Fear the Wolf

by S. J. Sparrows

  For the first time, I saw the Wolf in all her terrifying glory. She sat on her haunches, filling the platform where Illus—or the illusion of Illus—had stood moments ago. Seven thick tails floated behind her, creating the same silhouette as the sun surrounded by rays as it dips below the horizon. I had always imagined the great beast to have two tails, like all other wolflings, but these seven white bushes combined were nearly as large as the Wolf’s actual body.

  I gripped the hilt of my sword and angled the blade to cover my shield, which I held over my chest.

  The Wolf stayed still. Her coat of pure white somehow shone even whiter with the sickness. It gleamed, sparkling as though a hundred stars were trapped under her fur, desperate to get out. Even her eyes were almost entirely white. A wet black nose and a curved line of dark lips stood out against the overwhelming brightness. The Wolf narrowed her dark, leaf-shaped eyelids at me. I wondered if she would speak in that mighty voice I’d heard when I first left my village.

  But then claws scraped against stone—and she came for me.

  I dived to the right as the Wolf crashed through the circle of stands, hurling the ancient stone tablets in all directions. Some of them fell to the floor with a loud crack. Others flew a few strides before skidding across the ground. One slab of stone was flung with enough force to burst against the cavern wall, shattering into dozens of dark shards.

  Dodging the carnage, I ran for the corridor. I hid behind the pillars that separated the narrow passage from the rest of the chamber. The Wolf slammed into the columns. She couldn’t fit through. I had the briefest moment of relief. Then I jumped backward and pressed myself against the cavern’s cold, damp wall as the Wolf forced her head between two pillars in an attempt to reach me. She snapped and growled. Long strings of saliva flapped from her gnashing teeth.

  I lunged forward to stab her in the eye, but her head pulled back. A massive paw shot between the pillars. I barely had time to jump over its swiping claws. I tried to strike the beast again, but she moved too fast. She was so big and quick I struggled to avoid her attacks, let alone fight back.

  Searching for another tactic, I pelted down the corridor, following the perimeter of the chamber. As the Wolf pursued, running parallel to me on the other side of the pillars, she smashed into the central columns supporting the cavern ceiling. The ground trembled hard enough to topple me. Knees bloody and sore, I shot to my feet and kept running. I wished I could cover my ears from the deafening sounds of rocks crashing to the ground.

  Distracted by the destruction she’d caused, the Wolf lost track of me. She shook dirt and rubble from her fur as I hid behind another pillar. The cavern went quiet. The birds that lived in the ceiling had screeched and darted into the entrance tunnel the moment the Wolf came for me. Now the only sounds were of my breathing, which I fought to silence, and the Wolf’s slow steps and snuffing nose as she sought me out.

  She would find me. I knew that. But until she actually saw me, I had the advantage.

  Her sniffs grew louder. Her paws crunched closer. And my hammering heart entered my throat.

  The moment the Wolf peeked around the pillar I was hiding behind, I slashed at her face. The black blade struck her snout. Blood instantly appeared, a flash of red on white. The Wolf yelped and drew back. I jumped out of cover but stayed in the corridor.

  Tentatively, the Wolf pawed at her blood-drenched snout. Her dark lips drew back in a wince, then turned into a fierce snarl. Her eyes fixed on me. Without looking away, she circled farther back and then charged straight for me. I ran, but not fast enough.

  A shuddering crunch rumbled throughout the cavern. Something hard—a rock, perhaps—smacked into my back. The air thumped out of my lungs as I stumbled and fell onto the hard ground. My sword and shield rattled and clanged against rock. I pushed myself back up, grimacing at the raw pain in my palms. The skin was dotted red and surrounded by folded-up layers of peeled skin, my hands grazed from the fall.

  After retrieving my sword and shield, I turned to find the Wolf half buried under the rubble of three pillars she’d knocked down. The ground trembled again, and another loud crack echoed through the chamber.

  I heard the hiss of running water. My eyes followed the sound. One part of the cavern wall grew darker. The patch became larger and larger, trickling down the wall and pooling on the ground. My stomach clenched.

