Wolfskin

by W. R. Gingell

  It died lingeringly as the day progressed, golden threads dulling to a dark brown and then, finally, to lifeless black. It hurt me inside to feel it dying there, and the pain of it added to my grumpiness until I was ready either to burst into tears or kick something.

  To add to my woes, Akiva seemed to have woken from her preoccupation; or woken at least enough to remember that I could make myself useful. She was intent on teaching me how to deal with the smaller disturbances around the forest. Fortunately, just as I thought that I wouldn’t be finished before bedtime, there was an odd, calculated knock on the door which usually heralded the arrival of Akiva’s more unusual guests. I was bundled out the back way with orders not to return that night.

  I ran before she could change her mind, for once not even remotely interested in spying to see who the interesting visitors were. By that time dusk was beginning to creep through the forest, and when I found Bastian he was in his wolf-shape, as disgruntled as myself. I guessed that he was angry to have used his human time waiting for me; and, feeling an urge to defend myself, I was less than cordial in reply to his snarling: “What took you so long!”

  We quarrelled heatedly and childishly until our bad humour was spent, and then sat back and scowled at each other in weary, fuming silence.

  At length Bastian raised his chin from his paws, and said with grudging amusement: “The thing I love about you, Rose, is that you pull no punches.”

  “Neither do you,” I pointed out. Some of his stringent remarks still stung.

  “Now, now, sweetheart,” Bastian reproved. “Kiss and make up.”

  I almost remarked that I wouldn’t kiss him even if he were not a shaggy and possibly flea-infested wolf, but it occurred to me in time that such a comment would hardly pour oil on the troubled waters. Instead, I nodded and stood up.

  “Alright. Where shall we start?”

  “If I were not a wolf I would show you,” Bastian said lazily, purposely misunderstanding. The tips of his teeth just barely showed in a hunting smile. “The lips are a good place to begin–”

  I scowled at him. “I meant where shall we start looking. Which wardship?”

  “Spoilsport,” murmured Bastian, but he rose to his four paws, yawning. “Very well: business it shall be. Who disappeared first?”

  I thought back to Kendra’s disappearance, frowning. Time seemed to have telescoped, as if it had been decades ago instead of just over a year.

  I said: “Kendra. But we don’t know which wardship she disappeared from; she was last seen with David.”

  A little arrogantly, Bastian said: “I’ll know. We’ll start in David’s wardship, and I can follow her trail from there.”

  I wondered what made him think he would succeed where the most powerful wardens had failed, but he was a wolf, after all; and a magically contrived one at that. No doubt he had his ways and means. I allowed him to lead the way to David’s wardship without complaint, reflecting that if he failed I would at least have the pleasure of crowing at him.

  I hadn’t visited David’s wardship before. It bordered on Akiva’s, and was slipping into the first frost of winter when Bastian and I stepped into it. I instinctively masked my forest signature as we entered, feeling the vastness of the wardship that was now Mara’s. David’s wardship had been added to the others when Mara took over, and now the lines between wardships were faint and nebulous. Soon they would disappear altogether, the only evidence of their separateness the sudden changes of season between locations.

  The forest didn’t like it. I could feel its confusion in its struggles to right itself. I found myself thinking that Akiva had been wrong. Wrong to support Mara, wrong to allow this horrible, piecemeal amalgamation. It surprised me, because somehow I had come to think that Akiva was never wrong.

  A light evening frost was crystallizing on the grass as we walked, and we proceeded in a soft, crackling of icicles, leaving a trail of dark footprints behind us.

  Once, Bastian turned to ask: “Aren’t your feet cold, little witch?”

  I shook my head impatiently, and he said under his breath: “Ah, yes. Dragon fever.”

  A little while later he stopped.

  “Here,” he said, sitting back on his haunches. “This is where she began.”

  “How do you know?” I demanded. I disliked the near sightlessness that came with being in another wardship, and it was annoying of Bastian to sound so assured. All I could see were very faint shadows of the forest lines.

  “It’s the newest trace of her.”

  I looked around, frowning. “Which way does it go?”

  “You’re not going to like this,” Bastian warned, his eyes maliciously amused. “It leads right back to Akiva’s border.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, ignoring the veiled implication. “David said he helped her over the border and that was the last he saw of her.”

  “I gather we’re not considering Akiva in the light of a suspect?”

  “Of course not!” I said indignantly. “Besides, she was with me when most of the wardens disappeared.”

  “How annoying,” Bastian remarked. “I would have enjoyed casting her as the villainess. Still, you did say that Cassandra is helping whoever is doing this; they could each have taken a part.”

  I was almost unsettled for a brief moment before reason took over. Bastian was only baiting me, and even if Akiva was perpetually grumpy, she was not an abductor or a murderer.

  I put my hands on my hips and gave Bastian look for look. “Where does it go after Akiva’s wardship?”

  Bastian gave a lazy wolf-grin and stood up again. “This way, little witch.”

  We followed the trail all the way back across Akiva’s wardship and into Mara’s again. This time the point at which we entered was her old border, when her wardship had once been restricted to just one sector of the forest. Now that she controlled six or seven, the entire sector curled around Akiva’s like a sea. We were the small island about to be overpowered in the waves, linked only to Cassandra’s wardship.

