Chapter 7

Dawn had arrived to see her asleep in a makeshift bed of hay in a corner of the kitchen. There were dried tears on her cheek, spilled again once she'd realized she could no longer communicate in a human tongue. She'd hugged and let herself be comforted by the innkeeper's wife, and eventually lulled into an uneasy sleep. In the early morning she begrudgingly opened her eyes, and for a moment felt scared when she realized she wasn't lying on the forest floor.

The hay should've embraced her in a familiar way. The warmth of the kitchen fire should've been a welcomed feeling. The sound of knives as they sliced and diced the food for breakfast should've lulled her back into sleep, but they seemed oddly disquieting to her now. They echoed the crackling of the fire ominously in a dissonant symphony that seemed almost too chaotic for her to bear. She shrunk into herself, wishing the four walls around her would crumble away so she could sleep under the open sky.

She spotted something moving on the floor, dashing from behind a bucket and in the direction of the door. Shaking off the remnants of sleep and suddenly forgetting everything about her whereabouts, she ran after it. It tried to escape by venturing outside and into a chicken coup, but she was quicker and already used to the nimbler forest cousins of the fattened, domesticated house mice. She made a quick work of it, crushing its little skull between her fingers and using her sharp teeth to pry its little body open. It tasted fresh, and the tangy, sweet flavour of its bloody raw meat release a wave of relief to wash over her body. She regained some of her strength.

There was a small stream running across the property, behind the inn's stables. She approached and drank from it, not minding the nervous horses that upon seeing her walked back into the safe refuge of their stalls. She washed her face and her hands, and for a moment thought about submerging herself fully in it, thinking back to Mountain-stream's happy cries the day before. The image of Wolf-mother's blood over the surface of the lake flashed before her eyes, and she decided to go back into the inn.

"Are you all right now, child?" asked the innkeeper when he saw her. She ventured to open her mouth before remembering the previous night's distress, and with that memory in her head she simply nodded. "Are you, perhaps, from one of the southern villages that have been caught in the succession war?"

Alix nodded again. The innkeeper's face darkened. "Are your parents, perhaps…?" Another nod.

"Oh, poor thing," the innkeeper's wife said. "May god bless your poor innocent soul. Do you have any family who could take you in?"

Alix's mind went back to the wolves, and she trembled. "Don't mind my words, child," the good woman said. "We will make sure you are taken care of. How about you stay with us for a day or two? We could certainly use an extra pair of hands around, and once the priest comes back we can ask him for advice."

Alix perked up at the offer. The couple sensed her enthusiasm and gently shared a laugh. "This war has been very heavy on the land," the innkeeper explained. "We've seen many families pass through our town escaping the advancing armies. They look for a new lord to serve, or a new plot of land to farm. It's harrowing to see so many good folk entrusted into the will of the lord. We are glad to be able to help whoever needs it."

The sun very slowly stepped into its zenith in heaven as beneath him Alix laboured heavily in the yard, doing the weekly washing of the inn's linens. It was a repetitive task and one that took a great deal of strength: she had often been short of breath before when helping her mother, and yet now was able to take care of it herself, alone, with an easiness that saw her completing a whole chest's worth of bedsheets and clothes in the space of a day. She found it easy to numb her mind as her fists pounded the soapy clothes over and over again, and if her mind was clear, her heart would be at ease.

Before evening had arrived, she escaped back into the safety of the inn to stand near the fire. She had heard the looming of the night as she finished hanging the laundry; she heard the crickets and the birds, and the rustling of the forest beyond the fields that seemed to ask her to come back. She couldn't stand their chatter, as she knew if she focused long enough she'd hear familiar voices and see red eyes hiding in the shadows of the bushes. So she escaped the night by seeking the bright lights of the hearth. The silence of the forest floor was easily replaced by the voices of the patrons of the public house, which she listened to as she laid back in the makeshift hay bed. She fell asleep looking for patterns in the fire, trying to ignore the strange longing in her gut.

The next day the innkeeper's wife asked her for company as she went about doing the day's shopping in the town market. They would be preparing for a banquet of sorts to receive back the parish priest, and so they were in need of a great deal of provisions.

"He left a fortnight ago to retrieve a new sacramentary he had commissioned from the monastery beyond the mountains," the matron explained. "He left a curate to take care of mass, but Lord strike me down if I say any lies: the boy's heart isn't in it. And he keeps bringing unknown psalms for us to recite, it's all very confusing. Once Father Fiachra comes back we'll be able to have a proper mass again."

The market was similar to the one in her town; she saw fishermen selling fresh salmon, farmers selling carrots and parsnips, and potters pedalling jugs and dishes of all sizes. Women and children walked about with their baskets, and animated chatter filled the air as neighbours stopped to catch up. Alix stopped to admire a blacksmith's arrowheads when she spotted a familiar face in the distance. Olivier, her own brother, was chatting away with someone who looked to be a particularly wealthy merchant.

