“Give it back!” he said, swiping for it, but she raised it out of his reach. He looked at me. “Make Mama K give my Wolfriders back,” he said.

“Yours?” Karen said. “Those are my books. I’m just letting you borrow them.”

“Mama L!” Perley appealed to me. I gave him our special look of, It’s out of my hands.

“Come on, Perley,” Karen said. “First we’ll muck out the duck shed, and then I’ll read you Wolfriders.”

“I don’t want to muck out the duck shed,” Perley said.

“I don’t care,” she said. He inched his way off the couch, still looking doubtfully at Helen and me.

“Go on,” I said. “We’ve all got our work to do.” Lip out, he followed Karen through the front door.

Before I left for work, Helen and I scooped the snakes up with shovels and put them outside, but they were back by the time I got home. Next, we patched the holes where the snakes were getting in, but there were too many holes. Still, Helen greeted us and the black snakes with a fresh and hopeful smile each morning. When Karen smirked at her over breakfast, she pretended not to notice.

Karen mostly stayed away, patching the driveway where it was rutted, stacking firewood, fetching propane in town. She tried to enlist Perley, but he drifted back to Helen and me, fascinated by our fight against the wild. He always went right for the snakes, hissing at them, or giving them a thwack to make them kink up and send up their sulfur smell.

“You’ve got to stop him doing that,” Helen said.

“He’s being friendly,” I said.

“He’s frightening the snakes,” Helen said. “The smell is horrible.”

“What can I do?” I said.

“Tell him not to hit the snakes,” Helen said.

“Hitting is Perley’s form of love-patting,” I said.

“What is love-patting?” Helen asked. “That’s just something that you made up.” So I love-patted her. Like a sort of a soft slap with a caress at the end. She shrank from it.

“I don’t like that pat,” she said. “And that’s not what Perley’s doing. He’s trying to hit the snakes. Like how he hit Rudy. Like how he hits you when you don’t give him chocolate.”

“Well, maybe it means he needs chocolate,” I said.

“I need chocolate,” Perley said.

“But don’t tell Mama K, right, Piglet?” I said, slipping him some chocolate chips.

“You can’t hit snakes, Perley,” Helen said. “It’s dangerous.”

“But aren’t they harmless?” I asked.

“Not if they’re provoked,” Helen said. “I’d fight back if someone hit me. Wouldn’t you?”

“Perley, gentle touch,” I said.

“I am Friend of Snake,” Perley said, swinging ElfQuest at the snake on the sofa.