“The Hulk and I go way back,” he says after a spell. “When my dad would lock me in the root cellar, The Hulk kind of saved me. The villains would hurt Bruce Banner and put him down so much, and then when he’d get mad enough, angry enough, he’d turn invincible. It was a powerful tale to a young boy in a root cellar.”
I know he’s probably only telling me more of his story because he knows that hearing stories calms me, but I listen eagerly.
He talks about how he’d imagine scenarios of himself as The Hulk, bursting out of there.
“It came true a little bit,” I say sleepily, nestled into his chest.
“I’m nowhere near The Hulk.”
“In comparison to others, you are.”
A rumble in his chest. He’s not like The Hulk right now. He’s badly concussed. Probably dizzy, judging from the way he looked on shore. He takes a curl in his finger, the way he loves to. “And then you came like a beautiful angel, and you asked if I turned into The Hulk to escape. And I wanted you more than anything.”
More than his freedom, even.
The drone of the helicopter fades away, and it’s just the soft waves lapping at the bottom of the canoe, and us alone under the stars.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kiro
The next morning,we trek through the forest. Midmorning. I should feel happy. Every turn is familiar. Every view. I’m nearly home. But everything’s wrong.
I told her the helicopter scared off my pack. But if Red or Snowy or the others were anywhere near, they’d scent me. They’d come.
“Our den was just over that hill,” I say, with a mixture of excitement and dread. “It’s possible they’re not here for the winter yet, and that’s why they’re not out to greet me.”
A lie. They should be here. They would be here.
My heart pounds as we get to the peak of a hill overlooking a valley that’s lush with reds and oranges. A stand of green pines pointing up to the sky like feathers.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
It is. And it’s all wrong.
My eyes aren’t on the panorama. They’re on an outcrop of rock and two huge downed trees midway down the hill. You wouldn’t mark it as a home by looking. But it’s a home.
Or was.
I feel her eyes on me. “Kiro?”
The world sways. It’s not my head.
I start down toward the den, then break out in a run, not wanting to get there, yet needing to get there with every fiber of my being. I stumble once but keep going. I round the boulder and duck in under the massive downed trunk like I did so often, so deeply familiar.
I move into the cool shade and protection of the den. A wide space. Not so tall. Not tall enough to stand.
I scent him before I find him. I go cold. No.
With shaking hands I slide aside the leaves and decay, and there it is—a slash of white that shouldn’t be there. A half-buried skull. Red—I know it’s Red by the scent. Bones still carry the scent of the animal.
I unearth it a bit more and press my hand against what would have been the side of Red’s head, breathing hard, unable to believe that this bump of bone was once my friend.
I press my forehead to the side of his head, like I used to when he was alive. When we would sleep side by side. Red. So loyal. All the misery and loneliness of those years of being trapped crashes through me.
It’s then I scent Snowy. I’m heaving in gulps of air. I scent Ghost, another of the older ones.
I scrabble around in the dried leaves and dirt, finding the bones.