The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell
They stood in the snow, their backs to the churning city. Behind them, a revolution was beginning.
“Where to, my darling?” said Marina. “We can go anywhere now. Back to the woods? South to Moscow?”
“I think,” said Feo, “I’d like to sleep. There’s a place I know. And I’d like to eat.” She realized suddenly that she was starving. “And then tomorrow, I think we should let the wolves decide.”
Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a dark and stormy girl.
She lived with her mother in a ruined castle, burnt black outside but shining clean inside. It smelled always of spices, of hot stews, and of the reassuring smell of drying animal.
The girl’s bedroom was in the west tower. She had painted the windows with all the colors in her box of paints, so in the evenings light shone out gold and red onto the castle grounds.
In the room next to hers was a bed that was slept in only during holiday months. Ballet shoes hung above the mirror.
And in the ballroom of the castle there lived three wolves. One was white, one was black, and the third, much smaller than the other two, had patches of both colors; his chest, where his heart lay, was gray.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m deeply grateful to the following people:
To David Gale and everyone at Simon & Schuster, for such endless kindness. To Ellen Holgate, my UK editor, whose wit and patience I had until now believed existed only in fairy tales. To my wonderful agent, Claire Wilson. To Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson, whose books lit my childhood and whose encouragement has been a gift. To my brother, who has been the first reader of every book I’ve written. To my mother and father, as ever and for everything. To my friends, especially Mike Amherst, Johnny Howard, Katie Jackson, Daisy Johnson, Jessica Lazar, Daniels Morgan and Rothschild, and Julie Scrase. Lavinia Harrington and Sammy Jay, for our trip to the Arctic circle. Liz Chatterjee, for whisky, and Amia Srinivasan, for wine. Mary Wellesley, whose jokes I have stolen. Miriam Hamblin, who since we met at age ten has been my ideal of generosity. And, most of all, to Simon Murphy, who, among a thousand other wonders, took me to meet my first wolf.
Author photo © KATHERINE RUNDELL
Katherine Rundell is the author of Rooftoppers and Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms. She grew up in Zimbabwe, Brussels, and London and is currently a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, where she teaches Shakespeare and hopes for snow.
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Also by
KATHERINE RUNDELL
* * *
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms
Rooftoppers
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Katherine Rundell
A slightly different version of this work was originally published in 2015 in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Dan Burgess
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Book design by Lizzy Bromley
The text for this book is set in Bembo.
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4814-1942-0
ISBN 978-1-4814-1944-4 (eBook)
Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder