The Wolf Wilder

by Katherine Rundell

  “Vermin,” said one guard. “That’s what the general says. Vermin with big teeth.”

  It was understandable, then, that they did not recognize the two magnificent gold-anointed animals who came processing past them half an hour later, led on a chain by a young soldier. He saluted as he passed, and they returned the gesture. They did not notice how brightly the boy’s face shone with suppressed happiness, how he shivered with restrained joy.

  Feo and the others were waiting for Ilya in Peter’s Square. The sun struck against the golden domes around them, filling the square with sharp winter light. The crowd of staring children from a few days before was still there, still staring: It was as if they had not moved. Alexei slipped among them, whispering, handing out sticks, telling jokes, slapping shoulders. His grin was larger than ever: He stood sleeveless, bruised, and bare headed in the melting snow.

  Feo had unplaited her hair and wrapped herself in her old wolf-smelling clothes, and felt more like herself. Her heart and stomach were surprisingly calm. Black shook free of the chain—which, after all, was only painted string—and ran to her, licking her fists and gnawing on the tops of her boots. Feo had streaked his fur with gold, and White’s bandage was gold too.

  There was a sudden commotion among the children in the square, some pushing and some shouting.

  “Hey!” An adult’s hand parted the crowd of children, and Grigory, his beard vibrating with rage, pushed to the front.

  “Have you any idea,” he roared, lifting Sergei clean into the air, “how much trouble you’re in?” He crushed Sergei against his chest. “We’ve been searching the woods for the past three days. It was Sasha who thought you’d be here. Where have you been?”

  More adults from the village were pushing through the crowd, snatching up Vasilisa and Zoya, hugging them so tightly that the girls let out cries of pain.

  “Uh-oh,” said Alexei. “We might have a problem.”

  But Sasha was pushing her way forward, climbing on a bench and shouting for silence. “Grigory! Be quiet, for once in your life. Listen: We’ve been insane with worry—but we didn’t come to shout at you. We came,” said Sasha, “to help. To help Feo. And my maddening little brother. We’ve come for Rakov. It’s about time. We’re here to fight.”

  The cheer that went up from Feo’s army was so loud that it shook the clouds.

  “Say something,” said Alexei. “Feo. They’re watching you. We need them. Say something.”

  “But I’m embarrassed.”

  “You have no right to be,” he said. “Being embarrassed is a luxury. Hey!” he roared. “Everyone! Listen to her!”

  They pushed her to the top of the steps of the cathedral and stood waiting.

  “I don’t know what to say,” began Feo. “Um . . . thank you all for being here. But—” The weight of everyone’s gaze on her was too much. Hot, shameful tears began to fill her eyes. She turned to Alexei, fighting the wobble in her chin. “I don’t know how.”

  But the crowd was parting on the steps, hissing and yelping, and up the stone stairs, beautiful and bold, stalked Black, followed by White. They crossed to her and sat, one on each side, their faces turned to her. Feo laid a hand on their heads. She breathed in their wild courage. She brushed away the water from her eyes.

  “Alexei wanted me to start a revolution. And I’ll try: I’ll try until I’m dead. But it won’t be me starting anything: Mikail Rakov started all this. Rakov came in the night and burned down our home. He took my mama away, because he was afraid of her. He was afraid that she wasn’t afraid.

  “And then—three nights ago—he shot dead one of my best friends.”

  There was a hiss from the crowd. A group of men came out of a bar and stood, staring, in the middle of the road.

  “She was a wolf.” Someone laughed, but Feo kept on. “She was the bravest and the cleverest wolf in the world. And so now I need to be braver, so that the total sum of bravery isn’t less. Rakov likes to burn things—we all know that—but she had fire inside her, and Rakov’s afraid of fire when it’s inside living things.”

  A group of nuns filed past and stopped, wrapping their habits around them in the wind.

  “And he’s taking our food and homes. And he’s taking the people we love. How many people here will have to live every single day a little bit lonelier because of him and his gun?”

  One of the nuns cheered.

