Don't Call the Wolf

by Aleksandra Ross

  Lukasz realized, suddenly, that it was the first time she had used Ren’s name.

  “—are you sure you would not like to change your wish?”

  Lukasz glanced between them. Wish? Since when had the Baba Jaga granted wishes? He would have to ask Ren about it later.

  “No, Baba Jaga,” said Ren, in her soft, hoarse voice. “I want this.”

  They left Król in the Baba Jaga’s meadow, promising to return for him once their battle was over. Together, they trekked upward through the hills until the little cabin and the purple fields were far behind them.

  As the sun dipped lower in the sky, they broke from cool pathways into a ring of pink-tinted peaks. The Mountains rumbled around them, but their path stayed still. It took Lukasz a moment to realize that they must have reached the enclosure of fixed foothills. He and Ren paused to rest on a ledge, and Lukasz put his arm around her shoulders as they admired the view.

  It was amazing. After this, he would never appreciate another sunset the same way. Beneath them, and crested with snow, the Mountains rolled like waves. A family of mountain goats dashed out between the peaks below and began to climb. As the twilight deepened, the cliffs roiled and the goats danced from ledge to moving ledge. The noise was deafening, like thunder in a summer shower, with the goats bleating below. He realized, suddenly, that they were laughing. They were playing.

  “It’s so beautiful,” murmured Ren.

  Lukasz glanced down at her as the wind tugged at her hair and she pushed it back. The human clothes only heightened that odd, magical quality that clung to her. Then she smiled. The sly smile, the quiet one, the one that rarely graced those downturned, flawless lips.

  He leaned down and kissed her. She ran a hand over his cheek, through his hair. Maybe he should have felt guilty that so many tragedies had conspired to lead to this. But he didn’t. He didn’t care.

  He would do it all again, because she loved him.

  “We should go,” she said, pulling away. “The sun is almost gone.”

  They kept on through the hills, now transforming to violet. Then the path led them through a narrow passageway of rock, so tight that they had to stoop and walk single file, and when they emerged, they were in the valley of the Glass Mountain.

  Beside him, Ren gasped.

  The last of the sun glanced off the Mountains surrounding them. At the other end of the valley, miles away, rose a mountain of shimmering glass. It was so tall that its peak was lost in the clouds overhead. It caught the twilight in orange, yellow, pink, and purple. The sunset ricocheted off its faceted edges, as if the Mountain could not bear to let go of the dying light.

  “My God,” murmured Lukasz.

  But he wasn’t looking at the Mountain. He was looking at the armor.

  The valley was full of armor. Golden breastplates heaped against gauntlets. Pools of chain mail sparkled like mirrors. Amid the wreckage lay horses’ faceguards, broadswords, shields, charred carts with broken axles and missing wheels. Pennants flew from hundreds of pikes, rising at odd angles from the ground. The wind had whipped them ragged and their colors had long ago been faded by sun and rain, but Lukasz could still make out their emblems: bears, eagles, lynxes, and even the wolf’s head of Hala Smoków.

  Somewhere out there, beneath a pennant of gold and purple, lay the empty armor of Ren’s father. Somewhere out there was the sword that his own father had once carried. Somewhere out there lay leather vests and broadswords, black uniforms and antlered bridles. Somewhere out there lay all that remained of nine brothers.

  Lukasz pushed back his hair. Ren put a hand on his arm. He put that arm around her and pulled her into his side.

  They had made it. They were at the foot of the Glass Mountain.

  That was when Lukasz saw them.

  44

  “WHAT IS IT?” ASKED REN as he stooped suddenly to the ground.

  When Lukasz straightened back up, his heart was pounding. He didn’t trust himself to talk. Ren was speaking in the background.

  “Lukasz,” she repeated. “What is that?”

  Two wire rims, two pieces of cracked glass inside.

  He looked up, numb. Ren’s eyes went wide. Then his heart dropped right to the bottom of the Mountain, and he swayed so sharply that Ren grabbed his arm again.

  As if she read his expression, she turned slowly around.

  Someone had appeared behind them, inching out from behind the pink rocks. Now that person squinted at them, as if he had trouble seeing through the rapidly gathering twilight.

