I sat back onto my heels, lifting my hands to defend myself. The bracelet fell into the crook of my elbow but I ignored it. My attention was all on the wolf, padding to the side of the pool. It was close enough for me to see that it was a she-wolf, and it struck me there was nothing threatening in her demeanour, save that she had come closer. She had not hunkered down or snarled or shown any sign of aggression and she made no attempt to come around the pool, or gather herself to leap over it.
‘What then?’ I croaked.
She stiffened at my voice and lowered her head slightly, but her hackles stayed down and she did not growl. She only went on staring at me intently. I wondered if she could be a tame wolf that belonged to someone who lived along the path. I could not sit there forever, so very slowly I got to my feet. My knees cracked but the she-wolf only followed my movements with her silver eyes. Then she began to pad softly around the pool towards me.
Heart thudding wildly, I took one panicky step back, and then another.
She stopped and sat back on her haunches. I stared at her indecisively, feeling as if I were involved in some complex negotiation whose rules I did not understand, and which might end with me having my throat torn out. Then some impulse made me glance down and I saw that I was back on the path. When I looked up again, the she-wolf had vanished. Mind reeling, I suddenly became aware how dark it was. The trees about the pool seemed closer than they had been and I had not noticed until now how dead and black they were, branches stretching down towards the water like claws.
I shivered and continued along the path, knowing I would not be able to do so for much longer, for once it was dark, I would not be able to see where I was going. I imagined the black wolf shadowing me in the darkness, biding her time, though for what I did not know, since she had already had the perfect opportunity to attack me. My mind felt as unsteady as my legs, yet there was nothing I could do but walk, my eyes fixed on the vanishing track, my ears listening for the sound of paws.
‘A black wolf?’ my husband had questioned me later, looking sceptical and amused, and my needle slows as I remember the intimacy of that long-ago conversation.
‘Black and female,’ I answered. I was somewhat indignant about his scepticism, given that he was a faerie prince who had been well on his way to turning into a wolf when I wed him. But at the same time I had been distracted by the coolness of his white faerie flesh against which my body seemed to burn like a brand.
‘The wolves of the pack that dwell in the valley are all grey,’ he had murmured, taking my fingers from his chest and kissing their tips absentmindedly. ‘Perhaps it looked black in the shadows under the trees. Strange that a female was alone though; the pack usually stays together.’
‘Maybe she was a lone wolf?’
‘Lone wolves are male. More like she had new cubs in a den somewhere close by. You were fortunate she was alone. No wolf will attack a human alone.’ Gathering me close, he kissed me on the mouth, and said against my lips, ‘Fortunately I got to you before the pack arrived.’
‘I was frightened out of my wits when I saw her, but I don’t think she wanted to hurt me,’ I told him. ‘I think now that she was trying to get me back to the path and away from the black strangler trees growing around the pool. She stopped coming towards me the moment I was standing on the path.’
‘It was because you were on the path that she had to stop,’ my husband had corrected me, shaking me a little. ‘All of the wolves in the valley are ferociously wild. You saw that for yourself. They would have killed you if I had not distracted them so that you could get to the cave.’
I was not convinced, but now I was distracted by the memory of my astonishment when an enormous red bird appeared just as the wolf pack surrounded me. To my horror, the big grey wolf that was their leader had stepped right onto the path, which, until that moment, all of the wolves had seemed scrupulously to avoid. It was not until later I worked out that the path repelled the wolves only in daylight hours. The red bird had uttered a piercing scream and dropped towards the leader of the pack, talons outstretched, and the wolves had scattered. After a frozen moment, I had seen my chance and darted for the mouth of a cave.
‘I did not see a black she-wolf among the others,’ I finally told my husband.
‘Because she was not black,’ he answered indulgently. ‘She was a grey wolf you thought to be black who would have killed and eaten you with relish had she thought she could manage it alone, my pretty morsel.’ He slid his hands down my back and cupped my buttocks, and when his lips claimed mine again, I had forgotten about the black she-wolf.
My needle is still for a moment as I remember how it was to be held and cupped and pressed by hands that seemed as if they could never get enough of me. And yet they had ceased to want me. Was I no longer desirable because I had become a mother, or was it because I was human and ageing, if slowly, that caused my husband to turn from me? Or had the chemistry between us faded in the face of our son’s affliction? Perhaps all of those things had eroded the lustre of our desire. I resume my sewing, thinking that perhaps it is that the ways and paths to the body are closed one by one, by many things, and all without a person noticing, until a day comes when you discover there is no longer any gateway to the flesh.
