Echo North

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  The Wolf Queen is screaming.

  All I can feel is my heartbeat and Hal’s, still together, caught fast between our palms.

  The world seems to shift, blurring before my eyes and then sharpening again. But now the fire is gone, and we are back in the Wolf Queen’s court, and she is flat on her back, staring up at three figures looming over her, her face wracked with terror.

  The East and South and West Winds blaze with cold fire, and the East Wind presses his sword against the Wolf Queen’s throat.

  “You have broken the laws of the old magic, daughter of another world. You have twisted it to your own uses, you have made a deal and failed to honor it.”

  The Queen is ragged and small before the might of the Winds. “Please! Please let me be. I didn’t know.”

  The South Wind shifts his spear. “You knew very well. You have known always what you do, every second you have been on this world. There is no innocence in your heart. And so there shall be no mercy for you.”

  She weeps bitterly on the forest floor, and somehow in spite of everything she’s done to hurt Hal, to hurt me, I feel a twist of pity.

  The West Wind spreads his wings, and takes the spinning wheel from his back. “And so we take your power from you, and so your throne is broken.”

  “No. Please. Please.”

  It’s the last word she ever utters.

  A chaos of wind and fire whirl round her, and the East Wind and the South Wind uncurl her magic with their spear and their sword. The West Wind catches it on his spinning wheel, and winds it into shifting, shadowy silver. I think of the threads in the bauble room, the twisted echo of the binding magic.

  Her screams pierce through me and I can’t bear it. Hal wraps himself around me, presses my head against his chest. But I can still hear her screaming.

  And then suddenly, she stops.

  I lift my head.

  The Wolf Queen’s hall has vanished, along with the sea of people on their dead thrones. We stand in a quiet patch of forest overshadowed with stars.

  In the Wolf Queen’s place crouches a small silver wolf. She has the blank eyes of a beast; no comprehension burns behind them. She bares her teeth, frightened, and snarls at us. The Winds watch, silent and grim, as the creature who was once the Wolf Queen dashes off into the wood, the flag of her tail vanishing quickly amongst the trees. I pity her, but at the same time I know the Winds’ mercy. She will not remember what she was. She will never know all she lost. Her evil will not haunt her in the dark of every night.

  The Winds each turn to me, and bow, the West Wind last of all. I remember how it felt to ride on his back with his golden wings beating strong underneath me, returning me to the beginning of my life, giving me another chance.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  The West Wind smiles.

  And then he looks past me to where Mokosh still sits on her throne, weeping, as though unaware of everything that has happened. The West Wind goes to her, wraps her in his strong arms.

  “Where will you take her?” I ask.

  “Somewhere safe. Somewhere she can find healing, apart from her mother’s cruelty.”

  My heart twists. “Take care of her.”

  “I will take the very best care, dear one.”

  And then he spreads his wings, and he and his brothers are gone.

  It’s only then, as Hal and I turn to stare at each other, soft and weary and blinking away ash that is no longer falling, that I let go of his hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  IT FEELS LIKE THE WORLD GETS a little smaller when I let Hal go. He looks away from me and a soft wind stirs through the dappled leaves scattered on the forest floor.

  I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. The truth of what Hal told me sinks in, and the Wolf Queen’s words eat into my mind. He never wanted you. He never loved you. He was just trying to save his own worthless skin.

  I am hollowed out. I have saved him, but now what?

  Hal speaks first, though he’s careful not to look at me: “Do you know the way down the mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  The gold circlet has vanished from his head; he’s wearing only a ragged shirt and dirty trousers, and I see again the threads of silver glinting in his hair.

  I’d thought the journey and the rescuing would be the hard part, but it’s not. It’s this. I don’t know the man standing just paces away from me, looking old and young at once. We went through hell twice together, but now there is nothing to say. The Wolf Queen had a hold of him, was manipulating him for so long—is there anything of himself actually left?

  “We had better go,” says Hal. “The Wolf Queen’s magic may yet linger.”

  My heart jolts. What if every second we stay here a year spins away down below us? What if any hope of seeing my father again is already gone?

