Wolfskin Read online

  Wolfskin

  W.R. Gingell

  Hi! I’m W.R. Gingell.

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  For Dad, with love from his ‘boy’.

  Cover images courtesy of ponytail1414, Fotolit, mariemilyphotos and canstock

  Cover by Joleene Naylor

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Intermission

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  It was bright summer in the Dingle, the triad sweeping in a high, hot arc across the sky with its littlest sun just above the horizon. Sheep were bleating in the tottering remains of the old fort, where patches of purple lavender fluctuated on the breeze in warm, scented gusts; and sunshine fell crisply over the plentiful woods, creating welcome pockets of shady green. It was clearly a day to be outdoors. In spite of this obvious fact, I, sulky and dismal, was stuck indoors to mend a huge rent in my second-best petticoat. I had been hunting among the hills and crags of the ruins for a falcon fledgling to train as my very own, when a sudden crumbling of ancient masonry left me dangling precariously with a bloody shin and the sound of tearing cotton in my dismayed ears. Mother sat me down promptly the next day and warned of dire consequences if I didn’t mend it, and mend it well; and I was feeling distinctly put upon. It would only get ripped again, and then where would my hard work be?

  I tried to explain the sense of this to Mother, illustrating my point with the myriad other mended tears decorating my petticoat, but she only said significantly: “It had better not, Rose.”

  The veiled warning was one reason for my put-upon feeling. The other reason was my younger sister Gwendolen. She was sitting opposite me with her own sewing, the early summer sunshine spangling a halo over her golden hair that was entirely appropriate. She liked sewing. It just goes to show that insanity runs in the most commonplace families, I suppose.

  “You’ve sewn a wrinkle in,” she told me helpfully, looking over my work. “It’s going to pucker.”

  I poked my tongue out at her, but my heart wasn’t in it. There’s nothing hypocritical about Gwen: she really does love housework, and her advice is always sincere. She even sings while she does the washing up.

  Mostly, I mutter. And break dishes.

  It seems such a waste of time: I don’t intend to be married, so why should I be in training? Gwendolen’s storybooks say that to have adventures one must be either the seventh son of a seventh son, or at the very least the youngest, most beautiful daughter of a bevy of seven, but I haven’t ever had any trouble finding adventure. Mother says it’s my unique perspective on life, but I say that if you want adventure, you have to march right up to it and kick it in the shins. It makes life more interesting.

  Life at this juncture was stretching out before me, as long and tortuous as the tear in my petticoat. My father, amused and indulgent of a daughter who swore black and blue at the age of seven that she would be a bloodthirsty pirate by the name of Cutlass Rose, had been willing to allow me to follow him out into the fields and woods without demur as soon as my little legs could keep up with him. He taught me to fish and trap and fight; and (much to my delight) referred to me as his boy. Father had died several years ago, but I had been left with the conviction that there was not a boy my age that I couldn’t out-hunt or out-fight, and a series of black eyes and bleeding noses had not been sufficient to convince me otherwise.

  Gwendolen, on the other hand, was perfectly happy to be turned by my sensible mother into a Marriageable Prospect; and now at almost thirteen had already refused two proposals of marriage. Girls married young in the Dingle, some even as young as Gwendolen was now. Mother wouldn’t hear of it for us. She was determined that we would be at least sixteen before we became engaged.

  “You deserve to know your own mind,” she told us, when Gwendolen complained. She hadn’t been married until she was past twenty, and it had been a very happy marriage. “It’s not just about being chosen by a boy, you must choose for yourself. For heaven’s sake, have a bit of sense, Gwen.”

  “I choose freedom,” I grumbled, throwing down my petticoat and looking longingly out the window. I prowled toward the square of sunlight, careful not to let Mother see me, and peeked out. She had her back to me, nipping off spotted leaves from a sparse but healthy rose bush. The black spot had gotten into the roses last year, decimating them, and Mother had become paranoid over the smallest blemish in any of the bushes.

  “You should sit down,” Gwendolen said, tugging briskly at the sleeve she had finished to test the set of it. “Mother said no lingering and no lollygagging.”

  I huffed out a breath, considering my options. There didn’t seem to be any, so I pumped one fist in the air vigorously, shouted: “Freedom!” and scuttled back to my chair before Mother saw me. A few moments after I had picked up my sewing again, Mother’s flushed, inquiring face appeared at the window.

  “Do I hear the stirrings of rebellion?”

  I tucked my chin in, trying to hide the mulish set to it, and her eyes twinkled.

  “I’ve got a good mind to let Akiva have you, after all,” she said.

  I bit down very hard on an excited yell. Akiva was the village witch, a most interesting and exciting person, and I had slightly accidentally overheard a conversation between her and my mother that suggested she was looking for an apprentice. More, that I was her first choice.

  “I’m nearly finished,” I said. The slap-dash stitches shoring up the torn petticoat were anything but satisfactory: hopefully Mother would forget to check on it once I was done.

  No such luck. Mother held out an authoritative hand, the twinkle in her eye more pronounced, and said: “Let me see.”