  He looked so different Lukasz might not have recognized him.

  His long black hair fell loose over his shoulders, merging seamlessly with an equally tangled beard. He was smaller than Lukasz remembered, or at least thinner. No longer obscured by glasses, his eyes had dark circles under them. There was a gaunt, hungry look in them. It was a face he’d tried so hard to make a scholar’s, one that belonged so obviously to a Wolf-Lord.

  The best, the smartest, the kindest of them all.

  “Lukasz?” whispered his brother.

  When Lukasz finally found his voice, it ached.

  “Franciszek.”

  45

  KOSZMAR WOKE.

  He curled his fingers under, tasted blood. He blinked. The sun had risen behind the trees, and the light was too bright. With what was left of his arm, he shielded his eyes. He was faintly aware of ribs protruding, like fingers, from his torn chest. The light was unbearable. The hum of crickets was unreasonably loud. Something pounded on the ground beside him, and it took him a moment to realize it was his own eviscerated heart.

  Koszmar screamed.

  The protruding ribs began to move. Wriggle. Then they twisted and tore and stretched, and Koszmar screamed into the empty forest. No, whispered a small part of him. A small part not yet dead. Not like this—

  He had been broken. Undone. Remade. Left to die. The ribs kept moving, clawing, and in another moment, Koszmar realized they weren’t ribs at all.

  They were fingers.

  Koszmar screamed.

  The fingers tore free. The world danced on stars of pain. Koszmar’s heart pounded wildly in the dirt, and his skin ran slick with blood, and he screamed, he screamed, he screamed. His single remaining eye rolled, looking for flames, seeing only darkness. He screamed until the fingers inside him tore his lungs out, his voice out. And then, without his lungs, he screamed in silence.

  These were his last moments. If he had hoped they would be heroic, would be selfless, would be good—

  And then, Koszmar Styczeń, who had wanted so much to live, was dead.

  The hands kept clawing. They kept tearing.

  Only the fingers moved. They pushed farther from his broken rib cage, sliding into hands, then forearms. Then a chest and shoulders emerged, tearing the ribs wide. A head unfurled, with hair congealed in clots. Slick rivers of blood coated naked spine. Yellow fat dripped from bare skin. In quivering loops, entrails fell from its body as it straightened. Slowly, stiffly, gingerly. A new colt, learning to walk. It turned its head from side to side: it saw, it heard, it smelled.

  It had struggled, being born.

  Then the second soul of Koszmar Styczeń stepped out of his corpse and into the mad, dark world.

  46

  THE LAST TWO BROTHERS EMBRACED each other.

  They spoke so rapidly and in such thick Mountain accents that it was like an entirely new language altogether. Ren only caught a few words, too few to pick out an actual sentence.

  At last, they broke apart, and Lukasz introduced his brother to Ren. She smiled uncertainly.

  “This is Ren,” said Lukasz. “She’s the queen of the forest.”

  Franciszek held out a hand, and Ren shook it.

  As Franciszek led them up the mountainside, Lukasz told him their story. About the Apofys, and about his hand, which he offered to his brother for inspection. Franciszek turned it over, examining the missing fingers.

  “It’s healed remarkably well,” he
said with interest. “Did you get photographs of the healing process? Now, what do you suppose—?”

  Then he stopped and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  Lukasz held it up, as if in peace.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not as good as it was. I think . . .” He hesitated. “I may have to fight right-handed now.”

  Franciszek chuckled.

  “You’re better with your bad hand than most soldiers are with their good ones.”

  While they talked, Ren looked at the place Franciszek had been living for the past two months. There was a campfire and a few goatskins spread out on the rough stone. Two leather-bound notebooks stood next to a small pile of spade-shaped pieces of gold.

  Ren picked one up, turned it over in her hands.

  “What’s this?” she interrupted.

  “Dragon scale,” said Franciszek. “They’re all over. Sheds worse than a cat, this Dragon. Interestingly”—he glanced at Lukasz—“they don’t disintegrate.”

  Lukasz raised an eyebrow as he took one of the scales. He looked at Ren.

  “There’s a saying among dragon slayers. Bones, horns, and fur. Everything else—scales, teeth, claws—degenerates when it falls from a dragon.”

