When Dealing with Wolves

by A. R. Thompson

  Aethren shook their head. “I’m done talking if he won’t listen. Done. Just – get out, Kristan. Go home.”

  Without waiting to see what Kristan or Marken would do, Aethren climbed the ladder to their room. They flung themself down onto their bed, pulled the pillow over their face, and let out a muffled scream.

  Chapter 23

  Further into Deothwicc, beyond the Speaking Tree’s Clearing, the mountains reared again. The trees were sparser here, although greenery still thrived aplenty on the grey-black slopes and broken ground. Birds thronged, squirrels rustled in the undergrowth, and bees moved languidly through the branches. Rostfar even caught sight of a honeybear. The tiny animal had examined her with keen honey-gold eyes from its nest for a long, breathless moment, then vanished from sight.

  A great rocky mound sprouted from this shattered, wild land. Its sloping sides were curiously bare of trees, and the summit just cleared the forest canopy. Rostfar checked with Estene, and got permission to light a cook-fire there.

  “But why is fire necessary?” Yrsa asked, loping along at Rostfar’s side as she trekked up the slope.

  Rostfar sighed and hiked the brace of squirrels back up her shoulder.

  “I have to cook these.”

  “Cook?”

  “It involves fire. If I don’t do it – well, I have to do it.” Rostfar tried to quicken her pace, but Yrsa kept up with ease. The young wolf was a shadow Rostfar couldn’t shake – a reminder, in so many small and painful ways, of Arketh.

  Rostfar snapped away from that thought. It invited her down a road she couldn’t afford to walk; not here among wolves who would likely rip her to shreds at the first opportunity.

  “But why do you have to do it?”

  Rostfar frowned. That was a good question; Marken probably knew the answer. “I don’t know.”

  “So then how do you know fire is necessary?”

  Rostfar pinched the bridge of her nose. Bounding along at her side, Yrsa kept talking.

  “Because if you didn’t do this – this ‘cook’ thing, you could eat with us. With the pack.”

  “No,” Rostfar said, too sharply. “I don’t want to eat with your pack.”

  “Oh.” Yrsa’s stride faltered, and Rostfar kept going. They continued the rest of the way in silence.

  At the top, Rostfar set to work lashing small branches together so she could roast one of the squirrels. Hunger made it hard to focus. For days, she had been substituting a good diet with edible shoots, still tough from spring hibernation and hard to swallow. Yrsa had offered to help by hunting, but Rostfar had adamantly refused. She had to admit she regretted that now.

  The stick Rostfar was trying to tie together snapped under her trembling hands. Frustration flared up inside her with alarming strength, too bright and boiling to contain. She kicked the roasting spit over and dug her fingers into her thighs.

  Isha could have done this easily. He was so good at the fine tasks. But she wouldn’t be making a spit on her own in wolven territory if Isha hadn’t betrayed her trust; if he hadn’t said those cruel, cutting things; if Arketh hadn’t vanished.

  If Arketh hadn’t gone looking for me.

  If, if, if.

  “Rostfar?”

  Rostfar jerked away from Yrsa’s inquisitive nose. “Gods, Yrsa, just leave me be!”

  Yrsa whined. Rostfar couldn’t help but feel guilty.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered and cupped her face in her hands. It helped, blocking out the moonlight and snow-glare for just a few moments while she got her breath back. Beyond the protective darkness of her closed fingers, she heard the pad-pad of Yrsa’s retreating paws.

  Strangely, Yrsa’s absence brought no comfort. Rostfar groaned aloud and leant back against the rock face.

  Rostfar had never managed well with juggling multiple jobs at once, but there had always been people around her who were happy to help. On hunts, tasks were handed out depending on each person’s strengths so that the group worked smoothly together. She’d never felt so useless before. So bereft of support. Even Yrsa had run away, and if Grae’s example was anything to go by, the other wolves would sooner cause her trouble for trouble’s sake than let her be in peace.

  She closed her eyes in defeat.

  The sound of heavy breathing roused Rostfar some moments later. She started to get up, but relaxed when she saw it was only Yrsa returning with a bundle of sticks held gently in her mouth. Yrsa dropped them at Rostfar’s feet.

