| |
Further into Deothwicc, beyond the Speaking Tree’s Clearing, the mountains reared again. The trees were sparser here, although greenery still thrived aplenty on the grey-black slopes and broken ground. Birds thronged, squirrels rustled in the undergrowth, and bees moved languidly through the branches. Rostfar even caught sight of a honeybear. The tiny animal had examined her with keen honey-gold eyes from its nest for a long, breathless moment, then vanished from sight.
A great rocky mound sprouted from this shattered, wild land. Its sloping sides were curiously bare of trees, and the summit just cleared the forest canopy. Rostfar checked with Estene, and got permission to light a cook-fire there.
“But why is fire necessary?” Yrsa asked, loping along at Rostfar’s side as she trekked up the slope.
Rostfar sighed and hiked the brace of squirrels back up her shoulder.
“I have to cook these.”
“Cook?”
“It involves fire. If I don’t do it – well, I have to do it.” Rostfar tried to quicken her pace, but Yrsa kept up with ease. The young wolf was a shadow Rostfar couldn’t shake – a reminder, in so many small and painful ways, of Arketh.
Rostfar snapped away from that thought. It invited her down a road she couldn’t afford to walk; not here among wolves who would likely rip her to shreds at the first opportunity.
“But why do you have to do it?”
Rostfar frowned. That was a good question; Marken probably knew the answer. “I don’t know.”
“So then how do you know fire is necessary?”
Rostfar pinched the bridge of her nose. Bounding along at her side, Yrsa kept talking.
“Because if you didn’t do this – this ‘cook’ thing, you could eat with us. With the pack.”
“No,” Rostfar said, too sharply. “I don’t want to eat with your pack.”
“Oh.” Yrsa’s stride faltered, and Rostfar kept going. They continued the rest of the way in silence.
At the top, Rostfar set to work lashing small branches together so she could roast one of the squirrels. Hunger made it hard to focus. For days, she had been substituting a good diet with edible shoots, still tough from spring hibernation and hard to swallow. Yrsa had offered to help by hunting, but Rostfar had adamantly refused. She had to admit she regretted that now.
The stick Rostfar was trying to tie together snapped under her trembling hands. Frustration flared up inside her with alarming strength, too bright and boiling to contain. She kicked the roasting spit over and dug her fingers into her thighs.
Isha could have done this easily. He was so good at the fine tasks. But she wouldn’t be making a spit on her own in wolven territory if Isha hadn’t betrayed her trust; if he hadn’t said those cruel, cutting things; if Arketh hadn’t vanished.
If Arketh hadn’t gone looking for me.
If, if, if.
“Rostfar?”
Rostfar jerked away from Yrsa’s inquisitive nose. “Gods, Yrsa, just leave me be!”
Yrsa whined. Rostfar couldn’t help but feel guilty.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered and cupped her face in her hands. It helped, blocking out the moonlight and snow-glare for just a few moments while she got her breath back. Beyond the protective darkness of her closed fingers, she heard the pad-pad of Yrsa’s retreating paws.
Strangely, Yrsa’s absence brought no comfort. Rostfar groaned aloud and leant back against the rock face.
Rostfar had never managed well with juggling multiple jobs at once, but there had always been people around her who were happy to help. On hunts, tasks were handed out depending on each person’s strengths so that the group worked smoothly together. She’d never felt so useless before. So bereft of support. Even Yrsa had run away, and if Grae’s example was anything to go by, the other wolves would sooner cause her trouble for trouble’s sake than let her be in peace.
She closed her eyes in defeat.
The sound of heavy breathing roused Rostfar some moments later. She started to get up, but relaxed when she saw it was only Yrsa returning with a bundle of sticks held gently in her mouth. Yrsa dropped them at Rostfar’s feet.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to do,” Yrsa said. “But now you can try again.”
Rostfar stared incredulously at the branches. They were all far too thin, but Rostfar didn’t have the heart to tell Yrsa they were no good for her task. The gesture, simple as it was, made Rostfar want to cry with gratitude. She gave Yrsa a tired smile.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll try again.”
Rostfar’s pack had contained a serrated knife for cutting wood, a small drinking-bowl, several pouches of dried meat, spare boots, one of Isha’s undershirts and a single sock. She had painstakingly unpicked the undershirt and used most of the sturdy thread for snares, the cloth for bandages. If she prepared one of the squirrels and carved the meat into leaf-thin slices, she could hang it here in this hollow to dry with what remained of her thread. The other she could cook on a frame over the fire. Yes, she could do this.
Rostfar got to work, and Yrsa dozed.
A few hours later, Rostfar had one charred drinking bowl and a slightly-burnt meal. The frame over the fire hadn’t worked, but she’d managed to skewer the squirrel and roast it instead. It was hardly up to the usual standards of a hunt, but at least she’d successfully prepared the spare meat to dry.
Rostfar picked at the burnt bits in silence, occasionally stealing glances at where Yrsa lay at the start of the narrow track. She was watching the sunrise with one ear pricked, her head at an attentive-looking slant. So much like a child, Rostfar thought, but also with wisdom and a sense of responsibility few children could understand.
“Why do you stay here? With me?” Rostfar asked once she had eaten all that was edible. Yrsa shuffled around so she could look at Rostfar while they spoke. “Is this how you guard your prisoners?”
“Pris-nes . . . pris-unn?” Yrsa repeated the word laboriously and then gave up with a brief flick of her head. “The only thing we guard is the Speaking Tree.”
Rostfar couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up in her throat. Yrsa was so earnest and sincere.
“I mean, do you stay with me to make sure I don’t escape?”
