The Wolf Wilder

by Katherine Rundell

  “We have to go,” said Feo. “Good night.”

  “Where are you taking her?”

  Feo hesitated. “You won’t tell?”

  “Never! Really, I swear, Feo.”

  “I’m taking her home: my house. She can sleep inside if she wants to, or on the porch. Will they see us, between the wood and the house?”

  “No. I’m covering these six miles.” He looked down at the gold buttons on his sleeve. “Can I come back?”

  “Won’t they beat you?”

  He shrugged. “Can I come back?”

  “All right. Yes. If you want.”

  “And help with the wilding?”

  “It’s not easy.” Feo fought down her grin. It was too early, she reckoned, to be grinning at soldiers. “You can, but not if you bring a gun. And only if you promise never to tell what you saw. On pain of death by wolf.”

  “That seems fair enough,” he said. “I mean”—and the city twang she had heard before was in his voice again—“if you had to die, at least that way would be exciting.”

  FIVE

  The weeks that followed were some of the happiest of Feo’s life. They stayed close to the house, as far away from the soldiers’ barracks as possible. Marina patrolled the area, her knife always at her side, her face pinched, but no gray coats appeared. And the pup, even before his eyes opened, was evidently an animal of fearsome intelligence—when he was awake, which was not often. He slept next to Tenderfoot outside the front door. Feo would sit on her windowsill at sunrise with the pup in her lap while Tenderfoot nosed around the snow, darting around corners, lunging at puffs of wind, chewing the side of the house, disappearing for an hour or two, trying out her new running legs.

  Sometimes Ilya turned up without warning. He tried, at first, to make it seem as if he had stumbled up the hill by accident and was surprised to find Feo chopping wood or oiling her skis.

  Feo laughed. “Your surprised face is not convincing. You look like somebody’s great-aunt.”

  Black and White had both sniffed at him once, and rejected him as both uninteresting and inedible. Only Gray kept watch, following him to the edges of the woods when he left. Her expression was not exactly hostile, but nor was it plumping cushions and offering him hot drinks. The pup began to recognize his smell, and to mew blindly and stagger about when he approached. Ilya would sit, holding the pup in one hand, and tell Feo about the other soldiers in the barracks, about the tsar’s twitchy anxiety, about riots in the countryside. Feo rarely heard about the world beyond her own woods, and she listened hard. Again and again she asked him to tell her about Rakov.

  “On Sunday he made some of the junior officers hang by their hands from the balcony all night. He said if they let go, he’d shoot them before they hit the ground. I think he’s mad. Or maybe just going mad. The others say it wasn’t like that five years ago.”

  “Why doesn’t the tsar stop him?”

  “The tsar has a sick baby boy, so he ignores the rest of Russia.”

  “I didn’t know he had a son!”

  “Of course he does. You don’t get much news around here, do you?”

  Feo stuck out her tongue. “Russia is quite a big thing to ignore.”

  “Yes. It means Rakov can do whatever he wants. Which would be all right, I suppose, except the things he wants are bloody. He drowned an old beggar in the snow once. The tsar never found out.” As he spoke, Feo did her best impression of somebody who was not afraid.

  “Hm,” she said. “I see.”

  He told her about the small officers’ library, too, from which he sometimes stole books. “They’re the only good thing about the whole place. I sleep with a dictionary under my pillow, sometimes. Just to remind me that there are more words in the world than ‘Come here, boy.’ ”

  In return, Feo told him about wolf wilding, and their traditions. “We don’t give them human names,” she explained. “Wolves have their own names: They don’t need ours. So we call them by color, or descriptions—like Tenderfoot.”

  “What will you call the pup?”

  “Nothing, yet. Their fur changes color for the first few years, so we don’t call them anything until we’re sure.” Her family had been wolf wilders for generations, she told him, since Peter the Great. He was only pretending, she thought, not to be impressed.

  Ilya was there the day Tenderfoot first learned to tear open her own meat, and watched, from a safe distance, as Feo and the wolves rolled together in the snow in triumph. He helped coax Tenderfoot into a run, pushing from behind, while Feo flew ahead on skis, calling encouragements in Russian and in her best Wolf. He was there the day Tenderfoot discovered the frozen elk and crunched it up, victorious, bones and all, only to vomit extravagantly over Ilya’s boots.

