Darkwood (31 page)

“No more kills,” Annie said.

Fristi nodded. The wolves backed away from Chopper. “Gibbet?”

He brought her face very close to his. “What?”

She considered the wide mouth, the smile like a wound opening, the false teeth. She considered the portrait in the king's throne room, and the mine overseer six generations ago who looked so very much like this one. She considered the apothecary's spell that slowed her blood and the potion that forced flowers to bloom and men to sleep their lives away.

“I don't know what you are,” she said. “But I know what made you.”

“Ah, but do you know what made
you
?” He brought their faces closer still, so close that she could smell the queer, bleached bone odor of his teeth. “Do you remember your own birth? Because I remember mine.”

“Let me go.”

He turned her again so she faced Chopper. Chopper, whose face had never changed, who had never lowered his gun.

“What will you do now, little animal?” Gibbet whispered in her ear. “Claw me? Bite me?”

“
This
,” Annie said, and brought her bare heel back as hard
as she could into his shin. Gibbet yelped and doubled over. She jerked free and ran pell-mell toward the white flag.

“Move aside, dear. I need to wrap her up.” Serena stood over Annie and Page with a stack of clean bandages in her hands.

“She's so pale. Even her lips.”

“Yes.” Serena tried to smile but couldn't quite manage it. “Annie, she has lost a terrible amount of blood.”

“But you closed the wound!”

“I closed it too late.”

Bea took Annie's hand in hers. “We don't know that for certain, Serena.”

“Bea, look at her! Already a ghost. It's wrong to give the child false hope.”

“We haven't tried everything yet.”

“What else? What haven't you tried?” Annie clutched Bea's hand so tightly she winced.

“There is one thing—,” Beatrice began, but Serena cut her off furiously.

“I know what you're thinking, and I won't!” She turned to Annie. “Bea's mad. She means for me to do a transfusion.”

“You've done it before,” Bea said, “at the medical college.”

“A lifetime ago! And there were a dozen doctors standing by to help.”

“I'll help you,” Beatrice said. Then her eyes widened.

Fristi stood inside the tent. “We await your orders, Scion.”

“I have no orders for you!” Annie shouted. “Whatever you
think about me is wrong. Please, just leave me alone!” She glanced desperately at Page.

“You fear for the girl?” Fristi asked.

“My sister. Yes, I fear for her!”

“She is not your sister,” the wolf said matter-of-factly. Then just as matter-of-factly, “What does she need?”

“Blood.”

Fristi disappeared without another word. Annie stared after her from the tent's entrance. The battle had ended. Men and wolves searched the field for their wounded. A captain from the king's army kept guard over Chopper and Gibbet. Chopper stood stoically as ever, but Gibbet snarled something at Fristi as she ran past.

Fristi returned with a legion of wolves behind her. In their midst, looking determined and afraid, came the king.

“Miss Trewitt! The kinder … the wolves. I cannot understand what they want. Where is Page? Is her condition improved? What is happening?” Without waiting for an answer he pushed past her into the tent. At the sight of Page he cried out as if in pain.

“She needs blood,” Beatrice said quickly, “a transfusion.”

“Then you must perform one.” Already the king was shrugging out of his embroidered coat and vest and unbuttoning the layers of silk underwear he wore beneath them. The scars on his face and neck where Annie had attacked him showed plainly. Beatrice and Serena gaped at him.

“Your Highness, do you mean … do you wish for us to operate on you?” Serena stammered.

“I do not wish it. I order it,” said the king. Then he bowed
once with great formality, legs straight, back flat as a table, and lay down on the blankets beside Page.

Fur grazed Annie's hand. “Scion, do not weep. Come with us.”

Wolves surrounded her. They crowded the tent, pressing against Annie until she lost her balance. They caught her, as they had that night outside the palace gates, and bore her from the tent.

“Page!” Annie cried. “Page!”

But the wolves were carrying her farther and farther from the tent and the people inside it. She let her head fall back and saw two small shapes traveling through the branches above, orange and striped brown. A cry came from the tent. Or perhaps they were too far away. Perhaps it was only a bird.

At last she slept. The wolves moved gracefully beneath her, passing the burden between them without waking her.

There was a draft. A very cold, persistent draft, the kind that would have Aunt Prim reciting from one of her favorite lists.
Ailments Induced as a Consequence of Malignant Breezes: Gout! Dyspepsia! Shrunken extremities! Sluggish bile!

Annie tucked up her legs and nestled closer to the cats. If she didn't open her eyes, or listen very carefully, or smell anything, she could imagine they were back on the old straw mattress in the garret.
I had the strangest dream
, she would tell the cats, but they would lose patience halfway through and demand to be let out the window. Even now, she could feel Izzy stretch in a way that meant the warm lump of cat attached to her rib cage would soon become a fidgety cat intent on breakfast.

The floor beneath her felt cold and slightly damp. Stone. Water dripped nearby. Farther off she could hear the shushing of an underground river. The air smelled of salt and smoke and the light green, split-wood scent particular to Dour County.

