“It won’t save you,” said the stranger, watching helplessly as she was dragged into the darkness by a pack of wolves with the taste of blood on their tongues. “The knife won’t change a—”
///
“Maggie?” said Rían, leaning across the table, brushing the tears off her cheek with his thumb. “Maggie, it’s alright. You don’t have to—”
Between them, a stub of tallow candle had burned itself down to a puddle in its dish, and the flame lay low and guttering, throwing a ragged yellow light up across his face. The table was sticky under her wrists with last night’s ale. It was hot in the place—the close, sour, airless heat of a summer morning in a room that had been shut up all night with too many men in it—and somewhere behind her a barman was sweeping broken glass into a pile with a slow, dry scrape.
“No,” she said, shaking herself out of a memory. “You’re right. Everything about me comes from that night, more than anything else in my life. You can’t know me until you know—”
\\
—she felt the bone in her right arm crack under mighty jaws, and she kicked desperately with her free leg, trying to do whatever damage she could manage before the wolves found a spot that she wouldn’t recover from. She screamed, delirious with pain, and pounded and pounded and pounded her fist into the closest wolf’s head until it yelped, pulled away, and got ready to lunge again.
The stranger was there, watching it all, helpless and pitiful, his face so full of sorrow and he—
///
—shook his head, trying to keep his composure in the near-empty tavern, but failing miserably. At the next table, the last of last night’s drinkers snored with his cheek on the boards, and the owner had given up trying to wake him. Nobody was listening. Nobody in Bytown was ever listening at this hour. “It’s alright. We can stop here, love…”
“There was so much blood,” she said faintly, feeling the colour drain from her face as the words crept out of her mouth. “There was cobblestone in the courtyard, and the blood was just everywhere and all over my clothes and he was reaching up for me, and he still had his napkin tucked in his collar from supper—he always forgot it, I was always pulling it out for him—and his eyes weren’t…they weren’t right, and he kept trying to tell me—”
\\
“—you’re going to die soon,” said the stranger, in the heartbeat before the wolf wrapped its jaws around her neck. “And I can’t say a prayer for a name I don’t know.”
The teeth, out of nowhere, dug into her flesh. She felt its hot breath on her skin, blood pumping free, soaking her dress, and a sense of panic unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She was going to die, and pass out of this world unloved and unknown. It wasn’t the end that scared her. It was the lack of something after.
She reached her broken arm out to the stranger, fingers grasping, trying to touch the knife he still held in his hand, and she—
///
—was weeping so suddenly, she surprised herself. She pulled her hands free from Rían’s grip and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to stem the flow. “One little blade took everything from me,” she cried. “If I’d just—”
“No,” said Rían, up off his chair and taking his wife in his arms. “No, you can’t blame yourself. You didn’t do that.”
“They told me they’d leave him be. All I had to do was go with them, and they’d—”
“You didn’t do it,” said Rían, taking her head in his hands and looking straight into her eyes. “It’s not your fault. You can’t blame yourself for the actions of—”
“All I had to do,” she said, her whole body trembling with guilt and remembrance, “was go with them.”
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, holding her still, until she could barely breathe enough to cry, and she felt their heartbeats merge into one. He kissed the top of her head again and again, whispering: “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” to ease her suffering—or his.
“He tried to speak,” she said, voice so tiny in the crush of his embrace. “And I leaned down, and I put my ear to his lips so I could hear, and he…he…”
“Shh…” said Rían, desperate for it to be over.
“He said: ‘Find yourself a quiet life, and be happy.’ And then he died, and I…I…”
“Maggie, I’m so sorry,” said Rían, and she could tell he meant it so deeply, it cut to his soul.
She stared into the distance, all the grief long since spent, and her eyes hardened with realization: “I thought I could run from it. From that night. But I can’t. Not really. Just like I can’t run away from losing our baby.”
