When Dealing with Wolves

by A. R. Thompson

  "No," he heard himself say. "You'll tell them the truth. This has all gone too far."

  Faren shook him. Hrall's back and hips groaned in protest and pain snapped up his spine as his feet left the floor.

  "It hasn't gone far enough," Faren hissed. Spittle flicked his lips and sprayed onto Hrall's face. "It's always those wolves. Those stinking beasts. They infect everything with their magic, bring terrors into ordinary human lives and ruin them. Magic scares you, doesn’t it?”

  "Yes," Hrall wheezed.

  “And you want peace?”

  “Yes – Faren, stop—”

  "Then you have to kill them all. Burn them out of that forest, slaughter them. Then we can all go home and live."

  It was getting harder to breathe. Hrall’s vision was going black and he couldn't think. Oh, if only he were ten years younger. If only his body weren’t so stiff and slow. If only.

  "We'll lose lives. I'll – not let it – not let you."

  "Ethy was right," Faren muttered, more to himself than to Hrall. "She said I did the right thing in Myrardaen. They did have to die. But she failed here, didn't she? Even she failed. And I'm not her. I . . . can't." His grip slackened. Hrall instantly tried to get free, but he didn't make it. Faren was on him again in a heartbeat, pinning him down like an animal. This time his hands deliberately sought out Hrall's throat.

  "Stop struggling," Faren hissed. "I'm not killing you. But you can't get in the way, Hrallvir. You can't. This all has to happen."

  Hrall's vision went dark. I'm sorry, Rost-Skelda, he thought. Then the blackness claimed him.

  ⁂

  Aethren’s stomach twisted as they were wrenched out of the physical world. Wind screamed in their ears, threatening to peel the skin from their face, as everything dissolved into strands of dizzying colour. They were dimly aware of five points of pain in each shoulder as if from grasping fingers.

  Without warning, their feet struck solid ground. They stumbled and landed on their knees with a muffled groan as the movement jostled their shoulder.

  “Are you injured, hrafaïn?”

  Aethren blinked at a pair of bare feet a mere finger’s length in front of their face. Their vision was blurry, but they lifted their head until they could see the hem of a yellow dress.

  “What in the name of Erdan’s rocky boulders are you doing here?”

  “I would have come sooner, but I wished to bring as much aid as I could.” Flannað knelt so she was level with Aethren and offered one spindly-fingered hand.

  Aethren got up with Flannað’s help and stared around. They were standing on Deothwicc’s slope, their back to the forest. Isha was half-propped against a tree as if he had fallen there, his face a picture of confusion. It might have been comical, if Aethren wasn’t so wracked with shock and pain.

  “You know this . . . creature?” Myr asked, drawing close to Aethren’s side. He eyed Flannað with – not hostility, but something close. His lips were drawn back over his teeth in a garish warning snarl. Flannað looked suitably uncomfortable as she took a step back.

  “We’ve met before,” Aethren said, still reeling. Their injured arm felt full of pins and needles, and their head was pounding too much to think.

  “Aethren! Isha!” Mati broke out of the trees. There was a cut on his forehead, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. He went straight to Isha, helping him up and fussing over him. “Where’s Rost? What happened?”

  “There,” Flannað said, pointing back out across the plain.

  They all turned as one. First came the rustling of wings, the crackle of raw magic filling the air like lightning, the rush of wind – and then Aethren saw her.

  Rostfar was suspended at the centre of a living, seething mass, fighting its hold, her body alight with power. Not a cold power like Ylla’s weaves, though; more like the warmth of Bloom, spilling from her skin in translucent waves. She was terrifying and ethereal and godlike. It made Aethren’s skin crawl.

  The cloud twisted its shape like a shoal of fish as it descended on the slope, and Rostfar dropped. As soon as her feet struck the grass, the power drained away, leaving her tired and angry and human. There was dirt on her face and her blood in her hair, and she looked far more dangerous than any deity.

  “He killed Urdven!” Rostfar snapped at the hrafmaer who had carried her. “Why did you take me away? I could have – I could have—” But Rostfar didn’t seem to know what she could have done. Her knees buckled.