  I got up and gave it to her with a sigh, mentally consigning the rest of the day to unpicking and resewing, but Mother’s eyes were creased at the corners: a promising sign. I allowed myself to hope. I held my breath as she examined the petticoat in silence, turning the fabric to the bright sunlight.

  “Well, Rose,” she said at last, with a sigh: “I suppose I will just have to make the best of a bad deal.”

  Startled, I raised my eyes to hers.

  “I spoke to Akiva this morning,” she said, turning the petticoat to observe the other side of the darn. There was a small smile lingering at the corners of her mouth.

  “Mama, you’re cruel!” I said indignantly, bouncing up and down in an agony of impatience. “What did she want?”

  “Well, in spite of knowing you, she still seems to want you,” said Mother. She patted my cheek, leaving a smudge of dirt, and for an instant I fancied I saw the bright sheen of tears in her eyes. “I told her she might have you.”

  One short month later, I was walking down the road that led out of the village, dragging my small battered trunk behind me in th
e dust. I was bare-legged and bare-footed in the summer, kicking up dust and eager to reach the cool, shady sanctuary of the forest. Gwendolen had waved to me from the front doorstep, dancing from one foot to the other in vicarious excitement, but Mother had been grave and quiet with the little furrow between her brows that meant she was Not Giving In To Her Feelings.

  The Daring Cutlass Rose setting out on her first Gallant Adventure, I thought, a little defiantly. I was determined to vanquish the tiny ache in my throat that told me Mother was now a luxury rather than the everyday commodity I was used to. The road blurred briefly at the thought, and I blinked fiercely, saying aloud to no one: “The road is dusty today, but we pirates fear no dirt. The forest will tremble before us!”

  Before I knew it, I had left the dusty road for a soft, moist forest track. The air was cool and sweet in the forest, intoxicatingly free, and I began to feel in good earnest that my adventures were beginning. The ache in my throat subsided, leaving in its place a feeling of light-headed expectancy, and before long I was charging through the trees with a stick for a sword, slashing indiscriminately at branches and briers alike and leaving a wide trail of destruction in my wake. My trunk bounded behind me, becoming very quickly the worse for wear with each chunk of grass it tore out, but since I was as happy for my clothes to form a straggling line through the forest as I was for them to remain in the trunk, I continued heedlessly as I was.

  I was gleefully engaged in the process of reducing a blackberry bush to small, thorny pieces, on the principle that it was an enemy to the crown and traitor to the country, when a thunderbolt out of the blue struck me hard by the left ear and sent me tumbling into the blackberry’s wilting embrace.

  I dropped my stick-sword, the better to rub my ringing ear, and turned an aggrieved face to my attacker, conscious that strands of blackberry bramble were clinging threadily to me, and that my petticoat now had a new tear.

  Before me stood an old woman I recognised as easily as I did my mother: her face was lined and brown, and she was a little bent, but her eyes were as uncomfortably sharp as ever. It was Akiva. The hand with which she had boxed my ear was now on her hip but I didn’t put it past her to raise it again, so I released the handle of my trunk, which thudded heavily to the ground, and stood to attention as best I could.

  “What,” she demanded, without preamble, “Do you mean by tearing up my forest?”

  I would have liked to have pointed out that it was everybody’s forest, but the look on her face convinced me that it wouldn’t be safe to risk it. I tucked in my chin and mumbled: “Sorry.”

  She snorted, and strode away down the grassy path. “I dare say you are.”

  The snort left me indignant. It suggested that I was only sorry because I had been found out and punished. It was true, of course, but she couldn’t know that.

  “Pick up your trunk when you walk!” Akiva threw over her shoulder, as I scrambled to keep up.

  I did so, panting, and was attempting to cut the corner to catch her up, when she snapped back at me: “Keep on the path, girl!”

  She must have eyes in the back of her head, I thought resentfully, backtracking with a scowl. I was too new to Akiva to know how far I could push things, so I followed her bony back scrupulously along every curve of the path until at last I caught her up by an old, shabby garden gate, and discovered with some stupefaction that I was standing in front of a house. I hadn’t seen it as we approached, by board or beam.

  I glared at it reflexively, wondering why not, while Akiva did something fiddly to the crooked little gate, muttering crossly beneath her breath. While she muttered, I put down my trunk and gazed about me. I could just see the road to town through the trees, and even the crooked weather-cock atop the roof of my old house. I regarded the sight thoughtfully as I trailed into the garden in Akiva’s wake, my trunk once more clasped in my arms, and barked my shin on the white picket gate for my trouble.

  “I thought your cottage was further in,” I squeaked, one hand clapped over the afflicted area and the other desperately grasping my trunk.

  Akiva snorted again in a way that would have earned me a box on the ears from Mother, and said: “I dare say you did.”

  She stumped on up the path, choosing not to notice my frantic one-legged dance, and passed through the front door. It was bright green but peeling with age, and I was surprised when its hinges didn’t squeak. Akiva didn’t leave it open for me.