  Oh, no … the lake.

  Then I had no time to think. The Wolf roused, emerging from the pile of dusty, broken rocks with the sounds of rattling stones and dirt showering down. With this side of the corridor partly destroyed, I decided to run to the other side of the room for better shelter. I inhaled deeply, then ran. I went for the shortest route. But it mattered not.

  The Wolf got me. The air was knocked from my lungs again. A sharp, slicing pain ripped across my left arm. I glimpsed the Wolf’s claws as I flew across the room, thrown off my feet by her mighty swipe. I slammed into a pillar. The impact would have taken my breath once more if there were any left to take. Instead, I heaved, fearing my insides would come out. I tumbled to the ground and dropped my weapon and shield.

  Bloodied, bruised, and battered, I wobbled to my feet and picked up my sword and shield. I didn’t rush, because I lacked the strength, and the Wolf would be upon me before I could reach shelter, anyway.

  I accepted my fate.

  My mother was dead. Reni was dead. My father had a new life. Aldan was safe now. The people I’d grown up with were gone. Nosy was likely dead. And Neverdark … if she were alive, wouldn’t she have found her way to this chamber by now?

  My spirit broken, I forced myself to stand tall and face the Wolf. No more running. No more hiding.

  I held out my sword. “I’m not afraid to die,” I said as the Wolf prepared to charge at me once more.

  I closed my eyes.

  A rush of air chilled my skin and swept back my hair. Knocked backward, I hit the ground. Something warm and sticky ran over my fingers. Confused, I opened my eyes and stared at my hand, which still gripped my sword. Blood traveled down the blade and over my knuckles.

  The Wolf had impaled herself on my weapon.

  Her heaving body surrounded me. Trembling, I slid to one side and let go of the sword. The Wolf thudded to the ground. I got to my feet, still baffled that I was alive somehow. I stared at the Wolf as she lay dying, and she stared back at me.

  Her eyes had cleared. For just a moment, the white sickness had retreated. Or perhaps the Wolf had found one last ounce of strength to fight back. I swallowed hard, gulping against the swelling ache in my throat. The Wolf was large enough to have ripped my head off without coming near my weapon. But in her moment of clarity, she had spared me and killed herself. She had known that despite all the skills she’d taught me as Illus, and despite preparing me for this moment by training me to slay the Fox, I’d still had no chance of defeating her.

  As I gazed into her eyes, her voice spoke directly into my mind. Her mouth did not so much as twitch. The voice was resonant, reverberating inside my skull, yet much weaker than the thunderous sound that had filled my head the last time.

  “It is not death you fear.”

  The words stopped my heart and then made it pound. My blood rushed; my skin tingled. The truth of her words awakened something in me. And with this new knowledge came the realization of what I truly feared.

  “Life,” I said through a gush of air.

  A knowing glint came to the Wolf’s eyes. And as her breathing slowed, blood pooling around her body, she intoned the ancient passage I had heard so many times while growing up. However, she must have finally deemed me worthy of her true message, because she filled in the missing parts—the lines none of my people knew or remembered:

  “Fear is your mentor;

  to be afraid is to know of your desires.

  When in peril, you feel fear if you know you wish to live.

  When chasing a dream, you feel fear if you know you wish to succeed.

  Respect your
fear by facing it.

  For a time, you must live in fear,

  keep going despite fear,

  until that fear becomes a quiet companion.

  You are worthy of every good thing you desire.

  So long as your heart is pure, you can never presume too much.

  To let fear win is to quietly perish inside.

  Fear is your captor but also your ally.

  If you never strive to be something more,

  never dare to do something new,

  and never challenge what has come before,

  then you will know death before you die.

  To fear less, you must first allow yourself to fear more;

  you must honor Her name …”

  As the light of life dimmed in the Wolf’s eyes, I finished the final sentence for her. “Fear, the Wolf.”

