by Teresa Rook
There’s a crash as a dark figure darts out from the shadowed alley, straight into the cart’s path. I watch with numb detachment as the cart knocks the man over and is sent off-course. Robbed of its inertia, it rolls a few feet in the wrong direction before coming to a peaceful stop. My vision swims. Disbelief that’s too exhausted to become rage.
“Have you tried knocking?”
The man gets to his feet. He attempts to brush the dirt from his shorts, but he's only smearing it around. He looks at me with a tilt to his head, expecting an answer, but I have nothing left inside of me. I am blank, and I am falling.
#####
The girl and the toddler sit inside a dark, damp room. Or maybe it’s not a room. Maybe the darkness is just so thick it tricks them into thinking there are barriers around them. The sense of space expands and contracts, but the two of them are constant, two brown-haired girls with wide eyes, perfectly still, listening to the song.
By us it’s built, and by us it may fall,
For we are sea and sky and earth...
six
I'm awoken by an uncomfortable tension in my arms. I toss and turn but keep my eyes squeezed shut. I imagine the holes the rats must have chewed through my forearms, my fainted body lying in a dark alley. Disease has crawled inside and twisted my skin, and if I open my eyes, the pain will come.
But I sense I'm being watched, and that's enough to make me open my eyes and watch back.
I'm lying on a cot that feels soft as a cloud after my hellish few days. Light comes from a large window on my right, and from my spot on the bed I see blue skies and patches of the tops of weathered trees. The ceiling here is much higher than any other ceiling I’ve been beneath. I sit up on my elbows. Aches, but no real pain.
“Take it easy, there.”
I let out an embarrassing squeal and raise my fists to make up for it. The figure sitting by the bed is calm and collected, dark elbows resting on dark knees. His eyes, a creamy brown, watch me with an uncomfortable softness. That's right: this is the man who stopped my cart. This man kept me from the castle.
“You have no idea what you've done,” I say. “I needed to see the Wolf. My tribe's blood is on your hands now.”
His lips twitch and settle into a little smile. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
I glare at him. “How long are you going to keep me here?”
“Door’s unlocked.” He gestures to the floor, wood instead of dirt or straw. “I don't see any shackles.”
It’s true. Nothing holds me here. Should I make a run for it before he lets slip what he's really after? I don't see any weapons on him, but they could be concealed. My knife has been taken, and I'm wearing some kind of simple shift in place of my practical, if filthy, tunic. My satchel, my canteen. Where are they?
“I'm not here to hurt you,” he says.
“Tell me why I’m here.”
He shakes his head and points to a bedside table. It holds a bounty of fruit and bread. My stomach lurches immediately and loudly. “Have some breakfast,” he says. “Then I'll answer any question you want.”
“Answers first. Food later.”
He raises an eyebrow and starts to say something, but then drops it with a shrug. “Alright. You seem pretty desperate to see the Wolf.”
“What's it to you?”
“You almost tore down the wall.”
“Not much of a wall, if it can be torn down so easily.”
His long nose and the colour of his skin, same as the woman in the storehouse. A Nirokean. Sudden terror grips me, swiftly replaced by burning rage. He's here to topple the Chirals. And the reason he thinks he can is… “Are you a Witch?”
He blinks. “I. No. Pardon?”
“Simple question. Are. You. A. Witch?”
“Of course I'm not. Are you?” he asks, rhetorical. I must sound like Old Man Wells.
“Of course not.”
He waits as though for a punchline, but none is forthcoming. I continue to glare at him. He shakes it off and his smile returns. “Question answered. Now eat. Then we go.”
“Go where?”
“To see the Wolf.”
#####
“Ennis.”
The guards close the double doors behind us, leaving me trapped inside a large dome of a room with the Nirokean and a Carnigan woman, skin like mine. Her stomach is bare between her leather top and a skirt tassled with furs and feathers. Dark hair curls down her back and around her face, and she looks out from her strange halo with green eyes fringed by yellow cosmetics, like she’s traced her crow’s feet with dandelion petals.
