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The new wolf led Rostfar deep into the forest. Rostfar wanted to run, to fight, to move. Fear hummed inside her at an incessant pitch, but there was nothing she could do about it. The wolf stood tall enough that its head was almost level with Rostfar’s chest and although its muzzle showed flecks of grey, its build was strong and lean. Just looking at it left Rostfar sick to her stomach. There wasn’t a story in the world that could have prepared Rostfar for the sheer size and bulk that loped serenely before her.
They had been walking for a while, when Rostfar’s brain finally reconnected with her mouth. “Expecting me,” she blurted. “You – were expecting me?”
“By manner of your speech, yes. You – a human.” The wolf glanced back over its shoulder. “My name is Estene, and that was Grae. You?”
“Uh – me, what?”
“Your name.” Estene prompted in a tone that may have been mocking were it not for the soft edge.
“Rostfar.” Rostfar replied by social reflex. She steeled herself and swallowed. “I’m here because . . . because wolves have been haunting our lands, and magic took – my daughter went—” she couldn’t make herself say it.
“Your daughter went missing,” Estene said, “and you blame magic.”
“I don’t blame magic,” Rostfar corrected her with rising impatience. “I know it was magic, or some creature of the wyrdness – a creature like you. A wolf. I want answers.”
Estene stopped so suddenly Rostfar almost walked into its
(her)
side.
“Do you want answers, or do you want revenge?” Estene asked with the barest show of her teeth. “Because revenge, blood-for-blood, killing senselessly – these are not Wolven things. They stopped existing the moment you walked into our home.”
Rostfar’s mouth clacked shut.
Estene continued walking calmly as if the exchange hadn’t happened. Rostfar said nothing else until the two of them came to a stop at another clearing. This one was less defined, less open. Branches knotted together overhead, and tree roots snarled their way through the leaf-strewn floor. A series of water pools were sunk into the naturally tiered rock, the air above them coloured with steam. The scent of wet earth and iron was stronger here.
“Are you going to kill me?” Rostfar’s tongue was thick and heavy, but her insides felt hollow.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Estene said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Or I would have allowed my children to attack you before you ever set foot in Deothwicc.”
“Then what am I here for?” Rostfar demanded. Estene motioned her head towards the pools.
“You will want to rest after your journey, yes? Then wash and lick your wounds. I must confer with my boundmate and our Speaking Tree.”
“Confer?” Rostfar repeated numbly.
“About you, and what to do with you.” Estene gave her a strange, slantwise look. Rostfar had to fight the urge to laugh; it sat, hard and painful, in the space between her lungs. “Why do you look so surprised, Rostfar? We are wolvenkind, after all. Not animals.”
Rostfar looked down to hide the chase of emotions across her face. She had to hug herself with her fingers digging into her arms to contain the hysterics that wanted to break free, quivering with the force of them. Her cheeks burned.
When she looked up again with another question on her tongue, Estene was already gone.
⁂
The human was exactly where Grae said she would be. Yrsa crept through the underbrush, using the time before it detected her to get a good look. She had never seen a fully-grown human up close before.
They were odd creatures with their furless hides, long limbs, and the hairs that grew without rhyme or reason on their heads and faces. Yrsa watched the human remove a few of the layers of stolen skin that they called “clothes”. The human leant over the hot pool until she could plunge her wounded arm into the water with a low hiss of pain. Grae’s teeth had not gone deep, but the wound was wide and clearly hurt.
Guilt rushed over Yrsa in a tide that snatched her breath away; she should have been there to stop him from attacking, to stop him from behaving so much like a human. But she couldn’t be everywhere at once, no matter how much it hurt to admit.
Yrsa slipped from her cover. “Is it painful?”
The human moved with impressive speed for one so strangely built. She bolted up and whirled around.
“You,” the human snarled low in her throat. Yrsa recoiled, unprepared for the certain venom in the human’s tone. How could she already hate Yrsa without knowing her?
“Me?” Yrsa cocked one ear and lowered her head in a gesture of appeasement. The human’s aggressive stance faltered and then—
“I should kill you.” But her voice shook. Yrsa crept a little closer until she was completely out of the shrubbery’s cover. Exposed. Trusting. “I saw you in the wyrdness. You were there when Astvald died, and in my daughter’s memories.”