I sighed and let my thoughts return to the moment I had entered the cave.
It was pitch dark when I remembered, with a burst of relief, the lighter the old woman had given me. I dug frantically in my pocket until my fingers found it. To my astonishment, when I pulled it out and flicked its flame to life, I found that it was not the cheap disposable lighter the old beggar woman had given me, but a heavy, beautifully engraved silver lighter. How had I not noticed that, I wondered incredulously.
There was no time to ponder it, for I knew it would not be long before the wolves came into the cave after me, and there was nothing I could use to bar the entrance or use as a barrier. The only possibility of safety lay in getting to high ground. Holding the lighter high, I saw a ledge jutting out some way up the side of the cave. I went to the wall beneath it and studied it intensely for a moment, then I extinguished the flame and thrust the lighter in my pocket.
I began to climb in utter darkness, feeling for the nubs and niches I had seen and praying I was not veering away from the ledge. I had not been climbing for more than a minute when I heard the wolves enter the cave. One of them gave a growling snarl, and when I heard it running towards me, I nearly fell from sheer fright. I froze and heard it leap and then fall back with a yelp to scrabble at the face of the rock beneath me. Only then did I know I had climbed high enough to be safe, though not by much, for I had felt the heat of its breath on my ankles. Forcing myself to be calm, I continued to climb slowly and very carefully. It seemed to take forever before I felt the ledge above me and, with a sob of hysterical relief, dragged myself up onto it. I lay there gasping and trembling for a long time before I could bring myself to sit up. Moving so that my back was against the wall, I prayed the wolves had gone, but one flick of the lighter was enough to disabuse me of that fantasy. The pack sat below the ledge, staring up at me with sullen red eyes. I spent an utterly terrifying night on my narrow ledge in the darkness with the smell of wolf all about me, and the knowledge that, if I slept, I would likely roll into the maws of the waiting pack.
Whenever I felt myself drifting off, I would flick the lighter flame on. One glimpse of the vigilant wolves was enough to bring me wide awake, heart banging at my ribs. Yet despite that, I did fall asleep ere morning, and woke with a terrified start only to find that the pale limoncello sunlight of the very early morning lay across the sandy floor of the cave. There was no sign of the wolves save for their criss-crossing spoors, but it took me another hour to get up courage enough to climb down and go outside.
The clearing where the red bird had appeared overhead was empty and wet with dew, which glistened like diamonds scattered on every leaf and blade of grass. It was beautiful, but aside from drinking my fill from a small stream beside
the cave and filling the empty water bottle I had in the bottom of my book bag, I felt no urge to linger. I hurried to the path. A long red feather was lying on it and I took it up reverently to marvel at its beauty. That was when it came to me that the path would keep me safe so long as the sun was in the sky. Only later did I understand that the feather had imparted that knowledge. Another of my mother-in-law’s clever refinements.
Slipping the feather into my coat pocket, I set off briskly along the path. I paid no heed to the rational part of my mind that insisted a path could not protect a walker, because neither could a valley and a forest be contained within a wall on a mud island in the midst of a city, but here I was. Too many impossible things had happened for me to feel anything was impossible, save perhaps finding a way back to normality.
I kept up a good pace to begin with, but by late morning I was flagging badly. Aside from the fact that I had hardly slept the previous night, my shoes were beginning to disintegrate and I had fallen twice, grazing my knees badly both times. By midday I was so sleepy that I could scarcely keep my eyes open, so when I came to a grassy sunlit clearing, I simply lay down on the path, rested my head on my arms and slept. I had thought dimly that I would not sleep long lying on the hard ground, but I had not taken into account my exhaustion. When I woke I was horrified to find the shadows of the trees around the clearing had grown long and thin. I had slept for hours, and the sun was barely high enough to show above the tops of the trees.
Certain the pack of wolves had not done with me, I scrambled to my feet, wincing at the pain in my knees, and set off at a limping trot, praying I would find another cave or, better still, a house or settlement of some kind before darkness fell. But an hour later, I was still on a path surrounded by trees when I heard the distant howl of a wolf. I began to run, convinced the pack was beginning to assemble for the chase. Soon after, the ground began to rise once more, and as the slope grew steeper, I slipped time and again on the loose scree, opening up the grazes on both knees. Mopping at the blood trickling from the cuts, I was horrified to think of the scent trail I was leaving for the wolves, but I told myself that the steepness of the terrain gave me a better chance of finding another cave.
