Metro Winds (38 page)

‘I was frightened out of my wits when I saw her, but I don't think she wanted to hurt me,' I told him. ‘I think now that she was trying to get me back to the path and away from the black strangler trees growing around the pool. She stopped coming towards me the moment I was standing on the path.'

‘It was because you were on the path that she had to stop,' my husband had corrected me, shaking me a little. ‘All of the wolves in the valley are ferociously wild. You saw that for yourself. They would have killed you if I had not distracted them so that you could get to the cave.'

I was not convinced, but now I was distracted by the memory of my astonishment when an enormous red bird appeared just as the wolf pack surrounded me. To my horror, the big grey wolf that was their leader had stepped right onto the path, which, until that moment, all of the wolves had seemed scrupulously to avoid. It was not until later I worked out that the path repelled the wolves only in daylight hours. The red bird had uttered a piercing scream and dropped towards the leader of the pack, talons outstretched, and the wolves had scattered. After a frozen moment, I had seen my chance and darted for the mouth of a cave.

‘I did not see a black she-wolf among the others,' I finally told my husband.

‘Because she was not black,' he answered indulgently. ‘She was a grey wolf you thought to be black who would have killed and eaten you with relish had she thought she could manage it alone, my pretty morsel.' He slid his hands down my back and cupped my buttocks, and when his lips claimed mine again, I had forgotten about the black she-wolf.

My needle is still for a moment as I remember how it was to be held and cupped and pressed by hands that seemed as if they could never get enough of me. And yet they had ceased to want me. Was I no longer desirable because I had become a mother, or was it because I was human and ageing, if slowly, that caused my husband to turn from me? Or had the chemistry between us faded in the face of our son's affliction? Perhaps all of those things had eroded the lustre of our desire. I resume my sewing, thinking that perhaps it is that the ways and paths to the body are closed one by one, by many things, and all without a person noticing, until a day comes when you discover there is no longer any gateway to the flesh.

I sighed and let my thoughts return to the moment I had entered the cave.

It was pitch dark when I remembered, with a burst of relief, the lighter the old woman had given me. I dug frantically in my pocket until my fingers found it. To my astonishment, when I pulled it out and flicked its flame to life, I found that it was not the cheap disposable lighter the old beggar woman had given me, but a heavy, beautifully engraved silver lighter. How had I not noticed that, I wondered incredulously.

There was no time to ponder it, for I knew it would not be long before the wolves came into the cave after me, and there was nothing I could use to bar the entrance or use as a barrier. The only possibility of safety lay in getting to high ground. Holding the lighter high, I saw a ledge jutting out some way up the side of the cave. I went to the wall beneath it and studied it intensely for a moment, then I extinguished the flame and thrust the lighter in my pocket.

I began to climb in utter darkness, feeling for the nubs and niches I had seen and praying I was not veering away from the ledge. I had not been climbing for more than a minute when I heard the wolves enter the cave. One of them gave a growling snarl, and when I heard it running towards me, I nearly fell from sheer fright. I froze and heard it leap and then fall back with a yelp to scrabble at the face of the rock beneath me. Only then did I know I had climbed high enough to be safe, though not by much, for I had felt the heat of its breath on my ankles. Forcing myself to be calm, I continued to climb slowly and very carefully. It seemed to take forever before I felt the ledge above me and, with a sob of hysterical relief, dragged myself up onto it. I lay there gasping and trembling for a long time before I could bring myself to sit up. Moving so that my back was against the wall, I prayed the wolves had gone, but one flick of the lighter was enough to disabuse me of that fantasy. The pack sat below the ledge, staring up at me with sullen red eyes. I spent an utterly terrifying night on my narrow ledge in the darkness with the smell of wolf all about me, and the knowledge that, if I slept, I would likely roll into the maws of the waiting pack.

Whenever I felt myself drifting off, I would flick the lighter flame on. One glimpse of the vigilant wolves was enough to bring me wide awake, heart banging at my ribs. Yet despite that, I did fall asleep ere morning, and woke with a terrified start only to find that the pale limoncello sunlight of the very early morning lay across the sandy floor of the cave. There was no sign of the wolves save for their criss-crossing spoors, but it took me another hour to get up courage enough to climb down and go outside.

The clearing where the red bird had appeared overhead was empty and wet with dew, which glistened like diamonds scattered on every leaf and blade of grass. It was beautiful, but aside from drinking my fill from a small stream beside the cave and filling the empty water bottle I had in the bottom of my book bag, I felt no urge to linger. I hurried to the path. A long red feather was lying on it and I took it up reverently to marvel at its beauty. That was when it came to me that the path would keep me safe so long as the sun was in the sky. Only later did I understand that the feather had imparted that knowledge. Another of my mother-in-law's clever refinements.

Slipping the feather into my coat pocket, I set off briskly along the path. I paid no heed to the rational part of my mind that insisted a path could not protect a walker, because neither could a valley and a forest be contained within a wall on a mud island in the midst of a city, but here I was. Too many impossible things had happened for me to feel anything was impossible, save perhaps finding a way back to normality.

