Stepmothers and the Big Bad Wolf eARC Read online

  As far as we could tell, Beings of Fire were largely indifferent to the troubles of humans; but they were not entirely immune to our flattery, or our fervent pleas for aid. Thus, after weeks of darkness, when the people of the kingdom awoke to find what looked like stars in the sky, we allowed ourselves to hope that our entreaties had been heard—that an army of fire had finally arrived, to beat back the Night.

  It is strange to walk in the forest by starlight, if that’s what this is. I feel exposed and uneasy. Soteli Ma’s profile unnerves me, spare and stern in the unfamiliar glow. The dim outline of the trees, the leaves, even my own hands seem alien, out of place.

  We wander the forest, aimless. The air is stale, like a boarded up cave—and tense, like something waiting to happen. It is almost a relief when it does. The sky breaks with a palpable crack, and we run again. Faster, this time, for we know we have been found.

  A wave of menace huffs behind me, like the open mouths of a hundred wild dogs. I scramble over rocks, tree roots.

  Soteli Ma steers us west, off the path, across the stream. She reaches down and grabs a stick as she runs.

  “The eyes,” she says. “It will blind them.”

  I glance over my shoulder mid-stride. The rakshasas have taken the shape of wolves, large as bears. The troubadour was right; their eyes glow red, like fire.

  Soteli Ma hurls a stick behind her, and another, striking her target each time. Blinded, the wounded rakshasas fall under the feet of their fellows. I follow Soteli Ma’s lead, grabbing sticks and hurling them at my pursuers, rejoicing each time a pair of red eyes goes out.

  Soteli Ma does not seem to tire, and she is faultless in her aim. While my volleys grow increasingly wild, hers continue to hit their targets. I do not know how many demons lie blinded, over how many miles, nor how many remain. I focus all my energy on flight.

  Above us, the stars grow brighter, bigger, like sparks burning holes in a black curtain. I can see a ravine, unbridged, in the distance. Soteli Ma sees it, too. We will not be able to cross.

  “The trees!” she shouts.

  Soteli Ma leaps up and grabs the lowest branch of a towering banyan tree, pulling herself up with ease. I make a dash for the same tree, but my foot sinks into a snarl of knotted roots. Thrown off balance, I fall. I scramble to stand, but my foot is wedged tight. Behind me, three—no, four rakshasas approach.

  I hear the snap of a branch breaking and a clack as Soteli Ma brings down another demon. I struggle to free my foot. The more I pull, the more it tightens, like a noose.

  I reach for the dagger at my calf.

  It was not built for use. It barely has an edge. But it is all I have.

  The panting of the demons grows closer. I hear another one fall. I slide the blade of the dagger beneath the roots and start cutting.

  Two rakshasas remain, not 20 feet away. Soteli Ma strikes another. I focus on the movement of the blade, on the fibers of the root as they begin, slowly, to weaken.

  One demon is left. It is larger than the others—rank, teeth like spikes, dripping tar. I watch its approach as I cut. It is so close that when Soteli Ma puts out its eyes with one final volley, the stick rebounds and strikes my cheek.

  The rakshasa is blind, but it does not fall. It knows I am near. It sniffs, waves its fat tongue like some prehensile limb. I close my eyes. My mouth. I continue to saw through the root, but silently, with uncanny economy. Finally, the root gives way with the smallest of sighs. The rakshasa swings its massive head toward the sound. I raise my hand in the air, and Soteli Ma is pulling me up, into the canopy, to safety.

  Minutes pass. I open my eyes. Above us, the holes of light continue to grow. I look down at the ground. The wounded demon flickers and vanishes, and cool, clean air rushes into the forest, rousing the leaves.

  I am alive. I am also no longer afraid. I turn to Soteli Ma.

  “How did you know what to do?” I ask. “How do you know these things? Why did my father want to marry you? Who are you?”

  Soteli Ma looks up at the sky, the patches of Night diminishing.

  “I will tell you a story,” she says.

