I tried to remember where Father lived. While he’d been avoiding me, I had never spotted him coming in or out of a house. But a couple of days ago, I thought I glimpsed him through an unshuttered window. There had been a woman in the house too—Letti Ronnan, I assumed—and the two of them were chatting, smiling, and laughing. They looked happy together. Without noticing me watching, they had casually shuttered their window.
I needed to find that house before—
The scuffing of shoes reached me too late. Someone grabbed me from behind. Rough hands yanked my arms, twisting them behind my back so that I dropped my sword and shield.
Humid breath warmed my ears as a familiar voice spat, “You’re coming with me, nomad.”
“Get off of me!” I screamed. I threw back my head, trying to break Snuttus Bot’s nose, but he must have dodged it.
“Stop struggling,” he said in a bored tone, as though he had no time for my foolishness. “The Wolf is after you. You’ve brought this upon us with your nomadic ways, thinking you can come here and change how everything is done. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you sneaking into the forest, nomad filth!”
“Let go of me,” I said, wriggling some more. His nails dug into my arms until my flesh stung. I stumbled, falling against his chest, and he dragged me backward as I tried to regain my footing.
“You lied to us all,” he went on, sounding more condescending than ever. “You never wanted to be one of us.”
I tried to shake my head as he pulled me toward the door. “You don’t understand. I’m not a nomad.”
“Quiet! I don’t want to hear anything more from you. All I require is for you to die. Perhaps if the wolflings kill you, they’ll stop killing the rest of us—”
A thud, a grunt, and a burst of breath against the back of my head—all this came at once. The hands gripping me loosened, going limp in an instant. As I found my footing, Snuttus’s body slid against my back and fell to the floor.
I turned to find my father holding a large rock in his raised hand. Eyes bulging, he stared at Snuttus’s unconscious body as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done.
“Oh, no,” he mumbled. “I … I didn’t mean to … but he was going to hurt you. Wasn’t he? He was trying—”
I shut Father up by rushing over and wrapping my arms around him. “You saved me.”
He didn’t hug me back right away, but after a moment, he dropped the rock and laid his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Senla,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry … for everything.”
Pulling away, I forced a smile and shrugged. It felt good to hear an apology, but now wasn’t the time. “We need to move Snuttus. Help me carry him into that room. We’ll lock him in there, so he’ll be safe until the wolflings are dead.”
Father stared at me in shock.
“Come on!” I demanded.
But a wolfling lunged through the front door into Eden’s house. I snatched up my sword and shield, and I jumped in front of Father. “Get back,” I told him, waving the long black blade to keep the beast away.
“Senla,” Father began, but I shoved him back into the protection of the building. Wildly, I swung my sword at the wolfling, forcing it out of the house.
It was a vicious-looking thing. A thick scar covered the smooth, sealed-up area where one of its eyes was supposed to be. The other eye—a bright, sap-colored orb—fixed me with a hungry gaze. The wolfling was bulkier than most. Its forelegs bulged like the arms of a fieldworker of many cycles. I dreaded to think how effortlessly they would swipe through my flesh.
When the wolfling and I were both outdoors, it grew tired of being forced back. Now it held its ground. As the beast growled at me, its lips quivered above gleaming white fangs. I snarled right back at it.
The creature’s two bushy tails whipped at the air as if to intimidate me. One tail had mostly golden fur, and the other black; the colors matched the patchy gold-and-black coat that made up the rest of the wolfling. When the beast raised its hackles, the hairs standing up looked nearly as sharp as its teeth.
Father called to me again, but I urged him to stay inside—where he’d be safe.
The one-eyed wolfling rushed at me. I took a calm breath and killed it with one strike.
No other beasts were nearby. But screams and other terrible sounds still filled the air. The attack wasn’t over yet.
I twisted and began to say, “Come on, Father, we need to move Snuttus,” but then it happened.
The Wolf found me.
