Wolfbreed (19 page)

Hilde was snuggled against his right side, between him and the wall. He always put her there, because if she slept on the left, where his arm was, he was more likely to knock her out of bed. She would also use his arm as a pillow and the pins and needles of his arm going to sleep would wake him up halfway through the night. Last, it just made it simpler to get in and out of bed without waking her.

He edged away from Hilde and sat up, stretching.

Uldolf jumped to his feet, knocking his head against a low-hanging rafter. He didn’t notice the pain even as he half stumbled into the middle of the cottage. “Mother? Father?” He bent over his empty bed. “Wake up, she’s gone!”

The covers had been thrown aside, and on the pillow were the
scraps of a bandage, clotted with blood and strands of red hair. Uldolf grabbed the pillow, heart racing. It was cold.

“Mother?”

Hilde sat up in her bed. “Ulfie? What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

“She—” Uldolf spun around. “Lilly. She’s gone.”

Hilde looked at him wide-eyed. “No, she wouldn’t go.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “She
wouldn’t
!”

Uldolf shook his head. Lilly—he thought of her using Hilde’s name now—wasn’t in her right senses. She could have walked off anywhere during the night.

“Father?” he called.

Worry started to slip into panic as he realized his parents’ bed was also empty.

“Mother?
Father?
”

Then he heard his father from outside. “Out here, son.”

“Ulfie?” Hilde’s face was streaked with tears. “Ulfie, she’s not mad at me, is she?”

Uldolf walked over and hugged his sister. “No, little chipmunk. She’s just confused.”

Hilde nodded into Uldolf’s shoulder and sniffed. She muttered, “I shouldn’t have told her.”

“Told her what?”

“Son.” Burthe’s voice came from outside. “I think you need to come out here.”

ldolf walked out of the cottage and hugged himself against the sharp morning air. His breath fogged a little as he followed his parents’ voices around to the back, where the main field was. He rounded the corner and saw both of them standing by one of the low stone walls that separated the front field from the back.

They were both staring into the field.

Uldolf walked up next to them. “What’s going on? Lilly’s gone …” He trailed off.

“She’s right there,” his father said, unnecessarily.

About twenty yards away from them, standing ankle deep in the black fresh-turned earth, stood Lilly. Her borrowed bedclothes were torn and dirty, flapping in the early morning breeze. The bandage was gone from her head, and her red hair hung down past her shoulders. Where Burthe had cut it—above the red scar of her wound—her hair had grown back a stark white. The wound on her temple was bleeding, and she held her bloody hands in front of her face, as if she wasn’t sure where the blood had come from. She stared at the blood a long time.

“Thank the gods she didn’t go far. Is she …” Uldolf didn’t finish the question. He had just looked down to see the other thing out there in the middle of the field.

The carcass of a young bull elk—antlers barely sprouted for the spring—was sprawled another ten yards from Lilly. The elk had been in full health, standing nearly as tall as Uldolf at the shoulders and probably close to a hundred stone in weight.

And the elk had been savaged. Claw marks had cut deep grooves in the side of its chest, and ragged bite marks had torn across large sections of its neck. The elk’s head was turned at an unnatural angle and stared at Uldolf with dead black eyes, the hide on its brow glistening with the morning dew.

“Did you see what killed it?” Uldolf asked.

“No,” his father said. “But I think she saw whatever it was.”

“Lilly?” Uldolf called out trying to get her attention.
“Lilly?”

ll she could see was the blood.

She could try to hide, to close her eyes, to forget.

It would always be there.

What did we do?

A voice, colder, older, answered her,
We did what had to be done
.

I don’t want this anymore
.

You never wanted it. That is why I am here
.

I don’t want you!

She clutched her hands, shaking, remembering—

Ulfie’s voice.

She turned her head, away from the blood, and saw him standing by the low wall around the field. He stood there unscathed, next to his parents, staring at her.

Lilly thought her heart would burst from relief.

illy turned around, and when she saw Uldolf, her eyes widened.

“Ulfie!”
she cried.

For a few moments, Uldolf was too stunned to react.

She started running toward him, waving her arm as if she was trying to get his attention. “Ulfie! Ulfie! Ulfie!”

Oh, no …

Uldolf vaulted over the wall because what was about to happen was painfully obvious. “Lilly, no! Don’t run.”

But his warning was too late. She only ran a few steps before her foot bogged down in the soft ground and she tumbled, face first, into a pile of newly turned earth. She pushed herself up on her hands and knees, sputtering, coated with dirt from her brow down.

She started sobbing.

Uldolf reached her and bent down to extend his arm to help her up. Instead of grabbing his arm, she threw her arms around him in
a hug that knocked him enough off-balance that he almost went facedown in the dirt on top of her.

“Ulfie.”
She sobbed into his shoulder.

Uldolf felt his face redden. He wrapped his arm around her and helped Lilly to her feet. She was shaking so hard that he could hear her teeth chatter.

“She’s terrified,” he whispered.

His parents had walked into the field after him, using the gate.

Burthe stepped in front of him with a little “harrumph” that made Uldolf’s face burn a little hotter. “Let me see her head.”

Uldolf nodded and tried to turn Lilly toward his mother. Lilly wouldn’t cooperate, refusing to let go of him. Burthe watched him struggle for a few futile moments, then sighed, walked over behind Uldolf, and lifted Lilly’s chin off of Uldolf’s shoulder so she could look into her face.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Filthy.”

“Her head, she was bleeding …”

Burthe tsked a few times and moved Lilly’s hair around. Lilly winced, yanking away and burying her face in Uldolf’s neck.

“I guess she likes you,” Burthe said finally.

Uldolf patted the back of Lilly’s head. “But is she all right?”

“She’s fine. Some stitches opened up and bled a little, but the scar’s holding together. I don’t think I’ll need to put new ones in.” Burthe walked around in front of Uldolf, watching Gedim as he examined the elk. “She is certainly touched by the gods if the animal that killed that beast didn’t turn its attention to her.”

“You think it was here when she came outside?”

“Look at her, Uldolf. You said yourself, she’s terrified. Besides, no predator would abandon a fresh kill unless it was scared off.” Burthe’s voice lowered. “Take her inside. Whatever killed it may still be out here somewhere.”

Uldolf remembered the words of the knight from yesterday.
Has
your farm been troubled lately … by strange beasts? Men or animals killed or injured?

Could this have something to do with Lilly?

Uldolf let the nonsensical thought go. “Come on, Lilly. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

As he led her back to the cottage, he tried to cheer her up. “So Hilde taught you my name, huh? Did she tell you that I find that nickname really irritating?”

“Ulfie,” she whispered.

“No, I guess she didn’t.”

She grabbed his arm and hugged it, stopping him. He looked down at her. She squeezed her eyes shut, and nearly shook with the effort of speaking. “I … I …”

After seeing her mute for so long, he was amazed that she was speaking, but he was also scared at the effort he saw in her face. It was almost as if trying to speak was painful for her. “It’s all right, Lilly. Don’t force it.”

She shook her head violently. “I … I … I never h-h-hurt Ulfie.”