35.
Ashes Mend
Tir wailed.
He crumpled onto the ground, pressing his face into the snow and shaking like a lost pup. Crying was not enough. Nothing was enough; no words or cries could express the grief rising inside of him. He felt empty, hollow, as if there was a gaping hole inside of him like the hole in his mother’s throat. Something had been torn out—something that he had relied on for his survival, for his hope—it had been ripped away with cruel abruptness.
He had believed that Arwena was dead long before, but seeing her sprawled limp and still at his feet, like a broken-throated rabbit…that was different. He wanted to scream, to roar, to be swallowed up by the cold earth, but he found that he couldn’t make a sound. Tir wished that he could curl up in a tiny ball in the snow and never get up again. Arwena was gone. He knew that it was true, but he couldn’t believe himself. He wanted it to stay that way. He refused to open his eyes. Seeing her lying there would make it too real, more real than he could handle.
But Alanki was silent, stony-faced. She did not make a sound. She did not move. Tir, absorbed in his anguish, did not notice her stillness until she shifted forward, closer to Arwena’s limp figure. Cautiously, he raised his head to see what she would do.
Alanki was standing over Arwena’s body. She stared down at the red gash in her throat as though trying to burn a hole in her fur. She was as silent and motionless as Arwena, but there was something different—a stiffness in her legs, a glint in her eye, the slow, bristling rise of fur along her back.
“She’s dead,” Alanki whispered. Her voice was hollow with disbelief. “She’s dead. After all of that.”
She turned her pale green eyes on Tir, and he shuddered at the stony coldness he saw in there.
“She’s dead,” she repeated. “He killed her.”
There was no asking who “he” was. Captain Leron had given Arwena the fatal blow before Alanki and Misari had intervened. They had both seen it.
All at once, Tir was afraid of her. She was his sister, and she would not harm him now, but she was still the renegade. She was still wild and unpredictable and angry. But if ever Tir had thought he had seen her angry before—in all the times she had roared words of venom at Alpha Liyra, all the times she had faced the packwolves in pursuit; killed, even—if he had ever seen her angry before, it was nothing compared to the awful, silent rage that had begun to push through her skin like cold smoke.
“He killed her,” she said again, her voice hoarse and shaking. “She was my mother. All this time I—I could’ve been happy; she looked at me like I was clean, like everything was fine—now it is perfect, and for a moment I really thought we could…He took that away from me. He killed her.”
Tir rose to his feet and began to move towards her, but flinched away under her gaze. “A—Alanki,” he said. “I understand; I know how—”
“He killed her,” she said, louder. “HE KILLED HER.”
Tir took a few steps back, trembling. He remembered the cold rage of Xelind as they had fought Captain Leron. Xelind had been immovable, dead-eyed, terrifying, but the look on Alanki’s face would have torn gashes in his veneer. She was silent for a few moments, quivering and shaking as if the ground was moving beneath her paws.
“Alanki,” Tir whispered, frightened. “Alanki, don’t—”
“I’LL KILL HIM!”
“Alanki!” he shouted, as she tore out of the clearing. “No! Come back here!”
But she wasn’t listening to him, and he knew it. He ran after her, brambles whipping his face. She couldn’t kill Captain Leron. No wolf could kill Captain Leron. Hold him back for a second, maybe—but not kill him. He was three times her size. She may be quick, but he would snap her like a twig. It would be suicide, to attack him. She wasn’t thinking straight.
“Alanki!” he shouted, running as fast as he could. “Stop! Stop!”
Gasping, he burst into the hollow where the battle was still raging strong. He searched the hollow, but he did not have to search long.
There was a feral roar that echoed throughout the entire hollow, and every wolf in both packs froze at the sound and turned to watch. Alanki was a creature of flame, white fire that seemed to rain from the sky in a screaming torrent. She flew down the bloodied slope, fur streaming behind her in ragged waves. She was ten times her own size, vast in her rage. The wolves of Liyra’s pack stared, sensing that something in the battle had changed.
At the other edge of the hollow, Captain Leron was a rearing mass of foam and ripped fur as he tore out the throat of a wolf beneath him. His back was to Alanki; he did not turn around when she entered the hollow and he did not appear to have any awareness of the battle outside of his own private corner. Alanki crashed into him with an earsplitting crack. He crumpled in the snow in astonishment. It was awhile before he could recover, but by that time Alanki was upon him in a whirlwind of screaming white fur, claws slashing pale fire, red blood rolling from Leron’s dark fur into pools that stained the snow.
