When Dealing with Wolves

by A. R. Thompson

  “Ylla must have been ecstatic,” Aethren muttered.

  “She threatened to kill him.” Thrigg bowed her head. The words seemed to cause her pain. “He had to learn how to walk again, even after he’d healed. It took him months, and Ylla couldn’t stand it. I don’t know if she resented a human in Hrafnholm, or the love that grew between him and Ýgren – but it doesn’t matter. She drove them both away in the end.”

  “With everything I learn about Ylla and my mam, I wonder how they could be related. What the Nys happened to drive them apart, to make them so different? Or—” A slow, creeping realisation dawned on Aethren. “Were they different? I don’t . . . I don’t really know who Mam was. I don’t know who I am, not anymore.”

  Thrigg didn’t answer at first. She slowed down until Aethren came to a stop, waiting for her to catch up again. The expression on Thrigg’s face was clouded and difficult to read. Almost like she was trying to hide something.

  “Ylla could answer your questions much better than I.”

  “Not possible,” Aethren said shortly. “She’s avoiding me.”

  “She’s not avoiding you,” Thrigg said gently. Too gently. “She’s doing her normal duties—”

  “Duties that conveniently keep her away from me and my questions?” Aethren finished. “I’m not fooled, Thrigg. I know I scare her, or fill her with revulsion, or . . . whatever that look in her eyes means. She’s avoiding me.”

  “I know where you can find her,” Thrigg said in a quiet voice. “Come with me.”

  Thrigg led Aethren to the mouth of a cave, not far from the centre of Hrafnholm. It was unremarkable, but Thrigg looked increasingly anxious as she approached.

  “I’m not supposed to go down there, not unless I’m – unless I have permission. But . . . you’re not from Hrafnholm. Ylla can’t blame you if you don’t know the rules.”

  Aethren smiled in wry appreciation. “That’s a fair point,” they said. Thrigg offered something like a smirk in return.

  “Watch your step and use the wall to guide you. It’s dark.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Aethren said.

  Thrigg didn’t look convinced, but she nodded. “There’s a cavern at the end of the passage, and I think that’s where she’ll be.”

  “And if she’s not.”

  “Take a good look around.” A peculiar expression crossed Thrigg’s face. “It might give you some idea.”

  Aethren frowned, but Thrigg didn’t seem willing to give any more explanation. Giving her a final, questioning glance, Aethren entered the cave.

  The passage was dark and close, its walls damp and cool. Aethren only had to go a few steps before the gloom gave way to pitch darkness; they looked back, but could no longer see the entrance.

  Down and down they went until a change in the air brought them to a stop. There was a strange, steady light seeping from a crack at the end of the passage. Aethren approached cautiously. The crack was only just big enough for them to squeeze through, and they could just make out a broad, open space on the other side. There was no sign of Ylla.

  Sucking in their stomach with a deep breath, Aethren slipped through the crack.

  The cavern floor was smooth, save for the rippling patterns left by some ancient stream, and broken only by a carved stone chair in the centre. They could hear water somewhere, but it was so distant it kept wavering in and out of earshot, and the air felt dry. Nothing like the passage through which Aethren had entered.

  All the light was coming from a silver-blue orb that hung in the air, high above Aethren’s head. It cast no shadows and emitted no stench of fuel; Aethren’s eyes ached when they tried to look at it for too long. Even by its light, the roof of the cavern was too far away for them to see. Impossibly so.

  Aethren shivered. Everything here tasted of magic.

  Reluctantly, Aethren stepped further into the cavern. Ylla wasn’t here, and they had no wish to linger. But. It might give you some idea, Thrigg had said.

  Aethren went further into the light and saw what it revealed. Their eyes widened in shock.

  Paintings decorated the walls. This wasn’t so strange – lots of the caves along the coast were filled with paintings done by generations of children. Aethren had done a few themself. But what the paintings showed was – impossible.

  Aethren saw something that might have been Eahalr; stone buildings towered on long legs above wiggly lines of water, framed by the bristly shapes of hemlock trees. There were little human figures dotted around the picture, weaving and farming and hunting. There was even a blacksmith at a smithy and a group of children playing with a hoop or a ball.

