Echo North Page 4

  “The power to save him is in your grasp,” said the wolf. “Choose. Come with me now—or let your father die.”

  The bluish tint to my father’s skin looked darker than before, and his pulse grew erratic under my fingertips. Something twisted hot and sharp beneath my ribs—there was only one choice I could make.

  “I’ll find my way back to you, Papa.” I bent to kiss his forehead. “I’ll find my way back.”

  I forced myself to stand, forced myself to look the wolf in the eye. “I promise to come with you. Now save him.”

  The wolf dipped his head. “Follow me.” He paced to the edge of the clearing. I tore myself away from my father and went after him.

  “You said you’d save him!” I looked back to the halo of lamplight where my father lay crumpled in the snow, his life ebbing away. Horror and hope woke wild inside of me, along with a strange unwavering conviction I didn’t understand. Snow fell wet and cold against my cheek, evaporating in the heat of my tears.

  The wolf stepped in front of me. He raised his white muzzle to the sky and barked a sharp, harsh word I didn’t recognize.

  The wind rose wild, tearing at my furs and my hair, spitting ice into my face sharp as glass. And through the howling wind, came the sounds of a jangling harness, barking dogs, a man singing in the snow. I knew that voice—it belonged to old man Tinker.

  My heart jerked.

  The wolf glanced back at me. “Get out of sight.”

  I ducked behind the trees and held my breath.

  Tinker’s sled drew close, barreling between the trees. The dogs yapped and a lantern bobbed from a pole. He pulled up next to my father in a spray of white and climbed down, assessing the situation with a single shrewd glance. He hefted my father onto the sled and piled furs on top of him. Then he uncorked a bottle of what could only be brandy and tipped a few swallows down my father’s throat.

  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 a
nd 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.

  “Wolf. Please—tell me who you are. Tell me why you brought me here.”

  He sighed, as though he was weighed down with an impossible burden he could no longer carry. “I am the keeper of this house—I am bound to it, and it to me. I am old, my lady. I am dying. At the end of the year I will fade, and if the house does not have a new master by then, it will fade with me.”

  Whatever I expected him to say, it wasn’t that. “You brought me here to … take your place?”

  “If you choose the house. And if the house chooses you.”

  “But I have to get back to my father—my family!”

  “And so you can at the end of the year, my lady, if you so choose.”

  “Will you give me a choice?”

  “There is always a choice.”

  “You didn’t give me a choice tonight—I couldn’t let my father die.”

  The wolf shook his white head. “Tinker would have come, whether you made your promise or not. He was never in any danger.”

  And then he stopped in front of a red door, carved beautifully with lions and birds and trees. “Your room, my lady, for the duration of your stay. Dinner will be ready as soon as you are settled.”

  “But—”

  He was already gone, the tuft of his tail showing around the corner, leaving me to reel with the knowledge I had abandoned my father and sacrificed a year of my life for absolutely nothing.

  I HAD NO INTEREST IN investigating the room behind the red door. I paced the corridor after the wolf instead, but he was nowhere to be seen. Frustration twisted through me. The wolf had tricked me, and for what? To trap me in this strange and terrifying house? I could have been home with my father. I could have been safe.

  But I blinked and saw my university acceptance letter crumbling to ash. If it weren’t for my father, would I even want to go home?

  Down the hall to the left, lamps flared suddenly to life, stretching out of my sight line. I walked that way, hoping they would lead me to the wolf.

  I passed countless doors and wandered up seemingly infinite hallways and staircases. Icy currents of air whispered past my neck. Laughter and music echoed faintly from behind some of the doors, while from others came the scent of wine and honey and autumn flowers, or the winter tang of a crisp starry night after a snowfall. The whole house seemed to brim with memory and sorrow, with lost dreams and forgotten joy. I ached with a sadness that wasn’t my own.

  Magic teemed around me—I didn’t know how to process it all. Part of me still wondered if I was freezing to death and delusional in the wood, but it was all too real. I paced through a white marble hallway and brushed my fingers along a vein of gold running through the walls; it pulsed warm, humming with life. Donia would hate this place. My father would be awed. Rodya would try to make sense of it all, reduce it to cogs and gears. I could do little more than try and accept it, shifting my understanding of the universe to include something that, in this house, was as natural as breathing.

  And then I found myself opening a tall door and stepping into a high-ceilinged chamber hung with glistening chandeliers and furnished only with a long table, draped in a linen cloth. The wolf was perched awkwardly on a chair at one end of it.

