Darkwood

by M. E. Breen

  “I’ll run. Now hold your hands here, like this.” Annie pressed the king’s hands over her sister’s wound. “Like she did for you.”

  “Look at them all,” the king said in that same odd, dreamy tone. “Look at how they wait on you.”

  Annie turned, and for the first time saw what made the king speak so strangely. The battlefield had fallen perfectly still. Men and wolves seemed to have forgotten what they were doing and simply stared. On the hill above them four hundred wolves stood still and stared. They all stared at her.

  Annie took a step forward. No one moved to stop her. She started to run. A white flag marked with a red cross waved at the eastern edge of the field.

  A large shape stepped into her path, a wolf, rearing on its hind legs, its pelt sliding horribly from its back, a flash of white skin, whiter teeth, then a rifle butt brought down hard against her temple.

  Two blurred dark shapes loomed over her. Two wolves? A paw reached down, no, a hand. To help her up? Sharp pain crossed her scalp. Her hips left the ground, then her feet. She was being lifted. By the hair. It hurt to struggle, but she did, until the hand in her hair made a fist and jerked her head back. She found herself looking up at Gibbet’s furious, blood-smeared face.

  Chopper stood beside him with his rifle pointed at Annie. She saw at once why she had mistaken them for wolves. As camouflage, each wore a rough cape of wolfskin. The skins were fresh.

  “What are you?” Annie said in Hippa.

  Gibbet smiled. His teeth, she saw, were fake.

  “This girl,” he called out. “Why do you stop fighting for this girl?”

  The red wolf howled her answer from the hilltop. She dropped into the wash and four hundred wolves flowed after her and through the parted ranks of soldiers. They came to a stop in front of Annie and Gibbet.

  “Fristi, you wish to make trouble for me?” Gibbet snapped in Hippa.

  “Release the scion,” the red wolf said.

  “What did you call her?”

  “Release the scion.”

  “How do you know it’s her?”

  “She is the one.”

  “How do you know?” Gibbet jerked Annie’s head to the side as spoke. Fristi’s eyes narrowed.

  “You know it as well as I. But if you need a sign—there, at the back of her neck.”

  Now Gibbet jerked her head forward. Fristi growled. Annie felt his finger with its sharp fingernail touch the nape of her neck where the white hair grew.

  “That is nothing. A birthmark.”

  “A birthmark indeed. Let her go.”

  “Finish the fight. Then I’ll give her to you. The girl, and all your land. Whatever you want.”

  Fristi barked high and fast. Annie recognized the order, but it wasn’t Gibbet they went after. A shout of fear sounded from the top of the hill and Uncle Jock appeared from behind the oak, Mira snapping at his heels. He slashed at her with his rifle but she drove him relentlessly over the edge of the wash. Wolves waited below. He slid awkwardly down the steep hillside, trying to scramble up even as he fell. At the bottom he managed to stand and lift his gun, but there were too many, too close. Panicked, he turned and began to run, staggering through the mud. Fool, Annie thought. For now the wolves hunted as a pack, darting in to deliver quick, superficial bites, then backing away. They were not without cruelty. When their prey stumbled, the wolves hung back, allowing him to get to his feet before they moved in again.

  “A trade?” Fristi asked.

  “There is no trade,” Gibbet replied. “He means nothing.”

  “Then he dies.”

  “No!” Annie cried, but her voice was lost in a volley of excited barks as the wolves brought down their prey for the final time. She was glad she could not turn her head.

  “But surely this one means something?”

  Wolves surrounded Chopper, snapping and snarling. Annie could smell his fear, though none showed on his face.

  “No,” Gibbet said. And it was true. She sensed nothing like sadness on him, no regret, no uncertainty, only his same stale odor of onions and fury.

  “No more kills,” Annie said.

  Fristi nodded. The wolves backed away from Chopper. “Gibbet?”

  He brought her face very close to his. “What?”