  And then there were the wolves.

  “The lost history of Eahalr,” said Ylla.

  Aethren spun around. Ylla stood at the other end of the cavern, a smaller version of the orb hovering above her outstretched hand. They caught sight of an opening behind her, before Ylla made a gesture with her free hand and the stone sealed itself. Ylla’s face was hard and stony.

  “Thrigg sent you down here, I suppose.” It should have been a question, but it wasn’t. Ylla fixed Aethren with a cold, clear stare. Aethren stared straight back.

  “What do you mean, ‘lost history’?”

  “Use your eyes,” Ylla said. “Take a step back. Here, by my chair – yes. It’s hard to see the big picture from up close.”

  Aethren’s skin was crawling with pinpricks. They wished they could dissolve into smoke and feathers like the hrafmaer and vanish from this place. They wished they could stop staring.

  There were wolves with baskets on their backs, carrying pups and children together; wolves sitting in conversation with humans; wolves and humans fishing, splayed out on either side of the stream with claws and spears at the ready. Together. And above all of them, a raven with huge wings that seemed to engulf the sun and both her moons.

  “Not my most flattering likeness,” Ylla remarked.

  “Your likeness?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Ylla guided the light further along the wall, and Aethren followed.

  “Is this – are you trying to tell me that humans and wolves were once . . .?” they gestured at the depictions of kindness and solidarity with a disbelieving snort.

  Ylla nodded. “After Erdan built your walls, the wyrdaetha knew that the time of chaos and magic was over. Erdan had declared his alliance with the earthen kinds – wolves, humans, animals – and joined with Norðunn and Hrafnir.” Licking her lower lip, she perched cross-legged on the stone seat and placed her hands in her lap. “Wolves and humans were free to mingle.”

  “You talk like you were there.”

  “I was,” Ylla said. Aethren opened their mouth with every intent to accuse her of lying and found that the words wouldn’t come. The tired, cold look in Ylla’s eyes stopped them.

  “But if you were there, then Mam . . .?”

  “Here.” Ylla guided the light further along to a new image, one that struck a blade of ice through Aethren’s heart.

  Gone were the scenes of a happy, unified community. In their place was a single tableau depicting two ravens – one painted silvery-grey and the other earthy red – facing one another with their talons outstretched. Beneath them, Eahalr had been reduced to a few spires poking above the water. The humans stood on one side of the wrecked town, beneath the red raven; the wolves stood on the other, beneath the silver.

  “This place . . . reminds me,” Ylla said at length.

  “Seems like a bloody grim reminder, if you ask me.”

  Ylla didn’t look amused. “It was bloody, yes.”

  Aethren waited, but Ylla didn’t elaborate any further. They raked their eyes over the walls, imagining Ylla sitting on her stone seat, surrounding herself with pieces of the past. Punishing herself, maybe? Or was she remembering her grand accomplishments?

  “But what did you do?”

  Ylla’s eyes snapped to Aethren. “You have no idea what it was like. Ýgren and I grew up in the shadow of humans and
wolves – these creatures that were bound to the earth, little better than animals.” There was more emotion on Ylla’s face than Aethren had ever seen, and it terrified them. She was incandescent in her contempt. “At least the wolves had the wyrdsight, but humans? Save for the few like our mother, they were blind insects scrabbling in the earth.”

  Aethren stared at Ylla, horrified. Ylla kept talking, her voice rising to fill the cavern.

  “Ýgren thought humans were wonderful. I thought I could . . . better them; help their society grow beyond their limitations. But—” Ylla sucked in a sharp, shallow breath. “That was my mistake; I was young and foolish, and grieving our mother’s death. I shouldn’t have tried to teach humans to manipulate the wyrdness as myself and Ýgren could. Hrafnir wasn’t best pleased at the extent of our interference.”

  “’Our’ interference?” Aethren repeated sourly. “Or yours?”

  Ylla stood abruptly and drew the light close to her chest. Darkness swallowed the cavern whole, save for a tiny circle around Ylla.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Ylla’s voice sounded flat; deflated. “We erased ourselves from your history. That was Ýgren’s idea – our mother had died and become a legend. It would be easier if we, too, faded into stories.”