That was all they could see of Leron—a flash of dark brown fur here and there, a muffled bellow. Alanki was everywhere, her white fur flying, slashing at the captain again and again in a maddened rhythm, limbs lashing, a tangle of white lightning that seemed to have no mercy. And all the while, she was screaming.
The wolves had moved out of their way. Their eyes were dull with confusion and shock. They had not yet grasped what was going on, or Liyra’s wolves would have rushed to aid their captain, and then it would be all over for Alanki. But the sudden appearance of the renegade, flying out of nowhere into the hollow with a terrible roar—it had stunned them, and they were motionless.
But Tir raced forward.
“Alanki!” he screamed. “Alanki, stop!”
His cries were drowned out by the roars of his sister, who had no other intention in the world but to destroy the wolf in front of her and cause him as much pain as possible. It wasn’t difficult—Leron was already in pain; he was weakened from his earlier fight with Alanki and Misari, and Alanki buried her snarling muzzle in those raw wounds as he made awful, shrill sounds Tir had never heard a wolf make before.
Horror flashed before Tir’s vision and he lunged forward. Alanki had gone too far—he wouldn’t let her kill another wolf, Leron or not; he couldn’t stand it. Too many lives had already been destroyed and wasted. Another death was no way to end the battle, and he raced forward towards the pair, intending to stop this before something terrible happened.
He ran into Nerasa. She whipped around and caught him by the scruff of his neck as he attempted to run past, dragging him back. Her yellow eyes flashed in the darkness and, unlike the rest of the wolves, they contained no numb shock.
“Don’t, Tir,” she said. “Let her have Captain. It’ll be best for all of us, and it’s too late for him, anyway.”
Tir stared at her, stunned. But she was right. Turning back towards the tornado of white and brown fur that was Alanki’s revenge, he saw the dark bulk of Captain Leron rear up from the snarling tangle. Red gashes ran down the length of his body, blood running in slick wet waves down his sides. He rose above Alanki’s snapping jaws as though to come crashing down upon her to crush her beneath his weight.
It was what she had been waiting for. She lunged upwards, green eyes livid in the dark. Her jaws plunged into the dark fur of Leron’s neck, wrenching, breaking, ripping his throat out with a sharp crack.
In the half moment before he fell, Tir could see perfectly clear across the hollow. Leron’s grey eyes widened with bewilderment, unable to believe that he was dying, dying… His massive brown bulk crumpled, twisted in the air, and fell to the ground with a thud that shook the earth beneath Tir’s paws.
And then there was absolute silence.
The haze before Tir’s eyes cleared, and he looked up. Alanki was standing with her shoulders low, panting. Her fur was streaked red and standing on end. Slowly, she raised her scalding gaze from Leron’s body to watch the wolves surroundin
g her.
At first, no one moved.
Captain Leron is dead. The words seemed to pick up like wind in the air; the shocked reverie that had held the wolves was fading. The wolves in Liyra’s pack were stunned. It was impossible. Leron was their strength, their invincible Captain, the one who had led them out of the marsh. This tiny renegade had destroyed him. It was almost too much for them, and for a moment, they all stared. A hundred eyes gleamed in the dark.
But their confusion was solidifying into anger. This wolf had killed their Captain. It was not her right. A few growls rose from the crowd, rumbling in the air. The sound climbed like rolling thunder, and within moments every wolf in Liyra’s pack was on his feet, stiff-legged and snarling with rage.
Tir watched as they began to circle around Alanki, eyes flashing red in the darkness, echoing the red haze of the fire-moon above. She snarled back at them, ready to fight again—she did not care who, or what; she had lost her mind to the overwhelming fury of what had been taken from her. But Tir knew she would not last in another fight, much less the direct confrontation between her and the packwolves, a fight that had been coming for a long time.
“You dared!” said Liyra. “You dared!”
She didn’t seem to be able to find the words to say anything else, but it was enough. Her pack growled in one voice, drawing the circle tighter.
From the other end of the hollow, there came a chorus of answering snarls. A few wolves in Liyra’s ring yelped as they were flung aside, breaking the circle for just a moment as Misari came storming through with his pack streaming after him. They surrounded Alanki, facing Liyra and her pack.
“This quarrel is ended,” Misari said. “Your captain killed her mother and my mate. Now it has been settled. We have no further reason to fight.”
“This isn’t about your pack,” Liyra hissed. “This is about the renegade’s actions before you even arrived. We will leave you in peace when she is dead and our murdered packmates have been avenged.”
“I cannot allow that.”
“You still will protect your renegade? Even now, your pack will stand behind this one wolf?”
“She is no renegade,” Misari growled. “She is my daughter and a member of my pack, and so we will protect her.”
“Fine, then. We will kill you as well.”
