Outside the Gates

by Molly Gloss

  But now the sound in her voice did not give him any comfort. It only made him begin to shake.

  “The wolf cannot carry him out,” Shel said in a dull, weary way. “We have not even the ironwood, here, to hide in. We would all be lost to him.”

  The boy looked down at the ground. All of his secrets had been shown to her already. He looked away because he could not bear to look in her eyes.

  Shel watched him quietly a little while. Then, from inside her shirt, she brought out Rusche’s calendar string and put it in his hand. She had tied several clumsy day-knots, to mark the time they had been separated.

  “When the wolf had some of his strength back,” she said, “I showed him this string I had found. I thought there might be your scent on it yet. And he would leave me and go to find you, if he could. I thought I would go back to a cave I had seen, a place in the high rocks near the falls, where I could make a good winter house.”

  She looked toward the wolf. Trim had dropped flat on his belly, resting beside Vren’s feet, waiting for them. He did not look around to meet Shel’s eyes.

  After a little silence, the woman said, “I watched him go off downstream. Then he looked back to see if I was coming.” She said this as if it had been reason enough for following. And now, not reason enough.

  In a while he only asked her, “Are you turning back, then?”

  She only answered, “Yes.”

  Without looking up at her, he said sorrowfully, “I cannot go with you.” He thought of saying something more, perhaps some word about the fen-fox, but it seemed too slight a thing, now, for hope. He waited, but she said nothing more. Carefully, he wound the calendar string around his neck and started down the hill, with Trim rising quickly to follow beside him. He went slowly, pushing his feet along through the wet, cold grass.

  He looked back once. He remembered what she had told him, how she had followed Trim, but when he looked back, she only stood frowning at her feet, and would not watch him going away.

  9

  A High Yellow Fire

  THE BOY AND Trim watched from rocks along a hillside as the new camp was made. In the small valley of a creek, people leaned broken evergreen boughs against tree trunks to make three little shelters against the snow. One old woman slowly, with her empty hands and a few crooked sticks, began to shape the spellbinder’s house.

  The boy thought, It is a Shadow! He remembered the square stone walls, the tight roof, the door Trim had splintered.

  Rusche was there among the others at the campsite. He was thin and frail. He had lost his pointed hat so his hair stood out in a tangled brush, and the red was dull with dirt. Vren could not see his eyes at all, below the thick hanging hair, but there seemed nothing familiar—nothing that was Rusche—in this man’s soft mouth, his loose, open hands and hunched shoulders. Seeing him, Vren’s heart stuck dry in his throat.

  The sky came down low over the camp place. Rags of it were caught on the branches of the trees and the stiff, tall stalks of weeds. But the snowfall disappeared into mist above Rusche’s head, and none fell on the sled where the spellbinder lay waiting for his stone house to be finished.

  When the man stood up, finally, it was a surprise to remember how plain he was. He looked short and thick, next to Rusche. His dark hair hung limp behind a long bald forehead. Still, seeing him, Vren began to tremble. He wanted to close his eyes, so the eyes of the spellbinder might not find him. But he was not able to look away.

  The man touched Rusche’s arm and said a few words. From that distance, Vren could not quite hear what was said, and the voice seemed whining and thin. But when the boy saw how Rusche lifted his head and turned toward the sound—he felt a dark thrill himself, as if he heard the whisper of a low, buzzing voice inside his own ears.

  He put his face down against the ground and folded both his arms up over his head. Trim’s nose bumped against the back of his neck, but for a while Vren could not raise his head. He could only lie still with his face pressed against the grass, while the thickening snowfall settled on him like a cloak.

  • • •

  Before the door of the stone Shadow-house, a man and a girl built a high yellow fire. They dragged up long branches and bark pieces and carried in handfuls of twigs. Once the fire was built, the spellbinder came from inside his house and stood at the doorway, peering out into the darkness.