Annie sat up. She was not alone. She pivoted slowly, peering
in every direction. She was staring toward the back of the cave, staring toward nothing, when whiskers brushed her cheek. Then breath, hot as an oven. Annie turned her head and looked directly into the wolf's eyes. The gaze was serene, gentle even, but the animal was huge, bigger than Sharta, bigger even than Rinka. Her coat was coal black except for a diamond-shaped patch of white on the breast. Her voice sounded like the wind in the pines, whispery but strong.

“I am glad to see you awake. Welcome to Finisterre.”

Annie cleared her throat to dislodge the first word, but still her voice came out a squeak.

“Where is my sister?”

“Page is well.”

Annie blinked, startled. “Is she here?”

“She is with the king.”

The wolf looked at Annie with a tenderness that made something in her memory groan and shift, something she had not thought of for years.

“Come with me,” the wolf said. Annie followed her through a passage at the back of the cave. The space was so narrow she had to crawl on all fours to fit through. Light spilled through an opening ahead of her. The light was bright but soft, softer than sunlight.

The passage opened onto a ledge overlooking a vast, brilliant cavern. White light glowed from the vaulted ceiling and from every wall, and even from the ledge under Annie's feet. The cavern was perhaps a hundred feet across, the vault at least as high from where Annie stood and many hundreds of
feet deep. All of it, every inch, was covered in white ringstone. Annie peered over the ledge. Far, far below, she could see the white walls disappear into the dark mottled surface of the sea.

“Is this the moon?” Annie asked, and blushed. It was a foolish question.

But the wolf answered her seriously. “This is how I imagine it, also. You see the roof's reflection on the water?”

Annie ran her fingers over a pattern of gashes in the stone close to where they stood. They looked like claw marks. She took the ringstone from the hem of her skirt and showed it to the wolf.

“Gibbet has been here. He gave my uncle a ringstone cut from this cave.”

The wolf shook her head. “Gibbet has never been here, but you are right about the stone. Let us go make ourselves comfortable. Then I will tell you a story.”

The cats were waiting for them at the front of the cave. To Annie's surprise, they greeted the wolf like an old friend. It gave her a strange feeling to see Izzy rub against the wolf's legs.

“It was you on the road to Magnifica, wasn't it?” Annie asked.

“It was. We had come to bring you home, only you turned out to be a very fast runner.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Helia. I was Sharta's mate.”

“I'm sorry he died.”

“I am glad you buried him. Wolves don't bury their dead, but this was fitting. Perhaps you can take me to visit his grave someday. You and Page could take me.”

Annie's pulse thudded in her ears. “What do you mean?” she whispered.

The wolf sighed and lay down. She rested her chin on her crossed paws. “I'm sorry. I should be more direct. I have never had a conversation like this before.” She paused. “I will start at the beginning. Do you remember the first child whose name Primrose wrote in her big book, the first child taken by the kinderstalk?”

How did this wolf know about her aunt's book? But Annie answered, because she did remember. “Phoebe Tamburlaine. But the kinderstalk didn't take her. Gibbet took all those children to work at the Drop. Their parents sold them.”

“The kinderstalk did take Phoebe. We took her.”

“You killed her?”

“No, but it nearly came to that. The wolves have been hungry for a long time, as long as I can remember, as long as my mother and her mother could remember. Once our territory covered all of Howland. There was plenty of game, plenty of space to roam, and then—”

“They dug the first mine. Page showed me on the map.”

“Yes. So here we are squeezed into our little corner of the world, and there isn't enough room for us all, and everyone is very hungry. You can imagine the fights.”

“Fights over food?”

“Over humans, mostly, and whether to hunt them for food.

Sharta and I said no, other wolves said yes.” Helia gave a toothy smile. “There were times I considered it, believe me. But if we hunted humans, surely they would hunt us back? Besides, the people of Dour County had never done us any particular harm. It seemed … unfair.” Helia looked up. “Won't you sit down?”

Annie had been standing rather stiffly, as though prepared to run at a moment's notice. She made herself sit. Prudence lay across her lap like an anchor.

Helia went on. “The child, Phoebe, was left outside after dark. What the parents intended, whether it was a mistake, I don't know. A group of us were out hunting, as usual. We caught rats around the farms. From time to time we'd find a stray chicken. But that night we found her. She was so tiny, I remember, all white and gold, like an aster.

“A wolf caught her by the ankle. I told him to let her go. He refused. We fought, and I killed him. I fled with the child.

“Sharta was furious when he learned what I had done. No wolf could excuse the killing of another wolf to protect a human child. There were so many humans and so few of us. At the time, our only thought was to run. But run where? Perhaps Sharta acted too quickly. Perhaps the pack would have let us live. I don't know.

“A witch lives in these woods, an ancient, evil thing. Sharta asked her to cast a changing spell. We thought we could hide in the form of another animal.” She smiled grimly. “A fox, we thought, or a bear. Of course, she wanted payment.”

“The white ringstone,” Annie said.

“She asked many questions about the ringstone, how
much there was and whether it was good quality, but she refused to enter the cavern.”

“What about the claw marks I saw on the wall?” Annie asked.

“That was the strangest part of all. She crouched outside the entrance with her cloak pulled tight all around her, then reached one hand in and tore a handful of stone right from the wall. When she touched the stone it seemed to hurt her, like a burn.” Helia paused. “We should never have let her take the stone.”