For a while, we ran through almost complete darkness, but then I spotted a flickering orange glow ahead. And another splotch of bright orange further along. And another. As we reached the first sconce, the tunnel filled with warm light and gentle heat.
Who had lit these torches? It couldn’t have been the Wolf or any of her wild beasts.
After passing six sconces, we reached a fork in the tunnel. It split into two passageways, each running deeper underground. The path to the left was much narrower, probably too tight for the Wolf to fit through. The one to the right yawned with plenty enough space.
I stared into the void on the right. A stirring sensation tickled at the base of my throat. My body felt as though it were being tugged toward the path. Was I imagining the whispering voice that called my name?
“This way,” I said to Neverdark.
But before she could respond, reverberating growls and the patter of wolfling paws rushed toward us from behind. From the entrance.
“Quickly!” I said, waving Neverdark to follow.
Neverdark pivoted until she faced the direction we had come from. She fixed her feet on the ground. “No.”
“What? We have to go now, Neverdark. It’s this way.”
“You have to go that way. You have to finish this.”
I hurried around to face her, but she looked ahead defiantly, staring past me and down the glowing orange tunnel the wolflings would soon charge down.
“I won’t leave you,” I yelled in her face, shaking her by the shoulders. “You didn’t leave me.”
“Go, Senla. There’s too many of them. If you stay, we’ll both die. If you go, at least you’ll have a chance to end this.”
“No, I—”
“Here, take this,” she said, handing back my shield. When she lifted her eyes, she finally looked at me.
A sob caught in my throat. I choked out the words, “I can’t watch you die. Not you.”
“Then don’t. Go now. I’ll hold them back.”
I opened my mouth to protest once more, but Neverdark grabbed me behind the neck and pulled me in for a kiss. It seemed to last for cycles, but not long enough. When the kiss was over, Neverdark threw me behind her and shoved me toward the right-hand passageway.
“Go!” she screamed so loud my heart leapt.
I turned and ran, refusing to look back, refusing to acknowledge the growls that grew louder and louder. But then I did look back. The shadows of many wolflings slid along the tunnel wall, becoming larger as they approached Neverdark.
Soon the shadows were replaced by real beasts. Even with just her dagger, Neverdark slashed the first wolfling down with three skillful swipes. She danced away from the others that tried to surround her.
“Come on then!” she yelled. “Come and get me!” She dashed down the narrow passageway, and the pack of wolflings followed.
I watched, torn in two, fighting with all my will to stay back. Not Neverdark. Please, please, not Neverdark. The sounds of her being chased by wolflings faded until it was nearly silent where I stood. In the dim, quiet tunnel, I felt more lost and alone than ever.
With tremendous effort, I pulled myself down the right path. I couldn’t waste Neverdark’s sacrifice either—I wouldn’t.
I flew deeper underground, running past one lit torch after another. I began to believe I was stuck in an eternal loop. But a little bright dot ahead of me gradually expanded into a wide doorway. When I broke through, heaving for air, I found myself in an enormous cavern.
Stopping for breath, I leaned against the nearest rock wall and feared I would collapse. My vision had turned to murky water. I waited for the dizziness to pass, dragging one fill of humid air after another into my chest.
My eyes cleared, I gained control of my aching body, and I pushed myself up to standing.
There was so much to take in at once, but one thing immediately stood out: the Wolf wasn’t here. No giant beast. No wolflings. No people. And judging from a cursory sweep of the cavern, there was only one way in and out—the way I had come. For a moment, disappointment, anger, and a hefty sense of loss overwhelmed me, but I was too curious about what was inside the cavern to let self-pity keep me down for long.
In the center of the great chamber was a circle of evenly spaced stands. On the sloping top of each one lay an ancient-looking tablet. I was standing too far away to see the tablets in detail, but they each looked similar to the one my people had kept in our village hall. Inside the ring of plinths, a brilliant crisscross of lines filled the circular area. The lines had been carved into the ground, starting from the bottom of every stand and leading to the base of every other, so that all were linked together. The interconnected pattern filled me with a sense of harmony. Order. Balance.
Slowly, I stepped toward the raised tablets. The size of the cavern could only be appreciated from its center. I looked up, awed by its vastness, and spun to take in its grandeur. Small birds nested in nooks of the cavern ceiling. Twittering, they flittered between their nests and sent dirt and feathers drifting to the ground.
Whenever the birds stopped making noise, the chamber thrummed with a deafening silence. Quiet like this did not exist anywhere else. As I had this thought, I realized the whole cavern seemed as if it were separate from the world. Standing here, I felt surrounded and embraced by the thick stone walls shielding me from the outdoors, from the weather, from everything.
The cavern provided an almost homey feel that stirred something deep and ancient in my spirit. My body shivered, wonderstruck.
I lowered my gaze from the ceiling to inspect the sides of the chamber. A narrow corridor ran along the whole perimeter, with great pillars lining it. Spaced throughout the room, other stone columns, with lit sconces hanging from them, reached from the ground to the ceiling. The torches cast ovals of flickering light up the pillars. On the cave walls, craggy rocks jutted out, stretching long shadows in many directions.
