Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  Yes, she also knew about the vines, and the voices, and the eerie footsteps in the dark, as did everyone else in the village. But those terrors seemed to fascinate her, rather than spook her, which frightened my mother endlessly on her behalf.

  That frightened me too, because I understood her fascination with the woods, and I worried that she felt drawn toward the forest just like I did. That some day, she might answer that call.

  “You’re too young,” I told Sofia. “And, Mama, you’ll need my help with the tart.” The Laurents’ order would be difficult to fill even with both of us working.

  “I can make the tart!” Sofia pounded one small fist into the scrap of dough intended to keep her busy.

  “You can help me prepare the apples,” my mother conceded. “But not until you’ve finished your meat pie.”

  Sofia’s green eyes lit up, and she pushed a lock of copper-colored hair over her shoulder as she turned back to her task.

  “Surely Gran’s delivery can wait until tomorrow.” I removed the smoked pork from my basket and set it on the shelf above the brick oven. “She’ll understand, once she hears about Elena’s engagement.”

  “Tonight’s the full moon, Adele.” The day we were expected every month. “If neither of us arrives, your grandmother will think something’s wrong. I can handle the orders.” The tone of her voice suggested that I would not win this argument. “You’ll see Elena tonight. Go deliver Gran’s bread and make sure she feeds you something warm before you head back. It’s a long walk.”

  It certainly felt like a long walk, anyway. Even with my mother at my side, I usually had to remind myself to breathe, and now . . .

  “There’s a lantern hanging out back.” My mother wiped her hands on her apron as I packed my grandmother’s baked goods into my basket and draped a fresh cloth over the whole thing. The raisin bread was still warm, and it smelled delicious. “Adele.” She took me by both shoulders, and the concern swimming in her eyes fed my self-doubt. “Be careful. Stay on the path and don’t stop until you get to the cottage.”

  “I know.”

  “The lantern will keep you safe.”

  “I know, Mama.” Monsters hated light, and they feared fire.

  I reached for my threadbare brown cloak, but before I could lift it from its hook, my mother shook her head.

  “You’ll need something thicker than that.” She motioned for me to follow as she pushed past the curtain into our private room at the back of the bakery, where she knelt to open the trunk at the end of her low straw mattress, opposite the one Sofia and I shared. “This will keep you much warmer.” She stood, shaking out a lovely red wool cloak.

  That crimson fabric had been folded up in my mother’s trunk for as long as I could remember. When I was a child, I would run my hands over it any chance I got, before she shooed me away and closed the lid. Yet in all those years, I’d never seen her take it out of the trunk. In fact, I’d had no idea it was a cloak until that very moment.

  I frowned at the beautiful garment. “Aren’t you saving this for something special?” Why else would she have had it all this time? The cut was simple and functional, and the material would be warm without adding too much weight. But the color was extravagant—a deep red hue she’d once said was made from berries grown in the forest.

  “It isn’t mine, Adele. It’s yours. Your grandmother made it the year you were born, and I think you’ve finally grown into it.” She turned me by my arm and draped the cloak over my shoulders.

  For a moment, my surprise was enough to overwhelm the nervous buzzing beneath my skin at the thought of stepping into the woods by myself. Of facing a darkness that daylight could not penetrate.

  Because the cloak fit perfectly. The rich fabric fell to my ankles, draping over both of my arms, as well as the basket. And it was warm. Almost too warm to wear inside, with the heat leaking beneath the curtain from the oven in the main room.

  “I can’t believe how quickly these last sixteen winters have gone. You were born on a day very much like this one. Cold and clear.” She turned me to face her again, and there was something odd in her eyes. Something both assessing and nostalgic beneath the warmth of her gaze, as if I somehow seemed different to her today. “You came into the world just hours before the full moon rose.”

  She tied the cord loosely at my neck, to keep the cloak from slipping off, then she lifted the hood to settle it over my head, framing my face. “Beautiful,” she declared as she stepped back to look me over.

