Wolfskin

by W. R. Gingell

  “Forest side,” I said shortly, through the buzzing in my ears. “Quickly!”

  Thomas was approaching from the other direction by the time we found the place. It wasn’t a full breach: the wards still held, but they had been weakened severely. Whoever or whatever had done this, they were still outside.

  “No breach this side,” Thomas reported, and ran one hand through his hair. “Is Gwendolen safe?”

  “In the house,” I told him. My last sight of the party had been of Gwendolen being pushed summarily inside the house by Gilbert. She didn’t look pleased.

  Bastian snarled. “Someone’s coming.”

  To my surprise, Thomas darted a swift, sharp look around and demanded: “Which direction?”

  He evidently had no trouble at all understanding Bastian. I made a mental note to warn Gwendolen that her most pressing suitor was a very strong magic user and that she stood a significant chance of having little wizardling babies.

  “Forest!” snapped Bastian. “Rose, stay back!”

  I spared an annoyed thought for his bossiness, and said coldly: “It’s only Akiva and Mara.”

  I’d sensed their approach for some time now, swift and silent through the forest.

  “They felt the attack. They’ve probably come to check on us.”

  Bastian took a deep breath through his nose and nodded. “I have their scents now.”

  “I’ll make myself scarce,” Thomas said. His arms were crossed over his massive chest as if now that the emergency was over, he didn’t know quite what to do. “We have a truce with the wardens; we don’t draw on forest magic and they leave us and our magic alone. It’s not exactly cordial.”

  I nodded. “Tell Gwendolen and Mother that it’s safe now.”

  Akiva and Mara came from different directions, rather to my surprise. Sensing them on the energy lines, I had assumed that they were walking together: but Akiva came directly through the forest as if from the cottage, and Mara appeared along the road just edging the forest. Akiva arrived first by a few seconds, her face lined and grey. I thought she looked relieved when she saw Bastian and I.

  “I see you’re still alive, then,” she said shortly. “Did anyone make it through?”

  I barely had time to shake my head before Mara’s clipped tones interrupted. “What has your apprentice done this time, Akiva?”

  I bristled, but Akiva only said: “Someone tried to force their way through her wards.”

  “Where’s the breach?” Mara cast a professional look at the wards. “I don’t see it.”

  Akiva’s voice was grimly approving. “There is no breach: what you felt was the backlash.”

  “What made you ward your apprentice’s house with such severity?” asked Mara, her eyes narrowed. There was an edge to her voice that suggested either that she didn’t appreciate being kept out of the loop, or that she had begun to suspect Akiva again.

  “Rose was worried about her family,” Akiva said easily. “The wards are her own doing. She thought the disturbances in the forest could spill over into the outside. It seems she was right.”

  Mara raised an eyebrow at me. “Strong wards for an apprentice. Why is the wolf here?”

  “I’m protecting my own,” Bastian told her, with a touch of insolence. “What are you doing here, Mara?”

  She gave him a frosty smile. “We’ll see about that, wolf. What were you thinking, Akiva?”

  “Rose involved herself,” Akiva said, shrugging. “She broke the first clause in the curse. May I suggest we continue this discussion another time? Young Gilbert is coming.”

  “And the intruder?”

  “We didn’t find anyone,” I said.

  “Not even a scent,” agreed Bastian. He sounded as if he were annoyed with himself. “Whoever did it had enough power to mask themselves.”

  Mara seemed to be satisfied, much to my relief. At all events she nodded and swept away; followed shortly by Akiva, who stopped behind only long enough to see me mouth ‘He’s safe’ in answer to her inquisitive look.

  Gilbert arrived breathlessly just moments later. He seemed to find it necessary to put an arm around my waist even though I was leaning on Bastian for support. I was too tired and sore to object to the annoyance as I might usually have done.

  “Thomas wants you to come back to the house; he says Gwendolen is worried.”

  Wearily, I nodded. “All right.” I gave Bastian a brief hug and said: “Will you come in too?”

  Bastian shook his shaggy head. “I’ve already been out of the forest longer than is wise. Take care, little witch. I’d be happier if you were in the forest under my eye.”