  She considered the wide mouth, the smile like a wound opening, the false teeth. She considered the portrait in the king’s throne room, and the mine overseer six generations ago who looked so very much like this one. She considered the apothecary’s spell that slowed her blood and the potion that forced flowers to bloom and men to sleep their lives away.

  “I don’t know what you are,” she said. “But I know what made you.”

  “Ah, but do you know what made you?” He brought their faces closer still, so close that she could smell the queer, bleached bone odor of his teeth. “Do you remember your own birth? Because I remember mine.”

  “Let me go.”

  He turned her again so she faced Chopper. Chopper, whose face had never changed, who had never lowered his gun.

  “What will you do now, little animal?” Gibbet whispered in her ear. “Claw me? Bite me?”

  “This,” Annie said, and brought her bare heel back as hard as she could into his shin. Gibbet yelped and doubled over. She jerked free and ran pell-mell toward the white flag.

  “Move aside, dear. I need to wrap her up.” Serena stood over Annie and Page with a stack of clean bandages in her hands.

  “She’s so pale. Even her lips.”

  “Yes.” Serena tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it. “Annie, she has lost a terrible amount of blood.”

  “But you closed the wound!”

  “I closed it too late.”

  Bea took Annie’s hand in hers. “We don’t know that for certain, Serena.”

  “Bea, look at her! Already a ghost. It’s wrong to give the child false hope.”

  “We haven’t tried everything yet.”

  “What else? What haven’t you tried?” Annie clutched Bea’s hand so tightly she winced.

  “There is one thing—,” Beatrice began, but Serena cut her off furiously.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and I won’t!” She turned to Annie. “Bea’s mad. She means for me to do a transfusion.”

  “You’ve done it before,” Bea said, “at the medical college.”

  “A lifetime ago! And there were a dozen doctors standing by to help.”

  “I’ll help you,” Beatrice said. Then her eyes widened.

  Fristi stood inside the tent. “We await your orders, Scion.”

  “I have no orders for you!” Annie shouted. “Whatever you think about me is wrong. Please, just leave me alone!” She glanced desperately at Page.

  “You fear for the girl?” Fristi asked.

  “My sister. Yes, I fear for her!”

  “She is not your sister,” the wolf said matter-of-factly. Then just as matter-of-factly, “What does she need?”

  “Blood.”

  Fristi disappeared without another word. Annie stared after her from the tent’s entrance. The battle had ended. Men and wolves searched the field for their wounded. A captain from the king’s army kept guard over Chopper and Gibbet. Chopper stood stoically as ever, but Gibbet snarled something at Fristi as she ran past.

  Fristi returned with a legion of wolves behind her. In their midst, looking determined and afraid, came the king.

  “Miss Trewitt! The kinder … the wolves. I cannot understand what they want. Where is Page? Is her condition improved? What is happening?” Without waiting for an answer he pushed past her into the tent. At the sight of Page he cried out as if in pain.

  “She needs blood,” Beatrice said quickly, “a transfusion.”

  “Then you must perform one.” Already the king was shrugging out of his embroidered coat and vest and unbuttoning the layers of silk underwear he wore beneath them. The scars on his face and neck where Annie had attacked him showed plainly. Beatrice and Serena gaped at him.
r />   “Your Highness, do you mean … do you wish for us to operate on you?” Serena stammered.

  “I do not wish it. I order it,” said the king. Then he bowed once with great formality, legs straight, back flat as a table, and lay down on the blankets beside Page.

  Fur grazed Annie’s hand. “Scion, do not weep. Come with us.”

  Wolves surrounded her. They crowded the tent, pressing against Annie until she lost her balance. They caught her, as they had that night outside the palace gates, and bore her from the tent.

  “Page!” Annie cried. “Page!”

  But the wolves were carrying her farther and farther from the tent and the people inside it. She let her head fall back and saw two small shapes traveling through the branches above, orange and striped brown. A cry came from the tent. Or perhaps they were too far away. Perhaps it was only a bird.

  At last she slept. The wolves moved gracefully beneath her, passing the burden between them without waking her.