  “And he’s taking our future. And the future needs our protection: It’s a fragile thing. The future needs all the help it can get.”

  Sasha shouted something high and indecipherable, and swung Varvara into the air, and the baby squealed.

  “Rakov wants to kill my mama. He wants to use today to take her away from me forever. But I”—she pushed the hair out of her eyes and tried to look tall—“I am the wolf girl, and I am not afraid of him!”

  That last part was a lie, but a roar went up around the square.

  “He’s blind now in one eye because of me. But he’s always been blind: He doesn’t see the facts. The fact that there are more of us than there are of him. The fact that fire in your soul beats fire on the ground. The fact that love always beats fear. And the fact that it helps to have wolves on your side.”

  A nun punched the air and knocked off the hat of a watching chef.

  “I didn’t want a revolution. I just wanted Mama. I just wanted things to be like they were. And . . . Alexei”—she grinned at him—“sometimes when you talk about revolution, it’s actually quite annoying. That’s something I found out—revolutionaries are annoying. But . . . Rakov didn’t just come for us, for me and Mama. He took Yana’s Paul, and that meant he took part of Yana, too. He took part of Sergei, and Sergei’s only eight.”

  “Nine!” called Sergei. “Practically nine! Nine in a week!” Grigory laughed and cuffed his son around the head.

  Feo barely heard. “Rakov, he saw no reason not to take the things he wanted. He thought fear was the most powerful thing in the world. He thought fear had the most kick—he thought we’d care more about being safe than being bold. But then . . . he took my Gray.” Feo looked around the great square, at the golden domes around her, at the upturned faces. “And now I’d rather be bold. We’ve got to say, You do not get to take anything more. One person can’t do it—not alone—but all of us, us kids, we can take ourselves back. We can take our fear back. And I don’t know if we’ll win, but we have a right to try. The adults, they want us to be quiet and careful, but we have a right to fight for the world we want to live in, and nobody has the right to tell us to be safe and sensible. I say, today, we fight!”

  Ilya let out a whoop so loud he went purple and had to be hit on the back by Alexei, which only turned him a deeper indigo. Alexei laughed, and hit him again.

  “Rakov doesn’t believe in us,” Feo went on. “He thinks we’ll sit, each of us alone with our hands in our laps, hoping we won’t be next. He doesn’t believe in our bravery. Let’s show him that we are brave as . . . as wolves!”

  The wolves recognized the word and stood, and howled, and over their voices Feo shouted, “Tell Rakov to start saying prayers for the souls he took! Tell him we’re coming to end it. We have the land in our blood and fire in our feet, and we’re coming to change our stories forever!”

  There was a roar: a roar that sounded around the square and down the side alleys and caused the children of the city to prick up their ears and turn their heads, like wolves do when they hear a call in the wind.

  Ilya let out a choked war cry. He ran ahead of the crowd, down the streets, and spun to face the jail. “Run and hide, Rakov!” he yelled. “I’m coming to show you that you can’t despise me! It’s a mistake to call people feeble! It’s a mistake that’s coming for you, with fists!” He spun on the spot, pirouetting so fast Feo expected to see flames leap from his shoes. Without turning to see if they were following, he began to run.

  The crowd set off at a wolf’s gallop down the pavement, Feo scrabbling onto Black’s back at a sprint
, her hair whipping at the open mouths of passersby. Sergei gave a roar, as deep as his eight-year-old lungs would manage, and bounded after her.

  Feo sped up, urging Black with her knees. The children charged out onto the main road, streaking down alongside the Fontanka Canal. Feo looked back at the gang on her heels, singing, shrieking, running hand in hand with snow in their eyes: very thoroughly wilded. There was something in their whoops—something louder and more guttural than most—that made other children come running out of side streets to watch as they rushed past. They saw golden wolves, the girl with her flying hair, and the singing, gleeful army of children and adults and dogs, hundreds of people swarming down the streets. Ilya sang Tchaikovsky to Zoya and Vasilisa as they ran.

  In one side street a gang of children were hanging out laundry. They dropped it and sprinted after the crowd, waving red underpants in their hands for flags. By the time Feo was rounding the corner to the jail, three hundred people were on her tail.

