Fear the Wolf Read online

  The rain began to fall. Little droplets at first, and then droplets so fat they thunked against my skull. The drumming on the leaves drowned everything else out—well, almost everything. Growls rumbled under the sound of rain. More shadows appeared between the trees, flashing past too quickly for me to see what they were.

  I suspected I knew.

  Then a different awareness burst inside of me. Whatever the shadows were, all of them were heading in the same direction—the direction I had come from.

  The village.

  The Wolf Strikes

  8

  Louder than the hammering rain, a mighty howl broke through the forest. The sound was unlike any animal cry I’d heard before. It was impossibly deep and resonant with an unnatural ring to it. My body trembled. But I ran toward the sound.

  Low branches and nettles whipped me as I flew through the undergrowth. My legs stung, itching more and more as they erupted in red lines and bright rashes. Fire spread through my muscles. I hadn’t known I could run so fast.

  Then I stopped. Where had the growling creatures gone? I had tried to follow them, but they had moved too fast. Panting, I turned on the spot. I thought hard and looked at my surroundings even harder.

  When I had entered the forest, I was so absorbed in my foolish fantasy that I paid no attention to where I was going. Now I was lost.

  I slammed my teeth together and groaned. There was no time for this. Those animals—the Wolf’s creatures—were heading for the village. I knew that in my gut. I needed to stop them somehow … or warn the villagers … or, I don’t know, do something, anything.

  I straightened up and inhaled through my nose. Without any signs to lead the way, I had no choice but to listen to my gut some more.

  Show me the way home.

  I raced under the canopy, sheltered from the rain, but the moment I burst out of the trees and into the village outskirts, the downpour drenched me. The weight of my tunic tripled as I realized where I stood. I turned toward the hidden dip in the hills, toward the place where I had argued with—

  My heart gave a sharp twist.

  I ran to Reni and dropped to the ground. She lay on her back in a pool of mud and blood, unmoving, staring blankly at the sky. Her arms were splayed, her sword still gripped in one hand. When I looked at her neck, my stomach heaved.

  Her throat was torn open.

  I drew her body to me and shook her gently. “Reni,” I cried and shook her harder. “Reni …”

  Her head lolled, stretching open her mouth. As fast as the blood gushed from her neck, the rain washed it away. I swallowed back the acid in my throat and tensed my stomach.

  What was Reni doing this close to the edge? When I had run into the forest, she was marching away from me, toward the village! Why was she here?

  I gasped and covered my mouth.

  She had come after me. Perhaps not right away. But after a while, she must have realized I was serious about entering the forest. And she had cared enough to try to stop me. And now … now she was …

  I blinked uncontrollably. I knew I should weep—I wanted to, I needed to—but my shock had turned to numbness, settling over me like morning fog over the fields.

  Cradling Reni, I stared without thought at the sodden ground. My vision softened to a blur. I’m not sure how much time passed before I stirred, but eventually I placed Reni down and kissed her forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the many memories that could break through this numbness and break me.

  Right now, I needed this numbness. I needed to pull myself together so I could help the people screaming in the distance—my friends and neighbors fighting off the Wolf’s creatures.

  My eyelids flew wide open. “Mother!” I said as if she could hear me.

  Without another thought, I took Reni’s sword, sprung to my feet, and bolted homeward.

  Everywhere around me, people ran: some ran away from the wolflings; some rushed toward them with weapons in their hands; others scrambled all over in search of family and friends.

  In all directions, wolflings and other wild beasts swarmed the village. I ignored the bodies on the ground, refusing to grieve for anyone until I knew Mother was safe. I tried to keep low, slipping behind every building and bush on the way. But something spotted me.

  A growl came from behind. I froze, a shiver crawling across my skin. Slowly I turned, as though moving at such a pace would keep me safe. When I faced the source of the sound, I knew my gradual pivot had achieved nothing.

  The wolfling’s eyes were on me.

