The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell
“What do you want?” she called.
“Need help?” he roared back. He was close enough now to see it was a boy: a boy as tall as a man but, as far as she could tell under the snow, barely older than Ilya. He was startling to look at, partly because of the sharpness of his bones, but mostly because, when he lifted his feet from the snow, she saw he wore socks but no shoes.
“Lost?” he shouted. He must have seen the look in Gray’s eyes, because he came no closer but stayed five feet away.
“No,” Feo shouted. “Cold!”
“Unsurprising!” he roared back, as another rush of snow came flying at their faces. He gestured with the thing in his hand: It was, Feo saw, a jackdaw. “Help?”
“Help,” said Ilya fervently, “would be much appreciated.”
Feo only nodded, as much as her frozen spine allowed. The storm, which renders most people unbeautiful, didn’t seem to have touched this boy. His hair was dark, sculpted into wildness by the wind.
“Fast, then!” he roared. He came closer and squinted at them. He pointed at Gray, at White. “Dogs?”
Feo shrugged: It was a shrug that you might, if you wanted to, interpret as a nod.
The boy grinned up at the sky. “Quick! Getting worse!”
“We can ride—” began Ilya, but Feo elbowed him in the belly button and he bit his lips shut.
“Yes! Come!” said the young man.
“You, hold on to my coat,” said the stranger. He held out the edge of his coat. “Going to run. Pull you. Hurry.” A thought seemed to occur to him, and he pointed to his chest. “Alexei Gastevski!”
Even in the wind, even with the cold coiling inside her stomach, Feo had time to note that the boy was surprisingly bossy. She stared around the clearing, the feeling of unrest growing in her chest, but there didn’t seem to be any choice.
“Come!” said Alexei. He set off at a lope, running bent half double in the wind. Ilya’s face was white and speckled with ice, but his eyes were bright.
Blinded by the wind, Feo ran in the footsteps of the stranger, the wolves following. Every few moments Gray’s nose touched the backs of her knees.
They jogged northwest, as far as she could tell, through a swaying, creaking landscape. After ten minutes Feo’s eyes and lungs had turned to ice, and her feet had turned to fire. She was starting to wonder whether death wouldn’t be the more comfortable option when, suddenly, dark shapes grew out of the white.
“Rocks?” said Ilya. At least, she thought he did: The sound was torn away on the wind.
“No! Houses!” shouted Alexei.
They weren’t, in fact, houses. It was a ring of ex-houses. Seven buildings, set back from the road and with plots marked out for vegetables: all of them burnt hollow, soot mixing with the swirling wind.
At that moment the storm gave a roar and shoved at them from behind, and Ilya stumbled forward onto his knees. Feo hauled him up.
“Careful!” said the stranger. He gave a guilty, noiseless laugh and gestured onward. “Come on! Very close!”
They picked their way through the rubble and snow. There was smashed pottery on the floor and a tin kettle with a foot-shaped dent in it. Black prowled around, growling.
It smelled of destruction, Feo thought, and of hard work undone.
Alexei beckoned them on. Twenty paces away was a stone building not much bigger than a shed. It had one window, and the smoke coming from the chimney looked neat and deliberate.
“Here! See: Stone doesn’t burn well. My sister’s place.” The boy leaned against the wall, under the shelter of the slate roof, panting and grinning. “Go in! What are you waiting for?”
The wolves faced the house. They sniffed suspiciously. Black let out a growl: Alexei’s eyes widened, and he stared at Feo. It was not an angry growl, in fact—there was wariness in it, and exhaustion—but, Feo thought, if you didn’t know the difference, it might be frightening.
“I’m not sure if there’ll be room for all three dogs,” said Alexei. “Maybe”—his attempt at nonchalance was not impressive—“leave the angry one outside?”
Feo nodded. Gray, she knew, wouldn’t go inside anyway, and neither would Black. Houses reminded him of his early captivity. But White’s injury was oozing nastily.
Feo kissed Black and saluted Gray. “White!” she said. “You have to come in. That wound needs cleaning.”
Black settled himself against the wall of the house and closed his eyes. But Gray paced away, back into the storm, and lay down among the burnt houses, where she could see the road. She set her nose to point north.
