Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  Something was happening to me. Something strange and miraculous.

  The lantern was suddenly nearly as visible as it had been before I’d stepped into the forest. Though it was useless now. The metal frame had come apart, and—

  One thinly hammered metal panel had come loose, exposing a sharp, wickedly jagged edge.

  As the wolf thundered toward me, its huffing breath growing louder with each passing second, I ripped that small panel from the frame and clutched it in my right hand, ignoring the pain as an edge bit into my skin. Distantly, I realized I could smell my own blood as it rolled down my palm.

  An instant later, the fallen tree rocked against my back as the wolf launched itself off the trunk. The beast flew over me to land in the underbrush a few feet away, and as it spun to face me, I got the first good look at my opponent.

  It was huge, its narrow muzzle pulled back in a snarl, revealing sharp teeth I could see alarmingly well. Its claws gripped the dirt as it prepared to leap. Its fur was like fresh snow, pale and gleaming.

  The wolf pounced, driving me to my back in the dry underbrush. I screamed as massive paws landed on my shoulders, claws digging into my skin through the thick wool of my cloak. My pulse raced fast and loud, and my vision swam. The wolf snarled, and the odor of rot on its breath wafted over me. Then its massive muzzle opened, and the beast lunged for my face.

  I shoved the metal panel into its neck.

  Sharp teeth froze inches from my nose. Saliva dripped from its muzzle, and I turned my face so that it hit my cheek instead of trailing into my mouth.

  The wolf tried to back away, and adrenaline surged through me. My left arm shot out, clamping around the beast’s neck out of some instinct I couldn’t fathom. I rolled to my right, throwing the wolf onto its side. My right hand twisted the hunk of metal buried in the monster’s neck, dragging the makeshift blade through its flesh. Across its furry throat.

  The beast made a strangling sound as blood sprayed from the wound. I scrambled to my feet, trying to escape the mess, but a warm stream hit the side of my face and splattered the front of my dress through my open cloak.

  For a moment, I stood, stunned and gasping for breath.

  Then a vicious cramp seized every muscle in my body at once, drawing my arms and legs into unnatural positions. I collapsed into the dirt on my side, twitching, trapped in mute horror as my entire body became one excruciating injury. My bones ached cruelly. My joints popped. My skin—every square inch—was assaulted with a vicious itch.

  I felt like I was being pulled apart on the rack and stitched into a new shape.

  And as suddenly as the whole thing had begun, it ended.

  I sat up, perplexed, yet panting with relief from the fading pain. And with a start, I realized that the world looked brand-new.

  I’d been able to see better in the woods than ever before since the wolf had attacked me, but suddenly I could see as if it were broad daylight. A hundred different hues of fallen leaves, from crunchy brown to black and rotting. Every crevice on the bark of every tree within sight. Thick, gnarly woody vines, the grayish brown of tree trunks. I processed all of it with an eerie clarity.

  WELCOME, CHILD.

  I flinched, startled by a message that seemed to have bypassed my ears entirely, to be spoken directly into my head. I’d heard my father’s voice in the woods several times since his death, but this was no voice I recognized. It didn’t sound human.

  This was different than the dark wood’s normal manipulation. It was more of a . . . greeting.

  I looked around, searching warily for the source, and instead, my gaze snagged on the white wolf lying in a pool of its own blood, staring sightlessly at the fallen tree behind me. Its throat was a gruesome wound, still oozing blood into a puddle soaking into the ground. A foot away lay the pane of metal that had ripped open a grisly gash in its fur.

  I’d done that.

  I reached for the metal, but the hand that stretched into my sight wasn’t a hand at all. It was a paw. A wolf’s paw, with thick, rust-colored, wiry fur that looked nothing like the beautiful snowy fur of the wolf I’d killed.

  Terror fired through me, tightening my throat. Racing in my pulse. I tried to clench my right fist, and the rust-colored paw curled inward, claws curving toward the ground.

  I rose, and I found myself standing on four legs.