  “Gran really made this for me? Why didn’t either of you ever tell me?”

  “Because that would have ruined the surprise. She’ll be thrilled to see you in it.” My mother pulled me into an embrace that lasted a little too long. Then she turned abruptly toward the front room again. “You should get going, if you want to be back in time for the celebration. Don’t forget your lantern.”

  I pushed the back door open and grabbed the lantern hanging on the wall. The candle inside the simple metal frame was short, but it should be enough to get me through the trip.

  “Pretty!” Sofia jumped up from her stool the moment I stepped back into the front room. “Where did you get the red cloak?”

  “It’s a gift from your grandmother,” Mama told her. “Adele is sixteen years old this season, and it’s time for her to start thinking about adult things.”

  The flush that rose in my cheeks had nothing to do with the heat from the oven. She wanted me to think about “adult things,” yet she wouldn’t even discuss Grainger’s request for my hand. A refusal that made even less sense to me than her wariness around his father.

  “Hurry,” she said as she went back to her dough. “And do not stop on the path.”

  “I won’t.” I gave Sofia a smile as I lit the lantern, then I pulled the front door closed behind me.

  On my way west through the village, I passed the blacksmith, the candle maker, the fletcher, and the spinster, who all looked up from their work to compliment my new cloak. I nodded to Madame Gosse, the potter’s wife, and after returning my polite nod, she stopped to observe to the spinster that perhaps red was not precisely my best color, considering the strong coppery cast of my tresses.

  I gave them both a friendly smile and kept walking.

  I passed the sawmill, the fallow fields, and the empty pastures, and as I approached the path leading into the forest, I saw a group of villagers gathered at the edge of the wood, working in the light from the halo of torches, which penetrated into the forest where daylight refused to fall. Half a dozen women with baskets were gathering acorns, while three men from the village watch stared out into the forest with their hands on the pommels of their swords, ready and willing to take on any beast that might lurch from the inky darkness.

  But only one kind of monster ever ventured from the dark wood—the same species that had cost my father his life.

  Loup-garou. Werewolf.

  They looked normal in their human guise, but loup garou were enormous and bloodthirsty in wolf form. Though my father had survived the initial attack from a werewolf, I’d seen the remains of other victims ripped limb from limb. Twice, when I was a small child, the village watch had recovered little more than a leg, still wearing the shredded scraps of a pair of trousers.

  Werewolves were the reason for the halo kept burning around Oakvale—loup garou were afraid of fire.

  A few yards to the east, the Thayer brothers were hard at work with their axes, chopping new-growth trees from the perimeter of the forest. The woodcutters worked daily to keep the woods from encroaching any farther upon Oakvale, yet they never managed to actually push it back. And as grateful as I was for their service—which they profited from by selling the trees to the villagers as firewood or to the sawmill to be split and planed into lumber, then sold down the river—I found the brothers themselves to be unpleasant, at best, and occasionally an outright menace.

  “Adele!” a familiar voice called as I approached the wood, and I realized that Elena was among
the women gathering acorns. She broke from the group and raced toward me.

  “Congratulations!” I pulled her into an eager embrace. “But shouldn’t you be getting ready for the celebration?”

  She shrugged, chewing on her lower lip. “You know what the priest says about idle hands. And I needed a distraction.” Elena stepped back to look at me. “What a beautiful cloak!” Then her focus fell to my basket. “You’re going to see your grandmother? Alone?”

  “She won’t be alone for long,” Lucas Thayer called, his ax propped over one thick, broad shoulder. “If Adele goes out there, she’ll soon be joining her father.”

  “Shush!” one of the ladies scolded, rising from a kneeling position to glare at him. “Leave the poor girl alone. She ought not go on her own, but it’s her choice.”

  Noah Thayer snorted. “Who do you think the watch will recruit to help find her body and drag it from the woods to be burned? She shouldn’t be allowed out there. Neither should her grandmother. Emelina Chastain is a witch, and you all know it. How else could an old woman survive in the dark wood all on her own?”

