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Coming back to life was like being born again.
Rostfar struggled with all her might against the living cocoon in which she lay, her system reeling from the force of Aethren’s cry for help. Arketh’s moth screamed in the hollow of Rostfar’s throat, battering against her bones and fighting for all it was worth until Rostfar’s rational thoughts were consumed.
You’re not ready, said the Speaking Tree – Norðunn
Rostfar didn’t know how long she had been drifting. Time hadn’t existed for her, but now that she was back in her body everything demanded attention. Hunger, pain, thirst, a desperate need to piss. Life was an extraordinarily painful thing, Rostfar realised, and she wasn’t ready to let go.
You can’t leave me yet, said that haunting, ethereal voice in the wyrdness. It tasted like tree-sap in her mouth and sounded like the deep, gentle throb of the Tree’s green heart. Rostfar screwed her eyes shut.
“Then come with me,” she hissed through her teeth.
The Speaking Tree didn’t answer. Rostfar stared up at the small circle of sky she could see and prayed fervently and whole-heartedly as she never had before, straining to lift her head from the bonds that were only trying to help.
“Come with me, dammit!” Rostfar wrenched her arm upwards.
Extraordinarily, they gave way. Rostfar continued to push until she was almost sitting, all of Aethren’s pained emotions giving her a strength she could never have found alone. Fresh vine-like roots began to wind their way around her – but not to trap, not this time. Rostfar stared.
Smaller roots burrowed into the tips of Rostfar’s splayed fingers, while others coiled through her hair and around her neck. She could see them moving beneath her skin, tracing the lines of bone and vein. The sight was terrible and unnatural, and yet. Rostfar was calmer than she had been in a long time. This wasn’t hurting her. It was healing her. Up and up the roots crawled, both over skin and beneath, following the poisoned red of Rostfar’s veins all the way to her heart. She undid her shirts with shaking hands until she could see the gathering green light shining from within her ribcage. The flesh that Other had torn was being knitted together again by tiny, fibrous strands at an incredible speed. The same was happening to her arm.
“Rostfar?”
Rostfar’s head whipped around. Yrsa was crouched a few paces away, seemingly reluctant to come any nearer.
“It’s okay—” Rostfar shuddered as her body remembered to breathe, to respond, to live. She doubled over. The roots slid away from her faster and faster like water cascading from her skin until it left Rostfar shivering where she sat in a circle of bare earth.
Isha came close on Yrsa’s heels. He dropped the bucket of water in his hands – because of course Isha would bring a bucket across the wild wastes – and fell to his knees in front of Rostfar.
“Are you – are you really alive?” His voice was hushed.
“Near enough,” Rostfar said, and smiled.
Isha cooked while Rostfar sat at his side. When he tried to tip a small palmful of salt from his bag into the stew, she caught his wrist and wordlessly took a large pinch away. They looked at one another and, after a beat of silence, burst into laughter. Rostfar was drunk on the thrill of being alive. She felt more awake than she had in a long, long while. Her veins were clean and her head was clear; for the time being, the rest of the world didn’t exist.
As Rostfar ate, she felt Isha watching her very closely.
“What is it?”
“Don’t you . . .” Isha hesitated a moment. He poked at his portion without eating. “Do you feel any different?”
“Why would I?”
“Well . . .” Isha studied her in silence. “Come on. It’s easier to show you.”
He led her to the springs where Rostfar had first met Yrsa, what felt like a million years ago. Isha knelt at the water’s edge and Rostfar followed his guidance.
What she saw in the still reflection took her breath away.
Gone were the dark centres of her eyes with their blue rings. There was no definition anymore – only a honeyed gold framed in the same dark lashes beneath a familiar brow. Rostfar touched a finger to her lips and the face in the water did the same.
Rostfar sat back from her haunches with a gasp, catching herself on her palms.
“But . . .” She licked her dry lips. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you need to?” Isha linked his little finger through hers. “You’re alive, and I – that’s all I need. Do you need any more than that?”
Yes, Rostfar could have said, I need our daughter. I need to understand. I need to know that we’ll still be like this when we leave Deothwicc.
But all those words threatened to destroy the rare bubble of comfort that encased her and Isha.
So Rostfar didn’t answer. Instead, she studied how her veins shimmered a soft, warm green whenever they encountered the beams of light through the canopy. The light on her skin pulsed and swayed, sometimes winding away from her and weaving itself through her fingers. When Rostfar looked at Isha, she realised the same thing was happening to him. Currents wound through the air like a web of netting, connecting everything in the forest and beyond.
“The wyrdness,” she said.
“What about it?”
“I . . .” Rostfar lifted a finger and held it against a strand nearest to her. She felt nothing, but the skin of her finger glowed gold for a moment as if lit from within. “I can see it,” she could hardly believe the words herself.
