Tinker stepped onto the sled again and called to his dogs and then they were all of them gone, hurtling away into the snowy dark.
I ran into the clearing, shouting after them, but they didn’t hear.
And the wolf was at my knee.
“I have kept my promise, my lady. Now you must keep yours. We must go quickly—she senses already that you are here. We will have to run. Can you?”
Another gust of wind tore through the clearing, knocking me backward. The trees began to groan and wail, and I thought they must be dying, breaking in pieces, splintering inward.
“Run!” barked the wolf above the roar. “Don’t lose sight of me!”
He sprang away into the darkness and somehow I leapt after him, my lungs already screaming out for air.
I ran, the wood and the wind and the dark wheeling round me, my eyes fixed on the white flash of the wolf. He was ever ahead, just out of reach. There was nothing but gnawing, bitter cold, the burn of my lungs, the bursting of my heart. Somehow, the snow didn’t hinder me.
I ran, away from the grasping fingers of the bony trees, away from the cruel wind that sought to snatch me up and shatter me against the stars.
I ran for a lifetime, and another after that, while the centuries spun away and time slipped into eternity. I became part of the wood, and the wood part of me.
But still I ran after the wolf, the trees shrieking, the wind coiling around me, ice biting deep into my soul. Exhaustion dragged me down. In another moment I would stumble, and fall, and be devoured.
I cried out, lunging for the blur of white in front of me. My fingers grasped the scruff of his fur, my arms locked tight around his neck. And then he was carrying me, barreling on into the horrible dark. I screwed my eyes shut, sobbing for breath. The wolf wasn’t fast enough. The wind would catch us, the trees would tear us apart. We would be forever lost.
But then—
Chattering birds, rustling leaves, the smell of rich earth and green growing things.
Warm fur, pressed up against my cheek.
I opened my eyes. My arms and legs were wrapped around the wolf, my fingers tangled in the scruff of his neck. Fear tore through me and I let go, tumbling from his back onto a soft carpet of wildflowers. I scrambled to my feet.
The wolf looked at me impassively. We stood in a quiet meadow, tall grasses waving among the flowers, bees buzzing in lazy air currents. The wood lay leafy and ordinary behind us, not even a hint of snow in sight. Ahead rose a lone hill, sharp and brown against the sky. It was midmorning, or a little past.
“Where are we?” I whispered, my voice hoarse and my lungs aching. The enormity of what I had done threatened to overwhelm me. All I could see was my father, hurtling away on Tinker’s cart.
“The house under the mountain,” returned the wolf. “My house.”
And he stepped toward the hill.
CHAPTER SIX
THE RUN THROUGH THE FOREST HAD sapped all my strength—I was wholly drained and hollowed out from leaving my father. His absence tore at me. Half of me was on the sled with him, rattling through the winter wood. The other half was struggling to comprehend the promise I’d made to the wolf—was struggling to comprehend the wolf at all. My head spun. How could any of it be real? Talking wolves and angry forests. Magic. It wasn’t possible.
And yet there I was. There he was, watching me with those amber eyes.
The warmth of my fur cloak was suddenly stifling. I shrugged out of it and draped it over my arm, overwhelmed by the birdsong and wildflowers and spicy tang in the air. It couldn’t possibly be springtime, and yet it was certainly no longer winter. I wrapped one hand around Rodya’s compass-watch and found, to my surprise, that it was ticking steadily—it hadn’t worked once since he’d given it to me.
“How long were we in the wood?” I asked the wolf.
“A week or two,” he answered, not looking back as he went on toward the hill. It loomed large enough to block out the sun.
I went after him. “But how can that be?”
“The wood works according to her will, and no other.”
“What does that mean? Who is ‘she’? Who are you?”
He didn’t reply, just paced through a screen of knotted trees and vines growing out of the base of the hill. I followed, ducking underneath a low-hanging branch; long leafy tendrils brushed cool and sticky past my face. Beyond lay a dank hollow that smelled of decay and worms. The sunlight seemed very far away. I could hardly breathe. “Where are you taking me?”
“Come,” said the wolf, somewhere ahead.
There wasn’t room. There couldn’t be room, but I stepped away from the vines and into solid darkness.
A great booming voice echoed around me, howling in a language I didn’t know, and a frigid current of wind grasped my shoulders, snarling my hair. I screamed and tried to fight it off, but the wind wrapped around me like coils of a snake, seeping under my skin, sewing ice into my bones.
And then the wolf was beside me, pressed up warm against my knee. “Another moment and we’ll be through.”
We walked together, wind and blackness clawing all around, and passed into what felt like a cool, echoing hall. The howling stopped and the wind seemed to vanish. A door shut behind us, a key turned in a lock (who or what turned it? Not the wolf, surely) and then a lamp flared, banishing the dark.
We stood in a long, low corridor, with stairs at one end and a wooden door at our backs. The lamp was set high on the wall, where the wolf couldn’t have reached it even if he did have hands, which pointed to something—or someone—being with us back there in the dark. I shuddered.
I stared at the wolf, noticing as if for the first time the enormity of him, the power in his white frame, barely contained. The danger. There were nicks in his ears, ropy scars on his back left leg, and places on his flanks where his fur didn’t lay smooth, evidence of more scars I couldn’t see. His power of speech made him seem almost human, but he wasn’t human at all. He’d manipulated me with my father’s life hanging in the balance—I wasn’t about to forget that.
The wolf glanced back, amber eyes and bone-white teeth flashing in the lamplight. “Welcome to the house under the mountain, my lady.” And then started up the stairs.
For all my tangled fear and anger, I had no desire to be left with whatever lurked behind that door, so I followed him.
His nails clicked on the stone steps, my felted boots whispering behind. I focused on the white flag of his tail, trying not to feel as though I was marching to my death. “What was that back there, outside the door?”
“The gatekeeper—the North Wind, or what’s left of him.”
“The North Wind? What does that mean? Who are you?”
He looked back briefly, but kept climbing until he passed out of sight.
I stood gaping for a moment, then yelped and leapt up the stairs after him. I caught up just as he came to another door, which swung open by itself and closed quietly behind us.
Beyond was a grand hall that might once have been a ballroom. It had high paneled ceilings, formerly elegant wainscoting, and intricately patterned wallpaper that was faded and torn.
The wolf walked faster and I matched his pace, wooden floors creaking beneath our feet. “I abandoned my father to come with you. Why won’t you answer me?”
His words were clipped and cold: “Not here.”
A yellow gown lay puddled in the corner, ribbons ragged, one worn shoe discarded beside it. I thought I heard whispers, rustling gowns, tinkling laughter.
But then we stepped into another corridor, and silence closed around us.
The wolf drew a breath and flicked his eyes up at me. “I do not like that room.”
“Why?”
“It reminds me of something I lost.”
On we went, down more halls, around corners, up stairs. We passed countless doors, some plain, some carved, some wavering impossibly, like they were made of liquid glass. Lamps flared to life just ahead of us, casting eerie shadows over the floor.