clumping of soil.
Garner watched this with growing wonder. The vine, like many of the plants in this room, was toxic in large quantities. The wolf seemed to swallow without chewing, and he stripped the trellis itself from the wall as he devoured. The unnatural sight went on for long minutes. Would he choke on a tendril that caught in his throat? Would a woody stem puncture his stomach? Would the poisons finally accumulate and do their deadly work?
It wasn’t until the wolf turned his eye onto the goldenseal, which had taken four years of nurturing to reach its present maturity, that Garner’s practical side kicked in.
The canine snapped at the five-leafed stem.
“Hey!” Garner rose off his step. “That’s valuable!” All of it was valuable. This was his livelihood now, not just some hobby. “Stop that!”
He brandished his walking stick but stayed where he was on the steps. He was no physical match for this wild animal, whose strength might be as abnormally great as his appetite. Surely the wolf would swallow Garner as easily as he could put down a mandrake.
The wolf polished off each one of the precious goldenseal roots and turned toward the cannabis. Garner wasn’t growing it legally, though he had been using it legally for medicinal purposes. Cat had prescribed it for him. They had developed a wonderful marijuana-candy recipe.
“I need that!” he shouted, and at this outburst the wolf turned his head lazily in Garner’s direction.
This is not what you need, Garner thought. But the thought seemed to belong to someone else. It was true enough, though. He knew in his knower that he didn’t need that particular medicine any more, except that the candy was a lucrative asset.
As the wolf devoured every last ounce of his fan-leafed painkiller, Garner wondered about the granddaughter who had dissolved his cancer. With a skill like that, who needed to ask for money?
How had she healed him? And why? More than any other question in the world, why?
Garner couldn’t bear to watch the rest of the garden’s destruction. He turned away feeling quite old again, and chilled in every extremity. He used the juniper stick to fortify his defeated walk back up the stairs. The loss of Cat, the loss of his family dream, the loss of his savings, of his income—it all bore down on him at once, so that he didn’t even care about the mystical wolf.
But Cat would have liked him, Garner thought. And Nova will be amazed.
As he stepped up onto the main level of his home, Garner felt the cool air coming through the shattered kitchen window. It caused him to shiver. He turned down the hall toward the other flight of stairs and climbed them, heart-mind-and-bone weary.
The short walk to his bedroom stretched out like an unbearable hike. Somehow he returned to his bed and lay down on it. The moon had risen an inch in the sky. The moonbeams on his floor had shifted by degrees. He stared at them and was able to watch them creep. He wondered how long it would take for the wolf to eat everything and finally leave.
Would he turn on the jars of tea next? Would he cast them off their shelves and lap up the broken glass with his tongue?
When Garner heard the weight of those tremendous padded feet loping up the stairs to the bedrooms, he knew the wolf did not plan to leave. Garner closed his eyes and waited. He was calm. He was ready to face his fate.
The graceful dog leaped up onto Garner’s bed, depressing the mattress and pinning the floppy legs of Garner’s house pants beneath his paws. The animal sniffed around the bedspread, and then his hot breath poured over Garner’s face, taking in the old man’s scent. His tail swept the surface of the bed, brushing across Garner’s knees. The man lay still, preparing for death.
The canine opened his mouth and panted, and Garner could smell the aromas of all his finest herbs and medicines on the wolf’s tongue. They were worth nothing now. He braced himself for violence.
Instead, the wolf stretched out his long body next to Garner and released a sigh. Then he laid his huge head across Garner’s chest, so that the man’s drumming heart seemed to leap into the wolf’s throat rather than his own. In a very short time, his heart began to settle down. The dread slipped away. Their breathing found a synchronized rhythm.
Peace overcame Garner. He finally felt warm.
He slept.
He