Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  She heard the beast pushing toward her through the undergrowth of the forest. She knew what she had done was dangerous, that it might get her killed.

  Very close now, a pair of silvery, moonlit eyes peered at her from the darkness of the forest.

  She took a long, deep breath, used her powers to consciously slow down her heart, and tried to stay calm. You can’t back out now, she told herself. You must finish what you started.

  But then thirty more pairs of eyes appeared in the forest, all gazing at her. Not just one had come, but many.

  She looked toward the closest pair of eyes gazing at her from the darkness.

  “Un don natra dunum far,” she whispered in the old Faeran language. I need your help, my friend.

  But at that moment, the light of the man’s flame came flickering through the trees.

  A large wolf emerged from the forest a few feet in front of her, her silver-gray eyes studying Willa intently.

  And then, behind the leader of the pack, she saw the others—the pale blue eyes of the younger wolves, and the gray and golden-brown eyes of the older wolves.

  These were the great warriors of the forest, the clawers and the biters, and on any other night they might have tracked and taken down a little creature like her.

  But Willa looked into the eyes of the leader of the pack, crouched down to the ground in front of her, and said the words to her again.

  “Un don natra dunum far.”

  The leader of the pack stared at her. She was a beautiful animal, with a thick blackish-gray coat and the muscles of many hunts. She had a strong nose and mouth, and held her ears up high, alert for the coming danger—the man and his dog coming toward them through the forest. Wolves and the other animals of the forest didn’t have names in the Eng-lish language of the day-folk, but in the old language, Willa knew her name was Luthien. She looked so different from the winter before, when Willa had met her and helped her, when the wolf had lain on the forest floor, shot by a hunter and torn by his hounds. And now, by the flow of time, all had come around.

  Luthien lay down on her haunches so close at Willa’s side that she could feel the warmth of the wolf’s fur against her shoulder. Wincing in pain, but knowing that it was her only hope to live, Willa crawled onto the wolf’s back.

  The day-folk man had seen her in his lair and wounded her. She didn’t understand why he had tried to help her in the barn, what kind of trick or twist of hatred had compelled him to such an act, but she knew she could not trust a human. And she knew that now that he had seen her, he would not let her go. He and his snarling dog and his clanking box of captured light and his killing metal were coming, moments away now, thrashing through the forest, trampling leaf and breaking branch, to capture her and pull her back into their world.

  As Luthien rose to her feet, Willa wrapped her arms around the thick scruff of the wolf’s neck.

  “The dog in the man’s pack has the nose to track us,” Willa said in the old language, knowing the wolf would know what to do.

  As the man and his dog came through the undergrowth of the forest, Luthien turned and looked at the other wolves of the pack. With a tilt of her head and a turn of her body, she gave the command. The other wolves turned and dashed in a dozen directions into the forest, yipping and yelping as they ran, as if inviting the coming enemy to pursue them.

  The moment they were gone, Luthien lunged into the darkness and leapt into running speed. Suddenly, Willa was flying through the forest, her hair whipping behind her. Her shoulder burned with pain, and the blood from the cut on her head was dripping onto Luthien’s thick coat, but Willa felt the joy of it, too, clinging to the wolf’s back, tearing through the forest faster than she ever had gone. The trunks of the trees rushed past her. Great jutting rocks flashed by. The leaves of the bushes were but puffs of air swishing against her face. She felt the driving beat of the wolf’s heart against her own, the air surging into the wolf’s lungs, and the heat pouring out of the wolf’s open mouth as she ran, her teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

  Willa looked into the forest to their left and to their right to see two strong male wolves running with them, guarding their flanks. Craning her neck, she saw that two young wolf pups were following close behind.

  She couldn’t see the other wolves of the pack anymore, but she knew they were out there, running through the forest in opposite directions. There was no way for even the keenest tracking dog to follow them all.

