Don't Call the Wolf

by Aleksandra Ross

  He stopped. Suddenly, he raised his hand, as if to run it through his hair, but knocked an inkpot off the desk. It shattered on the floor, and faded, red-brown liquid oozed across the hardwood.

  Ren knew what he was thinking. If Franciszek had come here, then he certainly would have taken the maps. And if the maps were still here, that could only mean . . .

  Ren’s heart sank.

  Without being fully aware of what she was doing, she put her hand on his arm. She wasn’t surprised, exactly. She had suspected this. She hadn’t said it out loud because it had seemed cruel, and because he didn’t seem to want to hear it, but there was no getting around it anymore.

  Franciszek was dead.

  Lukasz moved away from her touch. He turned to face the window, running his hands through his hair, smoothing it down around his neck. With his back still turned, he said:

  “They’ll be glad.”

  His voice was steady; his hands didn’t shake again.

  Ren blinked. “What?”

  He turned back around. He looked way too calm. Looked like he’d been doing this for far too long. Saying goodbye, closing doors, moving on.

  “They’ll be glad that we’re dead.”

  A bed occupied one side of the room, heaped with knitted blankets and furs. Lukasz crossed the room and sank down, his head in his hands. A little unsure, Ren settled next to him. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Who will be glad?” she asked at last.

  When Lukasz finally answered, it was to say more words than she’d ever heard from him at once. She let him talk. She was used to the silence of animals, but she was learning that these humans needed more.

  Besides, she liked how he talked.

  She liked him.

  “Everyone,” he said hollowly. “The aristocrats. The Unnaturalists. Even those wretches in the villages and towns. They hear Wolf-Lord, they think we’re dogs.”

  He smiled, not quite at her. Not quite at anything. He looked gaunt and old, but he had nine dead brothers, and Ren wondered how he had ever been able to smile at all.

  “When they heard my brother could read?” he murmured. “They were shocked. They wanted him to do demonstrations. For science. They study us in their universities. You know that? Put our swords and our carvings and our dragon antlers on display. They slap on a few plaques. They tell everyone about the once-great, now-extinct, savage people who couldn’t be dragged into this age with the rest of you.” His voice had gotten very harsh. “They were right.”

  The rest of you.

  It was strange, being folded in the rest of them.

  She wasn’t sure why she did it, but she took his gloved hand in hers. Her fingers intertwined with his. White in black, speckled with sun and shadows. He was wrong. She wasn’t like them. She wasn’t like the animals. She wasn’t like any of them.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  She wondered how it would feel to touch his other hand.

  “Why?” He laughed bitterly. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ren said. “No one should feel that alone. It just isn’t right.”

  He turned away.

  “I had nine brothers,” he said. “I was never alone.”

  Then she did what she’d been wanting to do almost since she met him. She smoothed back his hair, which was coarser than it looked. Then she ran a hand over the stubbled edge of his jaw. She loved his face. She loved that crooked tooth.

  Ren wondered, suddenly, if she loved more than that.

  He got to his feet, and Ren’s hand fell away. She wondered if she’d gone too far. She looked down at her hands.

  “You should sleep,” he said roughly, above her, not looking at her. “We walked most of the night.”

  “So should you,” she replied softly.

  Still, he didn’t look at her.

  “No,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “It just reminds me of death.”

  33

  I AM GOING TO DIE, thought Lukasz.

  He had never thought it would end here. With him in his father’s chair, Ren curled up in his father’s bed. She was finally sleeping, and he was too terrified to even close his eyes.

  Click, click.

  He ran his fingers over the lighter casing. He watched its tiny flame spring to life. He watched it snuff out. Was that how it would end for him? A tiny click, click, and then utter black? Or would he go out like Koszmar, on a single word and a shot in the darkness?

  He didn’t think so. His exit would be graceless. He already knew that. He clung to life like a dog. He always had.

  Everything wants to live, Henryk had said once.

  And by God, Lukasz wanted to live.

