Chapter 26-Shadows
The den was warm and comfortable, supremely homelike.
Canisp had never heard of a den with a fireplace before, but it made a wonderful difference. It was small—so small she hadn't noticed it before, scarcely more than a depression in the rough wall of the cave, but it served its purpose well. It was actually quite ingenious; it utilized what had once been a vent in the roof of the cave as a chimney, filtering through a carefully arranged series of rocks that released smoke but stopped cold air from stealing the heat from the fire in winter. Those rocks were provided by the old landslide that had created a livable den out of a shallow depression in the mountain. Careful excavation, Jenga told her proudly, had created a perfectly stable set of outer walls and a tunnel that never got muddy after rain.
It was a valuable innovation, that tunnel; weather changed quickly in the Southern March. Foul weather always came in from Stormness, and already black clouds were beginning to form around the proud eagle-headed peak, the wind changing direction as the storm gathered air to itself in preparation for a blow.
There was a short whuff of greeting as Kiro slipped through the tunnel, shaking his fur out. After a pause and a muted nickering sound from outside, a pair of bare feet emerged after the Wolf. They were followed by a shimmying Hosni, worming himself feet-first into the den. He had changed out of his borrowed formal gear and into a tan shirt and loose cotton pants, complete with a leather vest, cap and sandals. Where Ilona had found them she had no idea.
Jenga bumped her head against Kiro's shoulder, nuzzling against his neck with a happy sigh. She seemed perfectly, impossibly content since Canisp, who still didn't have the strength to walk much farther than the stream, had spent the afternoon telling her everything she could remember about Warrior. Her eyes, even now, were aglow with happiness; she looked as if the weight of a thousand worlds had fallen from her shoulders. With the light of their tiny fire flicking lovingly over her fur, in fact, Canisp could have taken her for Firebird.
Kiro nuzzled her back, nipping lightly at Jenga's ear, and she huffed a laugh. His tail swished easily as he turned to Canisp, nodding hello.
"Pardon," he murmured, slipping past her to the nest of furs and dried sweet-smelling grasses. Canisp stepped carefully out of the way as Jenga joined him; her wing was tender and she had already bumped it against the wall of the tunnel coming in.
In short order, Jenga and Kiro disassembled their bed, dragging the furs out to cover the floor. As it turned out, there was more than just the bearskin Canisp had noted—Jenga claimed an enormously thick, warm buffalo hide with a contented sigh, curling up beside her mate and looking forgivably smug—the skin covered half the cave and then some on its own, and such a prize in a private den could only be a testament to both skill and courage, as well as surviving a particularly brutal winter. Hosni had tucked himself into a corner, wrapped in his reliable old black cloak and propped against Vesta's saddlebags with all the ease of a Crown Prince of Archenland reclining on silk pillows. Canisp took the last of the furs—a buckskin that seemed to serve the sole purpose of having one extra layer between sleeping Wolves and the cold stone floor—and tossed it to him before sinking down carefully into the bear's thick fur. Orion fluttered about, fussing from Vesta's saddlebags to Hosni's shoulder to Canisp's shoulder and finally settling on her right foreleg, tucked against her chest, unconsciously protecting her weakest side.
The silence stretched out, unbroken.
When Kiro finally broke it, eons later, it was at first a palpable relief—the den had grown tense enough that Vesta could probably feel it from outside, where she shifted restlessly in the face of the approaching storm. His voice was quiet, a low murmur, barely audible over the tiny snaps of the little fire.
And then the meaning of the words sank it.
"I was in the Vereor."
Outside, Vesta snorted as the first drops of rain began to fall.
"…What?" Canisp's voice was a hoarse whisper.
Kiro gave a soft sigh and lifted his head. Jenga rolled slightly, taking her weight off of him and letting her mate straighten up. He settled into a more formal position, weight resting evenly between his forelegs. He was a solid black shadow against the wall, looming over a Wolf who could so easily have been Firebird.
"I was in the Vereor," he repeated solemnly. "I'm not proud of it, but neither will I be made ashamed. It's in the past—what matters to me is the present, and the future."
Easy to say for one who'd gained rather than suffered from the Vereor's tyranny! Canisp bit back the snarl that waited in her throat, the reflex tempered by a deeper instinct; for while the Wolf's voice was calm and even, unforgivably so, his eyes were dark with incurable pain.
He didn't need to be made to regret his past. Nothing could make him hate it more than he already did.
Jenga gave a small, pleading whimper. Her ears were down, muzzle resting on her paws, and she looked up at Canisp with mournful eyes.
"It's not like you think, Canisp,"
It was Orion who answered.
"Explain, then."
A howl of pain echoed through the cold, empty dungeons. The walls were unmoved; they were used to howls of pain. A she-wolf's cries would find no sympathy here.
She had screamed to unfeeling walls for over a year.