  “That is—” Hal’s eyes flick up to mine. “That is if I can come with you. I … I don’t wish to presume—”

  “Of course you’re coming,” I snap.

  He nods.

  I stride away from the Wolf Queen’s bower, and Hal follows. His gait is uneven, his left leg dragging a little behind him as he walks, and I think of that day long ago when I failed to free him from that trap, of the scars we both will always bear. I am broken forever in two. How can I still want to love him, knowing what he did, even if he did it because of the Queen? How can I forgive him?

  I want to. But I don’t know how.

  If you hadn’t lit that lamp, I would have been free. But—but she would have taken you instead. That was the deal. The only way to break my curse. Your life for mine.

  The wood is quiet as we walk, but not like before. There are birds singing in the trees, a flash of a deer’s white tail, a squirrel nibbling a nut on a fallen oak.

  The red flowers are gone. In their place grow tangles of honeysuckle and peonies and twists of wild roses, and they make the wood smell sweet. A track still winds between the trees, but it’s no longer paved with stones. I think it must be a deer path.

  The ground slopes gradually downward as I follow the path, and Hal comes at my heels. Part of me wants to tell him to walk beside me, but the other part, the part that’s raw with hurt, can’t quite bear it. We saved each other, but I’m not sure that’s enough.

  We walk in silence. Leaves fall softly all around us. The trees shift to the stately, ancient pines I remember from my ascent, and suddenly we’re at the edge of the mountain. The path I followed up here winds back down to the plain. I wonder if Ivan is there, waiting for me. He must be—he was just in his Wind form, breaking the Queen’s power. And yet somehow I already know he’ll be gone.

  Our climb down takes about an hour, maybe less, and the whole time Hal says nothing to me, and I say nothing to Hal. An awful numbness creeps into my heart. What if we can’t get past what happened on the mountain? Hal’s confession. The Wolf Queen’s truth. The scars that run deeper than the lines in my face.

  We reach the bottom before I’m ready: there’s no camp, no Ivan, no sign that anyone has ever been here before. Somehow I knew it would be this way.

  Blood pounds in my ears and I try to fight the panic. “Please not a hundred. Please, God, not a hundred.”

  “Echo?” Hal lays a hand on my shoulder and I look up to meet his glance.

  I don’t shake him off, but I don’t pull him close, either. “Ivan was supposed to meet me here. To wait for me. He’s a storyteller I hired as a guide, only he’s actually the North Wind, or used to be, and his brothers are the ones who helped us, back … there.” I wave vaguely up the mountain. “He promised he’d wait for me three weeks.”

  “Then that’s all we know. Three weeks have passed. That doesn’t mean a century.”

  I don’t know how Hal can be so calm, but I nod, my throat constricting. “He would have left me something. A note. A sign.”

  We search the ground by the path, lifting rocks and digging through bushes. The landscape is overgrown by tangles of briar
s and underbrush, and I’m ready to give in to despair when Hal finds it: a notch carved into the side of the mountain, an oilskin-wrapped package wedged inside.

  Hal hands it to me mutely, and I sit down with my back to the rock and unwrap the oilskin. A book stares up at me, the title Echo North stamped in gold on the cover. For a moment all I can do is stare.

  Hal stands nearby, watchful but not prying, and somehow his presence bolsters me enough to open the book to the title page: Echo North: the story of a girl and a monster and how her love saved them both, as told by Ivan Enlil.

  Ivan did it, then. He took me at my word, adopted my story as his own, gave it an ending. I didn’t expect it to end like this, though: printed words on cream pages.

  My heart pounds dully in my throat as I skim through the book, passing my eyes down the pages, reading snatches of my life told in Ivan’s lyrical prose. It’s much more fantastic than what I actually lived: book-Echo is scarred in a fierce battle with her stepmother, who is also the enchantress responsible for cursing Hal. The enchantress is a Troll Queen and Hal’s a bear, and book-Echo literally rides on the backs of all four Winds to get to the Troll Queen’s fortress.

