Echo North

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  My head spun. I collapsed onto the floor, succumbing to the pain.

  A breath of wind passed over me. I peered up to see the wolf bowing before a man who seemed to have wings growing out of his shoulders.

  And then the man was kneeling over me. His wings wrapped around me, his fingers brushed whisper soft over my wounds. The cool sensation of magic buzzed under my skin. The pain faded.

  “Sleep, dear one,” he said. “Until we meet again.”

  My mind floated away from my body.

  I slept.

  WHEN I WOKE IT WAS morning and I was back in bed, Rodya’s pendant tickling once more against my heart. The wolf slumbered down on the floor, bathed in a circle of sunlight from the window. I watched his chest rise and fall.

  He must have sensed my gaze, for he opened one amber eye, and then the other. “Good morning, Echo.”

  I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up in bed, remnants of my encounter with the wood coming back to me like tatters of faded dreams. “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “Only since yesterday afternoon.”

  That was a relief. “What was that place?”

  He stood and stretched, back legs first, then front ones. “The Temple of the Winds. We are lucky one of them was near; they are not always. They have many things to attend to. The temple itself is not always there—it exists apart from the … collection. It is ancient. Nearly as ancient as the world itself.”

  “Was that … was that the gatekeeper? The North Wind?” I couldn’t quite reconcile the angry force under the hill with warm wings and whispering magic.

  “The North Wind does not properly exist anymore. His power was unbound from him long ago. That was the West Wind.”

  “Old magic,” I said softly.

  The wolf nodded. “The Winds command some of the oldest magic there is.”

  I brushed my fingers over my newly healed skin, then reached up to touch my scars. I wished the Winds had been there that day in the field so many years ago. “I’m sorry,” I told the wolf. “I shouldn’t have tried to leave.”

  “I am sorry, too. I am afraid you are stuck here, my lady, until the year runs its course and the power in the wood fades along with me.” His eyes blazed bright.

  His words echoed in my mind: I am old, my lady. I am dying.

  I thought about the strange spidery clock in the bauble room, and wondered if it was ticking down the remainder of the wolf’s life. “Thank you. For saving me from the wood.”

  He dipped his muzzle. “You are welcome.”

  For the first time, I wondered if there was a way to save him.

  And I realized I wanted to find it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I GOT DRESSED BEHIND A SCREEN that appeared when I asked for it, in a cloud-soft blue gown I pulled out of the wardrobe. It had satin ribbons tying up the cuffs, and embroidered silver birds around the waistline in an unbroken circle of wide wings.

  “Come,” said the wolf, when I was dressed and had eaten my breakfast of nut bread with sliced pears and spicy orange peel jam. “I will take you on a proper tour of the house, or at least as much as we can manage in one day.” He paused at the door and cast a glance at my dressing table, where I’d laid the braided belt and pouch. “You will need your tools.”

  I put the belt on and followed the wolf into the corridor.

  “Think of the house as a quilt, the rooms as patches,” he told me as we went along. “There are two kinds of bindings: the kind we did yesterday, to keep whatever is in a room in, and the kind that keeps all the rooms bound to the house. Those bindings rarely fail, but they can unravel, and so must be checked regularly.”

  We walked down a stone hallway, sapphires gleaming from inside the rock, and came to the door I had bound the day before. The fire crackled noisily behind it, but I tugged on the mended scarlet cords, and they held firm. The wolf gave me a nod of satisfaction, and I swelled with pride.

  We walked along a grassy hallway and stopped at all the doors that lined it. One was carved with the image of a flower; another, a spider; another, a bear. To my surprise, the wolf told me to open the spider door.

  Inside was a vast hall, overgrown with moss, sunlight streaming in through a tall, broken window. Silver spiders the size of my palm were gathering the sunlight and spinning it into elaborate webs that hung all around the room. In one corner sat a spinning wheel and a basket heaped with empty spools. I gaped, awed. The whole place buzzed with magic.