  He touched the girl’s arm when she came by him—and Vren imagined he could feel the heat of that touch on his own skin, going down to the bone. The girl’s eyes found the spellbinder’s face, and she told him something. Then the man looked straight up the hill to the place where Vren and the wolf lay watching. Vren could hear the sound of his own blood inside his ears. He lay utterly still, with his hand fisted in the fur along Trim’s neck. If the man saw them, he gave no sign. He simply stared up toward them, and in a moment turned and shut himself back inside his house.

  Now the boy remembered the far-sighted girl who had, that first time, told the spellbinder he was coming, and he knew this girl hauling wood must be the same one. Lying silently, crouched behind stones in the dark and in the snow, he felt all at once noisy and naked and unhidden. And all his hope went quickly out of him, leaving him flattened and empty, deserted even by tears.

  Over the long night, the man came often to stand in the doorway of his house, staring out against the darkness. Several times he spoke to the girl, and then he would look toward Vren and the wolf. But slowly—as Vren lay in stiff fear holding in his own loud breath—he began to see that the man’s stare was blind, a searching frown, and always afterward the spellbinder would shut himself again inside his house.

  So Vren slowly remembered the smell of the man’s fear, how it had filled up the Shadow-house when the wolf had cried from outside.

  And he knew that the man was afraid.

  • • •

  Vren waited until much of the night had run out, until finally he could not wait longer. Fear grew best at night, and it was the only weapon he had. He stood and took hold of the fur along Trim’s neck and started down the hill. He meant to walk boldly in and lead Rusche away, trusting in the spellbinder’s fear of the wolf to safeguard him.

  His knees shuddered, not from cold. He felt the spellbinder must hear his heartbeat booming suddenly loud as any drum, but his feet, and the wolf’s, made only a little sound, stepping through the snow. The wolf’s shoulder, pressing alongside his leg, steadied him.

  They cut a wobbly trail going down across the snow toward the camp. Vren had hoped the fire would be left to go out. In darkness, no one might see how thin and sick the wolf was. But all night the man and the girl had tirelessly dragged wood from out of the dark snowfall, and now, coming to the edge of the firelight, Vren felt his breath catch. It was Trim who kept on, pulling the boy beside him into the yellow glare.

  The girl came toward them from beyond the snow-sheds. Her shoulders were hunched with the weight of branches she carried. She was smaller than Vren, a chalky-faced little child. Vren stood stiffly, holding tight to the wolf, but the girl’s eyes were flat and gray. She cast her wood into the fire and then wandered out again to the edge of the darkness. She did not look toward the two of them at all.

  He watched her thin, stooped back going away from him. He had been careful not to think very much of these other seven who were with Rusche, but the girl’s face, close at hand, let in a helpless guilt. The sound of his heartbeat filled his head so there was no room or calm for thought. He could only think that, afterward, when he was with Rusche again, he would be more fearless and more clever, and he and Rusche together might look for a way to unbind the others.

  He came on toward the little sheds. He was not certain which one sheltered Rusche. He simply went to the nearest.

  He had thought he should not look toward the spellbinder’s house, but when the door of the house pushed outward, the movement startled him, and he looked without remembering that he should not.

  The spellbinder stood in the doorway.
The fire’s light made a tiny yellow flame in his eyes. He seemed unsurprised to find Vren within his camp again.

  He gave a simple traveler’s greeting, as he had done another time. “Come far?” he said, in his low, pleasant voice.

  The sounds set off a humming inside the boy’s head. He stood still and watched the small fire burning in the man’s eyes. He wanted to look away. He could feel his heart beating loudly, and he knew he should keep on toward the near shed, or call out Rusche’s name as he had planned to do so long ago. But he only made a little, uncertain movement. A sound came up from his throat, but it was not a word.

  The man smiled a little. He did not come to touch the boy’s arm as he had done the other time. He stood where he was in the doorway of the house, behind the high fire.

  “The far-sighted girl told me you were here. We’ve been waiting for you to come down and be with us again.” There was a familiar tone of voice in the words—the sound of a friend’s playful scolding. Slowly Vren could not think why he had not come down to the camp sooner.

