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Rostfar stood in a flourishing valley, wondering why she was there. The last thing she remembered was drifting off to sleep on a tide of muttering voices, the shuffling and settling of a dozen hunters making their place for the night. Here, all was quiet. Not even the bloodflies that shimmered across the grass made their usual sound. The skin at the nape of Rostfar’s neck prickled.
She turned around.
Arketh stood there, blue-lipped and bloodless, her halo of pale auburn hair translucent in the midnight sun. Rostfar would have screamed, but she realised she had no lungs to scream with.
Take it, Arketh said. She had something cupped in her outstretched hands. A moth. Its wings were like pale moonlight, veined with silver. Rostfar met Arketh’s eyes for a painful second before looking away, back down at the moth.
I don’t have hands to take it with, Rostfar wanted to say, but didn’t. Arketh was moving closer, leaning up on her tiptoes, and although Rostfar didn’t have a body, she knew those cool lips had just kissed her forehead. Rostfar stepped backwards—
And woke up, waist-deep in muddy water and frozen to the bone.
Rostfar didn’t think about it; there wasn’t time. Move, her brain said, and her legs responded. She stumbled as her knees struck something hard beneath the surface and she went sprawling onto a bank. She clawed her way forwards on hands and knees until she could collapse, shivering, on soil darker than pitch.
There was a backpack on her back – the one she had been using as a pillow. Rostfar shrugged it off and slumped against it, coughing and shaking and unable to do anything else.
She had become an expert in waking up in strange places over the years, but not like this, so far from where she had been and without her boots. With only fur wraps for protection, her feet would likely not make it through the night.
Bag. Rostfar jolted upright. A soft, white light spilled out from the seams of her rucksack. She undid the straps with shaking fingers and flipped open the flap to find the moth from her dream nestled among her supplies. And there, illuminated by its wings, was a spare pair of boots. Rostfar could only stare in confusion until it hit her: the last person to use this pack was Isha, and Isha was always prepared.
The boots were ever so slightly too small, but better than nothing. Rostfar turned to the moth and found it level with her face. Impossible as it was, she got the sense it was smiling. She held out a finger, but the moth landed on the lapel of her shirt instead. It remained for a moment, then vanished from view. Rostfar touched the hollow of her throat, where she could still feel its steadily beating wings.
Rostfar had stopped shivering. Any traveller knew the real trouble began when the shivers and cold stopped, but this was . . . different, somehow. Rostfar felt it in her bones. There was a softness to the wind, a sense she was being kept safe. Protected. She cupped her hand protectively over the place where Arketh’s moth-soul rested and swallowed the sudden sob that threatened to break from her mouth.
The leftover glow was getting brighter. Rostfar hauled herself to her feet and turned to the east, where the sun was just showing its face over the edge of the distant sea. The horizon shone pink and pale gold, showing a spectrum of colours that flickered over the melting snow and finally faded to the white of the sun.
The first dawn of the Starve.
“Thank you,” Rostfar whispered, uncertain if she was talking to Arketh or to some nameless, faceless god she didn’t believe in.
Rostfar turned away from the sunrise and looked over at the jagged Harra Mountains. Beyond them lay Deothwicc, the legendary forest the wolvenkind called their home. Rostfar couldn’t see it yet, but she could feel it, like a fishing line lodged in her gut. It called to her with something deeper than words, overriding her initial instinct to turn back to Erdansten.
She gritted her teeth. Maybe the wolves had taken Arketh, or maybe it was something else. Deothwicc was a stronghold of magic – and magic was at the root of all her problems.
“What do I do?” Rostfar asked the empty air. But she already knew the answer. If her friends and family would hide things from her and claim it was for her own good, if they would insist on coddling her like a child who couldn’t be trusted with sharp toys, then she would have to carve her own path. Find her own truth.
And the wolves, it seemed, had all the answers.
This was a land that knew no human laws; it was untouched and unsculptured. Dangerous. Rostfar couldn’t take any chances. Even the water was strange to the taste, with a flavour reminiscent of the scent after a heavy rain. She watched the wild animals to see where they drank and what they avoided and used the tracks they wore in the rocks to keep from losing her way.
There were rivers made of black rock, folded like the batter for honey cakes. They should have felt soft, but they were solid and rough. Rostfar didn’t find it much of a stretch to imagine this had once been living rock, now frozen and never to move again. She clung close to these black rock fields until the hills became the grey mountains of the Harra. The slopes provided cover at night and easy bolt-holes during the day.
Rostfar had no way to hunt. Her lips cracked from a daily diet of dried fish and hunger hounded every step. Still, she kept going. There was nothing else she could do. The thought of going back to Erdansten was too painful.