  “That’s not going to be easy to explain,” he said, as Tenderfoot retreated, looking smug. “Rakov beats you if your boots and buttons aren’t polished.”

  “Here.” Feo passed him a rag. “Wipe them off. Use the snow as polish.”

  “They’ll still smell.”

  “So say it’s a fashionable perfume in Saint Petersburg. Anyway, you can’t live with animals and care about a bit of dirt.”

  “Well, yes. Anyone looking at you would reach that conclusion. But I think most people would agree that vomit and dirt fall into different categories of disgusting.”

  Feo stuck out her tongue. White, suspecting food, did likewise. “Don’t talk like a grown-up at me. I meant, most people think they like animals, but they only like the idea of them. Real animals mean real dirt.”

  “Feo, my socks have chunks of elk in them!”

  “It’s nice! It means she trusts you!”

  The day the pup opened his eyes they had a feast. They hid behind the house, out of sight of possible soldiers, and built a snow throne for the pup and put a red cushion on it, stolen from Marina’s bedroom. His teeth had yet to grow, but he spent the whole feast trying to tear the feathers out of it with his gums. Food was always plain by the tail end of winter, and so when Ilya pulled a pie from his pack, Feo felt her tongue prickle. It was mince in a red sauce, which ran over their hands and dyed the snow blood colored.

  “Where did you get this?” asked Feo. It tasted boldly of tomatoes and spices. The pastry was flaky and full of butter, better than any she had ever tasted.

  “I stole it! It was easier than I thought it would be. I mean, I expected to feel worse.”

  A raven flapped by. Feo pointed at it, and then to Tenderfoot. “Get him, Tenderfoot!” The wolf licked her pup and stayed where she was.

  “You see that face,” said Ilya. “She’s humoring you. That’s the face people make when you tell them you’re planning to crochet a ball gown for your cat, or paint your sheep orange.”

  “Shut up,” said Feo. “She’s getting faster every day. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You shut up,” said Ilya, “or I’ll tell General Rakov about Tenderfoot.”

  Feo ignored him. He would, she knew, sooner swallow his own tongue than turn in the wolf and her pup. “Mama says wilding is helping a wolf work out that she was born to be brave. That’s a difficult thing. I don’t need help.”

  This was one of the things Feo turned out to be wrong about: Ilya’s help saved her life.

  It was deep into the night when he knocked on her window. She had been dreaming of the pie, and waking felt an injustice. She hauled open the window, wincing at the night air.

  “What do you want?”

  Ilya didn’t answer. He was making little retching sounds, like a sick cat.

  “Ilya! What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . skied . . . fast,” he panted.

  “Why?”

  “Warning you. They’re coming. General Rakov. Four others.”

  The air in front of her eyes turned suddenly muddy. “Are you all right? Quick, come inside!” She grabbed him and tugged him up over the windowsill, not noticing he was still strapped to his skis. He thrashed, and then he was in. There were wet str
eaks on his face.

  “What’s happened?”

  He spoke so quickly she missed it the first time and had to make him repeat it. “Tenderfoot killed a cow. And food’s been going missing. They said she stole a pie.”

  “But you stole that pie! For us!” Feo stared at him. Then she shouted, “Mama! Mama!”

  “And when they went after her, she bit a soldier. They shot her.”

  “Shot her?” Feo stopped moving. The world stopped with her.

  “I’m so sorry. I tried—”

  “But—Tenderfoot? They shot Tenderfoot?” Feo dropped his ski pole.

  “Yes. She’s dead.”

  “No.” It came out creakily, not her voice at all.

  “Feo—”

  “She was alive four hours ago. I gave her half a jackdaw.” Feo sank down against the wall. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sorry, Feo.”

  “They can’t have. Ilya, they couldn’t have.” Tears were dripping down her chin into her hair.

  “They did. She’s dead. I tried! I swear, I tried. I couldn’t stop them.” She saw for the first time that teardrops had frozen on his nose and chin.

