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The Speaking Tree’s clearing looked completely different when it was full of wolves. Rostfar guessed the whole pack was there, and was struck by the loose, concentric way in which they gathered. It was orderly.
Estene sat in the roots of the great tree, staring out at her pack and at Rostfar with a gaze that could melt ice and freeze fire. Two wolves sat on either side of her – on one side, a black wolf only a little smaller than Estene herself, on the other, a leaner brown wolf who wouldn’t look at her. Rostfar hovered at the edge of the gathering. Her feet were anchored to the ground.
“Bryn, my eldest,” Estene nodded to the brown wolf. “And Myr, my boundmate and father of the pack.”
Rostfar tried to nod her acknowledgement. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded.
“We three have spoken,” Estene continued, “and we’ve made our choice. Come.”
Rostfar still couldn’t move. She was painfully aware of dozens of wolven eyes fixed on her, crawling over her skin. All Rostfar wanted to do was run to the hot pools.
Something nudged her in the back, hard enough that Rostfar was forced to stumble. She saw a flash of red-brown fur out of the corner of her eye. Yrsa. Rostfar closed her hands around her pouch of telling-stones and took a step forwards.
“You decided quick. Is . . . is it bad?” Rostfar asked.
“Why would the speed mean our decision is bad?” Estene cocked her head. “We have our own ways of talking, ones that don’t need so many time-consuming words. And the outcome of our decision is entirely up to you.”
“We won’t kill you. Murder isn’t our way,” Myr said. “But how do we know we can trust you? You walked into our midst, armed, and now you know about the Speaking Tree.”
“Why did you come here?” Bryn asked. His gaze was keen as a knife blade.
“For answers, I thought – but now I have more questions than ever.” Rostfar risked a glance around herself. The other wolves seemed to be drawing closer and closer. She licked her lips and willed her voice not to shake. “I’ve never thought violence is the way, and I don’t – I don’t want it to be the way, I promise you. But children have died, and all the signs point to a wolf.”
An angry murmur shivered through the pack. Rostfar’s skin felt too tight for her bones. She was suffocating inside herself. Her head spun, her knees shook, her heart ached. But she couldn’t stop talking.
“The wolf terrorised my people and stole my daughter. I had a vision of—” Rostfar glanced at Yrsa, who still stood by her side. “A vision of a red wolf, of Yrsa, and I thought, if I could find it, I’d know why. But now . . .” She shook her head.
“And now?” Bryn ignored the slight warning growl from Estene and leaned forwards like a – well, like a wolf scenting its prey. “What do you want now?”
“For it to stop. All of it to stop.” Rostfar crossed her arms. “And I don’t see why you can’t just make that happen. It’s one of yours who’s doing the killing.”
The pack’s whispering grew to a low, collective snarl. There was a line here, so thin it was almost non-existent, between a massacre and a deal. Rostfar knew she should care about crossing it, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. Even with so much at stake, she felt like she had nothing left to lose.
“Rostfar . . .” Estene growled her name. “Enough. You’ve said your piece.”
Rostfar stepped closer. Her whole world was spinning on a thread, but she forced her head up and said, “I want my daughter back, and my family, and my life – but none of that is possible while a wolf gets away with murder.”
Silence.
This will be it. They’re going to kill me.
“You’re right,” Estene said.
The world stopped spinning with a bone-jarring force.
“But it’s not a wolf that killed the pups,” Estene continued. “It is something worse, and it cannot be allowed to continue – on this we agree.”
For the first time, hope swelled in Rostfar’s chest. “Then show me where to find the creature and I’ll leave you be.”
“The human has seen the Speaking Tree,” snarled one of the gathered wolves.
“I don’t care about your tree,” Rostfar spat.
“But you care about your pack, yes?” Estene leant closer. Her nose was almost level with Rostfar’s. “And I care about mine. If I let you return to your people, knowing now what we have here, how can I trust that we won’t awake to find attackers on our slopes? Your people hate magic, after all.”
“I know how to keep secrets,” Rostfar replied bitterly.
Estene ignored her and stepped down from the platform of roots.
“We’ve chosen to give you a chance, Rostfar. And now you must choose if you will take it.”
“But—”
“You will stay here, walk our paths, show us what you are. And if I’m impressed – if you survive – we’ll help you end the child-killing that plagues your town.”
Hot, frustrated tears rose in Rostfar’s eyes. She didn’t want this – to be tied to one place, bound to a strange people by rules she didn’t understand. She needed to get out there and find the thing that had taken her daughter.
“No,” she tried to say, but nobody was listening. The rest of the pack had begun to growl and grumble, their bodies shifting all around her. Myr and Bryn got to their feet.
Something closed around Rostfar’s sleeve. She looked down and saw Yrsa tugging at her, urging her to move. Her feet responded before her brain could refuse.
Yrsa led Rostfar away from the Speaker's clearing. Tears blurred Rostfar’s vision, turning the wolf into a reddish blur, always a few steps ahead.
When they returned to the hot springs, Rostfar allowed herself to buckle. Her knees thudded on the leaflitter, but the ache of impact trickled down through her awareness as if from a great height.
"Is that it?" She whispered to the earth. "Am I trapped here?"
"You're not trapped," Yrsa said – and curse her for sounding so sincere. "But you do have to stay here. You saw the Speaking Tree."
It's just a bloody tree, Rostfar wanted to snap – but she couldn't, because it wasn't. She had seen something ancient and incomprehensible. Something sacred. Something secret.