  I read the ending Ivan wrote for me, all the while feeling Hal’s quiet gaze fixed on my face: book-Echo climbs up to the Troll Queen’s fortress, where she finds Hal chained in a high tower. To free him, Echo must complete three impossible tasks. First, to sew a blanket without needle or thread. Second, to make love fit in a box. Third, to clean Hal’s shirt from where the oil dripped, without using soap or water. Echo completes the tasks, with the help of magical creatures she met on her journey. The Queen goes into a rage, but book-Echo chains her in the tower in Hal’s place, and hummingbirds and the giants and the Winds pull the tower to the ground. Book-Hal, a prince, takes book-Echo to his kingdom and they are married and live happily ever after.

  I glance up at Hal, who’s still watching me, his face blank, his manner reserved. I swallow around the lump in my throat and lower my eyes back to the book. I turn the last page and find what I’ve been waiting for: a letter addressed to me on two sheets of crisp paper folded in half.

  I open the letter, trying to calm my raging heart.

  Dear Echo,

  I waited for you the three weeks we agreed on—to be truthful, I waited four. But time runs differently in the Wolf Queen’s domain, and I know that you are most likely well, that you might be there even still, locked with her in combat, freeing your white wolf from her spell. I am sorry I had to leave you, but so it was.

  Isidor and Satu are well. Satu has grown tall and brown and merry, and her favorite stories are the ones I tell of you. It is she who demanded I write them down, print them in a book. And I did, with a few liberties I hope you will forgive. The book has made me enough profit to buy a proper house and fine gowns for Isidor. It is a funny thing for a Wind to worry about providing for his family, but it is so, and it is you who has made it possible.

  I wrote you an ending, as you wished me to, but Satu has never been easy with what really happened on the mountain. So this year, for her tenth birthday, we have made the journey back here, to see if you had yet come down. But there was still no sign of you, and after a week of waiting, I finally convinced Satu that we must return home again. She swears she will come every year or two, and one day climb the mountain herself, to rescue you if she is able. I am very loathe to lose her, also, to the Wolf Queen, so you will understand my reluctance ever to let her do so.

  I hope that when you do, one day, come down from the mountain (and I do not doubt that it will happen), I am still living, and you find us, and tell Satu the real ending to your story.

  Many blessings to you, child. And may the Winds be with you always.

  Ivan

  I read the letter twice, then fold it up again and tuck it back into the book. Hal paces over to me, his eyes fixed on mine.

  “It’s been ten years. Ten years since I climbed the mountain, maybe more.”

  He nods, and I stare at him as the world blurs before me. Hal takes my hand. “Then it’s past time we got you home,” he tells me gently.

  THE BEGINNING OF OUR JOURNEY home is much like my travels with Ivan, minus the singing and without so much ice. The hard grip of winter has eased from the land with the Wolf Queen’s defeat, and there is life everywhere we go: deer on the plain, foxes in the caves, badgers and rabbits and pheasants amidst the scrub and rocks.

  Hal and I don’t lack for food. We hunt, we eat, we walk. But that’s all we do. We speak very little beyond the necessities of making and breaking camp, and we sleep on opposite sides of the fire every night. I miss him, I crave his company. He’s here and yet not here, close by but unreachable.

  We emerge from caves no longer encrusted in ice to find that the frozen lake Ivan and I spent so long trudging across has melted. We’re left with the unenviable task of walking around it for untold miles, and decide to camp early. We’ll face the extended trek in the morning.

  We eat fresh-caught fish roasted over a fire as the sun sinks slowly in the west. I watch Hal eat around the bones and spit them out amongst our coals, and all at once I’m thrown back to the garden, watching the wolf tear into his rabbit. The memory makes my heart ache. Hal glances up to see me watching him.

  “Tell me your story,” I say without meaning to.

  He fixes his gaze on the fire. “I was the youngest of eleven, six brothers and four sisters older than me. I was partially forgotten but mostly just spoiled and I did as I pleased, always. If I wanted a hound, I was given a hound. If I wanted to ride my father’s warhorse, I rode my father’s warhorse. I was closest with my next-oldest sister, Illia, who liked sunshine and reading and telling me that I oughtn’t always be so selfish.”

