Forgotten Wolves

I haven't had time to write many stories but I recently found this story I started a few months before school ended. It isn't written as badly as a couple of my other stories, and I think my writing's starting to get deeper... Anyway, the wolves part intrigues me because I love wolves <3


PROLOGUE

The girl smiled at the woman sitting beside her in the car—her mother. “Will we be home soon?” she asked in a slight British accent.
“You’ve asked that question at least ten times in the past hour, Jamie,” the driver laughed. “We’ll be home in another half hour.” The car was silent for several moments. Then, at length—“Do you really hate Quebec that much?” she asked in a soft voice.
Jamie sighed. “It isn’t that. I just feel so much more comfortable on the island.”
“Is it because of your father?”
“No, Mum. I know you’re a psychologist, but I’m not one of your patients. You can’t treat me like one. I’m different because I’m your daughter. And also… It’s none of your business however much I like Dad.”
Mother and daughter lapsed into silence.
It was a rainy night. The old Volkswagen was running low on gas. There were so many causes for what happened next.
A car swerved out onto the open road, right in front of Jamie and her mother. On instinct, Jamie’s mother turned the car to the right, to avoid the car. She had twisted the wheel too hard.
The car skidded across a thin sheet of black ice.
She struggled to right the car, but in doing so, her efforts turned the car over.
Jamie screamed.
Then there was pain.
Then there was nothing.
CHAPTER ONE

Jamie woke up. She couldn’t remember why she was there. She was covered in bandages. She couldn’t remember where she was.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned her head. There was a man, sleeping in a chair, very close to her bed. I’m supposed to know him, Jamie thought, but I don’t. What happened to me?
She tried to ease herself up, but a piercing pain in her head made her shriek. The man beside her bed woke immediately.
There was relief in his eyes, then worry, and finally pain. “Are you all right, Jamie?”
She nodded. “I think so.” I have a British accent, she thought dazedly. Since there was no way to put it off without pain, she asked bluntly, “Who are you?”
The pain in the man’s eyes intensified, and Jamie wished she could take it back. “I’m Dad, remember?” He seemed to choke on the last word. “Do you remember who you are? Why you’re here? Where you are?”
Jamie thought. “My name is Jamie,” she said slowly, “but I’m not quite sure of my last name. I think it starts with a D. I don’t know why I’m here. I think I’m in a hospital. Am I?” The man—my father, she reminded herself—nodded sadly. “Why am I in a hospital? Is there something wrong with me?” She felt oddly panicked. She already knew there was something wrong with her. Why should she be worried? Why was she wasting time asking pointless questions? Did she always do this?
“You were in an accident, Jamie. With your mother.”
Jamie felt dazed, like she was dreaming. “My mother,” she repeated stupidly. “Is she alive?” The man—my father, she reminded herself again—didn’t say anything. “She’s dead, isn’t she.” It was said as a statement, not a question. If she wasn’t alive, she was dead. It was that simple.
He nodded after a long pause. “It must be hard for you,” he said, his voice catching. “To not be able to remember her, I mean. She used to be the most important person in your life.”
“Really?” Jamie was intrigued. She wanted to learn more about this life which apparently used to be hers. “What was she like?”
Her father kept silent for a long time. When he began to talk again, his voice was layered with sadness. “She was a beautiful woman. She was happy most of the time, but when the mood seized her, she could become very withdrawn. She was such an intelligent woman, always hungry for knowledge. The house was filled with all her books.”
“Am I like her?”
“Very much so. You have her eyes and her hair. You have her nose. You look so much like her I can hardly believe it isn’t her. But you’re more emotionally balanced that she was. You liked to write more than to read.” Jamie’s father broke off in the middle.
Jamie kept quiet. She had a question, but she didn’t want to distress him more. At last, she ventured, “Who are you?”
“I’m your father.”
“Yes, you’ve said that. But what are you like?”
“My name is Robert Ma’iitsoh. I’m thirty-seven years old, and I study wolves as a profession. When we go home, there will be thirteen wolves waiting for us. Do you remember them?”
Jamie thought hard. “No,” she answered truthfully. “But…thirteen? Isn’t that how old I am?”
Robert smiled, pleased that she’d at least remembered her age. “Yes. Your mother and I started the project the year you were born. Each year, we add a new wolf.”
“Who are they?” Jamie propped herself up in bed, interested at last. Her father pulled out a scrapbook in his backpack and began to show her the wolves, and how to tell each one apart.
Lakota…Chinook…Cheyenne…Estonia…Gypsy…
Inuktitut…Lakota…Navajo…Shoshone…Tamil…Inupiat…
Lenape…Cherokee…
The names were familiar only because these were the names of Native American tribes, or of some other ethnic group. The pictures weren’t familiar. Eventually, however, Jamie learned to distinguish the wolves. She also figured out how much it hurt her father when she couldn’t remember what apparently had been so important to her before. And so she pretended. She pretended that she vaguely remembered something, or that something seemed familiar. Nothing too promising, since she didn’t want to get his hopes up.
“When are we going home?” Jamie asked finally. She had picked up enough to know that “home” equaled a huge estate that covered acres and acres, filled with a wolf tribe of thirteen.
Robert seemed surprised. “I never thought you’d ask to go to Ontario,” he chuckled.
Jamie looked startled—a mistake. “What?” she asked. “Do I not like to go to Ontario?”
Her father’s face changed, and she immediately knew that she had given away her act of remembrance with that one little question. “You don’t remember, do you,” he said softly. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. She didn’t remember. And he knew.
“Of course I do,” Jamie blundered. She couldn’t hurt her father this way. Even if she knew him as only a strange man who seemed to care about her, she didn’t want to hurt him. He loved her, apparently, and she wouldn’t hurt those who loved her.
Robert frowned, “No you don’t. Stop pretending just to spare me. I’d rather know what was really going on than to be protected. I’m not a child; I’m older than you are.”
“Age is nothing but a number,” replied Jamie without thinking. She didn’t even know where that had come from.
Apparently, her father did. He went white, and gasped, “You remember that?”
“Remember what?” Jamie was confused.
“Your mother and you used to eat those Dove chocolates all the time, and you’d memorize all those quaint little sayings inside the wrapping. Don’t you remember any of that?”
Jamie shook her head. “It just came out of the blue. I guess it became a kind of reflex.”
“Do you remember her at all?” Robert asked pleadingly.
She thought hard. “I—I remember she was tall, and that’s about it.”