“Howling, if you burned away I would never recover,” she said.
“You would too cause you like Feral more than me,” he cried, his arms crossed over his chest. He was far enough away that she couldn’t make out every detail of his face, but she was sure his bottom lip was in full pout, that there were hot tears rolling down the pudgy hills of his cheeks. “Because he’s like you.”
“I love you both more than breathing. Come here,” she said, and squatted. “Right now. Come here.”
He dragged his feet toward her. She pulled him in so his nose was to hers. “You’re a little me,” she said. “Hungry as a wolf.”
Howling sniffled. “You think I’m like you?”
“Just like,” said Vern, wiping his tears away with her thumbs.
“And me?” asked Feral.
“You, too,” she said. Though they both were pleased to hear it, she wasn’t sure it was a compliment. They were both her raw parts, her every sensitivity.
* * *
THEY FEASTED ON THAT DEER for weeks. Every morning Vern stewed a different joint over the fire, till the meat and bones were soft. After finishing their fill of meat, the children slurped up the broth greedily and gnawed on the gristle.
She’d chosen a good place to make camp, not far from a river, the ground relatively flat and smooth and not gnarled with tree trunks. She put stakes of different heights around their camp to keep track of which direction was which. The tallest stake, west, toward the river, the next tallest one, east, toward a cliffside where she didn’t want the children to wander, and two more for north and south. Northward was a road. She’d heard what she thought was a horn blowing from that way, the sound carried on the wind.
With help from the children, she built a shelter, using the deer hide as a soft bit of flooring. Howling and Feral were eager to participate, and even though they were more hindrance than aid, it was important they be involved. They’d need to know these things, how to live in the woods, how to live at all.
By spring, they were building their own structures. “Look, Mam!” said Feral, showing her his tunnel of sticks and leaves. It wound like a serpent through the trees.
When summer came, they could evade Vern for hours, their shelters so perfectly blended into the environment. It settled her to know how quick her babes were, how strong. She was under no illusion that if she died they’d survive on their own, but it was good to know they could fight. She didn’t know how long she had.
Lately, every morning her body erupted with a new agony. The strength and healing remained, but her joints and limbs were now a constant ache. Worse, she itched. She rubbed her body with herbs and tinctures, but they did not soothe. No matter how often she scratched, relief never came. Instead, the itch burrowed deeper, consciously evading her nails.
In the dead of night, her children asleep in the shelter, she crawled out, stripped off her shirt, and scraped her back against the rough bark of a tree until she bled. For once, this harm she did to her body was not intended. She moved up and down as roughly as she could against the bark, moaning as she tore her back to slivers.
“Mam?” she heard Howling call from inside the tent.
“Stay inside,” she said.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay. Sleep, baby,” she told him.
When dawn came and she’d worried multiple layers of skin away, Vern went down to the river in hopes that the cool, rushing water might numb what discomfort remained. Vern stripped and walked in.
The river was shallow enough that she didn’t have to worry about the current carrying her too far away, so she let herself float. The healing waters kissed the inflamed welts on her back. She flipped onto her belly and started to breaststroke, then front crawl. Vern was coming up for air when she saw the body, the little brown body, limp on the current.
Filled to the brim with a dread so horrid her heart did not properly beat its beats, Vern swam after the body of the child. It snagged on a branch, and she carried the body to the bank.
It was the same body she’d seen three years ago, the one she’d left to scavengers when she’d been too cowardly to return to it to give proper burial. That child had not been real, and nor was this one. Like the howling wolves, it was a haunting.
* * *
“MAM?”
“Mam!”
Both her children had come to fetch her.
“I’m down the river, children,” she called. “Bring me my clothes.”
“Which side you on, Mam?” Feral yelled. His speech was improving rapidly, though it would be a while until he was as adept as Howling.