  “You know I can’t leave Mother and Gwen.” I patted his head absently. “Whoever it was might come back.”

  Bastian nodded, as if he had expected as much. “At least tell that idiot to take his arm away from your waist.”

  I laughed, and relayed the message to Gilbert, who had demanded to know what the joke was.

  “That’s easily fixed,” he said cheerfully. He took his arm away only to pick me up again despite my protests. I had to wave my goodbyes over his shoulder to Bastian, who looked balefully after us until we entered the house.

  Inside, I was immediately accosted by a tearful Gwendolen, who brightened visibly when she saw that I was being carried.

  Too happily, she demanded: “Rose! Did you faint?”

  I glared at her. “Of course not! Gilbert, put me down!”

  Gilbert did so, grinning. I found that my knees weren’t as supportive as I would have wished, and the hand that Thomas put under my elbow for support was unexpectedly welcome. His face swam a little before my eyes as he tilted my chin to look frowningly down at me.

  “How’s the vision?”

  I blinked, and my sight cleared enough for me to be able to say truthfully: “Fine. It’s fine.”

  He smiled down at me as if he were amused, and said to Mother: “You’d better put her to bed. The wards took a nasty knock, and so did Rose.”

  Mother nodded, her lips compressed in a thin, worried line.

  “I have to draw the wards!” I protested, only weakly resisting being shepherded up the stairs.

  “Bed, Rose,” said Mother. Over her shoulder, Thomas gave me a slow, deliberate wink that said he would take care of the wards. I allowed myself to be shuffled off to bed.

  When I woke the next day, the wards stretched around the house, solid and neat. There was a restful quality to the air, and I caught a sense of Thomas’ quiet, single-minded determination in the house wards. I wasn’t surprised to find him at the breakfast table with David and Gwendolen when I made my appearance a little later. What did surprise me was that fact that Gilbert was there also, and that Gwendolen was looking very smug about it. I guessed from her air of self-satisfied complacency that she had invited him.

  I gave her a scowling look: if Gwendolen thought that she was matchmaking, she was fair and far off. I had no intention of becoming Gilbert’s sweetheart– as little, I thought crossly, as he had of becoming mine. Bother Gwen with her fainting princesses and enchanted princes, and curses broken by a maiden’s kiss! I felt a momentary, wistful desire to burn her books one by one. But as the thought entered my head, a memory entered with it: a memory of Liz and Harry and Gilbert, all of us discussing the curse by firelight. Elizabeth had suggested that a kiss could break the curse, too. A certain speculation entered my thoughts.

  I frowned over my porridge distractedly, too busy now to shoot darkling looks at Gwendolen, who was ignoring them in any case. I answered Gilbert’s morning pleasantries very much at random, my thoughts far away. Unfortunately, Gwendolen had been ignoring him as studiously as she had been ignoring my scowls, flirting with Thomas and leaving the burden of conversation with me.

  At length, Gilbert said ruefully: “Copper for your thoughts, Rose.”

  I gazed at him blankly, and blinked. “Oh! Sorry, Gil: I was thinking about the curse. I was wondering if Liz was right, and if it takes a kiss to
break it.”

  “You know, I’m beginning to believe in this curse of yours.”

  “Maybe Thomas knows,” I said thoughtfully, and interrupted the conversation between Gwen and Thomas without compunction. “Thomas! Do kisses break curses? Liz says all the stories say so.”

  Thomas shot me a speculative look. “It depends. What sort of curse is it?”

  “It’s not a real curse,” Gilbert assured him, cheerfully helping himself to the last slice of toast before Thomas could. “It’s an imaginary one that we made up to go with the legend of the forest.”

  “The legend of the forest, eh?” Thomas sat back, willing to be amused, but Gwendolen, her conversation with him summarily cut short, didn’t look as if she cared for the state of affairs. I had to bite back a grin, because it wasn’t like one of her suitors to leave a conversation with her in order to follow someone else’s.

  “Well, Rose? What is this legend?”

  It was a direct question, one the curse wouldn’t allow me to answer; so I chose to be sneaky, and said: “Gilbert explains it better.”