  As panic gripped my chest—as I sucked in rapid, shallow breaths—a frightening comprehension settled into my bones. I was a wolf.

  This isn’t possible. Yet my body welcomed the new form as if it were an old and comfortable dress. The night was freezing, yet I felt warm, insulated by the fur covering my skin. I could easily distinguish a myriad of individual scents. Rotting leaves. My own blood. The burnt wick from my extinguished candle. The musky scent of the wolf lying dead in front of me.

  I’d feared death in the dark wood, yet I’d succumbed to an even worse fate. I had become a monster.

  Noooo. A lupine whine leaked from my throat.

  I’d been infected. But how? The wolf hadn’t bitten or scratched me. It hadn’t broken my skin. Yet there I stood, in a form that would terrify my neighbors.

  When I was eight, my father was burned alive in the village square, while my mother and I watched from the crowd, because my neighbors suspected he might turn into a werewolf, after being attacked by one.

  Now I had become, without any doubt, the very beast they’d believed him to be.

  And yet, I didn’t feel like a monster. Or, how I imagined a monster must feel. I had no urge to spill human blood. To consume human flesh. Still, when the rest of Oakvale discovered what I had become, my fate would echo my father’s. My mother would lose me like she’d lost him, and this time Sofia was old enough to be scarred by the ordeal, just like I’d been eight years ago. The charred post in the village square would haunt her like it haunted me.

  This can’t be happening.

  I backed away, shaking my head in mute denial, and my paws got tangled in something. In a mass of material.

  I was caught up in my own dress—or maybe in my cloak. I backed up, tossing my head, trying to fight my way free from the cocoon of cloth, but that only seemed to further entangle me.

  “Adele.”

  I froze at the sound of my name, and it took me a second to realize I recognized that voice. And yet another second to realize that the speaker shouldn’t have recognized me, as I currently stood.

  Gran? But the word came out as another hoarse whine.

  “Calm down, chère. Everything is okay,” she assured me as I nudged my way forward to peek from beneath the hood of my new cloak. “You did very well.”

  I . . . what?

  “Your mother will be so proud.”

  My mother would be proud that I’d become a monster?

  I tossed my head, and the hood flopped to the right, revealing the forest to me again. And there stood my grandmother, straight and tall in a bright red cloak virtually identical to mine, except for a beautiful white fur trim.

  I’d never seen her wear that cloak before.

  She knelt in front of me, unfazed by the dead wolf, and untied the cord holding my cloak closed. Then she pulled it aside to loosen the bodice beneath. “Come on out of there, child.”

  Finally free, I crawled out of the ill-fitting garments and stood in front of her. Something swished in the underbrush behind me, and I spun around, on alert for the new threat, only to realize that I’d heard my own tail swishing through a bed of dead leaves.

  Because I had a tail.

  My grandmother laughed. “That takes a little getting used to. But your instincts are good—there is much to fear in the dark wood, even for us. Be still for a moment. Close your eyes and listen, and you’ll see.”

  I didn’t want to be still. I didn’t want to close my eyes. I wanted answers. But I couldn’t ask any questions, in my current form.

  “Go on, child. Close your eyes,” my grandmother insisted. So I did.

  At first, I
heard nothing but my own breathing. My own heartbeat. Then slowly, I became aware of a subtler sound. A soft sliding, like a snake slithering through the underbrush toward me, from the left. Only it was much too cold for snakes.

  My eyes flew open. My front left paw slammed down on something long and round. Something about the thickness of two of my fingers. It was a woody vine, which had been heading right for me—moving all on its own—until I’d pinned it. And even as I stared at it, the vine began to curl upward on either side of my paw, slowly winding around my wrist. Or, what would be my wrist, if I hadn’t become a monster.

  “Good.” My grandmother gave me an approving nod, and I whined, puzzled by how pleased she seemed about the horrific change in me. “But that’s only the beginning. You’re more prepared, now that you can see in the dark wood, but that doesn’t make you safe. Reassume your human form, and let’s get you cleaned up.”