“You’re smiling,” Isha said fondly.
“Huh. I am.” Rostfar lifted her fingers to her mouth in surprise. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“I . . . I don’t feel sad at all.” Rostfar swallowed and drew her knees up to her chest. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“No. It just means you’re going to be okay.” Isha put out his arm in silent question, and Rostfar shuffled just a little nearer to him.
“Will you? Be okay, that is?” Rostfar had to ask. Isha stiffened momentarily.
“Maybe. I hope so.” He sighed and rested his head atop hers. Rostfar ran her fingers over his, studying how their separate auras twined together. “What I said to you, what I did – I can’t forgive myself. Can you forgive me?”
Yes, Rostfar wanted to say. But she also wanted to tell him No, but nothing is the same anymore; that old wounds didn’t, couldn’t, matter. She swallowed. The words were stuck in her throat.
“No, I didn’t think so.” Isha pulled away. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were sad.
For a while, neither spoke. Rostfar took out her pouch of telling-stones and turned them over and over on the ground, setting down the stories she knew better than herself.
“It was Aethren who made me see things differently, you know?” Isha said at last. Rostfar’s head jerked up.
His words lit a fire in the back of Rostfar’s mind; a fire that illuminated the murky, dream-like state she had been in before the pain of awakening obliterated everything else. Terror knifed through her stomach.
“Aethren.” Rostfar was on her feet. Isha stared at her. “I heard them, in my head. It’s – it’s what brought me back. This shout like—” Rostfar cupped her head in her hands as she tried to stitch the fragmented moments back together. “Like . . . everything was collapsing, and they were alone. Ethy was there, and there was so much blood . . . I’m not sure.”
Isha got to his feet, too, his eyes wide. “Ethy? Blood?”
Rostfar shut her eyes, her fingers pressing harder into the sides of her head. There was blood behind her eyes, soaking the wyrdness crimson. She heard Isha say something about getting Myr, and then there was a wet nose prodding her elbow.
“You have the wyrdsight,” Myr said by way of greeting. He sniffed the place where she had been wounded and eyed her narrowly. “I can sense it in you, like one of the pack.”
Rostfar had to fight back the warmth his words inspired. “I heard my friend. I don’t know where they are. I need to leave – find them. They’re in pain—”
Myr nudged Rostfar’s hip to get her attention. “Follow the wyrdness.”
Rostfar stared down at him. She could still see the currents, but she did not understand how one was supposed to follow them. Walking along their length sounded like a useless solution. Myr nipped at her hand in playful impatience and sat down. Rostfar followed suit.
“You can see like one of us now, and so I’m certain you can sense as we do, too. Focus on how it makes you feel.”
Rostfar closed her eyes and focused on the soothing warmth of Myr’s flank against her thigh. As her muscles relaxed, so did her mind, and some coiled strength began to unravel itself from where it had previously lain dormant. Along the current of Aethren’s pain she went, dimly aware of the miles melting past. Her heartbeat slowed. Her breathing grew shallow. Never in her life had Rostfar experienced something so calming.
Then she opened her eyes, and everything changed.
Rostfar was not in her own skin. After a few moments of bewildering blackness, Rostfar realised that her mind had just encroached against the borders of Aethren’s. Not too far, but enough that she could feel all their emotions mapped out in front of her like wood grains beneath her fingertips. The guilt of being in so private a space sent a spike of nausea all the way back to her physical body.
Aethren! Rostfar pushed the thought out with as much strength as she could. She felt Aethren’s thoughts stir for a moment and then recoil in terror, hackles up in anticipation for some new attack. The surface of their mind was bright and glassy with fear-born apathy. Rostfar softened her touch and called to them again.
It’s not you, they replied. Rostfar pushed forwards a little more forcefully.
Where are you?
A flood of images came next, tumbling one over the other in their desperation to be understood: Aethren bleeding, Ethy dead; Marken’s face, blood running into his beard; Kristan; a tunnel, in darkness and green light. Grae. The sound of Nat choking echoed through Rostfar’s brain like a final knell.
Rostfar?
Not Aethren. Someone else – a stranger, pushing tendrils of thought into Rostfar’s mental space. She tried to speak, to ask who this was, but no words came. My name is Thrigg. We’re coming to you.
Rostfar fell back into her own body. She was flat on her back with Myr’s face directly over her own. Isha was there too, his worried hands on her shoulders. Rostfar sat up and turned away so neither of them could see the tears burning her eyes.
“What did you see?” Myr nudged her neck. Rostfar ran her hands down her face.
