Aha! you might think. Why fear them? They live so far from me!
Oh, but listen: a most interesting fact about wolves (and by “interesting” I mean “bloodcurdling”) is that once they get a whiff of your scent they can track you for days and will, in fact, never give up chasing you. One wolf was known to have spent seventeen years tracking its prey!
Again, you might think, But this changes nothing! I will never meet a wolf!
Well.
The most astute of my readers will have noticed my use of a very important word in an earlier paragraph: “rarely.” (Go on, go back and reread if you must. I’ll wait.)
For rarely does not mean never. Because on occasion, wolves do indeed leave the northern ice forests. If they have reason to . . .
Chapter Four
The next day, Bo buried Mads under the boughs of a flowering blossom tree. It felt as though his heart had been clawed by Ranik, shredded to pieces he would never be able to fit back together. He was scared and confused and alone.
When he had woken at first Light, Bo had thought it all a cruel dream. But when he’d spied Mads, cold and still on the floor, he had remembered. With tears, he had remembered.
Mads was dead.
Bo was alone.
Mads had not always been the kindest father figure—mostly he was a mean old drunk with a sharp tongue—but he was all Bo knew. He was the only one who’d taken Bo in when no one else had wanted him.
Eventually, Bo had summoned the courage to check outside the hut, but the wolf had long gone, forced to hide from full Light like all wolves. But Bo knew Ranik would be back in the half-Light. He knew this because the night before, the wolf had pressed close to the door and whispered, “You cannot. Escape me.”
Bo had clutched his stomach and gulped down the sour taste in his mouth when he’d heard it. He would have to leave. But where would he go? Where could he go?
“Goodbye,” Bo said to Mads’s grave, the mound of earth already lightly scattered with fallen blossoms from the tree above it. Nix pressed against Bo’s calves, whimpering quietly. In his hand, Bo held Mads’s leather necklace with the small crystal pendant. It was an odd shape—all points and jagged angles—and the thick leather strap was carved with peculiar little squiggles and marks, but Mads had worn it every day of his life, so Bo wanted to keep it.
Bo tied the leather strap around his neck, dropping the pendant beneath his shirt. He patted his chest, feeling the cold lump through the thin material. It was small comfort, however. Bo’s head was filled with strange ideas about wolves and Stars and keys and witches, ideas that danced and darted and refused to come together to make sense. He didn’t have any answers; he felt useless and afraid.
But there was something he could do. If he bought the wish from the man at the market, then perhaps he could save Mads. Bo wasn’t sure if he believed in wishes but it didn’t matter. If there was a glimmer of hope, the smallest chance that Bo could wish for everything to be the way it was before, he would take it. His life with Mads hadn’t been perfect but what else could he wish for? Sometimes Mads had even been kind to him: swimming in the river, shadow puppets on the walls, little foxes carved out of wood for Bo to play with. Not always, but sometimes.
Didn’t he owe it to the old man to try? Bo could prove his worth, once and for all.
Inside the hut, Bo grabbed everything that might be worth trading. How many Raha had the man asked for? Five hundred? Bo didn’t have anywhere near that amount, not even after he found a tin of money hidden beneath the hearth. But perhaps he could sell some belongings. He searched high and low but they didn’t have anything much of value.
Nix tied himself up in knots around Bo’s legs. “I’m not leaving you behind, you silly thing,” said Bo. “We’re doing this together.”
When he spied the box of gold-red dust under Mads’s cot, a coldness gripped Bo’s heart. He knew that, before he went to find Galvin, he should walk to the center of the forest and check on the old tree. For Mads.
Bo heaved his rucksack full of items to barter onto his back, and he and Nix set out, quiet in their grief. But when they arrived at the clearing, Bo’s heart—which was already shattered to a million pieces—found a way to shatter some more.
The leaves and limbs were blackened and shriveled, and the hole in the center of the trunk was so large Bo could have walked into it without bending over. The mournful howling he thought he’d imagined coming from inside the tree trunk the day before was now so loud it made Bo’s teeth rattle.
The tree was dead.
Worse still, whatever had killed the beastly old thing had spread to the trees circling the clearing, their branches bare of leaves, their bark peeling in long, jagged strips, their trunks splitting and toppling over. There was no breeze, no birdsong, no sign of life, save for the same tawny owl as last time. But with a gentle hoot and a flapping of wings, the owl left too and then there was silence.
A Dark funk settled over Bo, his insides crawling as though filled with Shadow Creatures.
How far would this . . . this disease spread?
Bo didn’t bother throwing the powder on the base of the tree. He tossed the pouch on the ground where he stood, then ran, feeling so much shame that here, again, was another way he had let Mads down. I can’t get anything right, thought Bo. No wonder I was left in the forest to die.
“What have you done?” Mads had asked when he saw the pouch, right before he’d died. These words whirled through Bo’s head as he ran.
What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?
* * *
As Bo neared the edge of the forest, he heard noises.
“Steady up!” rasped an old man’s voice, just through the break of trees. Bo crept forward until he could see beyond the forest and to the narrow road.
A scattering of people marched along the road, headed away from the village. On their backs they carried bulging rucksacks and baskets filled with food and clothing; a young woman pulled a cart overflowing with furniture and bedding. “Mind you don’t tip the thing,” the old man said to her. “You’re going too fast. I’d like to reach the Un-Royal City in one piece, thank you very much.”
Flyaway strands of brown hair framed the woman’s face; her cheeks were red with effort. “I need to go fast,” she snapped. “The sooner we get away from this cursed place, the better.”
Bo watched several more families pass, all carrying their worldly possessions, all looking over their shoulders at the village behind them, worry etched in their features. Bo even recognized some of the traders from yesterday’s market, the ones who had come from far-flung corners of Irin and who usually stayed in the village for weeks, peddling their wares.
“Strange,” said Bo to Nix. “Why do you think they’re leaving?”
The little fox growled.
“You’re right. The Shadow Creatures were bad last night. Louder than ever but you don’t think—”
And then Bo saw him.
The man with the gold teeth and the lumps and bumps and the dancing eyes: Galvin. The man who owned the last wish in the land.
Bo burst out from behind the trees and onto the side of the road. An old woman gasped at his sudden appearance, tugging back the small child trotting along the gravel beside her. “Get away with you!” she cried.