  “You look cold and wet. Come up next to the fire and get warm.” The man stretched his own hands toward the fire, or toward the boy.

  Vren was very cold. He remembered he had lain all night in the snow. His feet were numb, and his chin felt stiff. From where he stood he could not feel any warmth from the high blaze. Dimly, he thought he should not go up to the fire, but he could not think why. His heartbeat by now was slow and steady. And the man held out his hand.

  In a moment, with a little sigh of relief, Vren took a step, and another, toward the bonfire.

  Behind him something rumbled, a sound not quite like far-off thunder, and he cast a slow, startled look back toward it.

  The wolf stood as near the fire as he would come. The red hair along his shoulders had risen up on end, so his head and chest seemed huge, and his long teeth showed below his pulled-back lips. He looked past the boy to the spellbinder. In his yellow eyes Vren could see suddenly and clearly the spellbinder’s small, black reflection.

  He felt his heart start again, with fear.

  The man said, “Come up—” but by then Vren had put his hands tight over his ears, and the words after that had no shapes.

  He pushed his feet toward one of the sheds. He felt stiff and slow, and there was an itching inside his skull, as if a little of the spellbinder’s voice leaked through his fingers, but he kept steadily on, with his back turned to the man.

  Under the first shelter there were people lying together in a pile, as animals will, for the warmth of one another’s bodies. They lay on the snow, with no mat or covering except their own clothes.

  A little of the firelight came inside, so Vren could see their faces. One was the big man who had gathered wood and tended the cook bowl when Vren had come upon the spellbinder’s camp that first time. Another was a woman older than Shel. The knuckles of her hands were swollen huge, and her fingers bent like a hawk’s talons. The third was another man, with sores on his face, and arms thin as little sticks. If they slept at all, it was a Shadow-thing, for the three of them lay with their eyes staring, wide-open.

  Vren began to shake again. For a little while he could not move away from there. He stared at the faces of those three and, behind his own eyes, he saw the grayness of the no-time place.

  But he could feel the heat of the wolf’s body pressed close to his leg, and he knew where he was and what he would do.

  He and the wolf went across the snow to the next shed. Vren kept his hands pressed hard against his ears. He did not look toward the spellbinder’s house, but from the edges of his eyes he could see the man still standing there behind his big fire. He heard the wordless soft rubbing of the man’s voice still working to get inside him.

  Vren bent and looked into the second shed. In the darkness there were two women lying huddled together, staring inward at the grayness.

  He left them and went toward the third shed, where now he was sure he would find Rusche. He could not move quickly—the cold or his fear made him shaky and weak-kneed—but he set each step down stubbornly in a straight line across the snow, and he did not look toward the spellbinder at all.

  He thought again of his early, childish faith, that the simple saying of Rusche’s name would unbind the weather-worker; and before he had quite reached the place, he said, “Rusche,” once, as if the word might be a charm after all. When he could not make it come out loud, but only a little whispering rustle, he felt a chill of foreboding.

  At the edge of the shelter, he sat down heavily. It was empty inside. Snow had drifted up in a wave. He sat staring at the place where he had thought to find Rusche, and in a moment he let his hands drop hopelessly to his lap.

  For a while his own sobbing breath kept him from hearing the spellbinder’s voice; but then finally he did hear it, a vague soothing buzz inside his head. He had to stand on wobbly legs and look past the shed to the house.

  A man, not the spellbinder, stood in the way between them. It was the man who had been helping to tend the fire, and now he let an armload of twigs and branches down onto the blaze. He seemed to watch the sparks showering up through the snowfall, then he went slowly away, out toward the woodland. And Vren could see the spellbinder standing behind the fire, with Rusche there beside him.

  “You should come in to the fire,” the spellbinder said patiently. Perhaps he had been saying that simple thing, over and over, while the boy had kept himself from listening.

  Vren had lost his reason for staying away, so he started in, toward the fire. The wolf came too, pressing close beside the boy’s leg. The man, without speaking, watched them come. There was a little smile around his mouth, as if he were not now afraid of the wolf. His fingers touched Rusche’s arm.

