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Rostfar didn’t get very far. She didn’t know why she had expected to. Estene caught up with her on the rocky slopes that led down to the flats beyond Deothwicc’s border.
“Killing the unwolf won’t bring your pup back to you.”
Rostfar came to an abrupt halt. She clenched her teeth. “I know.”
“Then where are you going?”
Rostfar turned around. Estene stood on a ridge above Rostfar, forcing her to tilt her head back. She gulped. “It’s not about bringing Arketh back or revenge or, or any of that.”
Estene’s muscles rippled beneath her coat as she leapt down from her perch. Despite the threat posed by her size, her stance was relaxed. She eyed Rostfar narrowly.
“I think it is,” she said. “Even if you don’t realise it.”
Rostfar’s fists curled by her side. “Yrsa showed me those birds, the colourful ones.”
“Oh, yes.” Estene’s tone was that of a parent well versed in a child’s obsessions. It was so familiar – so human – that it hurt.
“I stood there, and I just thought – if not for the unwolf, Ket could have been there with me.”
“If not for the unwolf, Rostfar,” Estene said, a slight growl bubbling beneath her words. “You would never have come here in the first place.”
A cold hand squeezed around Rostfar’s throat. She struggled to take in a deep breath and tried to keep walking. Without so much as a scrape of claws on rock, Estene moved to block Rostfar’s path. Her head lowered, and although Rostfar didn’t know how to read a wolf’s body, she could hear Estene’s warning snarl. The hair on her arms prickled.
“Sit.”
Rostfar sat. She felt like a child being scolded by Mam.
“We rarely speak in possibilities.” Estene remained standing in Rostfar’s path, her stance immovable. “In what might have been or could happen. We live from moment to moment.”
“I don’t underst—”
“When you first came here, I told you vengeance is not a Wolven idea.” Estene stepped closer. Rostfar froze in place. “If I had acted on the possibilities of revenge every time something took a pup from me, my pack and the land around us would be soaked in blood.”
“But it would help you, help that feeling, stop it from happening again. It—”
“A trap took a pup from my last litter. Nessen. We’ve lost others to winter, or the hooves of a bull, or even another wolf. And I continued on, because if I had stopped for revenge, the balance that binds us all in place would have been disrupted.”
The invisible hand around Rostfar’s throat tightened. She hadn’t considered that wolves, too, would grieve for those they lost. But why not? It made sense.
“We don’t make traps for wolves,” She protested.
“No,” Estene said. “But your pack threw stones at Nessen as he tried to protect Grae. And then they left him to bleed. He died there.”
Rostfar felt like someone had punched her in the face. Because she remembered that incident. She remembered Arketh running to her, crying, because the older children were throwing stones at a small wolf. Nat had sounded the horn to summon everyone back to Erdansten but refused to let Rostfar see if the wolf had lived.
“If . . . if he was in your last litter, that would mean Yrsa is – that Yrsa and Grae, as yearlings, were . . .” she couldn’t make herself say it.
“Yrsa and Grae were Nessen’s littermates, yes.”
Rostfar ran her hands down her face. “And yet you stand here, talking to me?”
“Because you being here is Now, as is the unwolf,” Estene said. “And so, that’s what I’ll deal with.”
“How could I ever make what happened right?”
Estene tilted her head. “Stop living in the past. Come back into Deothwicc.”
“And if I don’t want to?” Rostfar asked.
“I’ll let you leave to hunt the unwolf,” Estene said. “Alone. Right now. None of us will stop you.”
Rostfar entertained it in her mind’s eye: returning home, carrying the head of the murderer-wolf aloft. But the vision was wrong. The unwolf in her mind looked too much like Yrsa, its eyes wide with fear and betrayal. She pictured the faces of everyone she knew; she pictured Isha, turning away from her. It’s still too late for Arketh, he said.
Rostfar pressed her hands to her eyes and asked, her voice small, “Do you really think the wyrdness called me here for a reason?”
“Yes,” Estene answered patiently.
“And . . . do you think if I left – do you think I’d be welcomed home?”
“I don’t know.” Estene relaxed her stance and sat, watching Rostfar with gentle eyes. “Do you think you’d be welcome?”
Rostfar didn’t need to answer that. No matter what anyone said, she didn’t think she’d ever feel welcome in Erdansten again.
“Okay,” she said. She pulled herself to her feet and turned back towards the forest.
⁂
Hidden in the trees at Deothwicc’s edge, Grae watched as Estene and the human walked back towards the forest. He had felt hope when he saw the human leave; had thought maybe they would be allowed to hunt it and then everything would go back to how it was.
But no. Things never went the way Grae wished they would.
He turned and padded back through the trees until he came upon a small group of his packmates. Among them were Geren and Ysmir, both of whom had been present when the human nearly set them all on fire. Bryn was at the back of the group, his eyes wide and watchful.
“The human tried to leave,” Grae announced. The other wolves in the group stirred at that.
“Really?” Bryn asked. He sounded disappointed – but at what, Grae couldn’t tell.
“So, it’s gone?” Geren sat up.
“No.” Grae slumped into the dirt between Ysmir and Geren. “Estene spoke with it, and then it came back.”
Grae could feel general disappointment, a little unease. Wariness. Two older wolves got up and left together without a word, letting their tensed muscles and bristling hackles do the talking for them.
“I don’t see why that’s such a problem.” Ysmir, Geren’s littermate, spoke up. “The human can sense the wyrdness, like one of us.”
A rustle went through the gathered wolves. This was news to Grae.
