The Wolf & The Witch

The wolf and the witch were no longer in the Land of Streams. And they weren’t in a red forest in September.

It was morning, and frost hung like strings in the air around them. Snow was nearly above their boots, and the sun was the same color as the gray clouds, and cast the same diluted shadows. Sharp, black mountains ran north and south like chipped sword blades, and snow hung down from the blades and piled in the valleys like blankets slipped off the back of chairs. Ancient trees stood tall at the bases of the mountains, black, and sharp.

White, gray, silence- the kind that comes with compassionate death, the kind that sits on the lonely edge of a glacier, hung in the air with the frost.

Claire shivered, and knelt down and scooped up handfuls of snow. Lestat joined her. They ate snow, and melted snow with their hands to fill their skins. They looked at each other, waiting for ghosts to assault them- none did. Just white silence, and their breaths, white and frozen between them, and the slow, muted sound of falling of snow.

“This isn’t what I expected,” Lestat said, surprised at the sound of his voice in the emptiness. He looked out at the white fog and the long, white valley in front of them, and the trees and mountains that ran off to either side. And at the end of the valley, at the edge of his vision, a small village.

“We can’t see out, like last time,” Claire said, and shivered. They had only taken a couple steps, and behind them- the tall ridge of a mountain, not red fields and a burned village.

Lestat sniffed the air- snow, pine bark, and rocks like the caustic odor of metal rubbed against metal, and at the very edge of his scent- smoke from iron stove fires, and blood. He looked down the valley, towards the village, then felt her shiver through the cuff; he corked the skin in his hand, retied it to his side, stood, and scooped her up in his arms. “It smells like blood in that direction,” he said, looking down the valley. “Towards that village.”

“Then let’s go the other way.” She shifted herself in his arms. “I can walk.”

He looked down. “And I can carry you. Cover up.”

Claire unstrapped their blanket and wrapped it around them, and snuggled up close. The end of her bow left a line in the snow leading away from the village as Lestat carried her forward. She shivered, and her ears felt cold. Then she looked up at his ear. “Sit me down a second. I need my hands.” He sat her down, and she fished around her pack for one of her shirts and he helped her cut it into strips with their hatchet. She tied half of the shirt around her head, and the other half around his, being very careful to keep his ear covered. “Ok,” she said, and motioned, and he picked her back up.

He carried her two miles down the valley, snow crunching underfoot, in the opposite direction of the smell of blood, when he smelled it again- blood. Forward through the snow and fog, and they were back where they started, facing the same village in the distance.

“Well, this is creepy,” Claire said. There’s no way they got turned around- not with the snow at their back, and the mountains on either side. Maybe this valley had a village on each end. “Up and over the mountain, I guess.” Claire leaned out of his arms and looked up. “Wow that’s a tall mountain. I’d go that way, where it’s not as steep.” She pointed, then leaned back and took her place in his arms, covered up and comfortable.

He looked down at her and grinned.

“What?”

He laughed at her. That was an awfully easy thing to say for a woman who was being carried up the mountain. But she was beautiful- her face was beautiful- the way her nose crinkled on the word ‘steep’. And she was awfully cute bundled up like that.

She glared at him- he was making fun of her. “Put me down, damnit- I can walk.” She fought against him but he didn’t put her down. “Stop it- you don’t have to carry me. Put me down. I can climb that goddamn mountain.”

He walked across the valley, up the piles of snow, towards the mountain.

She glared. She pouted. “Why are you laughing at me?”

“Because the way you said that was cute- just up and over this motherfucker, huh? Easy as eating biscuits.”

She blushed, and fought with him but he didn’t let her go; he didn’t put her down. Lestat carried her up the mountain, up the talus pile, past black pines, through deep snow. Up and over rocks, climbing to a low spot- where the blade of the mountain had chipped and dented. Hours passed as he carried her up the steep mountain. Near the top Lestat put Claire on his back, and crawled up the frozen stones on his hands and knees, grabbing hold of weathered ledges. They crested the cold mountain with only a few hours of light left, and skidded, and tumbled down the backside, past trees, down the talus pilings, back into another valley hanging with frost. Lestat stopped, leaning against a tree. The day was fading and the light through the clouds was gray, like cold water through a filter, and cast no shadows. He had no idea which direction they had just walked.

Claire brought water to his lips and he drank.

He carried her down into the valley then stopped.

“What?”

“This is the same valley, and that’s the same village, and… it still smells like blood.”

“So we just crossed that mountain for nothing?”

Lestat looked down at her and grinned- the same grin, from before.

