“You cannot go there. It is far down this Path, much too near the Black Water. You must go back.” He growled out the last words, his chest heaving. His pain was so great.
Rose Red licked her lips and drew a long breath. Then, though she did not know why she did so, she put out a hand to the beast, stepping closer. He watched her, snarling, but made no move. She touched a wound at his shoulder. He shook his head sharply.
“Get that light out of my eyes! I beg you!”
She inspected the wound. “I maybe could mend this,” she said gently. “If you’ll let me try.”
The look he gave her was agonized with regret. “There can be no mending for me. They tore me to pieces in the other world. I will remain torn to pieces in this one.”
Rose Red put a hand in her pocket. Sure enough, her fingers found a needle and thread secreted there. She drew them from her pocket, set her lamp down at her feet, threaded the needle, then carefully parted the creature’s coarse fur.
“Witch-fire!” the beast swore. “I told you, you cannot help me!”
“Hold still,” she said. She slid the handle of her lantern up onto her elbow so that she could still hold it as she worked.
“Why would you help me? I ate them; I devoured them, the mortal insects! I enslaved them with fear and worship, made them offer me gifts upon this stone. And they hated me.”
Her needle was sharp. She forced it through the torn flesh. She was glad her veil covered her face against that ghostly blood.
“They hated me, though I loved them, the little crawling things. They were ignorant and dirty; they needed my guidance.”
“Liar,” Rose Red said as she drew the thread tight.
“I did love them!” the wolf snarled. “In my way.”
“No you didn’t.” Her eyes fixed upon her work so that she would not have to return the awful stare he turned upon her. “You’re just sayin’ that to make yourself feel better. You hated them and used them and disposed of them as you liked. I know who you are. I ain’t so easily fooled as all that.”
The beast roared. He broke away from her, yanking the needle and thread from her hand, and bounded back to the other end of the slab, where he crouched behind the central stone, as though frightened of her.
His breathing came hard, agonized and wretched. “Why do you help me, then?”
Rose Red put her hands on her hips. “If I only ever did for them what deserved it, I’d have little enough to do.”
He stared at her, his gaze running over the folds of her veil and down her tiny frame. He could swallow her in a single gulp. But Rose Red slid the lantern back down from her elbow until she held it in her hand once more. The light glowed softly as she approached the monster, and it was he that trembled. She put out her free hand, feeling in his thick fur for her needle, but when she followed the thread back to the wound, she found that her stitches had all pulled out under his violent movements. Fresh blood oozed.
His voice, though that of a wolf, came as a sob. “You see, you cannot help. You and your cursed light. It hurts beyond bearing. I beg you to stop.”
Rose Red paused, uncertain. Then she broke the end of her thread and put the dirtied needle back in her pocket. The wound was worse than ever. She could not fix it. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have even tried.”
The lantern light dimmed.
The monster raised his face, and the fixed snarl was almost a smile. “I told you as much. There is nothing you can do for those who are dead. Go back now.”
She stepped away, clutching the lantern in both hands. “I’ve got to go on. You must let me pass, Wolf Lord.”
He heaved himself to his feet, his eyes rolling with pain. “It’s a fool’s errand,” he said. “Your friend cannot be recovered from the Village.” He sniffed then, drawing in the scent of her, and when he finished, his eyes opened with a flash. “Or rather, your enemy.”
Rose Red bowed her head. “She ain’t my enemy. She’s my mistress, and I promised to serve her.”
“You hate her.”
“I hate nobody.”
“Dislike her thoroughly, then.”
Rose Red did not answer.
The Wolf Lord shook his shaggy head wonderingly. “I will let you go. But you must leave something of your own behind with me. No one passes through to Death’s realm without paying the toll.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Your lantern.”
She gasped. “No.”
“That evil light is useless to you anyway. Did it help you to mend me? What makes you think it will help you win back this mistress you hate?”
“I cain’t give it to you.”
“Then you will not pass.”
Rose Red ground her teeth, blinking fast. The image of a stairway in the Eldest’s House flashed before her eyes. There were wolves carved into the banisters at the bottom step. Beautiful, polished wolves. “I . . . I’ll give you one of my gloves instead.”