“Wolf,” the man—Ennis—says in response, bowing just a bit. I follow suit, my heart picking up speed in my chest. Ennis stands with his hands clasped behind his back. “Time for one more? She worked very hard to gain an audience with you today.”
The Wolf straightens a headdress I hadn't noticed nestled in her wild hair. “I can make time.” She gives me a thorough up-and-down that dries out my mouth. “You look terrible. I'm sure Ennis can find you a nice bed to spend a few nights, even if there's little else we can do for you.” If it were me, I would have looked down at my shoes at those last words, but the Wolf maintains eye contact. “A plate of hot food.” Every bit the attentive leader.
“I haven’t come for charity.”
The Wolf raises one thick eyebrow at me, that same small smile I keep seeing on Ennis. Oh, she says without saying it. Then why are you here?
I run my tongue over my teeth and try to speak evenly. “My tribe needs food.”
She raises her chin and looks sideways at Ennis. Ah, she seems to say. Why am I not surprised? “Sounds like charity to me.”
“It's Tribe Barnab,” I say quickly, hating how desperate my voice sounds. “The food you have comes from us, and you need to give some of it back.”
From the way Ennis's eyes snap wide, I gather his guests usually refrain from telling the Wolf what she needs to do. Those eyes narrow as they shift back to the Wolf. He’s curious.
“We provide a fair trade for our share of the produce from Barnab,” she says. Her tone is perhaps the slightest bit clipped. “You benefit from our protection, as does every tribe in Carnigai. We could not provide such security if we didn’t collect a food tax.” She shakes her head. “What we have here now, we need.”
Bull. “Respectfully, Wolf,” I begin, but am cut off by Ennis's snort. He covers his mouth.
“Sorry, sorry,” come the muffled words from behind his hands. This is somehow amusing to him. Has he brought me here to be a spectacle? “Go on.”
The Wolf gestures for me to continue. I square my shoulders. “If Barnab’s workers starve, Salis will starve as well. Maybe not this year, but next. You won’t be able to refill your silos without us. If we die, you will follow. You need us or your tribe doesn't eat.”
She cocks her head to one side. “Your tribe has truly reached this point?”
“It has. Our stores, everything. It was all stolen, the night after your people collected. None of us will survive the winter.”
“But if I share the Chiral stores with you now, sentencing many of my own people to hunger, we won't get next year's food regardless.”
I furrow my brow, fighting down offense at the baseless accusation. “You will. We're good to our word. We've never backed out of a contract. Get us through this winter, and we’ll recover in the spring. It’s been a bad year. We won’t always need your help. But we need it now.”
The Wolf frowns at Ennis as if to say, I'm only doing this for you. “Why do you think we need food from Barnab, girl?”
“My name's Darga,” I grind out.
“Darga, then. Why?”
This is pointless, and I'm loathe to play along. But if it will help to flesh out the deepening caverns on Mhyra's starving body… “Because you have no farmland.”
“Anymore.”
“Anymore?”
She nods, and I think of the dry, crumbling landscape between here and the
Farms. It stretches right to the edge of us, the parched land rejecting all but the hardiest of life. Anything that comes to us from outside is dead or dying. Barnab is a single oasis in a desert wasteland. And that makes us powerful.
“Barnab does have arable land. Enough that we can provide for ourselves and for you.”
“Not forever. Didn't you notice, Darga, that only one of your cellars was full? If you have all this surplus, shouldn't you be able to withstand the loss of a single storehouse?”
“It was a tough year,” I say. “It happens.”
“And last year? How many storehouses were full then?”
I swallow. “One, Wolf.”
