Mads laughed. “You’re wrong. He’s long dead.”
The wolf snapped his jaws: a cold, metallic clink! “Let me. Remind you. With my teeth.” The giant wolf bore down on Mads, lips twisted and quivering in a snarl.
In a rush of reckless courage, Bo sprang from his haunches to his feet and shouted, “Leave Mads alone!” He blindly grabbed a fallen branch and thrust it forward like a weapon.
The wolf snapped his head toward Bo, jaws curling into a wide grin, his milky white eyes shining. “Who. Is this?”
Mads groaned but didn’t have the strength to stand or reach out. “No one. It’s no one.”
Ranik laughed. “It’s someone.” The wolf turned from Mads, creeping slowly toward Bo. “If old man,” he said. “Won’t give keys. I take boy. Fair trade. Boy for keys.”
Beside Bo, Nix growled.
“I didn’t think this far ahead,” whispered Bo.
The branch trembled in his grip as the wolf inched closer. “Stay back!” said Bo, but it was he who stumbled backwards.
The wolf snarled. “Dinnertime.”
With a loud cry, Mads lunged for his fallen axe and swung it toward the wolf. The blade cut deep into Ranik’s hind leg. The wolf howled in pain.
“Run!” Mads shouted to Bo.
Ranik turned and pounced on Mads with a roar, and the pair struggled—twisting, heaving, gritting their teeth, thundering with pain and effort. “Tell me. The truth!” cried Ranik. “Tell me. Or I eat out. Your heart. And find. The answer there.”
Bo could feel the night settling in, the Darkness approaching fast. Soon, the shadows would grow claws and teeth and become Shadow Creatures. No one survived the Shadow Creatures.
Bo looked at the branch in his hand, so thin and easily broken. He needed to get Mads into the hut. He needed to chase away the wolf before Dark. He had failed Mads with the ancient tree but he could save him now. He could earn his place. But how?
All at once there was a flash of blinding Light. The shadows cringed and Bo flung an arm across his eyes, gritting his teeth. When the Light faded, Bo lowered his arm and blinked rapidly until his vision returned. Mads was in the center of the clearing with a ball of pure white Light anchored to the palm of his hand. The ball was spinning, spitting colorful sparks in all directions.
A sudden coldness seized Bo’s core. He turned to where the wolf lay on the ground, unmoving. A swarm of questions buzzed inside him, threatening to burst from his open mouth.
It was . . . impossible.
Mads crumbled to his knees with a cry of pain.
Bo ran to him and skidded to the ground. He grabbed Mads by his shirt, soaked with blood. “Are you okay?”
“Go. To the hut,” wheezed Mads. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Bo looked to the wolf. The beast’s chest heaved, legs twitching—he was waking up. Around the wolf, shadows lengthened, their edges growing sharp and clawlike. Bo’s heart hammered in his chest.
He was tall for an Irin his age but he was thin and gangly. Still, Bo gripped Mads under his armpits and dragged the old man toward the hut with every ounce of strength he had.
So close. Almost there.
Leaves rustled—was it the wolf climbing to his feet? The Shadow Creatures waking? Bo dared not look.
“Hurry, Nix,” he said. Nix was by his feet, scampering and whimpering—the scar on his snout wept. “To the hut.”
Bo crashed back-first into the front door as the sound of the wolf running toward them drummed in his ears: thump-ta-thump, thump-ta-thump.
He rattled the doorknob, heaving against the heavy wooden door that wouldn’t budge.
Thump-ta-thump.
He pushed harder, twisting the knob left and right. “Come on! Come on!”
Thump-ta-thump. THUMP-TA-THUMP!
“Open! Please open!”
Finally, the door swung open and all three—Bo, Mads, and Nix—tumbled inside.
Bo slammed the door shut, bracing his shoulder against the thick wood as he turned the lock. His whole body shook as—thump!—the wolf crashed into the other side.
There was silence.
Bo breathed heavily.
Nix whimpered.
And then . . .
A howl.
Long and mournful. Ah-woooo!
A howl of bitter disappointment.
Bo quickly lit a candle to chase away the growing Dark and then crawled to Mads’s side and gripped the old man’s hands.
“Mads? What do I do?” he whispered. “Tell me. How do I fix you?”
Mads lifted a hand to Bo’s cheek—two fingers brushed away Bo’s tears. The rough drag of the old man’s callused skin across his cheek was unfamiliar to Bo, and a tiny, locked corner of Bo’s heart ached at the unexpected intimacy. “So many wrongs. No time to fix them all,” said Mads. His sigh was long: the sound of the wind through bare trees in the Sorrow Season. He looked down at his palm—the orb of Light was gone but his pale, grayish skin was still glowing. “Shouldn’t have been able to do that,” he said. A troubled crease lined his brow. “Unless . . .”
Outside, the wolf howled.
“In the morning,” said Bo, “I’ll go to the village. I’ll get help. Just hold on. Please?”
“No!” Mads grabbed hold of Bo’s hands so tightly it hurt. “Not the village. You must leave. Find the Stars so she can’t get hold of them.”
“I don’t—”
“The Stars!” urged Mads, wheezing. “Don’t let the Shadow Witch find them. She will wake too—there is nothing to hold her back now.”
“But Stars aren’t real! You said so.”
Mads’s grip slipped, his hands landing on the pouch half-filled with gold-red dust. Bo watched Mads’s face crumble with the realization that if Bo had the pouch now, then that meant yesterday, when he was supposed to sprinkle the dust on the tree’s roots . . . Bo looked away, ashamed. “Oh, Bo,” said Mads, and laughed, but it was a sad, rueful kind of laugh. “What have you done?”
“Hold on, Mads,” said Bo. “I’ll get help in the morning. Please just wait.”
Mads shook his head, loosening the top few buttons of his shirt, slipping the crystal pendant that always hung around his neck over his head. He held it out for Bo. “You must release the Stars. Set them free. Three keys. Riddles lead you to each one. The Scribe can help . . .” He forced the pendant into Bo’s hands. “The first riddle is . . .”
“Mads?” Bo squeezed his guardian’s hand and called his name again and again.
But it was too late.
The old man was gone.
The True Histories of Ulv, Vol. II
Why You Should Never Wish to Meet a Wolf
There are more things to fear in this world than there are boils on a troll’s bum. But few are more deserving of your blubbering, jelly-legged terror than wolves.
Wolves are carnivorous, cold-blooded beasts powerful enough to fight off Shadow Creatures—their one weakness is that they can walk only in the half-Light, that eerie hour or two before the Dark descends. Light burns their skin, you see: a horrible curse bestowed upon them many years ago as punishment (for more, see The True Histories of Ulv, Vol. I, “Why You Should Never Attempt to Eat the Sun”). For this reason, wolves rarely leave the northern ice forests of Rakoo, where days are a constant half-Light.