  Following her with some difficulty, I found myself in a high-ceilinged room with four tantalizing doors, low beamed and as brightly green as the front door. The back door was the most easily recognizable: it was open and almost straight ahead.

  I would have stood gazing around me for some time longer, but Akiva poked a hard, skinny finger between my shoulder blades, shoving me toward the door I had assumed to be the broom cupboard, and told me shortly to stow my trunk. I had to duck my head to fit through the door, which led to a small but airy room with just space enough for a bed and a small dresser with three drawers. When I turned around to thank Akiva she had already disappeared, and I could hear her rummaging around in the other room.

  In spite of the size of the door the ceiling of my bedroom was as high as the ceiling in the main room. The walls were whitewashed, pleasingly light, and the floorboards glowed a gentle gold in the triad’s light. I liked it very much. Most likely after a week or two of occupation it would be dirty, cluttered and over-run with my mess, but just then it was perfect. I crossed to the window and kneeled on the narrow, cushioned seat, leaning my head and shoulders out into the leafy green of the side garden. The forest was very close here, trees over-reaching the fence to brush against the walls and throw soft green shadows that mottled with the gold. It was pleasant and quiet, and I was tempted to stay where I was; but it was my first day after all, so I left the quiet greenness and went in search of Akiva once more. She wasn’t in the main room, and I took the opportunity to study it without danger of being told not to gawp or earning a clout from Akiva’s firm old hand, which I already had reason to respect. It was whitewashed, as my room was, and very, very clean. There was a fireplace, with a rack of herbs tied high above it and a coal scuttle beside it, old and rusty. A table stood back in the far right of the room with bread and cheese atop it and a washtub beneath it; and by the back door, a green hooded cape hung.

  I narrowed my eyes accusingly as I gazed around the room. I began to have the feeling that somehow, and in some way, I had been conned. It didn’t look at all as if a witch lived here. A workbench stood along the wall that held the front door, with a smallish window for light. I noted the mortar and pestle on the desk without much enthusiasm, but eagerly approached the rows of variously sized glass jars and phials, hoping for such exotic magical specimens as dragon’s blood or newt’s tail to alleviate the general lack of magic that the room radiated.

  Disappointingly, whenever I could read Akiva’s crabbed little writing, the labels described only such mundane things as ‘St. John’s Wort’, ‘Coriander’, and ‘Foxglove’. Regretfully leaving them, I stared briefly out into the front garden, giving the innocuous flowers a hard look; and then, failing to sight Akiva, wandered into the back garden.

  She was there, by a bed of newly sprouting summer greens. Her back was toward me, her rump in the air in the traditional manner of elderly gardeners, and for the first time I realised that she was barefoot, her toes disappearing in the deep green grass. Her skirts had been kilted up so that most of her scrawny calves could be seen, and I stared at her with my eyes bright and calculating, wondering if I would be allowed to tuck up my skirts just so. I had been mutinous when Mother lowered all my skirts three months earlier, since it had made tree climbing and exploration that much harder in proportion to the extra amount of skirt I now had. Maybe that’s why she did it.

  Akiva’s grey, dry voice cut in on my wonderings. “Stop staring and get to work, child.”

  Her back was still toward me, and I jumped at the sound of her voice. Perhaps
she really did have eyes in the back of her head.

  “I want you to turn the soil in that bed in the corner.”

  I did as I was told, digging and watering and fertilizing as ordered. Once or twice I spoke with the idea that it was rude to let the silence stretch on, but the first time I spoke Akiva only grunted. The second, when I asked about my empty window box, and what was supposed to be growing in it, she gave a short crack of laughter and said: “Whatever grows, of course. Don’t ask foolish questions.”

  I relapsed into silence and let my thoughts wander where they would. It was a nice garden, as gardens go; surrounded by the same grubby white picket fence that surrounded the front garden. The forest, as it had outside my window, seemed to press in and encroach upon it. Trees leaned over the more delicate herbs, providing shade, and at certain places the picket fence bowed slightly around an especially large trunk.

  I plied my trowel viciously, fairly itching to explore the forest, and each time I straightened to stretch out my back I found my gaze wandering unconsciously to the cool green shadows. As the day wore warmly on, these moments became more frequent and my gaze more longing.

  By the time the triad had sunk behind the trees in a welter of golden glory, taking with it most of the heat of the afternoon, I was dishevelled, hungry, and excessively dirty. I didn’t mind the dirt, but I did regret the hunger. After lunch, Akiva had stood over me, a scrawny, bent slavedriver, and made me dig a new garden bed, continually insisting on it being bigger and deeper. It seemed that Akiva’s garden needed a ridiculous amount of work done in it. I wondered how long it had been left to its own devices, and then, if Akiva had left it especially for her new apprentice. I darkly suspected she had. Nightfall couldn’t come quickly enough, in my opinion, and by the time it did I was so hungry that my stomach had long ceased even putting up the pretence of grumbling. As I trailed into the house in Akiva’s wake, there was a queer lightness to my head.