Author's note:
This is an illustrated novella and is meant to be read in the manner of a real book with two pages side by side. As such, I've had to publish it as an emagazine/pdf flipbook rather than on the ffnet platform. To read the illustrated novella, please visit my tumblr.
It is the first post on my tumblr which you can find by going to
kimberlite8 dot tumblr dot com
or directly at
kimberlite8 dot tumblr dot com/post/75345496281
(Please remove spaces above and replace dot with ".")
I've also uploaded the text only to ffnet which is what you find below.
If you would like to leave reviews on ffnet, I'd certainly appreciate it!
HOUR OF THE WOLF
Moon has set
and Pleiades: middle
night, the hour goes by,
alone I lie.
Sappho, Fragment 168B
Alayne opened her eyes to slits. What was the hour? It was still night time by all appearances, yet she felt bed sore, as if she had slept for a thousand years.
She pulled at her blankets, her body damp from sweat, her throat tight from a heavy catch in it. A wet compress fell off her forehead as she sat up abruptly into the dark. The room smelled of soured milk. She leapt out of bed to open the curtains.
The light of the full moon threw the disorderliness of her chamber in sharp relief. An unfamiliar basket of needlework lay beside a chair situated to face her. A thin broken branch of a weirwood tree stood in a small vase near her left bedside table, its blood red leaves old and dry.
Her eye sought and found a maester's trestle table in the far corner, full of scores of vials and healing books. She walked towards it and picked up the piece of parchment she found there. In Maester Colemon's jagged script it said: Alayne continues to worsen each day. Rapid heartbeat, agitation, delirium, burning fever … I fear death will take her.
Well, death had not taken her but her brush with it had left her not quite herself, feeling strange and emotionless. She returned to her window, opening it. The small night wind cooled her fevered brow, played with her disheveled hair.
"It's the hour of the wolf," she said aloud; the full moon hung in the darkness, halfway between its zenith and the western horizon. Sunrise would come in a few hours. What had Old Nan told her about this time? The hour of the wolf was when most old people die and when most infants are born. When ghosts and small gods were at their strongest.
A strange brutal pull compelled her to look eastwards and there it was, between two snow-blanketed trees. The Moonmaid. Small and yet oh so very haunting, raising the hairs on Alayne's arms. Suddenly, a swoop of sparrows whipped their wings down the sky, through midair; they came so close that the girl screeched, covering her face with her palms. But instead of little scratches, she only felt the flap of their little wings, scooping air, sifting snowflakes that hit her cheeks as softly as kisses.
She turned away from her window feeling tense and hot and churning over some forgotten, forgotten—What have I forgotten? Her thoughts flickered through her—dreams of running, keys to lost names— no more seizable than the smoldering breath of a blown out candle …
She climbed back into bed. Dawn was approaching and it would bring others with it. There was nothing to do but wait. Her eyes rested upon that tapestry that hung in her chamber. Scudding clouds drifted over the moon, staggering its light. Her vision wobbled and shifted. Either she was growing much smaller or it was growing much bigger, until she could focus on nothing else save the weft-faced weaving. In one panel, the white knight fought the dragon. Ser Serwyn in his Kingsguard armor on his black horse. The evil dragon Urrax, a nightmare vision with its glittering scales and wings crested with gold, teeth like black daggers, breath plumes of green fire. In the next panel, the Princess Daeryssa, bound and in service to cruel giants that lived in the high mountain that lay at the heart of the forest. Oh, that face. Full of ferocious yearning to reach through the dark and eternal forest boughs, through time and space, to pull the white knight to her. The emotion sighed through Alayne with surprising intensity and she felt the beginnings of a quiver in her breastbone.
Lovers fixed in time in a work of art. Their ardor would be forever green and forever unfulfilled. They lived right next to each other, loving everlastingly and yet never kissing. Her hand went to her mouth, covering her lips, her eyes wide and watery. That the old stories could play in her head and continue to move her in spite of her learning.
She rolled over, face down, into her pillow. Her nose against the linen, moving it all over, searching for some mysterious scent like a hound. There was nothing. She bolted up, every nerve atingle. She strained for control but the trembling intensified.
A few moments later, for no reason she understood and despite every effort to prevent it, she burst into tears. They spilled down her cheeks, filling her mouth. Their taste not merely salty but bitter: the tears of bereavement.
Her whole body shook. Her nose ran with snot. She sobbed for an hour at least, maybe more. Such sorrow unleashed. Taut with heartbreak, with the unspeakable desolation over something not just lost but simply forgotten.
"Gods be good, Gods be good…"
Still hiccupping sobs, she picked up the leaf from the weirwood branch and ate it. She didn't understand what she was doing, only understanding that the weirwood leaf had the strong scent of things that were, and that taking this into her body was better than crying and moaning for all eternity.
Where the danger is, deliverance also grows.
Who had told her that? Septon Chayle? Yet her mind conjured up a face, the face of her brother Bran, but old, older than any human had a right to be. So old he looked as if he had walked a thousand years upon the earth.
The Old One spoke to her, if only in whispers, of something inside of her that longed to be named.
It seemed forever before Sansa lifted her head. Footsteps. The warble and whine of mockingbirds announcing the dawn. Be she alive or be she dead, I'll grind her bones to make my bread.
Sansa let out a ragged breath but did not shiver. There was a feeling in her blood, something marching through her, someone new and courageous and wonderful waiting to be born.
"Now is when the point of the story changes," she said, her voice a hush.
Inside her brain, a sleeping wolf sprang awake, its yellow eyes opening in the dark.
THE END