When Dealing with Wolves

by A. R. Thompson

  Light flooded Aethren’s senses.

  They screwed their eyes shut, but the light still bled through their closed lids. It was so bright they thought they could taste it, sharp and cutting on their tongue.

  When Aethren could finally open their eyes again, it was onto a sprawling, subterranean world. The cavern was huge – bigger, even, than the painted cave – and stretched on further than Aethren could see. Veins of glowing crystal snaked through the black stone walls, and the floor was covered in lichens and mosses the likes of which Aethren had never seen. Everything in the cavern pulsed with a gentle, living warmth.

  Aethren was faintly aware that Thrigg had sat down – or collapsed, they couldn’t tell. Their eyes were fixed on a waterfall that cascaded from the ceiling into a pool of water. The surface held no reflection and, although the water was perfectly clear, Aethren couldn’t see the bottom.

  And there, lying peacefully on a stone island at the pool’s centre, was Arketh.

  Chapter 42

  Grae padded towards the walls of Erdansten as dawn broke. He couldn’t say what twisted impulse had driven him here, but it was too late to turn back now. And even if it weren’t, where else would he go? He had flooded every path he might have taken and now he was alone, stranded, with only one tiny bud of an idea growing in the back of his mind.

  The sounds and smells of a town waking up rose with the smoke that curled above the line of the walls. He crouched behind a pile of moss-covered stones – the remains of some kind of den, perhaps – and watched as humans walked along the walls. Fires burned like eyes despite the near-constant lightness that clung to the horizon at this time of year. Grae knew that it was impossible for a human to see him this far away, but that didn’t stop him from feeling watched.

  Grae considered his next move. The humans sitting outside of the walls seemed cheerful enough, passing around food and talking, but he knew what they could do with those spears at their sides. Rostfar—

  (no don’t think not about her don’t)

  A human would likely have laid down their spear or knife to show that they meant no harm, but that was hardly an option for a wolf. Grae couldn’t leave his teeth lying on the snow and walk in with his mouth open.

  Knowing he had no other choice, Grae took a deep breath and readied himself for what was to come. The humans might kill him on sight but, honestly, what did he have to lose?

  Grae stepped out from his hiding place.

  An old human standing guard spotted him first. Grae was a pup again as he approached across open ground, alone and vulnerable in territory that he didn’t know. He lowered his head and approached with his ears down, tail between his legs, desperate not to give them any reason to kill. The woman watched him with her spear levelled.

  “Don’t come any closer, wolf,” she spat. Grae paused. He knew what he had to do next, but he didn’t want it to happen. It went against the very grain of his nature.

  The nature that got me cast from the wyrdness.

  Grae avoided the woman’s eyes and rolled onto his back. He lay there with his heart in his ears, legs to the sky, and belly exposed. His skin hummed in anticipation of the stones and sharp, cutting voices that haunted his memories.

  But none came. There was only the crunch of feet in snow and the cold prick of a spear against his exposed belly. Grae almost stopped breathing.

  “Ethy, don’t!” A young, clear voice rang out in the silence. The spear withdrew.

  “My name is Grae,” Grae said as he stiffly rolled back onto his feet. A bell shattered the dawn air, followed by more footsteps crunching in the snow and frosted grass. “I’m looking for a healer.”

  The old woman let out a harsh bark.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “A wolf doesn’t lie!” Grae snapped out of habit. The words burned his throat. Was he wolf anymore? Was he a monster? Grae took a deep, shivering breath.

  “Ethy, I said—” some humans stirred and rustled at the entrance to Erdansten, and the owner of the voice stepped out. He was a pup, Grae could see that at once: small, skinny, with only one arm and a bag clutched to his chest instead of a weapon. “Let him alone.”

  “Get back,” the old woman said to the boy.

  “No.” The boy didn’t even look at her. He had eyes only for Grae. “I’m a healer. What do you want with one?”

  “Nothing,” Grae said. “I don’t – Rostfar needs help, and she needs it fast.”

  “What did you do to her?” the younger one demanded.

