A Warning

“Harlow? Are you okay?” 

The sound of Grandma Agnes’s voice caught me off-guard. I was still standing with my back pressed to the door, panting, my eyes closed, and I hadn’t realized she was in the kitchen. When I raised my eyelids a crack, I could see her standing across the room at the stove, stirring something in a pot, likely making our dinner. She was shocked to hear me come flying in the door, and I couldn’t blame her. I probably looked like a scared child running from the neighbor’s dog.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine.” I did my best to control my breathing. “Just… decided to go for a little jog.” I had lost my water bottle at some point, probably left it sitting by the stump I’d occupied near the tree that was supposed to be my landmark. I moved to the sink to get a glass of water.

“A jog?” my grandma repeated. Her tone conveyed she didn’t believe what I had said, not one bit. “Are you sure?”

“Yep.” I gulped down a few swallows of the cold water, glad it tasted more like a mountain spring than the tap water back home in California. “I’m fine.”

Grandma turned to give the pot a stir, tapped the spoon loudly on the side of the red container, and set it aside before she swiveled to address me. “Harlow, I’ve always been able to tell when you’re lying. Granted, you don’t tell me untruths often. But right now, I fear that you are.” She walked to the table in the nook, nearer the back door and pulled a chair, gesturing for me to do the same.

I swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to tell her what had happened. It wasn’t as if I had purposely gotten lost. And… the wolves had seemed to want to help me, not hurt me. An idea popped into my head. I thought back to those two wolves I’d seen in California and how my parents had packed up and moved us the next day. I had assumed my mom wanted me to get away from those wolves for some reason I couldn’t quite understand. Could it be I had gotten it all wrong? Had she moved us here, to the woods, so we’d be closer to wolves? Why she would want me to be near wild animals, I didn’t know, but she certainly hadn’t gotten us further away from them by taking us to a forest in the middle of their natural hunting grounds.

“Harlow?”

Grandma wasn’t giving up. With a sigh, I brought my water over to the table and sat in a chair across from her. “I got lost.” I said it easily enough, with a shrug. “I know what you said about keeping the house in sight, and I did that for a long time. Then, I ventured a bit further, keeping another landmark in sight. But… there was this noise nearby, one I couldn’t help but want to investigate. I thought I’d planned out a route to get back here, but once I saw what was making the noise, I panicked a little, and the next thing I knew, I was lost in the woods. I was scared, so I started to run, and eventually, I found my way back here.”

I had left out all of the important parts, and I could tell by my grandmother’s unwavering expression that she knew it. With her lips drawn tightly together, she stood. I watched her shuffle across the room to the pot, which she stirred again and then adjusted the heat. When her eyes returned to my face, I knew the inquisition wasn’t over. She came back to the table and sat before she asked, “What was the noise?”

“Oh. Some guy was chopping wood.” That was the understatement of the year. Some guy? Some unbelievably hot guy with beautiful blue eyes--the same shade as the first wolf I’d seen today, the one that had prevented me from approaching that dark house in the woods. Yeah, just some guy. 

Grandma Agnes nodded like it didn't surprise her to hear that I’d caught the sound of a neighbor chopping woods. In retrospect, it was probably a fairly frequently heard noise in these parts. I wondered if she usually chopped her own wood, before Max got here to do it for her…. But my mind came back to the current situation. She wasn’t done asking me questions. “Did you see anything unusual on your run?”

Her tone was light, as if she thought I might say I saw a monkey climbing the trees in the forest or came across a teddy bear picnic. I stalled. “Unusual?”

“Wolves, Harlow. Did you see any wolves?”

“Oh. Those.”

She shook her head slowly, reading my nonsensical answer as an affirmative, which it was. “How many?”

“Four.”

“Together or separate?”

“The first two were alone, but then the third and fourth sort of followed me home. At least, back to the tree I had been using to find my way back here.”

She nodded. “What color were they?”

That question threw me off. “What color?” She nodded. “I don’t know.” I gave a little shrug. “Wolf colored, I guess. Mostly gray and white.” I thought about the smaller wolf, how she was mostly brown, assuming she was a she. 

“And their eyes?”

“All different colors.” I wondered why that mattered. “The first one had bright blue eyes. Then green. Brown. Oh, and… purple.” Had that wolf truly had purple eyes? It seemed so strange now.

But Grandma only nodded again. “Were you scared?”

“I was at first, but then I thought they were trying to help me.” I leaned forward a little, my forehead crinkling. “Does that sound… stupid? Do wild animals try to help lost people?”

“Not usually,” she said, taking her turn to shrug. “But around here, there are animals that will try to help. But… there are also animals that will do tremendous harm, Harlow. Those are the ones you must be careful of.” She leaned in now, too, so that we were only inches apart. “Tell me, dear, did you see any other houses, other than the one where the boy was chopping wood?”

Slowly, my head began to rock back and forth. It might’ve been better to try and lie to her so as not to alarm her or get myself in trouble. But I couldn’t keep the truth from her any longer. “Yes.” I remembered how spooky the dark house seemed, how innate evil the ground around it had felt to me.

Grandma blew out a deep breath and leaned back. “You must never go there, child. No matter how tempting it may seem. Where the ground begins to die and the trees turn dark… do not go there. Do you understand?”

I nodded, no more explanation needed. “I won’t.”

“Good.” Grandma sighed and then got up from the table, walking back to her pot, and I had the feeling the conversation was over. It seemed like a strange place to leave it. I had so many questions now. Did she know who those wolves were--did they belong to someone? How was a person to tell which wolves would be helpful and which ones weren’t? Why was that house dangerous? What might happen if I went there?

But Grandma was finished. I knew her well enough to tell. I gulped down the rest of my water and took the glass back to the sink, headed upstairs. I had a lot on my mind, a lot of sorting out to do. Unfortunately, I knew I was short on answers, and the only place that held any sort of information that might serve useful to me was the forest, a place I wouldn’t be going back to--not that night anyway.