The shadows were deeper in the tunnel, with its narrow walls and low ceiling. The chamber had diluted them somehow, making them easier to bear. Here, even though they lacked the viscosity they had possessed in the wood, they clung and clutched, seeming to blank out the world. Annie pressed on, until her light illuminated the dirty, huge-eyed face of Sophia.
The girl’s eyes widened even farther, until it seemed they must fall out of her skull, no longer anchored by the shape of her skin. “Miss Pearl!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I knew someone would come for me!”
Annie shook her head exaggeratedly and pressed a finger to her lips, trying to signal the girl into silence.
“It hurts, it hurts,” moaned Sophia, either missing or ignoring the cue. “Please, can’t you do something?”
Annie shushed her again, fighting the urge to look over her shoulder. If the wendigo were returning, it was already too late to run. This time, at least, Sophia seemed to take her meaning; the girl quieted, settling down against the wall.
The wendigo lacked the patience or humanity for ropes or cages: they had trapped Sophia by wedging her foot between two stones. Both were large—too large for Annie to shift on her own. She stepped closer, leaning toward Sophia until her lantern illuminated every bruise and scrape on the terrified girl’s face. She pressed her lips against the filthy tangle of Sophia’s hair, praying that she was close enough to speak without the sound being carried by the cave.
“I have a friend waiting in the chamber,” she said. “I need to get him, so he can help me move these stones. You must be utterly silent. Make no noise, or the beasts may return. Do you understand? Nod if you understand.”
Sophia nodded haltingly, tears cutting new trails through the mess on her face. She didn’t make a sound.
Annie nodded back, trying to convey her approval, as she straightened and walked back to the chamber. The light from her lantern hit a waiting figure, and for one terrible moment her heart seemed to stop at the sight of him. Then his features became clear: it was Hal, not one of the wendigo. She beckoned him forward.
He shook his head in fierce negation.
She beckoned again, more pleadingly this time. Without his help, she would never be able to move the stone from Sophia’s leg; she could stay with the girl until the wendigo returned, she could sacrifice both of them so that Sophia wouldn’t need to die alone, but she could never save her.
Hal was too far away, too shrouded in shadows, for her to see his expression. But his shoulders slumped and he started forward, stepping over broken body parts until he joined her at the mouth of the tunnel.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, and turned to lead him to Sophia.
When the light struck Sophia’s face again, the girl looked from Annie to Hal, something like hope blooming in her eyes. She indicated her trapped foot. Hal, scowling, went to kneel in front of her, beginning to work at the rocks. They scraped against each other as he moved them, sending up little grinding noises.
Annie glanced nervously over her shoulder, looking for signs of movement. There were none. She looked back to Hal and Sophia, holding up her lantern to light their efforts—
And froze as the shadows, which had previously been beaten back by the light from her lantern, stubbornly refused to yield. They were thickening, strengthening, growing as solid as any flesh. The wendigo were coming back.
Hal, working at Sophia’s leg, didn’t appear to have noticed. Either the shadows were gelling slowly, like pudding setting, or he had been in these woods for so long that he no longer noticed such little dangers. As for Sophia, she was frozen in her fear, unable to register anything but her own dilemma.
Until her eyes widened, fixing on some point behind Annie, and she screamed.
It was a high, ringing sound, amplified by the shape of the tunnel until it became something akin to a weapon. Annie whirled, raising and swinging her lantern like a club, and smashed it against the face of the wendigo that had come up behind her, claws extended, ready for the kill. It howled, and that sound, too, was amplified by the shape of the tunnel.
“Hal!” shouted Annie, as she swung the lantern again. There was no further need for silence: they had been discovered. “Get her free!”