"What if I don't want to stay here?"
Yrsa seemed to have some difficulty with that question. She opened her mouth, then cocked her head to one side instead. "You have to," she said at last. "Estene doesn't mean forever – just until we know we can trust you."
"And how long will that take?"
"I don't know," Yrsa said.
Rostfar hugged herself as tightly as she could, trying to tamp down the overwhelming emotion inside of her. Her stomach churned and her head boiled and she couldn't breathe or move or think. Was she angry? Was she frightened? She couldn’t tell, but it all rose up inside her like bile.
"How could this possibly work? You just had to pull me away in fear for my life! They'll kill me."
"They won't kill you," Yrsa answered indignantly. "And your life wasn't in danger." She said it like that should have been obvious. Rostfar was used to people using that tone with her, but for once she didn't think it was justified.
"Then why pull me away like that?"
"You were rude." Yrsa huffed. Rostfar gaped at her. "You had said what you needed to say, and it as time for Estene to discuss the matter with Myr and my older siblings."
"But they sounded so—" Rostfar caught herself before she could let the words violent and dangerous slip from her lips. She didn't think Yrsa would appreciate hearing her family described like that. ". . . angry."
"Upset," Yrsa corrected. "Do humans like being called murderers and liars?" She tilted her head to one side and pricked one ear up.
The question was so keenly perceptive Rostfar found herself at loss for words. Everything inside her – the anger or grief or whatever it was – settled abruptly, like snow over rooftops. Rostfar was left feeling muffled. Drained. Stars and skyfire, she was so bloody tired.
"Rest," Yrsa said, as if she knew how Rostfar felt. "I'll stay here so you can feel safe."
Nothing would have made Rostfar feel any less safe than a wolf watching her sleep, but Yrsa was so sincere. Almost like
(Arketh)
a young child.
Rostfar nodded and lay down. The ground was hard and cold, but at least the thick canopy meant it was dry. She had slept in worse places than this over her lifetime.
A huff and a thump indicated that Yrsa had lain down a short distance away, somewhere out of sight. Her slow breaths and the scuff of leaves as she stretched were the only sounds Rostfar could hear beyond the exhausted thumping pain in her head. A thumping that seemed to grow louder when Rostfar closed her eyes. Its cadence changed, mellowing into a heartbeat so strong it made the ground tremble. No, not tremble – soften. The world was warping again, and Rostfar couldn't open her eyes to see it change. The leaves beneath her became warmer, yielding like a mother’s embrace, and the forest's heartbeat was filling her throat like warm mead—
"Rostfar?"
Rostfar opened her eyes. She was standing up, one hand extended towards the knotted roots of a fallen tree near the edge of the hot springs’ clearing. Yrsa spoke again, but Rostfar ignored her.
The fallen tree’s trunk was as broad as Rostfar was tall. Earth and moss had covered it through the years since its fall, and the branches had become new trees in their own right. The remaining roots of the original tree were stubborn and knotted things, holding onto a pile of boulders with all the determination of a clinging limpet.
Rostfar pressed her palm flat against the trunk. The bark became translucent with green light, its rough surface softening beneath her touch. The tree – the whole forest – had a pulse, so like the gentle call of the wyrdness that Rostfar found herself transfixed. Earth and bark and stone unravelled before her, and the roots came alive. They burrowed deep into rock as if it were soft clay, infusing everything with that living green light. Rostfar’s hand fell limp to her side as the earth heaved and shuddered, pushed into new shapes by the impossible, indominable growth of something that should have been dead.
"Oh, by the Speaking Tree . . ." Yrsa murmured, voice infused with awe.
The forest’s heartbeat rose to a heady, thrumming beat to rival Rostfar's own. It set her teeth on edge and her blood aflame, singing inside her with the brightness of the skyfire until she feared it might blind her from within – and then it went silent. The earth stilled.
A cave-like opening yawned at Rostfar from a mound of smooth stone, big enough for her to walk right in. Rostfar could see the roots that held it up, threaded through again-solid rock like veins. It reminded Rostfar of the burrows used by squirrels for hibernation during the Howling and the Quiet.
“The Speaking Tree has granted you a den,” Yrsa said reverently. “Just as it would a pack-mother. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She pushed her nose into the small of Rostfar's back, and Rostfar stumbled forwards.
The floor and ceiling of the den both sloped gently down to an ovular cavern with a nook cut into its back wall. A nook that was the perfect size and shape for a human to lie down in. Fine vein-like roots and threads of crystalline stone laced the earthen walls, carrying the living light of the forest inside them.
"What do I do?" Rostfar found herself asking.
"You sleep in it." Yrsa’s voice drifted in from outside. Rostfar licked her lips, mouth dry. Yes, sleep sounded good. Sleep was something normal. But inside a den, like an animal?
The light thrummed. Rostfar couldn't hear it with her ears, but she could still feel the rhythm of it, tattooed against her soul. This den was warm, sheltered. Safe.
"Sleep," she said under her breath. She crawled into the nook and wrapped her cloak tighter about herself. The ground was softer than she expected, and a soft warmth suffused the air. It was new and frightening and oddly, inexplicably, safe.
For the first time since Arketh had vanished, Rostfar could almost have said she felt relaxed. She curled up around that feeling, holding onto it with all she had, and let it draw her down into the first deep sleep she’d had in weeks.
