Don't Call the Wolf

by Aleksandra Ross

  Could they be the same . . . ?

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Koszmar.

  “What?”

  “Your face,” said the Wrony. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” Lukasz rubbed his eyes. “I’m fine. What were you asking?”

  “I said, do you think this is the girl Rybak was talking about? The . . . queen.”

  The way he said it, the word sounded faintly insulting.

  Lukasz glanced around. The two remaining villagers had now disappeared. He half expected Rybak to appear at any moment. Then again, Rybak probably hadn’t left his personal tinderbox in six years.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “You want to go to the Mountains, don’t you?” asked Koszmar.

  “Yes,” said Lukasz, before catching himself: “No. No. I want to find my brother.”

  “Who’s headed to the Mountains,” spelled out Koszmar. He gestured with one hand, as if encouraging a very slow-witted soul to arrive at a very simple conclusion. “And how are we going to get to the Mountains?”

  “Rybak—”

  “The man can’t even organize his damn papers, Lukasz,” interrupted Koszmar, instantly impatient. “Can you actually trust him to organize a route to the Mountains?”

  “I don’t trust you,” pointed out Lukasz.

  “A wise decision,” agreed Koszmar. “But our interests are aligned. You want your brother, I want the Dragon, and regrettably, all roads lead through this forest. And you and I need to make a choice quickly. Those villagers are coming back soon.”

  He hoisted the unconscious queen a little higher on his shoulder and added, “And she isn’t getting any lighter.”

  Król had wandered over and now nosed curiously at the girl. Lukasz wasted a second watching his horse before glancing back at Koszmar.

  “What are you saying?”

  The moonlight caught Koszmar’s long white teeth, and for one ridiculous moment Lukasz couldn’t help wondering if he might also turn into an animal.

  “Easy,” he said. “She takes us.”

  Lukasz let out a bark of laughter, and Król started.

  “She won’t help us.”

  Koszmar took the pipe from his lips, and smoke poured out of his nostrils.

  “She might,” he said. “With some persuading.”

  “We’re not hurting her,” said Lukasz, more sharply than he’d intended.

  “My word,” breathed Koszmar. “I’m not a monster, Lukasz. I wasn’t talking about hurting her. We just need to find out what she wants, and we tell her we can help her get it. A good old-fashioned deal, Lukasz. It’s how our world works.”

  Lukasz ignored the fact that “our world” seemed to pointedly exclude the Wolf-Lords.

  “What if she doesn’t want anything?”

  “Oh, Lukasz.” Koszmar smiled. “Everyone wants something.”

  Lukasz took off his cap and smoothed his hair back, thinking. He shifted off his bad leg, looked up at the empty houses, put his hands in his pockets. She’d dragged him out of the water. Risked her life for him.

  Or had she . . . ?

  “Koszmar,” he said at last, but he didn’t sound very convinced. Not even to himself. “You attacked her.”

  “She attacked you first.”

  Lukasz hesitated, put his cap back on. There was some truth to what Koszmar said. Besides, who was to say that this girl wasn’t the monster who’d dragged him under the water? Maybe she was just as malevolent as the rest of the creatures out there, and maybe he should just toughen up and do what needed to be done.

  Koszmar puffed his pipe, looking smug. Once more smoke rings drifted upward, and once more his embroidered uniform glittered. The girl—the queen—the monster—whatever she was, she dangled limply from his arm. Koszmar took the pipe out of his mouth.

  And then he uttered the magic words.

  “Come, Lukasz. Do you want to find your brother or not?”

  11

  REN WOKE TO PAIN AND the realization that her hands were bound. Fear sparked in her waking mind. Somewhere nearby, a fire crackled. The air was fresh and cool, with a hint of a breeze. Her hair, wet with sweat, stuck to her neck. Her mouth was dry.

  “Hallelujah,” said a voice overhead. “Sleeping Beauty awakes.”

  She blinked and opened her eyes.

  It was still night, and except for the crackling fire, the forest was still dark.