  Ren ran an experimental finger over the edge of the scale. It was razor-sharp, drawing a tiny drop of blood. She was about to respond when a twig snapped behind them.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked sharply.

  Both Lukasz and Franciszek looked up.

  “Hear what?”

  Ren turned. The path, hemmed in by hillside and rock, was empty.

  “I just—I thought I heard . . . never mind. It’s all right.”

  The brothers continued to sort through the provisions the Baba Jaga had given them, Lukasz continuing to tell their story. Ren returned her attention to them slowly. She still felt uneasy. She could have sworn she had heard, in addition to the snapping twig, a soft, faint mewling sound. It reminded her, unsettlingly, of strzygi.

  No. She dismissed the thought. There were no strzygi in the Mountains. Her mind was playing tricks on her.

  They settled by the fire. The crackling flames made Ren uneasy, but Lukasz put his arm around her, and for all her claws and battles, she found it strangely comforting. She was glad that he did most of the talking. She leaned into the curve of his arm, examining Franciszek closely. He was shorter than Lukasz—perhaps even shorter than she was—and a little slighter. He was also a little more fox-like than Lukasz, with a slightly pointed jaw and hungry eyes. And yet . . . they bore one another a strange resemblance.

  She couldn’t help wondering: What is he doing here? Had he really been sitting in these Mountains for two months? Watching the Dragon come and go, watching the sun rise and fall on that armor? Why hadn’t he turned back?

  Why hasn’t he tried to kill it?

  It annoyed Ren. Franciszek had left his little brother alone, when Lukasz had needed him. And Lukasz had believed the worst—almost died trying to get him back. Despite all his talk of protecting his little brother, Franciszek had let Lukasz suffer for two long months.

  And what had he been doing in that time?

  Then the conversation shifted to others. To stories of their other, lost brothers. Ren couldn’t keep track of all their names. Their oldest brother, who looked like their father; the wild twins; the one named Eryk, who’d risked his life to save a vila. She thought she’d have liked the brothers. Stories of palace balls, of beautiful cities, of salt mines and dragons with gorgeous names, like Lernęki and basilisks and Ływerni and Tannimi . . .

  Ren could almost imagine it: round tables, packed together and piled high with crystal glasses. The women would be beautiful, in fantastic gowns—though what those gowns might have looked like, she wasn’t quite sure. In her mind’s eye, ten versions of Lukasz threaded through the crowd. Wolves on the prowl. They might as well have been Czarn and his clan, taking a victory lap in the shadows of a ballroom instead of atop castle ramparts.

  These places seemed impossible to Ren. They were filled with humans, with laughter. With roads that were still paved, with kings who still lived. With ten brothers, strangers stranded an eternity from these hills.

  One day, she thought, she would like to visit them.

  “Lukasz,” said Franciszek, when Lukasz had finished their story and they fell into silence. “Our brothers’ clothes are in that valley.”

  The sky had long since faded to darkness. The mountain air was cold and fresh. In the distance, the Glass Mountain had begun to glow an eerie blue color.

  Lukasz became quiet for a second. His black brows were very heavy over his eyes. He picked at the tear in his trousers, and when he spoke, the single syllable sounded strangled:

  “And?”

  “Just uniforms,” said Franciszek helplessly. “And swords. Nothing else. I don’t know where they’ve gone. If they’re dead or alive, or if the Dragon—”

  To Ren’s shock—and horror—Franciszek burst into tears. Great wracking sobs like thunder, huge for such a slight man, shaking the whole Mountain.

  Lukasz sat up immediately.

  “Fraszko, what is it?” he asked.

  He crossed to the other side of the fire, and Ren watched them through the haze of heat. It reminded her of all the nights that had come before. He reminded her, terribly, that Ryś was dead.

  Lukasz was still talking, ineffectively. “It’s all right—”

  “It’s not—it’s not that,” sobbed Franciszek. “I’ve failed you.”

  Through the shimmering heat, Ren saw Lukasz draw back.

  “What?” he said incredulously. “What are you on about?”

