Wolfskin

by W. R. Gingell

  Before long I was crouched in the bushes outside the house, methodically touching each thread that led to it to make sure Cassandra wasn’t anywhere near. Her house was large and ornate, with delicate mouldings around the door and windows, carved in one piece from massive blocks of marble. I gazed at it in awe, wondering how she had gotten the blocks this far into the forest where the trees were so thick. Trust Cassandra to have something so ostentatious in the middle of a forest where no one else could see it. It looked like the kind of house that would require an army of servants to maintain, but I didn’t think Cassandra was the type of person to appreciate mere mortals nipping about her home where they could possibly interfere with her doings. Despite that, I was wary as I pushed open the massive front door, half expecting an old, villainous butler to appear and offer to take my coat in measured tones.

  No such apparition presented itself, and I was left alone to wander the hall. It was a grand hall, large and lofty, with its loftiness all the more pronounced by a floor-to-ceiling mirror at the opposite end. A regiment of doors opened off the hall on either side of me, closing in and forcing me to march toward my reflection. More uncannily still, Cassandra had arranged statues between each door: lifelike statues with horribly human expressions of sorrow and terror on their marble faces. The effect heightened my sense of being marched to my doom between regiments of soldiers. I gazed at those statues for a long, curious moment, trying to pin down the feeling of captivity they gave me. It came to me at last that it was because they had no feet. Their legs each ended in a solid marble block. It was as if their being statues hadn’t been enough for Cassandra: she’d had to take away from them even the idea of independence and freedom.

  I remembered the darkness in Cassandra’s violet eyes. Suppose, I thought, with a sudden cold chill; suppose that the statues were more than just statues; suppose that this was Cassandra’s army of servants? She had turned Bastian into a wolf, and it was no great leap from there to turning people into living marble statues.

  I looked at the statues again, more intently this time, and it seemed to me that I could see a slow kind of life to their faces. A shiver rippled through me, right to my bones. I stopped looking at them after that, unable to meet the hopeful question I thought I saw in their eyes.

  I would have begun by opening the door nearest to me, but one of the statues at the very end of the hall began to move, grating down a shallow groove that seemed to have been made for the purpose. My heart gave one shocking thump loud in my ears and I almost ran, but the idea of going back to Bastian only to admit defeat was not to be thought of. I huffed out a breath that was just a bit too quick and waited to see what would happen. Following the shallow trough in the hall, the statue grated across to the door opposite and stiffly opened it. I started down the hall toward it before my resolve failed, running lightly down the groove in the centre of the hall. My reflection, pale and reflexively scowling, hurried toward me, our feet pattering on marble in perfect synchrony.

  At last I stopped, panting, by the statue. It was a little girl, her face upturned to mine with an expression of hope that frightened me with its expectation. The faces of the statues around me were morphing into varied expressions of hope and fear, as slow as molasses. With a sick heart, I wondered what this little girl could possibly have done to be doomed to such a horrible fate. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, but there was no sorry for her kind of trouble, and I slid past her with my eyes lowered. I would do what I could.

  Cassandra wasn’t waiting for me just inside the room as I had been half afraid she would be. After I checked suspiciously behind the door I took a few more steps into the room, discovering myself to be in Cassandra’s bedroom. It was the size of a ballroom: all high, ornate ceiling and chandeliers enough to light the room like a light-tower even in daylight. The effect of spaciousness was accentuated by floor-to-ceiling mirrored glass just like in the hall, but in this room the mirrors were on all of the four walls. There was no escaping myself. In them I could see that I had a dirty face and that my pinafore was crooked. I felt that the mirrors, used to Cassandra’s beauty, were mocking me. I straightened my apron self-consciously and rubbed at the dirt on my face, but only managed to smudge it worse than before. I shrugged, resigning myself to grubbiness, and continued with my search.

  There wasn’t much to be seen, but the little girl must have opened the door to me for a reason. I opened my forest sight on the room. There were barely any lines in all the marble, which didn’t really surprise me. The only two things that showed any glimmer of change were a paperweight on the writing desk and a hair comb on the dressing table.

