When Dealing with Wolves

by A. R. Thompson

  “Did you need something?” Thrigg asked, propping the wicker-woven tray she was carrying against her hip. Aethren swallowed.

  “Company?” They raised an eyebrow at Thrigg, pointing to the spare chair at the table. Raw surprise flashed across Thrigg’s face, and her grip on the tray lapsed momentarily.

  Thrigg hastened to regain her hold on both the tray and her expression. By the time she straightened up to look at Aethren again, her expression was guarded and her voice carefully neutral as she said, “I cannot.”

  “Of fucking course,” Aethren snapped, their temper lashing out sudden and hot. Guilt doused it a heartbeat later when Thrigg recoiled, her eyes widening. No, Thrigg was nothing like Ylla. Aethren winced internally. “I’m sorry,” Aethren croaked, sinking down onto the edge of the bed.

  “Think nothing of it,” Thrigg replied, just a touch too fast. Or maybe not. Aethren wondered distantly if supressing their emotions was on the hrafmaer’s list of magical abilities.

  “I’m just . . . not very good at being forced to do nothing. Or, just, doing nothing in general,” Aethren said, and then, because they still felt the frustrating need to explain themself, “I’m going mad as a hare in a trap here, stuck staring at these walls. It’s not you I’m pissed at.”

  “No, I know.” Thrigg smiled. Even though the smile didn’t reach her eyes, it wasn’t cold – anxious, more like. Uncertain.

  That old squeeze of sympathy, pesky and inescapable, tightened around Aethren’s chest. They had worn that same expression on their face enough times to recognise it on another. Frustration built in their throat.

  Panics and temper aside, Aethren had never thought themself a particularly emotional person. But now, when their life depended on them being cool and rational, they kept pinning their heart on a target where anyone could hit it. They wished they could be more like Natta.

  Tucking their knees up to their chest, Aethren looked away from Thrigg and shrugged one shoulder. Noncommittal. Disinterested.

  “Ta for breakfast,” they said. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  Silence.

  When Aethren turned back to see what Thrigg was doing, the room was empty. They were alone.

  Someone knocked on the door. Surprised, Aethren frowned at the time-measure candle on the table; bare hours had passed since breakfast, and nobody came with supper this early.

  As if the hrafmaer were determined to surprise Aethren further, the door swung open.

  On impulse, Aethren leapt to their feet. The closest they had to a weapon was the carved wooden knife-like implement that had come with their breakfast. They snatched it up and turned to face the door, the tool held in a firm defensive grip, its point facing outwards. Ready to face whatever new ordeal Ylla had in store.

  But it wasn’t Ylla who came through the door. Thrigg hovered on the threshold. She looked first at the tool in Aethren’s white-knuckled grip, then up at their face. They expected her to turn around and leave, but she took a slow step inside and closed the door behind her.

  “You’re no hare,” Thrigg said with a smile. A genuine smile.

  Aethren stared at her. “What?”

  “Earlier – you said you were like a hare, but a trapped hare’s instinct is to run, not to fight.” Thrigg gestured to the knife. “I think you’re more like a fox.”

  Aethren scowled but let the tool clatter back onto the breakfast tray. “Hares, foxes, ravens,” they muttered. “Can’t I just be Aethren?”

  “Alright—” Thrigg offered another of her quick, uncertain smiles. “Aethren.”

  Aethren’s lips twitched into a half-smile without their permission. They cleared their throat and looked down at their feet.

  “I spoke to Ylla,” Thrigg said, snapping them both out of the awkward pause that followed. “She says you’re allowed out.”

  Out. Aethren hardly dared to believe what they were hearing. If they could get a good idea of Hrafnholm’s layout; work out how deep into the Wyccmarshes they were . . .

  But some of their thoughts must have shown on their face, because Thrigg hastened to add, “Only if you accompany me, and don’t try anything. That’s what she said.”

  Aethren bit the inside of their cheek and hoped that would be enough to hide their disappointment. Not that they should have been surprised – Ylla was too cold and calculating to make such an obvious mistake.

  “Accompany you where?” Aethren asked, trying not to sound as sullen as they felt.

