Crissa's Mate

Chapter Thirty-Four

When Crissa arrived at the airport in Vancouver, Canada, some twenty-five hours later, she could not get the image out of her mind back at New York's JFK International Airport. For it was there where her flight had linked up with her British Columbia connection. And it was there she had to part with the young associates she had met on the trip, and with whom she had shared so much. From that terminal it was on to Illinois for Josh and Mary, and for the others, a flight back to Alaska. The stark picture of Brad, David, the professor, and a still dazed and heavily-sedated Julie, waiting in the terminal, was too emotional for her to bare without tears. It was a picture she could not erase from her mind, even when her father ran up to her at the Vancouver Airport hours later and lifted her up like a child--exclaiming how much he and her mother had missed her over the past ten days.

"Now Crissy . . . you'll have to tell us all the details  of your trip. Over dinner tonight, huh?"  Her father's voice was enthusiastic and understandably emotional to be reunited with his only daughter. He was speaking and at the same time looking back and forth at her and the road, while driving them home through Vancouver.

"Yeah, Dad. I'll tell you all about it. A lot happened. It was actually . . . pretty unreal."

"Well your mother has already bought you new clothes . . . and a whole hallway of things you'll be taking with you to the dorms at UBC."

"Great, Dad. You two are the best." She felt her eyes welling up with tears.

"Oh. And a letter came for you a while back . . . from I think, your new roommate. You know, to welcome you and just . . . reach out, I suppose. To get to know you better. It's a girl named Trish from California."

"So . . . how did mom know it was my roommate?  Did she open the letter? My  letter?"

"Well OK. You know how your mother is, Crissy . . ."

Yeah. Totallym Dad. I do. Nosey.  That's going to have to stop now, you know?  When I'm living on campus . . . you two will just have to . . ."

"Back off?"

"Of course!   I'm not a child anymore, guys. Things will just have to be . . . different now."

"So I guess you're saying you grew up a little . . . while on the trip, huh, young lady?"

"Yeah Dad. That's kind of what I'm saying. Maybe a lot."

"Well . . . anything I  need to know about that?"

"Nope. Just that I'm older. A little wiser, and well . . . that I'm going to insist on my privacy now while on campus. I hope you both can deal with that."

"Yeah. I suppose we'll have to." Her dad was surprisingly quiet and now pensive while driving them quietly through the beautiful countryside which famously defined that region of North America. It was little wonder, Crissa took note, having missed it, that British Columbia was indeed such an enviable place in the world to live.

"So . . . did you make good friends with the other students?" he asked, more subdued.

"Some, yeah. They were interesting. I was still the youngest."

"Oh?   And was that ever a . . ."

"No Dad, it wasn't a problem. Hardly anyone could tell I was. And in the end, it really didn't matter one bit. They all accepted me OK . . . Some better than others," she added quietly.

"The boys, too?"

"Everyone, Dad. I got along fine. Just kinda glad to be home, now. And looking forward to school next week."

"I understand, Crissy. We just got very worried when you didn't . . ."

"There was no Internet. Or telephones where we were, Dad. You got my message from Berlin that I'd be on schedule coming home, right? The place we were was this . . . village at . . . at the very edge of the world. The unknown world, actually."

"And so . . . I guess you learned a few things about wolves?"

Crissa nearly choked when he asked her this.

"Yeah. Totally.  A lot, Dad. All  of us did."

"Great. So . . . give me just . . . one."

"One what, Dad?" Her heart began to beat faster.

"One interesting fact. That you learned about them. Maybe something you really didn't  know."

He turned off the main highway now and was heading up onto the roads which would lead within a half hour to their home in an outlying, leafy suburb away from the city.

"Well, OK. They're very . . . loyal,  it turns out."

"Loyal?  To whom?"

"Their mates, Dad. I guess it's kind of true, what we've always heard. That wolves mate for life."

"I think that's just a myth, Crissy. Isn't it?"

Crissa was uncomfortable with where the conversation was going. Yet, she couldn't resist the cryptic answer which jumped into her head.

"Well, I'll let you know if I ever learn more about that," she said, half in jest and half seriously.

"Good," he said smiling.

She then looked ahead through the windshield as the car traveled from the Vancouver International Airport northward, across the Lyon's Gate bridge and over the Vancouver Harbor toward the mountain communities of North Vancouver. When they had climbed up to the higher elevation, close to their community of Grousewood, Crissa looked back down toward the coast. She could see the early evening lights of downtown Vancouver and the distant, sprawling campus of the University of British Columbia at the very end of the peninsula. It would be there, within just a week's time, that she would be living in a dormitory on campus.

As it became darker, and the residential groupings of homes up the mountainside thinned out, Crissa looked further north to the uninhabited forests beyond Grousewood, in the direction of Mt. Fromme. She knew that somewhere in those dense woods and tall peaks, not far from her childhood home, lived packs of the North American Gray Wolf. And near them, in the same rugged environment, a distinct subspecies of coastal canis lupis, known as the British Columbian Wolf--both varieties large, robust and particularly beautiful as creatures.

How long, Crissa wondered, as they got out of the car and walked toward the house, before these beasts  could be running with a singular, and even more unique species of wolf? They would no doubt commune with him only briefly, she thankfully knew, but intensely during those days and nights under the spell of the full moon.

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