Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  “You think she would bite her own mother?”

  Max shrugged. “That’s how a wolf pup defends itself.”

  And suddenly it occurred to me how easily Tom could have bitten Grainger, when he’d carried the boy into the village, the day I’d found him. Or—

  “Sofia!” My sister’s name burst from my tongue. “She played with Tom and Jeanne earlier this week.”

  “He’s no more threat to your sister than he is to you, because women of our bloodline cannot be infected by a whitewulf.” My mother leaned into her work, kneading the dough from her shoulders. “However, if either Tom or Romy bites anyone else, the snowball that is this fledgling epidemic will begin to roll downhill, picking up speed and size as it flattens this entire village.”

  “Epidemic?”

  “Normally when a whitewulf bites, it kills and consumes, unless it’s driven away before its victim dies, as was the case with your father.” My mother wiped a smear of flour from her chin with the back of one forearm. “But we’re talking about children. While they’re young, I suspect they’re far more likely to scratch or bite to defend themselves than to kill. Which means that, should they feel threatened or cornered, or even just confused, they could lash out and infect people who have no idea what’s happened to them. Who could then infect others. And so on.”

  Though I was already suffering from vivid mental images of Tom and Romy growing into bloodthirsty little monsters, it hadn’t yet occurred to me that they could unleash a plague of whitewulf infections upon Oakvale.

  Guilt hit me like a burst of cold wind, stealing my breath. I sank onto a stool at the table. “This is because of me. I brought him here.” I glanced at Tom again, and when I found him watching us, still curled up on the floor, another chill traveled down my spine.

  Could he understand us? Beyond that, even if he knew the words we were saying, did he truly comprehend what we were talking about?

  “But what else was I supposed to do with him? I had no idea he was a whitewulf. I couldn’t just leave a child alone to die in the dark wood. That’s what would have happened to him, right?”

  “Without his mother?” Mama shrugged. “Quite possibly.”

  I lowered my voice even further, hoping Tom wouldn’t hear. “Do you think Gran knew about him when she caught his mother?” The beast whose blood was intended to trigger my own transformation.

  “I can’t imagine she did,” my mother said. “She wouldn’t have left him out there alone.”

  But I couldn’t tell, from her phrasing, what the alternative might have been.

  Gran would understand that any whitewulf pup she left alive would only grow into another threat to be dispatched, before it could snatch a terrified villager from the path and eat him. Would she really have chosen a different whitewulf for me to kill, if she’d known about the pup? Or was my mother saying Gran would have killed little Tom when she captured his mother?

  As horrifying as that thought was—wulf or not, he was still just a child—the truth was that if I’d left Tom to his fate in the dark wood, little Romy wouldn’t have been bitten.

  I turned to Tom again and was relieved to see that he’d gone back to sleep. “So, what are we going to do about Romy?”

  “As harsh as it sounds,” Max said, staring into an untouched tankard of ale, “what’s best for everyone is if she succumbs to the fever.”

  “That does sound harsh,” I breathed. “Especially considering that Madame Paget has already lost two children.” Most mothers had, of course. We’d lost my baby brother at just two weeks old, several years before Sofia was born.

  “Losing her to the fever would be a mercy, considering the alternative,” my mother insisted as she added pungent starter from a clay pot left to grow yeast from flour and water. “You know what will happen to them both, if anyone figures out what they are.”

  Flames crackled in my memory, accompanied by the phantom scent of burning flesh. “But they’re just children.” So far, they’d only proven a danger to the village chickens.

  She worked the starter into her flour, taking out her frustration on the dough in stiff, harsh motions. “And yet, they will grow into vicious monsters that crave violence and feed on human flesh.”

  “Is that certain?” I asked, devastated by the prospect.

  “Unfortunately,” my mother said through clenched teeth.

  An overwhelming wave of hopelessness crashed over me, sucking the air from my lungs. “So then, her fate is much the same, regardless. Either she dies of the fire raging beneath her skin, or of the one the village will light around her.”