  Like all wolflings, the beast had two large bushy tails, which appeared to balance out its stocky front. Wolflings were known for their mighty swipe because their forelegs were longer and thicker than their hind legs. Full-grown, this wolfling stood at over half my height. Black stripes ran along its spine, a dark ladder standing out against its golden fur.

  We regarded each other for half a second.

  Then I ran.

  I didn’t need to turn back to know the beast was chasing me. The fast thuds of its paws thundered in my ears, interspersed with hungry snarls and the violent snapping of its jaw. My feet ached with each desperate slap against the wet ground. I couldn’t let this beast follow me home. So I jinked to the right and kept running. My chest and throat stung, each panicked breath scratching its way in and out. I feared I would collapse from exhaustion, or trip and fall. I had no chance of outrunning this creature.

  Facing the inevitable, I stopped and turned around. The wolfling bounded closer. With shaking hands, I raised Reni’s sword and prepared to bring it swinging down.

  Garrut Dun leapt out of an alley and cleaved the wolfling in half with one upward slash. The beast yelped. Its blood followed the motion of Garrut’s sword, spraying up into the air and then showering down to mingle with rainwater in murky puddles. The two halves of the wolfling slapped to the ground.

  “Senla,” said Garrut, “where’s Reni?”

  Reni’s slack face floated before me. I saw her head slipping back lazily, her mouth easing open, the empty stare in her eyes. My mind tried to tell me I’d imagined it. She was alive. She had to be. She had to be …

  Garrut grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Senla! Have you seen my daughter?”

  “No.” I lacked the spirit to tell him the truth just yet, to say the words aloud. Reni’s dead. Those words would destroy Garrut. And right now, the village needed its Head Guardian more than ever.

  Garrut released his grip on me. He growled and rubbed the back of his neck as he began peering about. “I can’t find her.”

  When his eyes returned to me, hope still shining in them, I forced myself to shrug regretfully. “I don’t know where she is. But my mother … I have to—”

  “Of course, of course. Go!” He nodded understandingly.

  Burying my shame, I pressed my lips together and ran homeward again.

  When I looked over my shoulder, Garrut was surrounded by the Wolf’s creatures.

  9

  The dead were everywhere. Though I tried hard to ignore the horrific sights, it was impossible for me not to acknowledge at least some of the bodies. Not bodies, people—people I’d known my whole life: Lendun Mack, lying motionless by the well; Melina and Baron Lemmo, holding hands in death, their dead son, Bandurk, in a heap nearby; Markus Bennan, slumped over a fallen wolfling outside the smithy. I wondered briefly where Markus’s son was, imagining how confused and panicked Aldan must be.

  As I neared my home, I saw the chandler, Davvin Weck, kneeling outside his house. Davvin clasped his hands together in supplication. “Don’t fight back!” he yelled, pleading with whoever might listen. “The Wolf comes for a reason. We have presumed too much. Surrender! Surrender, and she might spare—”

  A wolfling lunged for him and snapped its jaws around his face. His last words twisted into a wet, muffled scream, which quickly faded.

  I forced myself to go on, my entire body throbbing with aches and pains.

  In the distance,
on the other side of the village, something enormous moved behind the buildings. I caught glimpses of it between the houses, but I couldn’t see the whole thing at once.

  So far, I had seen wolflings of many different colors: some had red fur, some black, some golden, and others were cloudy gray. A few even bore a patchy mix of these colors. But the great beast in the distance was the only one with a glorious pelt of pure white. From the sheer size of the animal, I knew it could only be one thing.

  The Wolf.

  I tried to get a better look while running, but a gray wolfling leapt in front of me. I slid to a halt and nearly slipped in the mud. I drew in a sharp breath. Clenching my teeth, I screamed into my closed mouth. I was so close I could see my mother’s house!

  For a dangerous moment, my frustration drowned out my fear. I lifted Reni’s sword, daring the wolfling to come closer so I could cut it down. Or at least try to.