  I could only cock my head to the side, hoping the gesture communicated a question I couldn’t actually ask.

  She smiled as she knelt in front of me, her joints popping in protest. “You only have to want the change, to make it happen. Think about your human form. Focus on reclaiming it.”

  I blinked at her, then I turned to assess the threat from more vines slithering slowly toward us. Beyond those, I heard a symphony of other sounds, and I realized that the monsters—and maybe the dark wood itself—were closing in on us. We should go. Surely I could reassume my human form in a safer location.

  Another whine leaked from my throat with that thought.

  “I’ll watch over you, child.” My grandmother stood and tucked back one side of her cloak, revealing a hatchet with a distinctly sharp blade, hanging from a belt buckled around the waist of her dress. “Get going, now.”

  So I closed my eyes and thought about my human form—the only form I’d ever known, until a few minutes ago. I visualized my feet, with high arches and long second toes. I remembered my arms, my somewhat bony wrists, and the narrow fingers that had grown adept at kneading dough. I thought of my face. Of the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of my nose and the highest part of both cheekbones. And of my hair, long and strawberry blond, which shone like copper in bright sunlight.

  Suddenly that full-body cramp enveloped me again, and I fell to the forest floor, writhing as my joints popped and my bones ached. As my skin itched viciously and my muscles contracted painfully.

  Less than a minute later, it was all over, just like before. Only this time, I found myself curled into a ball on a bed of dead leaves and sharp twigs, naked and shivering. But in my own human skin.

  “Gran?” I sat up, knees tucked to my chest, trying to ignore the way that bits of the forest floor were poking my bare backside. “What’s happening? The wolf didn’t bite me. How could I be infected?”

  “Get dressed, chère. I’ll explain on the way to my cabin.”

  Shivering violently, I looked around as I pulled my clothing closer and was disappointed to realize the dark wood was once again a land of murky shadows. That was still much better than I’d ever been able to see in the dark wood before, yet a far cry from the clarity I’d had in that inexplicable wolf form.

  “Hurry, Adele,” my grandmother urged, and I pulled my dress over my head as fast as I could, trying to push back the feeling of exposure and vulnerability that my own nudity inspired. “Stand and turn,” she said, and when I had, she tightened the laces of my bodice, then tied them. Gran snatched my cloak from the ground and shook it free of leaves and twigs, then she draped it over my shoulders.

  “This way. You strayed quite a bit from the trail.” She took off in a direction I couldn’t identify without the sun visible overhead, and I bent to grab my broken lantern.

  “I—Gran, I didn’t stray from the trail. I was chased from it by a huge werewolf!” I turned to stare down at the dead wolf. “What about . . . that? We’re just going to leave it?”

  “I’ll come back for what can be used. The forest will dispose of the rest,” my grandmother insisted, gesturing for me to follow her. “The dark wood is full of monsters, you know.”

  I nodded as I followed her deeper into the forest. “Everyone knows that.”

  Three

  “I’m sure you must have questions,” my grandmother said as I trailed her through the dark wood, my gaze constantly roving, on alert for threats.

  “Just a few.”

  Her soft laughter floated back toward me as I took in my surroundings, and the thing that most struck me, now that I could actually see in the dark wood, was the fact that the forest itself truly seemed to be alive. While I’d had that feeling before, experiencing it up close was entirely different.

  Unless she was asleep, my sister, Sofia, was constantly in motion, as if she just couldn’t sit still. The dark wood moved like that. As if it were breathing. Fidgeting. Waiting impatiently to be given something to do.

  Or someone to eat.

  Vines slowly coiled, wrapping around branches or twisting their way toward the ground. Limbs swayed without the aid of the wind. Branches seemed to grasp for me as I walked, like hands reaching out from the darkness. But for the first time in my life, I could see well enough to smack at fluttering, stick-like bugs the size of my palm when they tried to land on my arms and shoulders. I could sidestep a deep shadow blinking at me from beneath a clump of underbrush—a shadow that appeared to have teeth.

