Metro Winds (37 page)

After dusting myself off and gathering my wits as best I could, I set off for the rise I could see, but the ground sloped down and I soon lost sight of it. I walked for half an hour using the position of the sun to keep a straight course, trying to figure out what had happened. It was impossible that this wilderness was on an island in the midst of a city. No, somehow I was somewhere else. The only thing I could imagine was that the man, Ranulf, who had given me the stone circlet, found me unconscious at the bottom of the cliff and carried me in a boat to some remote place on the mainland.

It made no sense and yet there was no other explanation.

I noticed that the carved ring had grown tight about my upper arm and I was about to ease it down when I noticed a small track winding through the trees to my right. My heart leapt, for a path meant people and I set off at once upon it. Gradually it wended its way up into a dense copse of trees and though there was no sign of human habitation, it curved in the direction I had originally intended to go, and I felt sure that it would eventually bring me to the bare hill I had seen that would offer a better vantage point from which to study the terrain.

Half an hour later, I spotted a small clearing a little way down one side of the ridge, where there was a rough hut. A subsidiary path split off and ran down to the hut, which seemed as picturesque as an illustration in a children's book as I drew closer. Then I saw a man sitting on a stool by the door, whetting the edge of an axe. This sight was alarming enough that I hesitated, but feeling sure he had already noticed me, I did not feel I could turn tail like a frightened rabbit, so after a slight pause, I continued on. When I came to a halt, I saw the whetting stone still a moment as the old man looked at me, then he went calmly on with his work.

The sound of the stone on the metal set my teeth on edge, but I was in no position to be finicky. ‘Excuse me, but I am lost,' I said. ‘I wonder if you have a map and could show me where I am.'

He scowled at me, or maybe it was a smile. It was hard to tell in a face so seamed and leathery and sprouting great feathery tufts of hair from incongruous parts. It occurred to me belatedly that he might not understand English, so haltingly I began to translate my request into the language of the land, but the man wagged his head and said something to me in words that, if they bore any relationship to the language I had just spoken, must be distant. A dialect, I told myself, dismayed. But I smiled reassuringly and tried to convey by hand motions and mime that I needed to find a way out of the wilderness. The man looked suspicious and even offended as I persisted, my cheeks growing redder and redder, but suddenly he laughed uproariously.

Completely taken aback, I stopped and watched him bellow and rock and slap his knee until his mirth had run its course. Then he pointed to me and to a path that ran away from the clearing towards a heavily wooded hill. I tried to ask if the path led to a village, but the best I could get from him was that I must go that way and that I should not stray from the path. He made the latter very clear. I mimed that I was thirsty and hungry, but he shook his head sternly and showed three fingers to me. Then he pointed along the path again. I took the show of fingers to mean I must walk three kilometres to find what I needed, for surely he would not send me off on a three-hour walk without water. In any case there was nothing to do but to go on, since I had no means of making him give me water or food and he was clearly waiting for me to leave.

Mistaking my hesitation for incomprehension, he again pointed insistently along the path and shook three fingers in my face. I nodded wearily and trudged off, consoling myself that it would be better anyway to find a place where I could beg a bed for the night, as it was growing late.

By now I had given up all hope of trying to make any sense of what was happening to me. I must go through it, that was all, and when I came to the end of whatever it was, I would understand it. There were times in life when that was the only thing you could do. The affair with the married man had been just such a thing; an inexplicable and inescapable folly, seen as such only from without. Sometimes you simply could not see properly when you were in the middle of something, no matter how clear-headed and certain you were.

The path narrowed to a mere track as it wound among the trees, which were thick enough that the path grew quite dark in places, certainly dark enough for me to have to slow down to be sure I had not strayed from it. The old man's stern warning had impressed me, and now I thought I understood his insistence. He had been trying to tell me that I must not leave the path lest I lose sight of it and become irrevocably lost. I was uneasily conscious, too, that the day was steadily but surely drawing to a close. Whether or not I had reached a village, I would have to stop once it became too dark to see.

I was terribly thirsty by now, for I had drunk nothing since I had left the pension to seek out the library. Was it really possible this was the same day? If only I could find a stream, but I dared not leave the path. In faerie stories, the worst thing anyone could ever do was to leave the path. A path was like a clear intention that must be followed, but there were always other tempting possibilities trying to draw the hero or heroine away from their original pure purpose.