  The scent stopped abruptly at a tall white birch tree not long after we passed the border.

  “How can it just stop?” I gazed up at the tree, ghostly in the moonlight. “Did she climb it? Did someone catch her here and carry her?”

  Bastian drew in a hissing breath of annoyance that was really very commendable coming from a wolf. “There’s nothing. Nothing. No other trail, no other person. No blood, no struggle. It’s as if she ceased to exist.”

  “Maybe she did,” I said, frowning. “What about deeper forest?”

  Bastian shot me a hard look. “What do you know about deeper forest, little witch?”

  “I danced with the dryads,” I said airily, neglecting to mention that Akiva had very nearly boxed my ears for doing so. By the looks of it, Bastian was feeling the same urge.

  “Deeper forest is highly dangerous,” he said, in exasperation. “You shouldn’t know anything about it.”

  “It’s not much use telling me that when I already do,” I pointed out. “Should we look there?”

  “You need an invitation for deeper forest,” Bastian said brusquely. “Leave it well alone.”

  I heaved a cross sigh so that he would think I’d abandoned the idea, and filed the thought away for future reference.

  “Very well; what, then?”

  Bastian gave something close to a shrug, and I got the impression that he was offended at his lack of success. “Nothing. There is nothing we can do. Who’s next?”

  “Shona.” She had been a tiny, slender warden with glorious red hair; a quiet young girl who didn’t much care for human company and rarely ventured from her own wardship. “She had lovely hair.”

  “Your hair is lovely,” Bastian said irrelevantly. “Like thistledown or corn-silk.”

  “My hair doesn’t matter,” I said, scowling. There was a caressing edge to his voice that I didn’t like. “Shona was the next one to disappear. Her wardship is to the south of Kendra’s.”

&n
bsp; Bastian grinned lazily. “Oh, very well. Let us go on to Shona’s wardship.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Autumn was slow in coming that year, while summer stretched out long and hot. Bastian and I went from wardship to wardship, sneaking past the few remaining wardens and startling at shadows, but we found nothing but traces. Each of them ended as Kendra’s trace had done: abruptly and completely. Bastian grew annoyed – more so when I told him crossly not to sulk – and we at last gave up the venture with much less enthusiasm than we had begun.

  Akiva disappeared more and more often into unnamed parts, and I found myself at home with Mother and Gwendolen more frequently, just one more young person at the dinner table or in the dance set.

  On one such night, I found myself washing dishes with Mother in the kitchen, while dancers kicked up their heels in a reel outside.

  “Gwen’s showing off,” I said, grinning as I watched Gwendolen’s pert head turns.

  “Thomas is here tonight,” Mother said, smiling a little. “She’s young yet, but he wants to marry her. She’s been behaving disgracefully every time he attends a party.”

  I narrowed my eyes and searched for the object of Gwendolen’s attentions. I fancied that her gaze chanced more often in one direction than any other, and by following the line of her eyes I caught sight of an older man sitting at the outskirts of the dance. He was perhaps twenty-seven or eight, watching Gwendolen and her bevy of admirers with an amused smile. He didn’t join in the chatter and fun, but he was somehow there to put her shawl around her shoulders when it was needed, and ready with refreshments almost before Gwen had time to open her mouth to require them. I laughed to myself, because I knew then that Gideon with his bold eyes and Archen with his quick wit didn’t stand a chance against this quiet, thoughtful man. Mother was right about him. I wondered if Gwendolen knew it: she was certainly making an effort to captivate him as best she knew.

  Gilbert was there too: he hadn’t seen me, but I could see him, stretched out quietly by the refreshment table with his booted feet up on Mother’s chopping block and his plate piled high. I could have danced, I suppose: nowadays I had as many willing dance-partners as any girl except Gwendolen. But I found the noisy chatter more annoying than usual, so when I was finished with the dishes I left Mother and David alone and went to sit down next to Gilbert instead.

  His face lit up when he saw me. “Rose! You’re a sight for sore eyes. I thought you weren’t coming.”

  I shrugged. Akiva had told me to leave her alone for a couple of days, and I had turned up at home only to find the house decked with decorations, and party trestles being set up in the paddock behind the back garden. Mother had hugged me distractedly and then thankfully appropriated me for the setting out of chairs, while Gwendolen danced in excited circles around me; useless for any sort of work in her beautiful green silk dress. It hadn’t been a matter of my being at the party; it had been a matter of there being nowhere else for me to go. Gwendolen had tried determinedly to dress me up in my finest clothes, but I dodged all her efforts and skipped around the house doing the wards, conveniently out of sight. The only effort I’d made was to wear the only one of my dresses that was not inches too short. Still conveniently boyish, Gilbert didn’t notice.

  He grinned affably at me and said: “Come for a walk, Rose; it’s too noisy to think around here.”

  We left the brightness of the lights and chatter for the quietness of the forest. I heaved a sigh of relief that had as much to do with finding myself surrounded by the forest lines as it did the peace and coolness of the forest. The grass never felt the same anywhere else.