  “The werewolf of the forest,” Gilbert said, with relish. “Who eats the hearts of any young maidens in the forest. He was cursed centuries ago, and has been looking for someone to break the curse ever since.”

  Thomas’ brows rose; and across the table, David’s brow furrowed. I kept one eye on him as Thomas asked: “What sort of curse?”

  “Something to find, something to do, and something to give,” Gilbert said glibly. It had taken much verbal wrangling to get him to that point, but I felt as though my efforts had been rewarded. Since Gilbert didn’t truly know about the curse, he could speak as freely as he chose, whether his words were right or wrong.

  I saw David open and close his mouth once and then again, a look of frowning concentration on his face. Eventually, he said in a puzzled voice: “It sounds . . . familiar. But I can’t– I can’t seem to say it.”

  “Liz thinks that the something to find must be a ring or amulet that belonged to the werewolf, and that it has to be given back to him,” Gilbert added helpfully. “That’s the ‘something to give’ part.”

  Thomas folded his arms across his chest. “An imaginary curse, eh?”

  “Yes,” I told him firmly. I was glad that Mother wasn’t there: Thomas’ gaze was uncomfortably searching, and one set of sharp eyes watching me was bad enough.

  He said slowly, and with slight reluctance: “It’s very likely that such a curse would involve a kiss. They’re risky at best, however: notoriously complicated and inclined to suck you in if you’re not very careful. A person involved in a curse of that sort,” he added, his eyes not wavering from mine; “Could find themselves caught a little deeper than they expect, and needing to give a little more than they’re willing to give.”

  “Oh, don’t take the fun out of it!” begged Gilbert. “Ours is a simple little thing, broken by a maiden’s kiss; isn’t it, Rose?”

  I nodded, hoping that it was as simple as that, but Thomas frowned.

  “Curses aren’t for light talk,” he said, and turned back to his conversation with Gwendolen. I could tell that I had worried him, and I was sorry. David also looked quietly perturbed, but whether that was because he was worried or because memories were resurfacing, I couldn’t be sure. He must have known something of the curse as a warden, or the gag clause wouldn’t have stopped him talking about it. He remained preoccupied and silent for the rest of the meal, his brow furrowed and his eyes on the table, and I decided that it might prove profitable to slip into his room later and find out what he knew.

  Thomas and Gwendolen disappeared shortly after breakfast: into the village, if I wasn’t mistaken. I would have tried to corner David and find out what he knew, but he had sought safety with Mother in the garden and I found myself walking with Gilbert by the edge of the wood forest instead.

  Gilbert grinned and elbowed me. “They’re getting along well, aren’t they?”

  I followed his line of sight to see Mother looking up at David. She said something in her dry, quiet way that first surprised him, and then made him laugh. It did wonders for his usually sombre face, lightening the grey of his eyes to blue and adding much-needed laugh lines to his cheeks.

  “There must be something in the air,” I said, grinning sardonically. “Too long of a summer. Too many twilight dances.”

  “Speaking of which,” Gilbert said; “There’s one tonight; storytelling and dancing on the village green. Will you come with me?”

  “Oh, I’ll be there,” I said glumly. “Gwendolen will drag me there, if nothing else. It’ll be nice to have some peace and quiet when I get back to the forest.”

  “I meant will you go to the dance with me?” he said.

  I frowned, lacking the patience to sift through levels of meaning. Fortunately, before I could answer, Gilbert added: “Rose, I think your wolf is watching us through the trees.”

  I cast a glance forestward, and there was Bastian, prowling. “Ah. He must need to speak with me.”

  “I’ll wait,” Gilbert said, in a polite-but-firm way that puzzled me.

  “You should go,” I told him, oddly grateful to Bastian for interrupting. “I might be all day.”

  “What about the dance?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” I promised.

  Gilbert opened his mouth, but closed it again without speaking and nodded.

  “I’ll save a seat for you,” he said. I waited until he had gone before I slipped into deep forest. I had already disappeared around him too many times. I wasn’t keen to be hailed as the fairy queen again.

  When I came upon him, Bastian’s ears were flattened against his skull in a way that boded no good.

