Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

“You . . . ?” I blinked at her. “And Mama? What . . . Gran, what’s happening?” I demanded softly as I picked up my empty basket and shook off the cloth covering, trying to hide the tremor in my hands.

  She stepped onto the path and tugged me forward with her, and finally I regained my sense of direction. Her cabin was directly ahead. “You are becoming what you were always meant to be. You and Sofia are descended from a long line of women gifted with great abilities and burdened with an even greater responsibility.”

  I stumbled to a stop on the path, frowning at her. “This is how you can live alone in the dark wood?” How she could see so well and move so lithely through the forest? “We’re all . . . What are we?” Werewolves, obviously. Yet not infected. Not snow-white, like the beast I’d killed.

  “There are many words for what we are, child, and you’ve heard most of them. Yet they all fall short of the truth.”

  “Monster,” I said as a chill worked its way across my flesh. “We’re monsters.”

  “Yes.” She nodded firmly, and I felt a little sick at the admission. I’d expected her to deny it. “Never doubt that we are monsters, Adele. But that is perhaps the vaguest of all the descriptors. We are werewolf. Loup garou. Lycanthrope. Every region has its own name for us, and none is more common than simply ‘witch.’ Because your neighbors’ superstitions are rooted in truth; what we do—what we are—relies on a very particular and ancient kind of magic. An ability to alter our forms and a set of skills that are just as natural to the women of our line as any of your human abilities are.”

  “Werewolves.” My voice echoed with shock. “We are monsters.”

  “Yes. But of a kind unlike any other. The wolf you killed—she was a beast. A whitewulf. They are destroyers. Indiscriminate slayers. Consumers of human flesh.”

  “And we are not?” The tension in my voice begged her for a word of solace.

  “No, child.” Her gentle smile did more than her words to ease my mind. “We are redwulf. We are guardians. You are destined to protect your village, as your mother has for years. As I did, before her. As Sofia will, some day. And as your own daughters will.”

  Confusion and fear battled within me, but before I could ask the rest of my questions, my grandmother pointed at a familiar landmark: a narrow, subtle fork in the path, where it turned toward her cabin. “This way.”

  Her clearing appeared within minutes, an oasis of light in a sea of darkness, and a comforting sight that had never failed to make me smile. As far as I knew, this was the only place in the entire dark wood where daylight ventured. And for the first time in my life it occurred to me to wonder why.

  “This place is special, isn’t it?” I felt that today, in a way I’d never been able to before. “Why is there light here? How is there light here?”

  “There is light here because I persist against the darkness,” she said as we stepped into the clearing. “The forest continually encroaches, but just like the village woodsmen do for Oakvale, I chop the trees down when they intrude upon my clearing. I cut the vines. I beat back the brush and the roots. I fight for this land, to keep it from being swallowed by the dark wood, as my mother did before me. As your mother will, soon. Your ascension has come just in time, because I cannot fight this battle forever. I am an old woman now.”

  Yesterday, I would have believed that. But today . . . “You just told me you tracked and captured a wolf. A whitewulf,” I corrected myself, before she could.

  “Yes. And if my strength holds out, I will be able to do the same for Sofia in a few years. If not, that will be up to your mother. And to you.” As if to punctuate her point, my grandmother pulled the hatchet from her belt, and as we approached her cottage, she bent to swing it at the ground, where a woody vine was coiling almost leisurely toward her foot.

  Her hatchet cleanly bisected the vine. The amputated bit went still, seeming to shrivel right before my eyes, while the rest slithered back into the woods faster than I’d ever seen a vine move. Before today, I’d only ever seen them writhe slowly, and that had been eerie enough.

  “Persistence,” Gran announced as she slid the hatchet back into the loop on her belt.

  On our way across the clearing, she stopped at her small stone well and pulled up a bucket of water, which she hoisted off the hook and handed to me. I took the heavy pail and followed her up three steps into the main room of her small but cozy cabin.