  Chapter 18

  There was a draft. A very cold, persistent draft, the kind that would have Aunt Prim reciting from one of her favorite lists. Ailments Induced as a Consequence of Malignant Breezes: Gout! Dyspepsia! Shrunken extremities! Sluggish bile!

  Annie tucked up her legs and nestled closer to the cats. If she didn’t open her eyes, or listen very carefully, or smell anything, she could imagine they were back on the old straw mattress in the garret. I had the strangest dream, she would tell the cats, but they would lose patience halfway through and demand to be let out the window. Even now, she could feel Izzy stretch in a way that meant the warm lump of cat attached to her rib cage would soon become a fidgety cat intent on breakfast.

  The floor beneath her felt cold and slightly damp. Stone. Water dripped nearby. Farther off she could hear the shushing of an underground river. The air smelled of salt and smoke and the light green, split-wood scent particular to Dour County.

  Annie sat up. She was not alone. She pivoted slowly, peering in every direction. She was staring toward the back of the cave, staring toward nothing, when whiskers brushed her cheek. Then breath, hot as an oven. Annie turned her head and looked directly into the wolf’s eyes. The gaze was serene, gentle even, but the animal was huge, bigger than Sharta, bigger even than Rinka. Her coat was coal black except for a diamond-shaped patch of white on the breast. Her voice sounded like the wind in the pines, whispery but strong.

  “I am glad to see you awake. Welcome to Finisterre.”

  Annie cleared her throat to dislodge the first word, but still her voice came out a squeak.

  “Where is my sister?”

  “Page is well.”

  Annie blinked, startled. “Is she here?”

  “She is with the king.”

  The wolf looked at Annie with a tenderness that made something in her memory groan and shift, something she had not thought of for years.

  “Come with me,” the wolf said. Annie followed her through a passage at the back of the cave. The space was so narrow she had to crawl on all fours to fit through. Light spilled through an opening ahead of her. The light was bright but soft, softer than sunlight.

  The passage opened onto a ledge overlooking a vast, brilliant cavern. White light glowed from the vaulted ceiling and from every wall, and even from the ledge under Annie’s feet. The cavern was perhaps a hundred feet across, the vault at least as high from where Annie stood and many hundreds of feet deep. All of it, every inch, was covered in white ringstone. Annie peered over the ledge. Far, far below, she could see the white walls disappear into the dark mottled surface of the sea.

  “Is this the moon?” Annie asked, and blushed. It was a foolish question.

  But the wolf answered her seriously. “This is how I imagine it, also. You see the roof’s reflection on the water?”

  Annie ran her fingers over a pattern of gashes in the stone close to where they stood. They looked like claw marks. She took the ringstone from the hem of her skirt and showed it to the wolf.

  “Gibbet has been here. He gave my uncle a ringstone cut from this cave.”

  The wolf shook her head. “Gibbet has never been here, but you are right about the stone. Let us go make ourselves comfortable. Then I will tell you a story.”

  The cats were waiting for them at the front of the cave. To Annie’s surprise, they greeted the wolf like an old friend. It gave her a strange feeling to see Izzy rub against the wolf’s legs.

  “It was you on the road to Magnifica, wasn’t it?” Annie asked.

  “It was. We had come to bring you home, only you turned out to be a very fast runner.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Helia. I was Sharta’s mate.”

  “I’m sorry he died.”

  “I am glad you buried him. Wolves don’t bury their dead, but this was fitting. Perhaps you can take me to visit his grave someday. You and Page could take me.”

  Annie’s pulse thudded in her ears. “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  The wolf sighed and lay down. She rested her chin on her crossed paws. “I’m sorry. I should be more direct. I have never had a conversation like this before.” She paused. “I will start at the beginning. Do you remember the first child whose name Primrose wrote in her big book, the first child taken by the kinderstalk?”

  How did this wolf know about her aunt’s book? But Annie answered, because she did remember. “Phoebe Tamburlaine. But the kinderstalk didn’t take her. Gibbet took all those children to work at the Drop. Their parents sold them.”

  “The kinderstalk did take Phoebe. We took her.”

