Page 44 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

When I finish the story, I feel breathless. Gáspár is staring determinedly at the blank space between his horse’s ears, but his eye darts toward me, and I can see the gleam of reluctant interest.

“Is that all you think of death?” he asks finally. “No wonder you’re so keen to throw yourself into my father’s arms.”

I blink at him, unmoored by his reaction. “What do you mean?”

“This god of yours, Ördög”—he says the word with a wrinkled nose, as if the very shape of it on his lips repulses him—“he doesn’t subject the denizens of his Under-World to hellfire and torment, and every human soul finds its way to him when it dies, no matter how good or evil they were on Earth—in the Middle-World. What’s to stop humans from doing harm, if you don’t fear for the fate of your soul after death?”

On the backs of my thighs, my old scars flare. “I think humans are perfectly capable of punishing each other. What a terribly absurd question to ask, when you’re sitting there with your missing eye. You should know better than anyone that people can be as cruel as any god.”

“It’s not about cruelty.” Gáspár has finally turned to face me. “It’s about power. Without power, all you have is anger and spite. Cruelty comes when you have the strength to turn your anger on someone else.”

For a moment he sounds like the smooth-voiced prince again, armored in his eloquence, so stubbornly certain. I have missed this thread of petulance in him, but I will never admit it.

“Yes, I know that well,” I say. “People turned their anger on me every single day in Keszi.”

Gáspár goes silent again, angling his face away from me. After a moment, he says, “Is that where you got the scar on your eyebrow?”

I didn’t think he’d ever looked at me closely enough to notice. My hand flies up to touch the pink slit of scar tissue, cleaving my left eyebrow in two.

I almost want to ask when he noticed, but I’m afraid it will make him put up his shield again. Instead I say, “Another girl in my village blew fire in my face. Katalin.”

The shame of the confession hardly occurs to me. Gáspár doesn’t purse his lips in pity, and I think about him telling me how he stood between his mother and father as a child, relaying their cruelties and enduring their blows. His jaw unclenches, ever so slightly. “Why did she do that?”

“Because I stole one of the cabbage rolls off her plate. I think. It’s hard to remember.”

Gáspár’s breathing hitches. “And did you often find yourself under threat of fire?”

“You already know that I did,” I say, feeling heat rise in my chest. “Do you think that they drew lots to see who would be used to trick the Woodsmen? There was never a question. Never a word of protest. They all wanted it to be me. How would you like to crawl back into the arms of the people who cast you out to die?”

As soon as I finish, I’m flushed with chagrin. His ax and his cloak and his missing eye that terrified me—they are all a testament to his father’s loathing. Coming back to save the king must hurt as much as being expelled to save Katalin. It’s hard to think that it took me so long to realize that the shape of our wounds is the same.

There is no apology, no rejoinder, but the air changes between us, like sunlight beaming through the tree branches. When I catch Gáspár looking at me, his eye is narrowed and keen, as if he’s trying to follow something that’s moving farther and farther out of sight.

Still, we lapse back into silence, listening to the heavy pants of our horses and the sound of the river as it rushes downstream. I am about to suggest we stop and let our horses drink when a wonderful, familiar smell wafts toward me—the heady scent of boiling meat and the tangy finish of paprika, like a long breath followed by a sharp inhale.

We’ve eaten well in Szarvasvár—black birds and rabbits and one gamy racka sheep—but the smell of gulyás reminds me of feast tables and Virág’s fried bread, the memory more of a comfort than anything else that comes to mind when I think about Keszi. As much as Gáspár mocked me for craving peasant food, he’s stopped his horse to sniff the air too. In the distance, I can glimpse the green roof of a sod house.

Neither of us speaks, but we press on toward the village, dug right out of the riverbed. It’s a winter village, a place where the farmers and herders retire when it’s too cold for tents and the whole plain is pale with frost. Fires are burning in the windows of the houses like lighted eyes, and the smoke that wreathes out of them is curled like a beckoning hand. There are no doorways, just black holes in the sod that remind me of gaping mouths. The roofs are thatched with grass, and a seashell chime rattles in the threshold of the nearest house. The gulyás smell is almost thick enough to taste.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing, to beg some hospitality,” I say, hopefully hiding my desire with nonchalance.

Gáspár is quiet, considering. “Perhaps you can have your peasant fare after all,” he says, as if he has heard my earlier thoughts.

The wind rattles the seashells as we climb down from our mounts. I wonder how the villagers have managed to get them. Régország is landlocked on all sides, except for the small strip of coastline in Kaleva that clings to the frigid edge of the Half-Sea. Curiosity tugs at me, but the pull of the gulyás smell is stronger.

The interior of the sod house is cramped but tidy, as tidy as any place made out of dirt can be. Wooden shelves are notched into the wall, housing row after row of glass jars full of herbs and brightly colored spices. A table and two chairs are crammed beneath them, and at the very center of the sod house is a hearth with a big boiling pot, and an old woman hunched over it.

“I beg your pardon,” Gáspár says. “We are travelers on our way to Király Szek. Could we trouble you for a meal? As soon as we eat, we’ll be on our way again, and we won’t ask you to show us more kindness than that.”

Anyone would be charmed by such a polite entreaty, and Gáspár is dressed in the Woodsman’s suba besides. The woman turns around slowly, a smile inching across her wizened face.

“Certainly,” she says. “My house is always open to weary travelers, and my gulyás is almost ready. Please, sit.”

The wooden chairs are a welcome relief after days riding on a saddle and nights spent sleeping against the hard, freezing earth. The woman stirs her cauldron, profile cast gold in the warm firelight. She has a sharp little nose and squirrel-bright eyes, which look almost squashed under the mudslide of her brow. She wears her hair long and loose, gray strands skimming the dirt floor.

She doesn’t look much like Virág, except that they are both old enough to be my mother’s grandmother, but the resemblance is enough to fill me with a low, skulking sadness. If all goes to plan, I will never see Virág again. I try to sit up a little straighter in spite of it, and do my best to emulate Gáspár’s deferent tone.

“My name is Évike,” I say. “What’s your name?”