by Zoe Marriott
I paced up and down, trying to ignore the call of the flames and the singing voices. A dozen times my eyes turned to my half-hidden pack, and I jerked my head away. I couldn’t break my promise. But I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to.
“Farewell, my love, our time has come,
Long though I might to stay…”
I went still as the achingly familiar melody of that song filled my ears.
My resolve shattered.
Barely knowing what I did, I pushed open the tent flap and stepped outside into the gathering dusk. The light of the Mother’s Fire flickered between tents, and the singing voices filled my ears, drawing me onwards as I drifted through the deserted camp towards the firepit.
“Our time has come, my one true love,
The world calls me away…”
A belated sense of caution sounded just before I arrived at the fire. I stopped next to one of the big tents, peering through the gap at the people gathered around the white firepit. The stripped logs were empty tonight, though the space was crowded, packed with every hill guard who could stand. My eyes searched for Luca and found him and Arian side by side, their shoulders almost touching. Somehow despite the difference in their looks they seemed alike in that moment – sternly upright, faces grave as they sang, eyes filled with fire.
Hind was on Luca’s other side. Even in the golden flicker of the firelight she looked pale and ill. A thick bandage was wrapped around her face, covering one eye. She leaned into Luca’s arm as if she needed his support.
I tore my eyes away from the sight of Luca’s hand gently gripping Hind’s waist, and realized that Rani was nearly opposite me. She would see me if she looked up. I drew back warily into the shadow of the tent, thankful for the gathering darkness that hid me. The Rua healer looked almost as drawn and weary as Hind; she was staring into the blaze as if she were searching for answers. There was a conspicuously empty space beside her. The space that should have been Livia’s.
My wolf tooth felt like a shard of ice against my palm.
I did not try to sing. There was no place for my voice in this music, in this song of power and mourning, a prayer to a goddess that I still did not understand. I fixed my gaze on the deep blue centre of the fire, where colours rippled and danced, more like water than flame.
Their flickering slowed, the pointed tongues of flame elongating, rich blue bleeding into white, into silver, until they resembled a crown of icicles, burning icy-hot within the pit. A warning chill brushed my spine. Instinctively I started to look away, to turn from the flames.
Running from my fear, just as I always had.
Where are you going to go, Frost? Where can you possibly run to be safe from yourself?
For the first time, I had a life that I did not want to leave behind. I had friends. I had love. I had … myself. All I had ever wanted. I didn’t want to run this time. I didn’t want to look away. My grip on the wolf tooth tightened desperately. I felt my skin split with a sharp sting, and the trickle of blood on my palm.
Father. Please. Help me.
The lonely cry of the Wolf rose up in the night, a cry that only I could hear. I trembled with the desire to flee.
You will spend the rest of your life running. Too scared to fight. Too scared to love.
The Wolf’s howl was louder now. Closer.
Father, why don’t you answer me? Why is the only time I hear you in my nightmares?
Father?
Was Luca right? Did I have a choice? Did I have a soul? Did I have the right to pray to his goddess and hope for an answer? My need had never been greater than now. I couldn’t go on like this any more. If I had to leave Luca, I would leave behind any hope of happiness, or a normal life. I would leave behind belief, and love, and hope. I might as well die.
My breath clouded in the air before me, and I could feel the tickling as the blood on my palm began to freeze. Ice crystals scattered from my hair as blue sparks drifted up from the fire and spiralled towards the emerging stars. Towards the Mother.
You’ll never be free.
In a single movement I tore the wolf tooth from around my neck and threw it. Droplets of blood glittered in the firelight as it flew, carrying the dark, seething knot of my despair with it, carrying all the fear and anger I did not dare to express. With a quiet sizzle, it landed in the fire.
Take my message. Hear my prayer.
The singing faltered as people turned to see where the missile had flown from, and noticed me standing there. An angry murmur rushed through the crowd. Luca’s face brightened as he caught sight of me. Arian frowned, his expression worried. I ignored them all.