I approached the nearest stand. Engraved on the tablet was a long passage written in the old language. Unlike the tablet that had been kept in my home village, this one didn’t have chunks of faded, unreadable text. Of course, the old language was unreadable to me, anyway. But below this slab of ancient stone, someone had drawn an image of a heron, in a statuesque pose, standing alongside a human and a Tenniac, who were depicted cross-legged with closed eyes as though meditating or waiting patiently for something.
Searching below the picture, I found a transcript of the writing. But the paper had darkened with time, and the damp, stagnant air of the cavern had molded away its center. Out of the surviving lines, one stood out to me more than the rest. The final one on the page:
Patience, the Heron.
Frantically, I ran from tablet to tablet, looking at the pictures and reading what little text had survived the humid conditions. A fox was drawn next to a picture of a human and a Tenniac, who both appeared to be sneaking around. The transcription below ended with ‘Cunning, the Fox.’
Besides a drawing of a bushcat sat the image of human and a Tenniac, but these two figures held their chins in contemplation. Mold had eaten the bottom of the page, but I picked out the word ‘Curiosity.’ Beginning to understand the pattern, I guessed the full line had once read ‘Curiosity, the Bushcat.’
I carried on until I reached an empty stand—the only empty one in the circle.
“No,” I whispered. I shook my head and stumbled backward, unwilling to face the obvious conclusion.
Reeling, I staggered away from the stands. I tripped and crashed to the ground. As I stood back up, I turned to see what had tripped me.
“No,” I said again, but much louder this time. “It’s not possible.”
Before me lay the skeleton of a Tenniac. I hadn’t been able to see it when I’d entered the cavern, but once I began looking, I noticed more Tenniac skeletons hidden in the shadows. A shield rested next to the one in front of me, which still gripped a sword in its dead fingers—a long blade of shiny black metal, like the one I car
ried now.
In a daze, I hurried over to another long-dead Tenniac. Judging from their swords and shields, they had once been warriors. Had they died trying to defend this place—trying to protect their home? At last, I came across a sorry-looking pile of bones with a shield but no sword. One hand was curled as if gripping an invisible weapon. I looked at the hilt of my own sword, and I felt oddly ashamed.
But none of this made sense. After I’d killed the Fox, I watched Illus die … and her body, it … it vanished—
“May I simply call you Senla?” said a steady, soothing voice.
I jumped and twisted toward the sound. Illus stepped out from behind a pillar on the other side of the room.
My sight began to swirl, my recent injury throbbing above the ear. “I … I don’t understand …”
Illus watched me the same way she always had, with that unwavering stare. But something was different about her now; her slitted yellow eyes were paler than before, the edges shimmering in the low light. And her skin—the green undertone was gone. She glowed white.
“You do understand,” said the Tenniac.
I squeezed shut my eyes, struggling to breathe as my body bloomed hot and clammy. I couldn’t say it. Saying it would make it real, I feared. But that was foolish.
When I opened my eyes, Illus said it for me. “I am the enemy you seek.”
My heart froze and slipped to the bottom of my stomach. Swinging my head from side to side, I held back tears. But could I contain this anger? I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste blood. With all my will, I stopped myself from charging Illus. I tried to crush the image in my mind, the sickly satisfying thought of cutting off her head with one clean swipe.
The whole time! The whole time I’d traveled with Illus, thinking I was pursuing the Wolf, desperate for revenge—the whole time, my vengeance had been right in front me.
“Your name is Fear,” I said to Illus. “The Wolf.”
She merely nodded.
I rushed forward, raising my sword, before throwing myself aside and gritting my teeth. No. Not yet … As much as I wanted to rip Illus apart, I needed answers. I needed something that would make sense of all my loss and suffering. It seemed everything had been a lie. For all these cycles, my people had lived in fear of the Wolf—and with reverence for the wicked beast—because of what? A mistranslation? Did some fool a thousand cycles ago steal one of the many tablets from this ancient chamber and then fail to keep it from the wears and tears of weather and time?
As I struggled with my racing thoughts, Illus made her way to a platform on one side of the cavern. She didn’t glide with her usual grace. Instead she moved stiffly, as if warring with her own body, fighting every step she took. She held no satchel, weapons, or even a shield; she wore only her tight animal-skin clothing.
Out of all the questions I could have asked, only one word came to my lips. “Why?”
Illus clasped her four hands together, two near her chest, and the other two resting on her stomach. “Your people had to die so that you would embrace your destiny. They had to die to … to …” She twitched, her head snapping toward one shoulder before bouncing back up. “To silence the voices in my head … to quench its thirst … to satisfy the …”
“The white sickness,” I said.
“I have fought it all these cycles. Unlike Cunning, the Fox, I have not let it consume me. Cunning gave himself over to the sickness, and the sickness twisted him, twisted his nature, releasing only the darkest aspects of his message. He stood no more for wits and cleverness, but for wicked tricks and deceit. That is what the sickness does: it destroys in you everything you stand for. That is why I have fought it as long as I can; that is why, many times, I suddenly left you while we were traveling through the forest. To protect you from it. But sometimes the sickness wins—and when it takes hold, it demands blood. And fear.” She licked her lips with her pimpled black tongue. “Oh, yes, the fear, the terror … it tastes divine.” For a second, Illus’s voice transformed into the Wolf’s booming voice, but I watched her fight inwardly against her urges. “This is why your people fear me. Over many, many cycles, I have destroyed villages like yours, but never for the reasons your people believed.”