  Grae struggled to find the words. He had never had this problem before; but then – he had never tried to have a conversation without the reassuring currents of the wyrdness guiding his way. It was with a bitter irony that Grae returned to the honesty he had abandoned before getting into this mess.

  “I bit her.” Grae’s belly scraped the ground beneath him. The boy faltered. He looked at the old woman. Grae realised that was probably not the answer they were after. “No, I mean that I – I bit her, once, but that was long ago. The Other hurt her – there was so much blood—”

  “Did you wound her or not?” The old woman lifted her spear again. Confusion was tangible in the air. Grae whined in frustration.

  The boy stepped forwards and put a hand on her spear.

  “We should send for Hrall and Laethen. They decide.”

  “We kill it, Kristan.” the old woman said. “It’s dangerous.”

  The younger one – Kristan – tightened his grip on the woman’s spear until she lowered it. “If it bit her, why come for help? I’m listening if there’s a chance that she isn’t . . .” he didn’t seem able to finish that thought.

  Grae swallowed the snarl in his throat. There wasn’t time for this, but he was on human territory and would have to play by their rules if he wanted Rostfar to have even the slightest chance.

  A man ran out of the town gate and whispered in Kristan’s ear. Grae couldn’t make out the conversation over the roar of blood in his own head. Kristan looked back to Grae.

  “You’ll stay with Ethy,” he said in the voice of a pup trying too hard to be an adult.

  And wasn’t Grae just the same?

  So Grae humoured Kristan and lay down to wait. Ethy never once relaxed.

  After a time, Kristan returned with an old man and a woman. The man held a hare carcass in his hands, which he slung in front of Grae like a bag of rocks, his face closed. Grae sniffed at the offering.

  “I assume your kind eat all the same.” The woman sat down on a pile of rocks and rubbed her ankles. The man stood.

  It took a huge effort to remain wary. Grae’s mouth was full of saliva. “Why feed me?”

  “Why not?” The woman raised an eyebrow.

  “Because—” Grae hesitated. “. . . thank you.”

  Kristan sat cross-legged with his eyes fixed on Grae. Not moving. Saying nothing. Grae turned away from the group and ate in silence, hunch-shouldered against their watchful eyes.

  Once done, Grae licked his paws and turned to face the old man. “When do we leave?”

  “We don’t,” he said. Grae hesitated. He wondered if he had missed something. A small muscle in the old man’s otherwise impassive face twitched momentarily before he regained control. The silence stretched overlong, tainting the air.

  “It may take a moment,” Kristan said without looking up from his lap. Only then did Grae realise what Kristan was holding. A small net of rope. He didn’t know what it was, but the sight filled him with dread. Grae got to his feet.

  “What will take a . . .” Dizziness stole the rest of his sentence. His vision wavered. “What is this?”

  Neither human answered him. Grae’s limbs refused to respond to his mind’s frantic order to run. The old woman took Kristan’s bag from him and moved out of Grae’s line of sight as Kristan advanced.

  Unable to move, Grae could only snarl as the boy hooked the net over his snout and tied it behind his ears. When Grae tried to snap, the rope cut him. He could smell his own blood
, hot and metallic. It’s Nessen, he thought to himself. It always comes back to Nessen.

  Human hands, human voices. Laughter. Blood.

  But where was the weight on top of him, protecting him? Where was Bryn, pulling him out with teeth on his neck and kind, soothing words?

  Grae tried to fight against the bindings. Something hard struck the side of his head, shattering what was left of his vision into a thousand bright pieces. He could see a tunnel – or was the tunnel in his head? Darkness crept in, crept out, crept in. Out. In. His tongue was so big and heavy it filled his whole mouth, threatening to choke him.

  Blackness. Nothingness. No, no – that wasn’t right. Because he was awake, trapped, caught between sheets of fog. He hovered on the edge of passing out while the humans grabbed him. Their hands were hard and cruel, their ropes without mercy. Grae was dimly aware of gliding over the snow and stones and then the terrible rattling that came as they pulled him down a steep path.

  Then, at last, there was a cave. Faces swam in and out of Grae’s line of vision.

  “That’ll hold it,” Ethy said. “Post a watcher though, just in case.”