  “No.” My mother abandoned her dough and wiped her hands on her apron. “It is our duty to make sure she suffers neither of those fates.”

  Dread settled into my soul like smoke, too thick to breathe through. “You want to kill her?” I demanded softly. “No.” Romy was just a child. My mother and I were there when she was born!

  “I don’t think we can afford to wait and see if she recovers,” Max said, and little hairs stood up all over my arms. “The safest thing to do, for the entire village, is—”

  “No,” I repeated. “There has to be some alternative to killing a child.”

  “Adele, I know this is difficult.” My mother rounded her work surface to lean against the end of it closest to me. “But we have a responsibility to the village. This is part of a guardian’s duty.”

  “Isolation,” I said, determined to find some way to save her. “We can isolate her, so that no one else will be infected, while we wait out the fever.”

  Max leaned back in his chair. “How will you explain that to her family?”

  “And afterward, what then?” my mother asked gently. “If she survives, what will we do with her?” She glanced at Tom. “With them both?”

  “I don’t know! Release them into the dark wood, and hope some whitewulf mother takes them in? Or let nature take its course? Either way, that’s better than us killing a five-year-old,” I whispered, my voice so soft I could hardy hear myself. “I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.”

  “We have no choice but to talk about this,” my mother snapped softly, and I looked up, surprised to find her bright green eyes shining with frustration. “Our job is to protect our neighbors from the threat of the dark wood, even when that threat ventures into the village itself. Even when that threat looks like a harmless child. You must be prepared to make difficult decisions, and in this case, that involves weighing the survival of an entire village against the lives of two—”

  The front door flew open, cutting my mother off in mid-sentence, and Sofia burst into the room on a gust of icy wind. Her eyes were wide, her red waves a wild, tangled mess flying around cheeks flushed from the cold. “Madame Paget sent me, and I ran all the way!”

  “What is it?” my mother asked, visibly recomposing herself as she pushed the door closed. “Is it Romy? Is the fever worsening?”

  “No, it’s broken! She’s awake, and she’s asking for Tom,” Sofia said, and I followed her gaze to see that the boy had been startled awake by her arrival. “Can I take him to her?”

  “No!” I shouted, and Sofia jumped, shocked by my response.

  “Why not?” She glanced around the room in confusion, as the obvious tension seemed to sink in. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’ll take Tom.” My mother took off her apron and hung it on a hook by the door, leaving her fresh dough to rise on her work surface.

  I started to suggest that maybe Tom should stay at our house, but then I came to a conclusion my mother had obviously already reached—that the Pagets were at risk with Romy in their house anyway, and that indulging Romy’s request might keep her calm, which could keep her from biting or scratching anyone.

  “Tom?” Mama held one hand out to the child on the floor, and he stood to take it.

  “Can I come?” Sofia asked.

  My mother hesitated. “Yes, but let Tom keep Romy company. You and Jeanne can go play in th
e square.” A plan no doubt intended to keep Jeanne away from the two little whitewulfs.

  “Well, so much for my isolation idea,” I said, when the door had closed behind them.

  “It was kindhearted,” Max said, yet I could tell from his tone that he thought it was also impractical. “But now we have to deal with the reality in front of us. There are two whitewulf pups in Oakvale, and if we don’t do something, they’re eventually going to bite someone. Someone else, in Tom’s case.”

  “And, presumably at some point Romy’s going to change into a little wolf puppy, as Tom has evidently been doing at night. Do you have any idea when that will be?”

  Max shook his head. “No. But when she does, the village will assume the entire Paget family has come under some evil influence.”

  A chill crawled over my flesh. Could he be right? Would my neighbors believe that the Pagets were . . . receptive to the dark wood?

  “Does she have pox?” Sofia poked at the hunk of venison roast in her bowl.

  “No, it isn’t pox.” My mother set a second bowl of venison and broth in front of Jeanne Paget, along with a hunk of stale bread.