It was nearing sunset when I reached the top of the hill I had been climbing. I was bitterly disappointed to find that the trees were simply too thick to let me see clearly in any direction. Nor had I seen any cave. I felt like sitting down and weeping, but despair turned to terror when I heard a wolf howl again and the answering howls of other wolves, nearer to one another and to me than the wolf I had heard earlier. I got to my feet, quaking with fear, knowing the only other way I could protect myself was with fire. As swiftly as I could I began collecting dried twigs and branches and piling them up in front of a tree growing at the edge of the path. Once I had amassed a pile, I set a few strong limbs aside and then pushed a tissue from my bag in amongst a cluster of twigs on the heap. I took out the heavy, beautiful lighter and stared at it for a moment in wonder, but another howl made me glance up to see that the sun was minutes from setting.
I flicked the lighter and there was a little flare of brightness as the tissue went up, then the wood began to crackle. I unscrewed the nub at the end of the lighter and tipped a little of the fluid onto the end of one of the branches I had set to one side, then I screwed the nub back into place and held the branch into the flames. The glistening bark caught alight with a roar and a rush of heat, and not a moment too soon, for its light flared in not one, but many pairs of eyes, all red as the setting sun, malevolent and hungry, not cool and watchful as the silvery eyes of the black wolf had been.
I had built the fire in front of me, keeping the tree at my back, but I knew that I was vulnerable to attack from the sides. I meant to use the burning brand to protect my flank, but what if they attacked from both sides at once? The answer was all too obvious. For a moment a fury swept through me at the thought that I might die in such a stupid impossible way, and I brandished the burning branch and shouted, ‘Go away! I will not let you eat me! You’ll burn if you try!’
The red eyes continued to watch me, and seeing that the branch I was holding was beginning to fail, I bent down, never taking my eyes from the wolves. I groped quickly on the pile beside me for another branch, not daring to set down the one I held to pour more lighter fluid onto its replacement, but fortunately the second branch caught obligingly. I risked a glance at the pile of spare firewood and reckoned I had twenty minutes at best before the fire began to die. That was why the wolves had not tried to attack, I thought with a chill. They were waiting for the fire to go out.
In that moment, I knew I would die if I did nothing but wait. It occurred to me sickeningly that as well as giving off the smell of blood, I was probably stinking of fear.
There was only one thing to do. As surreptitiously as I could, I gathered up the remaining wood and then let it fall onto the fire in one armful. Then I hurled my burning brand towards the enormous wolf I had identified as the alpha male and turned to scramble up the tree. The fire gave a great whoosh and blazed up as I had hoped, but the leader of the pack must have realised what I meant to do and he leapt at me. The flames were too high and he gave a yelp as fire licked his flank. Then he was howling and rolling to quench his burning hide.
I had managed to reach the first branch and I glanced down to see the leader of the wolf pack glaring up at me with undisguised hatred. I climbed up to the next branch, realising that when the fire died completely, they would be able to get closer to the tree and jump higher.
When I reckoned myself high enough to be out of reach, I stopped, clinging to the trunk of the tree and gasping, unable to see anything below because smoke from the dying fire was billowing up and my eyes were streaming.
My husband told me later that he had been perched in a nearby tree as the red bird, poised to rescue me if I needed it. He had not intervened because, by managing alone, I was bringing potency and endurance to the princess spell.
‘So you were only to intervene if I was in danger of dying?’ I had asked. ‘That’s why you didn’t fly at the wolves when they came upon me the first time, outside the cave?’ We had been walking in the garden on the night after our wedding.
He nodded and said soberly, ‘It was hard to see your fear and do nothing.’
Remembering the soft gravity of those words, it comes to my mind as I thread my needle with celadon green silk, that if my son fails this last test, and all vestiges of what he was and what he might have been are fled, he will be wholly wild and it may be kinder to allow him to remain in the Wolfsgate Valley, to find whatever destiny he can as a wolf, rather than keeping him chained within the palace grounds. Perhaps he will join the pack. It would be a fine irony if he joined the wolves that had tried so hard to kill his mother.
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 b
een 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.