“Have we lost him?”
Feo looked back at Gray. Her hackles stood up stiff as an iron railing. “No,” she said. “Gray can smell him.” She heaved a breath. “This can’t be happening.”
“But it is happening. So what do we do?”
The “we” was generous, Feo thought. It was her, after all, whom Rakov was seeking, her face that had made his eyes light up with such a metallic shine of pleasure.
“White can’t run much farther.”
Ilya said, “Can one wolf ride another wolf? Could we put White on Black’s back?”
You could not, it turned out, make one wolf ride another. Ilya and Feo together tried to heave White to lie crosswise over Black’s back: It was the nearest White had ever come to hurting Feo. She snarled and lashed out with her claws, clacking her jaws, and twisted back onto the ground. Black merely looked pained.
Ilya’s eyes were wide. “That’s a firm negative, I think.” He looked behind them, but the trees were too thick to see anything. “Feo, is he going to kill us?”
“We won’t let him,” said Feo. She tried to sound strong and calm, like Mama. She tried to suppress the roar of urgency in her blood, to make a plan. “But if White can’t run, we’ll have to go where they can’t follow us. Rakov will be slow on foot, won’t he?”
“Well, he’s old. I’ve never seen him run, if that’s what you mean.”
“In that case, we’ll go where a horse can’t.”
Feo stared around them. The trees looked down at her, calm and waiting. They gave her hope; it was like having an army of her own. This was her terrain, she thought. This was the land she knew.
“There,” said Feo. “That way: There’s fir trees. They grow close.”
She helped White to her feet and they went on, the two children and the three wolves, barely at a jog now, stopping and listening every few steps, navigating into the heart of the wood. Feo kept her hand on White’s shoulder, feeling the exhaustion in every step.
The neighing did not begin again until they were into the roughest and oldest part of the forest, where storms had knocked trees down years before and no woodsman had ventured deep enough to claim them for firewood. One giant oak sagged drunkenly against the other trees, its roots upended. The tree was leafless, but from it grew a curtain of icicles, some as thick as Feo’s arm. As they ducked under it, an icicle fell, smashing on the ground, sending Black darting sideways and snuffing angrily. It gave Feo the first nudge of an idea.
“I want to do something here. Will you take the wolves on?”
“No! Your mother would kill me if I left you alone! I’m older than you, remember?”
“Please, I need you to drag the wolves: look, here, by the scruff of their necks. They won’t go without being forced. I don’t want them here.” The wolves turned to her voice as she spoke. Their eyes were full, as they always had been, of fire and nerves and faith in her. “I won’t let him hurt them.”
“They’re wolves.” He looked at her as if she’d suggested something unreasonable. “Won’t they eat me if I try to drag them?”
“I don’t think they will. They know you well enough now. Probably.”
Ilya licked his lips. “Probably.”
“Please, quickly. And the pup, too. Here: He’s in my sack. There’s a hole in that bramble bush—there, at the bottom. If you take them through that, you’ll be hard to follow.”
He stared, from Feo to the bramble bush, which rose leafless, eight feet tall, sprawling between the trees. “That’s a mouse hole.”
“No, it’s a fox path. It’ll be wider than it looks if you beat the snow away, I swear.”
She did not wait to watch them go but began digging under the snow for stones. It wasn’t easy, and her gloves were soon soaked, but she found four good-size rocks. She dropped them into her hood. Then she ran to a fir tree and heaved herself into its branches, kicking against the trunk for purchase and moving as slowly as she dared, so that the snow would help to block her from view.
This, at least, was familiar: the wood under her hands and feet, the widening view, the scent of ice and pine. She could see bushes shake as Ilya led the wolves in an unsteady parade through the undergrowth—and, in the opposite direction, the movement of branches.
The horse came into sight as if onto a stage. Rakov’s face was set, with traces of sweat at his neck and lips. He guided the horse straight for the curtain of icicles.