  “I shouldn’t have left you,” said Franciszek brokenly. “You were right all along, Lukasz. I came back because it seemed easier than staying out there. And now that I’m here, Lukasz—I’m so scared. I can’t do it. After finding their uniforms, their swords—” He looked suddenly at his little brother. “Lukasz, I can’t do it.”

  Ren was completely frozen. She didn’t want to be here.

  “I’m a coward.”

  “No,” said Lukasz helplessly. “No, you aren’t, Franciszek—you are brave—”

  Ren wanted to leave, but she was rooted to the spot.

  “I just can’t,” said Franciszek, still sobbing. “I just can’t do it. I can’t go any farther.”

  “That’s because we’re a team, Fraszko,” said Lukasz. He put an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “You do the planning. I do the killing. It’s how we work. We can’t do it separately. Just like with the Apofys. I didn’t plan. I can’t plan. Not without you.”

  Franciszek had put his head in his hands. Lukasz put his arms around his brother, the younger comforting the older. She’d never seen him like this: not with Koszmar, not with Jakub.

  Maybe with her, once, in a black river in the rain . . .

  “You did it this time,” said Franciszek at last, in a muffled voice.

  Lukasz laughed. He didn’t take his arm from around Franciszek.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I needed help from everyone. I asked another soldier. I asked Jakub. Ren—” He looked at Ren suddenly, meeting her eye. She realized, too late, that she had been staring, and blushed. Lukasz kept talking as if he hadn’t noticed. “Ren’s saved my life so many times. I should have died days ago, Fraszko. I didn’t do this on my own.”

  Ren reflected that even in that river Lukasz hadn’t said what she needed to hear. But now—now he seemed to be saying the right things to Franciszek.

  “Listen,” said Lukasz. “You were right all along. I was stupid. I was irresponsible. I was a jerk—”

  “I never thought that,” interrupted Franciszek, gulping a bit. He looked totally bewildered. “I didn’t leave because of that.”

  Lukasz’s eyebrows shot up. Then they came down again, and even though he didn’t say anything, Ren knew she was watching him finally forgive himself.

  “Let’s just go
back to Miasto,” said Franciszek at last. “Let’s live out our days in peace and forget about this Dragon. Forget about the monsters, Lukasz. All of them. It’s like I always said—don’t go looking for trouble. Don’t go calling the wolf. We’ve had enough nightmares for one lifetime.” Franciszek broke off, looking desperate.

  Lukasz put his elbows on his knees and ran his right hand over his burn.

  Ren’s heart began to quicken. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he broke the deal now. She understood, and she wouldn’t have hated him. This wasn’t his fight. Not anymore.

  “I can’t,” said Lukasz, in the same low voice.

  Franciszek was nonplussed. Ren held her breath.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t forget about the monsters,” said Lukasz, a bit indistinctly.

  “What—what on earth are you talking about?”

  Lukasz ran a hand over his mouth, down his neck. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse, and the words hung in the cold air and Ren watched them cut, like a knife, into his brother’s heart.

  “I’m in love with one, Franciszek.”

  Franciszek’s eyes flickered to Ren.

  “Lukasz,” he said, “we’re the only ones left. We could survive. We could go back to Miasto. Or—or we could go to Hala Smoków. We could—”

  “We will,” said Lukasz firmly. “But first, we have to kill that Dragon.”

  Franciszek’s face fell.

  “Lukasz,” he said, “no one else has done it.”

  Lukasz met Ren’s eyes over the fire.

  “No one else brought her.”

  47

  THE QUEEN AND THE WOLF-LORD were long gone when, a few hours later, there was a knock on the Baba Jaga’s door.

  She crossed the cabin, her wraithlike dogs barking and the hands trying, unsuccessfully, to shush them. She hadn’t always moved this slowly. Hadn’t always felt this frail. Millennia of power, and all it took was some nameless demon underground to pull the rug out from under her.

  The Baba Jaga opened the door to see twilight settling on her beloved hills. The mountain air was crisp and clean. The boughs of her apple tree bent in the soft breeze, and in her garden, bylica, lipa, and dziurawiec bloomed among her herbs, as they did year-round. It was all seasons at all times in the Baba Jaga’s valley, and for now, her crocuses bloomed.