Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  “If it can be, I do not know how,” my mother admitted as she pulled a jar of raisins from the shelf. “What I do know is that we guardians are the only thing standing between the monsters in the dark wood and the people in our villages. And though I’ve been dreading your trial since the day you were born, I am relieved to have you at my side now, as all of Oakvale would be, if they understood. As your father would be, if he were still with us.”

  “Why did he go into the woods that day?” I’d asked that question many times before, but I’d never been satisfied with my mother’s claim that she had no idea why he’d ventured into the forest alone. Maybe now that I knew the truth about her—about myself—she would finally tell me the truth about him.

  “Adele.” Her voice was little more than a whisper, yet it held a crushing weight. “This isn’t the time, chère.”

  “Mama. Please. Just tell me.”

  Her gaze found mine as she set the raisins on the table, and she sighed. “He was looking for a lost child.”

  I frowned, trying to read the truth in her eyes, but her expression was guarded. There was still more to it. “Why would you let him go out there alone, when he couldn’t see in the dark wood? When you could?”

  “Your sister was sick, and I was home with her. I didn’t even know anything had happened until they brought him home, bleeding heavily and already raging with fever. He said he’d heard a child cry out from the dark wood.”

  “What child? Was it ever found?”

  Her eyes fell closed for a second. “You were that child, Adele. Your father said he heard you call out to him from the dark wood. There is no other child he would have gone after on his own. He believed there wasn’t time to gather a search party.”

  “But I wasn’t in the wood. In my entire life, I never went into the wood alone, until my trial!”

  “I know. We found you that afternoon, curled up asleep with Elena Rousseau, in her loft.”

  Fresh pain sliced into me, reopening the old wound with a new and bitter depth. “The dark wood whispers lies in stolen voices. Everyone knows that. So why would he think I was really out there?”

  My mother shrugged. “He knew that the forest called to you, even when you were a child. It seems to hold a particular, almost hypnotic appeal to a future guardian. Several times, we’d found you standing on the edge of the village, just staring into the darkness, and he was always worried that one day you would answer that call. Long before you were ready.”

  Guilt hit me like a blow to the gut. He wouldn’t have believed the voice in the forest to be mine, if he hadn’t often seen me staring into the dark wood. If he hadn’t known I’d inherited a reason to walk into the shadows.

  He’d died because of me.

  My mother pulled me into a hug, heedless of the bits of dough drying on my hands. “No, Adele, it wasn’t your fault.” She took a firm grip on my arms and looked right into my eyes. “He knew you probably weren’t really in the woods, but he couldn’t take the risk that you were. That you needed him. He couldn’t ignore your cries for help because he was your father, and he loved you, and he would have done anything to protect you.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes. And in his position, even without the ability to see in the dark, I would have done the same thing. No parent can ignore her child’s pleas. The dark wood knows just which fears to prey upon.”

  “I worried that’s what I was hearing, when I found little Tom,” I admitted in a whisper. “Everyone knows about the forest’s deceptions. But when I heard him—”

  “Don’t ever do that again.” My mother’s voice was fierce, the flash in her eyes even more so. “You were very, very lucky to have found a child instead of a monster, but that isn’t likely to ever be the case again. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, and when she let me go, I turned back to the dough. But my thoughts would not stop racing. “How did you meet Papa?”

  At first, I thought she wouldn’t answer. That the memory I’d dredged up was too painful.

  “I met him the day we were wed,” she said at last. “I was not much older than you, though we were betrothed as small children, in secret.”

  I glanced at her in surprise. Childhood betrothals were common for royalty, and even for nobility, for whom marriage was often a way to form a political alliance or to merge fortunes. But for villagers like us who owned no land? And in secret? “Why?”

  “Our parents came to an agreement to ensure that I would have a husband I could trust and that your father could contribute to the fight, even though, as a man, he could not become a guardian.”

  “That sounds like a business arrangement,” I said.

  She nodded. “Of sorts. Because it is very difficult for a guardian to be married to a man who does not—who cannot—know about her responsibilities. Who can’t know where his wife goes at night sometimes, or what his daughters will become.”

  A sick feeling twisted in my stomach, and I poured my frustration into the dough beneath my hands, kneading it too hard. “Why can’t Grainger know? His job is to protect people, and my job is to protect people. So why can’t we work side by side?”

  “Because he is the village watch, Adele, and no matter how it sounds, you and Grainger are not two sides of the same coin. He fights behind the shield of daylight. In the cocoon of firelight. He will never be able to understand that you need neither of those. Or why you need neither of those. He will never believe that a wolf can protect this village, instead of terrorizing it.”

  “You can’t be certain of that,” I insisted. “You don’t know him.”

  “I do know him.” She took a scoop of rye flour from the bin to start another batch of bread on the other side of the table. “He’s a good man, but he won’t understand that guardians aren’t the same as a whitewulf. He will see teeth, and claws, and fur, and he will think witch. Then he will light a fire.”

  “No. Mama, he loves me. He would never do that to his own wife.”

