Echo North(23)

I took a breath, and opened the door.

Blackness enveloped me. “Let me through,” I whispered, in case the house held any sway down here. “Let me through.”

Wind raged around me, whipping through my skirt, clawing at my hair. I could feel its power, its anger. But I could feel its sorrow, too. Icy claws scraped my neck, thorny fingers grasped my ankles, dragging me down, down. An invisible weight crushed my lungs, swallowing my breath away. I thought of the girl in the story. “By the laws of the old magic,” I gasped, “let me through, let me through.”

A high mournful shriek echoed in my ears. The weight on my chest lifted. Gentle hands steered me through the darkness, and then I was tumbling through trailing vines, out into the sunlight.

I blinked up at the sky, scrambling away from the hill, toward the wood. I looked back, something in me wrenching at the thought of leaving the wolf there, alone forever. You could go back to him, said a voice in my mind, when you’ve told your father you are safe.

But I knew I wouldn’t. Whatever I’d thought connected me and the wolf didn’t really exist.

And yet.

I stood there longer than I meant to, torn between the wolf and my father.

But at last I forced myself into the wood.

It was perfectly ordinary, at first. Leaves crunched under my feet, the wind blew cold and smelled of damp earth. There were no animals, no birds. Just me and the trees. Rodya’s pendant thumped against my chest, the ticking of the clock speeding up suddenly before stopping dead. Its silence was deafening. Ominous.

I tramped on as the shadows lengthened and the light began to fail, pushing away my uneasiness, telling myself I was almost through, almost home with my father again, even though I knew that was impossible—the wolf and I had been trapped there two weeks, my father longer.

I tried not to think of the girl in the story, of the thorny creatures and the cruel queen. I tried not to think of the wolf, of how angry he would be when he discovered I was gone.

I tried not to dwell on the possibility that I had made a terrible mistake, coming here.

Ahead of me, the trees began to rustle, even though there was no wind. Their bare branches twined together, twisting down over the path and blocking my way.

I turned right, walking faster.

The trees moaned, their voices deep and horrible, like strings ripped from cellos, or trod under boots.

I broke into a run, my heart slamming into my rib cage, one hand holding tight to the compass-watch. I ducked underneath hanging branches that tore at my clothes, trying to catch me, hold me, but I tore free.

All around, the trees bowed low, knotting their branches together, cutting off my path.

And suddenly there was nowhere left to run.

A sapling sprang out of the ground and reached its twiggy fingers toward me, pinning my ankles and wrists, cinching tight around my chest. It stabbed toward my throat but I wrenched my head to the side, screaming.

More branches wrapped round me, until I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. They dragged me down and down, into smothering blackness, and I was swallowed by the wood into the dark of the earth.

Spots swam before my eyes. My life slipped away.

My father would never find me. Never know what had happened.

And then, heat, pressing in. A sudden thrust upward, the binding branches falling free.

I collapsed on the ground, gasping, so much grit in my eyes I couldn’t see.

Fire raged round me.

Smoke crawled high.

And the wolf was there, white against the flame, a torch gripped in his teeth.

The wood shrank back from him, screaming.

I reached out for the wolf; my fingers grasped his fur, locked around his neck.

He dropped the torch.

And then we were hurtling through the wood for the second time in as many days, me clinging to his back, shutting my eyes against the horror, against the dark.

He had found me. Somehow, the wolf had found me.

He carried me through the meadow and into the hill, past the gatekeeper and into the house. Up to the bedroom behind the red door.

I collapsed onto the bed, dirt and leaves falling black on the sheets, blood smearing red. I sobbed into the pillows, sobbed and sobbed. I couldn’t stop. But it wasn’t because of the pain raging in every part of me.

The wolf climbed up beside me, rested his head next to mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

But he blew a breath of warm air into my ear and said, “Dear one, do not be sorry.”



“ECHO. ECHO.”

I swam back to consciousness. Pain seared from every point in my skin; my vision was blurred and too bright. Some part of me realized that the wolf had never said my name before. I liked the sound of it in his gruff voice.

“You’re bleeding, Echo. We need to see to your wounds. You have to come with me.”

Somehow I pulled myself up, half falling out of the bed and leaning heavily against him. My blood seeped into his fur. Blackness threatened to overwhelm me.

“Stay with me. Just a little further.”

Down the hall, through a carved stone doorway, into a cavernous, echoing chamber. I had the dim impression of pillars and arches, silver light flooding through a wide window, a chaos of wheeling stars beyond. There was a sensation of peace and stillness, solemnity and great age. And underneath it all a feeling of tremendous power.