“I’m—” Everything rolled into place like a boulder sealing a cave. Yrsa’s heart plunged through her stomach. “I didn’t kill the pups!”
“You’re lying.”
Yrsa couldn’t help but take offence. She drew herself up and eyed the human with a level glare. “A wolf never lies.”
The human had inched sideways, but she froze at that and gave Yrsa a look impossible to decipher. The wyrdness around her was swirling faster and faster and—
It stopped, frozen in place and stained a stiff, starched white. Yrsa watched it with bated breath.
The human lowered her fists. “Then why were you there?”
The question made Yrsa flinch. It was one she had asked herself again and again in the days since returning to Deothwicc. She should never have been on human lands, but she was curious. She had always been curious. So, she had travelled through Deyjaholm – the ever-shifting tunnels created by the Speaking Trees’ roots, tunnels where time and distance held no sway – and gone to watch as the humans migrated from their town to a second territory.
“I wasn’t near human lands when the first child was taken,” Yrsa began slowly. She was trying to remain aloof like Estene had taught her, but the human looked so lost and hopeless and . . . small, in a way. “I travelled into your territory and watched you move to that other place, by the river. I . . . I wanted to watch what you did with that structure on the ice – really watch, not just through the wyrdness or from pieces deep in the pack-memory.
“I was never going to get close, but then I heard something cry. It shook the whole wyrdness, and I thought at first it was a wolf. I arrived to see a . . . a thing. It was going to attack the pup, but I scared it off. Or, I thought I did.”
All the fight went out of the human. She dropped onto the stone ledge of the pool like there was nothing else holding up her body and buried her face in her hands.
Feeling suddenly like an intruder in her own home, Yrsa shuffled her paws uncomfortably.
“What is your name?” She asked, desperate to break the thick, choking silence.
The human hesitated only a moment before saying, “Rostfar.”
“Then, Rostfar, I’m sorry for your loss,” Yrsa said. She thought it sounded like the right thing to say.
“My loss.” Rostfar’s voice was flat, but Yrsa had said the words now and couldn’t undo the path she had trod. “I haven’t lost anything. Arketh was taken from me, and you – you were there. You said you drove off the other wolf, so what happened after that? Why didn’t you do more?”
Yrsa cowered before the onslaught, bewildered and afraid. Could the human somehow read Yrsa’s soul? See the very questions she had asked herself?
“I don’t know,” Yrsa whined.
“You don’t know?” Rostfar’s lips twisted into something very like a snarl, although it looked wrong on her flat face. She stepped closer to Yrsa, looming, her hands rolled up like stones. “How can you not know?”
“I – I remember the other creature leaving. I saw it flee, and I was going to lead the pup back to your pack, and then – then it all goes dark. It was that thing – that wolf – it had a way with the wyrdness that no wolf should. It must have done something to me – please . . .” Yrsa crept backwards. Why wasn’t Rostfar leaving her alone? Yrsa’s ears were flat and her head was low, and the wyrdness around her hummed in tune with her remorse. It wasn’t her fault if she couldn’t remember. No wolf would blame Yrsa for that – Estene hadn’t, when Yrsa had told her what happened. So why did Rostfar?
“Stop!” Yrsa yelped out. Her hackles lifted, unbidden, as she felt her hindquarters hit a tree.
To Yrsa’s surprise, Rostfar did. Her body slumped again and her face went slack, mouth open like a hole. Water glistened in her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I . . . stars, I don’t even know who you are. I can’t start yelling at you. That – that’s wrong.” She twisted her fingers in her head-hair and shivered. Her agony was so strong Yrsa could taste it. Not wound-agony, either – this was far deeper.
“I’m Yrsa,” Yrsa said. She had no idea what else to do.
The long, mellow howl of the Summoning saved Yrsa from further conversation. Rostfar’s eyes went dark with fear.
“What does that mean?” She looked at Yrsa and Yrsa realised Rostfar was trembling.
“Estene is calling the pack to the Speaking Tree,” Yrsa replied in the softest voice that she could manage. “Come on.”