  The revelation hung suspended above them. Nobody seemed able or willing to speak. Isha let out a moan of horror. It sounded muffled and very far away.

  “I am sorry, Yrl Wyrdsaer,” said one of the hrafmaer. While her fellows had settled in low tree branches, bare feet dangling and bodies tensed for flight, she had remained on the slope. She was hunched and elderly, with beads of carved bone in her unnaturally black hair. Aethren thought her name was Ólinvar. “Truly, I am. But we had to get you to safety.”

  “Why did you come?” Aethren broke in. A high, relentless buzzing in their ears was making it hard to focus on the conversation. “If Ylla sent you—”

  “Ylla?” Flannað laughed. “We follow her no longer, hrafaïn. Thrigg was quite the inspiration.”

  “Thrigg?” Aethren glanced around at where Thrigg stood in the shadows of the treeline, hugging herself.

  “I don’t think—” Thrigg began.

  “Hush, dear,” Flannað said with a smile. “Thrigg here made a wonderfully rousing speech. About Ýgren, about Ylla’s crimes, and about you. You inspired her, brought her hope – and she believed it was a hope we should all have felt.”

  Thrigg’s cheeks were darker than usual, as if flushed. “Look, it wasn’t a speech. It was an argument. With Ylla. In full earshot of . . . almost everyone in Hrafnholm. But I was fed up! Furious! Ylla caused this, and she’d rather send you to deal with the fallout of her crimes than face them herself, and I could hear you were in so much pain, and I just—” she broke off with a sharp gasp. “I’d done nothing for long enough.”

  “Ren, what’s she talking about? What do the hrafmaer have to do with all this?” Rostfar asked stiffly.

  “Humans and wolves once lived together. Not just co-existence, but . . . really together. And Ylla – made a rift between them and caused us all to forget everything, because she thought humans shouldn’t have magic,” Aethren explained.

  “I was there. I saw the damage she wrought to your culture and history,” Ólinvar said. Her eyes were watery and sad. “Most of the elders are too afraid to leave Ylla, but I came. I came because Eahalr was my home once, long before Ylla drowned it and created the Wyccmarshes to divide the land. My heart is old, but not so barren that new seeds of hope will not grow there.”

  Aethren looked up at the hrafmaer in the trees. They counted sixteen in total, including Thrigg, Ólinvar and Flannað. Each one was staring at them with hopeful and determined eyes, as if they believed Aethren a new saviour. The buzzing in their ears rose to a relentless horror-pitch.

  “I brought you this,” Flannað said. Her voice came from a vast distance. Aethren slowly dragged their gaze to her and saw she was holding out a circlet of woven silver. Ylla’s circlet.

  Aethren stared at it. Was this a trap; some last, desperate ploy for Ylla to have her revenge? Someone might have said their name, but their heartbeat drowned out everything else.

  A familiar, calloused hand reached out and took the circlet. Aethren’s eyes snapped to Marken’s face as he held it out to them. He wore an expression somewhere between grief and pride.

  “This was Ýgren’s,” he said gently. “She gave it to Ylla before we left Hrafnholm. I think . . . it is fitting that you should wear it now.”

  Aethren looked up at him for a long, uncertain moment, aching for reassurance and not knowing how to ask for it – and then Marken pulled them into a hug. They could have remained there for a long time, warm and safe in his arms.

  But someone screamed. And the world erupted into flame
s.

  Chapter 54

  A dull, throbbing ache was growing in Rostfar’s head, as if the force of Illarieth’s memory had bruised the inside of her skull, and her heartbeat pounded to the rhythm of Urdven, Urdven, Urdven. Every breath burned the inside of her throat.

  “Rost?” Isha, strained and urgent. “Rost, can you hear me?”

  Rostfar blinked. She was on her back at the base of a tree with Isha leaning over her, his hands tight on her shoulders.

  “. . . in the yellow dress, she threw us—” Isha was saying. Rostfar stared at his lips. They weren’t moving in time with his words. He shook her shoulders.

  And then Rostfar felt it. Panic.

