The Wolf Wilder

by Katherine Rundell

  As she skied in through the door, the wolves were chewing on the carcasses of two ravens, covering the statue of Mary with flecks of blood. Feo did not go close—it is wisest not to interrupt wolves when they are eating, even if they are your best friends—but waited, her feet tucked up on one of the pews, until they had finished. They were unhurried, licking their muzzles and forepaws, and then charged at her as a gang, knocking her off the pew and covering her chin and hands with wolf spit. She and Black had a game of chase in and out of the pews, Feo swinging for balance around the headless saints. She felt some of the gray weight of the day lift off her stomach.

  Feo could not remember a time when she had not known and loved the wolves. It was impossible not to love them: They were so lean and beautiful and uncompromising. She had grown up picking pine needles out of their fur and old meat from their teeth. She could howl, her mother used to say, before she could talk. Wolves made sense to her; wolves were one of the few things worth dying for. It seemed unlikely, though, that anyone would ask her to: After all, wolves were, in general, on the other side of the equation.

  TWO

  The wolf who arrived two weeks after the general’s warning was a young one, a female with a beautiful tail, but fatter than any wolf should be.

  Usually, when the carriages arrived at the house in the woods, the drivers would blink, looking around for someone large and male to come and untie the wolf. Instead, they would see Feo and her mother coming from the house, wrapped in cooking smells. Marina was thirty-three and tall as the lintel on the front door. She had taught Feo to do pull-ups on the cottage door frames. She had a four-clawed scar circling her left eye. Men who met her had been known to forget, just for a second, how to breathe.

  This morning, though, Feo greeted the cart alone. She took the struggling wolf in her arms, nudging away the driver’s offer of help, and laid her in the snow. She stroked her head, and she quieted.

  The wolf’s fur was the blackest Feo had ever seen. At night she would be invisible—in fact darker than the night itself, because Russian nights, especially when there is snow to reflect the stars, are never absolutely dark.

  “Good to meet you,” said Feo to the wolf. She ignored the driver and dipped her face, touching her nose to the wolf’s muzzle. The wolf licked her chin. Her breath smelled reassuringly of spit and silver coins, but the long tongue was swollen and bleeding a little.

  “She’s bitten herself,” said Feo. “You should have driven her more carefully.” She looked properly at the driver. He was a big man, with long nose hair that blended seamlessly into his beard. “Did you pass any soldiers on the way?”

  “What? Why would I—”

  “Nothing, in that case.” Feo shook her head, hard. “Forget I said that.” She untied the wolf softly, keeping her hands where the wolf could see them. Her claws were too long, starting to curl inward toward the pads of her feet. Feo took her knife, balanced one of the wolf’s paws on her knee and began to cut the claws.

  “Have you got any food for her?” Feo asked the driver. “She’s hungry.”

  “No.” He raised his eyebrows. “She’s fat enough already.”

  Feo braced the wolf’s jaw open against her torso and ran her fingers along the teeth, pushing at the gums.

  “You—little girl, stop that! Mother of God!” The man let out an impressive cascade of swearwords. Feo noticed with interest that his fingernails were sweating. “Do you want to be killed? What are you doing?”

  “I’m checking for gum decay.” There was none. She let the wolf go and scratched her under the front legs. The wolf collapsed on her side, whimpering with pleasure.

  The man still looked horrified, and almost angry. “Shouldn’t that thing have a bit of rope around its jaws?” He was staring at Feo, at her eyes and at her earlobe: It had been split in two by a wolf’s accidental claw when she was six. Feo shook her hair over her face and gave him a withering look. At least, she tried to. She had only read about it in books and wasn’t sure how it was done. She imagined it involved a lot of nostril work.

  “Wolves don’t wear rope. They’re not like dogs.” They had more fire in them, she thought, and uneven tempers. It was difficult to explain. She bit her lip, thinking how to put it, then shook her head. Other people were so difficult. “You could go, if you felt like you wanted to. That’s how I’d feel if I were you.”

  Marina emerged from the house, her hair half braided, just in time to see the cart disappearing.