  “Is it the plague?” Jeanne asked, as she dipped her bread into her broth.

  “No, it’s just a fever,” I told her. “And your sister’s recovering already.”

  My mother had convinced Madame Paget to let Jeanne stay the night with Sofia, so she could focus on caring for Romy, who still felt weak. But we’d had no luck trying to save Madame and Monsieur Paget from the risk of a bite, because we couldn’t tell them that their daughter was a whitewulf.

  Which meant all we could do was hope that even with her strange new lupine instincts, Romy wouldn’t bite her own parents, and that they knew enough about Tom’s tendency to bite to stay away from his mouth. Because Romy would not be separated from him.

  And because bringing him back with us would only have put Jeanne at the same risk of a bite that her parents were in from Romy. At least this way, the threat was contained to one cottage.

  While the girls ate, my mother gestured for me to follow her into the back room. “You should have seen them,” she whispered as she sat on the edge of her straw mattress and resumed braiding the candle wick she’d begun the day before. “As soon as he saw her, Tom climbed into the bed with Romy, and they curled up together to sleep, like pups born of the same litter.”

  I sighed as I sank onto the bed next to her. “In a way, I suppose they were.”

  “There isn’t going to be a pleasant solution to this, Adele. I need to know that you understand that.”

  “I do.” I picked at the edge of the blanket. “Do you . . . ? Do you still think we’ll have to kill the children?” I whispered.

  “I don’t see that we have any choice but to give them an easy, humane end. Quickly. I’ll offer to watch them both tonight, so Madame Paget can get some sleep, and I’ll take care of it then. I think I can manage it so that her parents believe Romy’s fever came back in the night, and she succumbed to it. But Tom . . . Well, what Sofia thought when he was missing makes sense. He has a history of sneaking out at night, now, and who’s to say he didn’t wander into the woods, trying to make his way home?”

  “You don’t think it’ll seem like a coincidence if Tom runs away the same night Romy dies?”

  “I don’t think we have a choice. And I think people will be willing to believe that once Tom lost his best friend in the village, he wanted to go home. He’s been through a lot, even if our neighbors don’t have an accurate understanding of the tragedy.”

  “And you can do that? You can live with yourself, after you’ve taken another woman’s child from her, right under her own roof?”

  Her hands went still, her knuckles white in their grip on the wick she was weaving. “I don’t really have any choice.”

  “Like you didn’t have a choice, when you let Papa die?”

  My mother flinched. “Yes,” she said at last. “Sometimes a guardian has no choice. Even more often, she has no good choice.”

  “Who found him?”

  “You don’t remember?” she asked, and I shook my head. My memories of that day were of my papa. Of the horror of his mauled leg and his fever-glazed eyes.

  “Grainger’s father. Monsieur Colbert was on patrol, and he saw your papa go into the woods. He lit a torch and went in after him, and within minutes, he heard your father cry out. He followed the screams and drove the whitewulf off with his torch and his sword, then he dragged your father from the woods. But it was far too late to save him.”

  “So you let them burn him.”

  My mother’s exhalation seemed to deflate her. “There was no way to let him live, chère. None. He was infected. He would have become a whitewulf, and they are not like us. He understood what was happening, and he did not want to unleash a beast like that upon the village.”

  “How . . . ?” Grief swelled within me, fresh and throbbing. “How could you bear it? How could you just stand there and—” My voice broke beneath the agony of the memory.

  “That was the worst day of my life, Adele. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was nothing at all.” She gripped the edge of the mattress with hands white from the strain. “I had to stand there and do nothing while they tied your father to the post and piled wood around him. I had to do nothing when they lit the kindling. While he screamed, devoured by the flames. Because he would not hear of me objecting. I tried to talk him into it anyway, while I was laying poultices over his legs. While the priest, and the baron, and Monsieur Colbert were conferring over his fate, in our front room. Because how could I not try to spare him such a horrible death? But pleading for the life of a beast that consumes human flesh would have cast suspicion of witchcraft upon our family, and he wouldn’t let me endanger myself or you girls. He believed that submitting to his fate was his duty. That finally he would be protecting me—protecting us—from a monster.”

