Later, their kisses and raucous play awoke her. They were singing their favorite song: Mam.
“Mam! You was a goner,” said Feral.
“Mam! You was dead meat,” said Howling.
“Mam! You was like that dead bird. You remember? The one you killt with the rock?” said Feral, miming the action of throwing a stone.
“Mam, did you hear us singing to you?” asked Howling. “Do you know what a prayer is? We sang you prayers.”
“Mam, Mam! Did you know Ina tells stories, too?”
“Mam, I’m hungry.”
Vern’s eyelids fluttered furiously, trying to keep up, but the children and their chatter raced away ahead of her.
Bridget took pity on Vern and grabbed Howling and Feral each by their hands. “Clean up your stuff. It’s almost time for breakfast,” she said, referring to the scattered items the children had deposited around the living room: large sticks, pine-cone-doll people, acorns, drawings on the backs of old newspapers.
As the children straightened up their mess, Vern sat up and stretched, rolling her shoulders forward and backward. “Tell me about the last ten days,” she said to them, and they gladly narrated the goings-on of their lives here. The magic of real snow, so unlike the occasional icy drizzles they’d been in before. The magic of endless running water. The magic of the refrigerator. The magic of leeks, pistachios, salmon, fennel, yogurt, and a dozen other foods they’d tried.
Feral, as if keenly aware of civilization creeping in on him, ran to jump on the sofa after he’d cleaned up his things, doing somersaults and backflips. Vern shot him a look, and he ceased at once. He apologized for forgetting his manners, as he wouldn’t want anyone coming into one of the dens he’d built and jumping on everything and destroying it all. Only, nothing in the woods was as a bouncy as this sofa.
While Feral sat looking shamefaced, Howling lay on the rug thumbing through a book. “What’s this letter, Mam?” he asked. Scooting over toward him, Vern tilted her head and brought the book to her face.
“I’m not sure,” she said, as she squinted at the intersecting bends, hoops, and loops where Howling pointed.
“Huh?” asked Howling, one eyebrow arched, incredulous. Bless him. He still thought she knew everything.
“What does he mean, letters?” Feral asked from the couch.
“See, look. Come down here. If you get real close, you can see all that smear of black is separate little shapes,” said Vern.
Feral jumped up and crashed to the floor with a thud, then crawled over to the book. “They so small,” he said, as much in wonder and delight as in intimidation.
“This one’s a,” said Howling. “Ina showed me. It goes a-a-a. Like apple. She said there’s a song that says all the letters, and I asked her if it went on forever, since if you were to have a song for every number, it’d go on forever, but she said there was only twenty-six. I can count to twenty-six. Easy.”
He’d be reading chapter books in weeks, flying ahead of not just Feral, but Vern. “I can count to twenty-six easy, too,” said Feral, but he turned to Vern, desperate for reassurance. “Mam, I can learn the letters, too, can’t I?”
She nodded, not wanting her doubts in her own abilities to transfer to him. “Yes. You can learn the letters. Of course you can.”
“But how, if I can’t even see them?”
Gogo entered the room, having freshly showered. Her hair hung in a dark wet plait. She wore a flannel button-up over a black shirt, with black jeans. “We can make the letters easier for you to see with special tools,” she said, yawning so widely her jaw clicked. “Or there’s Braille. That’s where you use your fingers to decode the letters instead of your eyes.”
“You got any Braille books here?” Feral asked, casting a jealous eye toward the book Howling was thumbing through.
Gogo shook her head. “But I can look into getting some right away.”
Vern cleared her throat to reinsert herself into the conversation. “That’s not necessary. Now that I’m better, we won’t need to rely on your hospitality. We’ll be out of your hair in a few days. I’ll get those Braille books myself.”
“And special goggles, too? Like the ones Ina said?” asked Feral.
“He means glasse—”
“I know what he means,” said Vern. “I can get him glasses. I can get him whatever he needs, like I always have.”
Gogo looked at Vern but said nothing.