Feo said a prayer to the saints of good aim and wild ideas. She hurled her stone, not at the horse, but at the oak tree. The first went wide, landing soundlessly in the snow, but the second hit an icicle at its root. It dropped. Rakov reined in his horse and looked up, frowning. She threw another stone, and then another, her aim growing sharper, breathing hard and leaning out from the tree with one arm wrapped around the branch. There was a sudden clattering, glittering cacophony as thirty icicles came loose, showering down on Rakov’s fists and lap and horse.
The horse shrieked, a scream of bewildered terror at this sudden torrent of frozen glass. It reared, beating its hooves against the cascade, and Rakov let out a single angry hiss. He grabbed at the horse’s mane, but it reared again and he slipped sideways with a great shout and fell. The horse bolted, its mane patterned with broken ice.
Feo did not wait to see if Rakov was moving. She dropped six feet into the snow, rolled, spat out the sludge and what felt like a bit of her own tooth, and ran for the hole in the bramble. She wriggled through on her stomach, scratching her hands, and then straightened up. A grin had taken over her face despite the fear still in the air. Adrenaline kept all pain at bay, and she let out gasps of relief as she sprinted down the trail the wolves’ feet had left, brushing aside branches, looking neither back nor to the sides but only at the path laid out for her.
Gray saw her before she saw Gray. The wolf gave a rumble of recognition, and Feo cannoned straight into her, sliding sideways, and fell down flat on her back. Four faces loomed over hers. The hairless one smiled.
“Did it work?”
Feo sat up. “Better than I expected.”
“Is he still coming?”
“I think so. But not yet.” She rested her hand on White’s nose and counted her breaths. They were shallow but steady. “I think she can carry on. We’ll have to be slower, though.” She swung her leg over Black’s back. “I’ll tell you about it later. We’d better keep going.”
“Toward Saint Petersburg!” Ilya looked as relieved as she felt. “You’ll love it, Feo.” He handed her the pup, who wriggled in her arms before settling down to sit on top of Black’s head. “It’s a beautiful city.” Then, suddenly urgent: “Are you all right?”
“Of course!” she said. Or that was what she said inside: But to her astonishment she found herself suddenly shivering too hard to shape the words.
“You’ve gone green. I think you’re in shock. Here!” He fished a handful of candied fruit from the pocket in his trousers. “Eat this.”
“I’m fine, really,” she muttered. Her teeth were vibrating. She glared at her jaw as best she could. “Tell me about Saint Petersburg. I need to know what it’s like.” The fruit was dusty and covered in trouser fluff, but sweet. The pulsing in her head eased.
“Well . . . it’s huge. And golden. It’s a very tall city: It’s full of spires.” Ilya mounted Gray and tucked up his feet. “And there’s a town square as big as a lake.”
Black followed. Feo let herself relax into the rhythm of his tread. She reached out and laid one hand on White’s back, pulling her close, and the three wolves walked abreast, a wall of fur and teeth and loyalty.
“And the horses wear plumes, like ballerinas. And there are theaters that look like palaces, with ballets every night.”
“We don’t have ballet out here. Is it . . . It’s not a kind of food, is it? That’s something else.”
“It’s dancing! It’s magical, actually. A kind of slowish magic. Like writing with your feet.”
“Have you seen it?”<
br />
He grinned but didn’t answer. “And the city’s got people selling black bread and honey on the streets, freshly toasted. It’s exquisite.”
“Good,” said Feo. She didn’t know what an “exquisite” might be, but it sounded promising. “Onward, then.”
They set off, slower now, dripping blood behind them, but pointing always toward the north.
EIGHT
They were in open country and the sky was turning evening colored when the wind began to howl. White and Black howled with it
“Oh, chyort!” Feo whispered.
Ilya tried to sing, swallowed a gallon of wind and stopped.
The wolves did not usually deign to notice the wind, but Feo could feel Black’s anxiety twitching through his fur. As they sped across the snow, Feo saw great chunks of it tumble across the ground, forming snowballs as big as her head. The wolves’ tails stuck fast to their legs and the fur was flattened against their skulls. White was struggling, blown into zigzags as they ran.