  “Adele, he will.” Pain echoed in the lines at the corners of my mother’s mouth. “I watched my own husband burn. Because it was necessary. And that’s exactly what Grainger will believe about you. About your grandmother and about me. About your little sister, who knows nothing about any of this. He will watch us all burn, because his duty is to the village, and that’s what he’ll think he’s doing. His duty.” She sighed. “Your stars are crossed, chère. I hate having to tell you that, because I understand how you feel about him. How he feels about you. But it will never work. It can’t—”

  “It might.”

  She looked up from the table and her gaze intensified. “It can’t. Because as I was, you have been betrothed to someone else since you were hardly old enough to walk.”

  “I . . . what?” My mind was suddenly empty as I grasped for the meaning of her unexpected announcement. “You cannot mean—”

  “Do you think Grainger will show me how to make a ball?” Sofia practically yelled as she appeared in the doorway, her cheeks flushed from the cold, her eyes shining brightly.

  “Out!” I shouted at her, desperate for just a few more minutes of privacy with my mother. “Go play, Sofia.”

  “Adele,” my mother scolded. Then she turned to my sister. “Why do you need a ball?”

  Sofia stuck her tongue out at me as she took off her cloak and hung it from a peg by the door, then she reached for her apron. “I’m faster than all the boys, and I can kick the ball farther, but I don’t even have one of my own.”

  “Didn’t your sister just help you make a new corn husk doll?” my mother said, while I struggled to process both her announcement and the fact that I couldn’t demand more details while Sofia was listening.

  “Yes, but you can’t kick a poppet down the street, Mama. Not very fast, anyway,” she added on her way into the back room.

  When the curtain fell behind my sister, my mother leaned across the table to whisper to me. “We’ll discuss this more tonight.”

  “
Tonight?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at the curtain. “It’s time for your training to begin.”

  Before I could ask what, exactly, she had in mind, Sofia reappeared. She carried two shallow clay bowls of milk that had been sitting in the cooler back room since the day before, so cream could rise to the top. “I hate butter churning day,” my sister mumbled as she set the bowls on the other table and began to skim off the cream.

  “Yes, but you like fresh butter,” Mama reminded her. “And she who churns the longest gets the first taste.”

  I rolled my eyes. I always churned the longest, and Sofia always got the first taste, because she was the youngest. That was the kind of white lie my mother justified by calling it “motivational.”

  How, exactly, would she justify failing to tell me that I’d been promised in marriage to a stranger when I was still just a small child?

  Eight

  “Sofia’s asleep?” Mama asked as I snuck out of the back room, letting the curtain fall closed behind me.

  “Like the dead.”

  She frowned. “I don’t care for that expression.”

  That felt reasonable, considering. “She’s sleeping like a baby,” I amended, fighting the urge to start firing questions at her. Holding my tongue for the rest of the day had been almost as much work as churning butter and kneading dough, and now that we were finally alone, I felt like I was about to burst from my need for information.

  Yet my mother was as calm and composed as ever, and I knew from experience that she would not talk until she was ready.

  She wore a red cloak just like mine, except that white fur trim lined not only her hood, but the entire garment.

  “You’ve had that since you were my age?” I asked, and she nodded.

  Despite the combination of fear and relief I’d seen in her eyes when I’d returned from my trial intact, a rare gleam of pride shined in them now. It must have been difficult for her to maintain her secret for so long. “I only wear it at night, when I head into the dark wood.”

  “Why? It’s beautiful.”

  She gave me a small smile. “I don’t like to stand out.”

  “Should I save mine for our secret work?”

  “No. Our neighbors have already seen your cloak and they’ll find it strange if you stop wearing it.”

  “Did they see yours, when you headed into the woods for your trial?”

  “No, because I was already in the woods. I grew up in the cabin, remember?”

  Actually, I’d forgotten.

  “How have you kept the trim so clean?” I asked, kneeling to examine the bottom hem of her cloak. Though the fur around her feet must have been brushing the ground for years, I could see no sign of use or discoloration in it.

  “Whitewulf fur doesn’t stain easily. Dirt seems to slide right off of it.”

  Come to think of it, the one I’d killed in the dark wood had looked pretty bright, despite presumably living in the forest.

  “I always told your grandmother that we should use the fur for cleaning.” My mother laughed softly. “But she said that would be disrespecting both the beast itself and the effort that went into slaying it.”

  “That does sound like Gran.” I stood and took the leather belt my mother handed me. “You must have slain many of them, to have this much fur on your cloak.”

  My mother huffed. “I’ve dispatched many more than this fur represents. To say nothing of the other monsters.”

  The thought of how many must be out there sent a chill across my flesh.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Almost.” I took my new hatchet from the shelf over the bread oven and dropped it into a loop on my belt, then I fastened my own cloak over my shoulders. “Should we take a lantern?”

  “We can’t sneak past the watchman on duty carrying a light, and we won’t need one. You will see better in normal darkness too, now, not just in the dark wood.” My mother hesitated at the door, turning to look at the curtain leading into the back room. “I’ve never left Sofia alone.”

  “She’ll be fine. She sleeps like the— Um . . . babies,” I said, and my mother’s lips quirked up. “Did you ever have to leave me alone when I was little?”