  “And the wolves?”

  “I told you,” Ylla said, “Magic and humans shouldn’t have mixed. And the wolves, with their wyrdsight, were too close to magic for me to be comfortable.”

  The molten metal feeling from earlier was back in Aethren’s throat. They stared at Ylla, lips twisting into a killing-smile, flashing their teeth.

  “I knew all of this came back to you, somehow,” Aethren said coldly, “But I didn’t realise the whole thing was your bloody fault.”

  “Aethren—”

  “I’ve heard enough,” Aethren snapped. They turned, felt for the crack in the gloom, and fled back into the darkness, leaving Ylla alone with her past.

  Thrigg was waiting for them. She rose from her seat on a rock, a question on her open lips, but Aethren walked straight past her. Aethren didn’t speak all the way back to their prison. Couldn’t speak. They kept seeing Ylla bathed in eery blue light, staring at her grim triumphs etched in stone.

  Thrigg let them in wordlessly, but she didn’t close the door immediately. “Will you be okay tonight?”

  Aethren almost flinched at the question, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. They had always liked having time alone – but solitude and isolation, Aethren was learning, were two very different creatures. If they were home, they would probably have called on Kristan and gone exploring down the coast with him, throwing stones into the wild waves; or gone to the training grounds and worked out their frustration alone, surrounded by the bustle of everyday life. But what did they have here, save for four stone walls and a woman who was no longer human?

  “Aethren?” Thrigg put her hand on Aethren’s shoulder. They pulled away. “Aethren, please. Speak to me.”

  Aethren breathed in. Breathed out. Focused on the feeling of their ribcage coiling and uncoiling around each breath.

  “It’s a lie,” Aethren said. They felt the mattress shift ever so slightly as Thrigg sat down but they didn’t look at her. The muscles in their neck were locked in place

  “What is?”

  “Everything. Our history, our beliefs.” Aethren dug their fingernails into their wrists, scraping red lines in the skin. Red, like human blood. “Me.”

  “Don’t do that.” Thrigg tried to prize Aethren’s fingers away from their arm, but they resisted. Dug in harder. They could feel their mind hurtling away from their body at breakneck speed and couldn’t do anything about it. Panic, white and sharp, filled their head with shattered glass. “Aethren—”

  “No.” Aethren grunted in pain as their spine and head collided with the stone wall. They didn’t recall moving, but a space had opened between them and Thrigg. The rumpled grey sheets were like a tundra between them.

  “You need to ground yourself. Here, repeat after me—”

  But Thrigg’s voice kept getting lost beneath the roaring in Aethren’s head. They wanted their; they wanted his steady voice and steadier hands, guiding them through this. Their pa – who had also lied, in his own way.

  Aethren couldn’t breathe. No – they couldn’t stop breathing. Air tore itself in and out of their chest until they thought their lungs had to be bleeding. The ruthless tattoo of their heartbeat turned into a high-pitched whine.

  “Let it out. It’s okay.” Something was pressed into their hands. The pillow.

  Aethren crushed the linen against their face and screamed.

  Chapter 40

  Sprawled at the roots of the Speaking Tree, Rostfar slept as she hadn’t slept in days.

  For all its deepness however, the sleep wasn’t peaceful. Nightmares came at her from all sides as she lay, steaming and sweating. Isha’s hands and face swam to her through the fog. A cold nose pressed under her chin, flush against her pulse.

  “She’s weakening,” someone said. Rostfar tried to push the reaching hands away, but she was grasping at nothing. Her whole world throbbed and shuddered around her.

  “You need to wake up, Mama,” said Arketh. Rostfar blinked sleepily at Arketh, who sat on the edge of their dining table with a skein of yarn in her hands.

  “I don’t feel too good today, Ket.”

  “You need to wake up,” Arketh repeated, more urgently. “You need to listen.”

  Unable to control her own limbs, Rostfar staggered out of bed. She knew she shouldn’t be here, at home – but couldn’t remember why not.

  “Ket?” The room swayed. Rostfar reached out for the wall, pressing her other hand to her forehead. “You need to . . . I need—” The floor leapt up into Rostfar’s face and knocked the air from her lungs. Her palms and knees smarted from the impact.