“Stop it. Goddamnit, put me down,” she fussed, and clambered out of his arms. She glared at him, and he grinned at her. “You’re pissing me off with that grin. I told you I could walk.” He leaned in to kiss her forehead and she pushed him away, huffed, took his hand in hers, and pulled him towards the village. Snow had piled up in the folds of their clothes and she reached up and knocked his shoulders and back clean.

They walked two miles through frost and deepening snow to a small village of thirty wooden houses. Simple wooden homes, and simpler wooden shacks, roofs heavy with snow. Snow draped the fences, and snow draped the eaves and shutters, and snow draped the dead bodies scattered over the white ground. The wolf and the witch looked at each as they passed- most of them eaten- legs, stomachs, throats- broken bodies. Lestat noticed the blood was fresh, and stained the snow in bright patterns, despite the fact he had smelled this same blood nearly eight hours ago, and it had been snowing non-stop since. These corpses should be frozen, but they weren’t.

They knew from the first corpse what had killed them: a wolf. They knew because they were both standing in its massive paw print- many times larger than any they’d ever seen.

“This is a… uh… pretty damn big print,” Claire said.

Lestat didn’t answer- he doubted a sword existed that could cut through the bone of an animal large enough to leave a print like this. He looked at one of the houses- a wall had been ripped off and flung away. He looked around counting bodies- mostly the old, and men, and only ten or twelve, all eviscerated and torn to shreds. The bodies were scattered around as if tossed and flung, and the blood, and the footprints, lead behind the village to a narrow road. Not enough people were dead for the number of houses here, yet all the doors stood open to the cold. There was blood on the road leading north, behind the village. “I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to follow that road.”

“Why didn’t we go east?”

“We’d still be killing guards at the gates.”

“I’d rather us be the ones doing the killing than following the killers.”

Lestat considered. “You might be right. Maybe we should’ve gone east,” he said, and shrugged.

Claire sighed. She looked down at an old man at her feet- he was open from his upper thighs to the third rib from top, a red, and white, and gray, and maroon mess. Chunks of bone and body were scattered around. His ribs had simply been snapped out of the way by the jaws of a wolf. “Let’s see if there’s any food, or weapons in the houses.”

The wolf and the witch searched the houses and were lucky- they found food, iron stoves, dried wood, fur blankets, axes, arrows- they even found dried meat, and salt, and oil. But what they did not find were people- everyone in this village was either dead, just outside the door, or fled up the road into the mountains.

They made a fire in an iron stove and cooked turnips and sweet potatoes, and ate. They locked the door of their small wooden house, and latched the shutters, and added logs to the fire. They slept on a heap of blankets and bedding, and the wolf held the witch balled up in his arms, her feet tucked in, his arms around her head keeping her ears warm.

Claire squirmed a little, and moved her face closer to his. “This is how you held me the last time it was cold like this.” Over a month ago. Nearly two months ago.

“You ok? Cold?”

Claire smiled. “I’m fine. Did you like me, then? Last time?”

Lestat thought for a second. “I… don’t think so.”

Claire wasn’t mad; she sure as shit hadn’t liked him then, either. “Then why did you hold me, and keep me warm?”

He snuggled her close. “I heard you one of those first nights. We were freezing- no blanket, no fire, and you said you didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to die either. I went to sleep thinking that if we woke up we’d have at least one thing in common.”

Claire knew they had a lot more in common that first night than not wanting to die- they were just too stubborn, and hateful, and stupid to notice. She ran her right hand up and down his side, back and forth across his chest, slowly, and Lestat kissed the top of her head, and they fell asleep under a fur blanket, holding each other close.

The night was quiet and muted by the fall of snow in the darkness, and all the sounds of the world narrowed down to the slow burning of two pine logs in an iron stove, and their breathing, in and out, slowly in and out.

*

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Well, either way, the next section of this book needs a note:

In the first red forest they encountered ghosts, which made them mad, angry, hateful- the emotions of the ghosts rubbed off on Claire and Lestat. In this next forest they are part of a ghost story. Remember a few chapters back:

~~~“Are you traveling somewhere?” one of the women asked, pulling a bucket up out of the well.

~~~“The forest. Know anything about it?”

~~~The woman looked from the wolf, to the forest just beyond the village walls. “I know it’s dangerous, and I know it’s old,” she said, turning back. She rested her eyes on Claire’s thigh- a sliver of white running all the way to the thinnest line of white underwear. “I’ve heard it’s a different place- a very cold place. A woman came out a year ago or so, frostbitten, skinny- no fat on her at all, and she talked about dangerous wolves, and ice. Mostly the wolves.”