by Karah Sutton
For Mom. The story starts with you.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Karah Sutton
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2020 by Pauliina Hannuniemi
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9780593121658 (trade) — ISBN 9780593121665 (lib. bdg.) —ebook ISBN 9780593121672
The illustrations in this book were drawn in Photoshop and textured with handmade watercolor patterns.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Fear sank its jaws into Zima as she recognized the smell of magic. She pressed her nose to the ground and sniffed again. Like moonlight and decay—it burrowed into her nose, slippery and sinister. She shook her head and huffed to clear out her nostrils.
A shiver rippled through Zima’s silvery-gray fur. She knew what the smell meant.
The witch was nearby.
It almost seemed like the witch was following them. This was the third time Zima had smelled magic in the past three days.
Her little brother Potok sneezed and scratched his paw at his snout. Together Zima and Potok backed away, out of the cloud of scent and behind a clump of spiky evergreen trees.
But Leto, Potok’s littermate, kept his nose to the ground. He turned to Zima with his ears back and his black fur on end. We should get Grom, he said.
It was the right thing for him to say. Grom was their older brother and the leader of the pack. He would know what to do about a witch.
But why did they need Grom? Zima was the second oldest. Surely Leto could trust her to handle the witch without Grom’s help.
Potok let out a whimper and pawed at the dirt. He clearly wanted to get away from the smell as much as she did.
She tried to take on an air of authority as she voiced her disagreement. We will be safer going to the home place, she said, referring to the glen they’d marked as their territory, where they’d sleep for the next few days. We go the way we came—to the river—and follow it back.
It would take much longer to go that way, of course, but it would give them a wide berth around the witch. And it would keep them clear of the dangers of the forest—towering hogweed plants that could kill a wolf with a single touch, unexpected shafts leading to caves that could trap a wolf for days, poison streams that gurgled with Waters of Death. Navigating the forest was dangerous business.
She waited for Leto to give the signal that he would follow her lead.
But he didn’t.
His body language spoke clearer than words: I want to call for Grom.
He wanted Grom to lead them. Zima stared Leto down, trying to shake away the hurt that clung to her chest. But instead, he raised his nose to the air. With his jaw jutting forward, he prepared to howl.
Before he could, a rustle ahead made Zima’s ears prick.
She nudged Leto and pointed with her snout. He swallowed the howl. Together they turned to peer at something beyond the grove where they stood.
A figure was just visible, lurking between the trees.
The witch?
But there was no smell of magic about this person.
Zima crept closer and crouched behind a large rock, with Leto following close behind. His tail began to wag as he caught the scent Zima tasted on the breeze. Potok’s nervous breathing pulsed in the clearing behind them, where he kept his distance from the danger.
It was no witch. The thing, moving through the woods mere whiskers away, was a human girl.
The human hummed to herself as she picked her way along an unseen path, clutching a worn piece of fabric about her shoulders. The woven coverings on her feet rustled with each step. Zima searched for the glint of a knife. No weapon was visible, but she must have one hidden somewhere.
Zima fought the urge to flee. This was her chance to prove that she could take care of her brothers.
A conversation with Grom from a few months before swam in her memory. He had pressed a heavy paw on a length of twine. One end of the twine was wrapped around a sapling, and the other was tied around the neck of a fox. The fox’s struggles must have tightened the cord until he collapsed and breathed no more. Zima couldn’t unsee the fear still frozen in the fox’s eyes, or the long scratch marks he had left in the dirt.
They are getting bolder, Grom had said. And it was true. The humans were setting more traps deeper into the forest, and the shift had been sudden and swift, like a new wind carrying great black clouds. The question was, how many more of them were coming, and how much longer would it be before one of Zima’s pack got hurt?
Grom had read Zima’s thoughts in the hang of her tail and the twitch of her ears, and he nodded. Something has changed, he said. The danger grows by the day. A fierce need to protect the pack burned in his eyes as he said, From now on, we must take no chances. If you see humans, kill them, before they kill you.
Zima shuddered. She knew what Grom would tell her to do.
What she had to do.
She had to kill the human.
Her eyes
focused back on Leto. He hadn’t moved. We need Grom, he said again. He began to retreat from her, his back paws brushing aside soil-colored leaves.