  Feo felt the ground sway under her as she sat on it. “Who? Tell me who. I’ll kill them!”

  “There’s no time for that—they’re coming to shoot all the others. They’re going to arrest your mother. For defiance of the tsar.”

  “The tsar? How can you defy someone you’ve never met?”

  “They say she ignored the warning. Please—” Ilya took hold of both her arms and tried to pull her to standing. “Feo!” His nose was running, snot lapping down over his lip, and his face was wet. “They’re coming now.”

  “When, in minutes, exactly?” Marina was standing in the doorway.

  “Mama,” said Feo, “Tenderfoot—”

  “I heard. It’s all right, my love; don’t panic.” Her mother’s voice was sharp, but her presence in the room made it immediately easier to breathe. She turned to look at Ilya. “How long do we have?”

  “I skied as fast as I could, but they’ll come on horses. Or on the sled. It’s—I don’t know—half an hour. I’m not good at times. Maybe only ten minutes.”

  “Thank you.” Marina crouched in front of her daughter and pulled her into a too-tight hug. “You remember the plan?”

  “My bag’s by the back door.” Feo hadn’t thought she would need it. She tried to remember what she had put in it. I should have taken it more seriously, she thought. It had seemed so impossible that anything would ever change. Home had felt eternal.

  “Ilya, stand guard, please,” said Marina. “Shout if you see them coming.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Ilya saluted, and left them to stand where he could see the road up toward the house.

  “Feo, get dressed. You’re going to run to the chapel. Wait for me there. I’ll hold them here long enough for you to gather the wolves, and then I’ll follow. We’ll head south, and then down toward Moscow. You remember?”

  “Yes.” Feo scrubbed her face with her hair. “Of course.”

  “Quickly, then, my darling!”

  Feo’s fingers fumbled as she tugged on her thickest skirt and warmest boots. She took a shirt from her mother’s room and pulled it on. It was big, but a thicker wool than any of hers. She added her knit sweater, her red cloak.

  There was a scream from the door: Ilya’s voice. The door slammed open. The house was in darkness. Feo ran out of her room into the hall. There were roars, sounds of breaking and heavy boots.

  Four lit torches, four soldiers. Their faces were in shadow, but they were huge—middle-aged men with tough skin—and they carried guns. One barked an order and the others began smashing lamps and windows with the butt ends of their rifles. Feo pressed herself against the wall, her heart bellowing in her chest. She ran back to her room and grabbed a ski.

  She heard running, her mother’s voice in the sitting room, and then a roar of pain: male pain.

  Feo gripped the ski and charged down the hall into the sitting room. She could see her mother’s silhouette, backed against the wall, swinging with her knife.

  Feo swung her ski blindly. The room was in half darkness, but the man who lunged toward her had the hands and tobacco smell of Rakov. She swung again, turning a full circle and stumbling in the dark. Rakov let out a snort, which might have been anger but sounded like laughter.

  “Don’t . . . laugh!” Feo rolled her lips back from her teeth. She flipped the ski in her hands, held it pointed end first, and instead of swinging, this time she jerked forward and jabbed.

  It worked a lot better. Feo was horrified by how much better it worked. The ski smacked into a soldier’s neck, and he yelled and tried to grab the ski from her with one hand as the other clutched at his bruised throat. She tugged it away and jabbed again at Rakov. A horrible yielding feeling told her it had hit a soft target. He roared, and his spit flew in her face as he grabbed at her.

  “No,” she gasped. She couldn’t look up; she dropped the ski and ran, tipping over the chair with her knee and slamming the back door, snatching up her bag as she went. She heard a coughing, choking roar coming after her, and then her mother’s voice shouting, and a shriek. She couldn’t tell who it came from, and tears were blinding her, and something else: smoke. Flames were licking at the wooden windowsills from the inside, and smoke was coursing out into the cold.

  Feo stared for several seconds before she understood: Her home was burning. She put her hands over her ears and screamed. Wolf wilders are not supposed to scream, but at the sight of the fire, rage and fear took over her throat. From inside the burning house came a voice, a cry: “Feo! Run!”