  “My lady,” he said with a regal dip of his white head. “Come. Eat.”

  A second chair was pulled up to the right of the wolf’s. I caught the aroma of braised meat, and realized how hungry I was, my stomach growling. I went and sat down. The table overflowed with food: platters of venison and bowls of fruit, soup tureens and a mountain of sugary square cakes layered with jam. An elegant place setting lay before me: a china plate intricately painted with blue and red birds, silverware wrought to look like tree branches on a lace napkin, and a crystal-studded glass of shimmering pink liquid.

  I cast an eye at the wolf. There was no place laid out for him. “Is the food poisoned?”

  “Poisoned? Certainly not. I have not the table manners to entertain a lady of your worth—I had my dinner elsewhere.”

  I noticed suddenly that his back and tail and ears were flecked with blood. I shifted uneasily.

  He dipped his muzzle at the waiting feast. “You are hungry. Eat.”

  Tentatively, I obeyed him, my hunger outweighing my suspicion. I sampled little bits of everything: the meat was tender, the fruit summer-sweet, the soup hot and rich with flavor. The glass of pink liquid tasted lightly of honey and berries, and fizzed pleasingly on my tongue.

  The wolf watched me eat. His stare was disconcerting—he rarely blinked—and I couldn’t stop looking at the blood in his fur. I laid my fork down before I was quite full. From some distant room came the sound of a woman’s bright laugh, but the next moment it was gone.

  I thought of the long, long way from my bedroom to the dining hall, the infinite doors, the horror of the gatekeeper. The blood in the wolf’s fur. “Is the house … safe?” That wasn’t quite my whole question.

  “It is like any wild thing that has been tamed, my lady. It is sometimes safe, and sometimes not. But that isn’t the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “To remember that it is wild, and to be on your guard.”

  I knew he was referring to more than the house, just as I had been. “Was that you in the wood, last spring? Why didn’t you speak to me then?”

  He shifted in his chair, his fur brushing against the tablecloth and leaving little flecks of red on the linen. “There are times when I have been too long away from this house. I forget reason and speech. I become truly … wild. But when I saw you I remembered, a little. Enough to return to the house, where I remembered everything.”

  “What did you remember?”

  “That I needed you, my lady.”

  His amber gaze pierced through me, and I found I could no longer meet it. Silence slipped between us. The flames in the candelabras danced; the light hurt my eyes. I felt like I was falling.

  “My lady, you’re crying.”

  I touched the scars on the left side of my face and my fingers came away damp. “I miss my father. You took me away from him.” But that wasn�
�t why I was crying. I didn’t know why.

  One last shrewd glance and he leapt down from his chair, stumbling a bit. “Come, my lady. The night grows short, and the house becomes … less tame the nearer we get to midnight.” He paced toward the door, limping.

  I wiped my eyes and followed, the sounds of shattering crystal and frenetic laughter clamoring in my ears. “What happens at midnight?”

  “The magic ceases to function, and the house is unbound.” He nudged the door open with his nose. “You had better hold on to me, my lady. To be safe.”

  Tentatively, I wound my right hand in the scruff of his neck, and we went out into the corridor together.

  It was almost wholly dark, a single lantern flickering partway down the hall. Somewhere in the distance there came a high, keening wail.

  “Stay close,” said the wolf. “Nothing can harm you.”

  He was warm against my knee, a stark contrast to the frigid air around us. I couldn’t help but wonder: When the house was unbound at midnight, would the wolf also become wholly wild? I took a deep breath and tried not to think about the blood in his fur.

  The darkness narrowed in as we walked. It seemed to stare at us, it seemed to listen. The floor creaked beneath our feet. Somewhere close by, doors sighed opened and snicked shut again. Keys rattled, voices laughed. Bells jangled loudly and chains dragged over stone. I caught the scent of a winter forest, damp wood and cold so sharp it burned.

  And always the wolf, solid and strong beside me, padding quietly and confidently on. “What is your name?” he asked after awhile.

  I fixed my eyes on the single lamp burning ahead of us that we never seemed to reach. “Echo. For the echo of my mother’s heartbeat.”

  We climbed a set of stairs, turned a corner. Someone sobbed in the dark.

  “I heard a story once, about a girl with that name.”

  My breath caught hard in my throat. “How did her story end?”

  “I do not remember.”

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “I do not have a name.”

  “Then what am I to call you?”

  “Whatever you like.”