Tales of Arilland, Page 3

  However, in the event that you had taken a turn for the worse, I would have sensed it immediately and been fast by your side to nurse you back to health. You never need call, my Jack, for my heart knows you. I believe in your absence that I am developing the ability to sense when you are in danger. (Obviously, had the pastries been a real threat, I would have known about them long before that soused balladeer.)

  The gods brought us together, Jack. We are a matched set, cut from the same cloth. Who am I to deny the gods? I only hope they see you safely home soon, my dearest. I will be waiting. As always.

  Ever Your Girl,

  ~Red

  Beloved,

  This will be my last missive to you. The pain cuts me deeply, and soon I will return to the nightmare mouth of the wolf, where I was always meant to be. There is no world without you. There is no me without you. And soon, there will be no world at all.

  Forgive the stains on the page, red as my hair, but the quill grows heavy in my hand, heavy as my stone heart. The beats are slower now. The breaths are faint.

  My soul is crying out to yours, growing ever blacker with the night. Hear it and come to me soon, my love. Look to the stars—they will guide you to me. Perhaps you are already here, with your ax at the door. I only hope it is not too late.

  —R—

  To: Mister Jack Woodcutter

  From: Anastazia Yaga Vasili

  * * *

  My Dear Mister Woodcutter,

  Sir, it pains me to bring such news to you, after the incredible good deed you did my granddaughter and me so long ago, but in the event that any—or all—of Sonya's letters have found you on your travels, I thought you would want to know.

  Red is safe. It was I who dragged her back from the jaws of death this time, but the eyes and ears and hands of the enemy were her own. Its teeth were the penknife I keep in the writing desk.

  It was I who encouraged my granddaughter's correspondence to you, so it is only fitting that I must bear the burden of its outcome. You and I only saved Sonya’s body from the wolf that night—the part we could see and touch and feel. Her mind, I fear, never recovered from that darkness, and I did not recognize the signs until it was almost too late.

  Our little Red is recovering in the care of my spinster sister, high in the remote reaches of the white mountains. Perhaps you might have heard of it in your wanderings. Cinderella’s blind and mutilated stepsisters convalesce there. So, too, do the young girl with the donkey’s tail on her forehead, and the one who spits snakes and toads when she speaks. I believe Red is in the best hands possible. If my sister cannot save her from the wolf, no one can.

  As much as I hate to burden you with this information, I thought it best that you should know. You are a great man, sir, and you once did my family a kindness that will never be forgotten. May your road be straight and your skies be blue. May the gods lift you to their breasts and find you worthy enough to be rid of your burdens. Many blessings to you.

  Your servant,

  Baba Vasili

  To: Miss Sonya Vasili

  c/o Baba Yaga’s Traveling Home for Unfortunate Young Women with Magical Maladies

  * * *

  Dear Red,

  Get well soon.

  ~Jack

  * * *

  Sweetheart Come

  Sasha was fourteen when the villagers threw her to the wolves.

  She was mute: a quirk that eventually unnerved enough people to justify her banishment to the Wild Wood. She surprised them all by emerging from the Wood many months later without a scratch and heavy with child. This time it was the villagers who were struck speechless, but—enchanted or cursed—no one challenged Sasha’s right to be there. Upon her daughter’s birth, Sasha caught the midwife with her haunting gray eyes and said, “Mara,” clear as a bell. The rest of her secrets she kept. By the next full moon, Sasha was gone.

  Mara was raised by the midwife, embraced by the villagers, and ended up earning her keep as a huntress. Her tracking skills were unmatched and she had a sixth sense about her prey—virtues which kept the food stores well-stocked through the cold winters. When Fate found the man to tame her wild nature, Mara had one daughter, Rose. Rose “had a nose,” and grew to become one of the most sought-after cooks in five counties. The man who sought out her heart instead of her pies was a humble woodcutter, and together they had a daughter named Aurelia, with a voice that could sing the sun down from the sky. When she was of age, Aurelia took up with a band of wandering minstrels, and so was the first since her great-grandmother to leave the village. She and her beloved fiddle player were also the first to bear a son, Bane.

  Bane had a shy smile, a quick wit, and a heart of gold. From his grandfather, Bane learned how to cleave a piece of wood in two with one stroke. From his grandmother (and from experience), he learned to tell the difference between good mushrooms and bad. From his father he learned to play a variety of instruments well enough to coax out a melody for every occasion, but he preferred the fiddle. From his mother, Bane learned how to sing the sun down from the sky. Every evening they would trek to the edge of the village, to the top of the hill that looked down over the Wild Wood, and they would farewell the day. The selections varied with their moods and the seasons, but the last song was always the same lullaby Aurelia had sung to her son every night since his birth.

  Have wonderful dreams, love

  And dream while you wonder

  Of things that are sure as

  The sound of the thunder

  Love leaves too sudden

  And death comes too soon

  And wolves they all bay at

  The full of the moon

  When the sound of his fiddle surpassed that of his voice, Bane played instead while his mother sang. And when his grandmother’s apprentice herb-girl returned his shy smile, he asked her to marry him. And when Harvest became pregnant with their child, the nightmares began. For the first three months, one came at every full moon. Bane dreamt of running through the autumn trees at twilight to the top of the hill, hair brushed with dew by the welcome chill of the wind. There, along with his brethren, he turned up his face and howled to the sky. Harvest teased him about his twitching and the soft whimpering noises he made in his sleep.

