Fear the Wolf

by S. J. Sparrows

  “Of course I do.” I reached across and put my hand on hers. She recoiled at first, before relaxing her rigid arm. I smiled warmly at her. She held a steady gaze with me before smiling back.

  “They were ill,” she said. “They caught something. I don’t know what, nor where or who they got it from. It was in the winter, after all. It could have been something they ate. Whatever it was, I never caught it, and neither did anyone else. Just my parents. They were so … so weak. And tired. For days on end, they vomited, getting thinner and thinner. They sweat so much I ran out of dry clothes for them. They saw things. Things that weren’t there. It was … it was just …”

  I gave Eden’s hand a squeeze. She took a deep breath and carried on.

  “I looked after them here as best I could. Alone. As soon as everyone else realized how ill my parents were, they all stayed away. It took weeks for them to die. I did everything I could. But almost worse than their deaths was the way everyone treated me afterward. No one said anything to me directly—nooo, because that wasn’t their place!—but I knew what they thought. And they avoided me. They still avoid me now. And they all still think the same thing. They think my parents deserved what they got, that Mother and Father and I must have presumed too much somehow.”

  I tried to interrupt, looking for something reassuring to say, but Eden saw my mouth open and she cut in. “No, Senla, you know what it’s like. You saw it when you came here. They might tolerate you, because Mira told them to, but they all think your village deserved what it got. They look at you the same way they look at me. They blame you for what happened to your village.”

  “I know,” I said plainly. Eden’s eyelids flicked back as she stared at me in surprise. “It makes them feel better,” I explained. “They’re scared. They just need to blame somebody, to make someone else bad somehow. That way, they get to feel as if the same awful things couldn’t possibly happen to them.”

  Eden looked all around my face, her eyes darting here and there. She chewed her lower lip. “Is that why, after my parents died, the elders asked me not to come to the bakehouse anymore? They said it was for my own good, they did. That after all my worries, I didn’t need the stress of a duty everyone relied on. Pfft. I was never even ill. But perhaps you’re right. Do I frighten them? Do I make them feel like terrible things can happen to anyone?”

  “You don’t make them feel anything, Eden. You know why they think that way, and it was never your fault.” I felt like Illus for a moment, telling Eden what I thought she knew but wasn’t ready to face.

  Eden nodded hesitantly. “They fear the Wolf, not me.” She stared down at the table for a second, before her eyes filled with a fire. As if the thought had just hit her, she announced, “I hate people.”

  Taken aback, I cocked my head to one side. But I didn’t let go of Eden’s hand. “Do you really?”

  Tears formed in her eyes, growing larger. “Yes.”

  “You hate everyone?”

  “Yes,” she repeated more defiantly than before. But when she blinked, the tears fell, and she began to sniffle.

  I stood up and hurried around the table. After pulling Eden to her feet, I held her. Her weeping turned to sobbing. I wrapped my arms tighter around her trembling body. How long had she held this in? She sobbed in my arms until I came to a sorry conclusion: Perhaps no one had genuinely asked her how she felt since her parents had died. They had only feared her.

  When she stopped crying, I grabbed her by the shoulders, looked her in the eyes, and said, “Sometimes, I hate people too.”

  A laugh jumped from Eden’s throat. She smiled gratefully. Her voice strained from crying, she said, “I don’t hate you. You’re too nice for this place.”

  “Well, if I am, then so are you.”

  After that, Eden went quiet again, retreating into her mind. I let go of her and stayed in the main room for a while, in case she wanted to speak some more. She sat back down and finished her food with a sombre expression. When she was done, she pretended to tidy the room again.

  I let her know I was going to the spare bedroom, to which she nodded, and then I left.

  Feeling pretty sombre myself, I perched on the end of the stone bed. What Eden had said about the villagers only tolerating me kept dashing through my mind. I knew it was the truth, but hearing her say it confirmed my suspicions about the village.