This close, the wendigo smelled rank, like something dead that had been rotting in the sun for days on end. It opened its mouth and snarled, lunging for her. In the tight space of the tunnel, there was nowhere for her to go—but there was no way for the wendigo to press the advantage of its size, either. One massive paw caught her in the shoulder, slamming her against the wall, claws biting deep into the muscle of her arm. Annie cried out, as much in rage as in pain. The wendigo opened its mouth wider, lashing forward to rip out her throat.
She shoved the lantern into its jaws.
The wendigo, already mid-motion, bit down before it realized what it was doing. There was a shattering sound, and Annie had time to see the startled look on the wendigo’s face before the last of the tallow drained from the lantern’s reservoir and down the creature’s throat. The wendigo slumped forward, driving its claws deeper into her shoulder before it fell, the weight of its body pulling them free. The light went out. Darkness slammed down upon them.
Annie stumbled a few feet to the side, shocked, clamping a hand over her bleeding shoulder. “Hal?” she said, voice a querulous gasp.
He was silent for several seconds—long enough that she began to think the wendigo had not returned alone, that he was dead, and Sophia as well, leaving her alone.
Finally, Hal said, “Tallow.”
“What?”
There was a loud clatter as the rock finally yielded to his efforts, and moved. A moment later, Annie heard the distinctive sound of flint scraping against stone, and a spark lit up the darkness. Hal held up a small torch, no longer than her forearm, slim enough that it would burn down quickly. He must have had it inside his coat the entire time, allowing her to light the way.
Sophia was clutching her leg, knee drawn up against her chest. As Annie watched, Hal offered her his hand and gently coaxed Sophia to her feet, allowing the injured girl to lean against him. Sophia’s head barely came up to the level of his shoulder. It was difficult not to look at them and see him as he must have been with his own daughter.
“It kills them,” said Hal. “Pour tallow down a wendigo’s throat and they die. I don’t know why. To be honest, I’ve never given a damn. It happens.”
“Then I…”
“You killed it.” Hal looked at the wendigo, fallen so as to almost block the tunnel, and the sorrow in his face was deep and cold. “You killed her.”
Annie didn’t say another word. She stepped over the wendigo’s arm, with its long and curving claws, and moved to stand on Sophia’s other side, offering the woman her free hand. Sophia took it.
Together, the three of them left the tunnel where Poppy’s body lay, so long removed from the little girl who had hungered in the endless wintertime, now finally at rest. They crossed the cavern of carnal terrors, stepping around puddles of blood and the bodies of those who had been taken. Sophia closed her eyes for that part of the journey, relying on Annie and Hal to hold her up, to keep her from falling. She was limping, but not so badly that she couldn’t walk. She would make it.
No other wendigo came to confront them on their way out of the mountain. Poppy, who had been the last to leave, had been the only one close enough to hear the noises they had made. Had she still been a human child, she might have brought her mother when she went to investigate an unexpected sound. But even the thin memories of her human life hadn’t been enough to override a wendigo’s hunger. If she went alone, she could fill her belly alone. So she had come back by herself, and had filled her belly with tallow, and now her dreadful jaws were finally closed.
Annie stole glances at Hal as they walked, trying to read the expression on his grizzled face. If he was angry, he wasn’t showing it. He stared straight ahead, stoic as ever, and never once looked back at the narrow hole that would be his daughter’s final resting place.
The air outside was almost painfully fresh. Annie breathed in, trying to let it chase away the terrors of the mountain. Sophia leaned a little harder on her arm.
“We need to keep moving,” whispered Hal. “The wendigo will come back, and they’ll be angry when they see what we’ve done.”
“They won’t fear us? We killed one of their own.”
“They won’t care about that. It’s the stolen meal that will enrage them. We need to get back to my cabin.”
The cabin, where Sophia could rest: where Martin was waiting, terrified that she was already lost. It was the best solution, and more, it would put walls between them and the wood.
It would put walls between them and Adeline.
“We can’t stay there,” said Annie.
Hal scowled at her. “I don’t know where else your daughter could be.”
“Adeline?” Sophia looked between the two of them. “Adeline is missing?”
