Wolves of the Calla

one that looked like a many-jointed snake, the one that looked like the Tonka tractor he'd once gotten as a birthday present, the ill-tempered stainless-steel rat. He'd shot them all except for the last, some sort of mechanical flying thing. Roland had gotten that one.

Like the old robots, the woman in the yard below wanted to go someplace, but didn't know where. She wanted to get something, but didn't know what. The question was, what was he supposed to do?

Just watch and wait. Use the time to think up some other bullshit story in case one of them wakes up and sees her in the dooryard, pacing around in her wheelchair. More post-traumatic stress syndrome from Lud, maybe.

'Hey, it works for me,' he murmured, but just then Susannah had turned and wheeled back toward the barn, now moving with a purpose. Eddie had lain down, prepared to feign sleep, but instead of hearing her coming upstairs, he'd heard a faint cling, a grunt of effort, then the creak of boards going away toward the rear of the barn. In his mind's eye he saw her getting out of her chair and heading back there at her usual speedy crawl… for what?

Five minutes of silence. He was just beginning to get really nervous when there was a single squeal, short and sharp. It was so much like the cry of an infant that his balls pulled up tight and his skin broke out in gooseflesh. He looked toward the ladder leading down to the barn floor and made himself wait some more.

That was a pig. One of the young ones. Just a shoot, that's all.

Maybe, but what he kept picturing was the younger set of twins. Especially the girl. Lia, rhymes with Mia. No more than babies, and it was crazy to think of Susannah cutting a child's throat, totally insane, but…

But that's not Susannah down there, and if you start thinking it is, you're apt to get hurt, the way you almost got hurt before .

Hurt, hell. Almost killed was what he'd been. Almost gotten his face chewed off by the lobstrosities.

It was Detta who threw me to the creepy-crawlies. This one isn't her.

Yes, and he had an idea—only an intuition, really—that this one might be a hell of a lot nicer than Detta, but he'd be a fool to bet his life on it.

Or the lives of the children? Tian and Zalia's children?

He sat there sweating, not knowing what to do.

Now, after what seemed an interminable wait, there were more squeaks and creaks. The last came from directly beneath the ladder leading to the loft. Eddie lay back again and closed his eyes. Not quite all the way, though. Peering through his lashes, he saw her head appear above the loft floor. At that moment the moon sailed out from behind a cloud and flooded the loft with light. He saw blood at the corners of her mouth, as dark as chocolate, and reminded himself to wipe it off her in the morning. He didn't want any of the Jafford clan seeing it.

What I want to see is the twins , Eddie thought. Both sets, all four, alive and well. Especially Lia. What else do I want?For Tian to come out of the barn with a frown on his face. For him to ask us if we heard anything in the night, maybe a fox or even one of those rock-cats they talk about. Because, see, one of the shoats has gone missing. Hope you hid whatever was left of it, Mia or whoever you are. Hope you hid it well .

She came to him, lay down, turned over once and fell asleep—he could tell by the sound of her breathing. Eddie turned his head and looked toward the sleeping Jaffords home place.

She didn't go anywhere near the house.

No, not unless she'd wheeled her chair all the way through the barn and right out the back, that was. Gone around that way… slipped in a window… taken one of the younger twins… taken the little girl… taken her back to the barn… and…

She didn't do that. Didn't have the time, for one thing.

Maybe not, but he'd feel a lot better in the morning, just the same. When he saw all the kids at breakfast. Including Aaron, the little boy with the chubby legs and the little sticking-out belly. He thought of what his mother sometimes said when she saw a mother wheeling a little one like that along the street: So cute! Looks good enough to eat !

Quit it. Go to sleep!

But it was a long time before Eddie got back to sleep.

THREE

Jake awoke from his nightmare with a gasp, not sure where he was. He sat up, shivering, arms wrapped around himself. He was wearing nothing but a plain cotton shirt—too big for him—and flimsy cotton shorts, sort of like gym shorts, that were also too big for him. What… ?

There was a grunt, followed by a muffled fart. Jake looked toward these sounds, saw Benny Slightman buried up to the eyes under two blankets, and everything fell into place. He was wearing one of Benny's undershirts and a pair of Benny's undershorts. They were in Benny's tent. They were on the bluff overlooking the river. The riverbanks out here were stony, Benny had said, no good for rice but plenty good for fishing. If they were just a little bit lucky, they'd be able to catch their own breakfast out of the Devar-Tete Whye. And although Benny knew Jake and Oy would have to return to the Old Fella's house to be with their dinh and their ka-mates for a day or two, maybe longer, perhaps Jake could come back later on. There was good fishing here, good swimming a little way upstream, and caves where the walls glowed in die dark and the lizards glowed, too. Jake had gone to sleep well satisfied by the prospect of these wonders. He wasn't crazy about being out here without a gun (he had seen too much and done too much to ever feel entirely comfortable without a gun these days), but he was pretty sure Andy was keeping an eye on them, and he'd allowed himself to sleep deep.

Then the dream. The horrible dream. Susannah in the huge, dirty kitchen of an abandoned castle. Susannah holding up a squirming rat impaled on a meat-fork. Holding it up and laughing while blood ran down the fork's wooden handle and pooled around her hand.

That was no dream and you know it. You have to tell Roland.

The thought which followed this was somehow even more disturbing: Roland already knows. So does Eddie .

Jake sat with his knees against his chest and his arms linked around his shins, feeling more miserable than at any time since getting a good look at his Final Essay in Ms. Avery's English Comp class. My Understanding of the Truth , it had been called, and although he understood it a lot better now— understood how much of it must have been called forth by what Roland called the touch—his first reaction had been pure horror. What he felt now wasn't so much horror as it was… well…

Sadness , he thought.

Yes. They were supposed to be ka-tet, one from many, but now their unity had been lost. Susannah had