The Wolf in the Attic (29 page)

‘That’s for Pa,’ I whisper.

Job killed my father; now I have killed Luca’s.

I killed someone. The enormity of that is too much to take in right now. I have committed the greatest of all sins, and yet I feel no sorrow or remorse. Can I ever be forgiven?

I cannot bring myself to think on it.

T
HERE IS NOTHING
for it but to go on. I turn back towards the north and the cloud darkening the night’s horizon. I am too spent and sore to run – I can barely hobble. My ankle is swelling up where Job bit it, and my right shoulder feels twisted and torn; that hand is so slimed with filth that I wipe it on the grass and don’t care to look at it any more closely.

But I keep going. One hundred yards. It feels like a mile.

I peer behind me, and see the body lying white and still on the path behind. Even skinchangers can’t come back from the dead.

Two hundred yards. Three hundred.

I haven’t gone much farther when I hear a sound that freezes my blood once again. The other wolf. It sets up an awful tearing howl that is utterly different from all I have heard before. It is grief and fury mixed, and it rises up almost to a scream.

I do not look back. Luca has found his father, and in a few minutes he will find me, and it will all be over. No matter what he feels for me, he is one of them. He is the enemy, and I have hurt him worse than I ever knew I could.

My ankle buckles and I go to my knees, the breath sobbing in and out of my mouth. I cannot go on. It hurts too much. I do not even have it in me to crawl.

Half the sky has darkened with black cloud now. It is pouring out of the north like a carpet, and ragged outliers of it are passing over the moon. When that happens the world becomes blue-dark and hidden.

But when the moon comes out from behind those tattered sails of cloud the world lights up in silver-grey. Back and forth the light goes, and the wind is quickening. There is a weather-change in the air.

I do not want to look back and see the eyes of the wolf coming up the track. I stare north instead, and see a bright sparkle of running water come and go in the fitful moonlight. I was so close. Not that it would have done me much good. I can’t swim, and the thought of how cold that river must be…

I almost laugh at my own stupidity.

The devil takes the hindmost, Pa always said. Well, he was right. I just wish it did not have to be Luca. He is the only friend I think I have ever had.

At last I turn, still on my knees. He is here.

The great black wolf is only yards away, padding soundlessly towards me. Its eyes are bright as mirrors under the moon, and it walks in a cloud of its own breath.

‘I’m sorry Luca,’ I say to it. ‘He was going to kill me. He killed my Pa. Queenie lied to you. It wasn’t the Roadmen, it was Job. He murdered my father, and Queenie told him to do it.’

The tears course down my face. I can’t help it. I look up at the sky, and wonder what time it is. I take out Pa’s watch and click it open. It is after three.

I realize something, a forgotten fact from another world.

‘This is my birthday. I am twelve today.’

I look at Ma’s face in the lid of the watch, clear now in the bright moonlight. She is beautiful. I knew she would be. I know her dear face, now that I see it for the first time in so long. And the memories the photograph sends soaring quite take my breath away. The tears blind me.

The watch is ticking away my life, as it ticked away those of my parents. I close it and hold it close to my heart.

I will be with you soon.

The wolf is almost on me now. It moves as slow and careful as though it is stalking a deer, instead of a lame little girl.

‘Don’t make it hurt too much.’ I whisper.

21

K
NEELING, THIS WOLF’S
muzzle is level with my eyes. It is beautiful and fearsome beyond anything I have ever imagined out of the pages of a book. Larger than the wolf-Job, its fur shining black as sin.

Queenie was right; Luca is a wondrous thing, one of many marvels that most people in the world cannot even guess at.

I find myself wishing I could tell Jack about all this. There is a Devil after all; I have met him. So there must be a God, too, and that knowledge is incredibly comforting. It does not all end here. I think it would comfort Jack too. I think he wanted to believe in something even more than I did.

The story has a power all to itself, he once said.

But what if the story is true.

The wolf is growling, low in its chest. It is truly something, to not be afraid at this moment, my last on earth.

It pads forward, panting. I close my eyes.

So close I can feel the prickle of its fur.

And it stops there.

The wolf is huge and warm and dark, and I feel the heat of its breath on my face. It does not move.

‘Luca,’ I say, my voice all broken and hoarse, and I cannot seem to help myself, but plunge my hand into the thick coarse coat, the glorious darkness of it.

The beast shudders at my touch. Then it lowers its head, and the great snout nuzzles my neck, and licks at the blood there. It gives a whine, like that of a family dog.

I burst into tears, and hug the wolf, my bleeding arms barely able to encircle the massive neck.

‘Luca, I’m so sorry,’ I sob. And the great wolf stands there and takes my weight as I lean into it, and I hear its heartbeat deep in its chest and the warmth of it, and I feel like I could stay like that for ever.

I
T STARTS TO
rain. I feel it cold on my nape. The wind is getting up and rushing through the hedges and moaning over the open fields.

I hear something different below it, another noise on the track behind me. The wolf is looking at it. I turn around, recognizing the sound even as I do.

Hoofbeats, an unshod horse trotting down the track.

And I see him towering there.

The pale horse slows to a walk, and it throws up its head and gives a thundering whicker, tossing its mane like a wave. Upon it sits a thing of majesty, a broad-chested man daubed in red clay with the antlers of a great stag rising up out of his hair, and the light of the stars in his eyes. He and the pale horse seem immense, tall as a tree, and as they step forward, so the wolf in my arms sets its ears back and snarls.