“Come on, White!” Feo tugged at White’s scruff. “We need shelter!” When White didn’t move, Feo picked the wolf up by her armpits and dragged her toward the door. White snarled but did not bite.
Alexei was knocking at the door, and as Feo approached, it was opened by a young woman. She wore a baby on one hip and a hunting rifle on the other.
“Who?” she said to Alexei, nodding at Feo, who still clutched White in her arms. Feo tried to smile charmingly. She suspected it came out more desperate than she’d intended.
“I don’t know—I found them sitting inside some kind of snow castle. I liked their faces! Come on, they need to be near the fire.”
The woman looked into Feo’s eyes, into Ilya’s. She sighed. “Come in.” She raised an eyebrow as Feo pulled White past her but said nothing. Her face was very like Alexei’s, Feo saw—the same beautiful high bones and sharp edges—but older, and it was muted where Alexei’s sparked.
Inside was blissfully warm, and the wind, though not silent, was infinitely softer. Feo scraped the snow off her eyelids and looked around.
There was furniture piled in the corners, some of it burnt in patches and smelling of charred wood, but beautifully made. A pot of water hung on an iron hook over the fire. The fireplace itself was big enough to stand up in, and Alexei dropped the jackdaw next to the flames. Feo felt her whole body prickle as it came alive in the heat. It smelled safe in here, and soft.
Alexei grinned at them and pushed them bodily closer to the fire. Ilya began unlacing his boots.
“There!” Alexei said. “Now we can talk properly! It’s best not to talk too much in a storm: The snow gets into your throat. Once, my uncle’s tonsils froze and snapped off, honest to God.”
“Alexei!” said the woman, but she smiled.
Alexei laughed his guttural laugh. “What are your names? This is Sasha, my big sister.”
As he spoke a slab of snow flopped off the front of Ilya’s uniform and onto the floor. Under it was his jacket in boiled gray wool, the leather strap across the chest, the gold buttons.
Sasha’s face went suddenly slack with horror. “Alexei, what have you done?” She fumbled with her gun, struggling to cock it with the baby in her arms.
“What? I’ve done nothing!” Alexei looked suddenly younger, and more like a schoolboy. Feo stared, bewildered, from one to the other.
“You brought a soldier home? You brought death home for dinner?”
“No!” said Ilya. “I’m not one of them!” He had been laughing at Alexei, and his laugh was still on his face but frozen into misery.
“Get out. Get away from my child!”
“I wouldn’t ever . . . Nobody would. I mean, you’ve got a baby. . . .” He stopped.
“Leave!” said the woman. “I swore I would burn the next soldier I saw.”
Ilya kept shaking his head, but before Feo could stop him he had turned and headed for the door. Two tears were skimming down toward his chin.
“No, but look!” said Feo, and she ran to him, spun him round to face the woman, and scraped his icy hair back off his forehead so the woman could see the cleverness of his mouth and the goodness in his eyes. “See, look at his face! He was training to be a soldier. But now . . .” Now, she thought, he’s in the pack.
“They’re not dangerous, Sasha,” said Alexei, though he was flushing. “I told them they could come. I said you wouldn’t mind.”
“My father made me: He said I had to be a cadet or a beggar. He lied, and told them I was fifteen,” said Ilya. “I actually wanted to be a—” But then he jibbed, and bit his lips shut.
“No.” The woman did not put down the gun. “Alexei, after everything—”
Feo took hold of the woman’s elbow with both hands. “Please. A man—General Mikail Rakov—is looking for me. And . . . I need help.” She needed someone—someone older, who knew facts about the world and not just guesses—to tell her it would be all right. “Please.”
“General Rakov?”
“Yes. He’s taken Mama to prison, even though she didn’t do anything at all. He’s coming for me now.” It sounded so melodramatic to say it that she winced and gave an awkward grin. “Probably.”
The woman stared at them: a long, sad look. She put down the gun but kept the baby. “Give me your cloaks, then.” Feo saw that the dark patches under the woman’s eyes reached halfway down her face. “Come on—don’t look so worried, I’ll give them back. They need drying.”