  The people here were more vehement in their beliefs about the Wolf than my people had been. At first, they had followed Mira’s command to make me feel welcome, but with each passing day, I felt more and more eyes scrutinizing me. Judging me. These villagers lived in so much fear that they treated others the way they thought they should, not the way their hearts told them to—not out of real love, compassion, or warmth.

  And as far as I could tell, it all stemmed down from Snuttus Bot. That man thought he spoke for the Wolf. And through this blatant presumption, he tacitly gave those below him permission to condemn others too.

  These thoughts flew through my mind, bashing into one another, and my frustration grew.

  I had to wonder if I was being over-suspicious. Could I be imagining all the judgmental looks? Was my own shame playing tricks on me, because I refused to live by this village’s rules, because I continued to go into the forest to see Neverdark?

  I clenched my fists and hit the straw-topped bed, thumping down on both sides of me. My hands instantly throbbed. Pain ran through my fingers and up my arm, but I ignored it, focusing instead on the rattling sound I had heard. Curious, I moved some of the straw aside.

  My heart skipped when I saw my drawing sticks. I had forgotten about them. After my belongings were returned when I first arrived in this village, I had taken the sticks out of my satchel and hid them under the straw. Now, I held them in my hands, staring at the tools in deep thought.

  A heavy ache entered my chest. If I wanted to use these sticks, I would have to sneak into the forest and draw in the ground out there. Or I’d need to find a hidden place within the village borders, the same as I had done in my own village. Despite all that I’d been through, it felt for a moment as if nothing had changed in my life.

  Unable to stop myself, I shrieked and snapped the drawing sticks one by one, throwing them to the floor. Then I realized what I had done. Instantly, I got on my hands and knees and scrambled to pick up the broken tools. I tried to jam the splintered halves back together as if they might magically rejoin. But nothing happened, of course.

  I slumped onto my heels. With a defeated groan, I threw the sticks at the wall and dropped my face into my hands.

  Knocks rattled the wooden door. “Senla,” said Eden. “Are you all right in there?”

  “Yes,” I said weakly. “Just a nightmare.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ll be quiet now.”

  I heard no sounds of movement. Lifting my head, I strained to see through the dim evening light and my blurring vision. Eden’s shadow remained in the slit under the door.

  “I’m fine, Eden,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Her shadow left.

  45

  The next morning, Neverdark suggested she and I walk through the forest instead of sitting in our usual meeting place. She had picked a good day for it. Rain hammered the treetops, filling the wildwood with a wet, rustling thunder so loud we had to raise our voices to hear each other. Fat raindrops slipped through the canopy and struck my head and shoulders. My feet were soaked from the damp saplings, moss, and old twigs that brushed my sandals with each step.

  After the conversation with Eden last night, I was reconsidering Neverdark’s offer. No one could be their true self in a Wolf-fearing village; we were each trapped by fear of judgment. I felt so bitter and angry that I wondered if the villagers deserved the Wolf’s wrath. The thought lived for less than a second; I crushed it, rejected it, and hoped to never wish such a cruel fate on anyone again.

  The villagers couldn’t be blamed for how they were raised. I just wished I knew more about
the Wild Forces Illus had mentioned. Then I could make my new neighbors see that the world was much bigger and more mysterious than they knew—that life wasn’t as simple as living by words carved into an ancient tablet.

  “You look angry,” Neverdark shouted over the noisy rainfall. “Where’s my smiling Senla?”

  I tried to force a smile.

  Neverdark grimaced. “If that’s a smile, then I’m a Wolf-worshiping cropgirl.”

  I laughed.

  “That’s better,” said the nomad.

  Now I struggled to stop smiling. My heart felt lighter around Neverdark; my whole body did. It was effortless to imagine myself never turning back today—just walking off with Neverdark into the wild. But, with some thought, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Even if I survived slaying the Wolf, I could never join Neverdark’s clan. What would I eat?

  I’d spent only a few weeks in the forest, and I’d barely managed to forage enough food. In the winter, it would be impossible for me to live off of plants alone.