  “The spiders make the binding thread,” said the wolf, with a toothy smile. “Sometimes you can convince them to wind the spools for you, too, but it makes them a little cross, so mostly you have to do it yourself.”

  “How often does the thread run out?” I asked.

  “Sometimes every day. Sometimes once a year. It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “How the house is feeling,” said the wolf, as if that were obvious.

  I shook my head in bewilderment, and we went on to the bear door. That room contained, unbelievably, the inside of a huge circus tent, where a trio of white bears sang a sort of song in strange throaty voices.

  “I like to bring them honey every day or so,” said the wolf. “It soothes their throats.”

  I stared. “Do they do anything besides sing?”

  “Not really.”

  “Don’t they get exhausted?”

  “How should I know? They are the singing bears. That is what they do.”

  Behind the flower door lay a venomous garden. Roses bloomed purple, dripping poison. A wicked-looking vine grew up from the center of a crumbling well. The sky was mottled with dark clouds, and the air stank of mold and decay. The vine turned toward us, reaching out with dark tendrils.

  “House!” cried the wolf, “Axes!”

  And then an axe appeared before each of us and we grabbed them (the wolf with his teeth) and started hacking away at the vine as if we had done it a hundred times before. When the vine was cut down to a stub, oozing black, horrible-smelling sap from its wounds, we hurtled back into the hallway. I gladly took out my needle and bound that door tight. “We have to keep an eye on the vine,” said the wolf. “Binding or not, it’ll seep through and devour the house.”

  On we went, down dusty hallways and leafy ones, up some stairs that seemed to be formed from dragon scales, others of paper. Monsters beat against one door, thudding, hissing, wailing. The binding was fraying; I used the needle and thread to knit it back together. There was a door made of silver that shimmered and sang. Behind it lay a whirling, twisting something that I didn’t comprehend. “A gateway to another world,” said the wolf. “But we cannot go there; the journey would rip us apart.”

  There were more normal rooms, too. We passed through an armory, where racks of weapons, chain mail coats, and shields lined the walls, all emblazoned with a white bear on a blue field. There was a treasury, countless parlors, a storeroom, a small conservatory lined with windows and filled with perfectly ordinary plants. There was even a laundry.

  Every so often, I saw evidence that a young woman had once lived here: a wooden-heeled shoe, discarded in the hall; the loose beads of a bracelet gathering dust in a wall niche; a spilled bottle of perfume in front of one of the doors that smelled of sunshine and wildflowers. I wondered where the owner of these things had gone, and if the wolf had brought me here as her replacement. But every time I opened my mouth to ask him about it, we were somehow at another door, with another binding to check, another task to do.

  The day spun away, and the infinite, terrifying, wonderful house began to weigh on me.

  “You are tired,” said the wolf, concern in his voice.

  I leaned against the wall to catch my breath. I had just bound a room that randomly grew or shrank with no warning, and had nearly been trapped behind a door the size of my thimble. The wolf had dragged me out just in time. “I don’t know how you’ve lived here for so long all alone,” I said, wheezing. “The house is—the house is—”

&
nbsp; “Unwieldy?” the wolf supplied. His teeth flashed in a smile. “That is why I am glad you are here. It is very hard to hold a needle in one’s mouth, you know.”

  I laughed—I’d been wondering how he’d managed binding the doors on his own.

  He nudged my hand with his white muzzle. “I want to show you one last room.”

  BEYOND THE DOOR LAY A tall, sparse chamber, with wooden floors and a window looking out over the forest; the sky was deepening toward twilight.

  I gasped. In the center of the room was a dark mahogany grand piano, the lid lifted to reveal gleaming strings. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  “I thought you would like something to practice on, while you are here.”

  “I don’t really know how to play,” I replied, wondering how he’d think to bring me there. But I paced toward the piano anyway, sank onto the blue velvet bench. I pressed a few keys. Notes awoke from the heart of the instrument, echoing all the way up to the ceiling like embers in an underground cavern.