“Thank you!” Ilya’s voice clashed with Feo’s. “Thank you so much!” They unhooked their cloaks and stood shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the woman.
“Tell me what happened.”
“We’re going to Saint Petersburg,” said Feo, which wasn’t exactly an answer. She reminded herself to tell as little as she could. She hoped Ilya would do the same. If not, she might have to tread on him a bit.
Feo went on. “We’ll go as soon as the snow calms down.” She whispered to Ilya, “Let’s stay near the door. Just in case.” And louder: “Come, sit here, White.”
“Everyone should sit,” said Alexei. “We’ve got no chairs, but that’s best-quality Russian dirt floor. You’re wasting it by standing on it.”
Feo sat, and White leaned against her shoulder. Her breath was rough. Feo stroked her, and helped her lie as comfortably as she could on her uninjured side.
“What happened to your dog?” said the woman.
“Rakov,” said Feo. “Not the first time, but the second . . . It’s quite complicated, but, basically, Rakov happened. What happened here?”
Alexei put his hands in the tips of the flames to warm them. He smiled half a smile. “Rakov happened. Not personally, of course.” He swiveled his position and set his elbows near the flames. “He sent a dozen men. They rounded us up. They said we had a choice: We could run or be shot.”
“What?” said Feo. Ilya only groaned.
“Most people ran to the next village. Sasha couldn’t: Her husband’s away, and Varvara had a fever. I helped them hide. Our grandfather used to keep horses in here. It was my fault—sort of my fault—that they came at all.”
“Why?” said Feo, just as Ilya said, “Was anyone hurt?” Ilya edged closer to Feo, and she put her arm around him, shielding the sight of his buttons from the woman and baby.
“Yes, hurt, but nobody was killed this time, except some animals: eleven cats, a horse. They shot the horse, burned the cats.”
“Burned the cats?” said Feo. She swore, the worst word she could think of.
Ilya nodded. “That makes sense.”
Everyone turned to stare at him. “Do you want to . . . elaborate on that statement?” said Sasha.
“They used to say at the camp that he likes fire. He says nothing scares humans more than to see the things they love burn.”
“There used to be a store here,” said Alexei. “It had a dozen sacks of sugar; when they burned the store, it turned to toffee. It’s the only thing that didn’t turn to ash, so we’ve been eating that. You’d be amazed how quickly you get tired of it.”
Sasha smiled: Her smile was two parts exhaustion, one part sadness.
“When was it?” asked Feo.
“Two days ago.”
There was a long and meaty silence.
“Can I hold the baby?” asked Feo. It seemed a good way to change the subject. She had never met a baby properly. It was surprisingly heavy, and the head lolled around alarmingly, but it was warm to touch. Its hair was soft as wolf fur.
“Hello,” she said. “Hello, pup.” She rubbed her nose against the baby’s. Sasha, watching, flinched a little, but did not move.
The noise that came from the baby was not a howl but a mew—the sounds of a small person deciding whether to cry. It was also, coincidentally, the sound of a newborn wolf pup.
Feo felt the wolf pup jerk into wakefulness inside her shirt. There was a scrabbling—she winced as one of his claws got stuck in her skin—and then the nose of the wolf pup appeared under her chin. The baby mewed again. The pup mewed back.
“This is my other . . . dog,” she said, indicating the wet snout.
Sasha looked from her baby to the pup, and back again.
Feo said, “He’ll be good, I promise. He’s got no teeth yet, so he can’t bite. And he won’t pee on the baby or anything. Probably.”
The pup sniffed the air, making the bubbling noises in his chest that were the closest he could get to growls. Then he caught sight of the baby and gave out three tiny yaps of horror.
Feo laughed. She sat the baby in her lap, propped against her stomach, and scooped up the pup. “It’s just a baby, lapushka,” she said. “A human one. See? Hush, please! We’re guests.”
She set the pup in front of the baby. They sniffed each other, then the pup licked the baby’s bare feet. The baby squealed gleefully. It was the best noise Feo had heard in what felt like a very long time. She bent so her hair fanned over both the babies, and sang to them in a whisper.
Sasha watched, unsmiling but uncomplaining.