  I picked up the paperweight first. It was perfectly round, sitting on a black base, and at first glance it seemed to be an ordinary blown glass paperweight. It had a red burst of colour inside it, but when I picked it up the scarlet burst faded for an instant, and in that instant I thought I saw faces: imploring, desperate faces peering out at me. I almost dropped it in revulsion but something made me tuck it into my pinafore pocket instead, where it made a heavy bulge. It might be that this was what the little girl had wanted me to find, and I found that I couldn’t bring myself to leave it. It thumped against my leg as I crossed over to inspect the comb– which, no matter how many times I turned it over and examined it with my forest sight, remained a normal, wooden hair comb. Faint threads of forest magic ran through it, showing that it had once been a part of forest wood, but there was nothing else interesting about it. I tried putting it in my pocket with the paperweight, but the wooden tines made a loud tap tap against the glass that put me on edge, so I tucked it into my hair instead; deep underneath, where it wouldn’t be seen. I gazed around the room one last time but there wasn’t anything else of interest and I gladly turned toward the door once again. I had a feeling that I’d been in the mansion longer than it felt, as if time ran differently here, and my skin was crawling with the desire to be out. Even the marble floor beneath my feet seemed to be growing colder, and my footsteps quickened instinctively.

  I was just outside the door when a cold hand seized me around the neck. I found myself looking into Cassandra’s brilliant violet eyes, and with a detached sort of calm gave myself up for dead.

  “What are you doing in my house, little rabbit?” Her voice was conversational, but the fingers around my throat were as unyielding as iron bars. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice a rabbit darting about my house?”

  Horned hedgepigs! I thought bitterly. How stupid! I should have changed my signature to something else when I entered the house. Of course Cassandra had come to investigate a rabbit running around her marble halls.

  “You’d better let me go,” I said, holding her eyes with mine. “Akiva is waiting for me.”

  “And what does the little rabbit have in its pockets?” Cassandra said, her eyes fixed on the bulge in my pocket and utterly ignoring my threat as the pitiful thing it was. “It shouldn’t try to steal from me.”

  She pulled the paperweight from my pocket, spinning it idly from finger to finger, and her gaze wandered coldly over each of the statues in the hall. I saw the slow seep of emotion over their marble faces, from hope to horror.

  “Which of my lovelies let this girl in? And why did no one call me?”

  I saw the little marble girl tremble, a slow faltering of her eyelashes, and said: “No one let me in. I found your room myself.”

  “If you must lie, try not to lie so obviously,” said Cassandra contemptuously. “The doors open to me, and them. No one else.”

  None of the statues moved but I saw Cassandra’s eyes flicker to the little girl, cold and calculating. She knew exactly who had done it.

  She smiled icily at them, and said: “Very well. I will destroy you all one by one until the traitor steps forward.”

  The little girl moved as if to slide forward, but the graceful lady opposite her had already grated forward on her marble base.

  Cassandra, her head on one side as if she were listening to a soundle
ss voice, shrugged, and said: “You’ll do.”

  The lady disintegrated into a pile of marble dust without so much as a surge of power. Pinned against the marble wall with Cassandra’s hand about my throat, a chill of hot and cold shivered through me. The desolation on the stone face of the little girl told me that the graceful woman had most likely been her mother, and the satisfied curl to Cassandra’s lips as she glanced back at the little girl only confirmed my guess.

  Horned hedgepigs, but I was angry. I hadn’t known I could be this angry.

  After a moment the girl’s eyes dropped, and her head bowed.

  Cassandra turned back to me. “Why are you in my house, little rabbit? I am becoming impatient.”

  “I know you’re helping her,” I said, choking on fury.

  The fingers around my throat tightened mercilessly. I’d certainly struck a nerve. David couldn’t have been the attacker, and Gwydion wouldn’t be. Tancred had disappeared with the other lost wardens, so the attacker could only be another woman.

  “I just don’t know why. What do you get out of it?”

  Cassandra smiled coldly. “I get you, little rabbit. You, and the wolf; with no recriminations. Tell him that for me.”

