Metro Winds (39 page)

A picture comes to me of the black she-wolf. Despite what my husband said, I never thought she meant to harm me. I saw her only once more and fleetingly, before I was free of the valley. Or maybe it was only a vision, I have never been able to make up my mind.

I spent another precarious night high above the wolves, this time in the tree I had climbed. Not trusting myself to stay awake, I bound my hands about the trunk of the tree using the rope the old woman had given me. I was wakened just before dawn by the pain in my hand, and was appalled to see that I had slept in such a way that I had cut off the flow of blood to my right hand; it was frighteningly numb and blue. When I finally managed to unbind myself, I suffered fiery pain as the blood flowed back into my fingers, but I welcomed it, knowing I must have come dangerously close to losing a hand.

I cursed my stupidity all the next day, as the hand throbbed and ached, but at least the pain kept me alert. By the afternoon, the sky was cast over with heavy black storm clouds. I worried that the loss of sunlight would render the path powerless to protect me, as at night, but told myself that perhaps I need not be so concerned for I had seen no sign of the wolves during that whole day. It might be that the grey alpha wolf had been more badly hurt than he had seemed, and was now somewhere far away licking his wounds. I hoped so, but I dared not assume it.

The terrain was now flatter and less richly green and fertile. There were still trees either side of me, but they were sparser and the ground under them was stony and barren. This was fortunate, for twice black strangler trees lurched for me, and both times I saw their movement in time to evade them. It was after this that I named them to myself, and kept a wary eye out for them. By mid-afternoon the path had brought me to a clear swath of ground between trees half lost in thick mist. I slowed down, but seeing that the path ran into the mist-bound thicket, I had no choice but to enter.

The path wound through the trees and into a foul-smelling bog where yellowish water lay either side in pools that bubbled and reeked. I poked the stout stick I had been using as a staff into the bog and found there was no bottom that it could reach, and when a droplet of the foul water landed on my hand, it burned like fire. Washing my hand clean with a little spit, I continued, determined not to put a foot wrong.

I had been walking for half an hour or so when I realised that it was getting dark. I could not see the sky because the mist was too thick, but it was too early for nightfall, so it must be the clouds. I did not know whether to wish for rain or not. Rain might wash the cloying, stinking mist from the air, but it might also cause the bog waters to rise, and already they lapped uncomfortably close to my feet either side of the path. I told myself I was a fool for putting so much thought into a wish! Of course I did not know that I had come to a place where wishes might indeed be granted.

Soon, it was so dark that I could see the bog water had a sickly luminescence. Unfortunately it was not the sort of brightness that illuminated anything. It merely diffused in the fog, making it more opaque. Finally, I gave up inching along and sat down where I was to wait till the clouds broke, hoping they would do so before the sun set so that I could get out of the bog. If I had thought the ledge and the tree uncomfortable beds, it would be worse by far to spend a night on this narrow path with glowing, caustic water either side of me.

At length night fell, and I ceased to worry about burning water or storms or wolves because I could hear something moving in the bog. At first it was no more than a flaccid splash. Then I heard the wet sound of something large. Heart beating very fast, I stood up and searched the water on either side of the path for movement with eyes made keen by terror. I could not see into the water for it shone like a mirror, but when a bubble burst, I flinched. I realised as I stood there peering uneasily about me, that it was not the water that glowed but the mist that had risen from it. The water was merely reflecting the glowing mist.

I heard another splash, closer than before. Whatever was moving was coming towards me and it sounded a lot bigger than a fish. I had seen the wolves as the greatest danger I must face, and I had focused all my fear upon the pack, but now I wondered if there were other dangers. What if one of them was even now approaching me in the bog, readying itself to rear up and take me? If only day would come, but by my calculations, sunrise was hours away. I took out the lighter and flicked it to produce a flame, but it only had the effect of making the mist and the bog shine. Worse, I had the sense that whatever was in the bog had heard the sound, for there was a long, listening silence.

That was when I saw her: the black wolf. She was standing some distance away in the shining mist, visible only because her extreme blackness gave off no reflection, but her eyes seemed to glow silver. She looked at me, then she turned and padded a few steps before stopping and looking back at me again.