Please, Mother. Holy Mother. I lay myself at your feet. I offer my life into your hands. I beg you. Please.
Help me.
A voice of overwhelming power, crackling and spitting and dangerous, and yet somehow kind, too, spoke in my mind. I cried out, involuntarily clapping my hands over my ears.
My daughter. You only had to ask.
Before me, the fire exploded, sucking in air with a great, hollow whoomph.
The closest hill guards fell back with cries of wonder and alarm as the flames lashed out like the tendrils of an unearthly plant. Fire hooked itself onto the air and swarmed upwards, unfurling, tangling, growing. Strange colours – colours I had never seen before, and had no name for – pulsed within it, making my eyes water. Within a moment the firepit had become a fiery column, roaring and whirling as it stretched up towards the stars.
The Wolf’s howl was nearly deafening me now, sending darts of pain through my skull. Frost was blooming on my skin, a thick, crackling layer. Every instinct I had told me to turn and run. Run before the Wolf took control. Run, before everyone saw what I was. Run before I hurt someone again.
I forced myself to step forward. The hill guards that were still on their feet parted before me, faces awed and frightened. I kept moving until my boots rested on the smooth white stones edging the pit.
“Frost, no!”
Luca’s voice cut through the snarling of the Wolf and the roar of the fire. Stiffly, the movement sending flakes of ice showering off me, I managed to turn. Luca was reaching out to me, eyes anguished. Arian and another hill guard were clinging to the back of his jerkin, as if to stop him plunging after me.
“You can’t!” he cried. “It’s madness – just a legend. You could die. You could burn. You might never come back!”
I wanted to say I’m sorry, but my lips wouldn’t move. I tried to tell him with my eyes instead. I can’t run any more. I can’t run from you. This is the only choice I have left.
It’s this – or nothing.
Still staring into his eyes, I let myself topple backwards into the fire.
Twenty-six
Half-burned logs crunched and disintegrated as I landed, sending black ash and glowing sparks spinning around me like living creatures. I felt no heat. Only a pleasant warmth beating against my cheeks, my belly, my hands. The thick coating of ice on my skin sizzled softly and began to evaporate.
Then the column of fire closed, trapping me within.
White heat engulfed me. I shrieked, writhing in agony. My skin blackened and cracked open and then vaporized. I became a long, screaming streak of flame within the blaze. For a blink of time I could hear Luca screaming too, somewhere beyond the fire, but the heat had taken my sight. I could not see him. I couldn’t see anything.
Hush, wolf-child…
Everything went white.
It took me a moment to realize that I was still alive. My lungs were working like bellows. My head rang with the sound of my own screaming. I could feel my heart beating. If my heart was beating, then my body wasn’t burned away.
Experimentally, I moved one hand, expecting pain to rip through me. But my arm shifted smoothly. I peeled my eyes open to look. The skin was brown and whole, unmarked. I blinked. Blinked again. The whiteness hadn’t been in my mind. I was lying in a hollow, surrounded by banks of snow.
Am I dreaming this?
Cautiously, I rolled over and sat up, examining my body. There wasn’t a scorch mark on me. Not so much as a smudge of ash on my clothes. And when I put one hand on the snow and pressed down, the crust did not crack or give beneath the warmth of my skin. It wasn’t even cold.
Slowly, I climbed to my feet and looked around. I was in a forest like the ones at home. A winter forest of black, spiny branches and hard azure skies.
I climbed down from the bank of snow – the ice was as hard and steady beneath my feet as steps of stone – and saw that, near by, there was a small wooden house. Icicles hung from the low eaves, but the path and doorstep had been swept. A winter bird trilled sweetly, hidden somewhere in the wood. As I moved closer to the house the door swung open. I stopped in my tracks.
A couple emerged to stand on the scrubbed stone doorstep. They didn’t appear to notice me, even though I was close enough to count the freckles on the woman’s nose.
