Wild Heart by Patricia Gaffney Read Free Book Online

Charles were coming down the path from the house, and now stopping at the edge of the trees, staring in surprise. She lifted her skirts and trudged through the sand toward them.
    "Great heavens." The breeze blew her father's wispy hair sideways, like a rakish white hat. "How long has this been going on?"
    'Twenty minutes or so. Yesterday they built sand castles. Didn't O'Fallon tell you?"
    He shook his head. "Look, Charles. Look at his face."
    "Yes, sir. Very animated."
    Papa could hardly contain himself. "And they said he was probably an idiot!" he gloated, rubbing his hands together. "Ha! Won't tell 'em this yet—they don't deserve to know it. Of course. Of course. Should've seen it."
    "What's that, sir?"
    "It's Sam—Sam's the key. We'll use him. Come on, West. You, too, Sydney. Come on, got work to do!"
    * * * * *
    When the top wolfs muzzle turned gray and his teeth yellowed, his back legs stiffened and his eyes clouded, he was finished. Unless he had a wife who stayed with him because she was old, too, he went off from the pack to die by himself. A new wolf, the strongest one, became top wolf.
    With men, it was the opposite. Dr. Winter was so old, all his hair was white. He couldn't run and his eyes were watery and weak. But the professor was the top man in his pack, and nobody fought him, not even the one named West who was young and fit. Stranger still, the lowest man was O'Fallon, even though he was the strongest. But he was stupid and mean. Wolves would not have let him be the leader, either.
    There was another man, Philip. He was the brother of Sam and Sydney. He was kind, not mean, but he held himself aloof; he tried to stay out of the circle of the pack.
    The top woman was "Aunt Estelle." The lost man stayed away from her. They all did.
    His days began to change. There was a place behind the big house with walls around it made of crumbling red stones. A garden, they called it. He could have climbed over the wall, but they didn't know it; they thought they had him, so they didn't make O'Fallon come inside the garden to watch him. The professor, West, Sam, Sydney, sometimes Philip—they all came into the garden with him, and at first he couldn't look at them. He would stand apart, listen to them speak and breathe, and think about jumping over the wall. There were woods beside the house. He could run there, and no one could catch him.
    But he didn't run away. Because even the stars couldn't help him here. He was too far away to get home.
    "Experiments," Dr. Winter called the things they made him do in the garden. None of it made any sense. The professor would sit in the shade on a little chair that could fold up, and make writings on paper while watching him do—nothing. Walk from here to there, or there to here; eat an apple; scratch his head or shut his eyes tight; give half of his apple to someone else. Nonsense, all of it, but after a few days he didn't care, and he lost his self-consciousness. (A new word; he had learned it from West. "He's too self-conscious, sir; he can't act naturally in this setting.") The garden was better than the lake, because he could smell the earth and the dark trees, hear the insects burrow in the grass and the birds lay eggs in their nests among the leaves, and almost believe he was home. He stopped caring that the people were watching. He began to watch them.
    Sydney. Syd-ney. He could spell her name, because he'd seen Sam write it under a picture that he drew with a pencil. Sam meant for the picture to look like her, but it didn't. Not at all. She had pink and white in her face, a sort of blue in her eyes, like sky but different, darker, shinier—he wished he knew more words. He tried to catch her true scent, the one under the scent she put on herself. (Why did she do that? To hide? Was something hunting her?) But he had to be careful because if he got too close all the men, especially West, went on guard around her.
    He could close his eyes and listen to the sound of her voice,