They walked to the trash pile and looked at everything there. They found an old rocking horse and a bicycle with one wheel and two broken computers. There were many cans and bottles and some car tires. Jackie said the trash was on Mama’s property but had probably been thrown there by Hooper or someone who lived on one of the two properties before. He said some things in the trash were old. Reece had said the TV they used for the Wolfsbane was ancient. The rusted car was from the 1950s, an Invicta, he called it. Jackie took her inside the car and showed her the dashboard. He kept saying everything about the car was cool.

After exploring the trash, they fed Baby more insects. They saw a kingfisher and tried to find its nest in the stream banks. That had been Raven’s idea, and Jackie liked it.

They both knew he’d been at the stream for too long when the light turned a golden color.

“I’d better go,” he said. “Huck is covering for me, but my mom might have noticed I’m gone.”

“Will she be angry?” she asked.

“Worried,” he said. “Doesn’t your mom worry when you’re gone for so long?”

“She likes me to be outside.” She couldn’t mention that Mama wanted her to feel close to her kin by learning how to feed a baby bird. Mama wouldn’t expect her home until early evening when birds went to roost.

“My mom likes Huck and me to go outside, too,” he said. “We aren’t allowed to have phones or video games. Or watch a lot of TV. Are you?”

“No,” she said. She didn’t know what a video game was. There was no TV in her house, but Mama had a phone and computer she used to order things they needed. Raven wasn’t allowed to even touch them.

“Do you want to meet again?” Jackie asked.

She got a bursting feeling in her chest and belly. Like sun shining inside her.

“Yes,” she said.

“You can’t wait for me every day,” he said, smiling. “What if we meet at the Wolfsbane on Sunday around lunchtime?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Don’t forget,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Watching him disappear around the bend of the stream hurt even more than the first time. She felt an aching kind of alone she’d never known before. When the sky turned gray, when it was time for mama birds to go to roost, she returned home. Mama was in a good mood again. She had been for many days in a row.

They ate dinner, and Mama asked the usual questions about what she’d seen and learned. After she told her, leaving out Jackie and Huck, she got brave enough to ask a question.

“Did you ever see a dog by the stream?” she asked.

The surprise she saw in Mama’s eyes said she had. “Did you see a dog?”

“I did.”

“Last summer?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realize you were going that far last year.”

Raven wasn’t, but she didn’t say so.

Mama clasped Raven’s hand on the table. “Have no worries,” she said. “That dog won’t frighten you again.”

“Why not?” In her mind, Raven saw the TV deer spirit, microwave, and green Madonna scaring away the werewolf.

“It attacked me twice,” Mama said. “I was afraid for my daughter. To keep her safe, I had to return the dog’s spirit to the earth.”

“How?” Raven asked.

“With a gun.”

“When?”

“Late last summer.”

Raven worked to hide her reaction. Except she wasn’t sure how she felt about Mama killing the werewolf. If she hadn’t, maybe the boys wouldn’t have come to the swimming hole.

But Jackie believed his Wolfsbane Asking had made the werewolf go away. And that had made him happy. Raven decided she must never tell him what Mama had done. Because she wanted Jackie to always be happy.

5

Baby called to Raven and Jackie from up in a maple tree. Another Steller’s jay heard and attacked her. Baby escaped, flying out of sight.

“Will she be okay?” Jackie asked. He was as worried about her as Raven was. Raven sometimes called him Baby’s father, and that always made him smile.

“I hope she will be.”

“Will the other birds ever get used to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Mama said normally a bird would have the protection of its parents’ territory. But when Baby followed Raven around the land, she went through many birds’ territories, and sometimes they attacked her. Seeing her chased and never accepted was sad. Even worse, she’d been attacked by a hawk once. Raven never stopped worrying about her. But Mama said that was part of being a mother.

Raven didn’t have her raincoat, and the drizzle had soaked her clothes to the skin.

“Do you want to go to my house?” Jackie asked.

They had been meeting at the Wolfsbane for three weeks, but he’d never asked that before.

He looked up at the low gray clouds. “It’s not going to stop.”

“What about your mom?”

She had learned to use the word mom around him. She called Mama that when she was with him, too.

“My mom is really nice. She won’t mind,” he said.