  “You killed her?”

  “No, but it nearly came to that. The wolves have been hungry for a long time, as long as I can remember, as long as my mother and her mother could remember. Once our territory covered all of Howland. There was plenty of game, plenty of space to roam, and then—”

  “They dug the first mine. Page showed me on the map.”

  “Yes. So here we are squeezed into our little corner of the world, and there isn’t enough room for us all, and everyone is very hungry. You can imagine the fights.”

  “Fights over food?”

  “Over humans, mostly, and whether to hunt them for food.

  Sharta and I said no, other wolves said yes.” Helia gave a toothy smile. “There were times I considered it, believe me. But if we hunted humans, surely they would hunt us back? Besides, the people of Dour County had never done us any particular harm. It seemed … unfair.” Helia looked up. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Annie had been standing rather stiffly, as though prepared to run at a moment’s notice. She made herself sit. Prudence lay across her lap like an anchor.

  Helia went on. “The child, Phoebe, was left outside after dark. What the parents intended, whether it was a mistake, I don’t know. A group of us were out hunting, as usual. We caught rats around the farms. From time to time we’d find a stray chicken. But that night we found her. She was so tiny, I remember, all white and gold, like an aster.

  “A wolf caught her by the ankle. I told him to let her go. He refused. We fought, and I killed him. I fled with the child.

  “Sharta was furious when he learned what I had done. No wolf could excuse the killing of another wolf to protect a human child. There were so many humans and so few of us. At the time, our only thought was to run. But run where? Perhaps Sharta acted too quickly. Perhaps the pack would have let us live. I don’t know.

  “A witch lives in these woods, an ancient, evil thing. Sharta asked her to cast a changing spell. We thought we could hide in the form of another animal.” She smiled grimly. “A fox, we thought, or a bear. Of course, she wanted payment.”

  “The white ringstone,” Annie said.

  “She asked many questions about the ringstone, how much there was and whether it was good quality, but she refused to enter the cavern.”

  “What about the claw marks I saw on the wall?” Annie asked.

  “That was the strangest part of all. She
crouched outside the entrance with her cloak pulled tight all around her, then reached one hand in and tore a handful of stone right from the wall. When she touched the stone it seemed to hurt her, like a burn.” Helia paused. “We should never have let her take the stone.”

  Annie wanted to put her arms around the wolf. Instead she asked, “What happened next?”

  “Then she made a potion for us to drink. You can see the scar on the floor of the cave, there, where the brew bubbled over.”

  A patch of shiny black showed on the rock near Annie’s foot. She moved her foot away.

  “All four of us were to take the potion,” Helia went on. “Sharta and I, our son, Rinka, and the gold child. Sharta drank. I drank. The change came over us so fast. Sharta reared up on his hind legs. His pelt fell off him as if he had been skinned alive. His beautiful face became a stranger’s. I saw his horror at the sight of me.

  “Rinka fled. We could not hold him. How the apothecary laughed! I still remember her words. ‘To love a human child you must have a human form.’ But she was wrong.

  “We left the forest. We built a house and learned to farm. We could not call our older daughter, the fair one, by her real name. Instead we called her Page.”

  Helia tipped her head to the side. Her eyes were soft. “Soon we had another child. We named our younger daughter Annouk, an ancient name of the pack. But the name was too much for little Page to manage. She always called you Annie.”

  Without Prudence on her lap, Annie wasn’t sure what she would have done. Leapt to her feet and run away. Leapt into her mother’s arms. Except this mother, her mother, couldn’t hold her, not really.

  “Why did you leave us?” She spoke the words very low, practically into the top of Prudence’s head, but Helia heard her. The wolf’s voice sounded tired.

  “The potion wore off. You were just a baby when it happened. I returned to the pack, a wolf in a torn dress. Fristi had become a leader by then. Some of the others still wanted me punished, but she said losing my family was punishment enough.”

  “You lost Sharta too,” Annie said. And then, slowly, the full force of it just dawning on her, “Sharta was my father.”