Weirdly—or maybe not weirdly—Walks Looking didn’t wolf out once on the way to the stream where they were supposed to meet Many Horses.
There wasn’t even a hint of wolfiness. She remained a girl for the entire duration, albeit a girl clothed in Frank’s coat and hat, and Annie tried again not to be jealous that someone else got to smell Frank’s scent the whole way.
“Are you nervous about seeing your sister again?” Annie asked.
“No. Should I be?” Walks Looking led the way uphill, even though Annie was supposed to be the one doing the rescuing.
“I just thought if you haven’t seen each other since you were bitten, you might be worried she . . .” Annie wasn’t sure how to finish that question without hurting Walks Looking’s feelings.
The girl gave Annie a serious side eye. “My people don’t care about that as much as you seem to. Garou are given as much respect as anyone else, and they make excellent warriors and scouts.” She paused a beat. “We, I suppose.”
“It’s very new to you,” Annie said.
Walks Looking nodded. “I am not afraid, though. I’ll learn to control the wolf, as others do.”
“Do you think it will be hard?”
“For some it is. For others, it isn’t. Your friend Frank is very good at controlling his wolf.”
So good at it that Annie hadn’t had a clue he was a garou.
“Does it bother you?” Walks Looking asked. “Him being a wolf?”
Tears stung Annie’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “It did, because I didn’t know, and I said some really mean things about garou that I shouldn’t have—”
“You wouldn’t have said them if you’d known he was a wolf?”
“Well, no.” Annie frowned.
“And you don’t see a problem with that?”
Annie’s shoulders dropped. “I didn’t think he could be a garou. He’s so kind, and the only garou I’d ever known were horrible. They threatened to eat my liver. And then the garou I saw at the factory tried to kill him and Jane . . .”
Walks Looking nodded. “And now there’s Swearengen, who sends her wolves to bite others, and then enthralls them.”
Annie swallowed hard as they moved higher up the hill. “Yeah. I don’t know a lot of good wolves.”
“You know Frank,” Walks Looking said. “And you know me. You probably know a lot more good wolves than you realize, but you’ve had your eyes closed to them. Open your eyes, Annie Oakley. Wolves can be good and bad, like anyone else. Most people are both. The world is complicated.”
“You’re right,” Annie whispered.
They walked for a ways longer, not speaking as the night deepened and even the birdsong faded. When they found the stream and started following it up to the meeting point, Annie said, “I didn’t mean to talk about me. You’re the one who just escaped captivity and has to learn how to live with a new part of yourself.”
Walks Looking shrugged. “It benefits me if you learn to accept wolves. It benefits Frank, too, and all the other wolves who did nothing to harm you.”
At last they reached the clearing where Annie and Many Horses had fought off the bear, but the clearing was empty. There was no sign of Many Horses (or the bear).
Annie turned to Walks Looking. “She was here yesterday.”
“I’m still here!” Many Horses emerged from inside a small, cleverly hidden tent. She ran to throw her arms around her sister. “You’re safe!”
The girls hugged, laughing and crying, their emotions so raw that Annie had to look away. Tears stabbed at her eyes again and she couldn’t help but wonder where her own sisters were. A wave of missing them swept over her so strong and fast that she worried she might drown.
Many Horses and Walks Looking wiped the tears off each other’s faces, laughing in sharp relief. They spoke a few times, but in their own language, so Annie couldn’t follow, but we, your narrators, can say for certain that they spoke of that unbreakable bond of sisterhood and how they held on to it any time they were scared or worried, and that they had always believed they would be together again. And here they were.
Annie couldn’t understand the words, but she understood the emotions just fine.
After several minutes, the sisters pulled apart and turned to Annie.
“Thank you,” Many Horses said.
Annie’s voice was tight. “It was the least I could do.” The last of the day’s heat had faded, and Annie shivered.
“Oh, here.” Walks Looking removed Frank’s coat and hat. “Your friend will probably want these back.”
Annie shrugged into the coat, then pulled the vial from the inside pocket. “And this is yours,” she said, offering it to Many Horses.