  The wolfling bared its teeth. Its jaw trembled, spit dribbling from its lips. Bright, intelligent eyes glared at me. They were the yellowy-orange of tree sap, and equally as reflective. The beast was sizing me up, determining the most efficient way to rip me apart.

  It darted closer and pounced.

  I swung Reni’s sword, but the wolfling twisted midair to dodge the blow. As though mimicking the beast, I threw myself to one side, narrowly avoiding the snap of its teeth. The wolfling whined briefly when it landed. Though I had hoped to do more damage, I had at least nipped its back leg.

  A thrill ran through me. I turned and prepared to strike again, but I was too slow.

  Pain flared in my left forearm as the wolfling bit down. Reni’s sword fell to the ground, splashing into a puddle as I, too, was forced into the wet earth. Heavy paws pressed down on my stomach, claws digging into my flesh.

  Pinned down, I pushed and scratched and punched the wolfling with my right hand, desperate to get it off of me before it could chew through my forearm. It let out muffled yips and growls, loosening its grip a little, but the sharp teeth were locked into my arm.

  I twisted in the mud. Water splashed my face, the bitter taste of dirt entering my mouth. For a terrifying second, I feared I would drown in the puddle. I tried to thrash about. The incessant downpour was suffocating, but I managed to lift my head and heave in some air.

  Reaching for Reni’s sword, I peered over at my home. It was difficult to see while wrestling for my life in the rain, but something big and auburn slipped out of my house and dashed off. Whatever it was, it was larger than a wolfling but not nearly the size of the Wolf.

  My heart shattered in my chest. Was Mother still in there?

  Losing hope, I reached Reni’s sword and clawed it closer with my fingertips. My strength was failing.

  The wolfling bit down harder on my forearm. I screamed. My cry was soon drowned out by a booming howl: the same unnatural howl I had heard in the forest, just before the Wolf’s creatures attacked.

  The beast on top of me released my forearm. Its head shot up and tilted slightly as if listening to a faint sound on the wind. Without looking back down at me, the wolfling pushed off from my stomach and ran out of sight, leaving me winded and coughing.

  The pattering of many paws followed. It grew quieter until the only sound left was of the storm. No screaming. No yelling. No snarling, snapping or growling. No agonized cries for help. Only the rain—and even that was tapering off.

  I rolled onto one side and pushed up with my right hand. I drew my gaping left arm to my chest to cradle it there. Filthy, soaked, bloody and exhausted, I stumbled to my house and entered. All I could do for a moment was stand by the door and stare in horror as tears filled my eyes.

  I found Mother suspended slightly above the ground. She was tangled in her broken loom, fixed in place by a snapped wooden pole sticking through her side. Her tunic was torn and bloody, exposing her scratched and bitten shoulder. It looked as if she’d been knocked backward while trying to defend herself.

  I kept staring, unable to move just yet. My gaze settled on her limp face and still eyes.

  Then her eyelids fluttered. She gave an anguished moan.

  “Mother!” I hurried over and knelt beside her, throwing Reni’s sword to the floor. I feared that touching Mother would worsen her injuries, so I just leaned close.

  “Senla,” she said and coughed violently. Blood appeared on her lips.

  “Yes, Mother. It’s me. I’m here.”

  “You …”

  “Yes, it’s me.” That was all I wanted her to know right now—that I was here with her, that I would save her somehow. I would save my mother.

  “You,” she said again, “you did this.”

  The base of my throat tightened painfully. Struggling to get my words out, I said, “What? No, Mother … I …”

  “Right from the start,” she said, then swallowed loudly. Her eyes began to close as she turned away from me.

  “Mother?”

  “Right from the start, you presumed … too much.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked through my sobs, but Mother’s head never turned back to me.

  And she said nothing more.

  Nothing Left

  10

  I could have knelt by Mother’s body and wept until dark, but my arm would not stop bleeding. I had to pull myself away to find a finished piece of cloth. With some difficulty, I wrapped it around the wound as tightly as I could, using one hand. Then I tucked the fabric underneath itself to stay in place. Already I saw deep red patches forming, blood seeping through the layers.