  “I have duties to fulfil. There aren’t many, now there’s so few of us, but . . .” Thrigg shrugged. “Still work to be done. You want to help me?”

  Aethren swallowed down the desperate gods, yes that teetered on the edge of their tongue and nodded. “Sounds good.”

  Stepping outside of the hut for the second time felt no less strange than it had before. Hrafnholm spread out before Aethren in all its bleak glory, shrouded in mist and yet, somehow, pleasantly warm. They tilted their head back and stared up into the blue-grey sky, washed pale by the eternal sunlight. And they waited. Because something was wrong here – something deep and inescapable, and they couldn’t work out what. A dull ache of unease thrummed beneath their breastbone.

  “Aethren?”

  Aethren ignored Thrigg. They continued to stare up at the sky, at the mists, at the towering spires. Everything was wrong here; none of this should have existed. But there was something more. Something worse.

  “It’s so quiet,” Aethren murmured, hardly aware they were speaking aloud. “So . . . lifeless.”

  “What do you mean?” Thrigg sounded genuinely confused.

  “You don’t realise?” Aethren turned to look at her, disbelief and horror swirling in their gut. “It’s almost the Bloom – or it is the Bloom now. I don’t know. There should be bloodflies buzzing, ptarmigans calling. And foxes. And . . . wind, the breeze in the grass. But there’s none of that here.”

  A lost, pensive expression stole across Thrigg’s face. She looked down at her feet, fiddling with the carved bone clasp on her sleeveless cloak. “I hardly remember those sounds,” she said, speaking distantly. Aethren swallowed.

  “Why?”

  “The weaves, I suppose.” Thrigg seemed to mentally brush herself off, picking up a stack of baskets that had been sitting by the door. She passed them to Aethren, and they took them with numb hands. “Centuries of them, threaded through the mist and the earth and the air. They hold everything in place – and . . . keep unwanted visitors away.”

  The rising emotions in Aethren’s chest collapsed. Keep unwanted visitors away.

  “Are you coming?” Thrigg asked. She was already a few steps ahead of Aethren, waiting on the path with her own stack of baskets propped against her hip.

  “Yes,” Aethren whispered. And then, clearing their throat. “Yes, I am.”

  There had been a hope there, barely realised but growing nonetheless, that someone would come for them. And now that hope had been extinguished.

  Thrigg and Aethren spent most of the day working in a small, walled-in garden, pulling up potatoes and plucking apples. The blight that had destroyed Erdansten’s harvest hadn’t touched the hrafmaer’s crops. The potatoes were firm and large; the apples crisp and slightly tart, perfect for making jellies and sauces.

  There was evidence of magic – or “weaves”, as Thrigg called them – everywhere Aethren looked. It left a bitter taste in Aethren’s mouth. Their people would be working to the bone to make up for the lost harvest and roe, and here the hrafmaer sat in a cocoon of plenty. Doing nothing. Aethren scowled and jabbed at the earth with their trowel, which was carved from wood and bone instead of steel. They wished for the familiar weight of their quiver on their back, the reassuring cold of steel and iron.

  “Where’s your head?” Thrigg asked.

  Aethren stopped, realising they had been stabbing at the same hole over and over, and grumbled, “On my shoulders.”

  Thrigg laughed, then froze. She looked down, wiping hair from her foreh
ead with the back of her hand and leaving a smudge of dirt across her mottled skin. Her lips twitched as if embarrassed.

  “Why do you do that?” Aethren asked, harsher than they had intended. Thrigg met their gaze and then dropped it, wiping dirt from her hands. “I’m not going to, I don’t know, tattle on you to Ylla if you laugh. If that’s what you’re so worried about?”

  “Let’s finish and break for lunch,” Thrigg said. Her voice was brittle.

  Thrigg led Aethren to a domed stone building that apparently served as a storage house, where two other hrafmaer were sorting and stacking crates. One, wearing a yellow apron with red embroidered flowers on the pockets, hovered above the ground to reach the highest shelves as if she were standing on an invisible step. Her feet were bare, and her toes far longer than toes had any right to be.

  Aethren ripped their eyes away and stared fixedly at a far wall as the second hrafmaer took the baskets from Thrigg. Inside the building, they felt too big and tall to fit.