  In front of the jail was the same guardsman as before, and his mouth opened to form the word “Countess?”—but Black barreled straight past him, and the sea of three hundred pairs of elbows and knees knocked him against the wall. Faces were appearing at the windows.

  Alexei jumped on a post and shouted at the crowd. “Spread out! Break down the doors! Smash all the windows! Split up! Keep them busy!” It was mayhem. The world went from calm to chaos in sixty seconds. Bogdan dancing on marble staircases, Sergei scrambling up a drainpipe to escape pursuit, a horde of nuns swinging right hooks at the guards. All of them, even the smallest, kept up a roar of noise as loud as a hundred-piece orchestra of fury. Feo slipped past them all, taking the route Ilya had drawn for her in the charred wallpaper the night before. Dozens of guards shoved past her, running in the direction of the riot: Some were still chewing their lunches. One struggled to button his suspenders as he sprinted down the corridor. They ignored her: one lone girl with a pair of wolves, walking as fast as she dared, her head down. As she neared the North Wing, the paint became shabbier and the corridor narrower. Ahead of her she could see iron doors set along the wall. She sped up. Black and White ran at her heels, their noses touching the floor.

  Feo rounded the corner and froze. She grabbed the wolves’ necks to hold them back. A guard stood alone in the middle of the passage, his pistol pointing at her chest.

  “Halt!”

  “I’m halted. Look.” She held both hands above her head.

  “Don’t move!”

  She swallowed. “You have one gun,” she said, “but I have two wolves. Wolves are more painful than guns. Mathematically, I think you should give me the keys and run.”

  The soldier just stared. She realized suddenly that she recognized him: It was the same young soldier who had brought the elk, all those weeks ago. The underbite was unforgettable. He was staring at her with his mouth sagging loose.

  “You’re that wolf girl,” he said.

  “Exactly,” she said. She pointed behind her. “They need you more out there”—there was a sound of smashing windows—“than in here. And in here the wolves will eat you. Probably. In fact”—she glanced down at them, at the glint of their teeth—“not probably. Definitely.”

  The soldier was still hesitating when Ilya came charging down the corridor. Sliding on the marble floor, he flashed straight past Feo and the wolves, and at the last moment he leaped, higher than any dancer in Russia, and smacked both shins into the guard’s shoulders. They fell with a shout. Feo darted forward and snatched up the keys and the fallen pistol, fumbling with its weight.

  “Now one gun, two wolves,” she said. She was shivering with nerves and excitement, but she leveled the pistol at the guard’s head. “And one ballet dancer, and one wolf wilder. Go.”

  The guard scrambled to his feet, cast a look of horror at the wolves, and disappeared.

  Feo began to unlock the heavy iron cell doors, throwing them open. The first was empty; the next opened on an elderly woman muttering in French—Feo left the door open but ran on. The next was empty again, just brick walls, a plank bench, and a tin bucket.

  “Ilya!” She fumbled with the loop the keys were on. “Take this key, try the next corridor. Do you want to take the gun? I don’t trust it.”

  “Right.” Ilya turned the corner and disappeared.

  “And be careful!” she called. “He might be anywhere.”

  Feo threw open another cell door, a fourth, a fifth. And stopped, feeling her stomach peel away and plummet to the floor.

  Rakov sat on the plank bench. He was dressed in full military regalia, but his face was swollen and puffy, and his leg was bandaged to his thigh. His skin was the gray of dying things. As he saw her, his one eye widened, and his mouth curved upward in a single line.

  Feo’s heart stopped working. Her knees melted, and she only just held herself from collapsing on the floor.

  “You,” he said. “Again.”

  “You’re hiding,” breathed Feo.

  “I had no wish to be dragged before a mob.”

  “They’re not a mob. They’re people you hurt.”

  “They do not understand the great things I have done for this nation.” His face, as he got to his feet, was full of disgust. “They do not understand how I have purified it with fire.”

