Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  My stomach lurched, and I struggled to hold down my lunch. “Stop that,” I snapped.

  Sofia looked up at me, her eyes wide and scared, and I realized that the girls weren’t acting out what they’d heard for fun. They were trying to understand. “Was Madame Gosse right?” Her chin quivered. “Has Grainger lost his mind?”

  “No.” I sank onto a stool at the table, facing the girls. Aware that Max was listening. “He’s just . . . confused.”

  “And he’s lost his hand, because he shot Romy?”

  “It’s complicated, but yes.” I glanced at Jeanne and found her listening closely, her lips pressed firmly together.

  “And you’re not going to marry him now?” Sofia asked. “Because he’s lost his hand?”

  “That’s not . . . That’s not why I can’t marry him, chère. It’s complicated. At the moment, things are very . . .”

  “Complicated?”

  “Yes.” With a sigh, I stood and brushed hair back from her face. “I’ll explain it all as soon as I can. For now, just . . . stay away from the forest. Okay?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I always stay away from the forest.”

  “Good. I love you.”

  “I know. Love you too.” Then she picked up her doll, and I headed into the back room.

  “Adele.” Max followed me through the curtain.

  “Please don’t. I can’t look at you right now,” I told him. “I know that’s not fair. This isn’t your fault. But Grainger’s lost his hand—he’s lost everything—and you’re standing there whole.”

  “I—” He exhaled slowly. “That’s true. And I’m sorry.”

  “That you still have both hands?”

  “That he doesn’t. That my arrival wasn’t the joyful occasion I’d hoped it would be.”

  And he did look sorry. Though he’d done nothing wrong. He also looked exhausted.

  I sighed as I sank onto the edge of the straw mattress Sofia and I shared. What happened to Grainger was not Max’s fault. It was mine.

  “Have you slept?” I asked him. “You can sleep here for a while, if you want. I’ll watch the children.”

  “Thank you, but if you don’t mind, I should go to Monsieur Girard. I’m sure he understands my absence, considering the day’s events, but I am supposed to be helping him.”

  “Of course. Go. And give him my best.”

  “I’ll be back tonight,” Max said as he put on his cloak.

  When he’d left, I went back to the main room to get started on the next day’s bread orders. As I worked, I watched Tom. He played with a ball for a while, rolling it across the floor until it hit the wall and rolled back to him.

  Once I’d covered the unbaked loaves of bread and left them to rise, I sat next to the boy on the floor, determined to pull some information out of him. I needed to know how much he understood and whether he could speak. I had to know what it was like to grow up in the dark wood—half human, half wolf—and whether a whitewulf pup could be taught not to kill humans.

  After all, aside from biting Romy out of frustration, he hadn’t attacked anyone in Oakvale.

  “Hi,” I said, and though he looked up, he didn’t otherwise acknowledge me. “Are you hungry?” I asked, but he only blinked at me. “I’ll get you something to eat if you tell me you’re hungry. Or even just nod your head.”

  Tom picked up the ball and rolled it across the floor again.

  “Please say something. Just tell me that you can understand me.” Had he stopped speaking after the trauma of losing his mother? Or were whitewulf pups mute?

  Despite her transition, Romy could still speak.

  The front door opened, letting in a frigid gust of wind, and my mother stepped inside. The bags beneath her eyes had grown dark and puffy from lack of sleep.

  “Sofia, bundle up and take Jeanne outside to play,” she said as she took off her cloak.

  “Okay!” My sister stood, her doll forgotten. “Tom, come with us!”

  “No, Tom needs to stay here,” my mother said.

  “But—”

  “Go, before I change my mind and give you chores.”

  Sofia and Jeanne pulled on their cloaks and mittens and disappeared outside.

  “How’s Romy?” I asked as my mother sank onto a stool at the table.

  “She’s doing very well. Too well.”

  “What does that mean?” I set a tankard of ale in front of her.

