing well. They have structured days that include schooling and chores appropriate for their age. They also get to experience a little bit of new every day. So do I. The land around our settlement is the same and different every day. I like it.

Could you look in your bookstore and see if there is a book to teach someone how to draw? I’ll pay for it, once I figure out how to do that.

Your friend,

Hope Wolfsong

CHAPTER 4

Moonsday, Messis 6

John Wolfgard looked at Vlad, then focused on Simon. “Are you sure?”

“We’re sure,” Simon replied. “You know how to run a bookstore, and you know how to work with humans. And having another Wolf in Bennett would be a good thing.” He studied the other Wolf before adding, “I’m not telling you that you have to go. It’s your choice. There are only two other Wolves there right now, so it will be a small pack for hunting prey.”

“But you won’t have to depend on what you catch being the only food available,” Vlad said. “Bennett has plenty of food for the next few months or more.”

John thought for a moment. “Is one of the other Wolves dominant?”

“Virgil,” Simon said. He’d wondered how Virgil and Tolya had confirmed which of them was the dominant predator. Since Tolya was still in charge of the town and, as sheriff, Virgil technically worked for him, the Wolf must have realized instinctively how deadly the Sanguinati could be.

“When do I leave?” John asked.

“As soon as possible. They need to get the stores up and running again. I’ll write the travel letter this evening.”

“Perhaps John should hold off catching the train for a day or two,” Vlad said. “It will be easier if a group travels together, especially if there are Simple Life folk among Bennett’s prospective new residents.”

Simon nodded. The first day of the job fair began in a couple of hours—the farm and ranch workers. He hoped there would be a few humans suitable to send out to help the residents of Bennett and Prairie Gold.

When John left to pack his belongings and consider his new assignment, Simon let out a sigh. The good-natured Wolf had been a great help during the years when Howling Good Reads was open to the general public. But now the Courtyard stores would serve a different, more enclosed purpose, and John’s easy temper would be more valuable to Tolya in a place where neither humans nor terra indigene had had much contact with one another.