“But what if they did?” asked Jakub. “There are old wives’ tales of children born with teeth, or with two hearts. These children, the stories say, are those with extra souls.”
Jakub shrugged.
“But I think belief in predisposition is too optimistic. Even the theory of souls suggests that we are, in some way or another, guided by twin forces. So perhaps this business of predisposition is simply a lie to help us sleep. Perhaps it is easier to believe some are born evil, rather than admit that predilection exists equally in every one of us.”
They were all quiet. The night seemed very heavy.
“I do not like the monsters that were once human,” Ren observed thoughtfully. “I think they are the most terrible of all.”
“You are a wise queen,” said Jakub.
Ren looked at him with sadness.
“But I have been a cruel one.”
Lukasz wasn’t especially subtle, but even he could tell they weren’t talking about strzygi anymore. He’d already pieced the story together from the others: Jakub had gone looking for another creature to research, and Ren had punished him for it. He did not have any interest in reliving that moment with either of them.
“So,” said Jakub instead. “Shall we read?”
And suddenly, Lukasz realized that he had even less interest in looking like an illiterate fool in front of the queen.
“I have to go,” he said abruptly. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“But—” began Jakub.
“The strzygi—” warned Ren.
Lukasz got to his feet. His arm was numb, and inside the glove his fingertips were cold. Fear twisted within him.
“See you at camp,” he said shortly, and strode away.
Jakub’s story had gotten under his skin, as surely as that damn queen had gotten under it. The possibility was horrific. After all, if a strzygi bite could transform a man, what could a nav do . . . ?
He glanced back, but Ren and Jakub were already far behind him. Confident he was alone, Lukasz shrugged off his coat. Maybe he just had a little nick, catching on the seam of his shirt. Maybe, he thought wildly, he’d slept on some kind of poisonous plant. Maybe—
He dragged the shirt down off his shoulder.
The skin was no longer smooth. Five claw marks traced the same lines of the nawia’s blow, now bubbling like burns. He ran his fingers over one cut, and a sheet of skin peeled back.
“No,” he muttered. “No, no, no.”
At the touch, pain shot down his arm. Lukasz stumbled back, catching his foot on a root and almost falling.
He’d had his share of scrapes and burns and impalings, and he didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but this was worse. Wounds were supposed to heal. Not disappear and reopen and blister and burn. He cringed at the thought. . . . But, then again, what was he supposed to do?
Franciszek was the expert on these things. And Franciszek, God help him, was probably dealing with some monsters of his own at that moment.
This couldn’t be happening. Not when things were working out so perfectly. When he had a plan. When he was finally learning to read. When he’d met her—
He punched a tree and immediately regretted it. Pain splintered across his knuckles.
“Careful,” said a familiar, nasal voice. “I think that one was on our side.”
Lukasz swore again.
Koszmar was leaning against a tree a few feet away, smoking. He had one foot crossed in front of the other. He wasn’t as much watching Lukasz as he was staring off into space. In fact, he was so quiet and still that between the fog and the dimness, Lukasz had mistaken him for another tree.
“Have you been there the whole time?” he demanded, pulling his coat back on.
The mist gave everything a dreamlike quality as Koszmar turned slowly. He used his tongue to pivot his pipe to the edge of his mouth, and the click of the stem against his teeth echoed in the darkness.
“Yes,” he said softly. Then: “Do you need help, Lukasz?”
Lukasz hung back a moment longer. The night played tricks on a man in the best of times; this forest, at this time, was a death trap.
“Oh, come now,” said Koszmar in the same soft, almost musical voice. “It’s just me.”
Lukasz drew level with him. Cautiously, he leaned against a neighboring tree in an identical position, only reversed.
“Got a light?” he asked, casting a wary glance at the alternating blue and black before them. “Left mine by the fire.”
From the corner of his eye, he watched Koszmar fish around in his pockets. A languid grin stretched around his pipe.
