Shadow of the Wolf

by Tim Hall

  He dragged himself to his feet, stood away from this churning shuddering thing. The tree trunk—what Robin had thought was a tree trunk—shifted more forcefully than ever, making a noise like roots being torn from the earth.

  Next came cracking sounds, and a rustling, and a sharp snap. All of which formed the strangest ideas in Robin’s mind. He had the distinct impression that the log was uncurling itself: twigs unfurling into fingers, stumps breaking into gnarled feet, roots twisting into tendons. A moss-thick beard on a bark-wrinkled chin.

  There was a yawning noise, which could have been human, or animal, or a tree bending in the wind. It seemed to Robin a figure had lurched upright and was stretching its old-man limbs.

  “Has he been here … this entire time?” Robin muttered to himself. “Just lying here?”

  “I dare say I have.” The old man’s voice was dry leaves, scrunching. “What of it? How long have I slept? Perhaps I’m closer to the end than I thought. The merest task leaves me exhausted …”

  A muffled thump, like a branch dumping snow to the ground.

  “I can’t entirely recall what I was doing,” the old man said. “Ah yes, scaring away those creatures in metal skins. More tiring than it used to be. You’re not one of them, are you? Oh no, you’re the other one. We used to get plenty of your sort here, once. I hoped we were finished with all that.”

  It seemed the old man was now moving around the clearing, and as he did so there was a clack-clack sound, like branches coming together, or antlers clashing.

  “I didn’t know anyone lived in Winter Forest,” Robin said. “Are you a vagrant, or an outlaw?”

  “I’m an ancient discarded piece of the world, and nothing more. Leave me be, and I’ll do the same for you. I won’t be staying.”

  Robin lay down to rest. Nothing in this new life could surprise him for long. He drifted once more toward sleep. But something nagged at him. Something about all this was important …

  This old man, whoever he was, had survived.

  Robin sat up. “I need food.”

  “I dare say you do,” said the old man. “The amount you crash around. Must be exhausting. The amount of noise you make. I was hardly able to sleep. Well, you’re no concern of mine. You’ll get no help from me.”

  Robin didn’t have the strength to argue. He stretched out once more on the cold ground. Long moments passed before he felt a hard poke in his ribs.

  “You certainly are a skinny thing. Nothing but bones. Your type, you do well enough in a group, but you’re helpless on your own. But I won’t help you. She’ll fight me for you if I do. It’s in her nature. I’ll only make her worse. You’re on your own.”

  Three more pokes in the ribs.

  “On. Your. Own.”

  Another long pause. Snow beginning to fall. Robin thought the old man must have gone back to sleep. In that case, Robin would sleep too. It would be a relief. This frosted moss wasn’t so uncomfortable, after all. And the snowfall was wrapping him in a blanket that wasn’t so very cold.

  He would sleep and let none of this trouble him any longer …

  Another poke in his ribs.

  “Oh, all right. Don’t sulk,” the old man said. “I’ll help. I’m too soft. That’s my trouble. Never could stand to see one of your sort in distress. If I hadn’t been so soft, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess. I don’t suppose it matters, not anymore.”

  A lurching creaking sound, like a rotten tree falling.

  “Come then. This way. Ah, yes, I forgot. Take my arm, there. Hurry now. Do you want my help or not? I can’t have much time left. Come now, or you really will be lost.”

  * * *

  He led the way to a cave. Robin crawled inside.

  “It’s damp,” the old man said. “But it keeps out the frost and the wind. There’s a spring for fresh water.”

  “What about food?” Robin said.

  “Plenty of spiders under rocks.”

  There was a long silence. Robin realized the old man had gone.

  * * *

  Time passed in that cave.

  Robin ate slugs and stinkbugs he licked off the wet walls.

  Occasionally he thought he detected the musty, nutty smell of the old man, or thought he heard the shuffling of his feet. Robin called out but got only his own echo in reply. He felt even lonelier here than he had done living in the glade. The feeling was so intense he even began to miss Narris Felstone.