  She threw me before I had the wit to know what was happening. Threw me clean through the marble walls and deep forest, to land heavily and painfully in Akiva’s wardship not five steps from where I had started. Grass punched the breath from my lungs, tossing me willy-nilly into a tree trunk, and as the world came to a halt, I groaned with a mouth full of dirt and grass. When I spat into the earth it came out red with blood.

  Through the ringing in my ears I heard running footsteps, then I was turned carefully onto my back to look dazedly up into Bastian’s furious face.

  “You stupid child!” he snarled, wiping the blood from my face with fingers that were rough and slightly shaking. “Are you determined to kill yourself?”

  I tried to speak, but all that came out was another groan. When I attempted to sit up, Bastian’s hand locked around my shoulder unyieldingly and pressed me back into the grass.

  “Must you always wriggle? Stay still, little witch: you’re winded.”

  I coughed up more blood and grass and said grittily: “I’m fine. Let me go.”

  Being called a stupid child rankled, particularly since I felt that I did deserve it. I put a hand to my head where something was painfully digging in, and found that I still had the comb. It had been shoved further into my hair, drawing blood and tearing out hair as it went. It was a messy object when it came out, but I gazed at it with all the satisfaction of a triumphant victory.

  Bastian wiped the blood from his hands and eyed the comb in distaste. “What is it?”

  “A comb,” I said, wriggling out of his reach to sit up. My crushed lungs sent a spike of pain through my chest and I gave a small, gulping sob which I turned into another cough. It didn’t help.

  Bastian shot a sharp look at me that said he wasn’t fooled, but he let me climb to my feet with what dignity I could muster before remarking: “I’m not an idiot, little witch. I’m perfectly well aware that it’s a comb.”

  “It’s evidence,” I said, but my voice sounded unconvincing even to myself. I didn’t know what it was evidence of; or what, if anything, it had to do with the disappearing wardens. I only knew that it was something of importance to Cassandra. So I looked down my nose at Bastian, who hadn’t risen from his knees, and turned on my heel before he could ask any more difficult questions.

  It was only a moment before his voice said agreeably beside me: “Where are you going?”

  “Home to Mother,” I said, wiping the comb on my apron and tucking it away into one of my pockets. My head throbbed where the hair had been torn out, and I rubbed it thoughtlessly, bloodying my fingers. I wiped the hand on my pinafore and added: “It’s my birthday.”

  “So you mentioned,” agreed Bastian. “Little witch, you can’t go home all over blood and dirt.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him that I could go home in whatever state I pleased, when it regretfully occurred to me that he was right.

  I found a stream on a nearby forest line and whisked myself there, limping. I was aching all over, and the forest jerked sickeningly around me instead of proceeding in the normal swift seamlessness of deep forest lines.

  Bastian followed behind, trailing little strands of gold and black along the thread as he went, and I guessed that he was not far from his wolf-phase after waiting for me outside Cassandra’s wardship. He was unusually quiet, and I felt that I hadn’t been quite kind, so I said: “I’m sorry I bled all over you.”

  “Oh, I’m beginning to get used to it,” Bastian assured me.

  He lounged against a tree while I washed my face and neck. Drops of blood clouded the water briefly before being swept away, and my throbbing head lost some of its ache in the coldness of the water. I washed the comb as an afterthought and wrapped it in my pinafore, making a roll just small enough to be shoved under a convenient tree root by the stream. My dress was old, ragged and dirty, but at least it wasn’t bloody, and as the only dress I had that wasn’t inches too short, it would have to do. I’d gone through another growth spurt without noticing some time during the spring, and most of my dresses were now too short. It was with a little surprise that, walking beside Bastian, I realised my head now came a little past his shoulder.

  “Bastian, you’ve shrunk,” I told him, balancing perilously on tiptoes. Bastian grinned and picked me up so that my gaze was on a level with his.

  “Better, little witch?”

  “Put me down!” I demanded. I did not care to be treated like one of Gwendolen’s ragdolls, and the pressure of Bastian’s hands around my waist was hurting my ribs more than I liked to admit.

  One of Bastian’s brows rose mockingly. “But I haven’t given you your birthday present yet!”

  “You’re fibbing,” I said accusingly. “You haven’t got a present for me.”