“Luring you to my vices, am I?” He produced a lighter with amber inlays, and the expensive trinket passed between them, silhouetted by the eerie blue fog. “What a delicious possibility.”
Lukasz rolled his eyes, cupping his hands around the cigarette. He promised himself it would be his last. Especially if that girl—Ren—really was the princess. He wasn’t especially keen to find out what happened to those who disobeyed her rules.
The tip of the cigarette glowed orange in the blue, blue world. Fine tobacco, with a soft peppermint taste.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said in a low voice.
“Did Rybak tell you his theory about her being the princess?”
Lukasz started. For some reason, he’d assumed Jakub would have told him first. In fact, a small part of him was a little insulted that he’d gone to Koszmar before him.
“Felka told me,” said Koszmar, as if reading his thoughts. He didn’t turn his narrow, angled face. “He tells Felka everything. They used to work together, I think. Odd pair. Don’t know what she sees in him.” Then he added quickly: “I won’t tell the girl if you won’t, Lukasz.”
His heart sank even as he spoke, but Lukasz said: “Deal.”
“So,” said Koszmar after a moment. “What’s the problem?”
Lukasz stared unseeingly at the endless blue forest, at the mist lazily circumventing them. He kept his eyes on the haunted trees as he tapped some ash on the ground. It was deathly silent.
“I can’t do it,” said Lukasz at last. He raised his left hand. It looked normal, hidden in the glove. “My hand doesn’t work anymore.”
It used to be who he was. Dragon slayer. And now he was carrying a rifle and making deals with monsters in black forests.
Koszmar gave him a sidelong look. He was all smooth angles and languid smoke rings. Lukasz couldn’t quite put his scorched finger on it, but there was something different about him.
“Don’t worry,” said Koszmar softly. “I will help you.”
“How?”
“I can kill the Dragon,” said Koszmar. He put his hands in his pockets and the revolvers glittered in the dark. “It’s why I came to this godforsaken kingdom in the first place.”
Lukasz couldn’t help it. He snorted.
“Brought a butterfly net, have you?”
Koszmar’s head snapped over. It was almost inhumanly rapid. Lukasz fought the impulse to recoil.
“Don’t underestimate me, Lukasz. Butterfly nets don’t make majors.”
Maybe it was just the tint of strange lights, the sheen of strange silence, or that nagging, gnawing feeling . . .
Lukasz watched from the corner of his eye as smoke poured from the other man’s nostrils and drifted away to join the smog.
“All right.” He nodded. “I won’t underestimate you.”
Koszmar smirked.
Then he came off the tree long enough to offer his hand. When he spoke, the single word was slow and lazy and somehow musical. “Deal.”
They shook. Then Koszmar put the pipe back in his teeth and Lukasz stamped out the cigarette, and the pair settled back into their original positions, staring out at the silent trees.
“I saw your shoulder,” said Koszmar after a moment.
He half turned, chin tilted upward. His mouth was crooked in his face, stretched over his prominent teeth. In the strange light, his blond hair looked almost s
ilver.
“It looks bad.” Then he added, jerking his chin over his shoulder: “Saw some dziurawiec a half mile back.”
“So?”
“Miraculous stuff,” Koszmar went on through a stream of smoke. “Just steep it in a bit of vodka, soak your bandages, and there you have it. The perfect cure.” He shrugged, more to himself than to Lukasz. “Not bad for a drink either, honestly.”
Lukasz didn’t answer. It didn’t matter which deals they made or what kind of help was offered—the fact was that Lukasz didn’t trust Koszmar, and he never would.
He caught Koszmar’s eye. The Wrony’s pupils were constricted to pinpricks in a sea of gray, and his eyes were rimmed in red.
“Kosz,” he said on impulse. “You all right?”
Slowly, Koszmar turned to Lukasz. Smoke poured from his nose, despite the fact that he hadn’t taken a draw on the pipe for several minutes.
Lukasz’s skin crawled.