Her once pristine white fur was matted and stained, her skin raw where the time that never passed had chafed against a too-tight iron collar. The collar had been removed for this—not as a concession to her pain, but to ensure she didn't strangle herself. Even no longer bound to the chain, the she-wolf kept close to the wall.
She no longer remembered what it was to be free.
Another wave of pain swept over her, and she moaned. The moan grew higher as the pain tightened, sharpened to a pitiful keen, a plea to the heavens she would never see again, a cry for pity—from someone, anyone…
This was a place of death, she cried hopelessly. New life did not belong here.
The pups she gathered weakly to her side had no notion of where she was or what awaited them. They just wanted to live, to meet her, and in a rush of wretched, miserable love she knew she wanted them, too, wanted them to be born. How could she not—how could she help it? She loved them already, loved them as she had loved Epsilon the moment she felt his tiny presence inside her. She had borne pups in this place already, only months after she had arrived here—triplet sons to Ferinus, pups she hadn't wanted, hadn't even named, taken from her side before they had even been properly weaned.
But this was different.
Panting desperately, she called for her mate, the mate who had sworn to never leave her, who had given up his freedom and his family, given himself to the Witch to protect her as best he could, the father of the blind, deaf twins who had wanted so badly to see the world.
"Warrior," she sobbed brokenly. "Where are you?"
Miles away and in a different world, a werewolf horde emerged over the crest of a hill.
Trapped in darkness, two young pups were baptized with tears as their mother gave them the only gift she had the power to bestow—some tiny remnant of her past, of the family they should have known.
Jenga and Calliope, second of each name, pressed closer together and squeaked uncomfortably in the cold.
"I never knew my…my mother's name," Jenga murmured, the word unfamiliar on her tongue. "None of us did, we were too young to remember when they took us away…I don't even know what she looked like. But I know she was missing a leg. Some of the Police, they would mock us for it, call her the three-legged…" She trailed off, throat tight with anger never truly healed.
Canisp remembered a gentle white she-wolf who had lost a leg in resisting Vereor capture. She hadn't known her well, they had only spoken to one another perhaps three times; but she remembered her, a beautiful Wolf devoted to her mate and son.
An orange-tinged mate. A red-furred son.
"Ophelia," she said quietly.
The voice of a male was the harbinger of doom.
That was a lesson no she-wolf had to be taught. It was inborn, as much a fact of life as that a pup only ever knew their sire's name. The clang of a closing trapdoor brought every Wolf to full alertness, instantly. Ears folded down, tails lowered, chains clinked softly as those Wolves who were bound pressed themselves into shadows and tried to disappear. The silence was sudden and complete, unbroken except for the click of nails on stone.
Three of them, the experienced ears realized with dread, and curled up tighter, praying the males would just pass on…
Afterwards, they would be ashamed for wishing such a thing on another. For now, all they wanted was to be overlooked.
Jenga whimpered as the footsteps came closer; she couldn't help it.
There was a gentle pressure on her flank. Amber eyes, no less terrified than hers, nevertheless managed to say I'm here. Everything will be all right. Just the sight of her twin's face—perfectly identical, like looking in a mirror, rare even among Wolves, where a Wolf might have five siblings in the same litter—managed to help calm the frantic pounding of her heart. Calliope rose—silent, always silent, so as not to draw attention—and draped herself carefully over her sister, so that their heads were side-by-side. They pressed together, impossible to tell where one red-furred body ended and the next began, and held their breath as one.
The footsteps paused.
Jenga's panic was screaming inside her head. She wanted to howl and cry and throw herself against the door, the walls, anything. But her sister's familiar weight held her still, Calliope's breathing quiet and even, her heartbeat strong alongside Jenga's.
She stayed silent. The door stayed closed.
A howl at once murderous and heartbroken shattered the stillness, a hammer to a delicate vase, just on the other side of the wall from where the two sisters were huddled. Sounds of fighting broke out, briefly, followed by louder, more frantic barking, the desperate rattle of a chain being snapped taut again and again, the scratch of nails fighting for purchase on the floor, scrabbling against an iron restraint. There was a yelp of pain, a closing door, a pause. Then, rising again from their neighbor, more slowly, more deeply, came a long, terrible, wordless keen of unbearable loss that went on and on, a mourning cry that wouldn't end. It almost drowned out the click of calm, retreating nails and the squeaking cries of pups not quite weaned.
Their mother called for them long after the mighty trapdoor had swung shut. Jenga lay there, shivering uncontrollably, as Calliope's hot tears soaked her fur.
A/N: Let it never be said that I introduce characters for no reason. What, you thought that little anecdote back in Book One was a one-off? WELL YOU WERE WRONG. Yes, this is that Ophelia. And... no. She never learned about her sister's suicide. That, at least, is a small mercy.