  I put my hands on my hips, prepared to be scolded, and demanded without giving quarter: “What have I done this time? Or are you just grumpy today?”

  “You took your time!” he accused, thrown off balance. “What are you doing trysting with woodcutters?”

  “I wasn’t trysting,” I said, indignant in my turn. “I was talking. What do you want, Bastian?”

  “I have a lead on Cassandra,” Bastian growled. “I thought you would be interested.”

  “I am interested. What do you mean, a lead?”

  “Cassandra has been wandering from her wardship on the first day of every week, late to midnight,” he said, less grumpily. “She circles, but always ends up at the centre of Mara’s wardship. I didn’t realise it was a pattern at first, since I mostly try to avoid the old cow. Tonight she’ll go out again, and we’ll be waiting. From a safe distance, of course.”

  I grimaced, regret flooding me. “I can’t come tonight.”

  Bastian’s voice became silky. “Why not, little witch?”

  “I promised I’d go to the dance tonight.”

  “You were trysting!” Bastian was snarling. “Who is this bumpkin, anyway?”

  “He’s not a bumpkin!” I shot back, angry in my turn, but realising in the snap of anger that Bastian was just furious enough in earnest to really listen to me. I wanted the old Bastian back: the one that teased me instead of flirting with me. “Anyway, you’ve met him. His name is Gilbert and he came to fetch the medicine for Kelsey that time.”

  “Gilbert, Gilbert,” Bastian muttered to himself, and then, sharply: “Ah! The moonling who said you were the queen of the fairies. What was he doing whispering in your ear and putting his arm around your waist?”

  “He wasn’t whispering in my ear!”

  Bastian shot me an angry, exasperated look, and I put my chin up.

  “I enjoy his company,” I said evenly, knowing that my calm would only provoke him.

  Bastian’s amber eyes were molten and his teeth showed. “As opposed to what? Mine?”

  “Actually, yes,” I said grittily; and it was almost true.

  “I thought we were friends, little witch.” The anger was gone from Bastian’s voice. He sounded stunned.

  “So did I,” I said tartly, hardening myse
lf. It was difficult to tell if Bastian’s hurt was in earnest or an act. “Then you came back and everything was a pretend.”

  The hurt tone vanished from Bastian’s voice, and he said, quite cheerfully: “What a cynical little witch you are! You should try to be rid of that, it’s not becoming.”

  “It used to be fun,” I said wistfully; because for a moment it seemed as though the real Bastian was back.

  “All right, all right,” he said, lowering his head in feigned submission. “No more pretending. I must be losing my touch– or you’re too perceptive for your own good. Now be a good little witch and tell your bumpkin that you’re busy. I’ll be good.”

  With real regret, I said: “I can’t. I promised Gilbert that I’d be there.”

  Bastian’s eyes darkened stormily again, and I realised in surprise that his annoyance was somewhat more real than I had thought. It struck me that he might think that if I were friends with Gilbert I would be distracted from helping him break the curse.

  I said: “I’m still working on your curse, you know.”

  Bastian gave something like a snarl mixed with a whine, and stalked away to the nearest forest thread. He was gone before I could call him back, and I was left staring after him in some perplexity. What ailed him today? I put my hands on my hips and glared after him, but I felt a little badly about everything in general; and so, with a sigh, I went after him.

  When I found him Bastian was in his human form, kneeling by a placid stream and moodily skipping rocks across the waters. He looked up when he heard me approach, but didn’t speak.

  I put my hands on my hips again, and said austerely: “You’re very grumpy today.”

  Bastian sat back with a weary laugh. “Ah, Rose; I’ve lived too long. Go to your dance, enjoy yourself while you can.”

  “The dance doesn’t start until twilight. I don’t have to leave yet.”

  “I’m not good company today, little witch.”

  “You’re never good company,” I said cheerfully, kneeling to hug him comfortingly around the neck. I didn’t care to see him unhappy. “You’re rude and dictatorial and most often grumpy. But I like you just the same.”

  Bastian laughed again, this time with real amusement, and I sat back, satisfied with myself.