The Talisman

Vaguely aware that Wolf was crying.
    ‘Jack, I’m so sorry, please don’t hate Wolf, I can be a good old Wolf, you wait, you’ll see . . .’
    ‘I don’t hate you,’ Jack said. ‘I know you’re . . . you’re a good old—
    But before he could finish, he had fallen asleep. When he woke up it was evening and Muncie was behind him. Wolf had gotten off the main roads and on to a web of farm roads and dirt tracks. Totally unconfused by the lack of signs and the multitude of choices, he had continued west with all the unerring instinct of a migrating bird.
    They slept that night in an empty house north of Cammack, and Jack thought in the morning that his fever had gone down a little.
    It was midmorning – midmorning of October 28th – when Jack realized that the hair was back on Wolf’s palms.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
JACK IN THE BOX
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    1
    They camped that night in the ruins of a burned-out house with a wide field on one side and a copse of woods on another. There was a farmhouse on the far side of the field, but Jack thought that he and Wolf would be safe enough if they were quiet and stayed in most of the time. After the sun went down, Wolf went off into the woods. He was moving slowly, his face close to the ground. Before Jack lost sight of him, he thought that Wolf looked like a nearsighted man hunting for his dropped spectacles. Jack became quite nervous (visions of Wolf caught in a steel-jawed trap had begun to come to him, Wolf caught and grimly not howling as he gnawed at his own leg . . .) before Wolf returned, walking almost upright this time, and carrying plants in both hands, the roots dangling out of his fists.
    ‘What have you got there, Wolf?’ Jack asked.
    ‘Medicine,’ Wolf said morosely. ‘But it’s not very good, Jack. Wolf! Nothing’s much good in your world!’
    ‘Medicine? What do you mean?’
    But Wolf would say no more. He produced two wooden matches from the bib pocket of his overalls and started a smokeless fire and asked Jack if he could find a can. Jack found a beercan in the ditch. Wolf smelled it and wrinkled his nose.
    ‘More bad smells. Need water, Jack. Clean water. I’ll go, if you’re too tired.’
    ‘Wolf, I want to know what you’re up to.’
    ‘I’ll go,’ Wolf said. ‘There’s a farm right across that field. Wolf! There’ll be water there. You rest.’
    Jack had a vision of some farmer’s wife looking out the kitchen window as she did the supper dishes and seeing Wolf skulking around in the dooryard with a beercan in one hairy paw and a bunch of roots and herbs in the other.
    ‘ I’ll go,’ he said.
    The farm was not five hundred feet away from where they had camped; the warm yellow lights were clearly visible across the field. Jack went, filled the beercan at a shed faucet without incident, and started back. Halfway across the field he realized he could see his shadow, and looked up at the sky.
    The moon, now almost full, rode the eastern horizon.
    Troubled, Jack went back to Wolf and gave him the can of water. Wolf sniffed, winced again, but said nothing. He put the can over the fire and began to sift crumbled bits of the things he had picked in through the pop-top hole. Five minutes or so later, a terrible smell – a reek, not to put too fine a point on it – began to rise on the steam. Jack winced. He had no doubt at all that Wolf would want him to drink that stuff, and Jack also had no doubt it would kill him. Slowly and horribly, probably.
    He closed his eyes and began snoring loudly and theatrically. If Wolf thought he was sleeping, he wouldn’t wake him up. No one woke up sick people, did they? And Jack was sick; his fever had come back at dark, raging through him, punishing him with chills even while he oozed sweat from every pore.
    Looking through his lashes, he saw Wolf set the can aside to cool. Wolf sat back and looked skyward, his hairy hands locked around his knees, his face dreamy and somehow beautiful.
    He’s looking at the moon , Jack thought, and felt a thread of fear.
    We don’t go near the herd when we change. Good Jason, no! We’d eat them!
    Wolf, tell me something: am I the herd now?
    Jack shivered.
    Five minutes later – Jack almost had gone to sleep by then – Wolf leaned over the can, sniffed, nodded, picked it up, and came over to where Jack was leaning against a fallen, fire-blackened beam with an extra shirt behind his neck to pad the angle. Jack closed his eyes tightly and resumed snoring.
    ‘Come on, Jack,’ Wolf