  “Do you like cheese?” the one in the apron asked. It took Aethren a moment to realise the question was aimed at them. They managed a stiff nod, and she gestured to a stout table against the back wall. A little parcel of waxed cloth lifted from the table as if on strings and swung across to where Aethren stood. “Go on. I can’t hold it forever.”

  Aethren took the parcel. “Uh . . . thanks.”

  “Now go outside and wait. I want to speak with Thrigg.”

  Thrigg started to protest. “But Flannað—”

  “We won’t be long. The hrafaïn can have their lunch.”

  Before Thrigg could come up with a good argument against their leaving, Aethren slipped outside. The door closed behind them of its own accord.

  They stood for a long moment, staring around. This seemed to be the outskirts of Hrafnholm. Aethren took one step away from the storeroom. And then another. There was no way escape could be this easy, and yet – nothing happened to stop them. Another step. The cobblestones beneath their feet gave way to packed earth. Another.

  They ran.

  The mist hit them with full force. It curled long, skeletal fingers into Aethren’s clothes and hair, tugging them this way and that. Their legs stuttered to a halt, even though their brain was screaming at them to keep running. Everything – the ground, the sky, the buildings – had disappeared. Aethren felt like they were floating. Vertigo crashed over them in a wave.

  Aethren felt it then, clear as frost: strings of sinuous, ancient magic bound the air itself, thickening it until breathing was impossible. They were a fish in a net, writhing and writhing and knowing there was no way out. Every movement brought the weave tighter around them.

  “I’m not an unwanted visitor,” Aethren spat into the uncaring mist. “I’m the . . . hrafaïn. Blood of the raven. I—” their voice shrivelled up in their throat. They thought they might choke on it. Black and white flecks danced before their eyes as they finally registered where they were.

  Corpses floated in the mist. Foxes. Hares. Birds. Limbs and wings splayed at macabre angles like drowned animals tangled in seaweed, their eyes wide and unseeing. Aethren could taste their fear, everything that they had felt in their final moments.

  A hand closed around their wrist.

  Thrigg’s eyes were wide and – frightened? Except, no, that couldn’t be right. Because Thrigg was a hrafmaer, and she had no reason to be afraid. Anger, Aethren could have understood. But not fear.

  Aethren tried to move back. The world turned inside out.

  And then they were on all fours in the cobbles, crouched over a puddle of their own vomit. Thrigg’s warm hand rubbed circles across the back, her other occupied with keeping Aethren’s hair out of their face.

  “Let it out,” Thrigg said gently.

  Aethren didn’t feel cold anymore, but they couldn’t stop shaking. Their head hurt.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “The weaves. I told you.” Thrigg helped Aethren to sit back, then shuffled away and withdrew her hands into her lap. “Only we hrafmaer can go in and out.”

  “There’s really no way out?” Aethren heard themself ask as if listening to someone else speak from a great height.

  Thrigg hesitated just a breath too long before she said, “Really. No way out.”

  Aethren curled their fists. They could still see all those animals, their corpses and final moments preserved in the magic that bound them. Innocents.

  “So that’s it then?” Aethren met Thrigg’s eyes, their lips twisted into a bitter snarl. “You tell Ylla I tried to escape, and I spend my life a prisoner?”

  They expected Thrigg to look away, but she didn’t. “I’m not going to tell Ylla.”

  Aethren blinked in surprise.

  “We’re not monsters, Aethren.” Thrigg seemed to push the words around in her mouth before clarifying, “Well, not all of us.”

  “But Ylla is?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Thrigg said calmly. Her eyes softened as she asked, “Why do you want to leave so desperately?” There was no reproach or accusation in her voice – only curiosity, and regret.

  “People need me out there, and I . . . I need them, too. My pa, Kristan, Laethen, Rostfar, Ornhild – even my bloody pony. They’re my family, and maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you, but I can’t stay here while they’re out there.”

  “I do understand,” she said. “I promise you I do.”

  “Then help me escape!”

  Thrigg held Aethren’s gaze for a long time before she looked away, over their shoulder and into the woven mist. “I can’t,” she whispered, “but I wish I could.”

