Guardians Chapter Book #5
Page 9
But I was so enthralled with these days of just being that any worries about Pitch barely found a place in my thoughts. I knew now that I would have ample warning when danger was near—my left hand would be my alarm. Twiner called it “a wound that bonds” because although this wound gave me notice of trouble, it was also how Pitch could track and find me. So, yes, this wound would bond me to Pitch, for good and for ill.
As we walked through a majestic stand of chestnut trees, Twiner took my right hand firmly in his. “I was made to be an advantage,” he said as slender branches sprang from the fingers of his right hand and twined firmly around my right fist and forearm. I was surprised—and a little alarmed.
“Your left hand is bound to darkness by your own bravery and compassion,” he explained. “Now your right hand will be bound to light, by friendship and duty.” Then he shoved the tip of his forefinger into my right palm and, with a quick jerk, broke it off. Yes, it hurt to have a three-quarter-inch piece of stick in my hand, but before I could protest or shout, Twiner smoothed my palm with a cluster of small, vivid green leaves that now sprouted from the tip of his broken finger.
“This will stop the pain and heal the scar,” he said.
The chestnut trees around us began to sway. The rustling of a hundred thousand leaves created a rolling gale of sound that continued to echo from farther and farther away.
Then the branches from Twiner’s fingers loosened and receded. Twiner let go of my hand and bowed.
“You are now connected to every tree that grows!” He kneeled at my feet. “You are their sovereign lord and friend.”
The air around us—indeed, the sky all the way to the clouds—became filled with drifting leaves, millions and millions of them falling like snow for as far as any eye could see.
I had not seen this in my Moondream, but it felt like a dream. A glorious dream.
In the days that followed, we found ourselves in an increasingly wild landscape. The forests were ancient, dense, and enchantingly eerie. The ground was uneven and rocky, which slowed our pace considerably. We made our way through valleys so deep that at noon they were dark as night, and up hills so steep, we often used tree roots like ladders.
I found the land fascinating, and part of my fascination came from the unshakable feeling that Twiner and I were being followed. The trees here would tell us nothing despite our asking, answering instead with the equivalent of muted laughter. (When a tree’s leaves wave slightly or when you hear consistent creaking and groaning of limbs and there is no wind, chances are you are being laughed at by a tree. They may find your clothes ridiculous. Your hiking skills clumsy. Or your yodeling off-key. It is not cruel or teasing laughter. They are simply amused.)
But in this case, in these forests, we weren’t entirely sure. Even Twiner was stumped. These trees evidently had an alliance with some being that set them outside of the general brotherhood of large fauna.
The same held for the forest creatures.
None would talk to me. I tried to engage in conversation with an elk, a moose, three bears, and finally a gathering of chipmunks that were obviously very amused by us. The only word I managed to pry from the most giggly chipmunk sounded like “shadowbent.” The word meant nothing to me.
But Twiner knew exactly what it meant. The moment he heard the word, he transformed into a bow and a quiver of arrows and instructed me to hold him at the ready.
The chipmunk broke into laughter.
“Twiner?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“Yep?”
“I assume you will eventually tell me what ‘shadowbent’ is?”
“No need, really,” he said in his usual, dry-as-a-stick way. “He stands before you.”
I looked ahead and saw nothing, only massive chestnut trees, ground, and shadows. But then something caught my eye. A shadow that was distinct and appeared to move slowly and gracefully toward us. At first I thought it was a gigantic wolf, but as it came closer, the shadow stood upright and doubled in height.
“Aim at the shadow, please,” muttered Twiner as if he were talking to a not-very-smart child.
I did as he asked, though I didn’t feel that we were in any danger. There were no signs. My hand didn’t hurt. There was no wind. And those silly chipmunks were still laughing.
As I drew my bow, the shadow came ever closer. It stopped, and at last it seemed to come into focus. It was, apparently, a man. He lowered his black hood to reveal a most distinguished face and head with a wild rage of extraordinary furlike hair.
“No need for weapons,” said the shadow man in a thick Carpathian accent. “I am Shadowbent, and I mean you no harm.”
Skreevlick Shadowbent, king of the werewolves
From behind the tree trunks, a solid bank of hulking wolves now crept forward—more wolves than I could count or comprehend. They lifted their heads in unison and let out a collective howl that set my hair tingling. Then all the trees began to wave, and the chipmunks squealed; it seemed as if every living thing in these wild woods was signaling to us that Shadowbent was indeed the ruler of these lands.
Shadowbent was a gracious host. He took us to the crumbling, ancient castle that served as his home and made sure I was fed. Twiner took the form of a staff and listened to our conversation intently, never letting me set him out of reach.
Despite its disrepair, Castle Shadowbent was a regal and fascinating place. Set on the edge of the highest peak in the Carpathian Mountains, the views from its rooms and battlements inspired awe. A full moon illuminated the fog-shrouded valleys below and gave an enchanting shimmer to the untamed landscape of mountains and forests.
