1.
Aftermath
It began with fire.
Tir saw the churning colors before his eyes even now, whenever he shut them to sleep. The image was, quite literally, burned into his memory and it would not release him. He could feel the smoldering claws closing around his throat, drawing tighter still with each day he lived—the fire that had destroyed his forest may be gone, but it still remained inside him.
The pristine sky above him was blissfully oblivious of this. He opened his eyes—stinging and gummed up as they were with smoke—and stared into the blank heavens. It was dizzying. The blueness stretched on and on as if beneath his feet, like an ocean’s mouth that was threatening to swallow him up. Was it possible to fall upwards?
The familiar plummeting sensation tugged at his paws, and he could feel himself drop—turning over and over in the air like a dead leaf, feeling as though his insides were being pulled downward. He had fallen from the fire, before. That was how he had escaped. That was the only reason why he was alive now.
“The forest is dry,” Avrok had said the morning of the fire. “It troubles me—and Misari, as well. We need to move on and seek rain elsewhere.”
Tir shut his eyes tight and buried his face in the grass. Oh, how it all burned! The voices still repeated themselves in his mind, again and again, voices and sounds from before the fire and after it and sometimes even during. Still the flames crackled. They had not moved fast enough. It is impossible to outrun the wind, and fire often is borne on the wind. They should have known this!
The dusty clearing had erupted with the running shapes of terrified wolves and the air filled with noises of panic as they stumbled over each other, frantic to escape the burning forest before they were trapped. Smoke was beginning to cloud the sky, and the thick scent of the fire was getting stronger as it moved closer to the clearing.
Tir was swept away in the current of the pack as they all struggled to flee, like salmon swimming against the river. Clouded by the blinding panic, his mind was still in confusion. He could see the bright, lethal flames dancing before his eyes, and his fur felt heavy with ashes. Something had begun to burn in his throat.
“Seilo! Where are you, Seilo? The forest is on fire! We must leave now!”
Tir turned on the spot, his head cleared. He fought against the surging stream of wolves towards his mother’s voice. She was still in the camp, running in and out of deserted dens with her ears flat and eyes shut tight.
“Seilo!” she cried. “We must leave! Where are you?”
Tir dashed to her side. Grabbing her by the scruff of the neck, he pulled her out of the camp, feeling her go limp in his jaws. It took all the strength he possessed to haul her along the rough path formed by the panicked wolves. The fire was growing ever closer; he could sense it, pounding in his head like a red drum. His mother was terribly heavy for one so thin, weighing him down like a boulder, pulling him down into black water where he was drowning, drowning…He had to stop, he could go no further.
Tir cried out.
“Wake him up again, Seilo.”
The Gatherer’s voice was quiet and emotionless. Tir was curled up in a nest of long, slippery grass, trembling and sobbing to himself. Someone was shaking his shoulder, but he did not open his eyes. Where was his strength? What had he done to survive, when all the rest had perished? The flames were calling him still. They wanted him back—they did not like being cheated out of a victim.
“He’s not waking up, Palva!” said a pup’s voice, thin and frightened. “He’s still thrashing.”
“It’s the dreams,” said Palva. “He’s having his nightmares again. We’re running out of poppy seed—will you go fetch me some? Nerasa knows where I keep my old stores.”
“Yes, and I’ll hurry!”
There was a rustling in the grass as the pup ran out of the hollow, leaving silence behind him. Tir only buried his face deeper into the ground, trying to block out all thoughts, all memories, all visions…someone, in a thin and distant voice, was wailing. It was Arwena. She had often wailed.
“Listen to me,” said the Gatherer’s voice in his ear. Palva was standing beside him. “You are alive and safe. You have fallen from a great height, so it isn’t advisable that you move at the moment. There was a fire, but you are safe because you fell. Can you hear me? Tir?”
“I can hear you.” Tir raised his head and shook himself, still trembling and panting with fear. “How long was it this time?”
“Barely past dawn, though it must have felt like seasons. Last time you moaned for two days.”
Tir shut his eyes again. Yes, the flames still danced behind his closed lids. He opened them again, and for a moment his vision was black as charred wood—a brief spark of panic flared in his stomach, but the darkness soon cleared and he was looking into Palva’s emotionless face.
“I still see them,” he said. “I thought it would have gone away by now, but I can still see it. All of it.”
Palva shook her head. “You have been through more than you can handle. It isn’t your fault—Seilo’s gone to get more poppy seeds, which will help you sleep soundly again.”
“I don’t want to sleep. I’ve told you. I want to leave—that’s why I still hear their voices. They want me to find them.”
Palva did not answer, but Tir could see the exasperation in her pale, moonlike eyes. He looked away, knowing what she was thinking—that they were dead, all of them, and leaving to search for them would do no good. A sinking, hollow feeling told him she was probably right, but he did his best to ignore it.
Once his bruises and burns healed, he would have nothing to do with himself. Why shouldn’t he wander these strange fields, searching for his past? He knew as well as Palva that the nightmares must end, lest he kill himself with fear and sleeplessness, and the only way to end the nightmares would be to find them. All of them.
“I’m still here, Tir.”
Palva’s pale eyes were sharp as her voice. Her head was tilted to one side, but not even she could hide the concern in her eyes. She feared as Tir did: that he would go insane.
Rather like Arwena. Tir could have smiled with the appropriateness of it all.
“You know this can’t go on, Tir,” Palva was saying. “Are you listening to me? When was the last time you had a proper night’s sleep?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mutter, did you know that?”
“What sort of things do I mutter about?”
“Mainly fire. And you do speak a lot of someone named Arwena—assuring her that something wasn’t her fault.”
Tir moaned.
“Who is Arwena, Tir?”
