Page 43 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Kaleva’s empty wasteland slowly gives way to green: scraggly, wind-battered elms and long tracts of chewed-up grass, trampled under the cloven hooves of the wild racka sheep with their great spiraling horns. The hills bubble toward a black stretch of mountains in the distance, the outline of which I can only see if I squint and hold up my thumb to block the sun. The mountains are a natural border between Régország and the Volkstadt, our western neighbors, who, as Gáspár told me, had a head start on the Patrifaith and are much holier than us.

Gáspár has scarcely spoken to me since we left Kaleva, wind and snow chasing us south. I offer him my killed rabbits only once they’re skinned and bloodless, but he doesn’t answer my attempts at reconciliation with anything but a steely nod. And at night, he stamps away from me, far on the other side of the fire, lying down with his back turned. I huddle under my cloak, seething in my own stupid hurt. I know I shouldn’t be hungering after the warmth of a Woodsman’s embrace, but a part of me wants to rage at him anyway. If I showed him the scars latticed down the back of my thighs, would he accept my reasons for not wanting to return to Keszi? More likely he would flush and stammer at his first sight of a woman’s bare skin. I sleep fitfully, if at all.

One morning, we come upon a cluster of weatherworn stones, rising out of a hilltop like jagged teeth. Lichen-covered, they are washed nearly white with time. In the center of each stone is a hollow circle, big enough for me to put my fist through. Seeing them makes the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Gáspár circles them on his mount, horse whinnying.

“Are they a pagan creation?” he asks finally, as though he can’t swallow his curiosity any longer. “A site of worship for your gods?”

It’s the first time I’ve heard his voice in days, and it makes my stomach quiver in a funny way, relief twining through with despair. I shake my head, brow furrowed. Inside one of the holes is a strip of sun-bleached fabric that might have once been red, and a smear of something dark that looks like dried blood. One of Virág’s stories bristles in my mind, and I feel Ördög’s threads tightening their grasp on my hand. Whoever bled here was older than the pagans. These stones were arranged by something far more ancient, something as old as the Earth when it was new.

I am so desperate to hear him speak again that a question flutters up in me, embarrassingly earnest. “Would you like to hear the story of how Isten made the world?”

Gáspár’s lips thin. “I think I’ve heard too many of your fairy tales, wolf-girl.”

Now that he’s angry at me I am a wolf-girl again, and I ought to think him only a Woodsman. I should wring his kindnesses out of me like water from my hair. I should forget that he ever fell asleep with his arms around me, and think only of finding my father. But I feel like a dog with its teeth in something, holding fast and hard, knowing it will hurt too much and maybe take my teeth out with it, if I let go.

“Afraid you’ll start to enjoy them?” I ask instead. If I can’t win back his camaraderie, at least I can make him sulk and flush like our earliest days. Anything is preferable to this stone-faced silence.

“No,” he says shortly. “And since you are so eager to die, perhaps we ought to ride faster toward Király Szek. Saint István’s feast is in two days.”

I stand up, brushing dirt from my knees, and try not to let his words ruffle me. Ördög has blessed me with his power, and it only takes a flicker of my will, a phantom pain in my absent pinky, to wield it. Its potential coils inside me, like a serpent under a sun-warmed stone.

“Perhaps I’ll tell you anyway,” I say, clambering back on my mount. “Unless you can think of some way to silence me.”

“Enough,” Gáspár murmurs, a low warning. His fingers are clenched tight around the reins, but he doesn’t give another word of protest.

And so I speak into the green silence, wind scarcely rustling the slender elms.

“Once there was only Isten, alone in the Upper-World, his hair white with seven eternities. He did not think he could survive another one without companionship, because gods get lonely too. In his anguish, he began to weep. His tears washed over the barren land below with such vigor that they became the first ocean, made of salt and water and grief.

“But even when the ocean flowed, Isten was still alone. Yet now, as he surveyed the beautiful thing he had created, he was not angry or heartbroken. He was at peace, and that is the only time when you can make a sacrifice that works. So Isten cut out a piece of his own flesh and let it fall to the earth below. When it landed there, it began to stretch and change, until it became the first men and women of the world, sweet and pliant and peaceful.

“Isten’s new world was beautiful, and only a fool would not want to live there. There was no word for summer, because every day was as warm and bright as the last. There was no word for full because not a single belly had ever ached with hunger. There was no word for happy because no one had ever been anything else.

“Then, one day, a woman went to wash her clothes by the riverside. She knelt on the shore and dipped her dress in the water. But as she did, her hand skimmed against a rock, sharp and slick. The water around her streamed red, and when she lifted her hand into the light, she saw that she was bleeding, even though she had no word for blood. She could not explain to herself or to the villagers what had happened, but Isten had seen it all. He thought: I did not make rocks sharp enough to cut. I did not make human flesh soft enough to bleed.

“Soon enough, the vegetables that the villagers pulled from the earth became black and putrid with rot. The ground beneath their feet had grown hard and white with frost. And when one villager looked at his reflection in the lake, he saw that his face was creased with deep wrinkles. The villagers had to create a word for what they saw, so they called it despair.

“They begged Isten for an answer to their troubles, and so Isten searched. He came down to the Earth and walked upon it like a man. He walked until he heard a rumble beneath his feet, and the rumble was a voice.

“‘Hello, Father,’ the voice said. ‘I believe you are looking for me.’

“Isten looked all around, but he could see nothing. ‘Who are you?’

“‘Look below,’ the voice said.

“So Isten did. He peeled back the layers of the world he had made and found there was another one beneath it that smelled of damp and rot. Flies circled Isten’s head and maggots writhed under his feet. It was too dark to see anything ahead, but the strange voice still echoed around him, as if the blackness itself had a sound.

“‘It’s you,’ Isten said. ‘You are the one who brings decay to plants and flowers. You let frost lay upon the earth. You make my people grow white hair, and make their skin fold with wrinkles. You let them bleed, and you let them feel despair.’

“‘Yes,’ Ördög said. ‘All of these things are true, and I am all of these things.’

“‘How did you do it?’ Isten asked. ‘I did not create a world to rot or bleed.’

“‘But you did create me,’ Ördög said. ‘When you cut out a piece of your flesh to make the world, I was born alongside it. Creation can only exist alongside destruction, peace alongside pain. Wherever there is life, I will also be.’

“Isten thought, He called me Father.

“Isten left Ördög’s kingdom and returned to Earth, only now he called it the Middle-World, because there was another one beneath it. In this way, it became the world we know—a world where growth could easily become rot, where peace could easily become pain. A world that had a word for happiness, because now there was a word for despair. It was not Isten’s world anymore.”