“He’s quite clean,” said Feo. “No ticks or fleas. I would know: He’s been living mostly inside my shirt. See? No bites.” She lifted her shirt to show them her stomach, bite free. She pointed at the baby. “Is it old enough to eat?” Then she realized how that sounded, and blushed. “To eat food, I mean—not to be eaten!”
“She,” said the woman. “Her name’s Varvara. Yes, she would be. But I keep her on milk for now. There’s not much food around.”
There is a look that people get when they have not eaten for a few days, a tightness in the jaw and eyes. Feo knew the look: She had seen it in travelers passing by the house. It is not a look you can forget.
“What do babies eat?” asked Ilya.
“Bread in milk,” said Sasha. “Fruit.”
“I have some bread!” said Feo. “And some apples. If we roasted them and mushed them up—would that be too rich? For the baby, I mean.”
“No,” said Sasha. For the first time, she smiled properly. She put her hand to her head, as if dizzy. “That would be good.”
“Could we swap you, for some milk? For the pup? Just a teaspoonful?”
“Yes. Yes, I—of course.”
“Here, then!” Feo upturned her pack. “Six apples! If we put them straight in your kettle, they could be apple stew. Mama makes it at Easter. There’s a tiny bit of cheese, too. Cheese and apples are good together. They taste of summer. And chocolate—that must have been here since the autumn. It might taste a bit sacky.”
“You shouldn’t, child,” said Sasha. But she looked suddenly sweeter, and younger.
“Yes, she should!” said Alexei.
“Yes, exactly—yes, I should!” said Feo. “It’s what animals do. They feed the pack.”
Ilya was making a face. He knelt and put his mouth too close to Feo’s ear and whispered wetly, “We need to save some. You don’t know how long it’ll be before we next get food.”
Feo’s face burned hot. It can be inexplicably embarrassing to be caught midgenerosity. “We’ll be fine.” She changed the subject. “Why did the soldiers come? It wasn’t anything to do with me, was it?”
“With you? No! Why would it be?” Alexei began sharpening a knife, occasionally stabbing it at the apples bubbling in boiling water. “I need it sharp. For next time they come,” he said. “They burned my shoes and my books. I tried to stop them: the books, especially
“Why, then? Were they”—she tried to sound as adult as she could—“drunk?”
“Nothing like that, bless you,” said Sasha. “It was because our young Alexei is an agitator.”
“Really? Are you sure?” Feo had heard of agitators and seen prints of them. They were like crocodiles, but with longer snouts. “That just seems . . . so unlikely.”
“ ‘An agitator is a person who acts against the tsar,’ ” said Ilya, as if reciting. “They are enemies of the government. I read that somewhere.”
“Oh! Like they said about Mama.” That makes me one too, Feo thought, but she did not say it.
“Yes!” said Alexei. He stabbed at the apples in the pot. “And I’m proud of it! The tsar may not be cruel, but he’s stupid, stupid in the heart, which is the worst place to be stupid. I read about it: It’s a failure of intelligence, and of governance.”
“Governance,” said Ilya, nodding wisely. He shifted to sit an inch closer to Alexei. “Not good at all.” Alexei thumped him on the back. Ilya turned a red to match Feo’s cloak.
“Exactly! We’ve got to change things.” Alexei broke off a bit of cheese and fed a crumb to the baby. “If we can just—”
Sasha laughed and took the cheese off Alexei. “No politics!”
“At home,” said Feo, “if Mama has travelers for dinner and they start talking about the tsar, I’m allowed to say ‘forfeit!’ and get down from the table.”
“It matters, though!” said Alexei. “It’s not politics! It’s life!”
“It’s more likely to be death,” said Sasha. “Stop it, just for now, Alexei. Remember, you promised to stop once the soldiers came. Have pity on your poor big sister. I’d like you to reach your sixteenth birthday unarrested, please.”
Alexei ignored her. He lay back until his hair was almost in the fire and talked about serfs and revolutions and the persecution of the Jews and a man called Marx until Feo’s ears buzzed. He talked at twice the pace of anyone Feo had met, and tugged at his hair until it crackled with electricity. He talked over Ilya’s interjections, over the baby’s giggling in a pile with the pup, and as the storm grew louder he talked harder and faster than the wind. It was dizzying.