Rían’s face went still. He didn’t look away from her—she’d half expected him to, and he didn’t—but his hand found hers on the table and closed around it, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all. The candle hissed. Behind them, the barman’s broom stopped, then started again.
“They’re wounds, both of them, that I’ll never escape. But you’re right: I can’t pretend the scars aren’t there. They’re a part of who I am now.”
She pushed herself free of him, an arm’s length away, and worked up her courage to ask: “If I can’t give you a family, will you still love me?”
His face flashed with sorrow, and then a pitiful smile. “You are my family.”
“But am I enough?”
He laughed—a wet, helpless little laugh that was mostly breath—and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. He stepped closer, leaned down to kiss her, but paused just by her lips. “You’re more than I can handle, but we’ll muddle through.” And then he—
\\
—was standing over her, watching her die, as a yellow and orange halo flickered around him, and her vision blurred as the feeling in her body went—
There was a horrible squeal and the wolf at her neck jerked away, flailing backward before falling dead across her chest. Her reflexes kicked in without her permission, and she slapped her one good hand over the wounds in her neck to stop the bleeding—just enough to lift her head up to the sight of Niibin standing there with a flaming torch in one hand, as she pulled the sharpened branch out of the dead wolf’s body.
“Hold on, Ugly,” she said, swinging the torch toward the other wolves, who were scampering away to keep clear—but not leaving the area completely.
They hung at the edge of the torchlight, three or four lean grey shapes with their heads low and their ribs ridged under their winter coats, too hungry to give up and too wary of the fire to come in. Niibin’s breath came in ragged white clouds. Her face was black with soot down one side, and her hands were shaking so badly the flame shook with them, but she planted her feet in the snow beside Ugly and didn’t take a single step back.
Ugly rolled to her side, crying out in agony as the broken bones and torn flesh and muscle pleaded for relief, but she had bigger things in mind.
Across the way, just within sight, was the stranger. He was shaking his head like he didn’t want to deliver the news he knew he’d be asked for. She reached out for him, eyes twitching with concentration to keep from dying too soon.
“You wanted a quiet life,” he said.
She reached for the knife all the more urgently.
“It will end badly,” he said.
She made a horrifying gurgling noise while trying to scream at him, and it made Niibin jerk around in terror—which gave the wolves the opening they needed to attack. The first one dashed for her leg and got a swat from the spear in the head as a warning. It stumbled back but didn’t quit.
The second tried to take another run at Maggie, and got all the way to her ankle before Niibin jabbed its fur with the torch, setting it ablaze. The mangy beast shrieked in horror and raced off into the forest, bouncing off trees, back and forth, as it tried to escape its own demise.
Every time she’d come near a blade since the forest, it had burned her—not her skin, but something underneath it, her old self clawing up toward the light. Niibin’s knife had only brushed her fingers, and even that had nearly been enough. The stranger’s knife would give her all of it. Every name she’d ever answered to. Everything she’d run from.
Ugly reached a hand out to the stranger, pleading for the knife. She had to know. She had to remember. She had to die as herself, and not some nameless wretch who’d skirted fate one too many times.
Please… she mouthed, blood dribbling through her lips.
Rían looked at the knife in his hand, running his thumb along the flat of the blade, and sighed. Nodded. And stepped closer—
—as the world went dark.
The leaf sat in a pool of water so clear, you could see the sky in it. It was a vibrant sort of orange, curled up around the edges but otherwise unblemished in any way. Up above, the maple tree it had come from swayed gently in the breeze as the seasons struggled for dominance, and autumn landed a decisive blow. There was a bitter chill to the air, and it made Niibin pull her blanket a little tighter—a striped wool trade blanket, worn thin at the corners and patched in two places where Thunderbum had got at it.
She plucked the leaf out of the water and set it in her bag, closing the flap carefully to avoid damaging her prize. Across the stream, a pair of traps were hanging high off the ground. A rabbit and a muskrat, waiting patiently for their fates. She smiled to herself, and tried not to lose them when she cut the traps down.