  “What’s the point?” a stranger-voice asked. “I say we put a spear through its throat and be done with it.”

  “Kristan wishes to question it about Rostfar. The boy cares for his aunt, it’s unavoidable.” Ethy spat. She might have been aiming at Grae, but he couldn’t tell. “But that’s alright. I think I’ll have some use for it at the moot, anyway.”

  “Fucking formalities,” grumbled the other.

  “Necessary, Faren,” Ethy said. “You don’t want a repeat of what happened in Myrardaen, do you?”

  “The only use we’ve for a beast like that is to kill it.”

  “Exactly.” Ethy sounded amused. “But where we kill it is important, too. Come on.”

  Stones crunched. The voices receded.

  And then Grae was alone.

  ⁂

  Kristan perched on a box of crates as Marken moved between the sleep-sick children, checking temperatures. His fingers danced relentlessly on the wooden surface beside him with a mind of their own.

  “Water,” Marken said, his tone blunt. No please, no thank you. Kristan shuffled to his side with the tin jug balanced on his hip. He hovered as Marken knelt and wrung out a cloth into Magna’s mouth.

  The silence grew swollen and painful. Kristan wished he knew which salve to treat it with.

  “So . . . there’s still no change?” Kristan asked once he could stand it no longer. Marken packed up his bag, his shoulders hunched almost up to his ears. “Marken—”

  “No, Kristan. There’s no change.”

  “I did the right thing,” Kristan said into the stiff quiet, but he didn’t sound as sure of himself as he wanted to be. He couldn’t get the wide-eyed, terrified look on the wolf’s face as the concoction got to work out of his head.

  “I don’t have time to listen to as many of Rost’s tales as I would like, and I don’t know them as well as she does—” Marken turned to Kristan, one finger held up to stop him from interrupting. Kristan bit the inside of his cheek and stared at Marken. “But do you know what sticks with me from the ones I remember?”

  Kristan swallowed. “. . . No?”

  “Most creatures with the wyrdsight don’t lie.” Marken fixed Kristan with such a look of withering disappointment that he thought he would shrink. His ears burned in a mixture of shame and defiance.

  “Most,” Kristan repeated. “But not all, you can’t – hey, wait!” He had to hurry after Marken, who moved at an impressive speed for someone with a limp. Kristan caught up just as Marken left the moothall. “You can’t know that the animal wasn’t lying.”

  “Wolves,” Marken said firmly and turned, pressing the top of his walking-stick against Kristan’s chest, “Are not animals. They’re a Kind, just like me and you. And I let you go out to deal with the poor thing because I thought you’d have some compassion.”

  Kristan couldn’t hold Marken’s gaze. He looked down at his boots, struggling to find something smart to say; something that would show Marken the right of the matter.

  “I asked Mam. She thought it was a good idea.” Was all he could think to say. It was true – sort of. Mam had been repairing one of his cloaks, her face an unreadable mask, and probably hadn’t been listening. The “good idea” she had muttered likely meant nothing.

  Marken let out a heavy sigh. Sadness rushed in to replace the anger as it drained from his face. He just looked tired. “Neither you nor Nat should have been doing Rostfar’s job,” Marken murmured, and turned away.

  Kristan remained rooted to the spot. An icy hand had taken up residence around his heart on the night Rostfar went missing and, as Marken walked further away, it gave a vicious squeeze. A strangled noise lurched out of Krist’s throat. He clapped his hand to his mouth, hoping that nobody had heard – but there was nobody to hear.

  Kristan had been left alone.

  He stomped across the clearing, snatched up the tin jug, and hurled it at a stack of crates. It landed in the snow without a sound, which just made Kristan more frustrated. He kicked it hard enough to dent. And again – over and over. But it didn’t achieve anything, other than an aching foot and a ruined jug.

  Shivering and miserable, Kristan slumped down on the crates and hugged the jug to his chest. Aethren would have come up with something witty and sharp and then given him a hug until he felt better. But Aethren was gone, lost to the magic and the wilds beyond the walls.

  “You did the right thing,” said Ethy. Kristan near leapt out of his skin – he hadn’t heard her approach. She patted his shoulder and handed him his leather bag. “Here, you left this lying around. Wouldn’t want one of the little’uns to get their hands on it, eh?”