  Once upon a time, a king was riding in the royal hunting grounds when he came upon a fawn, caught in a poacher’s snare. The king freed the poor animal and carried it back to the royal menagerie, that it could heal in safety and comfort. Time passed, and the fawn recovered. When the king released it in the royal forest, it transformed into a human woman, revealing herself as a rakshasi. Filled with gratitude, the rakshasi warned the king of a coming calamity—a spirit battle not seen in this world for centuries.

  “They will strike at the court,” she warned. “First you. Then your daughter. Holy men. Nobles. Peasants. They delight in killing humans, as a provocation to the Gods.”

  “Can you stop this war from coming?” the king asked.

  “No.”

  “Can you save my kingdom?”

  “No.”

  “Can you save my daughter?”

  The rakshasi hesitated.

  “Can you save my daughter?” the king pressed.

  “Perhaps.”

  I want to kill her.

  I want to cut off her head.

  Not because she is one of them, but because she contrived to save me, while the world burned.

  I hear a rustle in the ferns below us. A woodsman, bearing an axe, bursts through the thicket.

  “Come out, dear ladies!” he calls. “The demons are vanquished! The war is won.”

  My heart’s desire! I will denounce Soteli Ma, and he will cut her down.

  From the corner of my eye, I see Soteli Ma make an almost imperceptible shake of her head. I hesitate.

  Once more, I quiet my breath. The branch sways, as if to crack. I become small, light, part of the tree. I close my mouth, my eyes, letting nothing out nor in.

  When I open them again, the last of the demon Night slips from the sky. The woodsman flickers, like sun through a cloud, and is gone.

  All the fight goes out of me. Without a word, Soteli Ma and I drop to the ground. We push through the thicket, past the tree line and into the open countryside. Into the light. It is dazzling. Disorienting.

  “Why don’t you go back to your own kind?” I ask at last. “You’ve settled your debt to my father.”

  Soteli Ma pauses, an unfamiliar uncertainty in her eyes.

  “I am no longer one kind or another,” she says.

  It is a long walk back to Soteli Ma’s hut, made longer by the tumult in my mind.

  The kingdom is rebuilding. Soon market days resume, and Soteli Ma does not protest when I accompany her. I gather what news I can of the court. My cousin Raihan Sultan Beg has taken the throne. He will be a good king, I think. But I feel strangely detached.

  One summer morning, a courtier rides up, handsome, on a royal steed. I have just come back from the stream, a large clay jar of water balanced on my head.

  “I beg your pardon, good miss,” the courtier says. “I am looking for word of the Princess Rania Shah Sultan Begum. She may have passed through these parts, before the war.”

  I take in the fine silk crest of his waistcoat, the rings of gold and topaz on his fingers. His fair, scrubbed face. The kindness in his eyes.

  “There are no princesses here,” I say, lifting the jar of water from my head and placing it at my bare feet.

  The courtier bows.

  “May I know your good name?” he says.

  I look over at the forest—at Soteli Ma gathering firewood, her back bent, her black hair a tangle on her shoulders.

  I give the courtier a small bow in return.

  “My name is Chakoo,” I say.

  Laura Ring is an anthropologist and academic librarian living in Chicago. She is the author of Zenana: Everyday Peace in a Karachi Apartment Building (Indiana University Press 2006).

  The Romans were gone, Arthur was dead, and the Wolf was coming.

  Portius paused in the shadows of the last line of trees to catch his breath. Th
e Wolf’s army had smashed the mud and straw huts across the river, and when he’d left, the army had been both burning and tearing apart the wooden palisades by the ford. They were headed for the old Roman fort on the hill. The curl of smoke on the horizon hopefully meant that it was not deserted.

  He set off again, forcing his aching legs and seared lungs to finish the long climb. He’d been running since daybreak; the sun was a little past its zenith. With looting and pillaging, the army was probably a day behind him. Probably.