  “He didn’t want a drink?” she asked.

  “No,” said Feo. She grinned at her mother. “He didn’t seem that keen on staying, actually.”

  “That’s probably just as well. Come, quickly—let’s get her under the trees and out of sight.”

  “You think they’re watching us?” Feo stared around at the snow.

  “It’s possible, lapushka. I don’t think it was an empty threat. Empty threats, in my experience, involve fewer breakages.”

  The wolf walked agonizingly slowly toward the woods, and she yelped as she went, as if unfamiliar with cold.

  Marina dusted snow from Feo’s hair. “We need to talk about what might happen.”

  “Uh-huh.” The wolf was coughing. Feo laid two fingers on her throat and kneaded gently. “What did she do, do you think? Why did they send her away?”

  “They said she got into the countess’s wardrobe and chewed up the dresses. But are you listening to me?”

  “That’s all? She didn’t bite anyone? Yes, sorry, I’m listening!” Feo thought about her pack. Gray had bitten off the thumb of a visiting tax collector. White had scraped a cut an inch deep in a duchess’s thigh when she had tried to make the wolf dance for visitors. And Black had eaten three toes, which, technically, had belonged to an English lord. Her wolves, Feo thought, were a bunch of the most beautiful criminals.

  “If Rakov’s men are watching us, you can’t be seen with the wolves in public.”

  “Of course. You already said that, Mama! And I asked the driver if he saw any soldiers, and he said no.”

  “You did what?” Marina looked startled. “My darling, you mustn’t mention soldiers to anybody. It’s not wise to let strangers know you have anything to fear.”

  “Oh.” Feo’s insides felt suddenly a little tighter, a little hotter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s my fault. I should have warned you.” Marina rubbed both hands through her hair. “I’ve been making an escape plan. Just in case.”

  The wolf set the side of her muzzle against Feo’s knee and coughed. “Mama, did she swallow the dresses? If she’s still got material in her teeth, it could be hurting her.”

  “Feo, leave the—”

  “Look, Mama.” Feo pushed open the wolf’s jaws. Wolf spit covered her hand as she felt carefully inside. At the back of the wolf’s mouth a wedge of cloth had stuck between the teeth. Feo tugged. It was red velvet, with one tiny seed pearl surviving of the embroidery.

  “There! And also this thread they used to tie her is too thin,” said Feo. She held up the wolf’s paw for her mother to see. “Look! Blood, there, see? Her paws are so fragile.” She kissed the wolf’s ear. “We should call you Tenderfoot.”

  “Here, I’ve got some ointment.” Marina bent and rubbed some brownish paste onto the wolf’s paw. Her hands were faster than most people’s, and the wolf relaxed into her grip. “But, Feo, do you understand? You’ll need to pack a bag—food, dry clothes, a knife, rope—and keep it by the back door, just in case.”

  Feo dragged her attention away from Tenderfoot. “In case what, though, Mama?”

  “In case Rakov comes back for us.”

  “But he wouldn’t! Would he? I mean—he’s old.” Feo tried to push away the memory of his eyes staring out at her from the yellowed face. “Old people like sitting down. And growing ear hair. And . . . soup.” Feo had met very few old people. “He’ll be busy doing those things.”

  Marina smiled, but the corners of her mouth looked heav
y. “Just keep your eyes open, lapushka. If you want to see the wolves, stay in the chapel or behind the house. We’ll wild this one as quickly as we can and release her at the woods to the west, by the kidney-shaped lake, so she won’t stray near Rakov.”

  “But those woods are bad for hunting! She’ll starve!”

  “Not if we teach her to catch birds. Besides, wolves find a way. Wolves are the witches of the animal world.”

  THREE

  Feo had been wilding wolves alone since she was ten years old, but never had she had to do it in secret, never with the back of her neck prickling. Wilding is best done alone, and Marina left her to attend to a sick dog ten miles off: Wilders in Russia often doubled as vets. But her face, as she went, was unsettled.

  “Keep your knife sharp, keep your eyes sharper, my darling,” she said. “Remember that.”