  Feo ran faster than she ever had before, shoulders forward, lifting her feet high in the snow. A stitch clamped down on her side, and she stumbled onto her knees and dragged herself up again, spitting snow. Her breath tasted of tin and bile, and she felt much too small. And then three shadows came tearing out of the woods and the wolves were there, galloping, panting, and sniffing the ash in the air. She opened her arms, and they charged at her and swept her backward.

  “Black!” She threw both arms around his neck and buried her face in his side. But his dark fur against the snow reminded her of something terrible and she halted. “The pup!”

  The side wall of the house roared with flame. Ash flew up into the night air.

  “He’s still outside the front door!”

  Feo ran, half crouching, one hand on Black’s neck. The pup was sleeping ten feet from the door, deaf to the noise of fire and men. He was making tiny bubbles of wolf snot as he snored. Feo snatched him up by the scruff and thrust him down the front of her shirt. He mewed, and his claws raked in panic against her stomach.

  She was staring out into the darkness, fighting to stop the shaking in her hands, when the door burst open. Black darted around the side of the house, dragging Feo by the wrist, his teeth puncturing her skin. As they passed, one of the windows exploded outward; fire licked at Feo’s cloak. The roof sparked and shuddered. And then human voices. Feo froze.

  Soldiers were backing out of the house, coughing and wiping their faces. And with them someone else: Feo’s heart pitched.

  It was her mother, silhouetted against the burning house. Her shoulders were pulled backward by her hands, bound behind her back, and her eyes and mouth wrapped in strips of sacking. A soldier walked on either side of her, hands on Mama’s arms.

  Feo bit down on her own wrist to stop herself from screaming. Mama stumbled, slipping blindly in the ice, and the soldiers heaved her roughly to her feet.

  Feo heard a snort: It came from the doorway. Rakov stood inches from the tongues of flame coming from the house. One fist was pressed into his eye and one sleeve was covered in blood, and his chest was heaving in laughter. It was uneven laughter: phlegmy, ragged, rising staccato into the night. It was the kind of laughter that makes you doubt the things you thought you knew about the world.

  Feo braced herself against the wal
l, her breath stumbling. She pinched her eyelids to wake herself up. When that didn’t work, she grabbed a fistful of snow, rubbed it into her open eyes, gasping at the pain. She had to be asleep: These things did not happen.

  They kept happening.

  Rakov beckoned the third soldier to help him onto his horse. His laughter had passed, and he scooped up a ball of snow and pressed it against his eye, his face managerial.

  “Check around the woods to the west. The girl will probably be with neighbors. Burn their houses if necessary.”

  The soldier hesitated, swallowed, nodded.

  “Look for the boy, too—the feeble one. Bring him back to me for disciplining. And this.” Rakov jabbed a finger at his eye, at the blood drying in the wrinkles in his cheek. “If I hear the officers gossiping about this—about the girl—it will be you, Davydov, who I will come to for an explanation.” The firelight illumined Rakov’s face, and his mouth spasmed, up and to the side.

  “Sir.” The soldier wiped soot and sweat from his face and saluted. His hand shook on the way down.

  Feo’s dinner rose up in her throat. Suddenly Black was butting the backs of her knees. Bewildered now, she slung one aching leg over his back. Before she could find her balance, the wolf was streaking across the snow away from the house, away from Mama.

  “Wait!” Feo mumbled. “I have to go back!”

  But she made no move to stop the wolf. Her breath scraped like a knifepoint against her insides. She felt the world becoming suddenly bendable and misty; fuzziness swept in through her ears and the world swept from fiery chaos into blackness.

  SIX

  Feo woke in the gray light of predawn, in a cluster of wolves, wondering why it felt as if someone had died. Then she remembered the night before, saw the soot clinging to her skin, and her arms and legs began to shake.

  “Mama!” she whispered.

  The wolves felt her move—felt, perhaps, the fear in the shiver of her skin. They leaped at her, and for a few minutes she lay in the snow and let herself be smothered in a ball of ruffled fur and wolf licks and accidental scrapes from claws. The pup tried to crawl into her ear. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, and prepared her fists and knees and heart to fight the world.