Don't Call the Wolf

by Aleksandra Ross

  “Our problem is,” he said, with great effort. He fished in his pockets for his lighter. “Is that we always go on about dragons, and wolves, and living in the Mountains for a thousand years. They assume we’re ancient and outdated because that’s how we act.”

  A shadow passed over Franciszek’s face, but he produced a small gold lighter and handed it to Lukasz.

  “We tried to belong,” he said in a hollow voice.

  Lukasz cupped the lighter around the cigarette.

  “We didn’t try very hard,” he said.

  “Maybe they wouldn’t let us.”

  “Maybe we were making excuses.”

  When he tried to give the lighter back, Franciszek negated the gesture with a small shake of his head.

  “Your need is greater than mine,” he said, smiling.

  The older and the younger. One who still remembered those blue hills and who knew what it felt like to belong. The other, who barely remembered and who, until this second, had never cared.

  “I’m sorry, Lukasz,” said Franciszek, after a moment. “I have always been hard on you. You were my favorite—maybe that’s why I was so protective of you.” He smiled sadly. “Even if I know you don’t like me much.”

  “I like you!” Lukasz protested. “You’re my brother, for God’s sake.”

  Franciszek smiled, without anger.

  “But I’m not your favorite.”

  “That’s not true,” protested Lukasz, but it sounded weak even to him.

  He loved Franciszek—he really did—but his brother had always been so serious. Berating him for the tattoo he’d gotten after Rafał left. Constantly drilling lessons into him: reading and table manners and dancing and how to be polite to the fine ladies and gentlemen on the street.

  You won’t be hunting dragons forever, Franciszek would always say. You need to know how to do something else.

  Lukasz had ignored him. He’d avoided him and tagged along with the twins or gone hunting with Eryk.

  “It’s all right,” said Franciszek. “I understand.”

  Franciszek was the best of them all: not brutal like the twins, not perfectly heroic like Anzelm. Just unfailingly honest, and good, and kind. Lukasz wondered what they had done to deserve a brother like Franciszek.

  “No,” said Lukasz. “No, Fraszko. I love you. You’re my brother. Let’s just—let’s get this Apofys, and then—”

  Franciszek interrupted.

  “Don’t you understand?” He turned to Lukasz. Behind his glasses, his eyes were circled in blue. He was close to Lukasz’s age, but he looked older than twenty-one. “I’m not coming. I’m going back.”

  Lukasz was a Wolf-Lord. He had killed dragons. He was on the side of Mountains and wolves and the kinds of legends that didn’t die quietly in the darkness. But still, his eyes filled with tears.

  “No,” he said. “No, Fraszko, you can’t—”

  “I remember the path,” said his brother, speaking over him. “I remember the way home. I don’t want to die hunting Apofi or ferreting Lernęki out of storm drains. I want to see the Mountains again.”

  “You will—” started Lukasz.

  “When?” asked Franciszek sharply.

  Lukasz opened his mouth, but no answer came out. He didn’t have an answer, he realized. He was never going back to those damn Mountains, and Franciszek knew it.

  His brother smiled tiredly.

  “See?” he said. “You’ve always belonged out here.”

  “Don’t do this,” begged Lukasz, and his voice cracked. “Just listen to me for once, Fraszko.”

  Franciszek looked away.

  “You’ll be happier without me,” he said. “I won’t be bothering you. Besides—” He nodded to where the drunks had crowded the gate. The street was bare now, but Lukasz could hear the sounds of shops opening and carriages rattling. “They love you here, Lukasz. They want your picture in the newspapers—they want you at their parties. You’ll be fine.”

  “You’re my brother,” said Lukasz.

  My last brother.

  Franciszek didn’t answer. If Lukasz had been upset before, then now he was angry.

  “You’re just going back because it’s easier,” he accused. “It’s easier thinking you have to go back—doing what all our brothers did before. This is the hard thing, Franciszek. Staying out here. Making new lives.”

  Franciszek shook his head.