  “Her wound is healing too quickly, and there’s no sign of fever. I don’t think her mother has noticed yet. She’s as occupied with praying as with tending the wound, and she’s inclined to believe her prayers are being answered. But I fear there’s another cause.”

  “Do whitewulfs heal quickly?”

  My mother shrugged as she lifted her cup. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever studied a whitewulf, beyond the lay of its fur as trim or lining for warm clothing. But the pace of the child’s healing is not natural. Her parents will notice that soon.” She exhaled slowly. “Are you still determined to handle this yourself?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re certain? It must be done tonight.”

  “I’m certain. I’ll leave with the pups as soon as I’m sure the rest of the village is asleep.”

  Her left brow rose. “With Max.”

  “Yes, with Max.”

  “Adele, I know this isn’t what you want—”

  “This isn’t about what I want. I understand that.”

  “I know. I’m just saying . . . This won’t be easy, and once you’re out there, you might be tempted to just . . . leave them.”

  I blinked, trying to hide my surprise. To hide my intention.

  My mother sipped from her tankard, then she set it down and took my hand. “I know that would be easier for you to bear, believing you’d spared them, but Max is right. If you leave them out there, you’ll just be condemning them to slow starvation at best. While that might be easier for you, it won’t be for them. And if they were to somehow survive . . .”

  Any consequence from my decision would be my fault. My guilt to bear.

  That’s what she was saying.

  She took another long gulp of ale, then she met my gaze frankly. “Chère, I need to know that if I send you out there, you’ll do the right thing.”

  I swallowed my guilt and doubt and gave her a firm nod. “Mama, that is exactly what I intend to do.”

  Max returned for dinner, and Jeanne finally went home, insisting she could help her mother care for Romy. We had no excuse to stop her, so Mama and I let her go, hoping that Romy was no longer in enough pain to make her lash out and bite.

  Max joined us at the table for stew made from the last of Gran’s venison roast, but Tom wouldn’t move from his pallet, so I took a bowl to him.

  “Why won’t he go near the hearth?” Sofia asked as she tore a chunk from the fresh loaf my mother had set on the table. “Isn’t he cold?”

  “Tom doesn’t like fire,” my mother told her. “He seems to be scared of it.”

  Sofia turned to him with a curious look while she chewed a bite of rye bread. “You don’t need to fear fire unless you stick your hand into it, silly goose. Or unless it catches on cloth, or on the walls.”

  Or, unless you’re tied to a stake in the middle of the village square. Not that Sofia had any memory of our father’s death.

  Tom blinked at her. Then he poured stew straight into his mouth from the bowl.

  We ate in silence after that, and when I looked up from my food, I realized that Max and my mother were both staring at the table, evidently mired in the same guilt and dread that had stifled my appetite.

  Nothing would be the same after tonight. Not for the village, and not for me. And certainly not for the Pagets, whose only mistake had been to take in the little boy I’d found in the woods.

  I forced down the rest of my dinner and cleared the table, and I was headed into the back to rest until Sofia made a happy little sound. When I turned, I found Max pulling his sketch bo
ok from his pack. “Oooh, are you going to draw? May I watch?” she asked, scooting her stool closer to his.

  “I thought I might. And yes you may.” He gave her a somber smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes, and I realized he was looking for a distraction. Because he was as bothered by what we were going to be doing in a few hours as I was. By what he thought we were going to be doing, anyway.

  “What’s that?” Sofia asked, as I crossed the small space to look over his shoulder.

  “It’s a crossbow. I saw some soldiers carrying them a few months ago, and I asked one if I could sketch his weapon. He was kind enough to oblige.”

  The page in front of him held a detailed sketch of the crossbow he’d given me, with dimensions and materials carefully labeled, and as I stared at it, I realized that Max had intentionally hidden this page from me when he’d first showed us his sketch book. Because he hadn’t yet given me the weapon he’d made.

  He turned the page, and I found myself looking again at the little cottage he’d drawn. Presumably the cottage he’d built for us. And suddenly I couldn’t look away.