  “Adele?” My grandmother turned to look back at me, and I scurried to catch up.

  “Sorry. I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m a werewolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is that possible, if I wasn’t scratched or bitten?”

  “You were not infected by the beast you killed. However, your transformation was triggered by your contact with it. The wolf has always been in your blood. This has always been your fate.”

  “What does that mean? And how did you know that was me?” I gestured, one-handed, in the direction of the spot where she’d found me. “How did you know I would be out here?”

  Her smile felt strangely reassuring. “Tonight is the full moon, child. You were born under this moon, sixteen years ago.” She stepped over a thick root as it rippled up from the dirt in her path, moving with the ease of a much younger woman. With more grace and quicker reflexes than I’d ever seen from her. “Your mother and I have been planning for this day for a very long time.”

  “You planned for my candle to go out on the path? For me to be attacked by a—?” And suddenly I understood. “You made this happen. Why? How?”

  “Your mother rigged the lantern. I released the wolf.”

  “I—what?” I stopped, and when she realized—again—that I wasn’t following, my grandmother turned, impatience flickering behind her pale eyes. “Where did you get a werewolf? Why would you send him after me?”

  “Her,” Gran corrected. “I tracked and captured her this morning. Unfortunately, I was too late to stop her from attacking a merchant wagon.” Her shoulders slumped beneath the weight of a failure more profound than anything I could imagine. “I think it was on the way from Oldefort. The driver and his wife both lost their lives.”

  “We weren’t expecting a merchant.” They were few and far between in the winter months, and when Oakvale was forced to send people through the forest for emergency supplies during the harshest part of the year, the village watch always sent an escort with them. The group invariably left in the middle of the day, heavily armed, carrying torches and lanterns. We hadn’t lost any merchants in several years.

  Oldefort, evidently, was not so fortunate.

  Gran nodded gravely. “My greatest sorrow is that I cannot protect the ones I don’t know to expect.”

  “Protect them? How would you protect a caravan, alone in the dark wood? And how did you capture a werewolf?” I blinked at her in the shadows. “I don’t understand how any of this is possible.”

  Gran glanced pointedly at the ground near my feet, and I looked down to see another woo
dy vine reaching for my ankle. “They aren’t always that slow,” she said. “They’re still testing you.”

  “They’re testing me? The vines are testing me?”

  “Twice in my tenure as a guardian, I’ve found villagers hanging from vines draped over tree branches, as if from a gallows. You should not get in the habit of standing still for long out here.”

  “Considering that I don’t plan to be in the dark wood very often—”

  “You will be.” The gaze she turned on me felt heavy. “You must be, Adele. Come. There’s the path.”

  I looked in the direction she pointed, and I saw the path worn into the forest floor by years of traffic—foot, hoof, and cart wheel. I’d never had a clearer view of it. And there, just a few feet away, lay the basket of bread I’d dropped.

  “I’m sorry, Gran.” I knelt on the ground next to the loaf of raisin bread, which sat on its side beneath a broad fern leaf. “It’s ruined.” The rye bread hadn’t fared much better.

  “Don’t fuss over the bread, child. It was only an excuse to send you out here.”

  But she loved sweet breads, and raisins were too costly to waste. And yet, despite the squandered expense, bread did seem like a pointless thing to fret over, considering that somewhere out there in the forest, a merchant and his wife had lost their lives. That moments before, I’d stood on four legs, just like the beast that killed them.

  A fresh bolt of fear crashed over me as that understanding finally seemed to settle in. “Gran, how are you so calm? They’re going to burn me alive in the village square, just like Papa.”

  “They’re not going to burn you.” She waved away my fear with an off-hand gesture. “No one’s going to know about this.”

  “Of course people will know! How could I possibly keep them from finding out?”

  “You will keep your secret the same way your mother and I have kept ours.”