When Dealing with Wolves

by A. R. Thompson

  “Where are we?” Rostfar asked, even though she thought she knew the answer.

  “Eahalr,” Mati said. He rested one hand on the back of her neck and rubbed firm, gentle circles with his fingers. “We’ve been here a week or so now. You – you were gone for quite a while, Rost. Gave us a real scare.”

  Rostfar pressed her face into his upper arm. A hard knot of fear sat on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She didn’t want to be here in this drowned and dreary waste; she wanted to be in Deothwicc, warm in her den with Mati and Isha and Arketh as the forest thrived around them.

  But Deothwicc had burned. And now that home was lost to her, too.

  “How’s Isha?” Rostfar whispered without lifting her head.

  “He’s healing. His ankle’s on the mend, and the burns on his hands weren’t so bad as Marken feared.”

  “And everyone else?”

  “Alive, Rost. We all made it out safe.” Mati gave her a brief squeeze. “Aethren’s been ill with an infection, but Marken, Nat and Krist are all doing as well as they could be. The hrafmaer seem okay, too, but it’s hard to tell with them. The others from Erdansten had cuts and nips, but the wolves weren’t trying to hurt them.”

  Rostfar swallowed, almost too scared to ask her next question. “. . . the wolves?”

  “They’re . . . alright.” She felt Mati cringe. “Well, not alright. They can’t be, I suppose. Yrsa was burned and Marken doesn’t know if her fur’s going to grow back. They don’t know where this one called Estene is for some reason, but they don’t seem as worried by that as I thought they would be—”

  “She went away to have her pups. Only pack-mother and other pupping wolves know where the Pupping Dens are.”

  “Oh. Well, Myr did that wyrd-thing and – spoke? I don’t know, do you speak with it? – Found out she’s fine, anyway. Grae burned his paws carrying you out, and Faren cut one of Myr’s eyes up quite badly. . .” Mati’s voice trailed off into sheepish silence, as if embarrassed by the grim information he was sharing. “Atta died. The rest are alive – hurt and grieving, but alive.”

  The fear in Rostfar’s chest shifted slightly, giving her more room to breathe.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked her.

  “That I’m disappointed. That sounds awful, I know. But—” her voice broke. “Is this it? Have we just come back to where all this started?” Rostfar pulled away from Mati so she could hug her knees to her chest.

  “We’re a long way from how things were, Rost,” Mati said gently. “What you did – Thrigg said it was you – it broke most people’s hunger to fight. It was like a nightmare, but it was real. I – I almost didn’t know who I was, and when it was over, I couldn’t even stand. The ones who didn’t fall were either insensate or scared shitless, and then there was this rain like – like—”

  “Like tears?” Rostfar suggested.

  “Yes,” Mati agreed after a ponderous silence. He peered down at her quizzically. “It tasted salty. Was that you?”

  “Norðunn.”

  “Oh.” Mati nodded, but still looked perplexed. It made Rostfar smile despite the mournful ache inside her. He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and continued to fill in what Rostfar had missed. She listened in rapt silence as he explained how the fight had broken out again when Atta had run straight at the humans; how Ornhild had found Hrall tied up in Faren’s tent, then freed him so they could call for a retreat. Hrall, Ornhild, Nat, Marken, Myr and Thrigg had spent almost a full day seated out in the middle of the battlefield, deep in discussion. At last, Thrigg had suggested she open Deyjaholm so the humans could travel safely home and continue discussions there. Hrall had reluctantly agreed.

  “Hrall – um, suggested – that we’d not be too welcome in Erdansten,” Mati finished. “He didn’t mean anything personal by it, I don’t think, but after everything . . .”

  “They’re still scared,” Rostfar said. Mati bowed his head in grim agreement. “So, what? We’re exiled here now?”

  “No, no! Hrall said he wants you to speak at a trialmoot. They want to get your side of the story, Rost. They want to listen.” Mati actually sounded hopeful, as if everything hadn’t gone entirely to ash. “Ornhild brought us lots of supplies so we’d be comfortable as possible, and she says the children’ve woken up. Marken’s been back ‘n forth and says they’re doing really well.”

  Rostfar sank deep into the fur-covered pillow. She should have been pleased, but she was only numb. “What about Arketh?”

