As I struggle to comprehend what Neca has just said, he stoops. Picking up a rock, he places it in my hand. The wolves seem to perceive the gesture as a declaration of intent. No sooner than I wrap my fingers around the rock’s edges, the low growl erupts into an angry bark.
Neca pushes off, and I spring in the opposite direction. The wolf charges. It brushes past my leg, missing with its razor-sharp teeth but spinning me off balance. I manage to land on all fours and just barely avoid smacking my forehead on a large rock.
A second animal barrels out of the trees. Its yellow eyes glint in the night. Holding my breath, I raise onto my knees and swing the rock directly for its jaw. The beast whimpers, letting up his charge a split second before he and the rock collide. Miscalculating, I strike him in the neck. Bones audibly snap from the force of the blow.
The wolf’s exposed canine catches me across the chest as his limp shoulder collides with mine and tosses me backward. I brace for the inevitable dashing of my head and hope I don’t lose consciousness.
Rather than a crushing impact, I’m caught up in a cushion of air like at the mouth of the cave. I bounce as if striking a spongy bed of moss.
As I tumble, the snarling of angry wolves is cut short by a wash of vibrating air. I slide down the edge of the ridge until I catch a foothold. My eyesight blurs. I can’t stop my brain from rattling. “Neca!” The word comes out of my mouth distorted and strange.
A fierce snarl, followed quickly by Neca’s own guttural challenge, reaches me on the front edge of a dark pulse—a ripple of shadow and emptiness. I hug the slope as an explosion of fur and shattered rock bursts from the top of the ridge and rushes past. Gravel settles in the wake. Larger rocks splinter branches further down the slope.
Everything falls quiet. “Neca?” I croak his name and am suddenly terrified that the dark-skinned chadzitzin boy has left me alone.
Unable to see anything from my current position, I test my limbs and discover they work. I scramble onto the ridge. No wolves. No Neca. A low gurgling growl sharpens my other senses. Slowly, I turn toward the sound. I spot a dark shadow in the shape of Neca sprawled on the ground. A single wolf limps toward it.
“Hey, wolfie!”
The animal growls louder, refusing to alter its course.
“Hey,” I shout, “your mother was a coyote!” I reach for another rock.
The beast lunges for Neca.
I don’t have time to stop it. I scream. I scream for the fighter, for the boy, for the friend I’ve just made. I scream for my brother. The night dissolves. The sounds and smells melt around me. And the dark morphs into emptiness in every direction, except for the shapes of the wolf and Neca lying beneath it.
At the far end of a distant tunnel, I see the animal slow its attack. I watch it stop in midair. It blurs around the edges. An explosion splits the air between us, and all senses shatter.
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