Fear the Wolf

by S. J. Sparrows

  One morning, while I waited between the boulders for Neverdark to arrive, a rustle in the undergrowth startled me. A ripple of disturbed leaves and branches swept closer to where I was sitting. I reached for my sword as the nearest bush began to shake. The moment grew tense. Then a fluffy club-shaped tail poked out through the leaves.

  “Nosy?” I said.

  The bushcat crept out of cover. After tilting her head at me and blinking those large brown eyes, she padded closer. I held out a hand, careful not to frighten her. Nosy sniffed at my fingers before rubbing her soft head along my knuckles and purring.

  I sighed. “Nosy. You found me.”

  She purred deeper.

  “I missed you, my friend.”

  The bushcat slunk around the back of me, climbed my tunic, and then settled on my shoulder. Her tiny, sharp claws tickled my skin, but not as much as the fur caressing my neck. An uncontrollable laugh burst out of me. I tumbled onto the ground, my body trembling from the tingling sensation on my neck.

  As I fell backward, Nosy gracefully walked around onto my front. Her round face filled my vision. I fought to control my shuddering laughter, but Nosy sought to make it worse. She licked my face. Her sour breath entered my nostrils as her scratchy tongue scraped my cheek.

  Then Neverdark arrived.

  Nosy leapt off of me. I sat up, and the bushcat hid behind my back, poking her head around my hip to peer at Neverdark.

  “It’s okay,” I said as I reached back to stroke Nosy’s fur. “She’s a friend.”

  Neverdark grimaced. “Pfft. Not to those mangy little terrors, I’m not. They like to steal our food while we’re sleeping.”

  I frowned at the nomad, acting more annoyed than I felt. “This bushcat means a lot to me. We saved each other’s lives when we first met.”

  “Oh, well now you’re making me jealous.” Neverdark threw her hands in the air. “How can I outdo that? You and I nearly killed each other when we first met.”

  I shrugged. “You’ll just have to try harder.”

  “But seriously, Senla, those things are a nuisance.”

  “Not Nosy.”

  “You named it?”

  “Her.”

  “Sorry. Let me try that again. You named her?”

  “I thought nomads liked to keep animals. Like hounds … and stolen wolf pups. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Yeah, that’s because hounds are useful. They help to catch food. But these little things …” She waggled a finger at Nosy. “They only want to know you when they’re hungry.”

  “I’ve never fed Nosy. Someone I traveled with fed her sometimes. But Nosy started following me after I saved her. We’re friends.”

  “You’re friends now?”

  I laughed, trying not to shake my head. “You really are sounding jealous.”

  Neverdark let out a long breath and sat down. “Fine. Your friend is my friend.”

  Nosy slipped around my side and climbed onto my lap, still watching the nomad. I stroked the bushcat some more. Perhaps if she sensed my comfort around Neverdark, she would grow to trust her. Then again, Nosy had grown comfortable around Illus before the Tenniac had shoved her in a bag and frightened her off.

  “Oi,” said Neverdark, “friend of my friend, come here.”

  Nosy didn’t budge. Not until Neverdark pulled a strip of dried meat from her pocket. After biting the strip into smaller chunks, Neverdark held out a piece.

  The bushcat stirred. She pushed to her feet, her claws digging into my leg for balance. Timidly, she approached Neverdark’s outstretched hand. When she reached the food, she knocked it from Neverdark’s fingers onto the ground, licked it a few times, and then lay down to chew the meat into even smaller pieces for swallowing.

  “See,” said Neverdark. “Didn’t want to know me until a bit of food appeared in my hand.”

  That gave me an idea. “Do you think you could watch over her? I can’t let Nosy follow me back to the village. They would never allow it, me holding sway over an animal.”

  “What? I can’t bring this little—I mean, bushcat—I mean, Nosy—back to my clan. We don’t want any extra mouths to feed, especially ones that don’t contribute.” She shot a firm look at Nosy, who just blinked and continued to chew her food.

  “Please,” I said. “I don’t want anything to happen to her, but she seems to like following me.”