  His good hand covered his eyes. They grew hot, his vision swimming. The warmth brimmed, threatened to spill over. He rubbed the tears away, looked up to the view beyond the window, now a bit blurry. Dawn had broken, and the Mountains ground to a halt. Sun streamed through the foggy glass, illuminating dust and pink carpet. Rosy hills stared back from six sides, the very same hills that had once stared back at his father. He shivered.

  Lukasz wanted to live.

  There was a rustle in the doorway.

  He leapt to his feet. Then, swaying for a moment, he half forgot what he was doing. His eyes went to Ren, still fast asleep.

  God, she was perfect. She deserved a forest free of monsters. She deserved a kingdom free of that Dragon. She’d lost so much already. A crown, a family, now her forest . . . It wasn’t fair that she’d lost a brother.

  It wasn’t fair that she kept forgiving him.

  But she wouldn’t forgive him this time. He had one last promise to break. Hard to believe that when he’d first lied to her, he’d thought his hand would be his downfall. And now he wouldn’t just lose his career. He wouldn’t just lose her.

  Lukasz wished he could live.

  Someone moved beyond the doorway. Just as he returned to his senses, a man moved out of the hall and into the warming dawn.

  Lukasz’s heart stopped. It couldn’t be . . . not after all this time . . .

  The mavka venom must have been eating away at him from the inside. For a wild moment, he wondered: Was he dying? Was he already dead? Was this how it ended, among ghosts in a ghost town, doomed to an eternity in these purple hills?

  “. . . Dad?”

  The man in the doorway had a black beard, and he wore his gray-black hair long, in the more traditional style of the Wolf-Lords. He wore a Faustian-fur cloak over Dewclaw chain mail. A scabbard hung from his leather belt. No sword.

  “How did you—?” Lukasz had to stop and start over. He was horrified by how hoarse his voice sounded. “You’re—I can’t believe you’re alive—”

  His father had Tad’s deep-set eyes and beaky nose. He had Lukasz’s feline mouth. He had Rafał’s jaw. In his father, Lukasz could see each of his brothers, he could see fireflies, see his parents dancing, see nights warmed with dragon fur and enchantment, and it took him a moment to realize he wasn’t seeing. For the first time in a long time, he was remembering—

  The tears came. Spilled over.

  “I am not he,” said the figure.

  His voice was harsh and hollow, as if it had been dragged from a great distance away. He looked strangely dusty, tinted with gray. It was almost like he had been covered with a misty veil.

  Lukasz realized why.

  The creature was covered in cobwebs. They trailed on the ground, hung between its spread fingers. Suspended on a thread, a spider dangled from one elbow. And its hands were covered in thick silver fur.

  Lukasz rubbed the tears off his cheeks and, feeling stupider than ever, said, “You’re the domowik.”

  The creature bowed, revealing two silver horns in its long hair. Its movements were stiff, as if its bones had not moved in years. At its feet, insects scattered across the carpet.

  The domowik regarded him seriously, while another spider scuttled across its shoulders.

  �
�You smell like death,” it said.

  Lukasz rubbed the back of his neck. It was unnerving, looking into the eyes of his dead father, ensconced in this dusty, creaking body.

  “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

  The domowik blinked slowly. The gesture was overpoweringly reminiscent of Ren.

  “I am not a person,” it said.

  “Right,” said Lukasz, not quite sure how to respond.

  The domowik seemed to freeze in position every time it moved. It had none of the spark of life that lay beneath human movement. None of the heartbeat, none of the pulse. It moved, stopped. Became a statue. He supposed that was what happened when you spent twenty years alone under the floorboards.

  “Not long now,” it said.

  Lukasz’s mouth went dry.

  “Please,” he said. “Where—how—what happened to my brother?”

  The domowik became very still, statuesque once more.

  “You could have asked the Leszy this question,” said the domowik. “But instead you asked how to kill the Dragon. Nine brothers before you sat at that table. None of them asked that question.”

  Lukasz tried to smile, but it turned into a grimace.

