cold as he’d been . . . before. He smelled earth . . . dirt and leaves and something he couldn’t name. It smelled sort of like urine and he wondered if he’d wet himself.
His thoughts tumbled, his mind trying to grab a memory . . . Something wiggled against his foot and he pulled his knee to his chest, whimpering. He felt another movement near his shoulder and his eyes flew open. Memories of the man and the cliff and . . . and . . . he couldn’t remember more than that, but that made him move, clawing his way toward the circle of light above him. He came out of the hole he’d been in, rolling to the frozen ground, a cry of fear and confusion bursting from his cracked lips.
He put his arm over his eyes, waiting for them to stop blinking, and then slowly lowered it. Woods. And snow. Sunshine. The sound of dripping water all around him. At first, he thought it was rain, but no, it was melting snow. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, the sweet taste of fresh water dripping from the bare tree branches above and catching on his tongue. Relief. Relief.
Looking down, he saw that his body was black and blue with bruises, and he was only wearing his underwear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered stripping his wet clothes off. He’d been hot. Burning hot and then . . . he’d fallen. He looked quickly behind him and saw that the place he’d climbed from was a den. There were moving things around him, on him, whimpering and warm. On a rush of breath, Jak dropped to his knees and peeked back inside to where his almost-naked body had lay through the deep, dark night. There were six wolf pups, four sleeping, two staring up at him. He blinked, and they blinked back.
He saw the outline of where his body had been curled next to the pups. He’d fallen into their den and they’d kept him warm when he would have frozen to death. “Hi,” he croaked, tears springing to his eyes. He was scared, hurting, and still cold. Shaking. He was only in his underpants, his bare feet in the snow, but all of a sudden, he didn’t feel so alone, and the feeling made a lump of thankfulness block his throat.
The two pups who were awake were still staring up at him, and when he reached down slowly, carefully, to pet one of them, he shrunk back in fear. Jak saw that their ribs were showing and his heart squeezed tight.
They were starving. They’d been abandoned by their mother.
Just like me.
But they had no Baka to take care of them.
He reached into the den, touching one of the pup’s heads softly and petting him as he whispered the words his baka had said to him when he had trouble sleeping. “It’s okay. You will be okay. You will survive. You are strong boy.”
When he reached his hand over to rub one of the sleeping pups’ bellies, he pulled back quickly. The pup was cool under his touch. The other four pups weren’t sleeping. They had died. To be sure, Jak touched them one by one, all of them cool, though not cold. Not yet. Not like the alley cat he’d found dead by the building behind his baka’s apartment before screaming for her to come help it.
She’d come running, but there was no help for that cat. It was gone to cat heaven she’d said, and it was not coming back. Just like these pups. But these pups were different. They’d saved his life before they’d lost their own.
“Thank you,” he choked, touching the heads of each small wolf.
His feet were starting to tingle with cold and he stood, shaking the snow off and turning toward the woods where sunlight lit the spaces between the tall green trees. He spotted a piece of gray cloth and walked to it, his limbs burning with soreness, especially his arms. But other than that, he seemed to be okay. No broken bones, he didn’t think. He stepped on the rocks and bare spots of grass where some snow had melted until he came to the piece of cloth.
His sweatshirt. And it was in the grass in a circle of sunlight so it was only a little wet. Shivering, he grabbed his jeans and his coat, which were both close by, his coat hung over