  The wolf came to sit beside the bench. He tilted his head at me, as if debating something. “The last mistress of the house was a musician. I could teach you what I learned from her.”

  I thought about the shoes and gowns and discarded bracelets. I wondered who the former mistress of the house could have been, and why the wolf had told me the night before that I was his only guest. Whatever the case, I very much wanted to learn. I touched the smooth wood of the piano, and couldn’t stop my smile. “I would like that.”

  I HAD A BATH AFTER dinner, in a copper tub filled with magically heated water, then pulled on a soft nightgown and thick knitted socks. It was only after I climbed into bed that the wolf trotted in. I was about to ask him where he’d been since dinner, but the blood in his fur made it clear he had visited the bauble room.

  “My lady, it is almost midnight.” His voice was rough, distant, as he curled up in his customary spot on the floor. “You had better put out the lamp.”

  He sounded like he was in pain, and my throat constricted. I blew it out.

  Darkness flooded the room. I pulled the blankets up to my chin, listening to the steady sound of his breathing.

  “Good night, Wolf.”

  “Good night, Echo.”

  I woke a few hours later to a quiet chattering sound. I realized it must be the wolf, his teeth clacking together as he shuddered with cold on the floor.

  I half sat up in bed. It was warm under the coverlet, but the air outside the bedclothes was icy sharp. For the first time, I noticed the room had no fireplace.

  “Wolf?” I blindly tilted my face to where he lay shivering.

  “All is well, Lady Echo. Go back to sleep.”

  “But you are cold.”

  Silence. Then, “It will pass, by the morning.”

  “Morning will be a long time in coming.”

  “Sleep, Lady Echo.”

  I thought of how he’d lain next to me after he’d rescued me from the wood. It wasn’t as big a thing, but I couldn’t leave him down there; he hadn’t left me. “Come up here with me. The bed is big enough. You’ll freeze down there.”

  “I am fine.”

  And yet his teeth went chatter, chatter, chatter.

  “Wolf, please. It is so much warmer up here.”

  A long, long pause. Then: “Very well, my lady.”

  There came a shuffling, scrabbling noise as he got up, the creak and sag of the bed hinges.

  I was careful to scoot over to the side to give him enough room; I feared to touch him in the dark.

  I heard him burrow under the blankets, felt the weight of him on his side of the bed.

  “Echo?” He sounded lost and sad.

  “Yes, Wolf?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  And then we fell asleep.

  Somewhere in the night, I thought I felt the wolf’s warm breath on my cheek. I turned toward him, reached out, but my fingers touched only blankets.

  His voice was the barest thread in the dark: “I am sorry, Echo. I am sorry for everything.”

  My head was too thick with sleep to answer.

  I knew nothing more until morning.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN I WOKE I WAS ONCE more alone, no sign of the wolf but the mussed bedclothes. I wondered where he’d gone. All the gowns in the wardrobe were too elegant for everyday wear, so I asked the house for a new blouse and skirt. They appeared out of thin air, laying themselves over the bed, the skirt a dark green wool with gold leaves embroidered around the hem, the blouse of cream linen, so finely spun it felt like silk.

  “I’d like some breakfast,” I said when I had dressed. A little table unfolded from nothing and settled by the door, with a low cushioned stool beside it. I sat down to honey-sweetened porridge, plump sausages, and tangy orange slices.

  “May I have some tea?”

  A teapot and cup arrived an instant later, and I poured out a cupful and took a sip. I nearly spat it out.

  What was this? I raised the cup and took a hesitant sniff—it smelled like dirt with a hint of charcoal, which would explain the taste. I laid it hastily down again, and wondered if it was possible to teach a magical house how to make a proper cup of tea.

  Breakfast over, I stepped out into the hall. “Bring me to the wolf,” I said, and started walking. The floor shifted under my feet, and I found myself trudging through a corridor of fine white sand. It slipped into my shoes and clung to the hem of my skirt. I turned a corner and came face to face with the obsidian door. Whispers and music echoed from behind it—the wolf was in there. Remembering.