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do,” Yrsa said. “But now you can try again.”

  Rostfar stared incredulously at the branches. They were all far too thin, but Rostfar didn’t have the heart to tell Yrsa they were no good for her task. The gesture, simple as it was, made Rostfar want to cry with gratitude. She gave Yrsa a tired smile.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll try again.”

  Rostfar’s pack had contained a serrated knife for cutting wood, a small drinking-bowl, several pouches of dried meat, spare boots, one of Isha’s undershirts and a single sock. She had painstakingly unpicked the undershirt and used most of the sturdy thread for snares, the cloth for bandages. If she prepared one of the squirrels and carved the meat into leaf-thin slices, she could hang it here in this hollow to dry with what remained of her thread. The other she could cook on a frame over the fire. Yes, she could do this.

  Rostfar got to work, and Yrsa dozed.

  A few hours later, Rostfar had one charred drinking bowl and a slightly-burnt meal. The frame over the fire hadn’t worked, but she’d managed to skewer the squirrel and roast it instead. It was hardly up to the usual standards of a hunt, but at least she’d successfully prepared the spare meat to dry.

  Rostfar picked at the burnt bits in silence, occasionally stealing glances at where Yrsa lay at the start of the narrow track. She was watching the sunrise with one ear pricked, her head at an attentive-looking slant. So much like a child, Rostfar thought, but also with wisdom and a sense of responsibility few children could understand.

  “Why do you stay here? With me?” Rostfar asked once she had eaten all that was edible. Yrsa shuffled around so she could look at Rostfar while they spoke. “Is this how you guard your prisoners?”

  “Pris-nes . . . pris-unn?” Yrsa repeated the word laboriously and then gave up with a brief flick of her head. “The only thing we guard is the Speaking Tree.”

  Rostfar couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up in her throat. Yrsa was so earnest and sincere.

  “I mean, do you stay with me to make sure I don’t escape?”

  Yrsa cocked her head. “Yes, but not in the way I sense you mean. It’s . . . so you don’t do anything you shouldn’t – like the fire – or anything that’ll get you hurt.”

  “I’m already hurt,” Rostfar muttered. Her amusement ebbed away but the weighted sadness she had become familiar with felt somewhat lighter. Perhaps it was the sunlight, which lingered now for longer with increasing warmth. Or maybe it was the company.

  The company of this odd, half-grown wolf who reminded her of Arketh.

  “It’s also because you smell of loneliness,” Yrsa said softly. “And lonely wolves without their pack will become unwolf.”

  It was Rostfar’s turn to test a new word, feeling out the weight of it on her tongue. “Unwolf?”

  “They kill for the sake of blood instead of survival.” Yrsa’s voice had gone so quiet Rostfar had to move closer to hear. “And the wyrdness . . . they get cut away from it, from everything that makes us wolvenkind. Bryn says they go into a blood-frenzy until nothing else matters, not their names or other wolves or the Speaking Tree.” She hesitated, then added, “And it’s an unwolf killing your pups.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know.” Yrsa lowered her head onto her paws. “We’ve never lost one of our pack like that, not in all the years of our memory.”

  Rostfar stared into the smouldering embers of her fire.

  Unwolf. A wolf-turned-murderer
.

  That was what had killed her daughter and Astvald, had been lurking around Erdansten and haunting them from the mists. Rostfar curled her hands into fists.

  “You want to be out there hunting it,” Yrsa said bluntly, catching Rostfar off-guard. “I tried to. Not to hunt it like you think, but just to. . . see. I was curious, wanted to know if an unwolf really was the monster Bryn said. And the thing I faced out there was awful.” She lowered her head. “But unless it comes here, we won’t hunt it down. Maybe a lone wolf could, but the pack comes first.”

  “Well,” Rostfar said with a bitter smile. “I suppose it’s good I no longer have one.”

  “I think you do; you just don’t see it.”

  Rostfar sighed and said, “It’s nice you’re so optimistic.” She stood. She wanted the conversation to be over, but Yrsa tugged at her sleeve.

  “Can I show you something?”