  Neverdark sighed. “Most I can do is leave a bit of food around here. That’s if I have any left over.”

  “She can’t stay with you?”

  “No. But if I see her around, I’ll keep my people from using her for bow and arrow practice.”

  The thought made me shudder. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Neverdark waved dismissively.

  After eating, Nosy walked back to me and curled up on my lap to sleep.

  Neverdark and I had met here four times over the last three weeks. I loved our meetings. Our conversations were unlike any I’d had with a villager before. Neverdark didn’t fear asking questions that most villagers would find offensive or presumptuous. When we spoke, I sensed an atmosphere of safety, as if a giant warm bubble had surrounded us, blocking out everything else.

  She was the only person who made me feel like what I was sharing about myself was interesting for its own reasons. Even when she teased me by bickering with me and questioning half of what I said, I knew she never judged me as irredeemable. She listened to me. No, she didn’t merely listen; Neverdark heard me.

  I wished I could do the same for her. Each time we met, I tried to be more flexible and relaxed in our conversations, but our lives were so different. My upbringing tripped me again and again. I was raised to fear and condemn the nomadic way of life. Whenever Neverdark revealed something new about herself, my tendency was to reject it, criticize it, push it as far away from me as it would go.

  Trying to fight this instinct, I asked, “Do you have a second name … a family name?”

  “Why would I need a second name?”

  “Everyone has a second name ... don’t they? I knew a woman who used to be a traveler. Her name was Fendra Urn.”

  Neverdark tucked in her chin to stare at me from a low angle. Her eyebrows slanted as if to point at the center of her forehead. “You think all travelers are the same, do you?”

  “Um, I—”

  “My people don’t have second names. We all know who we are. We know who’s related to who, who’s in what clan. Why would we need another name?”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t.” I wondered if Fendra had taken a family name after settling down. Maybe she had changed her name altogether. Or perhaps her clan’s naming customs had not been the same as Neverdark’s. As I compared Fendra’s name to Neverdark’s, Taker’s, Hogslayer’s, and Treeclimb’s, I realized another difference.

  “Do your names mean anything?” I asked.

  The nomad gave a satisfied smile, her eyes gleaming. She rested an elbow on her knee to lean toward me. “Most clans name their babies after the skills of the parents. But sometimes the name is a guide. It’s what the parents want their baby to become, you know, traits they want their child to embody as it grows up.”

  “What does ‘Neverdark’ mean?”

  “It’s a play on my mother’s name: Everbright. My father’s is Strongwill. My parents wanted me to be like them. They wanted me to see the good things in life, to be strong. From a young age, they told me they never wanted me to let my heart turn …” She went quiet, her cheeks flaming red.

  “Dark,” I finished for her.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, throwing her head from side to side. “It’s embarrassing. I’ll regret telling you that.”

  “It’s not embarrassing. Your name is important.”

  Still huddled into a ball on my lap, Nosy purred louder as if agreeing. I chuckled and rubbed the bushcat’s back.

  When I looked at Neverdark, she gave me a wonky but appreciative smile.

  “So,” I said, “are you like your paren
ts?”

  “I try to be.” Neverdark’s smile vanished as she flicked a look at her arm.

  “What stops you?”

  Neverdark leaned back, placing her hands on her knees. “Really? You’re like a waterfall of questions!”

  “What’s a waterfall?”

  “Oh. Villager. Right. Never mind. You’re just asking a lot of questions, that’s all.”

  “That’s because I want to know more about you.”

  “Then come live with my clan already. I can’t keep my people in this area forever. We’re nomads. You know what that means, right? We need to keep moving. It’s in our nature.”

  “I know … but I can’t.”

  “Why? What’s keeping you here? You’ve told me a few times already that your friend Aldan is doing fine. And I know you’re not happy waking up and doing the same shit every day.”