Her first instinct was to run to him. She wished to hug him and ask him what had happened after she'd left them, if they thought she'd survived; she wanted to tell him she was doing well, that she'd been saved by Wolf-mother… but her stories and her questions would only come out in a series of growls and barks, as she'd crossed an invisible threshold that robbed her of her human language. She felt that perhaps, if they were to cross paths, they would fail to recognise her, as she was no longer the little sister they'd left behind. She had embraced the family in the forest, the wolves of the red eyes, and now was no longer that Alix…

Blood rushed to her face. She felt shame. She turned around and met the innkeeper's wife, and together they went back.

That night, she was asked to help in the public house by serving ale to the patrons. Her sudden and mysterious appearance had aroused the curiosity of the townsfolk who, despite the constant warnings from the inn's owner that she could not answer back, decided to pelter her with questions. That she was an orphan from the war was well known by then, but this wasn't enough to satiate the need for a story in the middle of the harvest season: they wanted to know if she'd seen the soldiers up close, and if it was true that the devil himself carried the banner of the Plantagenets. They asked after her family, what they had done until their tragic end; did she have connections with a guild? Was she planning to stay or to go to a relative's house? Did she know that there was a nunnery nearby who would take her in if she had no money for a dowry?

She found it all exhausting. She knew nothing about dowries, or nunneries, or what the future held in store for her. It all seemed strangely distant: the war and her parents' deaths, her life in her town, all of it had been overshadowed by the forest trees, covered over by leaves and ivy. She was confused; so confused. The humanity of the hearth and the men and women drinking ale seemed too foreign to her; she felt trapped in those walls, wishing she could go back to hunt under the stars with Wolf-mother. Yet the darkness in the forest terrified her as it hid the snap of the terrible teeth that had mauled her saviour. She could understand those people but they could not understand her; the wolves did understand her, but she couldn't understand them.

She was about to escape into the kitchen when the door opened and in came the figures of her two brothers. Any hopes of a swift, silent retreat were crushed when Olivier and Roland spotted her. It was clear that they had come into the building searching for her, and they quickly crossed the distance between them. Roland was the first one to get to her and so had the privilege of enveloping her in a hug before Olivier had the chance.

"Alix, Lord be merciful, you are alive!" he cried with a big smile on his face.

"What a blessed chance to see you in the market like that," Olivier went for the hug once his brother was done. "I couldn't believe my eyes."

Both of them had haunted looks in their eyes. "We thought they had killed you… did you…?"

"How did you escape?"

Alix opened her mouth and shook her head. She pointed at her throat. "What…? Did something happen…?" the confused Olivier asked.

"She can't speak," Roland said to his brother, having caught on. "But… why…? Did the soldiers… hurt you?"

Alix shook her head. "You escaped from them, unhurt?" A nod. "Did someone else hurt you?"

They received another sign that nothing undue had happened, which only served to frustrate them. Alix shared their feelings, and wished she could at least confide in them the strange events that took place after she'd left them. Fortunately for the brothers the innkeeper's wife had seen them arrive, and walked over to them to introduce herself.

"Greetings young men! I take it you know our little nut-cracker here! Are you perhaps family?"

"Nut-cracker?" The two brothers asked in unison.

"My apologies! We couldn't get her name so we resorted to finding one ourselves – quite the tough little lady you have here, she took the week's laundry by herself and had it all done by sundown. We haven't put her skills to the test but my husband and I made a bet that she could crush open walnuts with her bare fingers."

Both Olivier and Roland gave Alix strange looks. "Ah, yes, yes," Roland took the charge with a small smile. "We owe you all our gratitude. You see, we had thought until earlier today that our sister had been killed alongside our parents. We fled our village a fortnight ago, after it had been ransacked by Lord Plantagenet's soldiers. My brother and I have been travelling with a merchant who had been a close friend of our father's, hoping to make a new life in Bruges."

"The Lord has listened to your prayers, young men, I am truly happy for you all," the woman said with a big smile, her eyes shining with delight. She kept shooting excited glances at Alix, clearly happy that she'd been reunited with her family. "We've seen many young families, and young men and women escaping from the war alone, and it's truly heartbreaking. I pray for your continued safety, lord knows you all – and your most beautiful sister especially- have been through enough."

"Has she… spoken at all?" asked Olivier.

"I'm afraid this is how we found her, young man. She simply appeared in front of our inn two nights ago looking as if she'd seen the evil one himself. She made some strange noises at first but once she was calm, she could only communicate by moving her head."

It seemed like the matron was happy enough to continue talking about her temporary ward, but the gestures of her husband caught her eye from across the room, and she excused herself with a smile, repeating once again how glad she was that they'd been reunited.

The brothers led Alix to one of the few remaining empty tables, carrying a jug of ale with them. "Life in Bruges will be better," Olivier promised as he looked at his sister with sad eyes. "Lothar the merchant has promised to help us find an apprenticeship in the city, he knows people in the guilds. You could stay with his wife for a while, help her with their trade. You could learn numbers and how to write letters from them."

"It will certainly be safer with the Counts than remaining here," Roland commented. "What else do we have to look forward to but war? Even if they manage to put someone in the throne it will not be long until the king is murdered, and even if their own vassals don't kill him, it'll be the northmen invading from the coast. At least there is a sizeable navy in the port of Bruges, one that can repel invasions, and a strong dynasty that have been in power for some years now."