  “She’s on her way to us,” Mati said, and Rostfar could hear the grin in his voice. “Flannað and Thrigg left three days ago to get her from Ylla. They’ll be back soon.”

  “Oh.” Rostfar pressed both hands over her mouth. She could feel the shape of her smile beneath her fingers, but her joy was slow to come. It rose slowly, swelling inside her chest until it finally dislodged the weight there, and clear air rushed into her lungs. “Oh.” She rocked herself, knees hugged to her chest, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  For a while there was nothing save for the darkness behind her lids, and then Rostfar felt another body slotting into place at her side. Isha. He ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her temple.

  “Ket’s coming home,” Rostfar crooned, finally looking up.

  “Ket’s coming home,” Isha agreed, and the three of them began to laugh.

  ⁂

  Yrsa found Grae sitting at the bridge that led to Rostfar’s stone den. Rostfar had woken the day before, but that didn’t seem to matter to Grae: he kept his vigil as he had while she slept, seated with his head high and eyes fixed on some distant place. He blinked and looked sharply at her as she stepped onto the sunken den.

  “Grae—” Yrsa began, at the same time as he said, “Yrsa.”

  They stopped. Eyed one another. The only sound came from the low hum of insects as they chirruped out their morning song.

  Yrsa looked away first. It wasn’t that she couldn’t talk to Grae anymore, it was just . . . odd. Grae was still her littermate, but he felt unreachable now in a way that had nothing to do with him being unwolf. He had changed so much, but she didn’t know if she could say the same for herself.

  “I might go and stay with the humans,” Grae said. “In Erdansten.”

  Yrsa looked up at him disbelief. “You might what?”

  “Well, not inside the town – not completely. Natta needs to speak with the council about it more, but Kristan says I could den just outside where the walls are crumbling.”

  “But you – but I don’t – why?”

  Grae lowered his head. “I need somewhere new. Not here.”

  What about me? Yrsa wanted to ask – but that was the whole problem. She’d spent so long worrying about other people, she wasn’t sure what she wanted or needed for herself. Did she want Grae to stay, or did she just want things to go back to normal? Did she even want things to be normal again?

  If the world changed, where would she fit inside it?

  “Yrsa, please talk to me.” Grae’s voice was so small. So tentative.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Yrsa admitted, and met Grae’s eyes. For all his uncertainty, he looked lighter. Like he’d shed most of the weight he’d been carrying since Nessen’s death. “I – I want you to stay.”

  “I know,” Grae said. “But that’s part of why I can’t. You don’t need me, Yrsa.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No.” Grae padded closer and touched his nose to Yrsa’s neck. She swayed into him and inhaled his scent, almost surprised to realise it hadn’t changed. “I’ve got to learn how to live with my anger, and I think – maybe you need to learn how to live for yourself. We’re still littermates, Yrsa, and I’m not saying we can never see one another. I just think we need our own paths, too.”

  Yrsa whined and nuzzled in beneath Grae’s head. He was right. By the Speaking Tree, he was right – and that made it hurt worse.

  “Living with the humans matters to you,” Yrsa said. “Just
like being unwolf matters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m glad,” Yrsa told him, surprised by how much she meant it. She pulled back so she could meet his eyes. “I don’t understand – and I don’t need to understand to be happy for you. But I’d like to. Is that okay?”

  “We have time to talk about it, Yrsa,” Grae said fondly. His tail and his pricked ears told her he was happy, even if the wyrdness around him was still clouded.

  Yrsa tilted her head in a mixture of curiosity and surprise. “Listen to you, talking about future and possibilities. Who are you and what have you done with Grae?”

  “There are possibilities to talk about now,” Grae said, and scuffed her playfully in the face.

  Content in his company for the first time in weeks, Yrsa paced a few steps away and sent a soft pulse of Follow through the wyrdness. Grae didn’t follow. Of course. Yrsa flinched in embarrassment, but he hadn’t even noticed. He stood where she had left him, a perplexed expression in his ears and cocked head.

  “I’ve found some bees building a hive in the carcass of a caribou,” Yrsa explained. “Do you want to go and watch them together?”

  Grae perked up. “Race you?”