  As he neared the stone walls more signs of life became obvious. Outside fire pits roasted sides of beef and whole hogs, while a steady stream of people went in and out of the front doors. He was relieved to see that there were actually guards at the doors, a mismatch of Briton and Saxon weaponry and discarded Roman armor.

  He slowed a little as he neared. His darker skin and hair already made him an object of distrust even when he didn’t approach like a rabid dog. He met the gaze of the first guard, a middle aged man with graying hair and beard, and spoke his message without stuttering.

  “I need to speak with your leader. The Wolf is coming.”

  The guards exchanged glances.

  “He’d better be seeing the Red, then,” a younger guard interjected, and the graying man nodded.

  “I’ll need your weapon.”

  The woodcutter’s axe would be all but useless against the army that was coming. Portius surrendered it silently, then submitted to a quick but thorough search. At length the older guard nodded his permission.

  “How shall I announce you?” the younger guard asked. He looked barely fourteen, freckled and blond, and Portius grimaced. Seventeen had never felt so old.

  “Portius, from the east, Theoford.” The Saxons ruled that area now, and they were supposed to stop pushing the islanders west. But the Wolf kept coming. The Wolf wanted more.

  The boy only nodded, and led him inside. There were Briton-made hangings on the walls and fur rugs by the fire, with rushes elsewhere to dull the cold from the stone. A slight figure stood backlit by the fire, turning towards them as they entered.

  “Yes, Hamish?”

  “It’s Portius, from East Engle way. He’s asked to speak with you, says the Wolf is coming.”

  There was rueful amusement in the voice that answered. “We knew that, I think. Still, news is always welcome. Come in and be welcome, Portius.” The figure stepped back, so that firelight gleamed off a face that was barely older than the guard’s … and female. “I am Rovena, called the Red.”

  Hamish hesitated. “Should I stay?”

  Rovena smiled. “No, go ask Alden to bring up some warmed wine and a bit of food. My guest has come some distance from the look of him.”

  Portius came in hesitantly. “Lady Rovena … are you the widow of the Lord here?”

  “Daughter.” She sat, and gestured him to the chair beside her. “If I were only a widow, we’d none of us be having this trouble.” She cocked her head, smiling as if reading his confusion. “My father married me to the Wolf two months back to secure a peace. After he sacked several more of our villages, I decided he was wanting as a husband and left him. If I could have left him in pieces, believe me, I would have.”

  “He let you leave?” Portius realized that he was gaping and closed his mouth.

  “He did not.” Rovena met his eyes frankly, as West Island women tended to do. “He thought that two guards were enough to keep a Briton woman in line. He was … mistaken.” Her hand closed in a way that made him not want to ask about the fate of the guards. “So, you bring news of my husband?”

  Portius shook himself, then tersely described the fate of the huts and the palisades. “The stone here won’t burn. With the cisterns, you’ll have water in plenty, and I see you are gathering in food. Your best chance—your only chance—is to outwait him.”

  Rovena nodded an acknowledgement, then gestured to a side doorway where a serving man waited. “I’ll show you the cisterns after you’ve eaten. You’ve earned a meal with your warning.”

  The cisterns had been allowed to fall in disrepair, but should be easy to fix. Portius went over them with growing excitement. “I can improve on them for you. With these, water won’t be a problem.”

  Rovena was watching him, an odd expression on her face. “You are a builder, then?”

  “An architect. Or I would be, if I could. I like working with wood and stone.” He grimaced. “I’m a bastard, and unacknowledged. The only place for me in Roman society would be as a soldier … and war isn’t my strong suit.”

  She was kind enough not to laugh at the obviousness of that. He was barely taller than her, and would give even odds that she was stronger. Instead she nodded again, stared out over the hills, and abruptly spoke.

  “We don’t have enough food.”

  She turned back to look at him, and he could see the fatalistic calm in her eyes. “Either we turn out people, and don’t have enough to keep the invaders away, or we all starve. I was thinking poison might be kinder. I wouldn’t surrender a dog to that bastard.”

  “Oh.” Portius leaned back against the wall, staring blankly at the tile that turned it into a pool when the gutters were closed off. “I hadn’t thought beyond getting here.”