  Two men stood in front of her, one with his arms crossed and the other with his hands in his pockets. Their similar black uniforms only heightened the differences in their looks. On the left stood the Wolf-Lord: even taller up close, the cap pushed back on his head. Dark stubble now covered the lower half of his face.

  She didn’t know the other man. He had golden hair and eyes that seemed too pale for his face. He watched her with his head tipped slightly to the side.

  “She’s pretty,” he said, over the quiet crackle of the flames. His voice was muted, caressing, and horrible. He added: “Prettier than I expected, at least.”

  Ren shivered, still vaguely adrift. The Wolf-Lord did not answer.

  Then, all at once, it came back: the village, the rocks, the—

  Ren sprang to life. Power thrilled down her spine like a wildfire, and her jaws seized up, gathered bone-crushing strength.

  The blond one took a step back.

  Ren snapped lengthening but still human jaws. White fangs pushed straight out of her gums and shone from her human mouth. Nothing else changed. Something was wrong.

  Panic welled up in her throat.

  She hissed. Tried to lunge again. Her bare feet scored the earth. Rope cut into her wrists. But the strength was already ebbing away from her mouth, trickling back down her throat. And a half second later, she was human. Fully, stably human.

  “Oh, thank God,” said the blond man, uttering the words in a chilling kind of mumble. His lips barely moved when he spoke. “Oh, thank God, I really thought that might not work.”

  Ren smelled it. There was a strange scent to the ropes.

  “Go away,” said the Wolf-Lord, speaking for the first time. Then he added: “I want to speak to her.”

  Ren’s heart hammered. She fought the urge to cower back into the tree.

  Even though the blond man hesitated, he did not argue. He retreated to the campfire and tethered horses. Ren and the Wolf-Lord both watched him move away.

  Then the Wolf-Lord looked back at her. He crouched down on one knee, just out of reach of her now-useless claws. He ran his own hand over his chin, a hungry cast to his eyes, to the curve of his half-open mouth. For a moment, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the rustle of his hand over the beginnings of a beard.

  Ren began to shake. Her hands were tied and she didn’t even have her claws. She had never felt so defenseless. So naked. Fear burned on every inch of her skin. She was certain he could smell it on her.

  Ren hated being afraid.

  “What have you done to me?” she whispered. It came out as a hollow, rasping sound.

  The Wolf-Lord dropped his hand from his chin. Of all things, he grinned. It was a surprisingly nice grin. Ren didn’t like that.

  “Hit you with a shovel,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “No,” Ren growled. She shook her head furiously, hair whipping across her eyes. “This—my change—”

  “Bylica,” he said. “It’s an herb that breaks enchantments.”

  Ren’s heart sank. “Untie me,” she commanded in her coldest voice.

  He pushed his hair out of his face, but a few strands slowly unbent and fell back into his eyes. She decided the smile was less of a smile than it was the sly upcurve of a dog. Maybe that was why she’d thought she liked it.

  “You promise not to attack?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He laughed. It occurred to her that his voice had the same musical corners as Czarn’s. She shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, he was a Wolf-Lord.

  �
�I need your help,” he said.

  Ren did not answer. Fear was hardening, shifting. He’d called her a monster and soaked the ropes, and Ren was, for the first time in her short and very powerful life, completely helpless.

  Fury roiled.

  When the soft crackle of the flames was too much, he spoke again.

  “I’ve lost my brother,” he continued. His voice was soft and even, as if he was using every ounce of his strength to control it. “He came here to hunt the Golden Dragon, two months ago. Have you seen him?”

  They—Mama, Ryś, and the others—were always telling Ren that her heart was too soft for her own good. That she cared too much for the animals. She took too many under her wing. She’d brought home too many baby birds fallen from nests. Too many foxes, paws injured in snares. Too many otters, too many deer, too many squirrels . . .

  And maybe, maybe, once upon a time, for the briefest flicker, she could have felt the same way for humans. At the very least, she’d been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But that was yesterday. Today, she wanted nothing from these cowards.