  Rostfar bit the inside of her cheek. It was this, the eagerness to share experiences, that made Yrsa so uncomfortably like Arketh. She wanted to say no. She also wanted to say yes.

  Yrsa took Rostfar’s silence for an answer.

  “It’ll help you. Follow me,” she said, and delved off down the path.

  Rostfar followed Yrsa back into the heart of Deothwicc, where the trees grew dark and close and the sunlight barely reached. Yrsa wouldn’t tell Rostfar where they were going, save for the assurance she would like it once they got there. With little choice, Rostfar complied.

  “We’re here.” Yrsa came to a stop. Rostfar could see nothing particularly unusual; the trees were tall, and the earth was dark. It looked just like any other place in the gods-cursed wood.

  “Yrsa—”

  “Sh.”

  Rostfar bit the inside of her lower lip.

  As she stood there, contemplating the best way to leave, a burst of colour caught her eye. Her head snapped towards it, and her breath snagged in her throat. She had never seen anything so beautiful.

  The creature’s wings moved so fast they were barely there, as if Rostfar’s fingers would pass right through them. It flitted around her head, close enough she could get a glimpse of a long, pink tongue.

  Rostfar laughed. The humming of the birds’ wings was a beautiful sound, full of life and vibrancy. She had forgotten what those two things felt like.

  “What are they?”

  “I call them flutterbirds,” Yrsa said, and then admitted, “But I . . . don’t really know. They only come here for a little while at this time of the year, to drink the treeblood.”

  Rostfar craned her neck to track the flutterbird’s progress through the canopy. She could make out a low branch, its bark oozing sap as the tree thawed out after the long winter months. On impulse, Rostfar held out her hand and caught a few drops in her palm, intending to taste it for herself. The bird took it as an invitation.

  It didn’t stop to drink as seabirds did but hovered above her hand while its tongue took in the drops of sap. Rostfar could feel the small breeze stirred up by its wings, and the tickle of its beak. She smiled wider than she had in weeks.

  “Arketh will love—” Rostfar’s smile broke.

  Yrsa pressed in closer to Rostfar’s side. Rostfar leant into her ever so slightly, grateful for the company. Her smile softened until it left completely.

  “Was Arketh hurting when you tried to rescue her, Yrsa?” Rostfar asked softly, unable to make her voice any louder. “Was she scared?”

  “I don’t know,” Yrsa answered simply.

  Rostfar let that sit with her for a while, before she wiped her hands on her trousers and cleared her aching throat. “She loved colour. Inherited that from Mati. I never really got it myself, but it made her so happy. She always had to have the brightest of dyes, and she’d watch anything colourful or moving for hours – anything like these birds, or Urdven’s bees. That’s where she should be now, lying in his attic and watching that ugly beehive’s heart.” Her voice cracked, and she lapsed into silence. Yrsa nuzzled her, but Rostfar shifted away. Yrsa didn’t try to get close again.

  The birds continued their never-ending movement overhead, little more than bright specks shimmering in and out of the higher branches. Unlike Rostfar, they knew no fear of humans or wolves or unwolves.

  Rostfar’s joy sank and curdled in her gut like old milk. She wiped her stinging eyes with the heels of her palms and glanced at Yrsa, but she needn’t have worried. The flutterbirds had Yrsa’s full attention; her head moved with every variation in their flight patterns and her ears twitched at every noise.

  That would have been Arketh at her side, if not for the unwolf.

  Rostfar stepped backwards. Yrsa didn’t notice. Emboldened, Rostfar kept going until she was deep enough in the trees she could no longer make out Yrsa’s shape. Then she turned on her heel and ran.

  Chapter 24

  Rostfar didn’t get very far. She didn’t know why she had expected to. Estene caught up with her on the rocky slopes that led down to the flats beyond Deothwicc’s border.

  “Killing the unwolf won’t bring your pup back to you.”

  Rostfar came to an abrupt halt. She clenched her teeth. “I know.”

  “Then where are you going?”

  Rostfar turned around. Estene stood on a ridge above Rostfar, forcing her to tilt her head back. She gulped. “It’s not about bringing Arketh back or revenge or, or any of that.”

  Estene’s muscles rippled beneath her coat as she leapt down from her perch. Despite the threat posed by her size, her stance was relaxed. She eyed Rostfar narrowly.