  “She isn’t on her own,” I snapped at him as my temper flared. “My mother and I bring her supplies every month. And I’ve never known either of you to turn down her venison.”

  Our errand was as important for us as it was for my grandmother. For the most part, villagers were unable to hunt in the dark wood, even when they could afford to pay Baron Carre for the privilege, but deer often wandered into the clearing around my grandmother’s cabin, and she always seemed to be waiting for them with an arrow notched in her bow.

  And not even the neighbors who whispered “witch” behind our backs had ever turned down the fresh game she sent for my mother to trade for ground grain, honey, salt, and ale. They were willing to deal with the redheaded Duval women and their mad, reclusive matriarch, as long as those dealings filled either their bellies or their purses.

  “Mark my word,” Lucas Thayer said as I settled my basket into the crook of my arm and stepped back onto the path, my spine straight and my head high. “That girl will come back in pieces.”

  The dark wood was alive. That’s how it had always felt to me, anyway. As if every breeze that skimmed my skin were a breath from the forest itself, blowing over me. As if I’d marched into the belly of some great beast.

  As if I’d been swallowed whole.

  My heart pounded at that thought, but I sucked in a deep breath and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

  Stay on the path. Don’t stop. Hold your lantern high.

  Nothing could hurt me if I followed the instructions. Right? Yes, there were monsters in the woods. But they were afraid of light. Of fire.

  I would be fine, as long as I had my lantern.

  Within a few steps, I lost sight of the light from the village, and a few steps beyond that, I could no longer hear the thunk of the Thayers’ axes or the women talking as they gathered acorns.

  Every step carried me deeper into the darkness, and I could feel the chill of the frozen earth through the leather soles of my shoes. The forest swallowed the light from my lantern just a few feet from the source, leaving me isolated in a bubble of weak firelight, staring out into impenetrable gloom.

  I’d never been alone in the dark wood before, and I felt my mother’s absence like the loss of a limb. She’d grown up in my grandmother’s cabin, though back then, before the forest had encroached so boldly upon Oakvale, it was just inside the dark wood. So she was far more familiar than I was with the dangers and with ways to avoid them.

  Though I could only see the path beneath my feet and the occasional branch that dipped into view over my head, I could feel the woods around me. And I could hear . . . things. An unnerving slithering that seemed too loud and too late in the season to be snakes. A series of wet snorts. The crack of twigs beneath a foot too heavy to be human. The dry clatter of dead branches crashing into one another with every breeze.

  Just keep walking.

  A sudden gust of wind lifted the edge of my cloak, and I shuddered as cold air wafted up my skirt. My arm began to shake, and the bubble of light around me trembled. The shadows overhead danced.

  I dropped my basket. Then the wind gusted, and my lantern blew out.

  Two

  Terror clutched me like a fist squeezing my rib cage. I froze, afraid to take another step because I could no longer see the path in front of me, and that was when I realized I’d broken two of the rules. My lantern had gone out and I’d stopped walking. But if I kept going without being able to see the path, I might accidentally deviate from it. And if that happened, getting lost would be the least of my worries.

  Turn around, Adele. I picked up my basket, fumbling in the dark, and stood slowly. Just turn around and walk in a straight line until you hear the axes. Until you come out of the forest. That would be much safer than pressing on toward my grandmother’s cabin in absolute darkness. So I carefully turned, feeling with one foot for the edge of the path. Then I started walking.

  I didn’t realize I’d veered off course until my foot struck something. I screamed as I fell forward, arms flailing. I dropped the lantern. My hands slammed into the ground. Twigs bit into my palms and pain shot through my wrists and shoulders.

  My basket landed somewhere to my left. The scent of raisin bread suddenly wafted over me as the cloth-wrapped bundle rolled away, crunching over dead leaves.

  I sucked in a deep breath, the cold air scraping my throat raw as I fought panic.