  Now Feo crouched in the snow in front of Tenderfoot. The days had grown bruisingly cold, and her breath together with the wolf’s formed a cloud around their heads. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  She knew the wilding stages: She had recited them before bed since she was four. “First,” she whispered to herself, “ascertain what world the wolf has come from.” Some of the wolves who came to them were manic and snappish, and took very little time to rewild. Some were timid and jumpy and barely able to walk.

  “Sit,” she said to the wolf. Tenderfoot sat, carefully, her four feet arranged as neat as a laid-out table.

  “Down. Lie down.” Tenderfoot lay down in the snow. She did not take her eyes off Feo.

  “Paw?” Feo asked.

  The wolf sat up, licked her paw with exquisite courtesy, and held it out to Feo. Feo did not take it.

  “Beg?”

  Tenderfoot twitched, then hesitated. The expression in her eyes was mutinous. Feo grimaced. She tried to make her voice aristocratic. “Beg!”

  The wolf rose instantly onto her hind legs and lolled her tongue. Her face was that of a duchess on finding a dead rat under the bed.

  Feo laughed. “Yes, I know.” “Society” wolves could always beg, hold out a paw, lie still. Often—it made Feo want to cry—they could dance on their hind legs, their faces blank.

  “Once,” she said to Tenderfoot, “we had a brown alpha—sort of tawny colored—who could pull the trigger of a rifle with his nose. Which is a ridiculous thing to teach him. As if a wolf needs a gun.”

  Usually she would test if the wolf could howl, but that, she thought, would be as obvious as writing out an invitation to Rakov. “We need to be quiet, if we can.” She pulled Tenderfoot closer to a tree and said, “Sit, for now.”

  Feo sat too in the ankle-deep snow. Her cloak had an oilskin finish that kept the cold out, more or less. It was secondhand and much too long, but her mother had pinned it up so that it swirled around her ankles when she ran.

  “I wish they wouldn’t teach you to beg. It’s . . .” Feo hesitated: It was like telling a god to clean his shoes. “It makes me want to bite. Stupid people.” She looked inside the wolf’s ears. “Stupid rich people.”

  There was the sound behind them of falling snow. Feo whipped round.

  “Hello?” she called. “Who’s there?” and then, “I can see you! Come out!”

  There was silence.

  “If you’re watching, you need to know that I have a knife. And an angry wolf.” Tenderfoot tucked her nose inside Feo’s armpit and whimpered.

  “She’s more murderous than she looks,” Feo called into the silence.

  One of the trees scattered its load of snow onto the ground below, and a crow as big as Feo’s head took off from the branches. Feo held her breath, but nothing else moved. She stood and looked around for footprints. The snow was wind churned, but she could see no footmarks. She crouched down again, her heart beating a little faster.

  “Stupid,” said Feo again. Tenderfoot’s hackles were on end. Feo smoothed them down. “We’re all right, I think. Shh, lapushka. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  She tugged the wolf to her feet. “Come, we’ll find you a good tree. I’ll show you how wolves build their dens.”

  She led the wolf to where the trees were thickest, and began to pile the snow. As she worked, Feo told the wolf about the land around her new home.

  Feo’s part of Russia was a place that the world had, by and large, decided to pass by. The hilltops absorbed the cold, and the snow there lay thicker and stiffer than anywhere for a hundred miles. If you stood on the tallest hill and looked to the north, there were the woods, hills, and the stone barracks of the soldiers. The soldiers used to be a bunch of harmless drunks, sent into the countryside to be out of the way; but since Rakov’s arrival, Feo had heard regimental orders shouted on the wind. Sometimes at night there were screams. Beyond the soldiers’ gray buildings was flat countryside, snow-covered fields and trees, and then, far off and merging with the clouds, the smoke of Saint Petersburg.

  “See?” said Feo to the black wolf. “And to the south there’s just snow and snow, and then, see here if you squint”—she shielded the wolf’s eyes with her hand—“more snow.”

