Every night, before I left the library, I took the hand mirror out of the cupboard in the back room, and asked it to show me my father. He always put a lantern in the window for me before he went to bed. Donia always snuffed it out. Winter spun on, and one night, my father didn’t light the lantern.
Instead, he wept in front of the fire. “She’s gone, Donia. Gone. She’s not coming back again.”
Donia stroked his back while he cried and I had never hated her more.
The next night, there was no lantern. Two nights after, my father smiled at dinner.
It was small of me, but after that, I didn’t look anymore. I didn’t want to see my father moving on without me. I couldn’t quite bear it.
Every evening I had dinner while the wolf watched me eat. We locked up the golden birds on our way to bed, and just before midnight, I climbed under the covers and blew out the lamp, and the wolf clambered up beside me. I had the house make him an oversized shirt, for extra warmth in case the covers weren’t enough.
Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, I thought I heard him crying.
But that didn’t make sense.
Wolves didn’t cry.
ONE MORNING, I ASKED THE house to take me to the wolf, and it led me out into the garden. Several months had passed, and over the fence and past the meadow the wood was thick with verdant leaves.
In the village, the arrival of spring saw melted snow and mud everywhere, irises and daffodils bursting bright from the ground, a taste of sunshine and sweet breezes, the ability to shed our winter furs. Villagers were a little freer with their coins, which meant more book sales, and luxuries like butter and sugar and red meat for our table. That year, it also meant the end of Rodya’s apprenticeship—I was terrified that he would take a job in another town while I was with the wolf and I would never see him again.
I paced into the garden, wandering up the first few steps, and caught the sudden scent of blood tangling acrid with the flowers.
Around one of the rosebushes, the wolf was bent over a freshly killed rabbit, ripping its throat out.
I froze, my stomach wrenching.
Before I could creep away and leave the wolf to his meal, he looked up and saw me watching, his white muzzle drenched in blood.
For a second, we stared at each other. Then his tail drooped between his legs and he dashed away from me, on up the steps like a blaze of lightning.
I ran after him.
I found him huddled in the back of the waterfall room, desperately rubbing his bloodied mouth with his front paws.
“Wolf.” I approached him slowly, knelt down beside him, took his paw in my hands. “Wolf. Stop. You don’t have to do that.”
He turned away from me, his ears pinned back.
“Wolf.” I tugged a handkerchief from my skirt pocket, and gently, gently, wiped the blood from his muzzle.
His amber eyes couldn’t meet mine.
“It doesn’t bother me, Wolf. Really. I know you can’t have much of a taste for soup or noodles. I understand.”
He paced to the waterfall, staring out into the spray. “I did not want you to see me like that.”
I sat beside him, put one tentative hand on his back. The water danced and sparkled, catching in his fur, clinging to my eyelashes and framing the world with diamonds. “I don’t mind.”
“I mind,” he said.
My free hand went unconsciously to my scars; I traced their bumps and ridges. I understood. But it made me sorrier for him than I had been before—I thought of the clock in the bauble room, ticking down the rest of his life, and felt guilty I hadn’t been trying harder to find a way to save him.
“You should come reading with me,” I said. “There’s a few hours yet, before dinner. We can go to a fancy party and put frogs in the soup bowls, frighten all the guests.”
He let out a little huff that was some mix of a sigh and a laugh. “I fear I do not care for reading.”
“Oh, but you’ve been to the library here, haven’t you? It’s very peculiar. Not like a normal library at all.”
He whuffed with real, wolfish laughter. “I have, but the library has nothing for me.”
“You must not have found the right story yet. I can help you!” I wrapped my arms around his neck as if to tug him to the library that moment.
But he shook me off, suddenly cold. “I do not wish to go reading, my lady. I will see you at dinner.” He barked, “Rain room!” at the house, and disappeared through a door that appeared in the wall of the cave.
I sat alone as the sun set beyond the waterfall, unaccountably dejected.
The wolf didn’t come to dinner. I ate by myself and took the long way back to the bedroom, locking the gold birds in their cages, letting them eat seeds from my hands.
It wasn’t until I had climbed into bed and turned out the lamp that the wolf joined me; the door creaked open and shut, his nails clicked across the floor, the bed hinges sagged.
Minutes ticked by in the dark, and at last I said, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
He didn’t answer for so long I thought he wasn’t going to. But then: “You did not offend me.”
“Wolf?”
“Yes, Echo?”
I crumpled the covers in my hand. I listened to the sound of his breathing. “I wish you would let me help you.”
“You are helping. The house is in better spirits than it has been in years.”
“No, I mean help you. Help this year not be your last.”
He rustled in the bed; his fur scraped the sheets. “You cannot help me, Echo. You never could.”
“But—”
“Go to sleep,” he said.
I shut my eyes.
But sleep was a long time coming.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OUTSIDE THE ODD HUMOR OF THE house under the mountain, spring had turned to summer, and summer was deepening. Already, the year wended away. It would be autumn again soon, then winter, and my year would be fulfilled. I didn’t like to think about that—I wasn’t ready to think about it, so I pushed it to the back of my mind, and focused on music lessons, reading, and tending the house.
I was practicing one day on the Empress’s harpsichord when I looked up to see Hal leaning in the doorway.
He jumped a little, caught staring, and for a moment we blinked at each other and didn’t say anything. He was dressed simply: gray trousers and a loose-fitting white shirt, with embroidery about the neckline.
I’d been struggling to make my fingers understand my first ever three-part Behrend contrivance after semi-mastering the two-part ones. As delighted as I was to see Hal again, I was embarrassed he’d been listening.
Hal recovered his nonchalance before I had a chance to collect myself. “There are much better instruments than this to be found,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and walking over to the harpsichord. “I could recommend hundreds of titles with gorgeous pianos shut up in back rooms.”
I sat a little straighter on the bench, offended into speech. “I quite prefer the harpsichord, thank you.”
His lips quirked up. He leaned over me and played a few careless notes in the upper register. “If you say you prefer it because you read somewhere that Behrend originally composed his pieces for harpsichord, you clearly haven’t thoroughly pondered the topic.”
“Beg pardon!” I yanked the key cover down, forcing Hal to jerk his hands out of the way to keep them from getting crushed.
He grinned, unabashed.
I stood from the bench and paced over to the window. The music room looked out over one of the Empress’s many gardens. I glimpsed the edge of her gown peeking out behind a hedge, along with the elegant shoe I knew belonged to her wretched musician. I was so glad I’d never followed the book along its intended path.