***
Deep in the shadows of the Forest, Alanki awoke with a start. Chills skittered like beetles beneath her fur and she scrambled to her paws in a panic, shaking. The nightmare was fresh before her eyes.
The midday sun was high in the clear blue sky, but it gave her no warmth. The air was chill and thin, and she detected a trace of frost in its scent. Autumn was well set upon the forest; the blazing red leaves had long since fallen. Now, they lay forlorn and brown in scattered heaps. A sharp breeze swept through them, throwing them into the air and whisking them up in fluttering cyclones before they settled back onto the ground.
Something in the dry, dead leaves gave Alanki a thrill of horror. She watched them, entranced. The rushing air had set them to life, carrying them forward on the wind before dropping them. They now lay on the ground, twitching and turning over in the faint breeze as though alive. But they weren’t alive, not any more. They were dead. Brown and grey, without a flicker of color—dead.
She rose without thinking and ran off into the forest as fast as she could carry herself. Trees flashed by, but Alanki dodged between and around them without paying any attention. Everything appeared to be trying to stop her, to get in her way. Wind roared through the trees again, and they swayed to and fro, reaching for her with their sharp branches and blowing dead leaves into her face. Alanki dashed forward, unseeing and panicked. Her only though was to find the deer—and fast. Something was wrong.
They were still at the Lake. Alanki didn’t stop when they came into sight; she continued running as fast as she could. At first glance, nothing appeared to be amiss—they were grazing just as they always were at this time of day. From a distance, they seemed just as peaceful and unconcerned. Alanki only ran faster.
She was drawing closer. Now, she could make out individual deer from what had been a blurry, brown mass from far away. And now, she could see that something was much different. They were grazing, yes, but not in the little, scattered knots that they often moved in. No, they were all in one big clump, huddled in close together like birds in the cold. And they were not peaceful at all—Alanki could sense their panic and fear buzzing in the air. What was wrong?
As Alanki approached them, she slowed so as not to alarm them further. She did not know what had happened, but the deer were standing so close together it was impossible to distinguish one nut-brown flank from another. They were moving closer together even as she was watching, as though not one of them wanted to be on the edge of the group.
But the moment they caught scent of her, they scattered. The tight group broke up like a flecks of settled dust when a breeze blows through, flying off in opposite directions. Alanki could only stand stock still, stunned as the deer galloped away from her in different directions like dead, brown leaves scattering on the wind. She didn’t understand this at all—the deer knew her, they had raised her—why did they suddenly fear her? She shuddered. Delphinium had just said that most of them had forgotten her old brutality.
“What happened? Why are you so frightened?” Alanki cried. “’Tis only me—‘tis only Alanki. I…I am no harm to you! What is wrong?”
“Alankhi?”
The herd skittered aside, and an old buck trotted towards her from the center of the group. It was Eryngo, and Alanki guessed that the herd had formed their tight knot around him in attempts to protect him the most.
“Eryngo!” Alanki said in relief, running to him. “Eryngo, what’s wrong? What has happened here?”
Eryngo lowered his head, though not in a menace, but in grief.
“It happened just last night. The moon was a claw in the sky; ‘twas an omen we should have recognized.”
“An omen—?”
“No good can come of a night watched by the claw-moon. And ‘twas true, they had claws as well. Oh, what a night of claws and blood, black fear and death.”
“But—Eryngo, what has happened?”
“We are in mourning.”
Alanki’s eyes widened. Mourning? Then that means that—
“Someone was killed?” she whispered.
Eryngo nodded, and the rest of the herd turned away. They formed another tight group, having decided that Alanki was no danger to them. But there was a sudden cry, and a doe squeezed her way out from the crowd and ran towards Alanki and Eryngo.
“Delphinium!” Alanki shouted, running out to meet her. “Delphinium, what happened? Eryngo says that someone was killed.”
Delphinium nodded, just as Eryngo had.
“And yes, he speaks the truth,” she said, her gentle voice ridden with sorrow. “But Alankhi, I am sorry. You must forgive us; we thought you were one of them.”
“Them? But who is ‘them’? What happened?”