  My face tensed into a frown again, causing an ache between my brows.

  “What’s troubling you this morning?” asked Neverdark. She sounded serious for once.

  I lacked the inner strength—and desire—to explain my conversation with Eden. Instead, I broached a subject Neverdark and I had both avoided since she walked back into my life. “That animal trap I fell into … the pit with the spikes. It was disgusting.”

  “What?” Neverdark’s face twisted in confusion—perhaps even anger.

  “When we first met, I nearly fell on those spikes. How can you let animals die that way?”

  “I’ve gotta eat, you know.”

  “Not animals, and not like that.”

  The nomad put some space between us as we marched through the undergrowth. “Where has this come from?”

  “What?”

  “You. Having a problem with me. With what I eat.”

  “I don’t have a problem with you. But that trap is cruel, and I don’t think people have to eat animals to survive.”

  “Then you don’t know what it’s like to be a nomad. It’s how we survive. It’s what we’ve always done.” She snorted and shook her head. “You know, there are animals that eat people too. Is that wrong? Oh, and what about Nosy? Your little friend. Those bushcats are the most natural predators I’ve ever seen. If Nosy were bigger, she would happily kill us, and probably not for food either, but just because she can. Bushcats love to kill anything smaller than them. You might not like it, Senla, but death and killing are the way of the forest.”

  “You don’t have to make the animals suffer. People are different. We’re different. I know some animals are killers, but that’s their nature. We’re smart enough to know that nothing likes to suffer. There are quicker ways to end an animal’s life than to leave it bleeding out in a pit of spikes. If you have to kill it at all. I’ve lived off of plants my whole life.”

  Neverdark threw out her arms. “Well, that’s fine if you wish to waste all your time growing food. Me? I’ve got better things to do.”

  “So you kill for convenience?”

  “I s’pose I do.”

  “And you think that’s right?”

  “Not really. But it’s my choice.”

  “What about the animal’s choice?”

  “I’ve told you, Senla, killing is the way of the forest. If I can kill an animal without causing it too much pain, I will. But a girl’s gotta eat. And I’m not going to stop eating meat just because you were raised to feel ashamed about it.”

  A stabbing pain hit me in the chest. Now I put some distance between us; we were hardly walking together anymore—just in the same direction, a few strides apart from each other.

  I shook my head. “Do you not feel any shame? When you look into an animal’s eyes, and you see in those eyes the same desire to live that you have, what do you feel?”

  “No shame over my actions. Just disappointment that life demands death, that if I want to eat, something’s gotta die.” She shrugged, then repeated, “Way of the forest.”

  “I don’t believe you. I’m proof that you don’t have to kill to eat. My people were proof. This village”—I pointed behind us—“is proof.” I stopped and rubbed my throat. It ached from shouting over the downpour, but I hoped Neverdark didn’t think I was angry at her.

  “Okay, clever,” she said. “What about your plants? Do they not share the same desire to live, as you put it? Do they not reach for the sun and spread their seeds? Yet you devour them, Senla. Oh, and how many insects do you think your village people kill in the fields when they harvest their crops?”

  I coughed gently to find my voice. “I know. For me to eat, for me to keep on living, other things have to suffer in some way. Yes, some bugs and small animals are accidentally killed. But that’s the difference—accidentally killed. As for plants, they don’t appear to feel any pain. But you and I both know a hog squeals when it’s cut.”

  “Senla—”

  “I feel the same disappointment, Neverdark. I don’t understand why life demands all this suffering. But why do I deserve to live any more than an animal does? The least I can do is reduce how much suffering I cause.”

  “Senla—”

  “And if I wouldn’t starve to death, I would gladly eat nothing ever again.”

  “Senla! I’m not going to talk about this anymore. You won’t change my mind. You might wish you could go through life without accidentally treading on a few insects, but I’ll keep killing for food, because I want to, and because I like the taste of meat.”

