The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Six

Without giving the matter a second thought, Emily followed. She kept up as best she could, worried on one hand that she would be heard but on the other not wanting to lose them. Her reason for following she would struggle to explain, but a voice inside her told her that this was all part of why she was here. She scampered after the wolf and the man, which was not as easy as it might sound as the wolf moved so swiftly and with hardly a sound. Luckily they seemed to be sticking to the direction from which she had come not so long ago (although who knew how long it was now?), and just as she was tiring to the point of almost giving up she realised the wolf had broken into the clearing she had been standing in at the end of that day.

She followed as far as the edge, but then skirted around the outside, looking for somewhere she could be so that she could see in, but not be so easily seen. She chose a gap between two trees that stood quite close to the grove, yet had some thick brush underneath. Creeping beneath this brush, peering into the clearing, Emily realised the wolf had not chosen this place by accident. There were at least a dozen wolves within sight, possibly more outside her view. They were standing around the black wolf and she noticed that they were all so solidly built that they nearly dwarfed the one she had followed. The man was still being held in the wolf’s front paws like a ragdoll, lying limp and unaware.

Although she hadn’t seen him stir, Emily felt he was still alive. She had never seen a dead body, but thought she would know one when she did. There seemed to be some sort of argument happening, with a dangerous whiff of disagreement in the air. The wolf finally put the young man down in the centre of the clearing, returning to continue discussing him with two of the more important seeming wolves.

The clearing had taken on the air of a small amphitheatre and Emily was transfixed by the drama unfolding as she watched. The other wolves had been off to the side but were now making their way over to where the young man lay prone. A sharp sound came from the wolf that seemed deepest in discussion with the black one and the wolves stopped, but then continued once they saw he was engrossed once again.

They prodded the man and poked him for a reaction and Emily saw he was slowly coming back into consciousness. With each jab he moved a little more, and soon seemed to have regained his senses. Emily’s heart felt a pang when she saw how startled he was to find himself face to face with a pack of now circling wolves. The terror on his face was too much to bear and she had to look away.

Their teasing was getting rougher. One wolf would roll him over while another would roll him back. Their prodding became more insistent and they were soon swatting at him quite viciously, although not yet with full force. They could have torn him apart in seconds, barely troubling their muscular shoulders and razor-sharp claws, but they weren’t going to go that far without the say-so from one of the leaders still in debate.

A conclusion must have been reached, as the three wolves that had been standing aside joined the others around the young man. One of the wolves who had been relishing the toying the most picked the man up and held him out for the wolf that the black one had been talking with, the one with the long silver stripe down his back. Emily flinched as she saw the wolf strike the man with the back of a paw, sending him to the ground again. Just as the other wolves moved in and began swiping at him, a bright flash from the corner of her eye made Emily turn around. She was startled to see a woman burst into the clearing and scream out, but astonished to see her resemblance to her own mother. Again she realised that she was too young, but the coincidence was simply too great. This must somehow be her parents.

It slowly dawned on Emily that she has stumbled not only into a place she did not understand, but that the tricks of time that she had experienced during the day must be somehow linked to this feeling that these were her mother and father.

The girl who had burst into the grove was fired with a passion that made everything stop. Though only a few years older than Emily, she burned with an intensity that suggested she had suffered years of despair and was finally fighting back. The girl seemed to single out the leaders of the wolf-pack, somehow knowing who she must win over with her appeals. She pleaded and begged and talked to the silver-back and his enormous offsider. Watching the scene unfold was the black wolf who had started all this by bringing the man here, standing off to the side but listening intently.

Her pleas were getting nowhere however and the wolves turned from her. Emily was stunned to see the girl race across the clearing and break through the line of wolves circling the fallen figure, diving down and holding him. She was shouting out again, pleading for his life to be saved, when the black wolf startled Emily by shouting out for them all to stop and get away. The silver-backed one turned on him and they looked as though they were about to tear each other to shreds, when Emily’s eye was caught by the sight of the girl helping her friend to his feet and the pair raced away through the gap in the clearing the girl had broken through earlier.

Emily wanted to follow them to see where they went, but she found she was unable to move. Her legs had gone numb and she could do little more than turn her head back to the clearing. Suddenly, everything was still. The silver-striped wolf had just gestured to the gap in the clearing, seemingly sending off his wolves to chase down the fleeing humans, but the scene froze as they were in mid-step. Emily looked on at the tableau in amazement, which turned quickly to terror when she realised that while the rest of the wolves were no more harmful than statues, the black wolf had turned her way.

“You can come out of there now Emily Button, you’re quite safe,” she heard it say, and suddenly everything came back to her on the back of that low soothing voice.