“There’s a storm smell, Ilya,” she said. “Blind cold.”
“Is that . . . bad?”
“It’s not good. It’s not even in the realm of good.” She leaned forward and whispered into Black’s fur, “What do we do now?”
The wind gave another howl; it knocked her sideways and slid inside her kneecaps. It felt angry. Feo’s body gave a huge, unexpected shiver that made Black flinch under her.
“Stop it!” she shouted.
“I’m not doing anything!” Ilya said.
“Not you! The weather!”
“Oh!”
Together they shouted, “Shut up!”
There were, in Feo’s experience, five kinds of cold. There was wind cold, which Feo barely felt. It was fussy and loud and turned your cheeks as red as if you’d been slapped, but couldn’t kill you even if it tried. There was snow cold, which plucked at your arms and chapped your lips, but brought real rewards. It was Feo’s favorite weather: The snow was soft and good for making snow wolves. There was ice cold, which might take the skin off your palm if you let it, but probably wouldn’t if you were careful. Ice cold smelled sharp and knowing. It often came with blue skies and was good for skating. Feo had respect for ice cold. Then there was hard cold, which was when the ice cold got deeper and deeper until at the end of a month you couldn’t remember if the summer had ever really existed. Hard cold could be cruel. Birds died in midflight. It was the kind of cold that you booted and kicked your way through.
And there was blind cold. Blind cold smelled of metal and granite. It took all the sense out of your brain and blew the snow into your eyes until they were glued shut and you had to rub spit into them before they would blink. Blind cold was forty degrees below zero. This was the kind of cold that you didn’t sit down to think in, unless you wanted to be found dead in the same place in May or June.
Feo had felt blind cold only once. It had been one night in February of last year, and the walls had groaned with it. Feo’s mother had wrapped her in six blankets, five around her shoulders and one for her head and neck, and they had stood outside in the cold until Feo was convulsing and gasping for air. Then Marina had lifted her in her arms and carried her back in.
“Did you feel that? The cold?” Marina had said.
“Of course I did, Mama.” You could no more ignore blind cold than you could ignore a bear riding a lion. “Why did you do that? It hurt.”
“Because I want you to be brave, my love, but not stupid. When you feel that coming on the air, you run for shelter. You understand? You run even if your legs are so cold you can’t feel if they’re still attached or not. It would be stupid not to be afraid of the blind cold.”
“But fear is for cowards,” Feo had said.
“No, Feo! Cowardice is for cowards. Fear is for people with brains and eyes and functioning nerve endings.”
“But you’re always telling me to be brave!”
“Yes. You don’t have to do the things fear tells you to do; you just have to lend it an ear, lapushka. Don’t despise fear. The world is more complicated than that.”
But the weather, up until now, had always seemed on her side. This was something new. Ilya let out a cry as Gray was suddenly buffeted toward Black and the two wolves collided.
“This isn’t good!” he called.
At least, Feo thought, the soldiers would be in the same weather. “Perhaps it’ll kill them,” she said aloud. “They’re old. Older than us, anyway.” The thought was comforting. Mama had always said, “You will never be tougher than you are now. Children are the toughest creatures on the planet. They endure.”
The wind blew again, harder, and a snow-covered branch tumbled toward them, scattering the wolves sideways. Feo gripped her knees more tightly to Black’s sides.
Ilya called, “We need to stop!”
“There’s nowhere to stop!” The wind swirled around her tongue and whipped saliva from her mouth. It froze before it met the ground.
“Can’t we build a shelter?” he shouted.
Feo’s whole face was stinging. “Where?” They were pacing over what would, in summer, be a vast lake, ten feet of ice topped with half a foot of snow. There was nothing to shelter behind: not even a passing elk.
“This is supposed to be what you’re good at!”
It is difficult to make a face in a storm: The wind keeps trying to rearrange your eyebrows. Even so, Feo managed it. “Fine! We’ll build a shelter! Pile snow—it’ll warm us up!” “Warm up” was, she realized, somewhere between extremely optimistic and delusional, but Ilya was starting to look panicked. Feo scrambled off Black, blinded by her flying hair.