  When I turned back toward my mother’s body, I fully absorbed the scene: her lying there, dead, and the thick spike of wood sticking through her side. In a chain of stark images, I saw Reni’s savaged throat and my neighbors’ mauled bodies scattered throughout the village. Too fast to gulp back, vomit shot up through my mouth. I bent over, heaving until my stomach was empty and my throat raw.

  After rising, I risked a look at Mother again. Was the cloth I’d bandaged my arm with the last piece of fabric she had made? And now, only moments after her death, I had spoiled it … just like I’d spoiled everything in her life …

  I shook that line of thought from my head. The insides of my eyelids prickled, burning from the sadness I held back. The feeling I failed to contain, though, was the rage churning in my stomach. It surged up through my chest and into my arms. As I picked up Reni’s sword, the anger gushed into my legs, shaking them with a sudden determination.

  I marched out of my home and sprinted for the forest. Blocking out my surroundings, I let myself be led by the anger and my sole intention of finding the Wolf and—

  My thoughts were a mess. They were a swirl of fierce, bright colors and jagged shapes, my battered mind reacting to the hatred swelling in my body.

  I reached the border. Trees loomed before me. As I looked through them and into the tangled depths of the wildwood, it seemed they were calling to me. But another voice came, clearing my muddled thoughts in an instant.

  You did this.

  Mother’s dying words wrenched me to a halt. Right from the start, you presumed too much. A familiar mantra followed. Fear the Wolf, fear the Wolf, fear the Wolf. It came in my mother’s strict tone, echoing loudly throughout my skull.

  Did I really do this?

  My mind flashed back to the arguments with Mother, the scolding from Markus Bennan, the kiss I’d given Reni, and my running into the forest like a fool. How many times had I forgotten my place today? How many times had I insulted the Wolf?

  Perhaps I truly was broken beyond redemption, like my father had believed …

  But one thing didn’t make sense. Why had I survived the attack, but disciplined Wolf-fearing people like my mother had not? With that question came immense guilt, so impossibly heavy that I had to squeeze my eyes shut and bury the shame.

  If I had brought the Wolf upon the village, then seeking revenge now would endanger more people. Another fear rose in me, something I’d avoided thinking about until this m
oment: Was I the only survivor?

  My rage returned in full. I stepped toward the trees again, but stopped once more, biting my lower lip.

  “I can’t,” I said to myself.

  For a while longer, I peered into the forest, torn in two.

  I turned and hobbled back to the village.

  11

  Everyone was dead. At least, every person I’d found so far was. In a daze, I stumbled around, searching for survivors. The rain had stopped. The air was sour with the smell of earth and blood, yet a freshness ran through it, the crispness that always came after a downpour.

  Silence. Except for my heavy breaths and my feet squelching in the mud, the village was utterly still. I’d always found silence suffocating, but after the loud storm and the terrible sounds of the attack, the quiet was more eerie than oppressive.

  I inspected each body I came across, hoping to find one breathing. After examining a few, I realized something and nearly retched again: the Wolf’s creatures hadn’t stopped to eat. They had simply killed and then moved on. Part of me believed the whole attack would be easier to accept if the wolflings had killed out of survival, a need to feed. But this was never a meal to them.

  It was an extermination. A cleansing.

  With each person I marked as dead, I lost more hope. And strength. A numb ringing sound filled my ears. I looked at my bandage. Nearly the whole thing had turned reddish brown.

  Becoming light-headed, I stumbled and felt a powerful urge to rest. I stayed on my feet, but I sank into a crouch, thoughts of sleep pulling me down …

  A noise startled me. My fatigue vanished.

  Straitening up, I called, “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  Again, “Hello!”

  A high-pitched moan replied and drew me down a path.

  “Where are you?” I shouted. Perhaps they were injured and in need of urgent help. “Keep making sounds. I’m coming.”