  “The Mountains call me—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” snapped Lukasz. “They’re Mountains, for God’s sake; they don’t call anyone. And what are you going to do when you get there? Die alone in Hala Smoków? Kill the Dragon?”

  Franciszek went still as stone, and he slid off the sarcophagus. Lukasz leapt down and grabbed his arm.

  “You can’t be serious,” said Lukasz. “Honestly, Franciszek. Tell me you’re not going after that Dragon.”

  Franciszek rounded on him.

  “You don’t think I could?”

  “You’ve never killed anything!” exploded Lukasz.

  Franciszek’s face closed. A few strands of hair had come free around his face, and instead of looking wild, he looked like some kind of tragic poet. Lukasz knew he had crossed a line, but he also didn’t care. Then Franciszek, with blue eyes hard behind his gold glasses, said:

  “Just watch me.”

  And then Franciszek Smoków turned and walked away, disappearing through the gate, among the fireflies and vanishing fog.

  42

  “I WAS AWFUL TO HIM,” said Lukasz.

  Ren was settled on the edge of the bed, one dirty foot tucked up beneath her. He spoke without meeting her eye.

  “For seventeen years, Franciszek tried to take care of me. And I was so damn awful.” He had one hand over his gray face, hair pushed back, chin tilted up to the ceiling. Her leg was pressed warmly alongside his. “Sometimes, I think that if I’d just been nicer—if I’d been more patient—maybe he’d have stayed. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so . . . so homesick. Maybe he wouldn’t have come back.”

  The mavka wound was stark on his bare shoulder. Its edges were curled, with purple-black blood crusting his arm and chest. It was smeared all the way up to his neck, blending with the lowermost edges of his beard. He had a mark in ink on the other shoulder: crossed antlers, a wolf’s head, and three words. Ren fought the urge to trace them with her finger. “Maybe he’d still be alive,” Lukasz said.

  Ren heard herself swallow.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “He was always going to come back here. You all were. There was never any escaping it. You’re a good person. You’re kind and brave and funny—”

  Ren suddenly realized what she was saying and felt herself blushing. She broke off as Lukasz pushed his hand off his face and back behind his head. He stared at her, mouth falling a little open and crooked as usual, teeth still smeared with blood.

  Ren focused on the tear in the knee of his trousers, and finished, in a very soft voice:

  “You’re one of the best people I know.”

  He tilted his head to the side. The effect was overwhelmingly canine, and Ren had never loved him more.

  “Ren,” he said seriously, “I’m one of the only people you know.”

  The cabin was quiet, except for the muffled clink of plates in the washbasin. From the kitchen, a pair of hands floated up and deposited a bowl of steaming water on the side table. Then they floated serenely back to assist the other hands with washing dishes.

  “Wait,” said Ren, watching them. “Aren’t they going to help?”

  Lukasz followed her gaze.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. He jerked his chin to the water. “Come on. I can’t do it with my arm.”

  “No way,” said Ren, shuddering. “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can, it’s easy.”

  “No!” Ren was horrified. “It—it will hurt!”

  “Yes: me.” He pointed at his chest. “Not you.”

  “I don’t . . .” Ren
struggled for an excuse. “I don’t know how! Ask the Baba Jaga.”

  He held up his good hand.

  “No way I’m letting that old hag near my medium-rare flesh,” he said. “One look at me and her ‘hunter’s stew’ is going to get a hell of a lot more literal.”

  He had clearly offended the bodiless hands, one of which began making rude gestures from the kitchen.

  “Keep your voice down,” hissed Ren. “You’re going to get us both eaten. Fine. Fine, I’ll do it. But you have to tell me how.”

  “All right. Thank you.” He nodded to the side table. “It’s easier if you do it one stitch at a time, cutting the thread. Here—”

  He picked up the pair of scissors.

  “Don’t tie the knot until after you’ve gotten through the skin on both sides of the cut. And don’t tie it too tight, or else the scar will be hideous.”

  “Oh yes, pretty scars, of course,” said Ren dryly, threading the needle without any difficulty. The thread had been stiffened with wax.

  “Women love scars,” he said.

  “We both know you like monsters better.”