“And the year before was one as well. But the year before that? Two, Darga. And there were two during the previous four years, and then, five years back, there were three. Back before you were born, Barnab Farms used to fill nine storehouses to the brim each year.” She wants me to come to some conclusion on my own, but I refuse. I only stare at her, and then at Ennis, as though I can blame him for bringing me here. As though this wasn't all my idea. “You think hunger and starvation break against your borders, Darga. But the truth is that they're advancing, eating away at the edge of your precious Farms bit by bit, year by year. This isn’t a fluke, it’s a pattern, and it’s accelerating. Even if we had enough food to get you through this winter, you would only last another year, two tops. If you hold yourselves completely away from the world, you might even make it last for another three. Your people are hardy, it could happen. But eventually—and soon, believe me—your land will be dry as the dust in my streets.” She pauses, as though debating whether to go on. “And this won't be the last time somebody tries to take from you. The people who stole from you will come again, and others, too. Desperation is a difficult thing to defend against.”
Her words stun me. Barnab Farms isn’t like the rest of the world. It’s hard, but it’s life. It’s survival. The Wolf paints a desolate picture of our future, one where there’s no escape. Where bad will only ever turn to worse.
My mother and my father. What great secrets they've kept from me. It's no wonder they always supported my interest in the animals. They wouldn't have wanted me to know what it was like in the fields.
Looks like we didn’t need Tilly and her foal after all. A horse can’t work the fields if there are no fields left. I feel dizzy, but I will not show it. I will stay strong and force the Wolf to help us.
“Darga,” the Wolf says, her kindly voice pulling me from my thoughts. She presses a hand over her heart. “I'm sorry to have told you all this. You obviously care deeply about Barnab to have come all this way on your own. I truly wish there was something I could do to help.”
“Isn't your payment defense?” A tiny thread surges inside me, and I seize it. “You're supposed to keep Barnab safe from bandits. You've failed, and that's why we're in this situation. Where were you? Why are thieves allowed to roam within your borders?”
“That is not something I can discuss with you,” she says, irritation returning to her voice. “Suffice it to say we are acting in everyone's best interest.”
“Especially your own.”
“That's enough,” says Ennis. He frowns at me and shakes his head.
“I'm sorry I can't be of more help,” the Wolf says. “I have other matters to attend to now. Ennis?”
Ennis steps forward and places a hand on the small of my back, murmuring that we should go for now. I twist from his touch, refusing to be led away. “You will help us,” I snarl at the Wolf, who doesn't even look at me. Her gaze goes a thousand miles, cast absently through a window. “You have our food. You hold nearly a hundred lives in your hands. To ignore us is to kill us, and you don't want to prove the stories true, do you?”
“Come. Now.” Ennis captures my wrist and drags me back toward the double doors. The Wolf refuses to acknowledge me, so I relent. Perhaps Ennis knows something that can help me.
seven
“Tyrant,” I seethe once the doors are closed, shooting challenging looks at the two guards. They watch me out of the corners of their eyes, red uniforms wrinkle-free and spotless. Will I be strung up for daring to voice my disdain?
“I think you really made your case,” Ennis says as we walk down the ornate hallway, passing arch after arch of smooth gray stone. Countless doors lead off the main hall, breaking into private chambers. Does one of them hold our harvest? “She's definitely going to help you now.”
“You think so?”
Ennis blinks at me. “Of course not,” he says. “That was awful.”
“She's awful.”
“Watch it.” Ennis steers us left down a long hallway.
“What's she to you?” I ask as we step through an arch into a courtyard. Even here, in the heart of the Wolf's home, the ground is barren, though the winding stone walkway tells me this was one a grand garden. Two trees remain, those visible from the earlier window, spaced far apart. One is withered and shrunken, and I feel a pang of pity for it, sacrificed so that its bedmate might be fed enough to thrive. Though the second tree is in better shape, it's far from healthy. Its leaves are sparse and it bears no fruit, even in these final days of summer.
Ennis is about to answer when a sudden, violent shake reverberates through the courtyard. A sharp crack from above draws Ennis's dumbfounded gaze, and he watches the thick trunk split. I slam into him, knocking us out of the way of a large gnarled branch that crashes to the earth where we were standing. Its deeply wrinkled bark shatters in every direction.
