Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (10 page)

She wanted to tell Thule everything, about Caenith and her strange evening, about the theater in her head.

“You were right…something is wrong with me. So much has happened… in but a day. I don’t…I don’t…,” she stammered, scratching at her head as the buzzing intensified. “Voices. Sounds. Places and people I do not know. Things that are as close as if they are mine! Feelings. Passions. Fears. Please… please help me, Master Thule. I fear I might be unraveling.”

As eerie and unexplained as these events were, her appeal stirred Thule. He wobbled his way to stand and then across the room, reaching Morigan just as she released her first tears.

“It—it’s all right, Morigan.”

Warily, as if she might burn him, Thule dabbed at her tears. No sooner did he touch her face than the bees sang loudly, and she was whisked away—

To a candlelit room in a cozy cottage. She is snuggled in blankets, cold even though layered in warmth, and wet with the sweat of a fever. A lurching monster is in her belly, and over the pleasantness of minty herbs, she can smell her own sick in a pail somewhere. How small and helpless she is, as frail as a featherless nestling. (I am a child.) A handsome man, his face angular, his nose sharp, and his eyes blue and wise as the deeps of the ocean, is above her. This is her father, Thackery
.

(I am Theadora, she realizes.)

Thackery tends to her tears, kissing them away
.

“Shhh,” he whispers. “Hush, my doveling. A little fever is all. I shan’t leave your side. Myself and Ruftus are your guardians tonight, and we are tireless.”

He takes her raggedy canine toy and makes it bark and play on her blanket
.

“Papa!” she cries joyously
.

Morigan woke to Thule recoiling from her; it wasn’t so much that she had called him her father, it was the songbird’s pitch she had used to say
Papa
. Morigan had siphoned another memory from him, of the day Theadora got into blackbriar berries—deliciously sweet and toxic—and nearly gorged herself to death. Rage poisoned him, and he could not stop himself from screaming.

“What torment is this? That you would conjure the ghosts of my family! Get out! Begone, silver-eyed witch!”

Morigan fled.

By the time Thule shook off his anger and realized what he had done, how he had sent that poor, confused girl away, it was too late. Too late to catch her; though he shouted her name out of his tower until his lungs gave out and he crumpled beneath the window frame, huddled and miserable in the bloodred light of dusk.

II

The scrape of steel echoed through Caenith’s dim shop. To inspire himself, he had kept the lights he made for the Fawn burning while he worked. Often, he placed down his graver and mallet and would watch the fires for a speck or two, to contemplate Morigan and her mystery and the fate that had drawn them together.

I came to Eod to watch the winter rust and the summer die. To watch the slow rot of all that I cherish in peace. I did not think that I would find true beauty again. How many lifetimes has it been?
he wondered. How many years of solitude had passed without him seeing another creature of the old magik? Especially one so close to his own kind. Granted, other old things were out there, yet they either hid as he did, were of species unlike himself, or sulked in pits and stalked as monsters. Geadhain’s two Immortal Kings, one in the north and one to the south, were the exception to this decline. Their existence was a defiance of the new magik, for they were men who could not age or die: not even the most diabolical sorcerers could claim such enchantment. They were ancient beings, but good men. That is why he had come all the way north to Eod, for King Magnus’s city was a sanctuary. He might have retired in Zioch instead, the kingdom of the second Immortal King, Brutus, which lay far to the south of Eod. Yet those lands were lush and green and reminded him too much of the forests of Alabion. Memories he wanted to forget. So in Eod he had settled. To make metal claws and shells for slow-walkers. To wash the innocent blood off his paws in the ash of his forge. Mostly, he sought to ease his mind of the ghosts of Alabion. Bitterness would consume him if he followed these final bread crumbs of thought too much, so he jumped back into his work and thought again of the maiden. Her smell, grace, and pure spirit, and these fancies brought him joy as he crafted.

He was working on a bracelet for her. A loop made of gold filigree, which had the appearance of a twist of oak leaves coiled with holly and berries. The bracelet was to be his offering to Morigan in the ritual of the Great Hunt. Symbolic of the pardons one should make to the Green Mother for every life that is taken. When he hunted for flesh, he would leave the prey’s bones buried beneath a tree and laid with ivy, and then mark the site with his urine so that no creatures would disturb its peace. These were customs that any
slow-walker would find repulsive, and he understood this. Thankfully, the rituals for the Great Hunt were more refined, and the offerings were tokens of adoration made by the hunter and given to his prey.

Wolves mate for life. Once and once only had he made an offering for the Great Hunt and taken the most sacred of vows that came after. Aghna was her name. She was a paragon of her kind, a wind of white fur and fury, and his heart never tarnished her memory. Thinking of Aghna as he made an offering for a new mate was, in many ways, honoring her wishes. She wanted him to find another mate one day, she had said as much with her final breaths. He could not ask Aghna for her blessing, not as he had asked the spirits of Morigan’s ancestors, for the she-wolf was well and truly dead and in a place unreachable to him. Thus, he would remember her instead. He would think of how he loved her and honor her with that truth. With a mind as old as his, the vision came over Caenith in a mirage. It brightened the room with the glittering frost of a winter day, transporting him to a place deep in the wilds of the Untamed.

All he can hear are the exertions of his body, the thudding of his prey’s heart, and the swish of the fearful trees he rumbles past as they quiver and dump their snow upon him. He is pounding through the snow with paws of stone and thunder. Overhead, the sky is gray and withdrawn. On land, all animals shiver in their burrows. A lethal tension has hushed the woods. For the land is watching the hunt, waiting for the snow to run crimson so that it might untense itself. As it should be, for he is power, he is a lord of fang and claw. He is to be anointed in the iron-tinged blood of lesser beasts. When he hunts, he is death, which all life fears
.