But I am not a heroine in a story, I thought. I am a historian and the daughter of two pragmatic parents who disliked imaginary games and thought imaginary stories the province of the foolish and uneducated. And I am thirsty. As if conjured by my desire, I saw a gleaming pool of water in a little clearing only two or three steps from the path. Head pounding with thirst, I hurried to the edge and flung myself down on my belly to drink. The water was ice cold and very pure. I drank until my belly ached and then I lifted my head to gasp a breath and saw it: a coal-black wolf sitting on the other side of the pool watching me with eyes that shone like mercury.

I froze, water dripping from my chin and the ends of my hair, but I could not push them back or mop my face without moving, for I was still kneeling forward, resting on my hands. On all fours, I thought, wildly. I could feel gooseflesh rising over my entire body, even on my scalp. I did not want to be eaten by a wolf. Especially I did not want to be eaten in the middle of an inexplicable adventure so that I would never know how it ended.

Except that I would know exactly how it ended.

It is not the end of the story that matters, I think, my needle darting in and out of the tapestry, but understanding the meaning of it, unless the end is the meaning. The memory of the extreme terror I experienced seeing the black wolf gazing at me is dimmed in my mind for a moment by this thought, by the sense of its importance. Then memory floods back, carrying me with it into the past.

The stone armlet suddenly slipped from where it had been lodged about my upper arm and fell down to give the back of my hand a good hard rap. I bit back a cry of pain, but perhaps I made some involuntary sound, for the black wolf suddenly rose.

I sat back onto my heels, lifting my hands to defend myself. The bracelet fell into the crook of my elbow but I ignored it. My attention was all on the wolf, padding to the side of the pool. It was close enough for me to see that it was a she-wolf, and it struck me there was nothing threatening in her demeanour, save that she had come closer. She had not hunkered down or snarled or shown any sign of aggression and she made no attempt to come around the pool, or gather herself to leap over it.

‘What then?' I croaked.

She stiffened at my voice and lowered her head slightly, but her hackles stayed down and she did not growl. She only went on staring at me intently. I wondered if she could be a tame wolf that belonged to someone who lived along the path. I could not sit there forever, so very slowly I got to my feet. My knees cracked but the she-wolf only followed my movements with her silver eyes. Then she began to pad softly around the pool towards me.

Heart thudding wildly, I took one panicky step back, and then another.

She stopped and sat back on her haunches. I stared at her indecisively, feeling as if I were involved in some complex negotiation whose rules I did not understand, and which might end with me having my throat torn out. Then some impulse made me glance down and I saw that I was back on the path. When I looked up again, the she-wolf had vanished. Mind reeling, I suddenly became aware how dark it was. The trees about the pool seemed closer than they had been and I had not noticed until now how dead and black they were, branches stretching down towards the water like claws.

I shivered and continued along the path, knowing I would not be able to do so for much longer, for once it was dark, I would not be able to see where I was going. I imagined the black wolf shadowing me in the darkness, biding her time, though for what I did not know, since she had already had the perfect opportunity to attack me. My mind felt as unsteady as my legs, yet there was nothing I could do but walk, my eyes fixed on the vanishing track, my ears listening for the sound of paws.

‘A black wolf?' my husband had questioned me later, looking sceptical and amused, and my needle slows as I remember the intimacy of that long-ago conversation.

‘Black and female,' I answered. I was somewhat indignant about his scepticism, given that he was a faerie prince who had been well on his way to turning into a wolf when I wed him. But at the same time I had been distracted by the coolness of his white faerie flesh against which my body seemed to burn like a brand.

‘The wolves of the pack that dwell in the valley are all grey,' he had murmured, taking my fingers from his chest and kissing their tips absentmindedly. ‘Perhaps it looked black in the shadows under the trees. Strange that a female was alone though; the pack usually stays together.'

‘Maybe she was a lone wolf?'

‘Lone wolves are male. More like she had new cubs in a den somewhere close by. You were fortunate she was alone. No wolf will attack a human alone.' Gathering me close, he kissed me on the mouth, and said against my lips, ‘Fortunately I got to you before the pack arrived.'