  He daydreamed he was back in Thuner’s Fold, with his brothers, the three of them shooting arrows at baskets hung on poles. He remembered the day he tired of this practice—shooting at targets that never moved—and he took aim instead at a crow and hit it dead first time. Hal had laughed. “A penny says you can’t do that again. Not in a score of arrows.”

  And he couldn’t. It was beginner’s luck. Shooting crows was hard. And so it became an obsession, Robin standing for hour upon hour in Thuner’s Fold, until on a good day he could bring down one bird in every five. His mother baked the birds into pies.

  See, said Marian’s voice in the cave. You can do anything if you try. That’s the persistent goat I remember.

  “Leave me alone,” Robin whispered.

  No, I won’t! You got us into this mess and you’re going to get us back out. You said you’d kill him—the man who did this to us. A little bit of hunger and you’ve forgotten your promise.

  “What do you want from me?”

  I want you to stop feeling sorry for yourself and I want you to get up and explore and I want you to find better food. Bugs are one thing—you won’t starve, I suppose—but you should see yourself. Like a coat hung on a pole to scare off crows.

  Robin felt his way deeper into the cave. He found it was huge, with tunnels and chambers running in all directions, sometimes so low he had to crawl on hands and knees, sometimes so cavernous his voice came back a distant echo. He went a little farther each time, always counting his steps so he could find his way back to the mouth of the cave. In his mind’s eye Marian went ahead of him, crawling through gaps, whispering for him to come through or telling him to go back, just the way she had when they used to explore the crypts and cellars beneath her father’s manor.

  On one of their adventures through the cave Robin found his own private larder. He brushed against something hanging from the ceiling. Maybe it was a stalactite: It certainly felt cold and dead as rock. But when prodded the dangling thing moved. When prodded harder it shrieked and began clawing at Robin’s face. Soon the whole chamber was full of shrieking, beating, leathery wings. He retreated into a connecting tunnel, his heart hammering, summoning the courage to return.

  Scaredy Mary, Marian’s voice said. Get back in there. What are you afraid of, the dark? Ha.

  Robin was quicker this time, grabbing one of the hibernating bats from its roost and ducking back out of the chamber before the creature could raise the alarm. He killed the bat and roasted it over a small fire. He took another bat the next day, and the next. Each one provided a morsel of meat.

  What would you do without me? Marian said. You’re looking stronger already.

  “And what good will it do?” Robin said. “I might as well starve.”

  No! Marian screamed. I can’t do it alone. I won’t make it without you. Our fates are tied, we’ve always known that. We’ve both got to dig ourselves out.

  * * *

  Time passed. The cold, the damp, the loneliness.

  And the fear.

  Wind wafted through the cave and turned from stone cold to moist and hot, like breath. At the same time Robin heard a padding, clicking sound—claws against rock.

  It’s here! Marian hissed. It’s in the cave. Robin, run!

  But he couldn’t move. His limbs locked with terror.

  It’s coming closer! You have to get away.

  He fought to move even an arm, a leg, but he couldn’t so much as flinch—his body impossibly heavy against the cave floor.

  The Wargwolf moved nearer, its breath pulsing
hot and putrid, a low rumbling in its throat.

  Move! Marian shrieked. Crawl into the low tunnels—it won’t be able to follow.

  Robin struggled and struggled but he felt fused to the rock.

  The beast moved closer, its giant nostrils tasting the air. The clicking of its claws stopped at Robin’s side. Still he couldn’t move. His heart hammering hard enough to break.

  The Wargwolf was standing over him. Robin had the impression it had tipped its head. Then it was lowering its jaws, and he heard the wet noise of them opening …

  From somewhere distant, echoing through the cave, came a woman’s voice, shouting. The words were muffled, but the sound seemed to make the Wargwolf pause. And then it was turning, slinking away. The clicking of its claws faded and it was gone.

  * * *

  Time passed.

  The cave was a place of weird noises and dreadful sensations. There was a hissing, which could have been water squeezing through a fissure in the rock, or could have been breath between ancient teeth. A clacking, like stones thrown in a game of snitch, or like bones grating in an old woman’s neck.

