Chapter Sixteen

 

 

 

A twig snapped somewhere in the frozen forest. I knew the difference now between the crack of frozen sap and the careful tread of game. The wolf crouched beside me. Her ears swiveled, listening to something out of the range of my own hearing, and I watched her watch the woods, relying on her stronger senses.

She no longer bore any resemblance to the scrawny sack of fur and bones I had scooped up off the stable floor. Her shoulders came to my hip, still smaller than her siblings, but larger than any dog I had ever seen. White frosted the black fur around her ruff, and her muzzle was darker than shadow, a sharp contrast to the gleam of teeth beneath.

I checked the string of my bow. We had been tracking a herd of deer for the better part of a day, and the Huntress was somewhere over the next rise with the rest of the pack. I had circled back to startle them into flight, driving them down the slope and into the jaws of the waiting wolves. I stepped carefully, avoiding a deep drift, my muscles hard beneath my furs and my breath coming easily even in the frigid air. I heard only the crunch of snow beneath my boots. I followed the low plume of the wolf’s tail as she trotted through the trees after a scent far too faint for my nose to detect. I knew some of the smells of these woods. There was the sweet musk of deer, and the heavier scent of elk. The raw eye-watering stench of bear, and the harsh odor of wildcat urine. At the edges of these scents hovered the clean, clear smell of snow, and the peculiar difference between snow, running water, and ice.

And roses.

I hesitated, raising my face to the wind. The boundary was close; I had not realized we had come so far, but then again, the boundary did not seem to obey the laws of nature as I understood them.

The wolf’s hackles rose. I breathed the air in through my nose, trying to catch wind of the source of her alarm. The smell of roses was heavier here, and sure enough as we padded over a ridge, I saw the hedge rise into view.

We both froze.

There were no deer, over the ridge, but something moved. It took my eyes a long time to remember the shape. The creature looked so awkward, shuffling through the snow with its mottled pelt and its strange burden. Each step was clearly a labor, and it eyed the hedge with grim determination. Something stirred in the back of my mind, crawling out from the place where I had shoved such things, buried under the weight of snow and fur and the Huntress’s body, burned away by cold and moonlight and the warm red glow of the hearth, and drowned by the sound and fury of the storms that shrieked over the peaks.

The old woman crouched over her pack, unloading it into the shelter of the briars. She was careful, excruciatingly careful, her every move slow and steady as she kept her body clear of thorns.

I crept down the hill, keeping to the shadows of the trees and trusting the snow to hide the sound of my passage. The wolf kept pace. I wondered if she could smell my fear, or if the stench was trapped beneath my furs. This was the first other human being I had seen since I was taken. I tried to remember how long ago that would have been. The effort hurt. I remembered the pup, but not when she had grown. I remembered her first kill: a rabbit, white of fur and dark of eye, but not when she had made it. I remembered the Huntress’s hands, guiding my own along the bowstring, but I did not remember when the bow had become an extension of my arm, or when reaching for an arrow had become easier than reaching for a word. The rose in my bloodstream stirred. I was used to that now too.

I should speak to her.

The thought made me tremble, and I could not stop the shaking. I put my hand on the wolf’s shoulder for support and stepped out from behind a tree.

She saw me. The hedge rose between us, but it was thin here and seemed to part before me the longer I stared at it.

“Lady,” the woman said, sinking to her knees and bowing her head.

I did not know what to say. I stared at her bowed head, wrapped in a thick, woolen scarf, and felt the icy walls I’d built up around my memories of home begin to thaw. Terror gripped my stomach. I needed those walls.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. The words felt thick on my tongue.

The woman looked up. She was older than my father, her skin the brown of ripe acorns and wrinkled from too many years in the sun and cold. “Remembering,” she said. Her eyes were Lockland blue.

“Remembering what?”

“Many things, child. Many winters.” She gestured to the ground before her, and I looked at what she had brought. Small bundles of sticks, almost doll-like, bound with scraps of cloth or bits of hair, lay in the snow. I recoiled.

“What are they?”

“The memories of others. I bring them here on midwinter.”

“Why?”

“Because that is my job, child. I carry the memories of the dead so that the people in my care may set them aside.”

“You are a hedgewitch.”

“Of course. This boy here,” she said, lifting a small figurine wrapped in a bit of green ribbon, “died of fever a fortnight past. The winter dead belong to the mountain.”

I remembered the story the Huntress had told me about the significance of the winter rose to mothers.

“Why did you call me lady?”

“You belong to the mountain. It pays to be respectful.” She gave me a shrewd look and pulled out another wooden bundle. A strip of yellow silk clothed its chest, and something about the color made my throat go dry.

“Who is that one for?” I asked.

“This is for a man whose body has outlived his soul, his daughters say. He was a merchant once, proud and powerful. Now he sinks deeper and deeper into madness, speaking only of roses. His daughters begged me for help, and I will tell you what I told them. This man will never forgive himself. His heart already belongs to the mountain, and he will die before the spring unless he can find a reason to live.”

“A merchant?” The world went gray, then yellow as the silk.

“Yes. A merchant with three daughters, though only two remain to him. I have brought this here in the hopes that some small mercy might be granted him.”

Father.

“What of his daughters?”

“One is married, the other still too young to wed.”

“Who did she marry then?”

The hedgewitch placed the figure on the snow and gave me a smile with too many teeth. “You know his name, child.” She turned to go.

“Wait,” I screamed after her, but she did not, and her hunched form faded into the forest while the roses whispered and the life I’d chosen shattered like glass.

My father was dying. Madness, the witch had said, but I did not think it was madness. Guilt, perhaps, and grief, one too many losses piled up on his broad shoulders. He had been quietly breaking since my mother’s death, diminishing, fading, desperation turning him into a stranger. Now he feared his eldest daughter dead or worse, and he had given up at last while Aspen married Avery to keep the family fed and Juniper. . .

I had to return.

I had bought myself time, here in the wilds, but I had been a fool to think I could escape forever. My family needed me, and perhaps my presence would give my father the strength he needed to survive the winter.

And if not?

I gazed at the roses, seeing another casket, another time. If I could not save him, then I had to see him. I had to say goodbye. I had to tell him I forgave him, even if he couldn’t forgive himself.

Then I would return to the Huntress.

The wolf turned her head to look me in the eyes, and there was a message there that I could not read and was not sure I wanted to.