“Don’t worry,” repeated Koszmar. “I can help you.”
17
REN WATCHED AS JAKUB SHUFFLED the sheets of paper in his lap before sliding them into a leather sleeve beside him. She had a glimpse of neat block letters and messy handwriting, and although she’d seen enough books in the library to know they were words, she couldn’t recognize any of them.
And for some strange reason . . . she wanted to.
Jakub’s hands shook. She knew he was scared.
“Are you . . .” She hesitated. “Are you . . . feeling better?”
He dropped the last of the papers and scrambled down to his knees to pick them up. He ignored her for a moment. Ren moved from the ground to the fallen tree and knotted her fingers in her lap.
She felt for him. She wasn’t sure what exactly. Not yet.
“Jakub,” she whispered, “are you going to be all right?”
He looked up.
The magic of the moths and the flickering light brought out the scars. The shredded eyelid flickered over his empty socket, and she noticed, because she was looking at him—really looking at him—head-on for the first time, that his lips did not meet properly anymore.
“My daughter died,” he said quietly. “Who would be all right after a thing like that?”
Ren was only half listening. She was mesmerized by his face. Slowly, she registered his words, and she asked:
“How?”
Jakub began gathering up his papers again. There weren’t many left, and when he’d finished, he began rearranging them in the leather sleeve.
“Fever,” he said. “She was only a few days old, in Szarawoda. My wife died at her birth.”
“What’s Szarawoda?” asked Ren before she could stop herself.
Jakub returned to sit on the fallen log. He put the sleeve of papers between them, and Ren was grateful for the distance.
“It’s a town,” he said. “In the southwest.”
“Of my forest?”
“Of the country,” said Jakub. Then, seeing her expression, he sighed. “Here—”
He took a stick and began to draw in the dirt at their feet. He drew squarish, blob-shaped thing. He drew a big circle on the right side and scraped at it with the stick.
“Your forest is here,” he said.
He drew an X at the bottom of the blob with his stick.
“This is Miasto. That’s the capital.” The stick tapped the north part of the map. “That’s Granica, the northernmost port. Everything above it is water.” He tapped a spot in the southwest. “That’s Szarawoda.”
Ren was silent.
The scratched-out area of her forest was so . . . small. It was barely an eighth of that giant country, and she had never even seen the whole thing. Lukasz had come from Miasto. . . . She stared between the X and her forest, tried to gauge the distance.
She couldn’t. It was beyond comprehension.
“And,” she began, hoping she did not sound as ignorant as she felt, “there are . . . humans out there?”
“Ren,” said Jakub. “There are humans everywhere.”
She didn’t dare look at him.
She suddenly felt small and childlike, as if she had never done anything in her life. How on earth could it be, she wondered, that all this existed? That—
“Miasto,” began Jakub, filling her embarrassed silence, “is the most beautiful of cities. The houses are tall, with pink and green fronts, and statues on pedestals at every corner. Fifty of these houses surround the Miasto square, and every day, white horses pull carriages full of people to stores and ice-cream parlors and shows. In the center of the square is the Miasto cloth hall, where vendors sell everything—from fabric to guns to toys for children. In the southeast corner is the great Basilica of Saint Barbara, with ceilings fifty feet high.”
Ren stared at the map.
In her mind’s eye, she saw a country filled with copies of her own castle, full of the sad, angry villagers. It seemed like a terrible place to her. Were there monsters? What had happened to the animals?
Ren couldn’t tear her eyes away from the map. No wonder Koszmar treated her like some kind of savage. She must have looked like a barbarian to someone who came from a world this big. She must have seemed like a rat in a hole to them, trapped in here for so long.
“Are you all from out there?” she asked.
“I was born in Miasto,” said Jakub. “But I have lived all over the country. I was an Unnaturalist. A scientist studying unusual phenomena. It required that I move around often. Felka is from the village. Koszmar is from God knows where. And Lukasz, as you know, is a Wolf-Lord.”
And yet . . .