  And then Fear moved no more. She lay dead and motionless in the quiet cavern. I watched her, in a sort of daze, for an unknowable length of time. I was dimly aware of hissing water on the other side of the room.

  A mighty crack snapped me out of the daze. The cavern shook. I wobbled from side to side, and my eyes shot to the small fissure in the wall. Streaks of water sprayed from it now. With another loud splitting sound, the wall burst open and water flooded into the chamber.

  There was no time to pull my sword from the Wolf’s body, and my shield would only slow me down. Weaponless and defenseless, I turned and dashed for the tunnel. I heard water crashing and churning behind me as the temperature dropped in an instant. The air in the cavern sucked me backward as if trying to pull me into the rising flood. My eardrums ached and crackled, sensitive to the air being swallowed up by water.

  I pelted up the tunnel. When I reached the fork in the path, I stopped to peer down the passageway Neverdark had led the wolflings down.

  “Neverdark!” I screamed. “Neverdark, are you there?”

  But the roaring water caught up to me. As it soaked my feet, nipping at my heels like a wolfling hunting me down, I clambered up the tunnel toward daylight. When I glanced back, I saw the lit sconces being puffed out one by one.

  I emerged from the entrance, instantly blinded by the contrast from dark to light. Shielding my eyes, I stopped and felt the water rushing around my feet. Dirt and grit ran between my toes, carried by the flood. The chill water reached halfway up my shin before beginning to fall. Within twenty seconds or so, it had thinned out and left a layer of wet muck clinging to my legs, feet, and wooden sandals.

  When my eyes adjusted to the daylight, I realized the fog that had surrounded this place was gone. The skies were clear and blue. I drew in a deep breath and released it, glad to be alive, grateful that I could feel the sun’s heat kissing my skin.

  But as I squinted at the entrance to the Wolf’s lair, watching intently, my relief withered and died. The water level remained high in the tunnel. The entire lair was flooded.

  I pressed my stinging eyelids together and thought of Neverdark.

  Fearless

  54

  For hours, I searched. I hobbled about the area surrounding the Wolf’s lair, checking behind the entrance, wandering off into the trees, praying that Neverdark had found another way out. Three times, I returned to the mouth of the lair to wade through the water. But there was no sign of her. Only dead wolflings floated in the tunnel, their sodden bodies drifting across the dark, cloudy water.

  If only the water would recede, then I could search the cavern again. Maybe Neverdark had found a hiding place safe from the wolflings—safe from the flood. Perhaps she still lived. My heart told me she had to be alive. She had to be. A force tugged at my chest, urging me to dive into the flooded tunnels in search of her. But I could never hold my breath for that long. Nor could I see through water so murky.

  After two more hours of waiting outside the lair, I felt a shift in my heart. It went numb, and my hope vanished. Though I sensed all the aches and sores of my battered body, I felt no emotion—I felt nothing.

  And in this numbness, I wandered. I limped to the lake. The water level was lower than before, revealing a bank of sludge. I followed the water’s edge—my mind empty, my heart deadened—but something called to me. Something drew me toward the empty space beyond the lake, where there appeared to be no trees or hills or anything in the distance.

  The land stretched on for about two hundred strides. Then it disappeared.

  I walked toward the emptiness.

  When I reached the edge of the cliff, my feelings returned. Awe. Wonder. Fear. The chasm stretched further than I could see. Cautiously, I trod closer to peer over the side. Below me was a dark abyss as black and empty as a starless sky. Even daylight could not penetrate its depths. Ahead, in the distance, the dark void seemed to curve, blending into the blue sky with no other land in sight.

  A shiver of fear chilled me. The earth beneath my feet was not hard enough, perhaps softened by the large well of water nearby. It might take but a slight disturbance to break this barrier, which had held the lake in place for who knew how many cycles. I decided to follow the cliff edge away from the water until I stood on stronger ground with the forest at my back.

  Carefully I lowered myself to sit on the cliff edge with my legs dangling over. My wooden sandals clung to my toes, almost desperately, as if they knew they were at risk of falling into the chasm. A chill breeze caressed my legs.