“How?” Ilya said something else, too, but it was impossible to hear over the wind. She gestured to him to copy her and began shaping great armfuls of snow into a ball. Together they rolled the ball across the lake, pushing with their backs and knees, using the wind to help propel it. Feo’s blood seemed to defrost as she worked, and soon she and Ilya were sweating, running backward and forward with armfuls of powdery snow, piling more and more until the snowball was more a snow hillock.
The wolves watched, apparently unimpressed. Gray stood a little apart, and every so often she sniffed, connoisseur-like, at the rearing wind.
When the snowball was as broad as a woodshed and tall as a smallish giant, the two children crouched down in the lee of it. Feo pushed her back and bottom into the snow mound, and Ilya copied, molding himself a kind of throne. The wind shifted from a roar to a blur. The relief was overwhelming, and for a minute they sat gasping and laughing at each other’s frozen faces. They found that if they carved out a dip in the snow wall for their heads, the wind was dimmed enough to talk. Feo fished out the pup and held her palms, very gently, over his ears.
“I don’t want him deafened,” she said, “but he needs some air.”
“There’s a lot of it available, certainly,” said Ilya.
Feo pulled an apple from her bag and rubbed the ice off it. “Here,” she said. “You can have first bite.”
They passed the apple back and forth until it was just the core, which Ilya ate in three gulps, like a wolf. Feo was impressed.
“You learn to eat quickly in the army,” he said.
The wolves laid their ears against their skulls and tucked their heads into their hind legs. White’s sides were heaving. Feo stroked her ear, but the wolf clacked her teeth together and Feo shied away.
Ilya gasped and pressed himself backward into their snow barricade. “Did she just bite you?” His eyes were huge.
“No! She just snapped a bit.” Feo tried to smile, but it was unusual for White to be so short tempered. “She’s a wolf, you know, not a kitten.”
“All right, I know.”
“She’s tired, that’s all.” Feo pulled up her hood. “We need to get to a wood, where she can sleep.”
“Which way, though, to the city?” The compass needle spun uselessly in the wind.
“I think . . . over there.” It was very litt
le more than a guess. “I think there’ll be trees that way, soon. We can make a fire.” The snow was biting at her eyes.
“Won’t we . . . ? I mean, don’t take this as criticism, but if we get it wrong, won’t we die of cold?”
“I don’t know! I don’t come out in storms like this, Ilya. You’re mixing up being a wilder with being insane.”
As she spoke the wind dipped a little, and they heard a new sound. Ilya let out a burp of shock, then slapped his hand over his mouth. Feo hid the pup inside her shirt. They stared at each other.
“Is that . . . laughing?” said Ilya.
“Maybe it’s the wind.” But it wasn’t. It came again: guttural. Feo thought of Rakov and his laugh. Was that a soldier’s shape in the snow, or a tree?
“Over there! See: The wolves have smelled something!” She edged out from behind their snowball blockade. The wind punched her full in the face.
The three wolves came running as she scrambled to her feet, grouping themselves in front of her, facing into the wind. Ilya ducked behind Feo. Gray rolled back her lips: Snow blew at the wolf’s face and coated her canines, and saliva dripped onto the ground, but she stayed like that, her hackles raised.
A figure was struggling through the wind toward them, shouting something they could not hear.
Feo held her knife in both hands in front of her. This is it, she thought. He’s come.
The figure carried something black and limp swinging from one hand. Feo squinted into the wind; it looked like he had an ax in the other. Soldiers, as far as she knew, did not wield axes. And his coat, she saw, seemed to be made of ragged squirrel fur. Squirrel fur is not soldierly.
The relief of it made her want to leap around the field, but instead she shouted across the field, “Who are you?” The wind took her words, so she tried again, roaring, “Who?”
The answer got whipped away by the wind. But the face approaching was a promising one, Feo thought: young and unpanicked. He was grinning, struggling across the field toward them, and despite her ice mustache, Feo gave a quarter of a smile back.
The Wolf Wilder Page 6