  “The wolves teach us how to work together,” her mamaw had told her. “They hunt together, defend their territory together, play together, and raise their pups together. It’s through their love for one another that they survive.” Willa knew she wasn’t a wolf and never could be, but it was the kind of kinship that she had always longed for.

  Leaving the ravine of the river far behind them, Luthien climbed up through the rocky, forested ridges of the high ground, taking Willa up the slope of what the Faeran people called the Great Mountain. The Cherokee called it Kuwa’hi. But the day-folk called it Clingmans Dome on their maps, made from the ground-up flesh of trees. It seemed as if all the locations in her world had many names, old names and new, night names and day, as if the names, too, were fighting to possess these ancient places. It was seldom used anymore, but one of her favorite names for this place was the Smoky Mountain, for she had seen it say its name many times: in the waking dawn of each new morning, the white mist of the Smoky Mountain’s breath floated near its rounded top and out across the world, flowing down into hidden coves and sweeping valleys, out to the other mountains and ridges, and down through the fog-shrouded trees and over the tumbling misty rivers, as if the Smoky Mountain itself breathed the life into the world each morning and took it back again each night.

  Dead Hollow, the hidden lair of her people, was way up on the north slope of the Great Mountain, a place so treacherously remote, and so shadowed by thick trees and steep ridges, that no day-folk had ever trodden there.

  But as she gazed around her through her blood-blurry eyes, she realized that wasn’t the direction the wolves were going.

  “Where are we going?” she tried to ask in the old language, but her voice was too thin and raspy to be heard.

  As she clung to Luthien’s back, she felt herself getting weaker and colder, the sticky blood oozing from her wound and down her side. She held on desperately to the warmth of Luthien’s fur, but her eyes drifted shut and she began to slip away. All she could feel was the undulating motion of the running wolf.

  When Willa opened her eyes again, she was still clinging to Luthien’s back. She wasn’t sure where they were or how much time had passed, other than that the sun was rising in the eastern sky, and the blood was still seeping from her aching body.

  The wolves of the pack had come back together with her and Luthien on a rocky prominence that rose up from the surrounding terrain. All the wolves were looking in the same direction.

  Wincing from the pain, Willa slowly lifted her head.

  The wolves gazed out across a sweeping view of the mountains, the long blue ranges cascading one layer after another into the distance, the wispy white clouds hanging low in the valleys, with the dark peaks and ridges rising among them.

  She knew that the wolves of a pack far from their den didn’t just stare off into the distance for no reason. When wolves were far from home they acted with purpose. They ran with purpose, tracked with purpose. And now they waited with purpose.

  They seemed to be watching for something in particular to happen, but Willa didn’t know what it was.

  Then she saw an old black bear trundling down the slope of the nearby hill.

  All the wolves in the pack turned their heads in unison and looked at the bear.

  This was what they had come for.

  But they did not move.

  They did not attack.

  They waited and they watched.

  The bear moved slowly, arduously, as if every step was painful to it as it made its way down the slope
into the closest valley. It seemed gout-sick or wounded in some way.

  Were the wolves going to attack and kill the wounded bear? she wondered, for the wolf and the bear were natural enemies.

  But the wolves did not move forward. They stayed perfectly silent and perfectly still, watching the bear until it disappeared into the mist of the valley.

  Luthien seemed to take note of exactly where the bear had gone out of sight. Then she looked at the other wolves in the pack and moved in that direction. Clearly understanding her, the other wolves slunk in close behind and followed her in single file.

  As Willa glanced back, she could see that the two male wolves stayed closest to Luthien, right with her, strong and steady, their bodies hunched low, their muscles tight, and their eyes alert. The two pale-gazed young pups were slinking along behind them, wary and uncertain, one of them visibly shaking, his tail between his legs.

  Willa did not know what kind of danger they were all going into, but she could feel her body responding to theirs, the hair on her arms rising up, her ears tingling, her temples pounding.