  Besides, it was pleasant to be walking quietly with someone who didn’t expect me to say anything. Bastian had been uncomfortable company lately. It had begun when he came back on the day of my birthday and had only gotten worse; all charming words and black swirling amidst gold. I felt for the first time that he really could be dangerous. It was just one of those Bastian things, a need to make every woman he knew fall in love with him: but it was irritating. It was nice to be walking alongside a man who was content to stroll along with one hand in his pocket, munching at his piece of pie.

  “I’m beginning to think that I was right about you after all,” he remarked as we strolled beneath the low-hanging branches. “You are the fairy queen. You never smile unless you’re near the forest.”

  I smiled mechanically, but the thought left me cold inside. “Believe me, you’re lucky I’m not. You have no idea what I could do to you if I was.”

  Gilbert grinned, and said teasingly: “I wouldn’t mind being in peril from you. You’re quite small: I could pick you up and hold you back with one hand.”

  The next thing I knew, I had been swept off my feet and into Gilbert’s arms as lightly as if I were a feather. He grinned down at me again. “See?”

  “Put me down!” I protested, though I couldn’t help laughing at the smugness of his face. Horned hedgepigs, did everyone consider me to be a sack of potatoes?

  Gilbert must have taken the laugh as encouragement, because he only said, more smugly still: “It’s too muddy; you would ruin your shoes.”

  I wriggled my bare toes at him meaningfully, but he chose to ignore my pointed display, and said cheerfully: “Do your worst, fairy.”

  I bit back another laugh so as not to encourage him, and gave him my best scowl. “You’ll be sorry,” I warned him.

  “Oh, is that supposed to scare me?”

  “Yes,” I said austerely. “Fairies aren’t to be trifled with. Neither am I.”

  “Do your worst,” he said again, laughing. He didn’t stop walking.

  I said thoughtfully: “I think I shall box your ears.”

  Gilbert snorted. “If that’s your worst, I’ll be carrying you all the way back to the party.”

  I put my chin up in dignified silence and tweaked a few forest lines. New grown vines curled around Gilbert’s ankles and fastened in a blink, jerking him to his knees and sending me tumbling from his arms. I landed on my back and lost my breath for a few moments, giggling madly up at the stars. Gilbert groaned and pulled himself toward me, tugging at the vines around his feet.

  “That was not dignified,” he said reprovingly. I laughed up at him, and a reluctant grin rose to his face.

  “All right, all right, I admit defeat. Do let me go, Rose; I think I’ve lost feeling in my left foot.”

  I allowed the vines to loosen and Gilbert sat up thankfully. He leaned forward to help me up, one arm supporting my back and another beneath my elbow, and for a moment our faces were very close. I saw something I didn’t recognise in his brown eyes: felt a sudden tenseness in the arm that was around me. A reflex, perhaps mischievous, made me twitch the forest lines again swiftly, and Gilbert gave a yelp as the vines caught him off balance and tipped him onto his rump in the mud. The moment of unsettling stillness was lost as I stood and pulled him back to his feet, laughing.

  He eyed his trousers rather mournfully. “My one consolation is that you’re as muddy as I,” he said.

  I gave a little magic-laced shake to the cotton of my dress and flicked the mud out of it.

  Smugly, I said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Gilbert opened and closed his mouth, then finally said: “Your majesty, I beg leave to be your fool. I think I’ll feel safer back at the party.”

  I grinned, but inclined my head graciously. “You may leave the royal presence.”

  “Only if you promise to dance the next dance with me,” Gilbert said, his submission short-lived. “Come to think of it, you might as well come with me.”

  I took the arm that he offered. “All right. But you have to introduce me to Gwendolen’s Thomas.”

  “Happily,” he said cheerfully. “And to anyone else who is safely in love. But don’t expect me to introduce you to anyone else.”

  We were threading our way through the dancers when something slammed into my wards. I was thrown violently to my knees and the p
arty babble silenced in an instant to a mere whisper of sound. Through dazed, fractured sight I saw Thomas looking around sharply. His eyes met mine with a widening of understanding. He started towards me at a lope, shouldering aside dancers as Gilbert helped me to my feet, his arm around my waist. I heard the muted sound of screams around me, and dancers leaped wildly for cover as Bastian came leaping and snarling through their midst.

  Thomas was speaking but I couldn’t hear his voice, and my kaleidescoping sight made it hard to read his lips. I thought he was asking if I was all right; and, dimly, it occurred to me that he was a magic user himself. I put my hand out to grasp his arm and said urgently: “Check the paddock side!”

  I felt Bastian’s fur beneath my hand, and said: “Go with him, Bastian.”

  Thomas took off at a run, but Bastian didn’t move. I didn’t need my full hearing to tell me that he had snarled a ‘no’ at me.

  “Go warn Mother and David,” I told Gilbert, disengaging myself from his arms. I knew it was no use arguing with Bastian; and besides, I was glad for the support. “Something just breached my warding.”

  Gilbert hesitated but went, and I was left leaning on Bastian, still shaken and oddly deafened.

  “Where’s the breach?”