Echo North(64)

It doesn’t snow that first day, and the heat of the pony radiates through my legs and up my spine so I stay quite warm, though my nose tingles in the sharp air. I’m glad for the mittens, keeping my fingers from frostbite.

We walk awhile, to give the ponies some relief, leading them behind us in the white crust of yesterday’s snow. The sky ahead begins to redden, and Ivan calls back to me that we should make camp for the night.

We have made it almost to the shadow of the mountain range, and Ivan unfolds the tent from its bundle. I help him set it up, holding the poles while he adjusts the skins and drives stakes into the hard ground. Then he makes a fire, a little away from the tent, and I unpack salted meat, traveler’s bread, and tea.

The fire crackles red, warming our faces as we sit and eat in companionable silence. The ponies eat nosebags of grain. I feel weary and anxious, but glad I am finally on my way to Hal, on my way to atone for my mistake.

“It won’t be as easy, from here.” Ivan sips tea from a tin cup. “It is a long, hard road. I want to be sure you are ready to face it. I would not speak so in front of Isidor, but no mortal who has traveled more than a day or two north of the village has ever returned. Are you certain you want to walk this road?”

I don’t even have to shut my eyes to see Hal standing in the snow, his face tight with terror. “I am certain.”

Ivan doesn’t ask me again.

We sleep in the tent, on either side of the center pole. I wear my coat, and burrow beneath the other furs. I dream of Hal sobbing in the dark, of Mokosh with a crown in her hair. Of a forest of thorns, growing up around the reindeer tent, trapping Satu and Isidor inside. The Wolf Queen laughs. “I told you to turn back, but you did not listen.”

Hal marries Mokosh in the wood. They sit together on silver thrones, and the trees bend to their will.

But his eyes are empty.



WE REACH THE MOUNTAINS, AND climb them. The trails we blaze through rocks and ice and snow are too steep for the ponies to navigate with us on their backs. So we lead them, Ivan first with his pony, me after with mine. The wind bites sharp, spitting ice into our faces, and it’s only the climb that keeps me warm.

Ivan sings as he ascends the mountain, and snatches of his music come back to me with the ice on the wind. It’s a beautiful melody, haunting and sad, and I wonder that he has the breath to spare for it. I don’t want him to ever stop—it drowns out the sound of the Wolf Queen’s ever-present laughter.

We camp at the top of the peak in a little half-cave formed of jumbled rocks. There is enough space to light a fire, the smoke curling through a crack at the top, and we do not have to set up our tent.

The ponies graze outside, nosing bits of scrub out from under the snow. I unpack today’s rations while Ivan hangs a kettle over the fire for tea. It is only our second evening, but already there is a rhythm to it: the kettle starts to boil as I lay out salted meat on tin plates; Ivan puts another log on the fire and then settles across from me. I hand him his food and he chews, thoughtfully, as if he’s in another world.

“There is another story-thread about the Wolf Queen that perhaps you ought to hear,” says Ivan.

I’m chewing on my own meat, and I nod for him to tell me.

His voice takes on the cadence of a song, like his melody climbing the mountain today. “In the Wolf Queen’s court time passes differently. There are many tales of men and women coming into the Queen’s realm, spending what they think is an evening there, and returning to the outside world to find a hundred years have passed. Their families are dead and gone. Everything they knew crumbled away into dust. Once you enter, Echo, even if you can save both of you and be free of that place—it could cost you everything.”

His words make my eyes sting, but I tell myself it’s just the smoke from the fire.

My mind crowds with images of my father in his shop, Rodya bent over his work table, Donia with her swollen belly, laughing in the firelight. But there’s Hal, too, fast asleep in the bed, running with me down the hill, plunging into battle at the ball. Standing in the snow as the wolves close in, staring at me, stricken, because of what I’d done.

I turn away so Ivan can’t see that I’m crying.

When I sleep, I dream of my father. His face sags with wrinkles. Spidery veins show blue behind papery skin. He settles at the roots of a huge old tree and slowly turns to dust. The wind blows him away. There is nothing left.

And then the Wolf Queen is there, blood dripping from her teeth. “This is what you wish for. This is what you seek—your father’s death, your family’s hurt. Turn back. I will not warn you again.”

I am raw with aching. “I’m coming to save Hal. You can’t stop me.”

“The way is long and treacherous. You will be sorry.”

“But still I will come.”

She hisses at me. I am left to watch Hal, sitting on his silver throne. Vines grow up, twist around him. They cover all his body, twine into his mouth and nose and ears. They leave only his eyes, blue as the sky and just as empty, staring forever into nothing.

I know he is already dead.

In the morning, we scatter the ashes of our fire and start down the mountain.

Still no snow, but the trail is even more treacherous winding down. I slip on loose gravel and bits of ice and scree more than once. I tear a hole in my jacket, but Ivan says he’s packed a sewing kit, so I’ll be able to stitch it shut. The ponies stumble, too, but somehow they keep their footing. Ivan sings again, his voice rich and thick as honey, banishing the Wolf Queen’s laughter to the back of my mind.