  The wolves followed the trail of the sick bear into the white wall of thick fog and down into the valley. The colors of the forest faded into gray.

  As the rocks and trees around them disappeared in the mist, Willa felt Luthien’s muscles tensing, ready for the fight.

  As the long, single file line of wolves moved through the fog, Willa couldn’t see anything but white ahead, on either side, or behind her. She couldn’t hold back the pang of fear. Where were the wolves taking her?

  She held on to Luthien’s neck as the wolf lowered her nose to the ground and followed the large tracks of the wounded bear.

  Years before, when her mamaw could still walk, Willa remembered crouching down in the undergrowth of the forest with her twin sister, Alliw, the two of them watching their mamaw’s wrinkled fingers tracing reverently over the tracks on the ground—the deer with their cloven hooves, the mountain lions and wolves with their four claws, and the massive bear tracks with five distinct claws on each foot.

  Where the earth was soft, the prints were easy to see. But where the bear had crossed over rocky ground, the tracks faded and then disappeared. But Luthien kept her nose to the ground and followed the bear’s scent. No animal in the forest other than the bear itself had a better sense of smell than the wolf.

  A whirring, whistling noise passed overhead. Willa looked up, trying to figure out what it was, but the fog was too thick to see anything.

  She glanced behind her and saw the two young pups looking timidly up into the fog; they didn’t know what it was either.

  When Luthien stopped, the other wolves gathered around her, the leader of the pack. And as the mist cleared, they all looked out in the same direction.

  Willa lifted her eyes. She gazed in awe across a flat, silver-shimmering body of water, a vast lake that extended for as far as she could see before disappearing into the mist.

  Water poured down from natural springs in the surrounding rocks, but the surface of the lake stayed perfectly smooth. As great flocks of mergansers, teals, and other ducks wheeled overhead, their whirling reflections were like dark, winged fish swimming in the smooth water below.

  Willa looked at the serene water of the lake in astonishment. She had lived her whole life in a world of whispering streams, gushing rivers, and tumbling waterfalls—a place where water was always moving—but this flat, motionless lake was an amazement she had never seen before.

  Noticing a dark shape moving down the slope, she turned to see the old, sickened bear making its way toward the sandy shore of the lake. The bear lumbered into the water, and then sunk its body down into it, grunting air through its nose in sounds of immense relief. The water seemed to soothe the pain of its aching body.

  Willa looked along the edge of the lake. There were other bears, too, many of them brown or black, but others cinnamon or blue-gray, all up and down the shore, some of them swimming or wallowing in the water, others just sitting in the wet sand at the water’s edge.

  Luthien jolted in surprise when a massive white bear rose up in front of her roaring in anger. Willa pulled in a startled breath and clung tightly to Luthien’s back, pressing her face into the thick fur of the wolf’s neck. But instead of pulling back at the sight of the gigantic bear, Luthien leapt forward with her teeth snapping in a savage growl. The vibration of the wolf’s growl vibrated through Willa’s body. She pressed herself to Luthien as the bear stood on its hind legs and roared, outraged that the wolves had dared to come to this sacred place. The other wolves of the pack pulled back, and the whimpering pups scattered, but Luthien held her ground.

  Willa could see that this bear was much larger and much older than any of the other bears. This was his lake, and he was going to protect it from intruders like these wolves. A single swipe of his enormous paw would easily kill a wolf or a Faeran girl.

  But then to her surprise, she realized that the bear wasn’t just looking at Luthien. He was looking at her.

  Her skin and hair had reflexively blended into the color and texture of the wolf’s fur. In all appearance, she had become part of the wolf.

  But the bear appeared to be able to smell her, and its dark eyes gazed in her direction. There was an uncertainty in the bear’s expression, as if he thought he might know what she was, but he hadn’t seen her kind in a long, long time.

  As the white bear slowly stopped snarling, Luthien did the same.