  “I do,” he said quietly.

  This time, the blush didn’t make it all the way to her face. But Ren could still feel it dangerously close to her throat. She concentrated on keeping the blush at bay, focused on the task at hand: each cut started above his shoulder blade and wrapped down over his collarbone. The last twisted around his arm, at the very point of his shoulder.

  “I’ll try.” She bit her lip and nervously steadied herself with her left hand flat against his chest. He settled back with his eyes closed, teeth gritted. “All right, I’m going to do this.”

  “It’ll be fine— OW! You’re not supposed to stab me again!”

  Applause from the hands in the kitchen.

  “That’s why I didn’t want to do this!” snapped Ren.

  On the next try, she wasn’t quite as terrible. He didn’t yelp, at any rate. It turned her stomach, advancing the needle on either side of the wound, then tugging the cut edges together and tying the black thread in a careful knot. She placed the knots as he had instructed her, starting in the very center of each wound, continuously dividing each stretch in half with a new stitch. Segmenting them into the smallest possible sections. She repeated her stitch-and-knot process over and over, falling into a rhythm. Three cuts. Too many stitches to count. A seemingly endless supply of thread. A second needle when the first got too dull. And then a third. His hand fell back over his eyes as she stitched. He had angled his chin away from her, and his jaw spasmed, almost imperceptibly, with every entry of the needle.

  “Sorry,” Ren said, and for some reason, she found herself hoping that he knew that she was sorry for everything.

  “Just keep going,” he replied. It sounded like his teeth were gritted.

  It was an age before she finished. He hadn’t made a sound, but Ren could see sweat beading on his neck. She took the cloth from the water and carefully wiped off a week’s worth of dried, poisonous blood. Realizing she was finished, he heaved a sigh of relief and turned back to her, his hand falling away from his face.

  Their eyes met for a moment. He was still a little gray-looking, still a little sunken. But he looked like himself. A little wild. Trying not to smile. That single piece of hair, uncurling in its stubborn perfect way, falling slowly over one arched eyebrow.

  She still had the needle and thread in her hand, and all at once, she was seized by the urgent need to set them down on the table. She wasn’t sure why. Probably because her heart had suddenly sped up. Because she was acutely aware of her leg next to his. Because the cabin had abruptly gotten warm, and she was deaf to the sound of the hands working in the kitchen. Blind to everything but him.

  Ren had to lean past Lukasz to put back the needle and thread.

  He didn’t move out of her way, and for a moment, they were very close. So close that she knew her hair brushed across his unwounded shoulder. She could feel his breath on her cheekbone. Her heart pounded.

  He spoke, quietly, a hair’s breadth away, near her ear.

  “Ren,” he said. “I’ve only ever loved nine people.”

  He shifted against her leg, sat up. They were even closer, and Ren was finding it hard to breathe. Then he added: “You’re the tenth.”

  “I am not people,” she whispered.

  He laughed.

  “True,” he said. “You’re better than we are.”

  Her eyes met his. She felt them changing, felt her vision clearing, dimming. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t care that her eyes were changing from human to lynx and back again. She might have lived the rest of her life as a lynx, had it not been for him. Hard to believe she might never have met him. She might not have met him, without dragons to kill and brothers to avenge—

  I am animal.

  Cautiously, her hands moved to take his face between them. His beard was prickly in her palms, and she spread her fingers, like she’d once seen the rusalka do. Fur shimmered into light on her forearms, disappeared. Her fingernails sharpened, resting gently against his skin. He did not care. He just looked every bit as mesmerized as he’d looked that first day, on that first riverbank.

  I am monster.

  Lukasz barely moved. No words, just the slightest tilt of his head. A fraction of an inch, and Ren followed. Their lips touched. Ren’s heart somersaulted, started pounding in her ears. His hands found her face, the left a little different from the right, still perfect. Lukasz angled his jaw and kissed her.

  Then his good arm wrapped around her back, held her so close that his heart slammed in time against hers. He tasted like blood and smoke and that first day on the river.

  I am human.

  “I have never loved a person,” she whispered. “You are the first.”