No! said Zima under her breath. The human will hear you. I can do this, alone. She repeated the thought to herself. She could do this. She could do this.
But the tilt of Leto’s ears showed his disbelief. He didn’t trust her to protect him.
She had to prove him wrong. She crept closer to the human and closed her eyes, focusing on the scents of hair and sweat, and smoke from kitchen fires. She knew the smells from the only time she’d ever been to the village, when her father had taken her, before he died, at the peak of the warm season.
Her father used to say that humans and wolves could coexist if they left each other alone. But Grom had taken a harsher approach since he became the new leader of the pack: humans were deadly and an increasing threat to life in the forest. Kill them, before they kill you.
It is too dangerous, Zima, said Potok, his green eyes aglow between the branches of his hiding place. Wait for Grom.
He didn’t think she could do this either.
They were both wrong.
With her eyes closed, Zima sniffed the air, feeling the exact place where the human stood. She mapped out the precise height and distance she would have to leap to take the human by surprise. Leto would be impressed. He had to be.
When she opened her eyes again, she glanced toward Leto to make sure he saw, but he was gone. Potok too. They’d left Zima alone with the human.
Zima dragged her claws through the dirt in disappointment. Leto was going to call for Grom. Soon she would hear a howl and…
…and the human would too.
Zima looked up. If she waited much longer, the chance to surprise the human would be gone. Now was her moment to attack, to prove that she could protect the pack just as well as Grom.
With narrowed eyes, Zima slunk around the rock and behind a wide oak to get a better view of the human. If she could get the girl by the neck, she could snap her jaws and the human would be dead in an instant.
Zima moved right behind the human and crouched to spring.
The human reached up to tug on the fabric covering her shoulders. Then she stopped, her hand hovering near her neck.
Zima recognized the stiffness of her posture and the twitch in her hands. It was the look of prey that knows it’s being watched.
The human called out some words in her language. Her voice quivered, bouncing through the darkness like a bird searching for its lost chick.
There was nothing to do but attack the human, noiselessly. It was now or never.
But then the human made a sound. A whimper.
The girl was frightened. But humans didn’t feel fear—they always attacked first.
Kill them, before they kill you. Grom’s words rang in her ears and threaded through her thoughts, roots buried inside her and holding on tight.
Zima set her jaw. She had to do this to protect her family. Keeping them safe was as vital as the blood that thrummed in her throat. She readied her legs to leap.
A howl pierced the air. Leto, calling for Grom, giving Zima’s location.
The girl whipped around at the sound. Her eyes grew wide as they caught sight of Zima with her bared fangs and taut tail.
Their eyes locked for a moment.
Kill them, before they kill you.
The girl blinked. She took a step back. And another. She glanced behind her at the path.
This girl wasn’t preparing to attack, she was preparing to flee.
That wasn’t right. Humans were dangerous, but this human wasn’t trying to fight.
When Grom had uttered the words, Zima had imagined herself staring down the shaft of an arrow, bravely leaping to attack a hunter before he could release the string. Killing a human that had no weapons, made no move to attack…surely this wasn’t what Grom meant?
A thought flickered in Zima’s mind, burning bright before she had a chance to snuff it out: she didn’t have to kill the girl. She could leave, and the girl wouldn’t follow.
Zima closed her mouth and straightened her ears. Finally, she scrambled away, back around the boulder.
The girl’s quick breaths formed a panicked rhythm.
Suddenly shame washed over Zima. What was she doing? She’d given herself away, failed to kill the girl, and was now hiding like some sort of twitchy little rabbit. And Leto and Grom would arrive at any moment.
There was still time to do it. She peeked around the boulder. The girl met her eyes.
And then the girl smiled. Not a sinister, cruel smile. It was alight with kindness. She lifted a little hand and waved it.
Zima ducked behind the rock. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, not now that she’d looked in the girl’s eyes and seen no hint of the threat that Grom had assured her she’d find. Keeping motionless, she listened for the girl’s breathing. After some minutes there was a rustle of movement, and soft footsteps pattered away from the clearing.