  A fire blazed in her hearth, a pot of stew suspended over it.

  “First, wash your face.” She handed me a rag as I set the bucket on the table. “Then change into that, and I’ll work on your dress.” Gran waved one hand at the nightgown draped across her bed, and I realized she’d laid it out for me.

  “You knew I would arrive covered in blood?”

  “I certainly hoped so. The first kill is important. Without it, you would never have been able to claim your wulf form. To ascend to your role as a guardian.”

  I wiped my face thoroughly, and the rag came away stained red. “So, if I’d been unable to kill that whitewulf, I wouldn’t have turned into a redwulf?”

  Gran took a wooden bowl from a shelf on the wall and filled it with a ladleful of stew from the pot. “If you’d been unable to kill her, you would be dead.”

  Horror washed over me. “Has that happened? To someone in our family? To one of the other . . . guardians?”

  “A few times. Most recently to my sister. Margot. She died during her trial.”

  “Is that what this was?” I scrubbed my face one more time, then I laid the rag over the back of a chair to dry. “A trial?”

  “Yes. Your mother has been terrified of this day for years, so let’s get you cleaned up as quickly as possible, so we can send you home and put her mind at ease.” She glanced pointedly at the nightgown again.

  I took my cloak off and hung it on a hook by the door, where my grandmother had already hung her own. “This trim . . .” I ran one hand over the fur edging her hood. “Is this whitewulf?”

  “Of course. Tonight, I’ll go back for the fur from your first kill, and on your next visit, I will adorn your cloak with it. As is tradition.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Fur was used as a warm lining in everyday clothing and as a decorative edging—a purfelle. But I’d never seen anyone in the village wearing fur with as fine a pelt or as pure a color as the trim on Gran’s cloak. My new trim would not go unnoticed.

  Maybe people would think it was rabbit fur, from a distance.

  “I need your dress, Adele.” Gran sank into a chair in front of the fire with the bucket of fresh water at her feet and a scrub brush in one hand.

  “Sorry.” I reached back to untie my bodice and loosen the laces, then I pulled the dress over my head, careful not to smear any more of the blood on my skin. I stepped into her nightgown and handed her my dress.

  “Next time, fasten your cloak at the front, and with any luck, your dress will be spared.” She dipped her brush into the bucket, then she began scrubbing at my clothing. “Eat, child. You must be famished, after your first change.”

  I was. So I sank into the chair at her small table and dug in to the stew. “How did this happen?” I asked around a bite of potato and carrot. “How did we come to be guardians?”

  “For as long as Oakvale has been threatened by the dark wood, the guardians—specifically, women descended from our bloodline—have defended it. Most other villages in the path of the unnatural forest have their own guardians. Heaven help any that don’t,” she muttered beneath her breath.

  “Why have I never heard this? Why has no one ever heard this?” Yet I knew the answer before I’d even finished asking the question. “Because monsters are burned. Like Papa.”

  She nodded. “Because the village would believe the same thing of a redwulf as it would of a whitewulf—that we are monsters.”

  “And they’re not wrong.” That understanding bruised me deep inside. I shifted in my seat, trying to alleviate the sudden feeling that I didn’t fit pro
perly inside my own flesh. That I no longer knew my own body.

  “No. But they’re not entirely right, either. We are much more than just monsters.”

  “We’re guardians. But . . . what if I don’t want to be a guardian?”

  Gran looked up from her work, her gaze settling on me with an almost palpable weight. “That is your choice. But know that if you choose to stand by when you could fight, people will die. I know this is a lot to process at once. And I know it’s quite a burden to lay on a girl’s shoulders. But please believe me, Adele—there is no greater regret in the world than knowing you could have saved a life, yet you chose not to.”

  “I . . .” I exhaled slowly. “I don’t want to shirk a duty. It’s just that . . .” This wasn’t how my life was supposed to go. I was supposed to marry Grainger, and he was supposed to protect the village. I was supposed to work at the bakery with my mother and live in a little cottage next door to Elena and Simon, where our children would grow up to be the best of friends.