  Get up! Run!

  No, call for help and wait for someone to find you!

  Seconds slipped past as I tried to decide which would be least likely to get me killed. The Thayers and the watchmen might still be close enough to hear me scream.

  But the monsters might be closer. My initial scream might have alerted them to my presence, and shouting for help might only draw them to me.

  Something slithered over my ankle and a shriek ripped free from my throat. My jaw snapped shut, cutting off the sound, but it was too late. I could feel the forest closing in on me with a cacophony of soft, unidentifiable sounds. I slapped at my leg and the vine released its grip on me then rustled through dead leaves.

  I sat up and concentrated on my breathing, trying to slow my racing heart. To hear something other than the rush of my pulse and the rasping sound of my own panicked inhalations. The quieter I managed to make myself, the more I could hear from the forest around me. Twigs snapping. Branches swaying. The rustling of what sounded like leathery wings. The wet sound of something large breathing. Snorting.

  Two points of light appeared to my right, and I gasped. They blinked. Then blinked again. My heart slammed against my ribs with the realization that I was looking at a glowing set of eyes. And that they definitely were not human.

  The beast took a breath, and the wet, rasping sound seemed to last forever, as it filled its huge lungs. The soft rumbling swelled, and I realized I was hearing a growl.

  A wolf.

  Not a normal wolf. Loup garou.

  Fear washed over me like a bucket of frigid water, leaving goose bumps on every inch of my skin. My stomach twisted as I watched those two points of light. They blinked again. Then I heard a soft oof of breath and the pounding of massive paws in the underbrush as the wolf lunged.

  Every muscle in my body tensed. I swung the lantern, aiming at those bright eyes as they raced toward me.

  A scream tore from my throat as the lantern crashed into the wolf’s skull, little more than an inky blur against the greater darkness. The metal frame broke in my hand. Something warm and wet splattered my face, accompanied by the scent of blood. The wolf whimpered—a sound like the fletcher’s dog makes when he kicks it—and I heard the beast stumble to the side.

  I shoved myself to my feet and took off running, still clutching the broken lantern. Unseen branches slapped my face and arms. Roots and vines snagged my feet, as if the forest floor were trying to trip me. I stumbled several times, but I kept goin
g, tearing through the woods as quickly as I could. I had no idea where I was headed. But I was headed there fast.

  My legs felt oddly powerful, propelling me through the woods at a speed I’d never attained before, and what should have felt like an abuse of my muscles suddenly felt like a relief. Like scratching a desperate itch.

  My legs wanted to run.

  My arms pumped at my sides now, maintaining the rhythm of my stride. Aiding my balance. My lungs expanded easily, fueling my body so efficiently that even though I’d never moved that fast in my life, I wasn’t huffing. The speed felt natural.

  I felt like I was born for this.

  Yet despite my speed, within seconds, I heard the wolf crashing through the forest behind me, so close I could practically feel its breath on my neck. Fresh terror fueled my muscles, and my legs gave me another burst of speed, carrying me even farther from the path. Even deeper into the dark wood.

  And suddenly I realized I could see.

  The trees were little more than skeletal shadows, some of which actually seemed to be reaching out for me, but I could see them. Which meant I could avoid them.

  For the first time in my life, the impenetrable darkness of the forest had begun to loosen its grip. But the wolf was gaining on me at a terrifying pace. I would not be able to outrun it.

  I would have to fight.

  That realization should have sent me screaming in terror, yet it seemed to calm me. To focus my thoughts. I squinted into the dark as I ran, looking for . . .

  I had no idea what I was looking for, until the moment I saw it. A fallen tree. A big one, with a trunk broad enough to shield me for a second. I swerved to the right and leapt over the trunk as if I’d grown up jumping hay bales with the village boys, then I hunched down against it, my red cloak bunched up behind me. I shoved my hood back and as I lifted the broken lantern, I realized I could see better with every passing second, even without a light.