“Yes,” said Annie. “Was she…”
“No.” Sophia shook her head. “She was never there. I would have seen her.”
Annie found that she could suddenly breathe again. She pulled in a great gasp of air, letting it re-inflate her lungs, trying to feel her way back to solid footing. Adeline hadn’t been taken by the wendigo. Adeline might still be alive. Out there somewhere alone and frightened, but alive. That was more than she had been daring to hope for.
They moved through the woods as quietly and quickly as they could, Hal holding up his makeshift torch to light their way, Annie offering Sophia a steadying hand whenever necessary. The shadows thinned, making it easier to breathe, making it clear that the wendigo were elsewhere, maybe harvesting the settlement for more prey, maybe doing whatever it was that monsters did when not filling their bellies. It seemed an unwise topic of conversation.
“Not far now,” said Hal. “We’ll help you down the hill.”
“Martin is there,” said Annie.
Sophia straightened, eyes going wide with sudden hope. “Martin? My Martin? He lives?”
“He does, and he’s been searching for you,” said Annie. “He’ll be the happiest man alive when he sees you well.”
“I never thought to see him again,” said Sophia. Her tone was wondering. “I thought this was where our stories ended.”
“Oregon has ended a great many things, but not that,” said Hal.
They continued on in silence, Sophia now attempting to urge them on, walking as quickly as her injured foot would allow. Annie began to hope that they might make it.
Something moved in the trees ahead of them.
Hal stopped instantly, motioning for the others to do the same. Annie halted, putting an arm around Sophia, keeping her from running, and a white wolf melted out of the woods, pacing toward them.
It was vast, as wolves went, as large as the well-fed dogs of the traders in Montana and the Badlands. It walked with its head low and its ears flat, and Annie fancied she could feel its growl all the way down to the soles of her feet, vibrating up from the earth, pulling her downward.
“Wolfling,” spat Hal. “Stay back.” He dropped his torch to the ground, where it sputtered and struggled to catch among the damp needles, and raised his rifle.
Four more wolflings melted out of the wood, forming a loose semicircle in front of them. They did nothing, only stood there. That was enough. They menaced with their very presence, presenting a terrifying wall of teeth and fur and incipient swiftness.
Something rustled behind them. Annie knew without turning that it was the rest of the pack, hemming them in as neatly as taking a breath.
“What are they?” whispered Sophia.
“Wolflings,” said Hal again. “Not real wolves. Cousins. Or the damned souls of real wolves, condemned to walk these woods for their sins.”
One of the wolflings barked, sharp and cold. The others flattened their ears and growled.
“They seem to understand you,” said Annie. It was a struggle to keep her voice level. It seemed worth the effort. The last thing she wanted to do was trigger some sort of an attack. “Perhaps stop insulting them.”
Something nudged the back of her legs. This time she did turn. Three wolflings stood there, one for each of them.
“You may be considering shooting your way out of this,” said Annie, still keeping her voice as calm as she possibly could. “Consider, however, the alternative: don’t. They aren’t attacking us. They appear to be herding us. Perhaps we should go with them.”
“They’re beasts,” hissed Hal.
“Yes, and we’ve just killed a wendigo. We’re beasts in our own right, if looked at the right way.” The wolfling nudged her legs again. Annie gritted her teeth. “I want to live to see my daughter again, sir. Let’s do as the giant wolves wish.”
“I’m scared,” whispered Sophia.
“We’re all scared, dear,” said Annie. “It’s just a matter of being more angry than afraid. Once you can accomplish that, anything is possible.”
The wolfling nudged her again. She started walking. Sophia moved with her. Hal did not. Annie glanced back, once, to see two more wolflings moving toward him. She turned her eyes resolutely forward after that. It was simple math. There were too many wolflings for him to shoot them all: even if he tried, he would miss one, or two, or more, and that would be enough to put all three of them into the ground. Going along with the creatures might seem more dangerous than fighting them, but it would keep them alive for longer, and as long as they were alive, there was a chance.
