Echo North(81)

I lift my head.

The Wolf Queen’s hall has vanished, along with the sea of people on their dead thrones. We stand in a quiet patch of forest overshadowed with stars.

In the Wolf Queen’s place crouches a small silver wolf. She has the blank eyes of a beast; no comprehension burns behind them. She bares her teeth, frightened, and snarls at us. The Winds watch, silent and grim, as the creature who was once the Wolf Queen dashes off into the wood, the flag of her tail vanishing quickly amongst the trees. I pity her, but at the same time I know the Winds’ mercy. She will not remember what she was. She will never know all she lost. Her evil will not haunt her in the dark of every night.

The Winds each turn to me, and bow, the West Wind last of all. I remember how it felt to ride on his back with his golden wings beating strong underneath me, returning me to the beginning of my life, giving me another chance.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

The West Wind smiles.

And then he looks past me to where Mokosh still sits on her throne, weeping, as though unaware of everything that has happened. The West Wind goes to her, wraps her in his strong arms.

“Where will you take her?” I ask.

“Somewhere safe. Somewhere she can find healing, apart from her mother’s cruelty.”

My heart twists. “Take care of her.”

“I will take the very best care, dear one.”

And then he spreads his wings, and he and his brothers are gone.

It’s only then, as Hal and I turn to stare at each other, soft and weary and blinking away ash that is no longer falling, that I let go of his hand.





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

IT FEELS LIKE THE WORLD GETS a little smaller when I let Hal go. He looks away from me and a soft wind stirs through the dappled leaves scattered on the forest floor.

I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. The truth of what Hal told me sinks in, and the Wolf Queen’s words eat into my mind. He never wanted you. He never loved you. He was just trying to save his own worthless skin.

I am hollowed out. I have saved him, but now what?

Hal speaks first, though he’s careful not to look at me: “Do you know the way down the mountain?”

“Yes.”

The gold circlet has vanished from his head; he’s wearing only a ragged shirt and dirty trousers, and I see again the threads of silver glinting in his hair.

I’d thought the journey and the rescuing would be the hard part, but it’s not. It’s this. I don’t know the man standing just paces away from me, looking old and young at once. We went through hell twice together, but now there is nothing to say. The Wolf Queen had a hold of him, was manipulating him for so long—is there anything of himself actually left?

“We had better go,” says Hal. “The Wolf Queen’s magic may yet linger.”

My heart jolts. What if every second we stay here a year spins away down below us? What if any hope of seeing my father again is already gone?

“That is—” Hal’s eyes flick up to mine. “That is if I can come with you. I … I don’t wish to presume—”

“Of course you’re coming,” I snap.

He nods.

I stride away from the Wolf Queen’s bower, and Hal follows. His gait is uneven, his left leg dragging a little behind him as he walks, and I think of that day long ago when I failed to free him from that trap, of the scars we both will always bear. I am broken forever in two. How can I still want to love him, knowing what he did, even if he did it because of the Queen? How can I forgive him?

I want to. But I don’t know how.

If you hadn’t lit that lamp, I would have been free. But—but she would have taken you instead. That was the deal. The only way to break my curse. Your life for mine.

The wood is quiet as we walk, but not like before. There are birds singing in the trees, a flash of a deer’s white tail, a squirrel nibbling a nut on a fallen oak.

The red flowers are gone. In their place grow tangles of honeysuckle and peonies and twists of wild roses, and they make the wood smell sweet. A track still winds between the trees, but it’s no longer paved with stones. I think it must be a deer path.

The ground slopes gradually downward as I follow the path, and Hal comes at my heels. Part of me wants to tell him to walk beside me, but the other part, the part that’s raw with hurt, can’t quite bear it. We saved each other, but I’m not sure that’s enough.

We walk in silence. Leaves fall softly all around us. The trees shift to the stately, ancient pines I remember from my ascent, and suddenly we’re at the edge of the mountain. The path I followed up here winds back down to the plain. I wonder if Ivan is there, waiting for me. He must be—he was just in his Wind form, breaking the Queen’s power. And yet somehow I already know he’ll be gone.

Our climb down takes about an hour, maybe less, and the whole time Hal says nothing to me, and I say nothing to Hal. An awful numbness creeps into my heart. What if we can’t get past what happened on the mountain? Hal’s confession. The Wolf Queen’s truth. The scars that run deeper than the lines in my face.

We reach the bottom before I’m ready: there’s no camp, no Ivan, no sign that anyone has ever been here before. Somehow I knew it would be this way.

Blood pounds in my ears and I try to fight the panic. “Please not a hundred. Please, God, not a hundred.”