  I see Hal as he was in his memory book: small and sorrowful, begging his mother to let him go and see his sister. “I’m so sorry.” He shakes his head. “They’re all gone now. It hardly matters.” He reaches for another log to feed the flames. “I was seventeen when I first went into the wood. I was restless, bored. My brothers were given commissions in the army. My sisters were married or sent to learn music and manners on far-off estates. My parents had no use for me, and I had very little use for myself. So I went to explore the forbidden forest, mostly to spite my father. I met—I met her there, and … well, you know the rest.”

  “Not from you.”

  He shifts in his place across from me, bending his knees up under his chin and looking for all the world like a gangly, overgrown boy. I can see the scars on his left ankle, tight and shiny in the firelight. “She was kind to me. I thought she was just a girl my age. She spun wild stories about caring for her mother deep in the wood, and she fascinated me.”

  I try to ignore the stab of jealousy. “What then?”

  “I went to see her every day. I abandoned everything else, even fencing lessons, which had been the last thing I loved. We met in secret for six months, and then she showed me what I thought was the truth about her: she was a shapeshifter, unjustly banished into the wood. God help me, Echo, but I fancied myself in love with her, and we schemed—we schemed ways to be together.”

  My throat hurts but I just nod, staring at my fingers twisting tight in my lap. This time I feel his eyes on my face, but I don’t lift my own to meet them.

  “I agreed to a bargain with the Wolf Queen without even knowing I did. I was a fool. One night in her cursed court and her true nature came clear, but it was already too late. Her enchantment had taken hold, and when I ran from the wood in my wolf form—” Hal draws a ragged breath. “The world had turned long outside her domain. My brothers and sisters, mother and father—they had been dead already many years. But it didn’t count toward my century. No. I must feel every day of my hundred years. Unless I agreed to marry—at first the Queen herself, then in later years her daughter—agreed to become her creature forever, damned to even worse than the half-life I was already living.

  “So I shut myself in her enchanted hou
se, and felt every hour, every second of my life spinning away from me. By day, I was torn in two, my human self trapped in the worlds of the books, not remembering my true nature, while my wolf form raged, because I could not be free of her. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it any longer and went roaming, breaking through the wood she bound around me, searching for some spark of hope. And then I found you.”

  My eyes jerk up of their own accord and I stare at Hal across the fire. “Did you ever remember? That we had done it all before?”

  “My book self didn’t, until the end. But every night, when the magic grew thin and I shed my wolf form, I remembered everything I’d done to you—everything I was still doing to you—and everything you sacrificed to free me. Twice. And sometimes I looked at you and I knew you from before and it broke my heart. Because, in the end, no matter what happened—I would destroy you. I already had.” His voice catches. “I tricked you. Trapped you. I am as despicable as the Wolf Queen, more. Because I hurt the one I loved. I hurt you, and then I did it again.” He bows his head into his hands and his shoulders shake. He’s crying, and I can’t bear it.

  I slip around to his side of the fire and settle next to him, wrapping my arm about his shoulders. He leans into me for a moment, then turns to look up at me, his face twisted into a tangle of emotions I can’t quite understand.

  He wipes his eyes and I slip my hand into his and he doesn’t pull away.

  “Can you forgive me, Echo? I haven’t dared to ask you since the Queen was destroyed because I knew I couldn’t bear it if you reviled me. But now—now I just need to know. Can you forgive me?”

  My throat constricts. I hold tight to his fingers, the heat from the fire pulsing in my skin. “Yes. Oh, Hal, yes. But it hurts. It hurts so much.”

  “I know.” He lifts his free hand to cradle my chin in his palm, gently. “I betrayed you. I meant for you to be trapped with the Wolf Queen. I wished for it, because it meant I would be free. Every word she made me tell you was true and I did it to you twice. You didn’t have those scars. The first time—the first time you tried to save me, you didn’t have those scars. You didn’t—”