She bounded straight into Eden’s house. With a loud crunch, the house crumbled in on itself. Father reached a hand toward me before he and Snuttus were buried under the rocks and dirt.
“No!” I yelled. Dropping my sword, I stretched out my hand as if it weren’t too late to grab Father’s and pull him from the falling rubble.
Then as fast as the Wolf had come, she disappeared, loping off to wreak more havoc in another direction.
I stood in shock, gaping at the pile of rocks where my father had stood only seconds ago. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My surroundings seemed to blur as I gazed in frozen horror. But when my senses returned, I knew I had to act fast.
I rushed forward and began moving any rocks I was strong enough to lift. A groan escaped from under a mound, which started to shift a little.
“Father!” I clambered over to the shifting pile of rocks and carried on picking them up and throwing them aside. My fingers throbbed. Dirt and smudges of blood covered my palms already, the skin cracking from handling the coarse rubble.
A bellowing howl pierced the air.
I stood and looked about. It was the same impossibly loud cry that had ended the attack on my village. In the distance, the Wolf stopped baying and dashed into the forest, crashing through the trees with loud snaps and cracks. The surviving wolflings followed.
The massacre was over. At least for now.
Angry at myself for becoming distracted, I hurried to lift more rocks off of Father. But my foot slipped on a loose stone, and I fell into a half tumbled-down wall. A dark rock toppled from the wall and rushed toward my face. I flung my head to one side, but not quick enough. Pain shot through my skull.
There was a bright flash of light, then only darkness.
51
The next thing I saw was a pair of blue eyes staring at me in concern. It took me a few hard blinks to see clearly and dispel my dizziness, but I soon recognized Eden. Her mousy hair tickled my face, the ends brushing my skin as she hunched over me and repeated my name.
“Eden …” I croaked, not really sure what I was saying or why. “You survived.”
“You’re okay. Oh, good.” She looked to the side and said to someone, “She’s alive.”
Dimly, I became aware of sharp pains in my back. I wondered why I was lying on such uncomfortable ground. Stones dug into me. Stones … rocks … lifting large rocks. The second it all came back to me, I brushed Eden aside and shot to my feet.
“Father …”
“Senla,” said Eden, “be careful. You hit your head, I think. You were unconscious when we found you.”
Now that Eden had said it, I felt a sharp sting on the left side of my head. I touched the area, and my fingers became warm and sticky with blood. The gash was small, though, and I had no time to worry over wounds.
I stumbled back to where I’d been lifting rocks. Nausea rumbled my stomach, and I feared for half a heartbeat that I would lose consciousness again.
Other villagers were busy removing rubble. I didn’t know how long I’d been knocked out for, but my father’s face and upper body were free by now. Antoni Dar, one of the village healers, knelt beside Father, checking him over.
“Is he all right?” I asked.
I looked at Father, and he smiled at me. His smile turned into a wince as the healer applied pressure to his right arm.
Antoni said, “A few broken bones. I think he’ll survive.” He peered to one side, then added, “Poor Snuttus wasn’t
so lucky.”
Following his gaze, I gasped at the sight of Snuttus lying dead and bloodied under a heap of rocks. My body turned cold. He hadn’t deserved to die. Yes, he’d tried to sacrifice me to the wolflings, but only because he’d wanted to protect his people.
“What were you all doing here?” asked Antoni. He looked from me to my father.
Father was about to speak when I interrupted. “Some wolflings tried to get me. Snuttus and Fa—I mean, Kori—they both saw and tried to protect me. They pulled me inside Eden’s house, but then I don’t know what happened. It collapsed.”
Antoni hmmed. “You were fortunate. Somehow you ended up on top of the rocks.”
I chose to stay quiet and just shrugged. If the surviving villagers found out Father had struck an elder, he would surely be cast out. My hasty lie would protect him. There was nothing I could do for Snuttus now. But if anything existed after death, then I hoped he was reunited with his family.