  In the second three months, the dreams increased with both frequency and intensity. Bane imagined himself grooming, hunting, mating, and feeding kits. He awoke angry, amorous, and exhausted in turns—sometimes all three at once. In the daylight hours he found himself resisting the urge to rub his face in the cool spring grass or growl at the rabbit vermin that ran amok in the garden.

  In the seventh month of Harvest’s pregnancy, Bane’s dream-self fought brutally with a wolf from another pack. He awoke on all fours, looming over Harvest and staring at the crescent-shaped marks on her pale white throat. She had slapped him out of his vision; his cheeks stung from the deep scratches her prenatal nails had raked across him. In the midnight silence, a drop of blood fell from his face to her breast.

  “Sweetheart,” Harvest said calmly, “this has to stop. You have to go to the wolves and ask them for help.”

  On any other day those words might not have made a lick of sense to him, but right there, bathed in bright moonlight, with the salty taste of his wife’s sweat and fear fresh upon his tongue, Bane knew what he had to do. When dawn broke, he packed up his fiddle and a blanket and set out for the hill at the edge of the Wild Wood. Harvest stayed behind at the garden gate, but not before handing him a small bag of food. She had noticed the look in his eye, the look of every man who has left home with no idea of when he might return, or if he should.

  “Sweetheart, come back to me,” she said as she embraced him. “Come back to me before our baby is born.”

  Bane kissed his wife hard, with all the love in his golden heart, and promised that he would.

  Bane went to the top of the hill that overlooked the Wild Wood and stayed there for three days. He fiddled from twilight into the wee hours of the morning
. He played until his throat went hoarse and his fingers bled. He collapsed on the cold, hard ground as the sun rose, breathed in the lingering scent of his wife on the blanket, and slept the day away. He woke in the late afternoon, broke his bread and had a small meal, and waited. He lifted his fiddle and bow in time to farewell the sun, and continued to serenade the waning moon until he could continue no longer. The wolves did not come.

  The next day, Bane walked down the hill and into the Wild Wood. He walked through spider webs and sunlit meadows. Every morning he slept, every evening he walked, and every night he lifted his fiddle and bow and sang into the twilight. He slept fitfully on beds of hay and early summer wildflowers that made his golden heart ache for his wife and unborn child. Impatient and frustrated he wandered and played, played and wandered, deeper and deeper into the Wild Wood. Still, the wolves did not come.

  After the new moon, after the darkest night in the thickest part of the deep Wood, the dreams returned. Some days he would wake without clothing, his skin covered in angry red scratches. Some days he awoke with blood caked on his lips that was not his own and a full belly. Sometimes he awoke so far from where he fell asleep that he spent the rest of the day following the scent of his blanket back to his fiddle. The smell of his wife was fading; Bane feared that one day he would awake and not be able to find his way back to it. To her.

  Still every night he played, the calluses on his fingers growing thick as his limbs grew thin. He played songs of long ago and songs of yesterday. He played songs of adventure and songs of loss. He played teaching songs and drinking songs, songs of life and songs of death, songs for family and enemies. When he had played them all he made up new songs, songs for Harvest and their unborn child, and as he sang he wept tears onto the wood of his fiddle. But he always sang the sun down and up with a variation of that same old tune his mother had taught him.

  I dream as I wander

  And wandering dream

  Through a wild and dark Wood where

  I’m not what I seem

  I’m lost and I’m lonely

  And so with this tune

  I call to the wolves

  By the light of the moon

  At last, on the first night of the full moon, Bane’s song was answered by howling. He thought it was his imagination at first—he had imagined many things in his dream-wracked wanderings: the sound of Harvest calling his name, the smell of her skin, the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck. Invigorated, Bane ran up the nearest hill, climbed atop the largest rock there, and started the song again. Beneath his rough beard his smile grew with every howl and his golden heart ached to be so very near the end of his torment, to be so close again to the peaceful life he had before it was rudely interrupted by dreams of a life he didn’t want.

  The wolves poured down through the trees, their sleek bodies undulating in a neat, dangerous wave. They bound up the hill with predatory speed and encircled the rock on which he stood. Each wolf moved with preternatural grace in a dance as old as the hills themselves, ears perked up, mottled hair bristling, sharp teeth flashing, and for the first time it occurred to Bane to be afraid. He simply poured that fear into his song and used it to fuel his playing as the wolves settled in around him.

  In the glow of the moonlight he could hear their breath, taste their scent, smell their fur, feel their hearts beating as one. In the glow of the moonlight his golden heart warred against itself—the half that yearned for freedom and his place in this pack, and the half that yearned for home and the rest of his soul. The circle of wolves parted and, in the glow of the moonlight, the alpha pair stepped forward and became human.