Eryngo trotted over and stood beside Delphinium.
“’Twas Sundew,” he said. “Sundew was taken. There was not a thing we could have done, though we did our best. Fangs are too sharp and claws are too swift for deer to defend against.”
Alanki’s feeling of dread deepened. All at once, her head was far too heavy to support, and she gazed sightlessly down at the ground, feeling as though she might be sick. Sundew, a young doe, had been Delphinium’s first fawn. She and Alanki had grown up together.
“I am sorry,” Delphinium murmured. “She was my fawn. And if there was anything I could have done to stop Them, I would have done it. But the world does not work in that way. I am sorry.”
“But what happened to her?” Alanki asked, her voice quiet and hoarse. “Why did she die? How?”
“She was murdered,” Eryngo said, his voice as close to a growl as a deer’s could be. “Murdered. By your kind.”
Alanki was raised her head. “My kind? What do you—?”
“By those like you. By those who have fangs and long fur, snarling jaws and the mind of the hunter.” Delphinium’s face was an image of horror as she spoke. “By your kind. You know, A-Lankhi, that you are not a deer.”
And then Alanki understood. Her legs went rigid and her paws began to shake. She remembered, several days ago, that wolf she had caught in her territory. He had said something about wolves who had moved in nearby, wolves that had not been of his own pack.
“They are making camp on the fields.”
“There is a pack nearby?”
“Yes…”
Alanki began to quiver with fury, her grief evaporated. Those wolves. It could only be them. How dare they? How dare they hunt on her land, without her knowledge or permission? Alanki had long taken care to keep her territory clean of predators of all kinds, and yet these wolves had slipped in while she slept, like worms into carrion. They probably had blood on their fangs at this very moment. No wonder the deer were so terrified of me, Alanki thought. They thought I had come to take another one of them. A bitter taste was rising up her throat, and Alanki felt as though her pelt was smoldering in fury.
“Wolves did this?” she said.
Eryngo appeared a bit unnerved by the soft venom in her voice.
“Yes, ‘tis true,” he said.
“Why?”
“We do not know. They came, four of them at once. Soft, silent shadows that floated like wraiths over the night grass. They were swift and cunning and their fangs were eager for our blood. They circled around us, deadly circles, and we did not know what to do. Slowly, they drew the circle tighter, like a wire around our necks. We were trapped; death was on all sides of us. They tried to separate Sundew from the rest of the herd, but we fought. Eklo was on our side, we told ourselves, for we were his children. But no, they took her.” His voice ended in a weary, miserable huff of breath and his shaggy head drooped.
“Their fangs were sharp and long, white and deadly as the thin moon in the sky,” he continued in a scarcely-audible whisper. “Then they took her away, and for the rest of that night, the Lake was red and reeking of her blood.”
Blood, blood. The taste and scent of her nightmares rose like fire in her throat, and Alanki was searing with fury, her own blood poundi
ng in her ears. These wolves had no idea, no idea what they were stirring up. She tightened her claws in the grass, feeling them snag in fur, in flesh, seeing the shadow-furred wolves fall like insects beneath her fangs. She knew these wolves. She had felt them coming! She had dreamed it all; she had slaughtered scores of them long before they had scented the deer.
Tormentil, broken-throated Tormentil, rose like dust in her mind’s eye. This is your fault, all your fault. Alanki shut her eyes. She should have been able to prevent this.
“Just as Eyebright had said, my dear,” Delphinium said after a moment of awkward silence. “The days are growing darker; the danger bears down upon the herd. She was correct, was she not?”
For awhile, no one spoke; the only sound to be heard was the cold hissing of wind across the grass.
Eryngo raised his head. “You are to help us,” he said. “There is hope for us yet. Will you speak to them for us, A-Lankhi? Daughter of the River? They are wolves like you, after all; you can make them understand.”
Alanki looked up at the two deer. Then she looked away, across the fields, where somewhere, the wolves who had killed Sundew had come to settle.
“I will help you,” Alanki said. Her voice was soft. “Oh, they won’t do anything like this ever again—I’ll swear it. I’ll see to it that they know they’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.”