Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(64)

The taming was complete, but for one small matter.

The vl?ek did not speak, nor did he respond to his name.

It was not that the boy lacked intelligence, even beyond the animal cunning of his wolf kin. He was quick and clever, solving the puzzles and riddles set for him by the priest, following orders, obediently cleaning the small cell in the church he had been given. He was of the age to be taught the alchemy of language and written speech in the local grammar school, and learned his letters competently alongside the other children of the village.

The boy was not dumb. When given leave to explore the village and the edges of the forest beyond, the townsfolk overheard whispered conversations between the vl?ek and the trees, between the boy and the beasts. It was a tongue half remembered by babies and babblers, a curious murmur and chatter understood only by the innocent, the mad, and Mahieu. What was he whispering? they wondered. It sounded like eldritch spells.

Father, Father, they entreated the priest. There is something wrong with the child.

The good Father tried his best to appease his flock but fear, the priest would come to know, was greater than faith.

The boy’s silence was no longer regarded a symptom of a shy, retiring nature; it was the stubbornness of animal cunning. More and more, the villagers became convinced that the vl?ek could speak but wouldn’t; it was in the way those mismatched eyes watched everything and everyone around them. The vl?ek thinks, they would say to one another in the market place. He schemes. He spies.

What secrets do the voiceless keep? Only their own. But the townsfolk were afraid of what the vl?ek knew. The butcher and his mistress, two years younger than his own daughter. The blacksmith’s wife and her stash of stolen sweets, eaten on Lenten Sundays when the pious fasted. The goatherd and the baker, their hearts and lips still warm with the scent of each other’s breaths.

On the day the old year died, the butcher’s mistress was found dead in her bed.

There had been no mark upon her: no gash, no wound, no bruise. She was found blue and glassy, as though winter had turned her to ice from within.

Elf-struck! the villagers cried. The goblins have preyed upon Ludmila in her sleep!

The cold deepened, and with it came other deaths, other betrayals. Jakub the goatherd’s flock went astray, the blacksmith’s tongs turned brittle and broke, and the villagers came to understand that there was something deeply broken with the balance of the world.

It was because they had brought a monster into their midst. Who was the vl?ek? Where had he come from? Stories and rumors began to spread from house to house, tales of a kobold with mismatched eyes that stole trinkets and totems to do its owners mischief and harm.

Could it be, could it be? the townsfolk whispered.

But the vl?ek remained blameless, separate, distant. He went about his day, silent and sure-footed, a ghost among the living.

Then Karolína, the baker’s youngest, became possessed of a demon.

It began with biting pains on her hands and feet. The poor child cried that a wolf was devouring her limbs in her sleep, and she awoke with red, weeping sores and deep, suppurating wounds. Goblin bites, the villagers said, and they sent for the priest for an exorcism.

He came with incense, he came with holy water, and he came with two companions: the vl?ek and Mahieu. But when the wolf-child approached the sickbed, Karolína screamed as though she were being burned at the stake.

It was a sign.

It’s him, it’s him! the villagers cried. He’s the one!

The priest and the villagers began to crowd around the boy, who snarled and dropped to all fours, for he had not yet learned to suffer another’s touch. They came with kettles, they came with pans, and the men outside went in search of pitchforks and shovels, as the cornered vl?ek lashed and kicked out in fear.

It was Mahieu who betrayed them all.

Run, Ka?par! he yelled, leaping forward to shield the villagers from the wolf-child’s snapping white teeth and rolling, panicked eyes. The boy startled at the youth, his one and only friend, then ran, tearing through the crowd before disappearing into the dark beyond.

Torches sprang to life, voices were raised in eager shouts, as the fever of the hunt spread through the town like a plague, like a wildfire. While little Karolína wailed on in pain and fear, her mother and father, the priest and the mayor, the butcher and blacksmith gathered their tools as weapons and went in search of the wolf-boy.

Kill him, kill him! they chanted. De-mon! De-mon!

Mahieu knew where the vl?ek would go, and did not follow the others into the night. Instead he ran toward the church, toward the cemetery, toward the crypts, where a lost little boy might hide in the dark with the dead, the only humans who never asked him to speak.

Inside, Mahieu found the wolf-child hunched amidst a pile of rags, a collection of odds and ends and secrets stolen from the villagers. A little blue glass vial, the shards of a shattered sword, a goatherd’s bell, last seen draped about the neck of Jakub’s prize billy.

“Oh, Ka?par,” Mahieu said.

The vl?ek looked at him, stubbornness writ in his gaze. He knew Mahieu was calling him, but refused to respond.

“Ka?par,” Mahieu repeated, fighting against the panic rising with him. “Please. We must flee.”

The wolf-child growled.

Faithful Mahieu, blessed by God to commune with bird and beast, could not find the words to reach this boy, half wild, half tame.

“I know it is not your name,” he whispered to the vl?ek. “But until you give it to me, I cannot call you home.”