  And Lukasz kissed her.

  43

  BY THE TIME LUKASZ WOKE, Ren was gone. It took him a moment to remember where he was, looking around the little cabin. It was empty, except for the bodiless hands, and lit with the characteristic soft purple of early morning in the Mountains. He had a sudden flash of memory, of waking to this same light as a little boy, in one of the bedrooms of Hala Smoków.

  Lukasz sat up. Ren’s jacket—his other Wrony jacket—lay in a heap on the other side of the bed. He swung his legs over the side, flexing the wounded shoulder. Ren had done a good job with the stitches.

  And anyway, at least his tattoo—safe on his other arm—was still intact. Wherever he was now, Franciszek was probably still hating it. The thought made his stomach twist.

  “Thanks,” said Lukasz aloud as a pair of hands floated up and placed a cup of black coffee on the nightstand. Clearly still offended, they ignored him.

  He flexed the fingers of his left hand. They didn’t feel any different. Still in contracture. Still weak. If he’d hoped the cider would make a difference, then he’d been wrong.

  He got to his feet, gingerly stretched out his knee. That, too, was still sore. He saw that someone had left out a clean shirt and washed most of the blood out of his jacket. Lukasz dressed stiffly and picked up his rifle. He weighed it for a moment in his right hand, and then he left it propped against the wall.

  As he moved, he caught sight of movement beyond the window.

  More bodiless hands moved through the purple-flowered lawn, unpinning the washing from clotheslines. The Baba Jaga sat at a spinning wheel made of human bones and spun yarn from a basket in Ren’s lap. A gigantic golden apple tree unfurled above them, sparkling against the lightening sky.

  That damn domowik. He wondered if the old relic had known he would live. Maybe it had known this would happen, that the old hag would take one look at Ren’s haunting heart of gold and fall for her, just like the rest of them had.

  He couldn’t help grinning at the sight. Ren could settle in anywhere, and she’d belong. She’d always acted like she didn’t understand them, but she was the only one they’d all loved. Even Koszmar, the prickly little bastard.
>
  He took another sip of coffee, leaned against the window. At the same time, the Baba Jaga and Ren rose from the spinning wheel. As they approached the cabin, Lukasz noticed that the old woman had given Ren new clothes. They were dressed alike now: black vests over white shirts, with black-and-red-striped skirts.

  Ren carried the basket, chattering away. He could see the Baba Jaga smiling. Lukasz could have run out and kissed Ren again right there.

  “He deserves it,” Ren was saying as they pushed open the door. “He’s suffered.”

  “You are too kind to these humans,” the Baba Jaga answered.

  The canine jaws followed them in, panting and barking happily. They kept snuffling at Ren’s hands, because every animal and monster loved Ren, too.

  “Maybe,” said Ren, putting the basket of wool down on the kitchen table. “But we all need kindness, Baba Jaga.”

  They both looked up and noticed Lukasz. Ren beamed.

  “Ah, all better, aren’t we?” asked the Baba Jaga.

  Ren moved around the table to pour a cup of coffee and stood a little too close. It took everything in Lukasz to focus on the Baba Jaga instead.

  “Handsome devil, isn’t he?” added the old woman, addressing Ren. Then she crossed to them and ran a gnarled hand down Lukasz’s cheek. She leaned in and whispered, “If you ever hurt this dear girl, I will find you and eviscerate you.”

  Lukasz grinned down at her.

  “Don’t worry.”

  The Baba Jaga cackled.

  “I’m not the one who should be worried.”

  Ren cocked an eyebrow, as if to say, She’s right. The Baba Jaga lifted two satchels from the kitchen table. She passed one to Ren and Lukasz took the other.

  “It’s a straight walk northeast to the Mountain,” said the old woman. “You will find it by evening. It is surrounded by a valley and several hills. Both the valley and the hills are fixed points. They will not move with the tides. Go carefully, for now you tread on bones.”

  Ren nodded, looking solemn. She let Lukasz help her into the extra Wrony coat.

  “Take care,” said the Baba Jaga. “And Ren—”