  The male grew tall and lean. A thin coating of dark gray hair still covered his body, little enough for Bane to tell that every muscle was tensed and ready to strike if any of his suspicions were confirmed. The female was similarly wiry yet petite. The fuzz that coated her breasts and belly was mottled gray and russet; the rest of the hair that had covered her lupine form now cascaded down her back. There was something not quite right about her face, as if the human mouth she now wore couldn’t accommodate all of her tearing, bone crunching teeth. But she pinned him with a yellow stare, and when she spoke, her words were clear.

  “Come,” she said, “come run with us, cousin.”

  His blood roared through his veins, pumped wildly through a heart as golden as her eyes in a mad rush of acquiescence. But her invitation had sounded too much like another plea his mind replayed every night when he collapsed in exhaustion and every morning when the sun nudged him awake: Sweetheart, come back to me. Come back to me before the baby is born.

  “I cannot,” he said, and there was far more regret in his voice than he intended. “Please,” he implored. “Make the dreams stop.”

  She stretched out a hand to caress his bare foot, where it dangled down from the rock on which he sat. Her mate growled low in his throat. Her long, narrow palm was warm and rough, the nails that tipped her fingers dark and thick. It would be nothing for her to thrust those nails into his chest, tear out his traitorous golden heart, and replace it with moss and tree sap. “These dreams you dismiss so easily,” she said, “they are my dreams.”

  “I am sorry,” he said, and again the words dripped with regret.

  “It is not a decision to make lightly,” she said. “If I take the dreams from you, any part of you that was ever wolf will be gone forever.” No more seeing in the dark. No more singing to the moon. No more smelling his way home. But he could not return to his wife and family-to-be as he was, so dangerous to their well-being and so much less than a man.

  “Come run with us, cousin,” she asked again. “Be sure that the choice you make is the right one.”

  He set his fiddle on the rock, hopped down into the swarm of giant, hungry wolves, and slipped his hand into that strange and deadly palm.

  Harvest didn’t tell her parents about her husband’s mad journey for fear they would come and take her away. Her home was the one thing that kept her tethered to sanity. Bane’s family was very supportive: During the days, Rose helped her in the garden and her husband built a crib for the nursery. In the evenings, Aurelia and the fiddler played and sang for their supper, lullabying their daughter-in-law and soon-to-be grandchild into bed. For all the well-meaning company, it was the dead of night Harvest lived for most. She would stare out the window, wish on the stars, and blow kisses to the bone-colored moon. She would listen for the creaks and whispers that echoed in the empty corners of the dark world. They had the timber of Bane’s voice and they promised her they would return home before their baby was born. They promised.

  The night there was no moon Harvest felt the loneliest she’d ever been in her life. But were it not for the absence of her celestial companion, she never would have noticed the yellow eyes watching her from the far side of the garden. At the same moment there was a kick in her belly—she gasped, and in a flash the wolf was gone.

  Harvest looked for the wolf every night, and every night it was there. It never approached the house, simply watched the house from the same spot at the opposite edge of the garden. Harvest felt an irrational kinship with the wolf. She imagined that they were both lonely, both burdened by responsibility, both waiting for something they weren’t exactly sure of, and both wanting something they knew they only had a slim chance of obtaining. But the hope was there.

  Harvest began leaving food out for the wolf, sometimes not finishing her evening meal on purpose so that there would be scraps left. She walked them as far as she dared, to the near edge of the garden. She never saw the wolf’s eyes in the daylight and she never saw it eat, but come dawn the bowl was always empty.

  The first night of the full moon, Harvest walked the bowl of scraps out to the garden and saw an old man standing where her wolf had been. Short, dark gray hair covered his skin evenly, barring shocks of pure white on his forehead and temples. He was darkness, but for his sharp teeth and those piercing yellow eyes. Harvest dropped the bowl and squeaked out a ti
ny shriek, immediately wishing she was a braver woman.

  “I liked you better as a wolf,” she said.

  The wolf-man laughed hoarsely at her statement, baring his mouthful of deadly teeth in the process. Harvest froze, ordering herself to remain calm and show no fear. This was one of the last times her baby would be able to feel her every emotion, and she refused to let cowardice be one of them. See, baby, your mother is strong. One day, you will grow up and be this strong.

  “You must come with me,” said the wolf-man.

  “I do not have the dreams,” said Harvest. “That is my husband.”

  “It is for your husband’s sake that you must come,” said the wolf-man. “I fear for the loss of your husband to the wolves.”

  Harvest found his phrasing odd—it sounded more like the wolves would steal him away rather than kill him. “He will come back to me,” Harvest said defiantly.

  “The wolves can be rather persuasive,” he said.

  “He will come back to me,” Harvest repeated. “He promised.”

  “Yes,” said the wolf-man. “But what if he is not capable of keeping that promise? What if he needs your help?”

  “Then I would come with you,” said Harvest without hesitation. She pulled her kerchief from the pocket of her apron, tied her hair back, and walked across the garden to the wolf-man’s side. With a nod and a blur that sparked through the hair on her arms, he quietly transformed back into a wolf and bound into the darkness, leading Harvest step by trotting step to the heart of the Wild Wood.