  The bear peered at Willa. She wanted to look away, to avert her eyes. She wanted to run away. But she held the bear’s gaze.

  Finally, the white bear dropped down onto all fours with a muffled grunt, and Willa let out a breath of relief.

  “Thank you,” she said in the old language, loud enough for the bear to hear. “My name is Willa. My grandmother told me about your strength and your wisdom. I am honored to meet you.”

  The white bear made a low guttural sound and turned his bead and his body toward the lake.

  “He’s letting us through,” Willa whispered to Luthien.

  As Luthien stepped slowly toward the water, the other wolves stayed where they were, even the two males who served as her guards. They seemed to understand that only Willa and Luthien were allowed to pass, and pressing the issue further would result in a battle that neither the wolves nor the bears wanted to fight.

  As Willa and Luthien moved cautiously past the white bear, she could see that he was extremely old. He didn’t appear weak or decrepit, but she could see the knowingness in his eyes and the gray streaks of time in his weathered face. She sensed that he had been living far longer than any Faeran or animal she had ever met.

  For many years, her mamaw had taken her and her sister Alliw through the cathedrals of the giant hemlocks, teaching them how to speak with trees more than five hundred years old. Willa knew that bears normally didn’t live as long as Faeran, but she had a feeling that this particular bear had been a cub when those age-old trees had been saplings.

  As Luthien took her down to the edge of the water, goose bumps rose on Willa’s arms. She knew it was going to be cold. Every mountain stream she had ever entered had been shockingly, bracingly frigid, like melted snow.

  But as Luthien lowered her slowly into the lake, Willa realized the water was warm and soothing. It felt as if the light of the sun had become liquid.

  As she leaned back into the water with only her face above the surface, her body felt weightless, her arms rising buoyant at her side, her hair floating around her head.

  She sighed in relief as slow, gentle waves rippled one after another through her body, lifting the pain away. She felt the torn skin of her wounds slowly coming back together, as if a month of healing had occurred in a few moments.

  Her grandmother had told her and Alliw of a hidden lake that the Cherokee called Atagahi and a great white bear who protected it. From a distance, the lake looked like nothing more than one of the many mist-filled valleys, but hidden below the clouds was a
powerful healing place where sick and wounded bears came for refuge. The great white bear encouraged his ursine kin to come to the sacred lake, but guarded it fiercely from all others.

  As Willa floated in the water, letting its healing powers move through her aching wounds, the white bear suddenly rose up onto his hind legs in alarm and looked toward the rim of the valley.

  The quills on the back of Willa’s neck went taut as she quickly got her legs beneath her and crouched down in the water.

  She couldn’t believe it. It was the man who had shot her! He was standing on the rocky ridge, holding his killing-stick as he stared out across the mist-filled valley. His dog stood at his side. It was clear that they had followed her here and they were still looking for her.

  Luthien had carried her a great distance up through steep, rocky terrain that must have been exceedingly difficult for the man to climb. He must have run as fast as he could to chase her. What storm of dark anger and hatred had driven him to follow her so far?

  Luthien stepped forward, growling and snarling, her shoulders bunched for the attack. The wolves of the pack maneuvered for battle. The white bear moaned a low and menacing growl, his teeth clacking as the other bears gathered to his side, ready to fight.

  “Don’t see us,” Willa whispered as she gazed up at the man, her heart filling with dread, not just of the human and his dog, but of what would happen if they came down into the valley. “Don’t see us,” she said again.

  She knew that if the man saw the wolves and bears, he’d become frightened, shooting his killing-stick this way and that, and they’d attack in return. The man and the dog, and many of the wolves and the bears, would die.

  No day-folk man or woman had ever seen the healing lake of the bears. They might have heard about it from the stories of the Cherokee. They might have even searched for it. But none of them had ever lived to tell about it.

  “Just turn away,” Willa whispered as she gazed up through the fog toward the man. “Whoever you are, whatever you want with me, for your own sake, please just turn away.”