Her limp was a little worse with the cold weather coming in, but she still made good time around the circuit: some of the traps needed tending to, some needed fixing up, and some just needed a few more leaves strewn around to hide them properly. She paused by the cave where Thunderbum lived and listened for the sounds of snoring. No such luck. She waved good-bye to him and carried on her way, down the hill and around the stream again.
The days were getting shorter, which meant her leisurely pace wouldn’t do anymore. By the time she got to the circle of birch trees, she was already running out of time. She reached into her bag and took out the leaf and a small bouquet of half-dead flowers—the best she could find—and set them down on the mound of rocks beneath the makeshift wooden cross.
There was nobody under it. There never had been. But a person needed somewhere to put things down, and the birches were as good a place as any.
“I caught two today,” she said, by way of prayer. “And don’t go saying it’s a miracle. This is my victory, not yours.”
She scratched her cheek absentmindedly, and sighed.
“I miss you. I miss your utter uselessness, and the way you always seemed to be hiding something, even from yourself. And how you talked to ghosts in a way that was way too genuine to be made up. You were a lot of fun, Ugly. I wish you’d stuck around.”
Another gust of wind cut through, blowing the bright orange leaf off into the sky.
Niibin watched it go, and shrugged. “Nothing ever sticks around.”
She moved slower, on the way back. Not just because her leg was sore—wolves’ teeth tore muscle in ways she’d never quite understand—but because she wasn’t really keen to get back in the first place. The further she got from the grave site, the colder the world felt. Like the joy of those first months, in the winter, faded every step she took. So she moved as deliberately as she could, to stretch out those moments a little longer.
But at a certain point, there was no avoiding it: she could see the hill coming up, its spiked walls jutting out of the ground like ragged teeth waiting to chew up anyone that dared to get too close. It had started as a desperate night’s work on a bald mound of earth that looked like a bear asleep under a blanket of dirt: a ring of sharpened sticks shoved into the frozen ground by two half-starved women who didn’t expect to see morning. They’d spent the spring and summer making it worth the name. Stakes driven deep once the ground thawed enough to take them, lashed together with spruce root, the gaps packed with mud and moss. A gate that actually swung. Every time either of them came back from the woods with a new fright, another row of points went in. Up top, where the sharpened branches pointed out in all directions—unnecessary, maybe, but it was tradition, after all—the thatched roof—spruce boughs and slabs of bark lashed over a frame of poles—was holding its own against the wind. Whether or not it would survive the winter was another question, but at the very least it was shelter today—without an angry, stinky bear to deal with.
But then she paused, and nearly dropped her bag. Up at the top of the mound, in the area not covered by the roof, was a small trickle of smoke weaving its way into the sky.
Smoke from a fire.
Niibin took a bracing breath and let herself in the gate.
She climbed the side of the mound, careful not to step too loudly, keeping herself crouched low as she crested the hill. The fire pit at the far end of the hill was mostly doused, with a small batch of flames still going, but the rest of the wood smouldered away.
Niibin set her bag down next to it, and quietly crept toward the door to her home, across a meagre dirt courtyard. She smelled sweat. Heard heavy breathing. And she knew exactly what it meant.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” she asked, into the open air.
No response.
She rolled her eyes and tried again, louder: “I said: I guess it’s time to go, isn’t it, Mrs Kelly?”
The door opened and Maggie walked out, patting the sweat off her face with a rag. The scars on her neck and arm glistened in the light, but still looked so raw and treacherous, it made Niibin shiver. Maggie scooped Niibin’s bag off the ground and looked inside at the rabbit and muskrat there.
“We’ll have a feast, I guess,” she said, stoking the fire with a stray stick. “You did well.”
“Thanks,” said Niibin. “Now stop avoiding the question. Is it time? Are you finally ready?”
Maggie looked to her friend, and the corner of her mouth curled up into the most dangerous of smiles. “I am,” she said. “It’s time to be seen.”