For what seemed like an age, Zima sat there, too afraid to move. What had she done? She’d put compassion for a human above the safety of her pack. She’d let a human wander free in the middle of the forest. Her mind raced, her stomach heavy with embarrassment and shame. It took her a moment to notice that a new smell had seeped into the clearing.
It was the stink of magic, of the witch she’d detected just before. It filled her nose and throat, making her gag.
Her chest tightened. She had to get away from this place.
The witch Baba Yaga peered through the trees, watching the young wolf. Of all the wolves she’d seen, this was the first to step away from an attack. She could see the conflict in the bristle of the wolf’s fur. The tension straining the muscles of her legs. The wolf wanted to do something, to attack the little human girl, but she chose not to.
That was exactly what Baba Yaga needed. The gray wolf…a wolf who wouldn’t put up a fight.
Nadya crept away from the clearing, her mind buzzing like a swarm of bees. She’d met another wolf, been close enough to smell the pine needles clinging to its silvery fur. The thought sent a shiver of excitement down to her toes. And in that moment the wolf had backed away from her.
The others were wrong. She could navigate the forest on her own. Ignoring the nervous trembling still dancing along her fingers, she reached into the little bag tucked into the folds of her skirts and tugged out a crumpled sheet of paper. Dirt-colored lines were scratched across its surface—a smudge to indicate a familiar cluster of trees, a squiggle to signify a stream. Laying the paper on the ground, she licked a finger and pressed it into the dirt. Carefully she used the tip to draw a little wolf with pointed ears and a bushy tail. Wolves moved around, she knew that, but it was helpful to know where she’d spotted one.
There was still a lot missing, but every day she ventured farther into the forest, every day added a little more to it. It didn’t matter what the others said about the dangers of the forest—she knew how to navigate them. And when the day came when she finally left the orphanage, no one would follow her. They’d be too scared to enter the forest themselves to chase her down.
She sat, adding the new features she’d spotted that day to her map, taking care to mark poisonous plants and places where the earth fell away into craggy chasms—sudden holes in the ground that would trick an unwary traveler.
Her lips pressed into a hard smile.
No one knew the forest like she did.
She was so close to being ready. She could feel it. Soon she could leave the village for good.
When the light grew too dim to continue, she stood and brushed herself off. Katerina would be sure to notice the dirt smudges on her dress—nothing escaped those large eyes. Oh well, soon Katerina would be off to the castle in the north, living her new perfect life as the perfect bride of the tsar, and Nadya would be on her own in the forest, making her way to the great road that led south to the city and a new life.
The paper fluttered as
she held it up, trying to snatch enough slivers of fading sunlight to see where she was. Was she near the sheer rock face? No. The dried-out stream? No again.
She made her way down a slope, placing each foot in its woven bark shoes carefully so as not to slide on the loose rocks. Her foot twisted as she neared the bottom and she lost her balance, her arms flailing before managing to snatch hold of a tree’s branch. Her heart jumped. She had nearly fallen into one of the great openings in the ground. Little pebbles slipped out from under her feet and tumbled into the crevice, clinking against its stone walls.
Her hands burned. She released the branch and stumbled away, examining her palms. Deep red marks crossed her hands. They stung, but she didn’t have time to worry. She checked her map again. Had she seen this crevice before? It was hard to tell in the dim light.
Her pulse was pounding louder in her ears, trying to drown out the frogs and crickets that were beginning their nightly chorus.
That boulder crouching like a huddled giant, had she seen that before? Nadya stepped toward it. But as she approached, she discovered that these trees were unfamiliar too. They crowded around her, strangers looming.
No, they weren’t strangers. She knew this forest. No one else in the village could find their way through it like she could, and no one else dared to.
But the frogs croaked the truth.
Lost. Lost. Lost. Lost.
Somehow Nadya was lost in the woods.
The smell of the witch had begun to surround Zima, thick as fog, making her body stiff with alarm.
The witch was closer than she had ever been. Zima needed to get away, but she couldn’t tell which way to go. The scent was everywhere, clouding her senses. She couldn’t detect a safe path.
She stumbled away from the rock, slipping on slick leaves and bumping into trees. Every hair on Zima’s back stuck out straight as a pine needle. Her legs weren’t moving right—they dragged along the ground as though weighted with rocks. She pushed herself upright, breathing hard.
