The Wild by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online

down into a comparatively calm stretch, Jack lost control. One second he was fine, steering and commanding the boat like the boatbuilder and sailor he was. The next moment the craft was no longer his. The sense of smooth passage left them, and the Yukon Belle was tilting sideways down the river, cresting each wave with a sickening sway, impacting each trough with a head-rattling thump. Wood creaked and cracked, and Jim fell sideways as a splinter as long as his arm broke from the hull and scored across his face. Two inches higher and Jim would have lost both eyes.
    â€œJack!” Merritt called, but Jack would not look his way. He was too annoyed at himself, too involved in trying tobring the craft back under his control. The river had them clasped in its torrential hand, and it was only a matter of time before it spilled them and their belongings into the water or dashed them against the ragged banks. Either way would be the end of them, and as the water splashed his eyes, Jack saw his mother between blinks, sitting at the table and smiling over the final meal they had shared together.
    The spirits will go with you was the last thing she’d said as he’d left, more spiritual foolishness masquerading as affection. Yet as he remembered them now, those words seemed to whisper through the river-water spray.
    Jack glanced about. There above, on a cliff under which the river tore itself apart, stood a wolf. It was the largest wolf he had ever seen, its gray fur mottled with streaks of dark brown, muzzle shorter and stumpier than usual. Its ears were pricked up and forward, and all its attention was focused on Jack.
    Only on Jack.
    â€œYou…?” he whispered, leaning toward the wolf with his right arm outstretched. As his body shoved against and shifted the tiller, the boat creaked and rolled, and with a rush they were reconnected with the river, going with the flow rather than fighting against it.
    Jack glanced at Merritt and Jim and saw the two menwere grinning at him. Merritt said something in praise of Jack’s boatmanship, but Jack looked away again, back upriver at the rock they had now passed by. The wolf was gone. He scanned the bank, but the creature was nowhere to be seen, and already Jack doubted himself. The canyon here was narrow, the cliff walls sheer. Where there were banks, they consisted of boulders tumbled down from above over time, abraded by the river to suit its own shape. From what he could see, there really was no way down here for an animal of that size.

    It was the largest wolf he had ever seen.

    They sailed on, shooting more rapids and moving farther toward the Thirty Mile River. Jack no longer feared the waters. Something was guiding his way, and he could not shake the idea that seeing the wolf had caused him to shift the tiller at just the right moment.
    That wasn’t me , he thought, though he tried to smile at the men’s praise. None of that was me .
    The farther they moved from the deadly rapids that should have killed them, the more unsettled Jack became.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE DEATH OF HIM
    W HEN THEY CAMPED THAT EVENING , Jack was quiet and withdrawn. The wolf preyed on his memory. He had felt watched for a long time, and now, though the sensation seemed to have passed, he could still sense that lupine influence in the land around them. This was an altogether wild place, and while he had it in his mind that his presence could affect his surroundings, the idea that the opposite might be true was troubling. In a struggle of man versus nature, he felt sure, man—a man of determination and conviction such as himself—would be victorious. Now his certainty wavered.
    Merritt and Jim were confident and upbeat. With the three of them sitting around a fire and drying their soaked clothes, Jack’s two companions made jokes and talked of the journey to come. Jack nodded in the right places, andnow and then he mustered a smile, but he stared into the fire’s insides