  I broke eye contact and stared down at Nosy instead. It was true. Aldan had been doing well, except for one incident two days ago. When Ronni had asked Aldan to retrieve one of her tools, he became confused and twisted about himself, flustered, before stopping and staring distantly at a wall. Ronni tried to help him, but he raised a clenched fist to bring down on her face. The blacksmith dodged the blow and restrained him. After talking him down, she let him go and immediately distracted him with a task.

  “Now he treats me with more respect than before,” Ronni had told me with an untroubled laugh. “He was just testing me. He’s a great lad. Few nights back, he showed me this bunch of different colored rocks he’s been collecting. I’ve never seen anyone so happy about anything. Huh.”

  “That means he likes you,” I said. “Just never mention the color pink to him,” I added seriously.

  “I’ll be sure to remember that,” Ronni had said with a firm nod.

  Here and now with Neverdark, I mumbled, “Aldan had an incident. He’s all right now. But I worry …”

  “One problem, in how many weeks now? That’s good, Senla. You fret too much.”

  I filled up my lungs before blowing the air out through my nose. Again, Neverdark was right. Aldan had lost just as much as I had, if not more. It wasn’t realistic to expect him to adapt to a whole new life and dozens of strangers without having some problems. Anyway, just because I hadn’t been aware of all his incidents in my old village, that didn’t mean they weren’t happening.

  How many scuffles had Aldan had with his father that the rest of us never heard about?

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “So, come on, what’s stopping you?”

  “Hmm. I thought we were talking about what’s stopping you from living up to your name.”

  “We were,” said Neverdark with a lazy shrug. “Things change so quickly, huh?”

  “You’re not getting away that easily—”

  “Ooo, look, distraction!” Neverdark pointed at no particular spot on the ground. Foolishly, I followed her finger. “So, yeah, what were we saying? Ohhh, yeah. What’s stopping you from joining my clan of friendly nomads?”

  Amused, I decided to reward Neverdark’s effort by letting my question die. Becoming silent, I searched inside myself. A dull ache entered my heart at this realization, but my quest to slay the Wolf had lost some importance to me. It had been a great voice before, shouting me onward. Since avenging my mother, though, that voice had withered into a whisper, which merely tickled at the base of my skull.

  Still, the quest hadn’t left me entirely. As soon as I was rested, healed, and ready, I would hunt the Wolf again. I just needed time.

  How would Neverdark feel if she knew about my quest? Would she think me mad and lose interest in me, or might she want to help? Enough people had died because of the Wolf; I wouldn’t get Neverdark killed as well.

  “I’m afraid,” I lied. “The way you live, it’s so different to everything I know.”

  “Ah,” Neverdark said in a soothing tone. “Fear.” She smiled sadly and gazed unseeing at the ground. I felt as if I could see the weighty thoughts filling her head; I watched her internal battle as she tried to decide whether or not to share those thoughts with me. After some silence, she grabbed her left forearm and lifted it to stare at the pale ridges all along her wrist. “I know a thing or two about fear. It does crazy things to a person’s mind, and it makes a person do crazy things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know … It’s a sneaky thing. It whispers scary tales in your ear—tales of a future so unbearable you’d rather die than face it. But that’s it: they’re just tales. And that’s where fear’s weakness lies. You don’t have to believe what it tells you.”

  Neverdark’s words resonated in my chest, making my blood rush and my skin prickle. I gently pushed Nosy off of my lap so I could go to Neverdark. The bushcat grumbled and gawked at me as though deeply offended, before finding another place to lie down.

  Neverdark wouldn’t look at me. I sat beside her and took her scarred arm. Slowly, delicately, I ran my fingers across the raised lines, feeling every bump and groove.

  I was about to speak when Neverdark locked eyes with me and said, “I don’t believe its lies anymore.”

  We smiled at each other. Our faces were close enough that I could feel her hot breath caressing my mouth. Neverdark placed her hand over the tip of mine, which was still on her forearm. She moved my hand away, turned it over, and then entwined our fingers.

  A shiver ran through me, though my body turned warm and sticky. I wanted to kiss her. And from the way her eyes kept darting to my lips, I knew she wanted the same. Our faces drew nearer. A voice inside me cried, Do it already—just kiss her! But another voice reminded me of the last time I had listened to that urge. I pulled away, remembering Reni.