  She didn’t know if it was hers or his, but that didn’t matter. The ground where she, Mati, and Isha had been standing moments before was littered with broken arrows. There wasn’t time to look for anyone else, though.

  Rostfar heard a distant shout – the order to Release! – and then the long, low whistle of thrown missiles. She watched in helpless horror as a burning throw-weight arced through the air, trailing its long rope, and landed in a tree just in front of her.

  A breathless silence swept through the forest, swallowing all noise and movement. It was just a spark at first; a tiny, smouldering hole in the pine tree’s green dress. Rostfar even dared to hope it wouldn’t catch.

  Then the wyrdness itself caught fire, and the world began to burn.

  Ravening flames burst outwards in a cascade of heat and fury, devouring the tree from head to toe. And the one next to it. And the one after that. No fire should have burned that fast, and yet—

  Every inch of Rostfar’s exposed skin screamed at her to run, but her feet were anchored to the spot. She could feel the trees burning, her own nerves keening from the pain, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. If Isha hadn’t grabbed her and hauled her away, she likely would have stood there until the flames swallowed her whole.

  “I can feel it,” Rostfar gasped out, swaying where she stood. Pain drilled its way through her chest and exploded inside her ribcage. It was like hot metal against the soft nerves of her insides, scraping her raw. Worse even than the anguish of Illarieth’s memory or the burning trees.

  Rostfar’s knees gave out. Her vision swam.

  A few feet in front of her, a pale figure shimmered out of the air. Even with her blurred vision, Rostfar knew who she was looking at.

  Help her, Arketh screamed.

  A bead of sweat ran down Rostfar’s face with the effort of staying upright. Isha’s panicked shouts came from a long, long way away, but Arketh’s voice was the only thing that felt real in that terrible, smouldering evening.

  If she burns, we all do. You have to hurry.

  Arketh’s ghost burst into flames.

  “Did you see – was that . . .?” Isha was clinging to Rostfar with a white-knuckled grip, but she made no attempt to push him off. She could only just make herself nod. “But who was she talking about?”

  “The Speaking Tree. Norðunn.” Gripping Isha’s arm, Rostfar staggered to her feet again. “We have to get to the clearing.”

  “But Mati—” Isha’s voice broke.

  “I know,” Rostfar said, scalding tears welling up and running down her cheeks. “But we have to trust that Ket will find him. He’ll be there.” There wasn’t any time for this, but. She watched pain and fear and determination flicker across Isha’s face in quick succession. He nodded and took her hand in his.

  “Let’s go,” he said hoarsely.

  They ran.

  The further into the forest they went, the more it felt like the trees were trying to fight back. Branches caught and tangled in their hair and clothes, and paths that had once been worn smooth were knotted with roots.

  Rostfar could taste the magic in the air, thick and bitter like the juice of unripe berries. Her lungs ached from each sharp breath and her body wanted nothing more than to curl up on itself on the heaving earth. Only Isha’s damp, clammy hand in hers gave her any sense of reality – until he slipped, and even that small comfort was wrenched away.

  Isha was on his knees, face screwed up in pain, clutching one of his ankles. And then, she couldn’t see him anymore because a burning branch crashed through the canopy and blocked her way back to him.

  “Isha!” Rostfar tried to get to him, but the flames roared in her face.

  “Go!” Isha called back. “You have to. I can’t – I’ll be fine.”

  A lie. But what could Rostfar do about it? The burning tug in her gut grew stronger, urging her to leave him behind. Grey flecks crawled across her vision.

  From somewhere towards the forest’s edge came a wild, broken-edged howl. The howl of a wolf being burnt alive, Rostfar knew – and the knowledge cut her like a blade. So many lives, wolven and human alike, were turning to ash all around her.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked out, and continued to run.

  The air became thick. Rostfar’s pounding heart told her she was still moving, but everything around her had slowed. She tried to breathe, to keep running – but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Her lungs were dead and useless in her chest and her limbs were full of lead. Every rise and fall of her chest took a thousand years.