“It can—” Geren cocked his head at Ysmir with a long, calculating gaze. “Are you sure?”
Despite her blindness, Ysmir seemed to stare straight into Geren. “Yrsa told me so last night. The earth responded to the human to make her a den, just like anyone else.” She gave a casual little heave of her body and slumped back down with her muzzle resting on her paws. “As long as she keeps her fire away from the Speaking Tree, I don’t much care what happens to her.”
Grae and Geren exchanged a look. He could tell from Geren’s unsettled posture that he, too, had noticed Ysmir’s change in words. She, not it.
“That changes nothing.” Grae sat upright. He tried to keep calm, but he could feel his hackles prickling. “The human’s not welcome here, none of its kind are.”
Geren’s agreement was less vehement than before. Ysmir’s revelation had struck a chord.
“If that’s how you feel,” Bryn spoke from the shadows of a fallen tree with a yawn. “Take it up with Estene yourself.”
An uncomfortable silence followed. Everyone knew Bryn would be fathering his own pack within a year or two, and his words carried more weight than their idle ramblings. Grae bristled.
“The human has gotten too close to Estene. I don’t think she’ll listen to me.” Grae said. He wondered where his new streak of defiance came from.
Bryn stretched. “I’m not a carrier of other’s words.” His whole body was languid with the satiated sort of peace that came after a good hunt and an even better sleep. It made Grae want to bite him and hold on until Bryn bled; until he finally realised this was serious.
“Maybe I’ll allow an accident to befall the human,” Grae snarled at Bryn’s retreating hindquarters. “I’m sure Geren would help me.”
Bryn turned and knocked his claws across Grae’s face. “We raised you better than this.”
Silence fell. Cold fear prickled down Grae’s spine. He hadn’t meant to say his thoughts out loud or admit the extent of his fury. Bryn wasn’t quite snarling, but his lips twitched.
Grae stared at his brother, uncomprehending. Not wanting to comprehend. Bryn stared back. His unbreakable, unshakeable gaze scraped along Grae’s already raw nerves like teeth. A test. Show me your anger then, Bryn’s bodyspeak said, show me what you’re becoming. Grae backed away. Horror sunk through his stomach. He had trusted Bryn to be on his side, not the human’s.
Why?
Grae had to know. Bryn’s scent was glassy-smooth, betraying nothing, and his hackles had settled again. Grae couldn’t believe Bryn was so calm about all of this.
“They killed Nessen,” Grae said, but the words sounded oddly hollow this time. His heartbeat was loud enough to fill his entire body. “They . . .” he couldn’t say anymore. The other wolves rose and, one by one, drifted back towards the deep forest without a word.
“You’re falling, Grae.” Bryn’s stance softened with pity. “Remember who you are: you’re not a human, you don’t need revenge. You’re better than that.” Bryn licked Grae’s shoulder and then left as well.
Grae remained where he sat for a long while. He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to spool out into the wyrdness until it brushed up against the borders of the Speaking Tree. Warmth suffused his veins.
At least this was normal. This hadn’t changed. He was still of the wolvenkind and still part of his pack. He was Grae, named for his love of the open sky. He was a wolf. He was—
Spiralling.
The warmth that had cradled him only a heartbeat before turned to ice in his bones and the only thing Grae could see, feel, and hear on all sides was a chilling void. He twisted and turned in defiance and howled out for the Speaking Tree, for his pack, for Yrsa, Estene – but his cries went unheard. The breath in his lungs turned to ash. The darkness pressed in on all sides.
Grae’s eyes flew open.
He lay sprawled on his side in the leaf-litter. An owl’s hunting call echoed from somewhere high above him. The wyrdness crawled through the debris in front of his nose, hazy with the lull Grae expected from the evening hours. Relief flooded through him.
He could still see it. His world was still turning.
Paws padded towards him and Grae hauled himself to his feet.
He drew in a deep breath and steeled himself to face the small, slender figure that loped from the cover of the trees.
Yrsa. Alone.
“Where’s the human?” Grae hadn’t intended to ask her that first. He bit his tongue with his back teeth and lowered his head.
“It’s the human’s sleep-time—” Yrsa broke off and sniffed over Grae’s coat with an anxious snuffling in the back of her throat. “What have you been doing? Bryn said there was an argument and he left you here.”
“I had to catch my breath.” Grae shifted himself away from Yrsa’s nose.
“Your breath can’t have run away from you that fast,” Yrsa said. It was a joke, Grae knew it was a joke, but the edge to her voice didn’t go unnoticed. He drew his tail close in between his legs and took yet another step away from her.
“What do you mean?”
“Bryn told me that just after the first moonrise. It’s the night’s middle now.”
Horror crashed over Grae in a wave. He was certain he had only been out of the world for a few moments. But. A glance up at the sky told him Yrsa was right.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Grae said. “Just hungry.”
Yrsa brightened considerably at that. She pricked up her ears and darted back to the treeline where she tenderly picked up the corpse of a squirrel. Grae’s mouth filled with saliva at the smell.
“Ysmir caught the scent of prey-herds this side of the mountains.” Yrsa’s bodyspeak betrayed her excitement. “So, eat up. We’ll be hunting soon.”
She didn’t need to tell him twice. Grae tore into the hibernation-toughened flesh with gusto.
Only once Grae had finished did he realise he had told a lie. It was so small, so simple, and it had slid off his tongue with slippery ease.
Are you alright? Yrsa had asked.
He wasn’t. He was the furthest from alright he had ever been. But he had said yes.