After dining, Shadowbent took me to his observatory, where a large, ornate telescope stood among the fallen stones and timbers of the castle’s main tower. There were wolves in every room and hallway, pacing quietly, never taking their eyes from me.
“My men and I are forever bound to the Moon,” said Shadowbent, gesturing to the wolves.
“Werewolves?” I asked.
Shadowbent smiled. “Yes. But not the werewolves you’ve heard of in stories.” He sat in a large, thronelike chair that served as the observation seat for the telescope eyepiece. A dozen or so wolves padded over and reclined on the floor around him.
“We are men who became beasts to defend the weak. There are ancient evils in these mountains. Powerful families who have made misery for generations. We are savage men who savage others. The Moon gives us our power to summon justice.”
Then he motioned toward the telescope.
“We have seen your battles on the Moon. Your battle with the one called Pitch.” He leaned forward. “Pitch is not like us. He is a man who has become a beast and prefers to be a beast. He wants to stay a beast.”
Suddenly, every wolf in the room stirred. They all looked toward the same opening in the tower wall, snarling. My wounded hand clenched in pain.
Twiner was in my other hand faster than a thought as a barrage of black arrows came streaming at me. But Shadowbent was faster still. With a snap, he whirled his heavy fur cape up like a protective shield. Every arrow lodged in his cape and came no closer.
Again I am saved by a cape, I thought, remembering Ombric’s cape during Bright Night.
The arrows were only the first wave of the attack. Through each crack in the tower walls poured sword-wielding black creatures.
“Nightmare Men!” I shouted.
The wolves sprang at them. Their werewolf fangs tore at the dark specters like razors against rag dolls. No sword made a single wound against the wolves, and the battle was finished before Shadowbent’s cape could fall limp under the weight of the black arrows.
Except for the muffled growls of the wolves as they pawed and sniffed at the vanishing rags of the slaughtered Nightmare Men, the room grew quiet. Shadowbent turned to me.
“Pitch will never stop. Imprisoned he may be, but he will send whatever he can against you. He will do you hurt in any way he can so that you cannot hurt him again.”
“But these will be his undoing,” he said knowingly. “These tears are the last bits of his soul. The only thing left of him that is human. They are the weapon he fears most.”
The wolves began to howl, but surprisingly, Shadowbent smiled at me.
“An interesting night?” he said.
I couldn’t help but smile back.
Shadowbent’s castle suited me more than I expected. The tower where I stayed had only half of its peaked roof intact, but as with a skylight, it gave me the opportunity to gaze at the Moon. My room was carpeted in decades’ worth of fallen leaves. Here and there, a fragment of a broken stone archway jutted up from the soft, brittle dunes of the leaves.
The evening air was cool but not cold, and an easy breeze stirred a constant, dry rustle of leaf against leaf. Twiner leaned lightly against my hand with his crook up and kept watch. We were listening to the leaves as they told us the history of these woods and of Shadowbent and his werewolves.
“They are tragic men,” said Twiner. “They have all lost their families to war, starvation, enslavement. Now they live to fight injustice.”
“Yes,” I said. “And why did they fight to protect me?”
For a while, Twiner was silent. Then, finally, he said, “They understand the power of your dream.”
I wondered about this. Werewolves and men and families and myself. Twiner knew I was in a jumble of thoughts.
“You dream of a family you’ve never known.” He added, “They dream of the families they have lost. Your fight, they said, is the same as ours.”
I thought about that answer for some time. It kept me from sleeping. But as I looked up at my old friend in the Moon, I felt him, if not speaking to me, then somehow sending me a feeling. The feeling that the leaves were correct, that, yes, in the many past chapters of my life as Nightlight, I had fought for justice. But now I was not so sure. What I fought for was not revealed in my Moondream. But then neither was Shadowbent and his army of werewolves. This part of my journey was a mystery.
As I drifted into sleep at last, the leaves said over and over, Your fight is our fight, till it became like a song.
And my dreams were gentle and my sleep peaceful.
Shadowbent and his men would be our escort until I reached the farm I’d seen in my Moondream. I had described it to him, and he made a deep, almost-amusing sort of growling sound.
“I know this farm,” he told me. “It is outside our land but not far. We have kept watch on this family. They are very brave. Very kind. You have chosen well.”
“I didn’t choose them, really,” I admitted. “I just saw them in my Moondream.”
Shadowbent made the same pleased growling sound. It is strange to hear a werewolf king laugh. It is a laugh that you won’t ever forget. It starts like a growl but much deeper and slower. Then the steady rattle of the growl speeds up suddenly and stops with a high yip, then it all begins again with a slow build.
I found it to be at the edge of frightening. In short it pleased me enormously.
“Again I say, you chose well to end your journey with this family,” Shadowbent said once his mirth died down.
“I told you I didn’t choose them—”
“Kindness can be like a compass you did not know you carried,” he said to me. “You are new to being human. I’ve been human and beast. Trust me, young friend, you chose well.”
We traveled swiftly through Werewolf Valley and the Transylvanian forests. The werewolves moved on all four legs, as did Shadowbent, and their paws made almost no sound on the soft, newly fallen snow. I ran among them, marveling at their stealthy grace as they moved through the woods like a silent stream.