  I stopped walking and stared at her in shock. Neverdark paused too, and then swiveled to face me. I wasn’t surprised by what she had said, but by her outburst. Up until now, I had thought we were having a normal conversation. My voice must have sounded more heated than I’d realized. But why shouldn’t it? This was important to me. If I were to ever join her clan, Neverdark needed to understand that.

  I sighed and said, “That’s the heart of it, isn’t it? You don’t want to stop eating animals. It’s too convenient, and the taste of their blood has grown on you.”

  Neverdark erupted, her face contorting with anger. “You’re just trying to make my way of life wrong because you don’t have the heart to tell me that you don’t want to be with me. You want an excuse to make yourself feel better. Well, I won’t wait forever.” She spun and marched off through the trees.

  “Neverdark!” I called after her. She just flicked a hand over her shoulder as if swatting away a pestering bloodgnat.

  She left me cold, drenched, and alone in the wet forest. Miserable and confused, I found my way back to the boulders and then returned to the village.

  The next time I tried to meet up with Neverdark, I waited alone by the two great rocks until past midday. But she didn’t arrive. As I rose to leave, I wondered if I had ruined our friendship—or whatever bond we had shared. With all my heart, I hoped our argument in the rain would not be the last time we ever saw each other.

  46

  The summer days grew shorter, as did my patience with this village. With each passing week, I felt more restricted, suffocated, misunderstood, and worst of all … lonely. Until now, I wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel so alone while surrounded by hundreds of people.

  Day after day, I trudged on with the monotony of it all. I did my duties. I checked in on Aldan. And I knew my place—mostly.

  A quiet sadness grew in me as I came to accept the reality of one of my lifelong dreams. Since I was a child, I had envied Reni and my other friends who were born to families of guardians. From a distance I had watched the guardians training in their yard, trying to mimic their moves without being caught. How many nights had I fallen asleep imagining myself in their uniform, sword and shield in hand, fulfilling an honorable duty?

  In reality, the role was far more boring than my fantasies had led me to believe. Training had started off exciting and challenging; now it was tedious and tiring. Not even
all the fighting tips I had shared with Kuna were enough to vary our repetitive sessions.

  The worst part was patrol duty. For hours at a time, we walked the village perimeter in case any nomads or forest creatures might leap from the trees. Throughout the day, I would stop and peer into the forest, certain I had spotted something. Then a bird would burst from the bushes into the air, or a harmless ground animal would skitter through the undergrowth. A few times, I almost wished for something to attack, just to give me something to do.

  The only thing I looked forward to anymore was meeting with Neverdark, which, of course, was against everything the villagers believed in. But since arguing with the nomad, I hadn’t seen her once.

  Whenever I recalled our argument, I cringed and had to shake off the wriggling sensation under my skin. What a fool I had been, getting so intense about my beliefs. Now that I had mulled it over, I realized my fervor that day had stemmed from guilt. No, I would never kill animals for food or clothing or personal comforts, but I had killed animals. To defend myself, I had slain wolflings. Perhaps worse than that, I had crushed the Fox’s head while the beast lay defenseless.

  Today, as I plodded my assigned patrol route, I stopped to squeeze shut my eyes and rub the center of my brow.

  I was a hypocrite. I didn’t kill for convenience, no. But, however I viewed my actions, my hands were not free of blood.

  With some heavy sighs and even heavier thoughts, I came to a conclusion. Self-deception was necessary. To go on living, to stay relatively sane, everyone had to lie to themselves to some degree, or deny aspects of who they were, what they’d seen, and what they’d done. Perhaps it was a matter of compromise. If I could be honest with myself about the most important parts of my life, then I could hold the smaller lies and contradictions at bay.

  When I carried on walking, I did so with a firm decision. If I saw Neverdark again, I would not bring the subject back up. We were raised differently. I had to respect that. Moralizing at the nomad was no way of encouraging her to change—if any part of her even wanted to.