  “I have seen no Wolf-Lords but you,” she said.

  One of his eyebrows shot up.

  “How do you know I’m a Wolf-Lord?” he asked.

  “I would not be much of a queen if I did not know.”

  Ren licked her teeth. Smooth, blunt. Human teeth. She could barely contain her anger. She had saved him. She had saved him, and he—he—

  “You hurt me,” she said levelly. “And I am the queen. The fury of the forest will rain down on you.”

  She would have said more, but her voice was shaking too much to continue.

  The Wolf-Lord did not seem particularly concerned. One side of his mouth curved up a little higher than the other.

  “Right,” he said at last. “I’ll watch my back.”

  Ren snarled. But before she could lash out, a blade pressed against her skin and the ropes fell away. The Wolf-Lord stepped back, faster than an animal. For a moment, Ren was too shocked to react.

  She rubbed her wrists.

  “Does that help?” he asked.

  Even slower, she got to her feet. Her cloak fell off her shoulders.

  “No,” she replied.

  The Wolf-Lord very deliberately put his hands back in his pockets. It looked as if he was shaking slightly.

  “My name’s Lukasz.”

  He extended a hand.

  Ren looked at it, suddenly remembering the burned flesh of his other hand, now hidden within a glove. She blinked, long and slow. Then she moved her gaze from his hand to his face.

  “I do not care,” she said.

  He withdrew his hand. He stared at her with a horrible soul-stripping gaze, making her skin crawl and stomach curl. He pushed back his cap again, readjusted it on his hair.

  “There’s a stream down there.” He tapped his temple. “You can wash up.”

  Ren reached up, mirroring him, and encountered matted hair and sticky skin.

  “You—”

  She tried to lunge, but he stepped out of the way, and she just caught his shoulder. All the same, he stiffened at her touch. Maybe he was afraid she might hurt him. She should change. She should run. Disappear into the darkness, back home, tell everyone the truth about these selfish, violent creatures—

  But she didn’t.

  She didn’t stop to think why. She just walked to the river, trailing her fingers over the tree trunks. Whatever he had done to her, she reasoned, he could still kill the Dragon.

  It could still work.

  “Be honest,” he said behind her. His voice was low. “Was it you?”

  Ren stood on the riverbank, overlooking the water moving silently just beyond her feet. It was black and tranquil. Her forest was still beautiful. Her forest deserved to be saved.

  When she answered, her voice came out clear and unhurried.

  “I am always honest.”

  Then she added, “What are you asking me?”

  Ren half turned. He leaned with one shoulder against the tree, a little higher on the embankment. He had his hands in his pockets. Patches of silver embroidery adorned each leg of the trousers, frayed and creased. Then he asked:

  “Was it you who dragged me under?”

  Moonlight crept out from beyond the trees and caught a silver cross, stark against the brown skin of his chest.

  The night rushed in to fill the silence. Fury, silent and simmering, spread through her veins. Ryś had been right, she realized. He’d been right about them. There was no point in asking for help of creatures so ignorant, so closed-minded. So blind that everything looked the same to them. Hadn’t he seen the rusalka’s webbed fingers? Hadn’t he seen its broken teeth? Hadn’t he known, she wondered, the difference between her touch and that of a monster?

  She had risked her life for someone who couldn’t tell the most basic difference between good and evil. She laughed, and it was cold and angry.

  “You were dragged in by a rusalka.”

  He shook his head, pulling a small contraption from his pocket to click it open. Click, click. A tiny flame ignited, and he put it to his lips. Click, click. It was a small paper cylinder, which glowed red in the darkness.

  “She looked a lot like you,” he said. The slightest suggestion of a smile stole onto his face as smoke filtered down from his lips.

  “Rusalki can take any form they choose,” Ren began.

  “That’s convenient.” He laughed. It cut across the darkness. And stung.

  “But most often,” she continued, “they take the shape of someone the victim already wants.”