  “Obviously,” Yrsa said, and took off at full speed.

  Chapter 58

  Aethren lay inside one of the animal hide tents that had been erected in the dry grove at Eahalr’s outskirts. Fever still quivered through them, but it was receding now. They almost wished it would come back. At least they hadn’t been able to think inside that mire of heat and pain.

  Eahalr was a dismal place: cold where Deothwicc had been imbued with Norðunn’s warmth; gloomy where Deothwicc had felt so distinctly alive. Aethren knew that if they felt these differences so keenly, then Rostfar and the wolves must have been suffering tenfold. It made Aethren’s blood seethe with anger to know this was likely the best any of them could hope for.

  Someone knocked on the tent pole. When Aethren bid entry, Rostfar poked her head through the flap.

  “I’m heating some of your pa’s stew for breakfast. Do you want to join me?”

  Aethren hesitated. “Who else is out there?”

  “It’s just me, or I wouldn’t have offered,” Rostfar reassured them. “I know you need space.”

  “. . . Okay.” Aethren nodded. They dragged on a shirt and stumbled, blinking, to the firepit and its circle of stone seats. The stones had been sculpted by hrafmaer magic, perfectly smooth and oddly comfortable to sit in, even without a covering of furs.

  “Have you spoken to Marken yet?” Rostfar asked as she sat on a seat beside them, gently pushing a bowl into their hands. Aethren’s gut twisted at the mention of their pa.

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Rostfar nodded and began to eat. She didn’t make the silence awkward, for which Aethren was grateful beyond words. They stared down at the potatoes and cabbage – grown in less than a week by the hrafmaer – and turned the bowl between their palms.

  “Can you see it?” Aethren asked without looking up. “Ylla’s weave, I mean. The one she used to bind Pa’s tongue.”

  “Sort of.” Rostfar’s voice was slow and ponderous. They heard her spoon clink back into the bowl. “It’s very subtle. I don’t think I’d see if I didn’t know it’s there. Why do you ask?”

  Aethren breathed out heavily. “I could undo it, you know? I did that for Thrigg, and it was . . . not easy, but simple. I could undo it, and he could tell me everything he knows about Mam and Ylla and magic.”

  “So why haven’t you?” The question wasn’t judgemental. Just curious.

  “I,” Aethren said. Choked on the words. They had to swallow a couple of times before they could speak again. “I’m scared what I might learn. And I’m scared to talk to him, because I’m so angry, Rost – angry at myself, and Pa, and Ylla. Everything. But I’m tired, too, and anger just makes that worse.”

  “I understand. That’s how I felt when I first went to Deothwicc.”

  “But you had a reason!” Aethren finally looked up. “You’d lost your daughter. What have I lost? I don’t have any right to feel this way, and I hate it. I hate what it’s making me into. Ylla is a monster, and I know Mam had a part in what she did and I can’t help thinking – what if I’m like them? What if this anger inside me is just where it starts?”

  “Aethren, listen.” Rostfar’s voice was gentle, and from anyone else that would have been unbearable. “The wolves see anger as a deep and inherently human flaw, and they try not to feel it for fear of being like a human. But they were wrong. It’s not a bad thing.”

  Aethren stared at Rostfar, half perplexed and half disbelieving. “How can you say that? Ylla is angry and resentful, and look what that made her do. It made Grae unwolf!”

  “No.” Rostfar shook her head and turned to face Aethren full-on, setting her bowl to one side. “I’ve been talking with Grae, and I think the wolvenkind had that wrong, too. The wyrdness didn’t abandon them because they were angry. It’s more like . . . pain isolates us if we try to bury it – clouds our vision, distorts our idea of ourselves and cuts us off from others. Illarieth and Grae’s wyrdsight became overshadowed with their agony, and they were too frightened of being like humans to really process their feelings. If someone had just told them it’s okay to grieve . . .” Her breath caught. She cupped her hands around her pouch of telling-stones and quietly cleared her throat. “You’re allowed to be angry and upset about what you’ve been through. It’s what you do with your anger that counts.”