  “I think it is,” she said. “Even if you don’t realise it.”

  Rostfar’s fists curled by her side. “Yrsa showed me those birds, the colourful ones.”

  “Oh, yes.” Estene’s tone was that of a parent well versed in a child’s obsessions. It was so familiar – so human – that it hurt.

  “I stood there, and I just thought – if not for the unwolf, Ket could have been there with me.”

  “If not for the unwolf, Rostfar,” Estene said, a slight growl bubbling beneath her words. “You would never have come here in the first place.”

  A cold hand squeezed around Rostfar’s throat. She struggled to take in a deep breath and tried to keep walking. Without so much as a scrape of claws on rock, Estene moved to block Rostfar’s path. Her head lowered, and although Rostfar didn’t know how to read a wolf’s body, she could hear Estene’s warning snarl. The hair on her arms prickled.

  “Sit.”

  Rostfar sat. She felt like a child being scolded by Mam.

  “We rarely speak in possibilities.” Estene remained standing in Rostfar’s path, her stance immovable. “In what might have been or could happen. We live from moment to moment.”

  “I don’t underst—”

  “When you first came here, I told you vengeance is not a Wolven idea.” Estene stepped closer. Rostfar froze in place. “If I had acted on the possibilities of revenge every time something took a pup from me, my pack and the land around us would be soaked in blood.”

  “But it would help you, help that feeling, stop it from happening again. It—”

  “A trap took a pup from my last litter. Nessen. We’ve lost others to winter, or the hooves of a bull, or even another wolf. And I continued on, because if I had stopped for revenge, the balance that binds us all in place would have been disrupted.”

  The invisible hand around Rostfar’s throat tightened. She hadn’t considered that wolves, too, would grieve for those they lost. But why not? It made sense.

  “We don’t make traps for wolves,” She protested.

  “No,” Estene said. “But your pack threw stones at Nessen as he tried to protect Grae. And then they left him to bleed. He died there.”

  Rostfar felt like someone had punched her in the face. Because she remembered that incident. She remembered Arketh running to her, crying, because the older children were throwing stones at a small wolf. Nat had sounded the horn to summon everyone back to Erdanste
n but refused to let Rostfar see if the wolf had lived.

  “If . . . if he was in your last litter, that would mean Yrsa is – that Yrsa and Grae, as yearlings, were . . .” she couldn’t make herself say it.

  “Yrsa and Grae were Nessen’s littermates, yes.”

  Rostfar ran her hands down her face. “And yet you stand here, talking to me?”

  “Because you being here is Now, as is the unwolf,” Estene said. “And so, that’s what I’ll deal with.”

  “How could I ever make what happened right?”

  Estene tilted her head. “Stop living in the past. Come back into Deothwicc.”

  “And if I don’t want to?” Rostfar asked.

  “I’ll let you leave to hunt the unwolf,” Estene said. “Alone. Right now. None of us will stop you.”

  Rostfar entertained it in her mind’s eye: returning home, carrying the head of the murderer-wolf aloft. But the vision was wrong. The unwolf in her mind looked too much like Yrsa, its eyes wide with fear and betrayal. She pictured the faces of everyone she knew; she pictured Isha, turning away from her. It’s still too late for Arketh, he said.

  Rostfar pressed her hands to her eyes and asked, her voice small, “Do you really think the wyrdness called me here for a reason?”

  “Yes,” Estene answered patiently.

  “And . . . do you think if I left – do you think I’d be welcomed home?”

  “I don’t know.” Estene relaxed her stance and sat, watching Rostfar with gentle eyes. “Do you think you’d be welcome?”

  Rostfar didn’t need to answer that. No matter what anyone said, she didn’t think she’d ever feel welcome in Erdansten again.

  “Okay,” she said. She pulled herself to her feet and turned back towards the forest.

  ⁂

  Hidden in the trees at Deothwicc’s edge, Grae watched as Estene and the human walked back towards the forest. He had felt hope when he saw the human leave; had thought maybe they would be allowed to hunt it and then everything would go back to how it was.

  But no. Things never went the way Grae wished they would.