Echo North(24)

My head spun. I collapsed onto the floor, succumbing to the pain.

A breath of wind passed over me. I peered up to see the wolf bowing before a man who seemed to have wings growing out of his shoulders.

And then the man was kneeling over me. His wings wrapped around me, his fingers brushed whisper soft over my wounds. The cool sensation of magic buzzed under my skin. The pain faded.

“Sleep, dear one,” he said. “Until we meet again.”

My mind floated away from my body.

I slept.



WHEN I WOKE IT WAS morning and I was back in bed, Rodya’s pendant tickling once more against my heart. The wolf slumbered down on the floor, bathed in a circle of sunlight from the window. I watched his chest rise and fall.

He must have sensed my gaze, for he opened one amber eye, and then the other. “Good morning, Echo.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up in bed, remnants of my encounter with the wood coming back to me like tatters of faded dreams. “How long have I been sleeping?”

“Only since yesterday afternoon.”

That was a relief. “What was that place?”

He stood and stretched, back legs first, then front ones. “The Temple of the Winds. We are lucky one of them was near; they are not always. They have many things to attend to. The temple itself is not always there—it exists apart from the … collection. It is ancient. Nearly as ancient as the world itself.”

“Was that … was that the gatekeeper? The North Wind?” I couldn’t quite reconcile the angry force under the hill with warm wings and whispering magic.

“The North Wind does not properly exist anymore. His power was unbound from him long ago. That was the West Wind.”

“Old magic,” I said softly.

The wolf nodded. “The Winds command some of the oldest magic there is.”

I brushed my fingers over my newly healed skin, then reached up to touch my scars. I wished the Winds had been there that day in the field so many years ago. “I’m sorry,” I told the wolf. “I shouldn’t have tried to leave.”

“I am sorry, too. I am afraid you are stuck here, my lady, until the year runs its course and the power in the wood fades along with me.” His eyes blazed bright.

His words echoed in my mind: I am old, my lady. I am dying.

I thought about the strange spidery clock in the bauble room, and wondered if it was ticking down the remainder of the wolf’s life. “Thank you. For saving me from the wood.”

He dipped his muzzle. “You are welcome.”

For the first time, I wondered if there was a way to save him.

And I realized I wanted to find it.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

I GOT DRESSED BEHIND A SCREEN that appeared when I asked for it, in a cloud-soft blue gown I pulled out of the wardrobe. It had satin ribbons tying up the cuffs, and embroidered silver birds around the waistline in an unbroken circle of wide wings.

“Come,” said the wolf, when I was dressed and had eaten my breakfast of nut bread with sliced pears and spicy orange peel jam. “I will take you on a proper tour of the house, or at least as much as we can manage in one day.” He paused at the door and cast a glance at my dressing table, where I’d laid the braided belt and pouch. “You will need your tools.”

I put the belt on and followed the wolf into the corridor.

“Think of the house as a quilt, the rooms as patches,” he told me as we went along. “There are two kinds of bindings: the kind we did yesterday, to keep whatever is in a room in, and the kind that keeps all the rooms bound to the house. Those bindings rarely fail, but they can unravel, and so must be checked regularly.”

We walked down a stone hallway, sapphires gleaming from inside the rock, and came to the door I had bound the day before. The fire crackled noisily behind it, but I tugged on the mended scarlet cords, and they held firm. The wolf gave me a nod of satisfaction, and I swelled with pride.

We walked along a grassy hallway and stopped at all the doors that lined it. One was carved with the image of a flower; another, a spider; another, a bear. To my surprise, the wolf told me to open the spider door.

Inside was a vast hall, overgrown with moss, sunlight streaming in through a tall, broken window. Silver spiders the size of my palm were gathering the sunlight and spinning it into elaborate webs that hung all around the room. In one corner sat a spinning wheel and a basket heaped with empty spools. I gaped, awed. The whole place buzzed with magic.

“The spiders make the binding thread,” said the wolf, with a toothy smile. “Sometimes you can convince them to wind the spools for you, too, but it makes them a little cross, so mostly you have to do it yourself.”

“How often does the thread run out?” I asked.

“Sometimes every day. Sometimes once a year. It depends.”

“On what?”

“How the house is feeling,” said the wolf, as if that were obvious.

I shook my head in bewilderment, and we went on to the bear door. That room contained, unbelievably, the inside of a huge circus tent, where a trio of white bears sang a sort of song in strange throaty voices.

“I like to bring them honey every day or so,” said the wolf. “It soothes their throats.”

I stared. “Do they do anything besides sing?”

“Not really.”