The woman had straight, dark hair coiled around her head in a thick braid. Her nut-brown eyes were full of life and happiness as she looked up at the man. Her belly, swelling the front of her simple blue gown, showed that she was far gone with child.
The man was much taller than her, with powerful shoulders and light brown hair that curled wildly around his face. His eyes were grey. He looked a few years older than the woman, perhaps in his mid-thirties. He turned to face her and cupped her neck with one big, blunt hand. His fingers lay on the vulnerable skin gently.
“Stop worriting,” he commanded, his voice a deep rumble.
I stiffened as I recognized the voice.
“I wish you would stay home. I do not want my husband searching for a Demon Wolf,” the woman said. But she was teasing, not anxious. “We’ve enough coins saved, Garin. Stay in the warm with me.”
“You tempting lass,” he said, laughing as he dropped a kiss on her cheek. “I’ve promised to do a job, and I must do it. Now, can I go without fearing I’ll arrive home to find you mending the roof, or scrubbing the floors? Tell me true.”
The woman sighed. “Very well. I’ll rest as you ask.” She turned away and drew out a long, heavy coat made from a luxuriant black-edged silver pelt that I recognized immediately as a wolf fur. She held it out to the man and he took it and shrugged it on over his thick, padded doublet. He picked up a heavy leather pack, from which pieces of curved metal with vicious teeth dangled. Wolf traps. A double-headed axe, its shaft reinforced with iron langets, was bound to the top.
“Don’t make supper for me,” he said. “If I must stay out a day or two, I must. But I shall be home to take you into town on church day, don’t fear.”
The woman smiled, clasping his free hand, but now a shadow of concern darkened her eyes. “You will take care? The tales they tell in the town…”
He laughed, drawing their joined hands down to touch her belly. “Superstition and fear, my lass. A wolf is a wolf. A canny and dangerous beast, to be respected, to be hunted with care, but never feared. There is no wolf that can outface Garin Aeskaar.”
He kissed her again and stepped off the doorstep. He waited until she had closed the door and the key could be heard to grind in the lock before turning towards the bleak, spiny cover of the trees. As he went his carefree smile disappeared, and his face grew hard and determined.
“No wolf,” he muttered to himself. “No mortal wolf.”
He passed right by me, the soft fur of his coat brushing my hand. Then he disappeared into the forest. I stood frozen, staring after him.
Garin Aeskaar was my father. That woman was my mother. Before I was born. This … this was the last time she had ever seen him alive.
Go with him. The voice of the flames spoke into my mind. You must see what happens next.
Trembling with excitement, I obeyed, following the man – my father – into the woods.
Between one blink and the next night fell. I emerged from the trees and found myself in a clearing, looking at a hide of sturdy stripped branches and oilskins. My father sat in the shelter, the wolf-fur coat around his shoulders. A little pot bubbled merrily over a tiny fire. The smell of stewing meat and herbs reached my nose and made my stomach gurgle.
As I appeared, the fire flared up beneath the pot, flames tinged with blue and yellow and green. My father did not seem to notice. He began to sing, his voice soft, as he stirred the pot.
“Farewell, my love, our time has come,
Long though I might to stay;
Our time has come, my one true love,
The world calls me away—”
A vicious, rumbling growl broke into the song. Garin Aeskaar stiffened, easing slowly into a crouch. I could see his eyes flicking back and forth rapidly, searching the darkness. The growl came again, and Garin seized a branch and thrust it into his fire, holding it there until it caught, his other hand closing over the handle of his axe.
In the shadows, a pair of icy silver eyes glinted.
A coal-black wolf, at least seven feet from the tip of its nose to its hindquarters, emerged into the clearing. Its muzzle was peeled back on a snarl. The Demon Wolf. The beast that my father had slain. It was the same beast that had hunted me through my dreams all my life.
My father lifted the burning branch from the fire and rose slowly to his feet. The wolf flinched back as Garin waved the branch, but it did not run. Hackles raked up along its back as it edged closer, circling the small fire.