  This—whitewulfs, and guardians, and the dark wood—wasn’t a part of the plan. In my wildest dreams, I never could have imagined all of this, yet Gran clearly expected me to leave her cabin in my red cloak, having ascended to a position and a responsibility I never asked for. I never wanted.

  Did my mother truly expect this of me too?

  “Eat.” Gran dipped her brush into the bucket again. “I know it’s a lot. But the more time you spend in the dark wood, the more natural it will all feel. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword.”

  I took another bite and made myself swallow it. “Why are guardians needed, when we have the village watch? Grainger is a skilled fighter, and he’ll take over for his father someday.”

  “Grainger, and his father, and the rest of the watchmen can’t see in the dark wood, child. There is little they can do in the forest beyond the fall of whatever light they bring with them. The watchmen need us, though they don’t even know we exist.”

  No one knew. Yet if I were going to marry Grainger . . .

  “Gran, if we tell them—if we show them—we could work together. We could—”

  Her chair creaked as she stood to scowl at me, my dress hanging from her white-knuckled hands, splotched with water from her scrubbing. “Do you remember what it was like to watch your father burn?”

  Pain gripped my chest. “Of course I remember.” There was no clearer image in my memory, and it haunted me every single day. Every time I passed the scorched post in the village square.

  “Do not speak of the guardians to Grainger Colbert, child. Nor to anyone else. Not if you value your own life. Or your sister’s. Or your mother’s. Promise me.”

  “I . . .” Her fierce expression gave me no other choice. “I promise.”

  “You will have to be wary of him, Adele. Your duties will overlap his, but he must not know this. He must not see you go into the forest at night. He must not see you return. He must not find blood on your clothes, or weapons on your belt, or leaves in your hair. I know you care for him, but it is dangerous for a guardian to be so familiar with a watchman.”

  “He would never—”

  “He would,” she insisted as she sank into her chair again, with another pointed look at my stew bowl. “Watchmen burn monsters, child. So you must keep your word.”

  “Of course.” I ate several more bites in silence, my thoughts racing along with my heartbeat. I intended to marry Grainger. How was I supposed to keep such a secret from my husband?

  “What are my duties, Gran? Am I to patrol the dark wood, like the watch patrols the village?”

  “No, the forest is much too big for that. You can see in the unnatural darkness, now, but you are not the kind of monster that truly belongs in the dark wood. Your job is to hunt the beasts. To cull their population, particularly where they venture near Oakvale. A guardian protects her village at all costs, in both the town and the woods. But she does it in absolute secrecy. So you will hunt, and you will patrol the path where it runs through the forest, especially on rare occasions when there are villagers to guard. When a caravan heads out or an emergency messenger is sent through the woods.”

  That only happened during an outbreak of illness, fire, or famine, in the winter months when the river could not be traveled—rare occasions indeed.

  “But the watch accompanies anyone sent into the woods. To protect the travelers.”

  My grandmother heaved an unladylike snort. “And who do you think protects the watch? We guardians chaperone them from the shadows, making sure those men with their swords have little to protect the travelers from. That nothing attacks the caravan, if a torch goes out. You will be there, watching to see that no one strays from the path. You will protect them from the darkness. And they must have no idea you are there.”

  “You do that, now?”

  Gran nodded. “As does your mother, when she can get away from the bakery without suspicion.” And, like the rest of the village, I’d had no idea. “She and I are the reason Oakvale hasn’t lost a citizen in the dark wood in years. Though she’s been able to do less of that, with two girls to care for.”

  “One, now.” I chewed into a bite of venison. “Since I passed the trial.” I was old enough to marry, and I’d been working alongside my mother in the bakery for years. Now, evidently, I would be working alongside her in the dark wood as well.

  To my surprise, the jolt that thought sent through me was part terror, and part . . . anticipation. Curiosity.