  It was silent. Peaceful. And as I stared into nothingness, nothing seemed to matter. At least for a while.

  When my thoughts came tumbling back to me, they were too much to bear. My head rattled with one thing after another. Was Nosy alive? Did Neverdark make it out of the cavern? If so, where was she now? And what about the Wild Forces? How many of them still lived? Was I the only person alive who knew how important their messages had once been to humans and Tenniacs? And what about—

  A twig snapped behind me. My body convulsed, but I gripped the coarse rock beneath my hands, suddenly terrified of toppling over the edge.

  Twisting to look over my shoulder, I saw a wolfling sitting on its haunches between the bushes. It was mid-afternoon by now, and sunny, but the wolfling hid in the shadows. Another sound came, and I twisted further to find a second wolfling. Its bright eyes pierced through the shrubs. As I turned one way and the other to look over my shoulders, I spotted more and more of the beasts waiting in the undergrowth.

  This was it. I had no weapon. No shield. No means of defending myself, and no hope of killing a foe. This had to be the end. The wolflings would charge me off the edge. I would plummet to my death or perhaps fall forever through cold, empty darkness until I lost my mind.

  I decided to savor the moment. I turned back to stare into the hauntingly beautiful abyss and took a deep breath, delighting in the sensation of air cooling the insides of my nostrils. I smiled to myself. I suspected, if there had been anyone around to see it, they would have seen a happy-sad smile. I did not want to die. But if I had to, I would die knowing that I’d freed my people from their own shackles.

  Somehow, some day, they would discover the Wolf was dead. And then no one would need to live in fear of her wrath again.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  But the Wolflings didn’t come.

  After ten long breaths of nothing happening, the moment lost its bittersweet sense of finality. I looked over my shoulder again and locked eyes with a wolfling. It still rested on its haunches, simply watching me. I raised a hand; the wolfling’s eyes followed, glinting in the light. I lowered that hand, exposing my palm as if offering a treat. All the wolflings moved at once. They pushed to their feet and slowly padded closer. I lifted my hand, my fingers flat and pressed together. Every wolfling stopped and sat down again.

  My mouth dropped open as a rush of awareness rippled over my skin.

  I had become Fear.

  I was their master now. And in the moment of realization, I understood the Wolf’s teachings. I recalled every word of her sacred passage—the passage she’d s
hared with her last push of strength. I absorbed it and made it my own. Finally, after living in fear for so long, I knew what it meant to be fearless.

  Becoming fearless did not mean erasing all fear—I would still be afraid at times—but instead of trying to run from it, instead of pretending that fear is a phantom I must deny, I would listen to it. If I allowed myself to hear and heed the advice contained in every instance of fear, then I would fear less.

  Surrounded by my wolflings, my guardians, I looked into the chasm once more.

  An idea itched behind my ears. It crept to the front of my mind along with something the Wolf had said about the Wild Forces. We can only teach a student what the student has already begun to know for themselves. Tensing my brow, I tried to remember the images I’d seen on the tablets. Curiosity, the Bushcat … Cunning, the Fox … Perseverance, the Tortoise … Harmony, the Burrowbear … Wisdom, the Owl … and so many other Wild Forces.

  One, in particular, called out to me. And in response, I called out to it.

  I pushed back from the edge slightly and drew my legs up to sit cross-legged. Closing my eyes, I placed my hands on my knees and listened to my breath. My mind reeled with thoughts again, but instead of latching onto them, I let them drift by like an autumn leaf on the wind. I practiced focusing my attention, placing my awareness into different parts of my body, mentally exploring my fingers and toes and legs and arms and ears and scalp and every quietly tingling patch of my skin.

  Time passed. The insides of my eyelids gradually darkened. The cooling air raised the small hairs on my forearms, prickling bumps across my flesh. But no matter how uncomfortable I became, no matter how cold and hungry and stiff and sore, I simply waited. Patiently.

  Night had fallen. But I had no fear of night-apes anymore—not with my pack to defend me.