I had instinctively edged backward while Illus spoke, placing the circle of stands between myself and where she stood on a platform. If the sickness overcame her, at least I’d have a chance to move before she reached me.
Part of me pitied the Wolf when I imagined her as nothing but a puppet to violent impulses she had done her best to control. But most of me hated her. I battled these conflicting emotions as I asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were the Wolf? I saw you, back in my village. You skulked in the woods before you attacked. You drew those pictures in the ground where I always went to draw. You never told me why.”
Illus smiled, but it looked feral with her needle-like teeth and the white flecks glinting in her eyes. “I drew them to awaken your true self, to help send you on this journey.”
“But why did you have to kill everyone?” I shouted, unable to keep talking as if this were all so reasonable, so normal. “Why didn’t you just come to my village and tell us we had misinterpreted the tablet?”
“Even Wild Forces have their limits. We can only teach a student what the student has already begun to know for themselves. It is the same for every important lesson in life.”
With quivering muscles, I screamed, “Liar! You kill because you want to. You’re a vicious monster, and nothing more!” But I knew she’d spoken the truth. Every time she’d told me something on our journey—the few times she had finally answered a question—it had only ever been a confirmation of what I already suspected.
“You’ve seen the tablets before you,” said Illus. “Already, you sense their purpose. You see their connectedness. Their unity. And you know what the circle in the center represents.”
“The world …”
“Yes. Before the Tearing, all the lands were one. Everybody worshiped the Wild Forces, humans and Tenniacs together. Wise masters learned our messages the hard way, through meditation, contemplation, and the toughest trials in life. For the benefit of all, these masters inscribed our messages in stone. This brought balance to the world. Only when a person embraces all aspects of their being will they be whole.”
Illus stopped and growled suddenly. She snapped her teeth like a wolfling, drew in her limbs, and shook herself. Her skin rippled. It glowed in places, shining white lines wriggling under her flesh.
When she seemed under control, she continued as if nothing had happened. “After the earth tremors ripped the lands apart and separated all peoples, our lessons faded into distant memory. Your people forgot our messages. They forgot my message. But worse, the white sickness crept out of the cracks in our world, corrupting the Wild Forces trapped in this land, the same as I have been corrupted. I know not whether the rest of the world is as broken as this.”
I don’t know for how long, but my mind seemed to travel far away. A ringing entered my ears. My sight fixated on nothing in particular, and I stood still, unable to have any clear thoughts. My feelings, though? They suffocated me. A tremendous sense of grief pressed down on my shoulders and chest. As my mind began to settle, one thought wouldn’t leave me alone: it all seemed such a waste. So many senseless deaths. And why? Because an ancient, powerful being was unable to share her true message with the unenlightened; and the unenlightened, mistakenly living in fear of that being, stood no chance of learning anything from a creature they’d been taught to fear in their very bones.
Wearied, I scoffed, and it bubbled into a manic laugh. “Why me? Why did you send me on this journey?”
“I watched you from a distance for a long while before killing your people. I saw that you were different. You were unwilling to follow the rules, unwilling to do things when the only reason you were given was that you must. It’s true you had many fears, as you should. But unlike the other villagers, you did not cower away from your fears and
submit to a life of needless limits. I sensed the potential in you to learn what I could not directly tell you, to learn what your people have forgotten over hundreds of cycles—that fear is a gift. Inside every fear is a message, a lesson, something to grow beyond.”
“But … the children. Why did you kill all the young’uns?”
Illus flung out her arms, stretching them in anger. “I have waited nearly a thousand cycles for someone worthy of respecting my name. Worthy of spreading my true message. Like the rest of your people, those children would have grown up to fear me without question.”
“You don’t know that. You never gave them a chance. They were too young to have been taught to fear you yet.”
“Your people were weak. Weak-minded!” Illus pulled her arms in and hunched over. Her voice deepened, echoing throughout the cavern as she bellowed, “The voices demand it!”
An ache entered the base of my throat, as though I had swallowed a large nut without chewing it. “Illus?” I said in concern. Why did I still think of her as Illus when I knew exactly who and what she was? Why did that part of me that had pitied her earlier want to reach out and take away her suffering?
Illus covered her face. Through her long clawed fingers, she mumbled, “I cannot fight this much longer. I cannot hold this … form.”
I nodded to myself.
Illus raised her head, removing her hands to look at me. Not once on our journey together had I sensed that she regretted her actions. Not once did she apologize for anything. Not once did she even seem sorry. But now, staring into her sickness-infected eyes, I saw nothing but remorse.
My heartbeat faltered when I said, “You have to die.”
Illus simply replied, “I know.”
Then she burst into a thousand tiny parts. It was the same as when she had appeared to die, except instead of the little pieces floating away and vanishing, they multiplied and coalesced into the shape of a giant wolfling.
Fear the Wolf Page 28