  The wolf again came as near the heat of the fire as he would, and then he stood still. The boy, whose hand rested on the wolf’s back, stopped also. With great effort, he looked away from the spellbinder’s eyes. He looked for Rusche, in the darkness below his brows, where his eyes stayed hidden.

  Rusche, he tried to say, but he could not get the word to come out loud.

  “Come round to this side of the fire,” the spellbinder said. “Come here, and I’ll give you my hand.”

  The boy felt a warm shivering that ran down his arm to the palm of his hand, as if the man had already touched him, but finally, carefully, he made a word come out of his stiff mouth: “No.”

  The spellbinder’s eyes widened and then narrowed. Vren saw his own reflection flare and then grow smaller.

  The man made a thin hissing sound, like a whisper. Then he did whisper, as if he told a secret. “You’ve missed being with me. It is only with me that you can truly speak in the languages of animals.”

  Vren could not, this time, make his mouth open. He could not say No. But he was able to stand stiffly where he was. He did not come round the fire to the spellbinder. In Rusche’s blank face he saw the faces of the others, the ones lying under the cold snowsheds.

  The man watched him. There might have been a little anger in the man’s face now, or surprise.

  He said very softly, whispering, “Will you come here and take my hand?” He reached out for the boy.

  Vren closed his hands in fists and held them hard against his legs.

  “Rusche,” he said, in a small, hoarse voice, shaping the name finally, with pain and with care.

  If the weather-worker heard it, Vren could not tell. It was the spellbinder who gave the boy, and then the wolf, a startled look: He thought the boy had spoken a word in the wolf’s language. Probably he thought it a signal, or a command—and his quick fear must have sent its own command wordlessly inside Rusche’s head.

  The weather-worker lifted his chin. Then the boy saw his eyes, and saw they were not Rusche’s eyes at all. The hair stood up on the boy’s arms. Rusche’s face was dark and terrifying and unfamiliar. When he opened his mouth, he let out a great, terrible breath, a dark billowing cloud, oyster-colored and huge and angry. The thin
g rose from his mouth and, with a long, heavy thundering, spread itself under the overcast sky.

  Vren stood chilled and staring. Then, for only a little moment, he saw in Rusche’s face a spurt of alarm, widened eyes, a look that made Vren think suddenly of the red deer Bloom, and the alarm he himself had sounded too slowly. His hands closed in the fur along Trim’s neck. He tried to turn, pulling at the wolf—“Trim!”—but too slow again. The wolf stood stiffly, legs wide, his fur bristled, his lips curling back, even as the low Shadowed sky cracked open and let out its blinding white thunderbolt, and a boom of sound as loud and awful as the sound of the Gates slamming shut.

  In the orange afterglare, Trim seemed to fly slowly from the boy, his body curling backward through a long, soundless time, while the boy was paralyzed, watching. Then there was a small sound, whump, as the wolf struck the snow. The air afterward was trembling and silent.

  Vren could not cry. He could not get that much breath inside him. His chest felt collapsed. He found he was sitting in the snow himself, with his legs straight out before him. His burnt hands rested open in his lap. He looked from Trim to his hands in dull surprise. Then he looked at the spellbinder.

  The man stood just behind the weather-worker’s shoulder, in the doorway of the house. There was a look in his face, a little ugly boast. In Rusche’s face, as if hardened there, stood a clear, single moment of startled grief. Seeing that, Vren slowly lost the need to cry. It leaked out of him quietly. When he had his breath back, he only sighed.

  The spellbinder began to smile. He had smiled like that once before—when he had, for a moment, thought the wolf was gone, sent away by the boy’s crying star-song. Now he stroked Rusche’s arm in an absent way, without turning to see the look that was in the weather-worker’s face. Then he left Rusche standing alone, and came around the fire to Vren. He squatted down so he could put his cold hand on the boy’s shoulder and lean in near the boy’s face.