  “No. Your father was here to watch you when I had to venture into the dark wood. And you were old enough to take care of your sister in an emergency, by the time he died.”

  I’d been eight years old, the same age Sofia was now, but . . . “I had no idea you ever left in the night.”

  “That’s because I didn’t linger in the front room talking,” she chided with a smile. Then she pushed the door open quietly, and I followed her out into the cold night, relieved to note that she was right. My eyes made much better use of moonlight now.

  We walked down the dark dirt path past the town square, headed toward the western edge of the village. Fear and anticipation buzzed beneath my skin at the thought of going back into the dark wood.

  “What are we doing tonight, exactly?”

  “Hunting. Patrolling. Learning. Testing your stamina and reflexes.”

  “By killing monsters?”

  “Yes. Culling them from the population. That is the lion’s share of our duty.”

  “When were you planning to tell me about my betrothal?” I asked as we quietly passed the potter’s cottage.

  “Let’s try not to wake all of Oakvale,” she scolded with a glance around at all the darkened homes. There wasn’t so much as a candle lit in a single window. The only source of light, other than the moon and a sprinkling of stars, was the distant bob of a lantern to the east, carried by a watchman on patrol duty. And beyond that, the glow of the halo of torches defining the edge of the forest.

  “I need to know,” I insisted softly.

  My mother sighed, then she glanced to the west, toward the broad stretch of dark wood in the distance. She took my elbow and guided me somewhat insistently down the path until she could tug me behind a barn, to prevent the watchman on patrol from catching a glimpse of moonlight gleaming off her white fur trim.

  “Mama, how could I be betrothed?” I snapped, having reached the end of my patience. “How could you not tell me I’m betrothed?”

  “It wouldn’t have made any sense to tell you before your ascension.” Her jaw was set in a firm line, but her gaze looked worried. As if she weren’t entirely confident in that decision. “Until you discovered what you are, you couldn’t have understood the reason for the betrothal.”

  “And why couldn’t you tell me what I am? Why wait until my sixteenth year, then lure me into the dark wood under false pretenses?”

  My mother’s sigh seemed to carry the weight of the world. “I’m sorry, Adele. That isn’t how I wanted it. But the trial tests your instincts. Your reaction to danger, before you know what you’re capable of. Spilling whitewulf blood triggers the first change into a redwulf.”

  “You couldn’t have warned me? Or taught me how to kill a whitewulf?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Guardians have tried that in the past, and the girls who knew what was coming failed to ascend. To transform. It seems that only those who act on true instinct are capable of claiming their guardian form. Which is why you can’t tell Sofia any of this.”

  Her trial was eight years away, yet already I was terrified for my little sister. “This is barbaric.”

  “It certainly used to be,” my mother agreed. “We used to have to send girls into the dark wood and just hope they ran into a whitewulf before something else killed them. That’s how my aunt died. So your grandmother decided it would be safer to catch a wolf and release it directly into a potential guardian’s path. Her innovation preserved the test of pure instinct, yet prevented me from running into something else in the woods before I’d spilled whitewulf blood. Before I’d claimed my destiny and my abilities. She likely saved my life and yours. And Sofia’s. And by extension, she saved the lives of everyone we will protect over the coming years.

  “Those people are why it is importan
t for you to accept your calling. Your responsibility. And to marry a man who can give you daughters who will one day take up that same mantle.”

  My mother exhaled slowly, meeting my gaze in the moonlight. “Your betrothed is named Maxime Bernard, and he’s a few years older than you. I believe he’s seen nineteen summers.”

  “He’s not Grainger,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “He lives in Ashborne, and he will—”

  “Mama, are you going to make me marry him?” My voice sounded sharp with horror.

  “Of course not. If you think you cannot learn to love him, you may break off the betrothal. But you will at least hear me out. At least understand what your options are before you make your choice. And I certainly hope you know how very fortunate you are, to even have a choice.”

  I nodded, my jaw clenched hard enough to ache. I did know that.

  “Max is a carpenter,” my mother continued. “Having seen his father’s work, I suspect he is a very good carpenter, and he’s already built you a cottage on the southern edge of the village of Ashborne, a few days’ journey to the north of here.”

  My gaze narrowed on her in the dark. “How do you know he’s built a cottage?”

  “Do you remember the merchant who came shortly before the freeze? He was from Ashborne. He brought me a message from Max’s mother, assuring me that he is prepared for your union. That he has met his obligations, as negotiated by your father and me on your behalf when you were not yet two years old.”

  “He’s prepared . . .” I closed my eyes, trying to think it through. “Which means he—this Maxime—must have known about our betrothal for some time?”

  She nodded. “His mother assures me that he’s eager to meet you. To begin your life together. To prove himself worthy of calling a guardian—of calling you—his wife.”

  “But I’ve never . . . Mama, I’ve never even seen him! He might hate me! I might hate him!” And even if I didn’t, he wasn’t Grainger!

  And finally, the full impact of what I’d just heard hit me. “A cottage in Ashborne. I’m to live there? I’m to leave Oakvale? Leave you, and Gran, and Sofia?”