“You didn’t need it?” she asked.
“Nope. Not a drop.”
Many Horses smiled. “Good. I was curious if it would work, though—if the bond between Swearengen and the thralls could be interrupted and broken.”
“We may never know.” Annie folded the sleeves back to her wrists. “I should go back to Deadwood.”
“Do you want to camp with us tonight?” Walks Looking asked, motioning toward the tent. “You can go back in the morning.”
Annie did want to stay with the girls. They were fun and friendly, and she really wanted to get to know them better. But she shook her head. “You should catch up. Still, I hope we see each other again.”
Both sisters smiled. “You can count on it,” Many Horses said. “Just try not to get eaten by any bears.”
The next day, back at the Marriott, Annie sat down at her desk and began a letter. She was tired, but her conversation with Walks Looking had made her realize she needed to say something to Frank, not just run around Deadwood rescuing people with him. She’d hurt him before—hurt him a lot—and now she needed to apologize. Hopefully he would forgive her.
Dear Frank.
She crossed it out.
Dearest Frank.
She sighed and tried again.
Dear George.
There. That was better. She wrote the date across the top: August 2, 1876
There’s something I want to tell you, but it’s hard to talk about. Something happened to me when I was young—something with garou. I’ve never shared this with anyone outside my family, but I think I should tell you—not as an excuse for my behavior, but as an explanation.
The short version is that a family of garou nearly killed me when I was a child, and for years they were the only garou I’d ever known. I thought all garou were like that, and I held on to my fear for so long that it turned into hate. I allowed that hate to shape my views of all garou.
I know now that I was wrong. Garou are not all the same. In fact, you are Frank is one of the kindest, warmest people I’ve ever met.
Recalling some of the things I said about garou . . . I can only imagine how I hurt you Frank. I shouldn’t have said them, not only because Frank’s a garou, but because it wasn’t right.
I was wrong. And I am sorry.
I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make up for this, but I am going to try my best. I want to start with taking down Swearengen. Not only is she biting people who did not ask to become garou, but she is exploiting their fears of everyone else. It’s attitudes like mine that make so many garou desperate for the “cure”—desperate enough to spend a hundred dollars on something they know nothing about.
I will help make this right.
Yours, if you want,
Annie
Annie read her letter over again, feeling raw and revealed, and wildly uncertain what he would think when he read it. A letter by itself wasn’t much—it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the way she’d been—but maybe it was a start.
Maybe.
She folded the letter and put it aside for now. There were more people she needed to write to.
Dear Huldy and Sarah Ellen,
I have so much to tell you about what I’ve been doing . . .
She kept writing until she ran out of paper, telling her sisters about the show, about the scandal in Cincinnati, and finally about how she had met Many Horses and Walks Looking.
Seeing them together made me miss you more than ever, and I want you to know that no matter what it looks like, I didn’t leave you. You have been in my thoughts every day, and I will write to you so often you get tired of reading my words. I’ll keep trying even if the letters continue getting returned to me.
Maybe soon I’ll be back in Ohio and see you again.
Annie sighed and folded up this letter, too, and stuck it in an envelope. She was worn out and ready for a nap, but the sun was working its way toward noon, and below Annie’s window, the streets bustled with activity. She wouldn’t be able to sleep with all this noise.
(Narrators here: yeah, we remember that Annie is a heavy sleeper and that she could sleep straight through a tornado, but Annie didn’t know that. She still had a few more things to discover about herself.)
She put the letters in her pocket and headed outside.
It was even louder down on the street, cacophonous with people shouting about gossip and mining tips, someone pushing toilets (not—we shudder—even new ones) at people, and the splat of horses leaving their marks on the street.
This was truly the worst town. But then she heard it: Calamity Jane.
Now what had Jane done? Annie followed the sound of her friend’s name, hoping the worry knotting in her chest was for nothing. But then, like a scene from the not-yet-invented moving picture, the crowd parted and revealed the front of a newspaper.
The headline stood out, dark and daring:
CALAMITY JANE IS A GAROU!