By the middle of the fifth day, Rostfar realised Deothwicc had been creeping up on her for the last dozen or so leagues. Lone shrubs became trees, which became undergrowth, brambles, trees – and then the forest swallowed her.
Rostfar remained calm enough on the outside, but her stomach was doing its best to crawl into her chest. Her muscles were tense, ready, waiting. She wanted to run. Any minute now, she would be attacked or killed; there would be no questions, and she wouldn’t hear the wolf coming. Or wolves. They would tear her apart.
Although for that to happen, reasoned the snark in Rostfar’s head, she needed to encounter an actual wolf.
Deothwicc was as silent. The trees crowded close together for warmth, their folds of green needles like skirts from tip to toe. Twice Rostfar tripped amongst the gnarled underbrush, and twice she stumbled to her feet with her heart in her mouth, convinced something must have heard her fall. But nobody came.
The daylight hours were short during the Starve. Soon, Rostfar could barely see her hand before her face. She had to feel out each step with her hands and feet before she could move. Her own footsteps seemed to walk in front of her. Time vanished.
Until Rostfar found herself in a broad clearing.
It’s a heart, she thought at first, then – a tree, or – a god. Tree was the closest Rostfar could decide, and so she went with that. An ash. Its boughs were like a web that spread ever outwards, sheltering not only the clearing but the whole of Deothwicc, although Rostfar could see the sky through its branches. She didn’t have the words to explain the double-sight
(wyrdsight)
that occurred whenever she looked directly at it.
This was something ancient, something powerful, a being her mind probably could never comprehend. It created its own shadows, and they threw startling illusions up and down the trunk. One moment, hands scuttled along the boughs. In the next, the tree had the god-face of Norðunn, with her two sets of eyes and proud horns. The branches whispered together softly, and as Rostfar stood caught in the drift between two very different worlds, she thought the tree was calling her name.
Rostfar moved towards it.
A twig snapped beneath her feet.
Rostfar’s mouth went dry, and she stopped in place, her ears straining for any other sound. The whispering stopped and its absence brought a profound, roaring silence. Sweat beaded on her spine. From the darkness to her left came the sound of padded feet.
A wolf slunk from the treeline, fangs bared, and eyes locked on Rostfar with deadly intent. Its fur was a dusky brown and its eyes glistened with an all-too-human sheen of malice. Rostfar lifted her hands to show them empty, but they weren’t. She had a knife she didn’t remember unsheathing. The wolf kept coming.
This wasn’t the wolf from Arketh’s memory, and why would it be? There were dozens of wolves in Deothwicc. That hope had been futile, and now Rostfar had nothing else to hold on to. The best she could do was blink away her tears and keep her breathing as steady as she could.
“How dare you come here,” the wolf snarled. Rostfar began to move backwards and froze mid-step. The wolf circled her.
“I’m not here to fight,” Rostfar said. She didn’t know where the words had come from or if they were even hers, but as she spoke, she knew it was the truth. Her tone must have reached something behind those furious eyes because the wolf hesitated.
“No?” Its nose flicked towards the knife in her hand.
Rostfar’s stomach dropped.
The wolf lunged.
Rostfar darted out of his way, tripping and landing flat on her face. White exploded behind her eyes, but she pulled her foot free and crawled forwards. Lashed out blindly.
The wolf caught her wrist in his mouth.
Rostfar screamed and leant into the pain, letting it fuel her up, up, from ground to knees, to feet. Her hand closed around a stone as she stood and this time when the wolf knocked her flat again, Rostfar was ready. Claws snagged in her clothes. A stinking maw snapped in front of her face. A drop of saliva landed on her cheek.
She slammed the stone into the side of the wolf’s head with all her strength. He pulled away from her as if she were a living ember, unsteady on his feet. Rostfar took a moment to catch her breath.
It almost cost her life.
Instinct jerked her body sideways before the second wolf could tear into her, before her mind even registered its presence. All Rostfar could see was the wall of one huge, grey-white flank, and then eyes the colour of a dying fire set in a snarling face. Rostfar tried to scramble backwards, but her arm gave out beneath her. She didn’t know what had happened to her knife. The world was dissolving into a cacophony of colours and awful sound. Her vision swam.
“The human isn’t to be hurt,” said a voice, gravelly and firm. Rostfar turned her head and realised that she was lying flat on her back, staring up at the underbelly of a wolf. Ice laced her veins.
The voice of the first wolf, thick with anger, “But—”
“The human isn’t to be harmed,” The wolf repeated. Its growl was so deep it reverberated in Rostfar’s belly. “I’ve been expecting her.”