Her wolves growled in agreement, closing the circle tighter still.
Tir was swaying on his paws. From the rise where he was standing, the scene unfolded neatly beneath him like a story, like reflections moving on the water. There they were. In just a moment, they all were going to destroy each other. The fire-moon was round and orange as a dying sun, and he could not breathe. There was no way out.
Tir felt as though he was about to be sick.
Behind him, there was a slight brush of air and a whisper of fur. Tir turned to see Palva, her tail wrapped around a trembling Seilo. She looked Tir straight in the eye, and the fur along his back bristled.
“Well?” she said. “What are you going to do?”
Tir looked away. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said numbly. “It’s over.”
“You know that isn’t true. These wolves all know you. If anyone can do anything, you can.”
“They won’t listen to me. They wouldn’t listen to you—”
“I was wrong,” Palva said, taking Tir by surprise. For the first time, he noticed something like sorrow behind the reflections in her eyes. There was blood on her paws, the dark of crushed yew berries. “I thought I could know better than the rest of them, but I was as blind as they could ever be. I thought what I knew made me wise, but I failed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Tir stared at her, his thoughts trickling back into place. “A prophecy. Did you think I…?”
His voice trailed away as she nodded.
“I should have told you sooner. But this battle would come, and it will end. Now.”
“But the fire-moon—”
“Is symbolic. Nothing more. ”
He stared at her, frozen. The meaning of what she was saying lay over him and sank like cold water into his flesh. He heard the sounds of the wolves behind him, preparing to spring, preparing to attack, preparing to destroy what would be the last of moons. His family, restored to him, only to be snatched away by the friends of the life he had made for himself.
Palva nodded, eyes gleaming.
“I’ve said my bit,” she said. “You go on. Do what you will.”
Tir turned away. He took a small step forward into the hollow, though no one was watching him but for Palva. He felt her pale gaze burning into the back of his pelt and he drew strength from it. Swallowing, he leaped up onto a nearby boulder.
The battle hollow was as torn and bloody as the pelts of the wolves. Crimson snow made dark splash-stains against the icy trees; the stench of fear and death was heavy in the cold air. His entire world was falling to pieces around him. Tir swallowed. Shouldn’t he be used to this by now? It was his lot. Everything he owned, he had fought and struggled for; nothing was easy, nothing happened as it should. Yet he was passive; he was an observer, in everything he did. He could only reel with the effects of what was thrown at him—the fire, Captain Leron, the renegade. He would never learn to fight. He would never be more than an outsider. He would never experience the kind of happiness and peace that isn’t snatched away by some outside force, moments after he had found it.
That was not what he wanted.
“Hatred is power,” Xelind had told him, long ago. But look what hatred had already done—what hatred was about to do, in a few moments. Look where Xelind’s hatred had gotten him. From where he was standing, Tir could see the bloodstained form in one of the hollow’s far corners, dead and cold and broken like a white bird shot down from the sky. Was Xelind happy now? He had never been happy in life, and in the end, his rage failed to save him. Perhaps he was with his sister now. That was one family’s story, shattered and folded up and put away by Captain Leron. But it would not happen again, not with Tir’s family—Arwena may be dead, but she died happier than she had been in years. And now Tir had a father, a sister. It was more than he could have hoped for.
Leron had taught the packwolves how to survive in the marsh, but they weren’t in the marsh any longer. Perhaps what they needed now was someone who could teach them to cover their fangs and start to live, to thrive.
To bring light into the darkness, to bring understanding…
Yes, he understood.
And all at once, looking at all of this—the hollow, the bloodied snow, the debris of what they had all been driven to—something powerful and bright rose up inside of Tir. It wasn’t anger, but it wasn’t fear, either. He looked down at the hollow and he could name each wolf there—when the fight began, one side would win, but Tir would lose something however it ended. That would not do. Like fire, the tremendous feeling seared through his veins, setting his fur on end and making his eyes flash with a light he never knew he had in him. He was no longer sad, no longer despairing, no longer angry, no longer weak—but he had had enough. This all needed to end, right now. It had gone too far.
He looked up at the night sky, where a new star was glittering in the mist of the full fire moon. And he took a deep breath.
“ENOUGH!” he roared. “ENOUGH, ALL OF YOU!”
The growls silenced. The snarling ceased. A hundred burning eyes turned to Tir, who stood high above them on his boulder. In the starlight, his dark pelt shined like a brand of fire, reflecting the glare of the full orange moon above him.
“Enough,” he said, quieter. “Please. You must listen to what I have to say.”
There, he paused, feeling the eyes of the crowd on him, and he bowed his head.
“We have all made a terrible mistake.”