  Max’s cottage seemed so perfect. So peaceful, when my life in Oakvale was rapidly descending into chaos and violence. The temptation to chase such an ideal was almost overwhelming.

  But escaping to Ashborne with Max wouldn’t be leaving those things behind. The violence—my destiny—would follow me, wherever I went.

  Max turned another page, and my sister’s eyes widened as her gaze caught on the next drawing, the last one in the book.

  It was incomplete, but I recognized the forest scene immediately.

  “Oooh, what’s that? Some kind of beast?” Sofia frowned. “It just looks like a snake with spines down its back.”

  “See the lady next to it?” Max leaned over to point at the figure. “She’s there for scale. That snake is twice as long as she is tall.” And though the snake was just a suggestion made of several long, faint lines so far, the woman was fully detailed, including her hooded, fur-trimmed cape.

  “She looks like you, Adele!” Sofia squinted at the drawing, and when she tried to bring a candle closer, I blocked her arm, afraid she’d drip wax on the book. “It looks like you’re fighting the snake!”

  I glanced at Max, and for the first time since I’d met him, he seemed . . . embarrassed. As if he were nervous for me to see that page. “It isn’t done,” he said. “I’m not sure what that giant snake really looks like.” Because we’d extinguished the lantern in order to tempt it toward us.

  But he knew exactly what I looked like.

  I looked fierce, in the drawing. Strong and confident, as I faced down a beast reared up to my own height and nearly twice my width, with its broad, thick neck.

  “Perhaps Adele might have some ideas,” my mother said softly. “About how a basilisk should look.”

  For a moment, I could only stare at the drawing. Was that how he saw me? Did I seem so confident to him? So ready to charge into danger? Had he not seen my fear? Had he not heard the race of my pulse, with his well-trained ears?

  The girl in his drawing could do anything. He believed that, and his belief had come through in the sketch. The girl he’d drawn could walk into the dark wood and sacrifice two small children to save an entire village, and she could come out of that experience stronger. Tougher.

  More monstrous, in the way a guardian should be.

  I did not feel like that girl.

  “I’d guess that the spines should be longer,” I said at last. “Longer than my arms. And the fangs should drip with venom.”

  “Thank you,” Max said, his gaze holding mine.

  Sofia glanced back and forth between us. “Draw me!” she demanded, throwing her arms out. “I want to fight a troll!”

  I grabbed the candle before she could overturn it. “Paper is in short supply, and it’s very expensive,” I told her.

  “But you’re even more precious,” Max insisted. “As soon as I finish this one, I will start another. ‘Sofia and the Hideous Troll!’”

  She beamed adoringly at him as she returned to her seat at the table.

  Nineteen

  At the end of a day of baking, our back room was the only room it was comfortable to be in, caught, as it was, between the heat of the oven in the front room and the frigid air leaking through cracks in the walls now that the sun had gone down.

  My mother put Tom to bed on his pallet on the floor, then she and Sofia curled up on her bed, and I insisted that Max sleep in the one Sofia and I normally shared, so he’d be alert enough to help me with our middle-of-the-night task.

  When they were all softly snoring, exhausted by the events of the past couple of days, I lit a lantern and bundled up, then I trekked across the village square to the Colberts’ cottage.

  Grainger’s mother answered my knock on the door wearing a cloak over her night shirt. “Adele,” she said by way of greeting. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and she looked wide awake, in spite of the hour.

  “Bonsoir, Madame Colbert. I’m sorry to bother you so late. I just wanted to check on Grainger.”

  “That’s kind of you, chère, but he’s finally asleep. I think he’s developing a fever so I’d rather not wake him.”

  “Of course. But would you mind . . . I mean, can you tell me how he’s doing? How he seems? Is he still saying . . . those things?”

  Madame Colbert glanced over her shoulder into the warmly lit cottage. Then she stepped outside with me and pulled the door closed, huddling close to the wall to block the wind. “He has not veered one bit in his telling of the incident. His father and I thought that with his fever, he might be frightened into telling the truth. Or, at least, he might be incapable of maintaining the fantasy he’s woven, in the grip of illness. But he is steady in his assertion that Romy Paget is a werewolf, and that she is a corruption that will spread through this village like the plague, if no one listens to him.”

  I exhaled slowly. “Well, that is very . . . unfortunate.”

  “I have to admit, I can’t entirely bring myself to dismiss his claims,” she whispered. “After all, the great deceiver is known to work in such ways. And how better for the devil to insinuate himself in a village like ours than to target an innocent? A child, at that? You were there, non? Is there any chance you’re mistaken in what you saw? Can you think of anything that might have given Grainger such certainty, in such a frightening occurrence?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say.” It pained me to lie to his mother almost as badly as to lie to Grainger. “The only way I know of to account for his insistence in this matter is that he truly believes what he’s saying, mistaken though he is.”

  “And you’re certain he’s mistaken? That we have no reason to suspect the Pagets?”

  “I’m quite sure they are innocent.” Saying that was a risk. If Romy bit someone or exposed herself in some other way, Madame Colbert might accuse me of covering up her corruption. But I owed the Pagets as much as I owed Grainger. Maybe more, considering that they were about to lose their daughter. “Please give Grainger my best, when he wakes. And tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.” I could feel Madame Colbert’s gaze on me as I crossed the square again.

  In my own cottage, I sat at the table for a long time, looking at Max’s sketch book by candlelight while I listened to my sister snore, trying to pass the time until I was sure the rest of the village was asleep. Trying to distract myself from a consuming plague of guilt.

  A month ago, despite my fear of the dark wood and the monsters that inhabit it, I’d been exhilarated by the idea of my newfound destiny. My pulse had raced every time I’d stepped into the forest, and every beast I felled had felt like an accomplishment. Like both a service to my village and a personal triumph.

  I’d never in my life felt so needed—so intrepid—as I had when I’d stepped out of the woods with Tom, convinced that I’d saved him. That I’d found my true purpose.

  But now . . .

  I’d thought protecting Oakv
ale would feel rewarding, even if I could never take credit for my efforts. I’d expected to feel noble and courageous, content with my bruises and exhaustion because I knew I was making a difference.

  I didn’t expect the guilt. I hadn’t understood, when my mother told me how difficult my role would be, that she wasn’t talking about the hunt. She was talking about the secrets. The lies. The impossible choices.

  The sacrifice of one life for another.

  That’s what made us monsters. It wasn’t the fur, or the claws, or the teeth. It wasn’t the speed, or the strength, or the eyesight. It was the choices. Brutal decisions that often had to be made in the heat of the moment.

  Decisions I would have to live with for the rest of my life.

  When the moon rode high in the sky, I blew out my candle and stuck my head out the front door. The village was quiet. Nothing was moving, and I couldn’t see a single candle lit in a single window.

  I was supposed to wake up my mother, to say goodbye and listen to any last-minute advice. I was supposed to wake up Max and bring him with me. Instead, I said a silent goodbye to them both as they lay sleeping. Then I knelt next to the little boy asleep on his pallet between the beds.

  “Tom!” I whispered, shaking his leg gently.

  His eyelids fluttered, but once they were open, he focused on my face almost instantly. The child clearly had no difficulty seeing in dim light.

  “Wake up, mon cher. We’re going to go for a walk.”

  Tom sat up, his eyes bright and alert, despite the late hour. When I handed him the worn pair of shoes the Pagets had given him, he put them on without hesitation, though he was still clad in nothing else other than the borrowed tunic he slept in, which came to his knees.

  I put on my red cloak, settled the strap of my crossbow over my shoulder, and slid three bolts into my quiver. Then I led Tom outside without bothering to take a lantern, because without Max’s company, we wouldn’t need it.

  “We’re going to get Romy,” I whispered, and though he didn’t say a word, I swear his eyes shone brighter at the mention of his friend’s name.