  Gran huffed. “Your ascension was only the start, child. But you will grow stronger and faster with time. With experience. With training.” She stood again, holding my dress up. The front was wet, from her scrubbing, but the splattered drops of blood were gone. “Change again and come eat in front of the fire. Your dress will dry faster that way.”

  As I changed out of the nightgown, Gran set my chair next to hers and scooped out a bowl of stew for herself. “You have more questions?”

  “Was it a whitewulf that attacked my father?” I asked as I sat next to her.

  “Yes, though most people don’t know that term. Or that there’s more than one kind of werewolf. And there are much greater dangers, deeper in the wood.”

  “Then why do you live out here? Why don’t you come stay in the village with us?”

  She blotted the corner of her mouth with a clean cloth. “Because I refuse to give up any more ground.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She leaned forward, slowly stirring her stew with a wooden spoon. “When my father built this cottage for my mother, it was not in the dark wood. Back then, the wood was a more distant menace, slowly creeping across the land. Over the course of several years, my mother saw that it was headed this direction, so she came here to keep up with the threat. To protect the handful of cottages that would become Oakvale. By the time I was born, the dark wood had overtaken much of the landscape, save for this clearing my parents kept safe. But after her ascension, my Celeste didn’t want to raise her family in such isolation, so she and your father settled in the village.”

  “Papa.” Suddenly everything I’d thought I’d known about him—about his death and his life—felt like a half-finished story. “Did he know about the guardians? About . . . us?”

  “Yes.” Gran held up one finger, cutting off my next question before I could ask it. “Your father wasn’t a watchman, Adele. He was never the danger to your mother that Grainger Colbert is to you. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was a very special man, particularly suited to your mother, and to her calling as a guardian.”

  “And yet, she let them kill him.” I bit my lip, but it was too late to take the words back. It wasn’t fair of me to blame my mother for my father’s death, so I’d always kept that thought locked tightly within my own heart. But knowing what I knew now?

  I wasn’t supposed to see it. My grandmother was watching Sofia and me that day, but the bakery is right on the edge of the village square, and while she was busy with my baby sister, I snuck outs
ide and—

  “She just watched, while they tied him to the stake and set him on fire, because they thought he was a monster. But she was the monster. We all are.”

  “She had no other choice, child. He was infected. It broke her heart to watch him suffer and die, but if he’d lived, he would no longer have been your father. Her husband. He would have become a whitewulf. He would have terrorized the village, and it would have been up to your mother to protect Oakvale, even against her own husband. And your maman . . . she would never have let me spare her that burden. She would have done her duty herself, but she never got that chance, because he was pulled from the woods by the watch before she even knew he’d gone into the forest.”

  “But surely she could have tried to save him.” I knew I was wrong, even as I said the words. I understood that now better than ever before, having seen a whitewulf for myself. But my heart could not admit what my head knew to be true. I could not think of my father as a danger to anyone, much less to an entire village.

  “Suspicion would have been cast upon her, if she’d tried to defend him. People would have believed her to be infected too, because who would defend a werewolf but another werewolf? And that was too close to the truth to risk. She had to protect you girls. And your father understood that. He never fought his sentence.”

  My hand clenched around my stew bowl, while I tried to accept what I was hearing.

  My father believed he had to die. And my mother let it happen.

  “Now that you know who you really are, you should have a long talk with your mother. Find out who she really is. And who your father was. But make sure Sofia is not listening. Your sister cannot know about any of this until she’s older.”

  “Can’t you tell me about them?”

  “I could, but your mother deserves to tell her own story. I can tell you about my own life, however.” Gran spread her arms wide, her bowl gracefully balanced on one knee. “Over the years, I’ve watched this unnatural forest swallow Oakvale like it swallowed this clearing, isolating our little village, except where the river borders it. I have fought against the dark wood my entire life.” Firelight flickered in her eyes. “And I will continue to do that until the day I die.”