Dry-mouthed, I wondered if I was mad to think she was offering to lead me from the bog. She took another step and turned back to look at me again. I took a step towards her, wishing I had kept the branch to use as a staff to test the ground ahead. She took a few more steps, then turned to me again. I took another careful step and then another; now sure she was leading me along the path, I followed more readily, reckoning that anything was better than sitting on the path waiting for whatever was out there to attack.

She brought me to the edge of the bog, but when I found I was treading on a grassy slope of firm ground and turned to see what she would do, she had vanished.

I never spoke to my husband of that second encounter with the black wolf after he mentioned that the bog gave off a vapour that produced hallucinations, remarking how lucky I was to have got through it in my right mind. I asked only where he had been when I was in the bog. He admitted that he had not realised I was trapped there and had been without, waiting impatiently for me to emerge.

I have thought more than once over the years of the black wolf, and not long before my son hunted his ninety-ninth bride, I mentioned her to my mother-in-law. She had given me a swift, dark look, saying there had been a black wolf bitch, but that her hatred of humans was stronger than that of any other wolf in the Wolfsgate Valley because she was the same faerie who had tried to close the gateway between Faerie and the mortal realm, and who had brewed up the very curse that afflicted my husband and my son.

‘She became a wolf?' I asked my mother-in-law, wondering why my husband had not told me this when I had mentioned the black wolf. But then, as my mother-in-law related her story, I realised Ranulf would have disliked speaking of her because he had only just got free of her curse. Faerie folk do not like to dwell on unpleasant things, as a rule.

‘She was a shape-changer by her mother's blood,' my mother-in-law had told me. ‘She had taken that form to kill her lover and her half-sister for their betrayal of her, and she was still in that form when she cursed the king for stopping her closing the gateway to the human realm. So he punished her by trapping her power in that form. For a long time, she killed any human who came to Faerie by way of the Wolfsgate Valley, and the hunting of fully mortal maids became such a deadly business that it went entirely out of favour among princes.

‘But then there were no more sightings of the black wolf and it was thought that she had perished,' my mother-in-law concluded.

It struck me that if she was right, I had been incredibly lucky to come safe from the bog. It seemed too much to put down to luck, but maybe I had been due a little good fortune by then.

I forgot the black wolf once I came out of the mist that shrouded the bog, for to my surprise it was dusk and the great bronze disc of the setting sun was casting a dull gold light over the façade of a large and imposing building of several levels behind a high stone wall. My heart leapt at the sight of it, and at that moment I heard the howl of a wolf, very close. I knew it was not the black wolf but a summoning to the kill by the pack leader, and I set off at a run towards a gate in the wall, stumbling and slipping on the stony, tussocky ground.

I heard another howl ahead and to the left and faltered, but then I began to run harder, remembering I was still following the path and would be safe so long as it was daylight.

The wall was further away than I thought and the sun was setting when the path suddenly forked, one side becoming a white paved way that appeared to lead directly towards the gate in the wall, and the other remaining the same worn and pitted track I had been following since the first day. If my husband had not been there, awaiting me in his golden wolf guise, I would have taken the wide pale path, which would have brought me to a pretty meadow full of wildflowers. Their scent would have put me into a sweet sleep from which I would never have woken.

Somehow of all the tribulations I faced during the three days of testing, that lovely, deadly meadow was the worst of them. The thought of it haunted me for some time after I was wed, and once I went into the Wolfsgate Valley to look at it. Standing a safe distance back, I saw the bodies of a dozen girls who had found a dreadful immortality there, and weeping, begged my husband to use his power to save them. He only kissed me, telling me it was my good heart that had won the aid of his mother by the Wolfsgate, in her crone guise. Then he sobered and added that he would have to touch the sleeping girls in order to wake them, and that none could walk on that meadow and stay awake, not even the king of all Faerie. He kissed me again and bade me pity the sleepers not, for they were said to dream endlessly of their heart's desire, and perhaps it was a better fate than for them to wake and find their princes had long ago chosen another.

His words did not comfort me, and even now I sometimes think of that field of immortal sleepers with creeping horror, but this day, sitting with the heavy tapestry on my knee and waiting for my son's chosen to come through the Endgate, it seems to me that it might be a peaceful end to a mortal life, to lie down in a meadow of flowers and dream forever.