  I put my hand on the smooth black surface. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to my being there than simply to help him care for the house. Could I stop him from dying? Halt the hands of that strange clock and free him somehow? There had to be answers somewhere in this rambling collection of magical rooms. When the wolf wasn’t with me, I could look for them.

  And where better to look for answers than a library?

  I tapped my fingers against the obsidian door and turned away, telling myself it was my promise to the wolf that was keeping me from going back inside, and not my gnawing fear of the strange and terrible room. I gave the house its next command.

  I WASN’T BRAVE ENOUGH TO try a book-mirror that might turn out as tragic as The Hidden Wood, so I chose one with an innocuous description about a rich young fop who liked to go on fox hunts. Perhaps I would get lucky and find Mokosh again—she had an enchanted library, too, after all, and she read so much, maybe she would have insight into the wolf’s situation.

  I touched the mirror; magic curled through me.

  The next moment I was barreling along on horseback in the midst of a company of riders, wind singing in my ears, banners snapping bright overhead. Laughter rang loud on the summer air. My mount’s mane whipped back into my face and my stomach leapt into my throat. I could barely catch my breath but found I was laughing, too.

  A bugle sounded just ahead; hounds bayed. The landscape was a rush of green on every side.

  One of the riders looked back at me and gave a loud whoop—to my surprise I saw it was the blond man from the tavern in The Hidden Wood. Was he a reader, too? If he remembered me, he gave no sign.

  The tide of the hunt hurtled onward, and I caught sight of our quarry: the orange blur of a fox, dashing madly across the countryside, losing ground.

  The men around me hollered louder. They raised silver spears high; the sun made the metal flash and dance.

  The blond man didn’t have a spear.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another company of riders thundering up. One moment they were still a ways off, the next they surrounded us, a wall of glistering plate armor and naked blades. Swords pressed suddenly against all of our throats—mine included—and I glanced over at the blond man in an attempt to quell my panic. He was grinning widely around the blade at his throat. This might be a story, but pain bit into my
skin; blood trickled down my neck.

  A woman rode through the soldiers in her own plate armor, a blue cloak fastened around her shoulders, a silver crown pressed into her black hair. She looked young, no more than twenty or so, but there was a hardness in her eyes that made me tremble. The hunting party recoiled from her, some of them swearing, some of them begging.

  The woman just swept them all with her cold gaze and waved one hand at her soldiers. The blades withdrew, but only an inch. “The punishment for hunting in the queen’s wood is death.” Her voice was as brittle as wind rattling icicles.

  “We were nowhere near the wood, your majesty!” cried one of the young men. He had ginger hair and a scruff of a beard; blood dribbled down his neck to stain his blue doublet. I wondered if he was the book’s main character.

  The queen didn’t acknowledge him. “Tomorrow at dawn, your lives will be mine.” And to her soldiers: “Take them.”

  A sword hilt jabbed into my back, and my horse lurched forward along with the other members of the hunt. The queen’s soldiers ringed us tightly and herded us toward the dark line of a wood. Trees marched like soldiers, their trunks stark against the susurration of the wind in their deep green leaves. I shuddered at the memory of clawing branches, of smothering dark. But this wood was just a story. The queen was just a story. They couldn’t hurt me.

  Still, fear coiled tight and sank its claws in.

  The wood loomed near. The blond man glanced back once or twice, like he wanted to talk to me, but the soldiers didn’t abide conversation. If any of the men spoke, the soldiers knocked them in the head with their sword hilts or, in one case, sliced off the offending speaker’s ear. I gaped in horror as blood gushed down his neck, wondering how on earth I’d thought this book-mirror innocuous.

  We rode into the wood, where dark leaves and darker branches shut out the sunlight and the sky. The men wept. The man who’d had his ear cut off passed out from blood loss, slumping in his saddle—I doubted he would make it to morning. Maybe the soldiers would let me look at the wound. Maybe I could do something for him.