Page 29 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Soon the horses are pawing the ground and whinnying obstinately. We slip off our mounts and lead them through the forest on foot until we come upon a tree as thick around as Virág’s hut, the wood porous and termite-pocked, smelling damply of rot. Fronds of moss dangle from the coiled roots, and lichen crawls up the trunk, the pale color of old lace. We usher our horses into the hollow space where its roots have cleaved apart, and Gáspár ties their reins to a bulbous, sturdy branch.

“We’ve lost so much time already,” he says, frowning.

My voice rises over the baying wind. “You’re welcome to keep going on your own. I’ll return to dig you out come springtime.”

Gáspár makes a face, but he doesn’t protest. We trudge farther into the forest in search of shelter, finally pausing at the base of another tree. Its labyrinth of roots stretches over a hollow between the trunk and the earth, with just enough space for two bodies. I pause before the crevice, pulling my wolf cloak tighter around me.

Until now I’ve not touched him except to shake his hand to inaugurate our uneasy bargain, or to examine his wound. The prospect of being so close to him makes my stomach knot—especially because I know he’s still bridling from the indignity of needing me to wrap his cut. I slip through the slender gap in the roots, loosing clods of dirt. I crawl under the tree and pull my knees to my chest. Gáspár stands outside, the wind carding roughly through his suba, unmoving. His lips are thinned and pale. For a brief moment I wonder if he’s stubborn enough to stand out there all night, waiting for the snow to bury him. Then he slides between the roots and crouches in the hollow beside me.

There’s scarcely room to move once we’re both inside. His shoulder is pressed firmly against mine, the heat of his body bleeding through his suba and my wolf cloak. I can feel each tense of his muscles as his fingers curl and uncurl, jaw clenching. Our cold breath mingles in the small, dark space.

Gáspár’s face is drawn, throat bobbing. I wonder for a second time if he’s ever been this close to a woman who wasn’t a wolf-girl, but I decide not to needle him about it, since he is already glowering. Outside, the wind shakes the branches with a ferocious howl.

“Who could live in a place like this?” he murmurs, almost to himself.

I don’t know of anyone who makes their home so far north except the Juvvi, who herd reindeer and build fishing lodges along the ragged Kalevan coastline. But I don’t mention the Juvvi to Gáspár. When his great-grandfather, Bárány Tódor, conquered Kaleva, he made it his mission to subdue the Juvvi. Virág says that he captured one of their tribal leaders, a woman named Rasdi, and confined her in a prison until she ate her own feet. Remembering the story makes my skin prickle with anger.

“You say that Patritians consider killing to be a sin.” I keep my voice even, struggling not to think of his body flush against my own. “But your Patritian kings slaughtered thousands, not caring about their own souls or the souls of their victims.”

Gáspár’s eye narrows. “Those were pagans who refused to bend the knee to the king and swear themselves to the Prinkepatrios. Kajetán was a Patritian. He could have repented.”

“He wasn’t going to repent,” I say, mouth puckering around the word. “And you say that it isn’t your right to choose whether a man deserves to die, but you did choose. You decided that I should live instead of Kajetán.”

“I only did it because I can’t survive the North without you, and my soul will suffer for it,” Gáspár snaps. I can feel his shoulders rising, muscles coiled. “If I die before confessing the sin to the Érsek, I will join Thanatos for an eternity of torment.”

I almost laugh at the gravelly tenor in his voice, his supreme certainty. “How can you be so sure that you won’t join Ördög in the Under-World, instead?”

“Your devil is nothing more than an illusion cast by mine,” Gáspár says, voice smooth now. This is only more of his courtly rhetoric, practiced and repeated. I roll my eyes.

“Ördög isn’t a devil. He even has a human bride.”

He scoffs. “Just like a wolf-girl to want to wed a monster.”

“Csilla wasn’t a wolf-girl at all,” I tell him. “She was like the girls in your Patritian stories, sweet and pretty, but with a cruel mother and father. She lived by a swamp, and her parents sent her out to catch frogs for dinner, even though she didn’t have a net. Csilla hunted the frogs anyway, but her hand got caught in the mud and it hardened. Try as she might, she couldn’t get it free, and she resigned herself to death. Then she heard a voice, low and rumbling, from beneath her.

“‘Whose white hand is reaching into the Under-World?’ Ördög asked.

“Csilla told him her name, and begged him to help her. But Ördög said, ‘Your hand is lovely. You must have a lovely face to match it. If you die here in the marsh, you can come to the Under-World and be my wife.’

“Csilla gripped Ördög’s hand tightly. It was like holding on to a piece of winter birchwood, hard and inhumanly cold.

“‘I may die here in the marsh,’ Csilla said. ‘But before I do, my skin will grow pale and pruned. My lips will turn blue, and my nose will fall off from the cold. I will join you in the Under-World then, but I will no longer be beautiful.’

“‘That is true,’ Ördög said. ‘I can feel your skin beginning to wrinkle already.’

“‘Give me a knife,’ Csilla said. ‘I will slit my throat and die while my face is still lovely and my skin is still smooth.’

“The marsh water bubbled beside her, and a bone-handled knife floated to the surface. Csilla took the knife in her free hand. But rather than slitting her throat, she reached down into the mud and cut off her trapped hand at the wrist. When she was free, Csilla ran from the marsh as fast as her cold legs would carry her. She could still hear Ördög rumbling in protest, holding her severed hand.”

“Spare me your pagan myths,” Gáspár says, but his eye is alight with reluctant, half-damned interest.

“Ördög didn’t give up so easily,” I go on. “He came to Csilla two more times after that, first as a fly, and then as a black goat. Both times she tricked him again. First, she used her own golden hair to trap him in a spider web. Then, she burned half her face with hot coals, so that she would no longer be beautiful, thinking that Ördög would leave her be.”

“And did he?” Gáspár asks, quietly.

“No,” I say. “You said yourself he was a monster. And a monster needs a monstrous bride.”

The story of Csilla and Ördög is one of Virág’s favorites, but I always hated when she told it, because the other girls would take the opportunity to pelt me with sticks and mud and try to tear out my hair, telling me I was no better than Ördög’s hideous consort and that I might as well join him in the Under-World. It’s different to be the one to tell the story, and I find it fills me with an unexpected warmth, like a hot coal in my cupped hand. Through the knife-thin slits between the tree roots, I can only see narrow diamonds of white.