  Rovena shook her head. “You’ll want to keep going. We’ll likely delay them a few weeks, but no one in this land will be safe until the Wolf is dead. I’d surrender myself to him, but there’s no way he’d let me near him with weapons, especially after … well.” She cleared her throat. “I do appreciate the warning, though.”

  His brain was buzzing, equations and possibilities shoving at one another to be heard. “We need to trick him.”

  “Trick him? How? He’s the Wolf. He has an army.” Rovena smiled sadly. “Kindness isn’t much of an asset in this world.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of being kind.” Portius felt his face twist into a crooked smile. “We’re smarter than he is. That will be enough.”

  Four hours later the whole Clan saw Portius tossed out on his ear as their Mistress called him a dirty Roman spy, a coward, and a fool. Hamish tossed his axe after him, a look of reluctant pity on his face, while Portius raised his fist and swore the Red would be sorry.

  He stomped down the lengthy hill until he was out of sight of the Fort then gathered his strength and his courage for the next part. When he encountered the scouts for the Wolf’s army on the road, he marched up to them, head held high.

  “Bring me to the Wolf,” he said. “Tell him I’m going to deliver his shrew of a wife to him and her hall beside.”

  The Wolf was a big man, tall and broad with an iron gray beard and a hooked nose that reminded Portius more of eagle than wolf. He did not look like an idiot, or someone who suffered fools gladly. “Is this the boy who will give me the Red?”

  Portius was thrust forward. “Yes.” He tried to stand up tall, to be angry and believable. “Rovena promised my family they could seek shelter at her fort. When I got there, she had turned them out. I have no idea where they are now.”

  “Why should I care about this?” growled the Wolf, his dark gray eyes growing unfocused … and perhaps angry, impatient.

  “Because Rovena lied to my family,” Portius claimed, making a fist. “She’s not short on food. She has months of it stocked away, all manner of grains, even livestock.” He smiled a predatory smile, lowering his voice. “But she squats in a Roman fort, Caer Caradoc. My grandfather was a Roman. I know how to crack her fort.”

  The approaches to Caer Caradoc were not inviting. On one side it was very steep, and on the rest was a gentler, but wide-open expanse. All trees on these approaches had been chopped down. The Caradoc defenders would have ample time to rain down stones and arrows as the Wolf’s men climbed toward them.

  “Bah, we can starve them out. There’s no way any supplies could be weaseled in to her.” The Wolf had actually been given pause.

  “My lord, she expects you to do that,” Portius said earnestly. “A battering ram als
o would be accounted for. The Red’s fort is set up to defend against attackers at her doors. I can lead you up and over, to come in from the top rather than trying to get through the bottom.”

  The Wolf grunted. After a long pause he motioned to several of his men. “Make me ladders.” He turned to Portius, scowling. “You’re going to lead this attack, boy, and if you’ve led me wrong I’ll crush your skull with my own two hands.”

  Portius nodded, trying to look calm. “I’d expect no less.”

  By the time the ladders were finished night was falling. The Wolf directed his men to darken their faces and arms with mud or pitch and paced until darkness had settled. There was no moon, and light clouds obscured the stars. A few lights were visible from the Fort itself, but the way was dark.

  “The more of your men we can get onto the roof before they know we’re there, the fewer casualties we’ll take,” Portius informed the Wolf as they started the surprisingly quiet assent.

  The Wolf grunted. “Teach your grandmother to card wool, boy. I’ve been a soldier since before you were born.”

  Portius ducked his head and focused on making it up the steep grade. There was no cry from the Fort, no sign that they had been spotted, and the first ladder had no more been lifted against the wall then the Wolf was lifting him bodily onto it. Portius climbed rapidly, aware of the Wolf climbing a breath behind.

  There was enough room on the roof for a good hundred of the Wolf’s men without crowding. Damp rushes on the roof muffled their steps, and Portius whispered as he directed the Wolf to the center.