I kept up a good pace to begin with, but by late morning I was flagging badly. Aside from the fact that I had hardly slept the previous night, my shoes were beginning to disintegrate and I had fallen twice, grazing my knees badly both times. By midday I was so sleepy that I could scarcely keep my eyes open, so when I came to a grassy sunlit clearing, I simply lay down on the path, rested my head on my arms and slept. I had thought dimly that I would not sleep long lying on the hard ground, but I had not taken into account my exhaustion. When I woke I was horrified to find the shadows of the trees around the clearing had grown long and thin. I had slept for hours, and the sun was barely high enough to show above the tops of the trees.

Certain the pack of wolves had not done with me, I scrambled to my feet, wincing at the pain in my knees, and set off at a limping trot, praying I would find another cave or, better still, a house or settlement of some kind before darkness fell. But an hour later, I was still on a path surrounded by trees when I heard the distant howl of a wolf. I began to run, convinced the pack was beginning to assemble for the chase. Soon after, the ground began to rise once more, and as the slope grew steeper, I slipped time and again on the loose scree, opening up the grazes on both knees. Mopping at the blood trickling from the cuts, I was horrified to think of the scent trail I was leaving for the wolves, but I told myself that the steepness of the terrain gave me a better chance of finding another cave.

It was nearing sunset when I reached the top of the hill I had been climbing. I was bitterly disappointed to find that the trees were simply too thick to let me see clearly in any direction. Nor had I seen any cave. I felt like sitting down and weeping, but despair turned to terror when I heard a wolf howl again and the answering howls of other wolves, nearer to one another and to me than the wolf I had heard earlier. I got to my feet, quaking with fear, knowing the only other way I could protect myself was with fire. As swiftly as I could I began collecting dried twigs and branches and piling them up in front of a tree growing at the edge of the path. Once I had amassed a pile, I set a few strong limbs aside and then pushed a tissue from my bag in amongst a cluster of twigs on the heap. I took out the heavy, beautiful lighter and stared at it for a moment in wonder, but another howl made me glance up to see that the sun was minutes from setting.

I flicked the lighter and there was a little flare of brightness as the tissue went up, then the wood began to crackle. I unscrewed the nub at the end of the lighter and tipped a little of the fluid onto the end of one of the branches I had set to one side, then I screwed the nub back into place and held the branch into the flames. The glistening bark caught alight with a roar and a rush of heat, and not a moment too soon, for its light flared in not one, but many pairs of eyes, all red as the setting sun, malevolent and hungry, not cool and watchful as the silvery eyes of the black wolf had been.

I had built the fire in front of me, keeping the tree at my back, but I knew that I was vulnerable to attack from the sides. I meant to use the burning brand to protect my flank, but what if they attacked from both sides at once? The answer was all too obvious. For a moment a fury swept through me at the thought that I might die in such a stupid impossible way, and I brandished the burning branch and shouted, ‘Go away! I will not let you eat me! You'll burn if you try!'

The red eyes continued to watch me, and seeing that the branch I was holding was beginning to fail, I bent down, never taking my eyes from the wolves. I groped quickly on the pile beside me for another branch, not daring to set down the one I held to pour more lighter fluid onto its replacement, but fortunately the second branch caught obligingly. I risked a glance at the pile of spare firewood and reckoned I had twenty minutes at best before the fire began to die. That was why the wolves had not tried to attack, I thought with a chill. They were waiting for the fire to go out.

In that moment, I knew I would die if I did nothing but wait. It occurred to me sickeningly that as well as giving off the smell of blood, I was probably stinking of fear.

There was only one thing to do. As surreptitiously as I could, I gathered up the remaining wood and then let it fall onto the fire in one armful. Then I hurled my burning brand towards the enormous wolf I had identified as the alpha male and turned to scramble up the tree. The fire gave a great whoosh and blazed up as I had hoped, but the leader of the pack must have realised what I meant to do and he leapt at me. The flames were too high and he gave a yelp as fire licked his flank. Then he was howling and rolling to quench his burning hide.

I had managed to reach the first branch and I glanced down to see the leader of the wolf pack glaring up at me with undisguised hatred. I climbed up to the next branch, realising that when the fire died completely, they would be able to get closer to the tree and jump higher.

When I reckoned myself high enough to be out of reach, I stopped, clinging to the trunk of the tree and gasping, unable to see anything below because smoke from the dying fire was billowing up and my eyes were streaming.

My husband told me later that he had been perched in a nearby tree as the red bird, poised to rescue me if I needed it. He had not intervened because, by managing alone, I was bringing potency and endurance to the princess spell.

‘So you were only to intervene if I was in danger of dying?' I had asked. ‘That's why you didn't fly at the wolves when they came upon me the first time, outside the cave?' We had been walking in the garden on the night after our wedding.

He nodded and said soberly, ‘It was hard to see your fear and do nothing.'

Remembering the soft gravity of those words, it comes to my mind as I thread my needle with celadon green silk, that if my son fails this last test, and all vestiges of what he was and what he might have been are fled, he will be wholly wild and it may be kinder to allow him to remain in the Wolfsgate Valley, to find whatever destiny he can as a wolf, rather than keeping him chained within the palace grounds. Perhaps he will join the pack. It would be a fine irony if he joined the wolves that had tried so hard to kill his mother.