I screw my eyes shut. I don’t let go.
I feel him begin to change beneath me, and I open my eyes to see him growing larger and larger and larger, until I find my hands wrapped around the claw of a giant monster, with the shoulders and horns of an ox, the body of a lion, the feet of an eagle. His eyes glow fire red, and in one hand he wields a whip made of stars. He reeks of death and I am sick with fear.
The monster looks at me and laughs as he tries to shake me off his claw. But I wrap my whole body around his foot, tucking my head down between his claws, my feet cinched tight around his ankle joint. He cracks the whip and the tail hits the back of my head; excruciating light explodes in my vision. The fire and the pain tunnels into my mind, deeper and deeper, driving me mad.
But under the agony pulses a single, desperate thought: don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.
The fire fades a little, and I open my eyes to see Hal again, kneeling on the forest floor, weeping and raging in his anguish. My hand is curled about his wrist. He lifts his face to mine, and there’s hatred in his eyes.
“What do you want with me?” he demands. “She-witch. Devil’s daughter. Beast of the pit!”
The words cut deep but I fight hard against them. “I’m not leaving you. No matter what you say to me, I’m not leaving you.”
“Did you think I wanted you to come and rescue me in this foolish way? I was glad to escape you, escape that dreary house and your horrid company. To return here, to the Queen and her daughter who alone truly care for me. You are worthless. Wretched. Ugly. I cannot stand to look at you.”
Something cracks deep inside. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts so much. “How can you be so cruel?”
He tips his head back and laughs, laughs and laughs, and I think I hate him, but I feel the pulse of his heart beneath the skin at his wrist and I remember—
This is not Hal. This is her.
And I don’t let go.
Then he’s screaming as his bones once more break apart and feathers burst sharp from his skin.
He transforms into a great black carrion bird, and his talons pierce the skin beneath my collar bone, driving like a knife to the heart. I shriek in pain as he beats his wide wings and hurtles us both into the sky. His claws tear through me and I scrabble desperately to hang onto his leg as the world spirals away below us.
He flies, up and up and up, toward a tall white cliff where the moon shows its silver face just beyond.
He dashes me against the rock and pain explodes in my shoulders, my back, my legs. I hear a sharp snap, and a scream tears out of me. The agony is all-encompassing, filling the world.
But a thread of my being remains inside, a small voice whispering don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.
And I obey.
Then suddenly we’re back in the wood again, crouching together on the forest floor, and the pain is gone. Rain falls, somewhere far away. Or no—close; I feel it sweet on my skin.
“Echo—” gasps Hal.
But the Wolf Queen isn’t finished yet. Once more his body breaks apart and he transforms into a huge white mass before my eyes: a giant arctic bear, with claws as long as my hand and teeth bigger than the stalactites in the ice cave.
He opens his mouth and roars, swiping at me with his free paw—I’m clinging desperately to his other one. Hal’s claws rake deep into my back, and wetness leaks from the raw lines of fire in my skin. I sob for breath. The rain around us now is sharp as needles.
And I can still hear the Wolf Queen’s song-spell, tangled in the wind.
Everything in me screams to let go, to end the pain, to be free of it. Everything but that tiny thread that remembers.
I hold on to him, as his claws tear into my flesh, as he lowers his great head and sinks his teeth into my shoulder.
I weep and weep. I can’t stop the cries of pain ripping out of me.
But I listen to that quiet thread.
And I don’t let go.
Hal changes, again and again and again.
He’s a dragon, a demon, a fish with slicing scales. He’s a scorpion, a spider, a creature made of wind that bites like glass and tears raging at my skin. The creatures blur all together into a haze of anguish and torment and pain. Blood blears my eyes. I long for release.
But still my heart beats within me: don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.
And somehow I am strong enough to hold on to him.
And then he shifts into a form I know very well: the great white wolf.
I gasp as he crouches there, growling at me, my hand tight around his back left leg. I can feel his scars, the marks left by the wolf trap I tried so hard to free him from.
I breathe hard, desperate, afraid.
He twists and leaps at me, and I’m barely able to keep hold of him as his teeth sink into my arm.
The pain cuts down to the bone and a cry rips out of me. My throat is raw from screaming. My mind is numb with pain.
“Hal. Hal, please stop.” This form hurts more than all the others.
Or so I think—until he shifts into my father.
I’m so startled to see Peter Alkaev staring at me in the wood that I almost do let go, right then, but I stop myself just in time. I’m holding his hand, something I haven’t done with my real father since I was a very young child. It feels strange.
“I know you’re Hal,” I say aloud, more for my own benefit than the Queen’s latest creation’s.
My father smiles at me. There’s flour dusted in his beard, and he smells like cinnamon. “You know I care nothing for you, child. Even before you ruined your face, you killed my darling wife, and resigned me to an existence of misery. If not for you, I would never have lost money at the shop. It was your curse that did it. That made everyone hate us. That made crops fail and rains come out of season. You are devil-touched. I should have left you in a snowbank. You would have frozen to death, and I would have been rid of you.”
His words cut deep, though I know, I know they are the Queen’s words, not my father’s. He does not attack me as the creatures did, but still I feel pain—every pulse.
“We have stopped mentioning you at home,” he continues. “We did it the moment you went away. Peace came into our lives again. I cannot believe how you fooled us into keeping you all those years. Donia saw the truth, but I wouldn’t listen. Now we don’t need you. Rodya is married. Something that could never have happened to you. And Donia is with child and I thank God every day I never have to see you again.”
“Stop!” I cry, beating at his chest with my free hand. “Stop! I know it isn’t you.”
He grins, his eyes flickering red. “Why do you ask me to stop? Because you know I speak the truth and you are too water-willed to hear it? Foolish child. You are nothing. You have always been nothing, and that is what you will be forever.”
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I scream at him.
He just laughs and laughs, and I know it is the Wolf Queen’s laughter, but I still can’t bear it.
And then suddenly he is Hal again, and his mouth presses soft and warm against mine and he’s wrapping his arms around my shoulders and clinging to me as I’m clinging to him.
I sob into his chest and his tears fall into my hair and I can’t bear it.
“Echo, Echo, Echo,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I sag against him, still shuddering and scared. There’s tension in his arms; it isn’t over yet.
I hear the Wolf Queen’s step and look up at her. She stands cool and silver in the moonlit wood, and I realize the sudden silence is the absence of her spell-song. I regard her in exhaustion and fear, my arms still locked around Hal.