Hal hurried up next to her. Annie glanced at him.
“I see they convinced you,” she said.
He scowled, and said nothing at all.
Walking through the forest in the company of great white wolves was oddly soothing. Yes, the creatures were potentially dangerous, and yes, they could all die at any moment, but while the wolflings were there, nothing else was going to make its presence known. Even the shadows were behaving themselves, acting more like ordinary shadows, cast by ordinary trees, than the thick, fear-fueled things they had been since the circus arrived in Oregon. It was almost a relief. Yes, she was being herded through the woods by wolves larger than any she had ever seen, but at least if they decided to have her heart, she would die breathing easy and at peace with the world.
But what of Adeline?
The thought was chilling. She stumbled, earning a growl from the wolfling behind her. She hadn’t thought of her little girl since fleeing the wendigo mountain. It had only been a handful of minutes—surely no more than ten, fifteen at the very most—and yet it still felt like a betrayal, like she had done something she should never have been able to do. She had forgotten, if only for a moment, that she was a mother. She had been thinking of herself as an independent creature.
Of all the wicked things she had encountered in the wood, forgetting her child somehow seemed the wickedest of them all.
Sophia’s footing was unsteady, her leg weakened by the time she had spent with it crushed between the stones. The bones seemed to be unbroken, but still, she limped and staggered and required constant assistance to keep her from falling. Annie tried to focus on Sophia, and not on the fact that she was being herded by creatures that were almost but not quite wolves, or the thought that she had forgotten her daughter, even for an instant. Even for a second.
“They’re going to eat us alive,” said Hal.
“Why haven’t they done it, then?”
“Probably didn’t want to spill blood that close to the wendigo. Wendigo and wolflings, they don’t hunt together. They don’t share their kills.” Hal shook his head. “What one takes, the other cannot have. Both are smart enough to covet.”
“That means they’re smart enough to sin, and whatever’s smart enough to sin can be redeemed,” said Annie sharply. “Let them have their moments of redemption, and for God’s sake, stop encouraging them to eat us.”
“Don’t need no encouragement,” Hal muttered darkly. But he quieted after that, and that was all Annie could have asked.
They walked for what seemed like miles, crossing several small clearings, before the woods dropped away and another mountain rose out of the ground. This one, unlike the mountain of the wendigo, was alive: its slopes were covered in growing green, in briars and brush and scrubby pine trees. More wolflings lounged on low rocks and around the mouth of a cave. Smaller ones—adolescents and cubs, from the size of them.
“My God,” breathed Hal. “There’s a whole damned pack of the things.”
Annie said nothing. Her heart felt as if it had stopped in her chest, becoming a small, dead thing trapped between the straining billows of her lungs. Her throat was dry and tight, not allowing her to breathe in.
There, on one of the bushes near the mouth of the cave, was a strip of gauzy white fabric, clearly torn from Adeline’s gown.
“Ma’am?” Sophia looked at her in alarm. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
Annie’s knees buckled. The wolflings were still trying to nudge her onward, Sophia still needed her to stand, and none of that mattered, none of that was real, because Adeline was dead. These were the monsters that had stolen her daughter away, and Annie had let her be taken, while she had chased wendigo and whispers through the wood, turning her back on the little girl who needed her. She had failed. She had finally, after years of running, years of struggling for just one more day of peace and freedom, failed.
The ground was hard, studded with tiny stones that bit into her skin when she folded into a kneeling position, hitting her knees so hard that it brought tears to her eyes. That was almost a relief. She should be crying. It was a failure of biology and motherhood that she wasn’t. Something was wrong with her. The treatments Michael had given her, all those years ago, had changed her as surely as they had changed her children, and she had been a fool to think—
Something moved at the mouth of the wolflings’ cave, something smaller than the white wolves but taller at the same time, something with a biped’s stance. That was all the warning Annie had before Adeline burst into the open, legs churning divots from the ground as she raced to throw her arms around her mother’s neck.