Shouts from all around, and the ground shakes again. I watch with a grim near-amusement as a section of the barrier wall collapses and sends up a fog of plaster dust.
An idea seizes me. If these walls are collapsing, maybe the silos are, too. Maybe this is my chance.
Ennis mumbles something beside me, and I lean in to listen.
“She's in there.”
I look back at the building we just came from, and instantly the shaking makes sense. It's not just crumbling, it's blown straight apart, debris flung several meters from the building itself. The roof caves in before our eyes, the entire castle toppling like a line of dominoes. Ennis seems to shrink a little smaller with every pillar that snaps.
I get it. Don't know why I didn't before. He doesn't have access to the Wolf as a Nirokean visitor. He's not here to topple the Chirals. “This is your home.”
He doesn't seem to hear me. He just watches in horror as the last corner falls, and then all is still and silent.
And then screams. Ennis is right, she's still in there.
“Come on.” I grab him by the collar of his shirt and hoist him back up from where he's fallen to his knees. He looks at me slowly, confused, and I drag him with me to the rubble. “Where is she? Tell me how to get to her.”
He walks slowly around the west perimeter of the wreckage, his legs moving mechanically. It was a large building, and I don’t know the layout well enough to guess where the receiving room was. People flail around us as guards emerge from the edges of the debris, bleeding but breathing. I prod Ennis in the kidney. “Hurry up. Is this it?”
He doesn't answer, but he's stopped and is staring at the wreckage in front of him. I grunt and bend down to grab a slab of brick. My knees pop as I lift and I stagger backwards under its weight.
Ennis steps in automatically, his arms curling under the opposite edge of the brick. I catch his eye over the top of it and he squints, then looks around. He's coming to.
“Spitting seas,” he curses, then locks away his shock in the back of his brain. He hoists the brick on his own and tosses it behind us, then bends to grab another. We work side by side and are soon joined by others, sweat pouring down our backs and the rough chunks of wall behind us wet with blood from our torn hands. But there's too much, and it's taking too long. The screams are from outside, the townspeople confused and frightened. There is no more sound from the collapsed castle. There is no sign of life.
When at last we reach the
Wolf, my throat closes and I immediately look away, but it’s too late. I retch into the debris.
I realize I had this fantasy of rescuing her from certain death, and her granting me my request in gratitude. Or at least getting to her in time for her to die in the open air, her last breath a promise to help. But what we find leaves no room for final words.
Ennis drops to his knees beside me and howls. I close my eyes against the image, but it's seared into my brain: a crushed skull, her curled hair shorn clean off, scalp sticking to the metal that took the left side of her face. She was beautiful before, and I try to remember that, but the only image I can call up is her skin dragged down her face, no symmetry, like she's begun to melt. Her right eyeball is bare and visible in its original, uncovered socket, punctured by shards of shattered brow bone.
I hold my hand over my mouth and try to keep my stomach down, but I retch again, and up comes the rest of food that Ennis forced me to eat. I stare at it, chunks of pear I was too hungry to chew properly. All this wasted food. I choke on a sob and stay on the ground, leaning on my forearms, my head swinging from side to side as reality washes over me.
There is no help for my people.
My attention is caught by a young man running towards us, shirt half-open and flapping as he sprints. He stops beside Ennis, and I watch his eyes as they take in the grotesque remnants of the Wolf. His hair is just like hers, his green eyes a perfect match to the eyeball sitting lonely and naked in its socket. I get quietly to my feet. This newcomer is disquieting, and the pit of suspicion in my stomach focuses me back in the present.
The man puts a hand on Ennis's shoulder to steady himself. His Adam’s apple bobs frantically but he finds no words to say. He closes his eyes and works hard to get his breathing under control.
Then the hand on Ennis's shoulder tightens into a claw. Ennis yells and jumps away from him, smacking into me. I hold him steady, but the other man's hand is still digging in.