  From himself. She didn’t have to say that part aloud for me to hear it. To finally grasp his sacrifice.

  I’d been there. I’d seen my father in the bed and I’d heard my parents whispering. I’d seen Papa tied to the post and I’d smelled his burning flesh. How could I possibly have understood so little of what was actually happening?

  “I had no choice, yet I’ve never forgiven myself,” my mother said. “And I won’t blame you if you can’t forgive me either, now that you know.”

  What would I be forgiving her for, if he made his own choice? For not finding the opportunity to kill my father herself? To give him a less painful end?

  That was exactly what she was trying to do for Tom and Romy. But this wasn’t the same. My father made his own decision, but the children wouldn’t get that opportunity.

  “There has to be another way, Mama. Let me take them into the woods. I could lead them far enough that they can’t find their way back, and they could just . . . live there. Maybe some other whitewulfs will find them and take them in.”

  She shook her head slowly. “They’ll only grow up to be two more threats to this village. We’ll have to hunt them eventually anyway.”

  “At least then we won’t be killing helpless, innocent children. We’re supposed to be guardians. But how are we any different from the monsters in the dark wood, if we’re willing to do that?”

  She sighed again. “We are a different kind of monster, Adele. The beasts in the forest do horrific things to people. We do horrific things to protect people. And that is rarely easy. It’s rarely neat, or clean, or pretty. Yet it still must be done. Even when that makes us monsters.”

  But I couldn’t live with that. With being a monster.

  Slaying beasts? Yes.

  Hiding part of myself from all of my friends? If I must.

  Killing small children in their sleep? No. I couldn’t accept that as a part of my destiny.

  “Let’s ask Gran.” I took my mother’s hand and squeezed it, holding her gaze just as fiercely by candlelight. “She doesn’t know about any of
this yet, and maybe she’ll have a better idea.” Or maybe she’ll like my plan better than my mother’s.

  “We need to act quickly—”

  “A couple of hours. I’m only asking for a couple of hours, Mama. Max and I can go talk to her right now to fill her in. Get her advice. All I’m asking is that you stay here with Sofia and Jeanne until we get back. Just . . . don’t do anything until we know her thoughts. Okay?”

  Finally, she nodded. “But only a couple of hours. We need to do whatever we’re going to do before the sun comes up, Adele. We can’t let this risk continue for even one more day.”

  Sixteen

  I pulled my cloak closed, glad for its warmth, but in spite of the frigid temperature, I couldn’t make myself raise the hood because every time I did, I saw bright white fur around the edges of my vision. Gran had sewn the trim onto my hood weeks ago, but now, every time I saw it, I remembered that it had come from Tom’s mother’s corpse.

  “Adele, are you okay?” Max asked. If we weren’t still in the dark wood, on our way home, he would stop walking and look straight into my eyes, trying to assess the problem. He did that a lot, and most of the time, lately, he got it right.

  “No, I’m not okay.” Despite my hope that she would agree with me, Gran’s grim advice had come as no real surprise. “I understand that the only way to protect Oakvale is to remove Romy and Tom from the village, one way or another. I also understand that we’ll be cleaning up a mess I made.”

  “You didn’t know—”

  “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know he was a whitewulf. It doesn’t matter why this happened. What matters is that I put us in this situation, and now I have to fix it. What matters is that those children, as dangerous as they may be, aren’t malicious and haven’t done anything wrong. They haven’t hurt anyone. But they’re the ones who’re going to suffer for my mistake.”

  “Tom bit Romy,” Max pointed out, and though he was probably trying to help me feel better about what had to be done, I kind of wanted to punch the calm logic right out of him.

  I didn’t want to feel better about this.