Her skin was hot where it pressed against Annie’s cheek, and the part of Annie’s mind that could never stop monitoring her daughter’s health murmured, she needs her medicine, before shutting down, unable to process what was happening. She could feel Adeline’s breathing, feel her chest expanding with each breath she took. Annie looked up. Hal was looking at her.
“Is that the girl?” he asked.
No, the woods are crawling with children who can’t wait to embrace me as their mother, thought Annie nonsensically. Aloud, she said, “Yes. But how…?”
“Martin!” cried Sophia. She took off running, and made it almost five long steps before her wounded ankle buckled and sent her crashing to the ground. The wolflings didn’t chase her. Instead, they sat down where they were and watched, looking almost amused by the antics of these strange bipedal creatures.
Martin, who had followed Adeline out of the cave, albeit more slowly, hurried to kneel and lift his lover out of the dirt, his hands under her arms, his eyes fixed on her face. “Sophia,” he said, voice warm with longing and relief. “They found you.”
“I was so scared,” said Sophia, and threw her arms around him, and held him close.
“We found her, and you found my Delly,” said Annie, stroking her daughter’s hair as she lifted her head and looked at Martin. “How? How did you even get here? We left you in the cabin. I thought—it was my belief that you were going to remain there. To wait for us to return.”
“Well, ma’am, I—” Martin paused as he caught sight of Hal’s expression. The old forester looked grim, resigned even, like he knew exactly why Martin had chosen to leave, and couldn’t find it in himself to blame the man. Martin took a breath. “I got worried, ma’am. I thought, what do we really know about this fellow? How do we know he’s for the good, and not for the bad? Forgive me, ma’am, it wasn’t trusting of me, but you know what Mr. Blackstone says. Never put town over show.”
“And by letting me leave with a stranger, you thought you were putting town over show,” concluded Annie. She stood, gathering Adeline in her arms as she did, until the girl was bundled against her hip. The weight of it was reassuring, so familiar that Annie felt her tears begin to well up for real. The only thing that could have made the moment more ideal would have been Tranquility pacing out of the woods and standing by her side, all muscle and menace and fur.
Tranquility did not appear. Some things were too much to even hope for, and there has never been a truly perfect world.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Martin. He didn’t articulate his own fears over Hal’s relationship with the wendigo. It would have been petty, with Hal right there and Annie so clearly unharmed. “I left to try to find you. I guess I got turned around, because these big wolf-things found me first, and they brought me here.”
“Like they brought us,” said Sophia hopefully. “They’re good wolflings.”
“They’re man-eaters,” said Hal grimly. “They’re worse than the wendigo, because they hunt in the summer as well as the snow, and they understand how to function as a pack. They take care of their wounded and their weak. They’ve killed dozens of men in the time I’ve lived in Oregon, and I’m sure they’ll kill hundreds more before they’re burnt from the face of the earth. They don’t help lost travelers. Not unless they’re helping them into their own bellies.”
Adeline leaned back until her body formed almost a right angle from her mother’s, trusting Annie to hold her up as she freed her hands and began signing.
‘Wrong,’ she signed. ‘They’re my friends.’
“Can they understand you, Delly?” asked Annie.
‘They sign, some of them. They don’t know many words. Someone needs to teach them more words.’ Adeline wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s hard not to know many words.’
“That’s true,” said Annie. She looked to Hal. “Adeline says they can communicate with her. They speak with their hands.” After everything that had happened, the idea of wolves that spoke with their hands was somehow not unreasonable.
“That’s not right,” insisted Hal. “They’re beasts. They hunt, and they kill. They don’t help.”
“But they’re helping us,” said Martin.
“True,” said Hal. His eyes were on Adeline. “I wonder why.”