  Bastian had that black look about him again that I didn’t like. Wolf-Bastian would at this point be considering eating me: I didn’t know what human-Bastian would do.

  “Put me down!”

  The black look vanished and Bastian laughed as he set me down. “Very well; you’ve caught me out. I haven’t got a present for you. What would you like?”

  “Pecan pie,” I said, turning my steps homeward. “And baked peaches and scones.”

  “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” Bastian remarked. “You need a new dress.”

  I waved a hand dismissively. “It would only get dirty. Food is what I need. Besides, Gwendolen has probably already begged Mother to make me one.”

  “Gwendolen is a sensible girl.”

  “No, she’s not,” I said regretfully. Knowing Gwendolen, any dress she badgered Mother into buying or making would be all over frills and flounces. Still, I thought more cheerfully, if she did insist on forcing a dress upon me, I could always contrive to fall into a mud hole on the way home.

  We walked in silence until we reached the edge of the forest. I was thinking on my adventure, wondering what would happen now that Cassandra knew I was on to her. Bastian, very shortly after I formed my intention of falling into a mud hole should Gwendolen force a dress upon me, changed back into his wolf-form. He, too, was unusually thoughtful.

  When we came into sight of my house through the trees, he stopped walking and said: “Promise me you won’t go into Cassandra’s wardship again, Rose.”

  I hedged. “I will promise to try. Someone needs to keep an eye on her.”

  “Let the wardens take care of themselves,” Bastian said, on a growl. “Tell Akiva. Let her deal with it.”

  “Cassandra’s still after you,” I warned, making an attempt to nudge the conversation in a different direction. “She said that’s her part of the bargain: she gets you and me, without recriminations. That’s why she’s helping.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject, little witch,” Bastian said grimly.
“Promise me you won’t go back there.”

  I looked at him speculatively, measuring the distance between us and the distance to the road. I had no illusions that Bastian wouldn’t prevent me leaving the forest until I promised.

  “I promise to try,” I said again, and slipped sideways into a thread.

  Bastian was waiting for me when I came back to fetch the comb that night, a sable shadow I noticed only when he detached himself from the darkness to lope along at my side.

  “Since you seem intent on injuring yourself, we may as well collaborate,” he said, without preamble. “If you go into Cassandra’s wardship, then so do I.”

  “You can’t,” I said, angry at his stubbornness. “She’ll kill you!”

  “Very likely. But if you go, so do I.”

  “You’re trying to guilt me into behaving,” I said, with new respect. Bastian was ruthless in his bossiness.

  Having achieved his point, Bastian’s voice was brisk and cheerful. “Nonsense. Someone has to look after you, and since I’m assuming you’re not planning on telling Akiva any of this . . .”

  I opened my mouth to protest indignantly that of course I was planning on telling her, when I realised that I wasn’t. Perhaps I hadn’t been right from the first. There was a scared little part of me that knew wardens who got too close to the truth had a tendency to disappear, and I couldn’t bear it if I lost Akiva.

  “Oh, very well!” I retorted crossly. “I won’t go back in there. But I have to do something.”

  “We have to do something,” corrected Bastian, and I fancied his voice was a touch smug.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Very well then, smarty-britches; what should we do?”

  “Sarcasm does not become you, little witch,” said Bastian. “We reconnoitre, of course.”

  “Yes, but whose wardship will we scout out?” I demanded. I was a little put out to have my investigation taken over so summarily.

  Bastian grinned. “All of them.”

  We began our collaborative investigations in the late afternoon of the next day. For a good part of the morning it seemed as though I would not get any spare time at all, and I became grumpier as the day progressed. The changes affecting the forest as a whole were beginning to affect us also: too many wardens had disappeared, and Mara was struggling to maintain hold of what she had. The result was that our garden beds, along with various unrelated bits and pieces of the forest, had shifted to entirely different locations. That morning, a piece of deep forest had appeared around the side of the cottage, trailing broken forest lines through the grass; and two of the herbal garden beds had disappeared altogether. Akiva and I spent the morning finding the missing beds and reattaching them to our garden, but there was nothing to be done for the piece of deep forest that seemed to have been actually torn from the forest.