Occasionally, I would use Twiner to pull myself up onto a low-hanging tree limb, and from there, I would follow the wolves from above, running and swinging from tree to tree. It was thrilling. I had never felt so free as in the company of these wolfmen. My mind was at peace. I became a being of pure action and instinct. I forgot about my past and my future, I forgot about heartbreaks or duty. I forgot about Pitch. I thought only of grabbing the next branch ahead of me and keeping up with my friends below.
For hours we went on like this, but I had no sense of time or its passage. I had not noticed that the sun had set and night had come and, with it, a heavy snow. But then we came to the edge of the seemingly endless woods. The wolves slowed, then stopped. Shadowbent stood high on two legs and pointed toward a clearing up ahead. Through the snow, I could see the lights of a house. The windows glowed with warmth. The house looked like a tiny, welcome ship in a sea of downy white.
My heart brightened.
I recognized these fields and the house from my Moondream!
I climbed down through the tree limbs and landed next to Shadowbent, feeling genuinely sorry to part from him.
“You’ll need a new name to go with your new life,” he told me, and I realized he had never actually called me by any name. It was as if Nightlight had never existed.
He shook my hand. It was the first time anyone had ever done that to me. He shook it the way I’d seen grown men shake hands, but I was still just a boy. He smiled at me and made his amused growling sound again.
“Within every boy there is a man, and in every man, the memory of a boy,” he said. “Time to make the memories that will be your compass.”
He let loose of my hand and gave me a gentle shove toward the house. Well, gentle for a werewolf king. So I walked toward the house I had dreamed of and the family who lived there and the boy named Jack whose life I had envied.
The werewolves howled as I walked away. They were saying good-bye. I took the last steps of my old life across the snow-covered field until I came to the threshold of what I would become.
As I walked toward the house, the only sound I heard was the gentle tapping of the millions of feather-size snowflakes as they landed. The snow fell so thickly that my footprints were erased as quickly as I made them.
“My past is vanishing behind me,” I said musingly to Twiner, though he did not reply.
As I drew closer to the house, I could just make out talking and laughter coming from inside. I had seen these people, this family, in my Moondream, yet I had no idea what they sounded like. But I was able to easily discern each member of the family: the mother, the father, the sister, and the boy I’d seen in my dream.
“It’s time for me to be just a boy,” I told Twiner. “To be as human as possible. No becoming invisible. No tricks . . .”
“And no Twiner being more than a staff?” he asked.
I nodded solemnly. “Unless I say so.”
He paused as though he were thinking. “I understand,” he said at last.
I looked inside a nearly frost-covered window. Snow, caught on the edges of the windowpanes, left me only an oval to see through. It was like looking at this scene through a dream, but now I was actually here! The only distance between myself and this family was this window between us—this thin sheet of cold glass.
They were at their dinner table. The plates were nearly clear of food, so I knew they had finished eating. I watched them as they talked. They seemed so happy in one another’s presence. Then the boy glanced toward the window. His gaze stopped. His eyes went wide. For a fraction of a moment I almost made myself disappear—in fact, I may have, I’m not sure. Perhaps that’s why the expression on his face was of such surprise. But then I knew I was visible because he pointed toward me and cried, “Look . . . there’s a boy!”
The rest of the family turned and saw me.
Some moments in life seem to draw out, become longer than they actually are. This moment, this looking at each other through a pane of glass, was one of those times.
I could already discern so many things about this family. They weren’t frightened th
at a stranger was outside their house. They looked worried, not for themselves, but for me. They stood up quickly and came to the door. It was the father who opened it, but it was the mother who spoke first.
“Poor boy, you must be freezing,” she said.
“Come in!” said the father. “Quick, before we all freeze.”
I must have hesitated, because they reached for me and pulled me inside.
“He is frozen,” cried the daughter.
“He’s so frozen, he can’t speak,” cried the boy.
And then they were fussing over me, brushing the snow from my clothes and hair. I let the boy take Twiner. And the daughter took my cloak.
“Quick, Mother, get him some soup!” said the father. They sat me down, and a bowl of soup was thrust in front of me and a spoon put in my hand. They stood around me expectantly. I just blinked at them. I was still so amazed to be with them and in this house. My Moondream had shown me this moment, but now it was happening.
“Eat!” they all said, but all I could do was stare at them.
“He’s so frozen, he can’t even eat,” said the boy.
The mother sat next to me and put her hand gently on my shoulder. She leaned toward me, never letting her kind eyes break from mine, then she spoke very softly, as if she were speaking to a wounded bird. “Eat,” she coaxed.
And so I began to eat.
I must have been very hungry. The bowl was quickly emptied, and now they were staring at me.
“What’s your name?” asked the mother in her warm, tender voice.
What was my name? I had no answer.
“We are the Ardelean family. I am Victor,” the father said with his palm on his chest, then he gestured to each of the others. “And this is my wife, Irina; my daughter, Ana; and my son, Jacklovich.”