Yrsa cocked her head. “Yes, but not in the way I sense you mean. It’s . . . so you don’t do anything you shouldn’t – like the fire – or anything that’ll get you hurt.”
“I’m already hurt,” Rostfar muttered. Her amusement ebbed away but the weighted sadness she had become familiar with felt somewhat lighter. Perhaps it was the sunlight, which lingered now for longer with increasing warmth. Or maybe it was the company.
The company of this odd, half-grown wolf who reminded her of Arketh.
“It’s also because you smell of loneliness,” Yrsa said softly. “And lonely wolves without their pack will become unwolf.”
It was Rostfar’s turn to test a new word, feeling out the weight of it on her tongue. “Unwolf?”
“They kill for the sake of blood instead of survival.” Yrsa’s voice had gone so quiet Rostfar had to move closer to hear. “And the wyrdness . . . they get cut away from it, from everything that makes us wolvenkind. Bryn says they go into a blood-frenzy until nothing else matters, not their names or other wolves or the Speaking Tree.” She hesitated, then added, “And it’s an unwolf killing your pups.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” Yrsa lowered her head onto her paws. “We’ve never lost one of our pack like that, not in all the years of our memory.”
Rostfar stared into the smouldering embers of her fire.
Unwolf. A wolf-turned-murderer.
That was what had killed her daughter and Astvald, had been lurking around Erdansten and haunting them from the mists. Rostfar curled her hands into fists.
“You want to be out there hunting it,” Yrsa said bluntly, catching Rostfar off-guard. “I tried to. Not to hunt it like you think, but just to. . . see. I was curious, wanted to know if an unwolf really was the monster Bryn said. And the thing I faced out there was awful.” She lowered her head. “But unless it comes here, we won’t hunt it down. Maybe a lone wolf could, but the pack comes first.”
“Well,” Rostfar said with a bitter smile. “I suppose it’s good I no longer have one.”
“I think you do; you just don’t see it.”
Rostfar sighed and said, “It’s nice you’re so optimistic.” She stood. She wanted the conversation to be over, but Yrsa tugged at her sleeve.
“Can I show you something?”
Rostfar bit the inside of her cheek. It was this, the eagerness to share experiences, that made Yrsa so uncomfortably like Arketh. She wanted to say no. She also wanted to say yes.
Yrsa took Rostfar’s silence for an answer.
“It’ll help you. Follow me,” she said, and delved off down the path.
Rostfar followed Yrsa back into the heart of Deothwicc, where the trees grew dark and close and the sunlight barely reached. Yrsa wouldn’t tell Rostfar where they were going, save for the assurance she would like it once they got there. With little choice, Rostfar complied.
“We’re here.” Yrsa came to a stop. Rostfar could see nothing particularly unusual; the trees were tall, and the earth was dark. It looked just like any other place in the gods-cursed wood.
“Yrsa—”
“Sh.”
Rostfar bit the inside of her lower lip.
As she stood there, contemplating the best way to leave, a burst of colour caught her eye. Her head snapped towards it, and her breath snagged in her throat. She had never seen anything so beautiful.
The creature’s wings moved so fast they were barely there, as if Rostfar’s fingers would pass right through them. It flitted around her head, close enough she could get a glimpse of a long, pink tongue.
Rostfar laughed. The humming of the birds’ wings was a beautiful sound, full of life and vibrancy. She had forgotten what those two things felt like.
“What are they?”
“I call them flutterbirds,” Yrsa said, and then admitted, “But I . . . don’t really know. They only come here for a little while at this time of the year, to drink the treeblood.”
Rostfar craned her neck to track the flutterbird’s progress through the canopy. She could make out a low branch, its bark oozing sap as the tree thawed out after the long winter months. On impulse, Rostfar held out her hand and caught a few drops in her palm, intending to taste it for herself. The bird took it as an invitation.
It didn’t stop to drink as seabirds did but hovered above her hand while its tongue took in the drops of sap. Rostfar could feel the small breeze stirred up by its wings, and the tickle of its beak. She smiled wider than she had in weeks.
“Arketh will love—” Rostfar’s smile broke.
Yrsa pressed in closer to Rostfar’s side. Rostfar leant into her ever so slightly, grateful for the company. Her smile softened until it left completely.
“Was Arketh hurting when you tried to rescue her, Yrsa?” Rostfar asked softly, unable to make her voice any louder. “Was she scared?”
“I don’t know,” Yrsa answered simply.
Rostfar let that sit with her for a while, before she wiped her hands on her trousers and cleared her aching throat. “She loved colour. Inherited that from Mati. I never really got it myself, but it made her so happy. She always had to have the brightest of dyes, and she’d watch anything colourful or moving for hours – anything like these birds, or Urdven’s bees. That’s where she should be now, lying in his attic and watching that ugly beehive’s heart.” Her voice cracked, and she lapsed into silence. Yrsa nuzzled her, but Rostfar shifted away. Yrsa didn’t try to get close again.
The birds continued their never-ending movement overhead, little more than bright specks shimmering in and out of the higher branches. Unlike Rostfar, they knew no fear of humans or wolves or unwolves.
Rostfar’s joy sank and curdled in her gut like old milk. She wiped her stinging eyes with the heels of her palms and glanced at Yrsa, but she needn’t have worried. The flutterbirds had Yrsa’s full attention; her head moved with every variation in their flight patterns and her ears twitched at every noise.
That would have been Arketh at her side, if not for the unwolf.
Rostfar stepped backwards. Yrsa didn’t notice. Emboldened, Rostfar kept going until she was deep enough in the trees she could no longer make out Yrsa’s shape. Then she turned on her heel and ran.