  “Let me through,” she

  (shouted? thought?)

  to the looming trees as they pressed in close, trying to squeeze the life out of her.

  She dragged herself through each footstep, moving in an ungainly, dream-like fashion. The world stretched and shivered, threatening to pull her apart at the seams like an old rag – and then it snapped.

  Rostfar crashed to her knees inside the Speaker’s Clearing.

  Her legs would no longer take her weight, but she couldn’t escape Norðunn’s pleading cries. She began to crawl. Twigs splintered beneath her hands and bit into her palms, but her pain was barely more than a whisper compared to the dying screams of the burning wood.

  At last, aching and trembling, she collapsed at the Tree’s roots. Her hands left bloody smears against the bark.

  “I’m here,” she murmured, leaning her forehead into the bark. “I tried – I’m sorry. But I’m here.”

  Smoke crept up her nose and into her mouth. The Speaker was protecting itself, but the trees outside continued to burn. How much longer, Rostfar wondered as she collapsed, before the flames reached even this sacred, magical place?

  It didn’t matter. She had failed, and she had nothing left to give.

  Chapter 55

  Rostfar was tossed and whirled around by an unrelenting current. She wasn’t just looking at the wyrdness; she was inside it. The rushing tide of pure magic snagged her like a leaf and pulled her up, up and away from the familiarity of Ys. Her very bones were unravelling, melting, spooling.

  If she couldn’t find something to hold on to soon, she feared she might lose her soul completely.

  I’m here.

  A voice. Was it? Sound, like time and touch, didn’t exist here. The words seeped through her consciousness slowly.

  Then there were fingers – the memory of fingers – curling into her.

  Please listen to me.

  “I can’t,” Rostfar said – or, thought she said. “I’m drowning.”

  “No, Mama,” said Arketh, “you’re not.”

  Rostfar opened her eyes. She stood in the same flourishing valley that had greeted her after her sleepwalking, all those months ago. Birds wheeled and circled overhead. Strange birds, like none she had ever seen before. They had bald heads like wrinkled old men and harsh, grating cries.

  Looking down, Rostfar saw that the birds were circling two small, dark shapes.

  One was Arketh, kneeling in the grass. And the other . . .

  “What is that?”

  “Her name’s Illarieth, Mama,” Arketh told her, chiding in a way that only a child can. “Remember?”

  “Yes, I . . . I’m sorry.” Rostfar crouched on the other side of the thing that should have been Illarieth. It – she? – had been flayed
until only sinew and gore remained, and she lay curled in a tight ball, shivering.

  “It’s what she gave you.” Arketh continued speaking very softly as she ran her fingers over Illarieth’s stripped and bloodied flesh. Tiny white flowers blossomed beneath her touch.

  “Did you see it too?” Rostfar made herself ask, although she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer. She knew she couldn’t shield Arketh forever, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing something so brutal so young.

  Arketh looked up at her quizzically. “She didn’t give it to me.”

  “Oh.” Rostfar exhaled with relief and nodded shakily. “So does this mean you’re – awake?”

  “I don’t know.” Arketh frowned and drew her hands away from Illarieth.

  The whole of Illarieth’s body was coated in living flowers now. Rostfar found this disturbing, but the flowers seemed to have helped; Illarieth’s breathing was calm, and she had stopped shivering.

  Speaking slowly, not looking up, Arketh continued. “I’ve been up here for ages, haven’t I?”

  “Three months,” Rostfar said. “Give or take.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.” Arketh tucked her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them. “I didn’t want the raven lady to have me. She was so . . . cold, and angry. And I don’t think she was going to help, even though she told me she was. Or—” she chewed her lower lip for a moment. “She was, but in a bad way. Not everyone would have been happy or safe.”

  “You’ve been really brave, Ket,” Rostfar said. Arketh’s eyes darted up briefly, and Rostfar saw a glimmer of pride in them. She reached out, wanting to run her fingers through Arketh’s hair – but she couldn’t feel anything. It was like trying to touch fog.

  “I said to her I’d rather be brave like you, and she wasn’t happy. I had to run away to where she couldn’t find me.”

  “Have you been here alone?”