  Chapter 39

  Over the next few days, Aethren and Thrigg fell into a comfortable pattern. Thrigg arrived in the morning, shared breakfast with Aethren, and then the two of them went out to complete Thrigg’s tasks.

  Aethren suspected that the hrafmaer only worked to keep busy. Everything about their routine felt hollow, like a ritual void of faith or belief. But Aethren was too grateful for the open air and familiar work to argue, and so they said nothing. Monotony was better than being confined to a room, at least.

  “You’ve been very quiet,” Thrigg commented during lunch on the fourth day. Aethren leaned back against the apple tree they were sitting under and raised an eyebrow at Thrigg.

  “You say that as if you know me.”

  Thrigg appeared to bite back a smile. “I can tell by your face that you’re doing some serious thinking.”

  “Yes, well . . .” Aethren dropped a slice of bread back into the waxcloth parcel in their lap with a grimace. “There’s a lot for me to think about.”

  All trace of a smile vanished from Thrigg’s face, and her expression clouded over. She sat straight-backed and forlorn, her knees tucked up to her chest, long fingers tracing circles in the grass.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Is that why you’re so nice? Because you feel sorry for me – pity me?” Aethren hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, and they regretted it at once. “Ignore me. I’m just . . .”

  “Feeling trapped,” Thrigg finished. “And I am your captor, aren’t I? Or, one of them, at least.”

  “Yes. You are.” Aethren said, then lowered their voice and added, “But you’re trapped, too, aren’t you?”

  “Time doesn’t pass here in the same way as outside, but I know that the world has changed. The reason for my coming here no longer exists, and I can’t help but think—” Thrigg broke off, looking around. Apparently satisfied that nobody was around to overhear, she lowered her voice and continued. “I have to wonder if I could start again. Return to life as I knew it, once.”

  Aethren’s eyes went to the scar on Thrigg’s cheek. Their throat felt hot and tight. “The reason you had to come here . . . is that part of it?”

  Thrigg touched her cheek. She nodded, quick and furtive. “I angered a trader from Ysaïn, during the Bloom tradesmoot in Erdansten. When my people were readying our boats to return home, he lured me away and
. . . well.” Her fingers fell away from the old wound and she curled her hand close to her chest. “He intended to scare me, I suppose, but I don’t think he was prepared for me to fight back.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aethren said stiffly. It wasn’t enough, but they had to say something. Tentatively, they put a hand on Thrigg’s arm; her skin was pleasantly smooth and cool.

  Thrigg allowed Aethren’s hand to stay there for a short while, but she eventually shook herself off and cleared her throat. Aethren pulled their hand away and fiddled with a blade of grass.

  “You shouldn’t feel sorry for me.” Thrigg met Aethren’s eyes, briefly. “I killed him.”

  “Oh.”

  When it became apparent that Thrigg wasn’t going to speak again, Aethren finished their lunch in silence.

  It was only when Aethren and Thrigg were walking back to Aethren’s hut that Thrigg suddenly broke the silence.

  “Ýgren found me, frightened and delirious, almost dead. She saved me, despite Ylla’s strict commands not to – just like she did with your father.”

  Aethren’s step faltered. Just like she did with your father. “How did they meet? Did she steal him away, like you and Ylla did me?” The question made Thrigg wince, but Aethren was ready to push the matter if they had to. Thrigg, to their surprise, seemed happy to answer.

  “He’d been hunting, I think, when he angered a beehive and ran for his life,” Thrigg said. “A raven said he was lying at the bottom of a narrow ravine, just inside the Wyccmarshes’ borders. Ýgren was determined to help him – said it was the right thing to do, since he’d come to harm in our place. Ylla was . . . reluctant. Wary. They fought – I don’t know the particulars – but Ýgren came to me and Flannað later, and said we were to go with her to heal him.” A soft smile touched Thrigg’s lips, but the look in her eyes was distant. “The wounds were too severe to mend out there, so we brought him back here. His collarbone was broken, skull cracked, and one of his legs was all but shattered, bone sticking through the skin. I thought for sure he’d die, or lose the leg at the very least, but Ýgren worked on him for almost three weeks. And he healed.”