“Sure. They placed Alena in a foster home—she ran away. They put her in another home—she ran away again. She’d head back up to the top of the mountain and hide out in her woods for weeks at a time. That’s awfully hard on a little girl; after a while the authorities got tired of chasing her down, and we started to realize that we were doing her more harm than good. Social Services sort of forgot about her, so Rose and I took over; we decided it was best to let her stay in her home and just try to take care of her there. It’s all we could do; you can put a kid in a foster home, but you can’t make her stay. Alena just refused to live in Endor.”

“Why?”

“Because she hates the people here. When her father vanished, no one called; no one raised a finger to help. They left her up there to take care of herself; she might have starved if Rose and I hadn’t gotten to her first.”

“Why didn’t anyone help?”

“The stories.”

“What stories?”

“These are the mountains, Nick. People are deeply superstitious here—it’s sort of in their blood. There were too many stories about Alena’s father: the man who could talk to animals, the man who could raise the dead—”

“I’ve heard the same stories about Alena.”

“Exactly—but when her father disappeared the stories got worse. Some people said that he turned into an animal himself and ran away; some said that he was like Enoch in the Bible, only it was the devil who took him away and not God.”

“That would be pretty tough on a ten-year-old girl.”

“The stories almost killed her. It’s hard to blame her for hating Endor—I guess maybe I would too. She’s been living up there ever since, just her and her dogs. That’s the same trailer she lived in with her father, and those are the kennels he built.”

“Did her father leave her any money? How does she live?”

“Her father didn’t have a dime—just a thousand acres of Virginia mountaintop. Alena makes a living finding dogs for the CETC. About four times a year dog breeders from all over the country bring their puppies in. The trainers there test the dogs and buy the ones that have the qualities they’re looking for.”

“Can you make a living that way?”

“A good pup is worth about forty-five hundred bucks, and Alena knows what they’re looking for. She manages to sell quite a few— enough to get her by.”

“She seems to have a few of her own.”

“Thirty or so, last time I counted.”

“Where does she get them all?”