  “Mama?” Arketh sounded terrified and so, so far away. Rostfar twisted around, scrabbling for a handhold on the swaying floorboards, and came face to face with Other. It snarled at her, blood and flesh hanging in ropes from its maw. “Mama!” Arketh again; her voice was no longer in the room.

  Rostfar threw herself at the door. It dissolved beneath her hands, and the hut spat her out at the roots of the Speaking Tree.

  The Tree was thrumming with gentle light as it always did, but tonight the warmth Rostfar associated with its presence was gone, and a gentle coolness had taken its place. It seeped through her to the bone, drawing the heat from her wounds.

  [Listen.]

  “Who are you?” Rostfar wasn’t even sure if she had spoken. Her throat was so dry and her tongue so heavy. She leaned her forehead against the leatherlike, living bark and closed her eyes. The Tree’s heartbeat slowed in time with her own; the bark was yielding to her, softening, pulling her into an embrace.

  “I know this isn’t real,” she murmured. “I’m sick, is all.”

  [Rostfar.]

  “Hm?” Rostfar yawned. Drowsiness was stealing into her bones again, dragging her back into the fever-depths. She couldn’t fight it; didn’t want to fight it.

  With a sigh, Rostfar let the last of the tension leave her body – and the Tree swallowed her.

  Clarity doused Rostfar like water. She struck upwards for the surface and broke through the membrane of her sickness with a painful gasp. Her body was caught in space, suspended amid a sea of green and sickly violet hues. Panic chased through her head, then horror, and finally the numbing awe of a huge realisation.

  Treading water, Rostfar turned in place. A small part of her was still sceptical, but that part was fading fast. It was impossible to remain sceptical when she could smell the salt and feel the water soaking through her clothes. Currents eddied around her, but never caught her in their grasp. The cold didn’t affect her too deeply either.

  “I’m so glad you came here.” Rostfar looked up at the great cliffs and forgot how to breathe. How she knew that she was looking at Norðunn, Rostfar couldn’t say. She just knew, and that was
enough.

  Great ram’s horns curled back from the bony ridges of Norðunn’s forehead, and her eyes were a deep, warm amber. She was vast – too vast for Rostfar to truly comprehend. Sometimes she looked vaguely humanoid; sometimes she looked like the Speaking Tree. Holding one form seemed to be causing her difficulty.

  “Forgive me, I can’t bow, or . . .” Rostfar trailed off as Norðunn shook out her wings and laughed.

  “I don’t want to you to bow, Rostfar,” she said. Norðunn’s body flowed towards Rostfar over the surface of the water, her wings creating a dome like a starry sky above them. Up close, Rostfar realised with a jolt that there was a gaping hole on the left side of Norðunn’s chest, right where her heart should have been. Rostfar reached out for it with trembling fingers, and Norðunn let her. “My gift to your kind – to all kinds.”

  “I don’t understand.” Rostfar blinked sea spray from her eyes.

  “Don’t you?” Norðunn laid two fingers over Rostfar’s heart, her two seeing eyes glittering. Rostfar listened to her own heartbeat in dumbfounded silence, as something in the back of her mind connected.

  “The Speaking Tree,” Rostfar whispered. “The stories say you planted the seed to bring us together, but I never realised that meant your . . .” she pointed to the hole.

  “Hrafnir and Erdan lent their magic and strength. I gave my heart,” Norðunn said with a nod. “It was the only way I could bind the enchantment that protects this world from the more malicious of my kind.”

  “If you’ve been here all along, why didn’t you reach out?”

  “I did. But you wouldn’t listen,” Norðunn answered, no reproach in her voice. “Your daughter listened, but she’s gone somewhere I cannot follow.” Sighing, she withdrew her hand from Rostfar’s heart. “At least you are here now. It is more than I could have hoped for.”

  “But you’re a god,” Rostfar said, unable to wrap her head around the idea of Norðunn, the great trickster, asking for help.

  “No.” Norðunn shook her head. “Your people made me into a god. I am just another creature, albeit one far older than the world as you know it.”