The Winter Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

she couldn’t be seen from indoors, and peeped carefully through. Noah had gone, upstairs she guessed, but his mother was there, in a dark green print dress and an apron, leaning over a fat, black iron stove.

    Was she setting bread to rise, perhaps? Amelia wasn’t sure, but the covered pans she was carrying looked as though they could be bread. Amelia frowned. Her mother made bread sometimes, and Amelia helped. But not every day!
    From what she’d read in the diary, the nearest town was a day’s journey away, which meant that Noah’s mother hadto make everything. All the food – and probably most of the family’s clothes, too. Now she thought about it, Noah had written that the new shirts his mother had sewn for him weren’t as soft and worn as the old ones. Amelia had a feeling that Noah’s mother didn’t have a sewing machine, not even an old hand-turned one. She would have to take very good care of Grace’s dress, she thought, wondering how long it had taken to stitch together.
    Noah’s mother turned away from the stove and Amelia whisked sideways, hoping she hadn’t seen a shadow at the window. She stood pressed against the wooden wall, shivering. Seeing the cabin – such a small space for three people, four until a few months ago – had madeher understand that she was actually here.
    This was
real
, it wasn’t just a dream, or one of those school trips where the class dressed up and tried to live like people in the past. She was here, in someone’s real life, for a reason.

    “How big is the pup?” Amelia asked, as she followed Noah through the snow. He looked back at her curiously, and she shrugged. “I don’t know very much about wolves. I’ve never seen one for real, I’ve only seen pictures of them.”
    Amelia swallowed, tugging Grace’s shawl tighter round her shoulders, and trying not to look as though she was scared. Noah was suspicious enough already. She didn’t want to admit thatshe was terrified at the thought of meeting a wolf – even a little one. If she could convince Noah that she wasn’t scared, maybe she could convince herself. After all, why had she ended up here, if it wasn’t to help Noah and the pup? There had to be a reason this was all happening – she couldn’t spoil it by being frightened.
    “I guess he’d come up to just below your waist,” Noah said, looking at her thoughtfully. “I reckon he’s about three or four months old. He must have been born late in the year. Really late. Usually wolves have their pups in the springtime, so that by the time it’s cold like this, they’re big enough and strong enough to hunt with the rest of the pack. So either he came along late, or he’s the runt of the litter, maybe.”
    “The rest of the pack…” Amelia’s voice wavered. “Yes. Wolves hunt in packs, don’t they? So … why’s this wolf all on his own? Are you sure the others aren’t here, too?” She glanced sideways, almost expecting to see dark shapes slinking after them through the trees.

    “There is a wolf pack,” Noah explained. “When my pa first built our cabin, a few years back, he’d see them every so often, and close by. But they don’t usually hunt around here any more. Pa says he sees their tracks beyond the river sometimes, but not in this stretch of the woods. Too many hunters like Pa about, you see. Wolves are clever and they’re cautious, too.” He frowned. “Which is why I don’t really understand the mother wolf sniffing around the Wrights’ place.”
    Amelia nodded. “Me neither. Why was she all on her own?”
    Noah shrugged. “Wolves go off like that sometimes, if they want to start a new pack. But I don’t think that’s what this is. It’s more of an accident, I reckon. She’s got this tiny pup. Maybe the others had to move onto find a fresh hunting ground, and he was too little to go with them, so they both had to stay behind. If she’s been trying to care for the pup, without the rest of the pack to hunt for her,