He glanced at her. The Gatherer’s eyes were serious, and he recalled her conviction that talking about something would help the healing process—he had not believed her. This was the fourth time she had asked about Arwena, and he found his answer had gained a dull, practiced rhythm: “She was my mother.”
“And what is it that she did?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“And you?”
“I haven’t done anything, either.”
“Very good.”
He waited for her to turn around and go back to sorting her herbs, but she remained before him, staring as though waiting for something else. Something in her serene, expectant expression drove a spark of irritation through him. “That isn’t true, you know,” he said suddenly. Palva raised her brow. “That she did nothing. She did. Do something, I mean. She killed my sister.”
“Really?” Palva was unimpressed.
“Yes. The alpha made her do it. My father, I mean. Runts are always supposed to be killed, he said—it’s the mother’s job. Aren’t there any runts in this pack?”
“Not that I’ve remembered. Raatri was rather small, perhaps, but we never considered that he ought to be killed. I doubt his mother would have approved of the idea.”
“Arwena didn’t want to. She was miserable afterwards. I remember it; I wasn’t t
hat young.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Tir silenced and looked away. Palva did not answer, but he felt her pale gaze linger on the back of his head. She knew it was true. Though she meant well, Tir had sensed a coldness in the Gatherer—not cruelty, really, but a sense of indifference. Palva had never been haunted by fire. How could she be sorry for anything?
“Palva, I have the poppies—I’ve brought the…oh.” The sandy-furred pup named Seilo came tumbling down the grassy tunnel and into Palva’s hollow, a twisted bundle of crimson flowers clasped in his jaws. He paused when he saw that Tir was awake, and his ears flattened. Seilo did not say another word as Palva took the flowers from him with a word of thanks; he kept his wide blue pup-eyes fixed on Tir.
Tir looked away, glowering. Seilo was afraid of him, and he knew it was his own fault. How excited he had been, when it was Seilo who had found him at the foot of the cliff—burnt and bleeding and barely-conscious. His memories were vague, but he had fuzzy images of himself leaping up in a burst of manic energy, crying something about returns and fire and running headlong towards Seilo—the pup had been paralyzed with fright, of course. With his burnt, blackened fur and running eyes, Tir had looked like something long dead. And Tir had thought he was dead, that Seilo had come to fetch him—Seilo was dead as well, of course; he had vanished from Arwena’s den only a month before.
Arwena would be so happy to know that Tir had found him.
“You needn’t glare at him like that, Tir,” Palva admonished, when Seilo had run back up the tunnel. She was tucking the poppy blossoms into cracks between boulders, the red of their petals like brands of fire growing from grey stone. “He can’t help that he is so young.”
“He doesn’t remember anything. He must, I tell him—you can’t just forget things like that. My mother did everything for him, and he has no idea.”
“Of course he does. He remembers faces and voices, but not names. How could he? He was barely old enough to have his eyes open, then. He has spent more time living here with me than he did in your forest, where he was born. He was taken so young. You wouldn’t remember a thing, either.”
“He doesn’t know me.”
“If you could see what you look like now, you wouldn’t know yourself either. You’re a charred mess.”
“Thank you.”
It was a hawk that had taken Seilo, Palva said. They had found him sprawled unconscious in a marsh, the gouges of talons on his back. It was a miracle he was alive. Tir had a hard time believing that a hawk would take Seilo from his camp and then carry him a distance away only to drop him, but Palva said it had happened before. A drought leading into a famine was enough to make any bird of prey desperate.
“She didn’t know me after that,” Tir found himself whispering. Palva turned to look at him and, to his mortification, he felt his voice begin to quiver with something like tears. “She was…she was distraught. After he vanished. He wasn’t her pup, you know; he belonged to a friend of hers who died. She promised she’d take care of him.”
“I’m certain—”
“No, listen to me!” Tir felt a surge of anger, and he rose to his paws. His legs felt as though they were made of brittle twigs, and he swayed, but did not fall. For some reason, it seemed of utmost importance that he make Palva understand. “She didn’t know me,” he said, meeting the Gatherer’s pale stare. “She didn’t know my name or where I had come from—I’m her son. And no one in the pack would speak to me, either, because they thought Arwena had gone mad and maybe I was mad as well. It was as though…I—I didn’t exist anymore.”
“Tir…”
“And now I’m here,” he spat, throwing his head about to display the vastness of the strange land that surrounded him—a wide, open expanse of fields. Palva’s hollow was in a small dip in the land, and grassy walls reared up on all sides of him. He felt trapped. “None of you know me, either. I’ve gotten lost, Palva, but I truly am lost, do you understand? But if I find them again, if you let me…I can…they’ll know me.” His voice trailed into a weak whisper, and the tears again rose in his throat. “They must.”
Palva stared at him for a long time, and there was something like pity in her gaze. Tir looked away, trembling on his fragile and bruised legs. He did not want the Gatherer’s cold pity. He did not know what he wanted, but he wished she would stop looking at him as though he were mad. He wasn’t.
“You are very tired, Tir,” Palva said after a long silence, her voice quiet. “Seilo has been kind enough to bring me some more poppy seeds. A quiet sleep would do you good, don’t you think?”
“You don’t believe me,” he whispered. The reality of where he was standing now stung in his eyes, and he swallowed.
“Believe what? I believe that you do, in fact, exist—trust me, Tir, you need to rest. You will go into a shock episode if you do not control yourself.”
At her words, Tir’s legs gave out beneath him, and he sank back into the grass. The hollow seemed to blur before his eyes and his nose burned as though it were full of sand and soot. What had he been angry about? He wanted to sleep. His head ached, and the scent of the fire was wrapped like a smothering haze around his face.
When Palva brought him the poppy seeds, he gladly sank back into oblivion.