“All right, then,” Garin said grimly. “Let’s be done with it.”
The wolf snarled, its great hindquarters bunched to spring.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
You must look.
I could not ignore that voice. Quaking, I forced myself to open my eyes. But the scene before me had changed. The clearing was lit with the sickly pale light of dawn. Garin’s hide was smashed and broken, his fire out. Blood spattered, dark and half frozen, in the snow. Two bodies lay together at the edge of the clearing.
I gasped when one of the figures stirred feebly. “Edel…” he whispered. My mother’s name. “Saram…”
“That’s my name!” I cried, trying to step forward. “Can he see me?”
The air solidified around me, holding me still. He is speaking to his unborn child, said the voice of the flames. He picked that name for you when you lay in your mother’s womb. Your first movements inside her reminded him of the soft rippling of flame.
“Flame?” I shook my head dazed. “But my name doesn’t mean— It means sorrow.”
So the young men of your village said, as they taunted you. They thought it came from the word “sarm”, meaning grief and loss. But your father came from the far North, and there “saram” is a word that means fire, and warmth. You were never named “sorrow”, child.
Tears sprang up in my eyes as I stared at my father – my da, who had loved me before I was born, and named me for fire – dying in the snow. No wonder my ma had hated my nickname. No wonder she had refused to call me Frost. If only she had told me!
Look.
Above the two bodies, something writhed and churned. A clear, silvery light struggled with blackness, like starlight fighting to break through deep cloud. The silver light danced with shapes, like curls of frost or falling snow. The dark was absolute dark, and nothing could be seen within it. The air was filled with a wolf’s howling, and sharp claps of what sounded like thunder. It was beautiful and terrible at once.
“What is it?”
It is your father, and the creature he slew. That wolf was no ordinary beast. Your priests of the Other would have recognized it, for it was a favourite of their god. The wolf had lived nearly a century before it encountered a hunter strong enough to kill it. But in the moment of their deaths, their spirits have become tangled.
The silver light seemed to surge with new strength, the frost shapes within it burning with white fire. It enveloped the darkness and drew it down within itself, wrapping threads of light around it, until the spirit of the Wolf became a dark knot at its centre.
He ha
s heard your mother calling out in her fear and despair. He wants to see her again, to look on her face one more time. He wants to see his child.
The silvery light exploded outwards. I was blown with it. I heard breaking glass and a scream, and, in the whirling, dancing snow, I saw a silvery shape like a man reaching out to where my mother was huddled in bed clutching a motionless bundle to her chest.
At the centre of the silver man, darkness whirled and raged.
As the man’s silver hands touched the baby, the darkness suddenly expanded. The man-shape jerked, lines of darkness threading swiftly through its form like veins of poison. A deep, vicious snarl rent the air and my mother screamed again. The silvery hand that touched the baby’s head pulled away, but the darkness had already fallen over the child; the silver spirit’s movement only ripped the tiny body from its mother’s arms.
Garin Aeskaar’s spirit caught the child – caught me – and cradled me. Silver snowflakes and blackness fought around the baby’s form. Garin’s head bent, as if to kiss the baby’s face. On one bluish cheek, a white mark like frost, like a wolf bite, slowly unfurled. The baby kicked and screamed as pinpricks of blood rose on the scar and slowly trickled down its cheek.
“Saram…” whispered Garin Aeskaar’s voice. The silvery spirit, still wreathed in darkness, carefully placed the baby down on the edge of the bed. Then he seemed to wink out.
Ma snatched her baby – me – up from the snow, tears streaking her face.
“What happened?” I asked. “I–I don’t understand…”
Slowly, the sight of my mother sobbing over the baby began to blur and slide, as if seen through tears. Gold and blue seeped up through the blurring image and became flames, dancing in a circle around me, above me, beneath my feet. I stood at the centre of a ball of cool flame.
Your father saved you. He brought your spirit back and sealed it in your body. But in doing so, he also trapped himself, and the Wolf, within you.