  “None of them had a cross, as far as I remember.”

  “For a man who has insisted he does not want to kill the Dragon,” said the domowik, “you have sacrificed much in its pursuit.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I am the guardian of this household,” said the domowik. “I know you very well.”

  Lukasz bit his lip, looked away for a moment. Nine brothers gone. Up in smoke, fading into memory, getting darker and fainter and threatening to disappear for good. And soon . . . soon he would join them.

  His eyes flickered to Ren, still deeply asleep on the bed. In fact, she looked so still, so perfect, that he half wondered if the domowik had placed some enchantment on her.

  Even if Lukasz didn’t survive, it didn’t mean she had to die with him. It didn’t mean her forest had to die. And the domowik was right; he had asked the Leszy to help her, when he could have very easily asked it to help him.

  He’d promised. He’d shaken hands.

  “Just because I die,” he said, “it doesn’t mean the Dragon can’t be slain.”

  In a way, he thought, it would be easier. It would all be easier. Ren could fight her Dragon, avenge her brother, return to her beloved forest. And he could join his brothers. As a human. Not as anything else.

  “I will show her the sword,” said the domowik at last.

  “What about the Mountain?” asked Lukasz.

  Downy with dust, the domowik’s eyelashes flickered. Its expression was unreadable, but Lukasz was aware of his shoulder pulsing, twisting. He could feel the poison at work. Feel it in his skull, pounding through his heart.

  Then the domowik spoke.

  “There was one who may help,” said the domowik. “She is more ancient than any of these hills. She is more terrible than any of their demons. She alone wields the power of life or death over that Dragon. Her price will be great.”

  “I’ll pay it,” said Lukasz.

  The domowik looked unfathomably sad. “It will be your life, Lukasz.”

  For some reason, this hit harder. It was one thing to go kicking and screaming; it was another to lie down and die.

  Or maybe a small part of him had thought—had hoped—that he might one day return here, he might one day catch fireflies, he might one day spin a dark-haired queen around the great stone kitchens while children watched them from the stairs. Maybe, he realized suddenly, that part of him had not been very small at all.

  A thousand years of Wolf-Lords, and this was how it ended?

  Lukasz sank onto the bed. Ren stirred, gave a small, very feline stretch. He rested his hand, the ruined one, on her hair. He had thought he was used to it. Thought he was used to the melted flesh. The missing nails. The end of his index finger was completely gone. Charred right off.

  Maybe he had been dying for a long time.

  “I am not afraid of death,” he said.

  “It is not the death that inspires fear,” said the domowik, said the ancient creature, the guardian of households, the last echo of humanity in a death-swept town.

  “It is the dying.”

  34

  KOSZMAR WOKE.

  Slowly. Numb at first, with only the vaguest awareness. Shapes merged and fluttered in the dim. It smelled like fire, like charred meat. Someone was moaning. Retching. It took him a moment to realize it was him.

  Then came the pain.

  Everywhere. Moaning turned to screams. His face—oh Christ, his face—

  Koszmar writhed on the ground. It began to come back. He clutched at his face, his eye. Oh God, no—

  The bullet had missed his brain. It hadn’t been enough to kill him, only to blow off half his jaw. His fingers explored the congealed, damp mess of his left side. His eye was gone.

  Oh God, he was still alive. The words came back. Words he’d blocked out. Words from the first time he had ever seen Lukasz, in his father’s gatehouse, while the vile old man had goaded them to kill a vila—

  Everything wants to live.

  Koszmar moaned, writhed, struggled to his feet.

  Koszmar wanted to live.

  35

  BELOW THE GLASS WALLS OF the hallway, twilight turned the snow-crested mountains to lilac. Ren pressed a hand against the glass, watched her breath turn to fog. Behind her, the row of golden skulls reflected comets of dying light and warmed her shoulders.

  This wasn’t just abandoned. It had never really been discovered.