  Aethren wanted to believe Rostfar. They wanted to believe they were wounded instead of irrevocably broken. They wanted to believe all the bitterness and rage inside them wouldn’t fester into a corrosive flame; a fire that would burn them out until they became a resentful husk. But it was so hard. And they were so tired.

  Aethren looked past Rostfar, beyond Eahalr and into the Wyccmarshes. “You’re talking like it’s all over. It isn’t. Ylla’s still there in Hrafnholm, and the hrafmaer seem to think I’m some sort of leader. And Hrall’s put us in exile here as if everything we’ve done doesn’t matter! How can you accept it? How can you be so calm?”

  “I’m not calm,” Rostfar said, and Aethren heard the slight crack in her voice. “And I don’t accept it. I intend to fight back, to find a way to change things – but not yet. I need time. We all need time. If we keep pushing ourselves, we’ll fall to pieces, and we don’t deserve that.” She mustered a soft, rueful smile.

  “But what do I do about the hrafmaer? They’re expecting me to be like Mam. To lead them.”

  Rostfar leaned back on her hands with a thoughtful expression on her face. At last, the corner of her mouth twitched mischievously. “Screw them.”

  Aethren snorted. Then, surprised by their own mirth, they laughed. “I can’t tell them that.”

  “Yes, you can.” Rostfar patted Aethren’s hand and stood. “It’s not at all fair of the hrafmaer to make you into a leader because it’s what they want. Speaking as someone who spent a decade as Dannaskeld, nothing makes that sort of pressure worth it.”

  Aethren remained seated as Rostfar tidied up from the meal, staring into the fire. Rostfar knew what it was to be an unwilling leader; she knew the weight of duty and guilt, and how they chafed at your willpower. They didn’t believe her ideas about pain and anger, but they could listen to her on this, at least. Maybe.

  They were broken from their reverie by the sound of hoofbeats from the trees. A moment later, Marken appeared, leading Pony and Rostfar’s pony, Sylfr.

  “What is it?” Aethren rose, heart in their mouth. Marken’s face was too grim, too still, and they didn’t think they cope if anything else had gone wrong—

  “The trialmoot?” It was Rostfar who spoke. She seemed calm, but her grip on the bowl she was rinsing had tightened. Marken nodded. Rostfar closed her eyes and let out a shaky exhale. When she opened them, her expression was fierce. “Let’s go.”

  ⁂

  Mati, Kristan, Isha, Nat and
Grae accompanied Rostfar and Marken on the ride back to Erdansten. Only Marken spoke; his voice was a gentle companion to Whiterift’s rushing waters as he explained what he, Laethen and Hrall had discussed. Rostfar remained quiet and poured all her energy into fighting the urge to turn Sylfr around and ride away, past Eahalr and into the wilds beyond.

  There was nobody watching at the walls when they approached. Mati kissed Rostfar’s forehead, Isha squeezed her hand, and Kristan gave both her and Nat a quick hug. Grae remained a few strides away with his tail between his legs.

  “Are you ready?” Marken asked her.

  “No,” Rostfar said, and strode through the archway.

  The mootplace was packed full by the time Nat and Rostfar reached it. Rostfar stood at the north entrance, beside the Dannhren’s house, and felt her legs seize. Behind her, Nat tsked in impatience.

  “Wait—” Rostfar started, but Nat had already put her fingers to her lips and uttered a sharp whistle.

  Heads turned. People instantly began to move aside, but it wasn’t the smooth, respectful parting of a crowd making way for their Dannaskeld. Their steps were frantic, hands reaching for those nearest as uncertainty spread, and nobody seemed to know where to look.

  Beyond the crowd, the dais was set up in readiness. Two stools were set facing one another at either end of the highest level. Rostfar’s mouth went dry.

  “Walk,” Nat whispered in her ear. Rostfar walked. She tried not to think about how visibly her legs were shaking as she mounted the steps and sat on one of the stools. Nat stood in the crowd’s front row and gave Rostfar a tiny, almost hidden, smile.

  The doors of the moothall opened. Faren walked out, flanked by Ornhild and Hrall. Laethen and Marken brought up the rear. To Rostfar’s surprise, people seemed just as wary of Faren as they were of her. Nobody greeted him or called encouragement as she had expected. Ornhild was not gentle when she pushed Faren down onto the opposite stool.