And the man on the horse speaks, a deep voice with a lilt to it like music.

‘Leave her be, skinchanger. It is not for you that I am here.’

The horse comes to a halt beside me, and lowers its muzzle. For a second it is on my cheek, bristle and velvet-soft. The man looks down at me and smiles.

‘Gabriel,’ I say. And I want to bow my head, but I cannot take my eyes from his face. The wolf backs away growling, and my arm falls from its neck.

Other, faint noses in the night, growing louder. Voices. The rest of Luca’s folk are finally catching up with us.

‘Go back to your people,’ Gabriel orders the wolf. ‘Tell the witch she has failed.’

‘No!’ I shout, finding my voice again. ‘He’s my friend. He wasn’t going to hurt me. Luca, don’t leave me.’

The wolf stands there, teeth bared, a sing-song snarl rumbling out of it. The pale horse stamps its hoof and becomes restive.

‘Your place is not with them, child,’ Gabriel says. ‘It never was.’

I look at the wolf. It stands there, teeth half-bared, the growl rumbling in its chest. I want to hug it again, the way I once would have hugged Pie – or different – but the same. I don’t know. But I know I cannot bear to see the beast that is Luca leave me. I glare up at the majestic figure, and meet the star-cold eyes.

‘I don’t care. He forgave me, don’t you understand? I killed his father and he forgave me for it – I know he did. I won’t leave him. He’s –’ I choke. ‘He’s all I have now.’

Gabriel frowns, and for a moment his face looks terrible, frightening, like the statue of an old god.

‘There can be no splitting of such loyalties. I will allow this friend of yours to choose, here and now. His own people. Or you.’ He looks at the wolf. ‘Skinchanger, I offer you this choice only once. There is no time, and no way to go back once the thing is done.

‘You stay with her, and you shall have my friendship. You go back to your own people, and you must let them know that they are to leave her be, now and forever. If they harm her or dog her footsteps, then I will unleash my brothers of the hunt upon them, and I will harry them day and night across the whole length of the kingdom.’

The wolf stands there, blinking. Finally it walks back up to me and pushes its nose into my chest.

Gabriel nods. ‘Very well.’

I sag. The pain is rising in me now, and I see that I am kneeling in a pool of blood. It is pouring down out of my fingers in a black stream.

There is a swooping blackness that fills my head for a second, and when it passes I find I am up off the track, astride the pale horse before Gabriel, and an arm hard as oak is holding me there. I struggle for a second, on instinct alone.

‘Hush now child. I mean you no harm.’

Black figures crowding down the track, and the swinging glow of a lantern. A woman’s voice rises up in a shriek, and the sound makes me shiver and squirm.

‘Let us go,’ Gabriel says quietly ‘They have their dead to mourn.’ And the tall horse turns under us and begins walking to the north, towards the river. The wolf trots alongside silent as a shadow.

The pain grows less. The warmth of the horse and of Gabriel makes me almost drowsy. But my blood is trickling down the flank of the great animal. I am leaking at the seams, and I do not greatly care.

‘Am I going to die?’ I ask.

‘Yes, child.’

‘I killed a man back there. I have that sin on me.’

‘It was no sin, to fight for your own life. Your soul is clean.’

‘I don’t want to go to hell.’

‘Nor shall you. That test you passed also.’

My mind is slipping in and out of the night. I look down at the wolf trotting faithfully beside us. Then I feel the change of gait as the pale horse slips into a canter, picking up speed, its mane flowing out like white flame in front of me.

For some reason I think of the horse on that last day on the docks of Smyrna, galloping wide eyed and on fire through the crowd, and somehow it seems almost as though things have come full circle. This horse I am on shall take me out of the world with it. And I shall see them all again, Ma and Pa and Nikos.

I am not thinking very clearly. I must have dreamed. But I am sure that we are moving even faster now, the horse galloping under me with a motion as regular as the rocking of a boat. Luca the black wolf keeps pace with it, loping tirelessly beside us.

And we are not on the ground, but soaring through the air, and the whole wide land of England is spread out under me in the moonlight, the hills and woods and rivers and the tall stones and the ancient barrows. It seems almost for a second that I see a shape, a pattern to it.

‘So beautiful,’ I say, trying to keep my head up, my eyes open. It is my own country, the place of my heart. I know that now. I belong here at last.

22

S
O IT WAS
a dream I suppose. It certainly felt like one.

I lie and watch the shadows on the ceiling come and go. A dark wood ceiling, and the sunlight is fretting across it, a breeze stirring lace curtains and letting the light in and out.

For a long time, all I am is a pair of eyes, a single sense. All I do and all I want to do is watch the shadows above me come and go.

I am alive. For some reason I am surprised. I watch the play of light and shadow above me and try to make things add up in my head.

My other senses begin to work as well. I am in a bed, on clean sheets and with a patchwork blanket lying upon me, bright as a toddler’s finger-painting.

I can hear birdsong outside the window, and I think a motor car in the distance. And somewhere close there are footsteps coming and going on a stone floor, and the clink of plates.

And I can smell baking bread. The homeliest smell in the world. It must be Mrs Bramley, down in the kitchen.