  Feo loved it. The land around the house shook and shone with life. She had seen people pass by her wood bewailing the sameness of the white landscape, but they were just illiterate: They hadn’t learned how to read the world properly. The snow gossiped and hinted of storms and birds. It told a new story every morning. Feo grinned, and sniffed the sharpness of the air. “It’s the most talkative weather there is,” she told Tenderfoot.

  Her world was not, of course, all perfect. The few children in the farms were much older than her—almost grown up, with the beginnings of beards—or too young, and liable to cry and vomit unreasonably if she came near with the wolf pack. Feo liked the look of some of the older ones, but they laughed when she tried to join them, and said she was a child and smelled of wolves.

  Feo found it hard to act normally around strangers. She would be too silent, or rough when she’d hoped to be funny. For weeks and months after, some of the things she had said would come back to her and she would have to bury her head in the snow to cool down her cheeks. Adults, in Feo’s experience, often backed away when they met her. Her mother said it might—possibly—be because she stared at them. But the wolves stared too, and nobody reprimanded them.

  And the wolves were enough. They were better than enough. And two of the wolves, as Feo pointed out whenever her mother became anxious about her possible loneliness, were technically girls of about her own age. “I know they don’t speak Russian,” said Feo, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand each other.”

  White was the acknowledged beauty of the pack, and when Feo buried her face in the wolf’s neck, the fur was so soft it felt almost wet. She was young and, the male wolves who passed through seemed to agree, glamorous. Her snout was narrow enough to fit inside Feo’s ear. Most wolves are born with blue eyes, which turn yellow or gold at three months; White’s had remained blue.

  And there was Gray. Gray was a few months older than Feo, and Marina had fought a wolf hunter for her when she was a newborn pup cut from the stomach of her mother, a fight that had ended in a broken nose for Marina and a week in the hospital for the hunter. Perhaps because her first day on earth had been so stressful, Gray’s temper was large and unwieldy. The flick of her ears suggested she was invincible. Feo was not afraid of Gray because Feo refused, on principle, to be afraid of any animal—but if she’d had to be, it would definitely have been Gray she would have chosen.

  “It’s hard to be absolutely sure,” Feo told Black, “that she’s not going to bite off some part of me I’d rather keep.”

  Black had been sold for four thousand rubles because of the beauty of his coat, and until he found Feo, he had loved nobody. When he first came to the cabin in the woods, he had been fat, with a bottom large enough to block a doorway. Now, though, he was awe-inspiring, and the best friend anybody could dream of. On his hind legs, Black was tall enough to make two Feos, and—she knew from exper
ience—his paws were as big as Feo’s face. But Black was lightning quick.

  To see a wolf run, Feo reckoned, is to see something extraordinary—because, she told Tenderfoot, “a real wolf runs in the way that a thunderstorm would run if it had legs. That’s what you’re aiming for, all right?”

  Feo straightened up and rubbed Tenderfoot’s ears. The wolf flinched and whined.

  “Lapushka, you look like you wouldn’t know where to find your own teeth.”

  Many of the wolves who came to them, captured at birth and kept on chains, had never run farther than the length of a drawing room.

  “We’re going to do some running now,” said Feo. “Do you know running? It’s like walking, only more of it.”

  Tenderfoot stepped into a dip in the ground, found the snow was suddenly up to her stomach, and collapsed in a panicked heap, her head tucked down to her stomach. Feo reached into the snow, found the wolf’s belly, and pulled her to her feet. She weighed as much as Feo herself.

  “Wolves,” she said, “are supposed to be bold, and gallant, and fierce.” She rubbed Tenderfoot’s ears. “You might need to work on that.” Feo tightened the leather straps of her skis, wiped the icy mist off her hair before it could turn solid, and tucked it down her back inside her shirt. “Follow me, now!”

  She pushed forward and dropped off the edge of the hill. The sound of the wind in the trees made it difficult to tell if the wolf was following, but usually they came stumbling after her instinctively. Feo turned. The wolf sat at the top of the hill peering down, a dinner-party expression on her face.

  Feo bit away the solid snot icing on her lip, spat it out, and stamped, crisscrossing with her skis, back up the hill.