  “Oh,” said Neverdark, blinking excessively.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll think about your offer more seriously.”

  But I knew in my heart the only reason I would leave the village would be to search for the Wolf. How could I live with myself if I were to run off with some nomads, leaving this village at the mercy of that beast? Even if I stayed here and decided to give up my quest, at least I would be around to help defend everyone from any attacks.

  I stared down at my hands. There was no future for Neverdark and me—just as there had never been one for me and Reni.

  I avoided her gaze, but I heard Neverdark say, “Don’t be thinking too long. You wouldn’t want your first season as a nomad to be the winter, trust me. And at the pace you’re thinking it over, it will be.”

  As Neverdark stole Nosy’s attention with another scrap of meat, I returned to the village.

  44

  At Eden’s house, five days later, the quiet girl surprised me during dinner. We ate most of the meal without uttering more than a dozen words. Then Eden said, “You asked me before about Snuttus. You asked why his life had been hard.”

  “Yes?”

  “A long while ago now, he lost his partner and son. You see, although Snuttus is an elder, his partner Helena came from a family of fieldworkers. We all have our duties. You know that. It doesn’t matter who someone’s partner is, whether they’re an elder or not. So, Helena was teaching their son Ricki his duties out in the fields. They must have been near the forest’s edge, they must have been. They were attacked by something from the trees. Of course, Snuttus wasn’t there to protect them.”

  I made a small, involuntary sound in my throat. I stopped eating, and my hand moved to my heart.

  Eden pushed her food aside. She got up and began tidying the room mindlessly, organizing things that were already neatly arranged.

  She went on. “Their bodies were so … broken that no one ever figured out what had killed them. Night-apes, nomads, wolflings. Maybe another villager. It could have been. We all know that even the odd villager doesn’t turn out right. Sometimes, there’s no choice but to cast the rotten ones out, into the wild, is there?” Eden shook her head. “Imagine being Snuttus. Imagine having that niggle at the back o
f your head, telling you that one of your neighbors, someone you say hello to and smile at every day, just might have killed the people you loved more than anything else.” Eden exaggerated a shiver. “I get a chill just thinking about it.”

  I squirmed at the thought too. But I also couldn’t help being amused by Eden’s sudden expressiveness. For a shy girl who liked to keep to herself, Eden was quite the gossip once her mouth was pried open. She reminded me of a flower bud opening in the spring; before the petals were peeled back, how could anyone have known such loud beauty lay inside?

  “That’s dreadful,” I said. “It must be hard for him.”

  Eden shocked me further when she snorted a laugh. “I wouldn’t have too much sympathy for him. Snuttus never visited me when my parents were … No one did. Even after they died, no one dared come here. Now, even now, they don’t really talk to me. They just give me odd jobs to do to keep me out of the way.” She tutted. “And that’s more because they don’t want me around everyone’s food anymore.”

  I glanced at my bowl of leek and potato stew. What did she mean? Was this food safe? I had eaten with Eden every day for weeks now, and I felt fine.

  Eden was too absorbed in her emotions to notice my concern. I rattled my head and refocused on her. I had little reason to be suspicious.

  She continued without looking at me, still wandering about the room, adjusting things that didn’t need adjusting. “I used to work in the bakehouse near the village hall, you see, with my parents. We loved our duties. I don’t suppose a guardian like yourself would know, but making bread takes more time and work than you might think. Grind the wheat, mix the loaves, hours of baking. But when people would come to get their share, it was like they didn’t realize how much work had gone into it …” Eden became distracted. She pretended to tidy some more before stopping and peering about the room. It looked the same as it had before.

  “Come sit back down,” I said gently.

  Eden convulsed and looked at me as if she had only just noticed I was here. She came to sit at the table.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” I said. “What happened to them?”

  A wary expression crossed her face. Then her eyes softened, seeming to glow a little. “Do you really want to know?” she said in disbelief.