“I don’t know; it was all in pieces. There’s someone called Thrigg with them. She says she’s coming to me, and I think Aethren’s hurt. And Nat . . .” The image of Nat’s chest stuttering swam before Rostfar’s eyes; the sound of her breath, choked and ragged. “I saw some tunnels, too. They must be underground somewhere.”
“Deyjaholm,” Yrsa said. Rostfar hadn’t seen her approach, but now Yrsa padded to her side and nuzzled against her. The name sent a chill through Rostfar, although she couldn’t say why.
Isha broke the silence when Rostfar couldn’t. “What is that?”
“The tunnels you saw, they are . . .” Yrsa glanced at Myr, a silent exchange passing between them. Rostfar could see fragments of it in the wyrdness – permission, reassurance, unease.
“They spread from the Speaking Tree, through the roots,” Myr continued. “I always believed only we wolves knew of them – that nobody else could access them.”
“The Speaking Tree,” Rostfar repeated. “That’s where we’ll meet them?”
Myr bowed his head in assent.
“Rost, if we don’t know who this Thrigg is . . .” Isha put a hand on her arm instead of finishing that thought, his fingers curled in her sleeve. Please don’t go, she suspected he wanted to say. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze.
“I’m surrounded by wolves, Isha,” Rostfar said. “And I’m armed. This is the safest I could be.”
Isha didn’t look convinced, but he let her go.
The four of them returned to the Speaking Tree’s clearing, Myr in the lead with Rostfar close behind. Isha lingered; he hadn’t yet realised that the wolves meant safety. Maybe he wouldn’t.
Rostfar swallowed that worry and turned back to Myr.
“Now what?”
“We wait,” he said.
They didn’t have to wait very long.
The entire Speaking Tree shivered, her roots lifting out of the ground. Rostfar stared in silent wonder as the rock and dirt beneath unravelled, growing wider and wider until a hole large enough for someone to walk through opened at the Tree’s base. There was silence, a space for tense breath, and then a group of figures emerged from the gloom.
Mati and Marken came first, supporting Natta between them. Her face was pale and her eyes unfocused, but she was still putting one foot in front of the other out of sheer, bloody-minded pride. Marken looked like he was having a hard time standing as well, and there were bruises on his throat.
Kristan followed close behind – and beside him, ears back and tail between his legs, was Grae. Rostfar noticed that Kristan’s hand was resting ever so gently on Grae’s shoulder.
And then Thrigg stepped from the tunnel with Aethren in her arms, and Rostfar stopped noticing anything else.
Thrigg was slender and ethereal and so clearly not human that Rostfar had the sudden urge to cry. Her slight frame looked too weak to support Aethren’s weight, but she carried them easily. For a moment she looked at Rostfar and gave her a brief nod. It felt like a confirmation, but Rostfar wasn’t sure what of.
“Rost!” Kristan launched himself forwards, almost lost his balance, and flung his arm around her waist. She had a moment of pure shock before she remembered how to put her arms around him.
“Water,” Marken said, snapping into his role of healer with the shuddering gasp of a drowning man. “We need clean water and cloth to bind the wound, and Natta needs somewhere to rest. And . . . and—” he looked around as if only just realising where he was, his eyes lingering on Myr and Yrsa. More wolves were slinking from the trees, curious about these newcomers.
Rostfar stepped in, gently easing Kristan away from her. “You’ve your bag, Krist? Good. Marken’ll need what’s in there. There’re hot springs and my – my den, that way.” She pointed. “The water’s clean enough for bathing and I’ve drunk it just fine, but I don’t know how it’ll do for cleaning wounds. You can’t light a fire though, so. Um . . .”
“I can cleanse the water without boiling it,” Thrigg said.
“Good. Isha knows where my den is with my stuff. It’s warm, and there’s caribou skins to make them comfortable.”
Marken was slow, hesitant, but Thrigg didn’t waste another moment. She gave Rostfar a smile that could either have been grateful or nervous – Rostfar didn’t know her well enough to read her strange face – and followed Isha from the clearing. It was only as her outline began to blur in the dappled gloom that Kristan cleared his throat.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” He asked, his eyes on Myr.
“Perfectly safe,” Rostfar said as reassuringly as she could. His fear of the wolves was senseless and unfounded – but then, she had been the same, once.
Kristan followed Thrigg’s path at a brisk pace, and the others followed one by one. Nat made Marken hesitate and looked at Rostfar through unfocused eyes.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I will,” Rostfar said, “In a moment. Don’t wait for me.” She didn’t want to sound dismissive, but the rising tension among the wolves was making it hard to think.
“Rost—”
“You can’t be here for what happens next because the wolves don’t trust you,” she said – bluntly, but not unkindly.
“Okay,” Nat replied softly. “Fine.” She and Marken retreated.
And all eyes turned on Grae.