A woman shoved past me, nearly knocking me over. She whimpered, wobbling over the rocks in a hurry to reach my father. “Oh, Kori … Kori. You’re alive. Oh, thank you, dear life, thank you.”
Father looked just as relieved to see the woman. “Letti,” he groaned and pulled her closer to embrace in the rubble.
Feeling suddenly excluded, I turned away. I scrabbled over the remains of Eden’s house until I stood on flat ground in the street where Eden was waiting.
When our eyes met, she frowned and said, “He is your father, isn’t he?”
I let a small, sad smile serve as an answer.
Eden gave an understanding nod. From the way she looked at me, I knew the secret was safe with her.
Suddenly I noticed the sounds coming from all directions. When my old village was attacked, an eerie silence had followed. This time, a chorus of wailing and crying filled the air. As awful as the sounds were, I felt relieved.
There were survivors—a lot of them. That in itself defied what most villagers believed about the Wolf. We were taught that she wiped out whole settlements when they presumed too much. But here we were. We’d fought back, and we’d survived.
Villagers began to swarm around me. Some were hobbled, filthy, and injured, while others came out of their homes unharmed and joined the gathering crowd. At first, I smiled at everyone uncontrollably, so glad to see them alive, but soon I realized they weren’t so happy to see me. Muttering turned into loud accusations. People pointed at me, their faces twisting in fury and fear. They shouted all together, their voices merging until I couldn’t understand what any particular person was saying.
But it was obvious what they thought. They blamed me for bringing the Wolf upon their village.
The crowd closed in on me. Eden was shoved aside by an angry man, and then many hands clawed at my arms and neck and tunic and hair. My heart hammered. They advanced on me so fast I couldn’t draw my weapon. I feared they would tear me apart in their grief and anger, but then Kuna rushed through the crowd with a raised sword and told everyone to back off.
After creating some space around me, Kuna brandished her weapon to keep the other villagers at bay.
The villagers went silent. Then a woman with a tear-streaked face shrieked, “My brother’s dead because of her!” She lunged toward me, but the person next to her held her back with obvious reluctance. At least he respected the Head Guardian’s orders.
Others began to speak up again, but Kuna raised her voice above theirs. “Senla is the only reason any of us survived this attack. Without her knowledge, our guardians wouldn’t have stood a chance against so many wolflings.”
“Without her,” said an elderly man cradling his wounded arm, “the Wolf wouldn’t have come in the first place!”
“Yeah,” screamed a younger man. “And maybe that’s why we was attacked. She shouldn’t be teaching no other guardians to fight. The girl don’t know her place!”
The accusations came again, building into an awful din. Kuna struggled to hold everyone back. She swung her sword and even smacked a few villagers with the flat of the blade.
When the noise lessened a bit, I heard someone yell, “Throw her back into the wild!”
“Cast her out,” another agreed. “As long as she’s here, the Wolf will come back to finish us off.”
The crowd caught on. Together they chanted, “Cast. Her. Out! Cast. Her. Out! Cast. Her. Out!”
Through the throng of people, I spotted Mira in the distance. The elder had survived. I looked at her imploringly, wondering if she would calm her people like she had done on my arrival.
Mira just looked down and shook her head sadly.
My energy left me. I said to the gathering, “I’m sorry. I … I didn’t want this to happen.” But I couldn’t even hear my own voice over the chanting. I tried to speak again, and no one heard me. Then, through a gap in the crowd, I noticed something in the distance. A large shadowy hole stood out where the Wolf had broken through the trees to flee into the forest. In this dark circle, two widely spaced yellow eyes shone bright. The Wolf. She watched me as if goading me to pursue her.
Sadness twisted to anger, filling me with new strength. “I’ll leave!” I shouted, and the villagers went quiet. “I’ll go. I’ll leave now. I’m … I’m sorry.”
I shoved my way through the crowd, toward the forest—toward the Wolf. A few people yelled things like Yeah, leave! and Good riddance, but I ignored them and marched onward.
