Wolfskin
Page 32
“You’re horrible and I don’t understand at all why Rose wants to marry you,” she told him roundly; and then sighed. “Oh well; I suppose you’re right. I’ll tell him I’m sorry and then we can dance at your wedding.”
“If you want to be my bridesmaid you’ll need a groomsman to walk you down the aisle,” I pointed out, in a practical spirit. For good measure, I added: “You’ll need a new dress, too.”
Gwendolen brightened immediately, her dudgeon at having to admit she was at fault quickly put aside by the thought of a new frock. She darted away at once to see what materials she had available, returning only once to ask me what colour I wanted it to be.
Akiva took the news with as little surprise as Mother, but said in her caustic way: “Very nice for you both, but not yet. It’s far too busy, and the forest needs to be set to rights first.”
“Bastian says we won’t be married until I’m eighteen,” I told her gloomily. I was still only in my seventeenth year and Bastian had insisted that he wanted me to be sure of it. He had an absurd idea of fairness. It didn’t please me, but Akiva gave an approving nod.
“Sensible,” she said. “What will you do with the child?”
“She doesn’t like being outside the forest,” I shrugged. This was an understatement: every attempt to remove Cassandra from the vicinity of the forest, even to take her to Mother, had met with an outburst of screaming and red-faced limb-flailing that was at odds with baby Cassandra’s usually sunny disposition.
“I’ll keep her with me.”
Akiva grunted. “She might prove useful in finding the wardens.”
This, I felt, was a tacit approval of my adoption of Cassandra, for which I was thankful. I wanted her under my eye, and I had a feeling that the forest, insofar as it was capable of rational thought, had decided that she should stay. It had done its best by her, and I was determined to do the same. That would have to be enough for everyone else, too; for the forest knew how to protect its own.
Epilogue
The search for the missing wardens began almost immediately. Akiva organized us into parties and sent us on our way, methodically covering every blade and leaf of the forest.
Sometimes I walked with Bastian, who slipped reluctantly into his wolf-form, the better to smell; sometimes Akiva sent us out separately. Cassandra had begun to reach out chubby hands to the forest threads so I took her with me whenever I went out alone: it made me feel less solitary, and it kept Cassandra happy.
We found them slowly. Some were alive and well, but more were dead or gone beyond any help we could give. Tancred, who was luckier than most, had been turned into an eagle, and aside from an inclination to hunt for field-mice and a tendency to snap his head around with a glare whenever one of us moved too quickly, he was healthy and whole.
Akiva, in addition to arranging the systematic search of the forest, had begun the onerous task of finding wardens to replace those who were dead, and the setting of the forest to rights. She was exhausted more often than not. It was a long process, and a weary one, but by and by the forest began to settle back into its quiet rest.
A collective sigh of relief went up the day we found the last warden. Gwydion had found one too many milestones along the Queen’s Highway, and retrieved at last a grim-faced warden called Katerina. I looked at her face, stony in its silence as Akiva pulled away the last remaining threads of the spell, and found myself guiltily appreciating Cassandra’s choice of spell.
Katerina looked once at the baby Cassandra, and said: “You should kill her now, while you still can.”
I didn’t need the sideways grin that Gwydion shot at me behind Katerina’s back to remind me to hold my tongue. Bastian moved between Katerina and I, his wolf-form a warning without overtly threatening, but I only tickled his ears. It was something we were all going to have to learn to live with.
Nevertheless, I left them ministering to Katerina and took myself and Cassandra into the forest where she wouldn’t be an unpleasant reminder to anyone of the friends they had lost.
We never found Cassandra’s house again. It was a dark blot that blackened the past along with the few wardens who were irreparably lost. I hoped that somehow the statues had escaped, and it cheered me to think, as Akiva said, that the forest knew very well what it was about. What needed to be done would be done, in time.
I could say so much more. I could say how Bastian and I were married beneath the canopy of the forest in the cool and shadow, with David to give me away, and Gwen to prance after me with her hand in Thomas’ arm. I could tell how Cassandra began to walk shortly after, and how she filled the house with living forest as her infant hands reached out to the forest lines.
But I think only one thing really needs to be said, after all, and that is this: we lived happily ever after.
Finis
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