  “No.” Kristan rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t crying and took the bag from her. She started to walk towards the summoning-drum, but Kristan plucked at her sleeve. “Ethy?”

  “What is it?” Ethy gave him a soft smile.

  “Marken said—” Kristan took a deep breath. “Ethy, would Rost have done what we did?”

  Ethy’s face darkened and she knelt, taking both of Krist’s shoulders in her hands. “Rostfar isn’t here, lad, and she’ll probably never be here again.”

  “But if she was?”

  “Kristan. . .” Ethy’s grip tightened. “Kristan, you’re a grown boy now. Face the truth. If your aunt were with us now, she’d either be cast out of her role – or out of Erdansten entirely. She betrayed us.”

  The icy hand gave Krist’s heart another twist. He thought about Rostfar, tired and aching from a day’s training, and still telling stories to dozens of wide-eyed children. He thought about her tying his cloak up so he wouldn’t catch a chill, even though he was all grown up and didn’t need coddling any more. He thought about the day Arketh had been born, Mam trying to usher Kristan out of the room – and Rostfar, taking Mam’s hand in hers and squeezing. Let him help, she had said, Let him learn.

  Kristan tried to twist away from Ethy, but her hands held him too tightly.

  “Do you hear me?” Ethy asked, moving her head so she could hold his gaze and his shoulders. Krist’s eyes stung. He felt like Aethren had reached inside him and taken away his voice again. “Your aunt is a traitor.”

  “I hear you.”

  Ethy let him go. Kristan didn’t watch her go; he couldn’t stand to look at her. For the first time in his life, Kristan didn’t believe what Ethy had said. And he didn’t know what that meant.

  Chapter 43

  Aethren couldn’t help it. They cried out wordlessly – in shock, in horror, in hope. But Arketh showed no sign of moving. Her body was perfectly preserved, not what Aethren would expect from a corpse of almost three months. The light gave her face and hair an unearthly glow, allowing Aethren to pick out the faint traces of her veins. Were they imagining it, or was her chest rising slightly?

  Thrigg’s hand closed around Aethren’s wrist. They je
rked, startled to find themself on the very edge of the pool, about to jump.

  “Get her out of there.” Aethren turned on Thrigg.

  Thrigg shook her head sadly. “Aethren—”

  “She’s alive, isn’t she? She should be with her family, not here in this – this pit.” Aethren twisted their hand out of Thrigg’s hold. “What’s she doing here anyway?”

  No answer. Thrigg lowered her eyes, shamefaced.

  No, of course. Thrigg couldn’t answer their questions; Ylla had made sure of that. Aethren drew in some calming breaths, resting their hands on Thrigg’s shoulders. She looked up at them with wide, startled eyes.

  “If I undo this . . . weave thing, if I can undo it – will you help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Aethren sidestepped so they were no longer in any danger of falling into the pool, not taking their hands off Thrigg. “Okay, so I’ll . . . I don’t know, what? How does this work?”

  “You’ve got the ability to manipulate the wyrdness, even if you don’t have the wyrdsight. It’s here—” Thrigg put one hand on Aethren’s stomach. “And it’s here.” The fingers of her other hand were reassuringly cool against their temple. “You’ve used it before, haven’t you?”

  Aethren’s mouth went dry. They nodded. “Accidentally.”

  “Focus on how that felt.”

  Ravens laughing. Kristan, his eyes wide. Their hand stinging from impact with the tabletop.

  Too dangerous.

  “I can’t.” Aethren’s stomach clenched under the pressure of Thrigg's hand. Thrigg turned their face so they were looking at Arketh; her fingers were still pressing into the hollow of Aethren’s temple, boring through bone and brain to something buried deep inside.

  There was a blanket spread on the rock at Arketh’s feet. Aethren recognised the objects laid out on it – had seen them all in Arketh’s possession at one point or another. A worship totem on a leather string; her tiny boots, yellow mittens, yellow scarf; a ragwork doll and a teething toy that Arketh still carried like a charm. A teething toy that Marken had made for her as a second birth’s day gift.