He has left the pack behind—they are too slow—to deal with his bold prey, and he chases the great elk alone. The wily creature has lived and bred and eluded him for many more years than it should have. Through the falling snow and white-muffled trees, he sees a darting silhouette of gray and follows the reek of fear that streams behind it, leading him like a leash. Bravely, the elk dashes, spraying cold sweat and snow to the air, but still it cannot outpace his hammering paws. Under a jagged cliff lined with sad, snowless trees they race. Nearer and nearer he comes, for each of his bounds make for two of the elk’s. Soon the mist of its fear, the snow and sweat, splashes his face. He licks it off and snaps at the air, announcing death. Above them, a white shape moves along
the cliff. It is sleek, nimble, and smells of wolf. It makes no impression on him, for his attentions are narrowed on the kill
.

They are racing down a slope now, and the forest is opening wide into a grand white desert that he distantly approximates as a lake blowing with chill. He hopes to drive his prey into one of the winter dunes, and it seems to be where the animal is headed. Until it surprises him by leaping over the bank and skidding onto the lake, which is clearly frozen. Logic does not rule him in this moment, and he leaps over, too. Only despite his tremendous agility, mass has a greater authority, and as he strikes the lake, it breaks like a crystal plate, plunging his haunches into the frigid water. He scrabbles on the ice, shattering more with his granite paws and complicating his situation further. Sense would allow him to sort out his predicament, but the animal, not the man, has control; and all it wants to do is howl, froth, and rage at its prey: the laughing elk, which skates away
.

The ice cracks and cracks, and he sinks deeper and deeper into the hungry lake. As the heat in his loins flees, so too does the bloodlust, and the man inside him suddenly grasps the inconvenience that they face. Before a decision can be made on how to extract himself, she is before him like a white lightning bolt: a lean ivory wolf. She makes the choice for his survival for him, bites his meaty forepaw, and drags him from the ragged hole he has made. Widely she stances herself, like a four-legged spider, and this spread of her diminutive weight allows her to haul him out without too much collapsing of the ice. When the man inside himself realizes her logic, he stops any struggling and sprawls himself, allowing the unpredictably strong she-wolf to tow him to safety
.

Once they reach the snowy shore, the she-wolf releases him. He shakes off the icicles in his fur, and they pace each other, sniffing beneath their tails, nipping at what is tucked there. He recognizes the smell of the young she-wolf from his pack, though he had never taken note of her, nor could he have guessed at the strength that lay in her willowy limbs and foxlike snout; this power that could pull at a body larger than the largest bear in these woods. During his jeopardy, he could have slipped back into his more nimble skin and crawled from the ice with his five-fingered hands, or even allowed himself to drown and dream until he woke again—for death does not come to him easily or at all. But she has saved him the indignity of a failed hunt. She is canny and quick; he will see what more she can do
.

He howls across the lake to the great elk that thinks it has found freedom in the weald on the other side, and he catches the sweet musk of its fear again. They have wasted too much time already, and he thanks the she-wolf by leaving her to follow him as he plows through the banks of snow, circling clear of the ice. Within specks he is in the weald, cleaving up the rise through thorny bushes and trees that sting and lash, but break like tinder. She is behind him, the speedy she-wolf, as near as his own tail. United, they bark as the gray shadow of the elk is spotted, moving with painful slowness through entanglements that do not hinder its enormous pursuer
.

Nearer
.

Nearer
.

The musk is stronger, putrid with the soiling of death. The air is crackling with the music of the chase: snarls, huffing, thrashing trees
.

He leaps—

The silence hangs
.

SNAP!

The elk’s neck breaks; the succulence of bone, blood, and fur is flowering in his mouth, across his jaws and onto his coat. He rolls with his prey, tenderly as a lover on a white sheet. He chews and suckles the animal while it dies. The she-wolf has joined him, and as they pick at the corpse, their wet noses touch, their tongues lap together; they share the viscera coils with playful grumbles like two pups fighting over sausage links. He notices that she has pretty eyes, a shade of violet that reminds him of the flower so named. He is curious now about what other loveliness she conceals beneath her stained ivory pelt
.

Once they have eaten the elk to its bones, they hunch and howl to the night, while they shudder back into their two-legged selves. As a man, he looks upon her, and likewise as a woman does she upon him. Under her red paint, she is as white as frosty birches that stand outside the circle of blood—her hair, her nipples, even her eyes. She could be Mother Winter herself, and though he knows that he has seen her, first as a cub and then as a member of the pack, he has never truly seen her as a woman, for she is beautiful
.

After they bury the elk’s bones, drape the grave in pine as no ivy is about, and piss upon its rest, they stay in their skins. As if they are still beasts, they pace each other: sniffing, nipping, licking. Quickly their dance turns aggressive. He bites her shoulder, and she bites his chest, they each draw blood. In the
snow, next to the grave of their kill, they make love as people, then as wolves, and occasionally as something of each. Many hourglasses later, when they are spent, they track the hidden sun as it moves toward night. Because he is so warm, neither of them are cold, but he holds her as if warming her still
.

Calmly, for he is so sure of the question and its answer, he asks her to be his Fawn. She accepts by smiling, standing, and screaming into her four-leg shape again, then racing off into the woods. For weeks, they hunt together; they sleep in hollows of the Untamed; they bathe in the hot forgotten springs that creep in hidden cracks in the forest. They laugh as people and howl as wolves. When they return to their pack, he forges the ring that she is to wear in her ear until she is interred with it, and they swear their promise together in blood
.