And yet he had seen all this. He had been everywhere. Ren loved her forest with all her heart, and she’d have been happy to live in it for the rest of her life. But she was also curious. She had always liked to explore. She had always been a little too fearless.
And now, irrationally, she was jealous of these humans.
Then she asked, “Are the humans happy there?”
Jakub smiled, seemed to think for a long moment, and then said: “Few humans are.”
Ren nodded. They lapsed into silence.
It was a strange experience, sitting here in the dark with him. With the man she had attacked for doing the most human thing possible, hunting an animal. It was strange to hear about his world, so much more vast than her own. Strange to feel jealous of the person she’d tried to kill.
“I was not going to hurt him, you know,” said Jakub suddenly.
At his words, Ren was twelve years old again. Scrambling around in the snow, tearing at the knots of a snare. A black wolf, coated in blood, heaving and whining in the cold.
“You caught him in a snare,” she said, without expression.
“Not to hurt him,” said Jakub. There was a pleading note in his voice. “I only wanted to study him. To learn.”
Ren stared at his shredded mouth, not quite closing over his teeth. She stared at the place where his eye used to be. She looked at those five cuts and realized—with a small twist of guilt—that she would do it again.
“He tried to chew off his foot because of you.”
At her words, Jakub’s shoulders sank.
“How could you be so cruel?” she asked. “He was suffering. I could hear his cries even with human ears. I could smell his blood even with a human nose. Surely you knew.”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t think,” said Ren. “You saw a wolf. You saw an animal, and it never occurred to you that he might feel the same things as you. The same fear. The same pain. The same instinct to survive, no matter the cost.”
Ren remembered how it had felt, turning into a lynx for the first time. How it had felt to lose control. To feel blood between her claws. To be feared.
Ren loved being feared.
“Forgive me,” whispered Jakub.
“What are you doing?” asked Ren as she emerged once more at the campsite.
Felka looked up from going through Lukasz’s things. Neither Luka
sz nor Koszmar had yet returned, and Ren quelled a brief moment of panic. They could look after themselves. Felka lifted an extra coat from the pile, while Król watched them suspiciously.
“Looking for a light,” said Felka. She gestured to a lantern on the ground.
Ren folded her arms.
“I do not like flames,” she said. “No matter how small.”
The other girl shrugged. At length, she extracted the contraption from Lukasz’s pocket. It was small, gold, and square. When she held it up, Ren caught a glimpse of an embossed symbol: crossed antlers and a wolf’s head.
“There we go,” she said triumphantly. She leaned down to the lantern, and with a small snap a flame sprang to life.
Ren stepped back too quickly.
The girl watched.
“It’s just a lighter.” She clicked the contraption a few more times, and the flame died and was resurrected several more times. Ren hated it. “It’s totally harmless. Just a little fire, see?”
“There is no such thing as a little fire,” said Ren. “Only a fire that has not yet spread.”
Felka put down the lighter. The stripes of her skirt looked duller than ever in the flickering light from the lantern.
“Listen,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did, earlier. It’s not your fault people think that about you.”
Ren blinked.
“About you being the one killing us,” said Felka. “It’s not your fault. It’s just easier to blame someone, sometimes. You know? I think that’s what we do.”
“Why did you say it, if you knew you should not?”
“Listen, Ren. It hasn’t been easy for us,” said Felka. “For the past five years, we’ve been telling stories of a forest monster who eats people alive. She’s what happens to people who leave the village, go looking for trouble. Don’t you see? It’s a lot easier for us only having to fear one monster. Not the whole forest. Evil with a name is a little less terrifying. The evil that you recognize, that you can avoid—that’s an evil you can live with. Surely you can understand that?”
“So you just follow blindly?” asked Ren, a little testily. “Fear the monsters someone else invented? Told you to fear?”
Felka shrugged.
“Don’t we all?”
Ryś and Czarn wound back through the trees. Ren could hear them arguing in low, growling voices.
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