  Feo heard Ilya crash another door. She thought about shouting for help, but the noise over their heads was deafening. Nobody would hear.

  “You exhaust me.” He stepped nearer, looking down at her. Feo had never seen such pitiless eyes. “This seems a sad and tawdry end for a child so young,” he said. He cocked his pistol. “But life is sad.”

  “I won’t—” began Feo, but Black gave a growl that shook the air. White stalked up behind him and growled too: a duet of pure animal menace. “The wolves. They’ve recognized you,” breathed Feo.

  “Wolves do not under—” said Rakov, but as he spoke Black streaked past Feo and leaped at him, champed his teeth deep into Rakov’s hand as the pistol fired, and twisted with his jaws. Everything went murky for a moment as Feo was pushed against the wall by White’s charging body.

  When the world cleared, Rakov was backed into a corner, several yards from his pistol. His lip rolled up in so high a sneer that his mustache and eyebrows seemed ready to meet in the middle.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. Call those wolves off.” His voice was full of confidence. “Idiot child! You don’t know what will happen if you lay a hand on me. You will be killed!”

  “But you just tried to kill me. So that’s not a very useful threat.”

  “You do not understand power, or the way the world works.” He looked down at the wolves, clustering nearer. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I think I do dare,” Feo said. Her head was swimming, but she forced herself to edge forward in a half crouch and pick up the pistol, then darted backward. “I think I do understand. I understand a lot more these days. The important parts, anyway.”

  “Child, if you do not call off those wolves, you will spend your life in prison!”

  “I don’t think I will,” said Feo. “No. Thank you anyway.”

  “Now!”

  “They’re half wild, in any case.” Far away down another corridor, she thought she heard something. A cry. “I can’t always control them.”

  She heard Ilya give a great joyous roar: a weekend, daybreak, sunlit sound. She swallowed. Her fingers were slippery with sweat now.

  “You will be punished!” Rakov backed against the wall. “You cannot kill without punishment.”

  “You killed. You killed Yana’s Paul. And the hundreds of people that you burned to death. And the people you left to die in the cold. You killed your own soldiers—the old ones—for a joke.” And then she spat, hard, on his feet, and he recoiled from her in disgust, pressing against the wall. “You killed Gray.” She pointed the gun at his chest.

  “I am a general! I am the tsar’s favored officer! The rules are different for me! Think of what it says in y
our Bible—Thou shall not kill.”

  She looked at him. A vein was jumping on his forehead. His eyes were hard and staring. There was no doubt in them, and no regret.

  Feo looked at the wolves, the sharpness of their hackles and the anger in their spines and shoulders.

  “Wolves don’t read the Bible,” she said. “It’s up to them.” She held her breath as she walked out of the room and down the passage—then she dropped the gun and broke into a run and tore up the stairs, slipping on the marble floor, down the next corridor, following the sounds of laughter. She rounded the corner. At the end of it, hand in hand with Ilya, stood a tall woman with a four-clawed scar circling one eye. Her face was built on the blueprint used for snow leopards and saints.

  Marina let out a cry as she bent and opened her arms, and as Feo cannoned into them, the ache in her heart that had said “Mama!” said “Home.”

  It was several hours before Feo and her mother were able to talk, just the two of them and the wolves. The news of Rakov’s fate spread quickly to the men and women of the city. When it reached Peter’s Square, the roar that went up was not just from Feo’s army: Imperial soldiers joined in, tearing off their gold buttons and tossing them into the air like confetti.

  Feo and her mother walked slowly, hand in hand, past marching masses, past a wildly beaming Alexei, making a speech from the top of a handy pillar, and past Ilya, dancing a wild Cossack dance with a crowd of boys in the street; past Clara, sitting on Yana’s lap with the wolf pup lying in her arms like a doll—Feo scooped him up, promising to bring him back to visit—and past children’s hands that reached out to touch Feo’s red cloak for luck. They walked through the unguarded gates of the city, and the noise of singing and fighting faded.

  Feo showed her mother the sled and the gold still adhering to Black’s eyebrows. “It’s book gold,” she said. “It lasts a long time.”