  Even as she said it, her anger was renewed. She hadn’t considered the possibility until she’d said it aloud. And even as she thought about it, she remembered how close they’d been, remembered his hand on her face, remembered—

  Click, click.

  He opened and closed the contraption once more. The flame leapt to life and then died. Then he grinned around the ember between his teeth, and glancing up and down the river, he said:

  “That, my friend, is wishful thinking.”

  She did not like him. Whatever had happened on that riverbank, she did not like him.

  “I am not your friend,” she said softly. “And rusalki do not lie.”

  She turned back to the water.

  The surface began to shiver. Then it danced. Then it freckled, as if under rain.

  Ripples expanded. Silence fell. Fish flashed by, shooting through dangerously shallow waters. Ren’s heart quickened. Frogs raced past. On the opposite side of the stream, a family of otters erupted out of the water and frantically gathered their babies onto the bank before disappearing into the shrubs.

  Click, click.

  An icy blast of wind whipped across the forest, chilled Ren to the bone. For a moment, she was frozen. Her eyes were fixed upstream, waiting. Beyond, the Mountains loomed to the east. Ren spun around. She could just make out the edge of one castle tower in the distance. Mist billowed from the trees and rolled toward them. The water clouded, then became opaque and frozen.

  Ren’s breath, long and shuddering, hung in front of her like a cloud.

  “What the hell was that?”

  The Wolf-Lord had straightened up. Around him, the trees flashed blue-white, sparkling with new frost.

  Ren backed away from the water.

  “We need to go,” she said. “They’re behind us.”

  “What?” The Wolf-Lord’s hand went to the sword at his side. “What’s behind us?”

  Ren scrambled up the embankment.

  “They’ve cut us off. I don’t know where they came from, they’re surrounding us—”

  Lukasz grabbed her forearm and hauled her up the rest of the way. He dragged her so close that she knew the mist from his lips smelled like smoke and cinnamon.

  “What the hell are they?” he repeated.

  The fog thickened around them. It had a bluish shimmer to it—cold, and prickling, and unnatural. Ren snatched her
arm back, and as frost and silence descended, she hissed:

  “Nawia.”

  12

  FOR A SECOND, FEAR BOUND them together. For a second, she forgot to be angry.

  “We have to go,” she choked. “Now—we can’t—”

  Frost descended.

  “Not so fast—” He had a wild look in his eye. “What’s going on? What are these—nawia?”

  The temperature plummeted. The trees bent closer. Filigreed spikes crystalized on the branches overhead, and the stream buckled under the weight of the fog.

  “Nawia,” she gasped. He looked blank, unafraid. “How do you not know? What kind of fool are you, coming into this forest—?”

  Lukasz shook her with one hand, hard.

  “Get a grip, Queen,” he growled. “What the hell are nawia?”

  In that growl, all Ren heard was fear. She wrenched backward, but he held her fast. The night roiled. Twisted. Caught in the sawtooth claws of demons, the forest cowered.

  “Terrible things,” she whispered. “They’ll kill us—”

  “What are they?” he repeated.

  Ren felt paralyzed. She’d never seen nawia. Only heard about them from the animals, about the frost that preceded them. Only smelled the trail of blood and rot that followed them. Only had her imagination to fill in the gaps, to feed her fear . . .

  “They’re terrible,” she whispered.

  Her voice seemed to catch him. He paled, and his blue eyes darkened. An eerie light surrounded them now. Sharper than moonlight, giving away even less than the darkness. The forest held its breath.

  “Lukasz,” came a soft, murmuring voice. “What’s going on?”

  The blond soldier emerged from the trees, as suddenly and as silently as a predator. His eyes went from Ren to Lukasz and then lingered on Lukasz’s hands, closed over her shoulders.

  Lukasz let go of Ren immediately. He stepped back, and his expression was once again annoying and not entirely hideous.

  “She says it’s something called nawia,” he said. His voice was casual, but Ren watched his hand close on the sword at his side as he added: “Koszmar, I think we should leave.”