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.
At the bottom of the mountain lies a giant, wild forest, snow heavy on the boughs of the trees. Ivan is surprised to find it here but grateful, too, for our stock of wood already dwindles.
Night is falling fast as we erect our tent in the shadow of the trees, and then all at once a third day is gone, and we’ve eaten our dinner and crawled to our separate furs. I’m afraid to sleep—I don’t want to dream. The forest makes strange noises, creaks and snaps and whistles. Wolves howl in the distance, and I’m seized with a wild hope. Could we be closer to the Wolf Queen than Ivan has imagined?
But I hear his voice from the other side of the tent: “It’s just the wind, lass, filling the gaps. Sleep now.”
And at last I do.
THE BLIZZARD STARTS IN THE morning, and it doesn’t stop. We travel through the forest for two days, sheltered somewhat by the giant trees, their branches catching the brunt of the snow.
Misfortune dogs us. The first day, a branch snaps without warning and comes crashing down. I leap out of the way in time, but Ivan is knocked flat on his back, pinned underneath it. His face creases with pain. The branch is too heavy for me to drag off of him, so I dig desperately in the snow and the dirt, until I’ve made a big enough gap for him to squirm free. Ivan doesn’t say as much, but I think he’s broken one or more of his ribs.
The second day, I catch my foot in an unseen hole under the snow and wrench my ankle. I gasp, collapsing to the ground, just as a huge brown bear comes thundering through the trees and takes a vicious swipe at Ivan’s side. The ponies rear and scream. The wind shrieks with laughter.
But Ivan stands calm. He reaches out a hand to touch the bear. “You are far from home, my friend. It is winter. Go. Sleep. Wake in the springtime no more of hers.”
To my astonishment, the bear bows its head and lumbers away.
Ivan soothes the ponies next, then sags down beside me. Red leaks from jagged tears in his coat drip out onto the snow. “She’s watching us.”
The Wolf Queen’s voice coils through me: The way is long and treacherous. You will be sorry.
Fear seizes me. “You don’t think we should turn back?”
“No. But we must be more careful.”
I stitch up Ivan’s side and he wraps my ankle, and we hobble onward.
I’m not sorry to leave the wood behind.
Ivan speaks less and less as the days spin on, but I don’t mind his silence. I have little breath for conversation anyway, trudging after him and his pony through the endless snow. We don’t ride the ponies anymore—we’ve laden them with bundles of firewood, and they have enough to carry without us. Their progress would be even slower with our added weight.
The land stretches out before us in an endless frozen tundra, the eternal white broken only by the occasional low scrub poking through the snow. We walk and walk and walk, for hours every day, and stop just before nightfall to make our camp. We only put up the tent if it’s snowing—it is too much effort, otherwise. I fall asleep on one side of the fire, bundled up in furs, and Ivan on the other. Dreams haunt me. We wake always to a world of blurry whiteness.
I lose count of the days, after a while. There is nothing but the weariness of walking, the weight of my pack, the tired fog of the ponies’ breath and Ivan’s singing. He sings more than he talks, his music constant, tangled with the icy wind.
The tundra stretches on and on. Our rations and firewood dwindle; there is no more tea at night, just snow melted in a pot over the fire.
“We may have to eat the ponies,” says Ivan one evening, as we sit chewing on tiny scraps of meat. “If it comes to it.”
I don’t want to eat the ponies, but I know he’s right. There’s hardly any food for us, and less for them, and our faithful pack beasts are more likely to die of starvation than not before we reach our destination.
“We may not,” Ivan assures me, seeing my stricken expression. “I was just thinking aloud.”
I nod over my mug of melted snow.
“Two weeks,” he adds. “Since we left Isidor and Satu.”
“It feels like an age.”
Ivan smiles. “Or three.”
It’s the most we’ve spoken since our first couple of nights, and the sound of his speech comforts me.
“Have you heard the tale of the Four Winds?” His voice catches up the thread of a story.
“Part of it,” I answer, thinking of the wolf’s words to me in the temple, of visiting the Palace of the Sun in the books with Hal. “But I want to hear it all.”
“They were brothers, the only children of the Sun and the Moon. East was the eldest, and he favored his father the Sun, with bronze skin and hair the color of fire. He was a hunter, and roamed far and wide slaying terrifying beasts and winning great renown.
“West and South were the second and third born, and they too favored the Sun, though not with such magnificence as East. They were always quarreling, trying to outdo each other with feats of strength so that they might rise in their father’s eyes to the status of East. But North was the youngest, and favored his mother the Moon, with eyes like stars and hair of silver and skin pale as snow. He was lonely, for his brothers scarcely regarded him, and when they did take notice, mocked him for his quiet voice and meek spirit, which they mistook for weakness.