  She wasn’t sure what she had expected from the Wolf-Lords, but it hadn’t been this. She had grown up amid ruined finery; she had slept under the breathtaking carvings of the library, pulled moth-eaten gowns from crumbling wardrobes. She had lived in a castle of queens and nobles, and despite what Lukasz had told her, she had somehow expected a more savage place.

  Perhaps it wasn’t fair of her. But she was glad to be wrong.

  Her eyes moved, slowly, to the black cuff of Lukasz’s jacket and her dirty hand beneath it. Less than two weeks ago, she had stood at the castle windows in her own hallway, looked out at her forest. Back then, she could have wept for powerlessness.

  Today, she was closer to killing the Dragon than anyone else had been in seventeen years. They could do it. She knew it. She had a Wolf-Lord’s skill and the Leszy’s advice, and all she needed now was that sword. . . .

  A reflection flickered in the window. Ren turned, feeling the hairs on her neck prickle. She could have sworn she’d seen a figure in the arched doorway at the end of the hall.

  She’d left the other rifle in the tower with Lukasz. When she’d woken earlier in the evening, he’d been fast asleep in the desk chair. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to wake him. And besides, she’d assumed they were safe here.

  Carefully, she crept down the hallway. The dragon skulls watched her with empty eyes. The doorway opened onto a second hallway, this one lined with carved chairs. The light was dim, and dust gently drifted down from the ceiling.

  Ren glanced up, but the rafters were empty.

  When she looked down again, she started.

  The seat of one of the chairs had opened, revealing a concealed cupboard. She turned, but nothing flitted out of the shadows. No more dust fell from the ceiling. She glanced up and down the hall. It was deserted. She crept toward the chair.

  A dress lay folded in the opened cupboard. Seventeen years of dust had dulled the colors; its skirt was decorated in green and pink flowers, cascading down from the waist to gather at the hem. Trying to ignore how dirty her nails looked against the white cotton, Ren lifted the dress out. There was white lace at the cuffs, and the vest was pale yellow.

  Would it be wrong?

  The skulls watched with hollow eyes. It wasn’t like there was anyone left to care. Or even notice. She started to unlace the bodice and then stopped. Thou
gh human, her fingernails were so long that they looked like claws. Even without the fur, they were still the hands of a monster. She didn’t belong in clothes like that. Neatly, she replaced them in the drawer in the seat.

  And even if she had been born a human, she wasn’t one now.

  This was not her world. These were not her clothes. She had been left to evil woods and evil monsters. And she had survived. Lukasz had seen cities she could only dream about; he had met people she would never see. He had lived in a world like this one, where the streets were whole and the darkness had not yet crept in.

  She stood up, and a faint, foggy version of her looked out of the window.

  Power shivered through her gums, and Ren opened her lips. The girl in the window had blurry teeth, long and wicked. Ren knew they were yellow, with black speckles in the gums. Ren blinked, and even in the warped glass, she saw pupils big as moons.

  Ren blinked again, closed her lips, and when she opened her eyes, she was human again.

  Or at least, she looked like one.

  There was the sound of tinkling glass. Ren whipped around. A furry tail disappeared around the corner at the end of the hallway. She raced after it.

  She skidded to a stop at the next juncture, only to see the tail disappear around the next corner. She chased it down. On and on, she sprinted down halls that were alternately pitch-black or lit by candelabras that burst into flame as she passed. In one hall, the entire wall formed a window. In another, both walls were taken up by bookshelves.

  At last, she skidded into the biggest room yet.

  Panting, Ren took stock of her surroundings. It was completely empty, ringed with more carved chairs. Chevron-shaped stripes of light and dark wood decorated the floor. The walls were adorned with carvings and amber inlays, topped with dragon skulls and lanterns of dragon bones. There were no windows, but overhead, the ceiling was glass. Beyond it, the moon looked lonely in an endless sky.

  A chandelier the size of one of her castle towers hung from its center. It was wrought from dragon bones—not just the skulls, but the rib cages and the femurs, held together by unseen chains, and probably by magic.

  A hearth took up the opposite wall.