  Robin was sitting by his fire when suddenly he knew he was not alone. The old woman was here, at his side. She turned to face him, with that clack-clack sound of bones. In Robin’s imagining she smiled, and even as she did so she became older still, her lips curling back like leaves in a fire, teeth dropping from her gums, skittering on the cave floor. She kept aging, her hair coiling from her head, skin flaking away, skeleton crumbling, until finally there was nothing left of her but dust, rising in the heat of the flames.

  “There was no one there in the first place,” he muttered under his breath. “These are the stories you were told growing up, and now your mind is making them real.”

  Sooner or later all the stories come true, Marian said. All the monsters made flesh. I thought Arethusa was just a nymph from a myth until I realized I was her.

  “The ancient woman doesn’t exist,” Robin said. “There’s nothing in this cave but me and the bats and the cold and the damp. And you’re not even here, so I don’t know why I’m talking to you.”

  * * *

  Time passed.

  Robin ate his daily meal of bat flesh and he felt some of his old strength returning.

  He told himself, over and over, that he was alone in the cave. But he could never make himself believe it. Night after night he felt the hot breath of the Wargwolf and he lay pressed against the rock in fear. He listened to the old woman wheeze and her bones clack. He heard countless other uncanny things he could never begin to understand.

  He thought, just once, he heard someone—a bigger heavier someone than the old man—moving through the cave, running his hands across the floor, turning over rocks, as if looking for something in the dark …

  Time passed.

  * * *

  Robin lay down to sleep. As he drifted off he heard a sound that could have been the wind in the mouth of the cave, or could have been the memory of a song his mother used to sing, or could have been an old woman, whispering a ballad:

  When the twelvemonth and one day was past

  The ghost began to speak

  Why sit you here, all day on my grave

  And will not let me sleep?

  When shall we meet again, sweetheart? When shall we meet again?

  When the drying leaves, that fall from the trees

  Are green and spring up again.

  And then a hand gripped Robin’s wrist, and he heard himself shout in shock and fear. Hot breath moved close to his ear.

  “Finally, she’s gone,” the old man whispered. “Time to go. She’ll return soon enough. I said I’d help you and I will. I stick to my word. But she won’t like it. Not one bit. Come now, out we go. Before she gets back.”

  Following the old man’s voice, crawling from the cave, Robin heard the ticking of early insects. He smelled the sap rising in the trees and felt sunshine on his skin. From high above came the tock, tock, tock of a woodpecker calling for a mate. Winter was over.

  The old man no longer held Robin’s arm, yet somehow Robin found he could follow easily in his footsteps. He had the impression the old man had changed—he was no longer so frail. His movements were accompanied by a rustling, like the sweeping of a cloak of green leaves.

  “We must teach you to find your own way around,” the old man said. “The trouble with your kind is you never learn to look. You’ve got plenty of senses, but you barely put them to use. Under that bush, near your right foot, you’ll find a hedgehog that failed to wake from hibernation. Waste not want not, the first and last law around here. The early days of spring offer even less food than winter, perhaps you already knew that much.”

  Robin searched with his fingers and retrieved the spiked ball from under the bush and he carried it carefully in a fold in his surcoat. He followed the old man.

  “Why are you helping me?” Robin said.

  “Because I said I would. I keep my promises, unlike you people. Besides, she has plans for you, which makes me suspicious. Perhaps I can teach you to see sense, before it’s too late.”

  “What do I call you?” Robin said.

  “Well now, let’s see, it’s been so long since anyone asked. I’ve had a great many names: Silvanus, Faunus, Herne, The Green Man, The Great Horned One. So many more I’ve forgotten. My favorite was King Cernunnos. Suits me, don’t you think? King Cernunnos. A little respect for a change. Those were the days when—” The old man rustled to a halt. “They’re here again.”

  “Who?”

  “Those creatures in metal skins.”

  “The Sheriff’s men? Where? What should I do? Where should I go?”