Kuna caught up to me. She grabbed my wrist and twisted me around. “Are you going after the … ?”
I clenched my jaw and nodded. Before she might try to stop me, I said, “Kuna, don’t let your guard down, in case the wolflings return.”
Now Kuna nodded.
I said, “And … thank you.”
We smiled regretfully at each other before I turned and ran. I looked back a few times and was relieved to see that no villagers had followed me. Every time my feet hit the ground, my head pounded where the rock had struck it. When I touched the cut again, the blood was dryer and stickier than before.
I ran past dozens of dead wolflings and villagers, but I gritted my teeth and told myself not to look. If I hadn’t become distracted from hunting the Wolf, if I hadn’t allowed myself to stay in this village for so long, if I hadn’t waited until I felt ready, then this might never have happened.
I stopped at the smithy and found Ronni sitting inside with Aldan. She rubbed his back soothingly. Her tunic was torn, speckled with blood. When I looked down, I saw a nasty scratch on her right ankle.
“Are you both okay?” I asked.
Ronni snorted. “’Course we are. I told you I wouldn’t let nothing get inside of here.”
Aldan stared distantly at the ground, twiddling his fingers and bouncing his legs.
I went to him and gently lifted his face to look up at me. “Aldan, you’re safe. Ronni looked after you, didn’t she?”
He frowned but said, “Ronni looked after me, didn’t she?”
“Yes, Aldan. You’re always safe around Ronni.”
“That’s right, big man,” said Ronni, giving Aldan’s shoulder a good slap.
A broad smile stretched over Aldan’s face. Then, swiftly, his expression changed—he pulled a sullen look and muttered, “Useless Aldan.”
“No,” I said, “you listen to me. These people are going to need your help to rebuild the village. You can help. You’re big, you’re strong, and you are much smarter than you think you are, okay?”
Although he still pouted, he nodded. Something about his submissive response sent a guilty quiver through my heart. I realized for the first time that during our journey through the forest, I had hardly ever asked Aldan what he wanted to do. Vague, open-ended questions held the risk of confusing and upsetting Aldan, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t at least try to encourage him to make his own decisions.
“What would you like to do, Aldan?” I asked. “Do you like it here in this village?”
His mouth hung open for a while, his eyes w
andering the room in thought. Then with a small smile, he said, “I like it here. I … I … I want to help.”
I rubbed his shoulder, then stepped back and said to Ronni, “You’ll look after him, won’t you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “’Course I will. Why d’ya ask?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I looked at Aldan again and considered saying goodbye. In my heart, I knew this would be the last time I ever saw him. After seeing the Wolf move with such speed and power today, the best I could hope for was that I might manage to mortally wound her before she kills me. It was more likely the giant beast would tear me in two the moment I found her.
If I said farewell, it would distress Aldan. He would ask when I was going to visit again. And whether I lied or told the truth, my answer would only confuse him more. So, instead of saying goodbye aloud, I said it in my mind. Pressing my lips together, I held back a tear and left.
On the way out, I heard Aldan say to himself in a chirpy voice, “I’m always safe around Ronni.”
52
When the sound of wailing villagers faded behind me, it was replaced by a constant ringing in my head. The wound above my left ear had dried, but now there was a lump that stung at the slightest touch. As I marched through the trees, I tried to ignore the high-pitched sound and the sharp stabs in my skull.
I’d entered the forest through the gaping hole the Wolf had left behind when she fled the village. I half expected to confront her there, in the place she’d lingered to taunt me with her wicked stare, but she was nowhere to be seen. The wolflings had followed her, leaving a clear trail of paw prints, trampled undergrowth, and fallen trees where they’d forced their way through the thickets.
It was not yet midmorning, but the Wolf had ended so many lives—and destroyed many more. Anger rose in me. I had been here before—not in this place, of course, but in this same situation. Here I was again, chasing the Wolf after she had attacked a village. It felt as if my whole journey had been for nothing.
Fear the Wolf Page 26