  “Don’t do anything. Don’t go anywhere. All that wasted energy, blundering about. You ran last time—look how that turned out. They don’t see much, these creatures. They look only with their eyes. Lie still and let them pass us by.”

  “Where are they?”

  “On the southern edge of the forest. Half a morning’s walk away. Heading in this direction.”

  “How do you know they’re there, all that distance away?”

  “They startled a fox, which left its usual path and frightened a hare, which disturbed a heron, which called out to its mate, which alerted a merlin, which … You get the idea. The forest is a pond, and every beat of a butterfly’s wings forms a ripple. But those men in metal, thumping about, they are rocks thrown in this pond. Can’t you feel the waves they’ve caused? How blind your kind can be.”

  Robin felt an overwhelming urge to run. But he didn’t know which direction. He forced himself to stay with the old man. After a while they stopped so Robin could cook the hedgehog in its skin. He scooped out the meat with a sharpened stick.

  They went farther into the forest, stopping to dig up edible roots. The old man taught Robin to know deadly enchanter’s nightshade from its smell and how to find tubers from the feel of the soil. The day was warming toward noon when Robin heard the clinking of the soldiers’ mailcoats and the crunch of their nailed boots. He crouched, his hood up, not moving a muscle.

  “We should run,” he hissed.

  “No, no, lie still,” the old man said. “Countless times you’ve walked past a fawn or a lizard, oblivious to their presence, simply because they didn’t move. Invisibility is mostly a matter of patience.”

  “Which way are they coming?” Robin whispered. “How far?”

  He got no answer. He was on his own.

  He heard one of the rangers laughing. The crunch of boots. Those images flooded Robin’s mind: bloodred cloaks, spiked clubs, blood misting with the rain.

  Would the men stumble over him? Was he crouched on their path or just to the side?

  The men moved nearer. Close enough to hear their words.

  One ranger was saying: “So, a Friar and a Woodsman are being chased by a wolf, right. The Woodsman says: ‘Father, we’ll never outrun the beast. We’ll have to hide.’ The Friar doesn’t answer, he just grits
his teeth and runs faster. The Woodsman says: ‘I know wolves. Believe me, we’ll never outrun it. If we’re quick, we can climb a tree. I’ll help you, Father.’ Again, no answer. The Friar just hitches his habit and keeps running. The Woodsman tries once more, getting desperate. He says: ‘Father, we have to hide! The beast is too strong. We’ll never outrun it.’ Finally the Friar says: ‘Will you shut up! I don’t have to outrun the wolf—I just have to outrun you.’ ”

  “Ha-ha, Damon, you’re a funny man,” a second ranger said. “Where do you get them all from? Let’s have another.”

  The boots crunched past where Robin was crouching. He thought three soldiers had gone by, then four.

  But the last pair of footsteps came to a halt.

  “Captain,” this last ranger called. “There’s something back here I think you should see …”

  Cold sweat at the back of Robin’s neck. Overhead, a buzzard wheeled and shrilled pew, pew. To Robin it sounded like run, run.

  Up ahead the other soldiers had come to a halt.

  “What is it?” the shout came back.

  “There’s something here, Captain. I can’t quite make it out but … it looks like … Well, I’m not sure … It’s not moving … maybe it’s dead … You might want to come and take a look.”

  “Get up here, Fitz,” the leader shouted back. “Stop wasting my time. If it’s not our quarry I don’t want to know. I’ve got a life to get back to, even if you don’t.”

  A twig snapped. The last ranger was pushing his way up the path. Robin let out a long breath. He didn’t move until the last sound of the men had faded away.

  * * *

  The spring quickened.

  Cernunnos began to teach Robin to know the forest through smell and touch. He taught him to hear the different tones below his boots: the clump-clump of stony ground; the hollower sound above a badger’s sett; the packed-earth tump-tump of a deer track.

  Several times Robin had to stay dead still while soldiers passed. Sometimes when they made camp he would crouch nearby, listening to them talk. They always spoke too loud, laughed too much—nervous but trying not to show it. When they had gone Robin would go and scavenge what scraps of food they left behind.