Faolan’s tongue slipped that night in the field.
They’d been kneeling in the dusk-draped wildflowers in a meadow outside one of Felshire’s border farms, gathering wild primrose and cowslip, when a wolf the size of a wheelbarrow stalked through the grass. Its eyes were fixed on a small herd of sheep and goats in a paddock down the field, and, whether it simply couldn’t smell Faolan or was convinced it could sneak past them, it prowled paw after paw towards the unsuspecting animals.
Faolan watched it pass not fifty feet from where they knelt, heart in their throat. They’d seen this play out before. The livestock’s screams were always the worst.
“Don’t,” Faolan whispered.
The wolf’s ear swiveled towards them. It continued forward.
“Don’t,” Faolan repeated, raising their voice a tic.
The wolf’s ears flattened against its skull. It turned its head just enough to eye Faolan with disdain, golden eyes piercing like a night watchman’s lantern. It curled its lips in a silent warning snarl.
Faolan took a deep breath. Their ponytail tugged in the wind like the wildflower stalks in their trembling hands. Carefully, they lifted their ecru-brown eyes to the wolf’s.
“Don’t hurt those animals,” they said, their voice lowering to a whuff and a growl. Magic, warm and supple as honey, coated their vocal cords, a sensation Faolan had avoided for years. Faolan had no tail to position, no flexible ears or a muzzle to signal with, but they stood taller, keeping eye contact with the grey wolf before them.
The wolf stared at them wide-eyed. It stopped in its tracks, ears flicking back and forth like it was trying to listen to two different frequencies.
Faolan licked their lips. “The farmers whose livestock you seek will kill you first,” they added in that same magic-laced voice. “Traps line the border of the fence. Hunt elsewhere. Please.”
The wolf stared at them with those lamp-light eyes. Its ears swiveled. Its tail raised and lowered like a flag.
And, finally, with as confused an expression that Faolan had ever seen on an animal, the wolf turned and loped away through the field.
Faolan didn’t relax. Tension gripped their chest in iron jaws. They sat in the field, grass flattened under their trousers, watching the treeline uphill where the wolf had disappeared. They’d saved the livestock, yes. But they’d done the one thing their father had warned them never to do.
They’d used the wolftongue.
Faolan was never clear about the origins of their power. Their father, Conall, had a new explanation every time young Faolan had asked him growing up.
“The moon gave it to you,” he’d said when Faolan was five, sitting upon his knee by the hearth. “Kissed your forehead and blessed you with her magical powers.”
“The wolves gave it to you,” he’d said when Faolan was eight, helping him bundle St. John’s wort to dry in the rafters. “Nipped you on the ear when you were a babe and gave you the power of their speech.”
“In truth, I do not know,” he’d admitted when Faolan was twelve, on a hike through the woodlands that were unmarred—so far—by axemarks and stumps. “I found you alone in a field, crying for a mother that never came, helpless and bound to be some creature’s dinner if you didn’t get shelter and a warm blanket around you. I took responsibility. I’m not superstitious like other folk—so long as you don’t go talking with the wolves where others can catch wind of it, do what you will.”
So, like it or not, Faolan had been able to communicate with the wolves that roamed the edges of Felshire’s colonial walls. They’d been able to hear the howls of hunger, parse the panting of tongues into pleas for food and clean water. Every year, the wolves’ misery grew worse.
And every year, the leader of Felshire ordered more and more forest cleared for farmland.
Sheep and goats, donkeys and pigs, all manner of domesticated livestock soon stripped the wild grasses bare. Roosters marked the dawn more than songbirds. Even Faolan and Conall’s home that once bordered ash and hazel trees was surrounded by farmland now.
“Faolan, listen to me—you must hide your wolftongue,” Conall had ordered from his deathbed. Gripping Faolan’s linen shirt in a fever-weakened grip, the only family Faolan had known for eighteen years held their eyes in a desperate plea. “Keenan MacLear will hang you in an instant for having a heathen tongue, for speaking in magic and mystery. You know how he is with superstition. Guard your voice and mind your words, and you will live a long life here.”
A long life it could be, but I live in the shadow of a power-hungry mogul, Faolan thought, not for the first time, as the memory of their father’s passing merged with the bustling cobblestone streets of Felshire’s developed sector. The village had expanded so far in the two years since Conall’s death that Faolan struggled to remember what the land used to look like. High stone walls had been constructed to keep out wolves and other threats; churches sprang up like weeds; iron gates and sharp-tipped ramparts bristled against the placid blue sky.
At least I kept the wolf safe, Faolan added as they finished their business in town. Poor thing—it’s just trying to live like the rest of us. It doesn’t deserve to die just because it’s hungry.
Faolan set a carton of bilberries in their pack and cinched the top tight, trying to ignore the faces that stared at them. The marketplace swelled with people: sun-hardened farmers, sharp-eyed merchants, cloud-headed clerics, and others just trying to make a decent living for themselves.
But the eyes of Felshire’s ruler peered at Faolan from every direction. Everywhere they looked, Faolan saw effigies of Keenan MacLear: miniature portraits, carved wooden dolls, even a few stained glass window hangings peddled by the most pretentious artisans. The man was as much a saint as an appointed official. His fire-red beard and rugged face promised shelter to his people and decimation to his enemies.
I know what you are, the portraits seemed to say. Wolftongue.
Faolan shivered.
They shouldered their pack and hurried home.
The wolf was there to greet them.
Faolan nearly fainted when they opened the kitchen window to let in the summer air and saw the great grey beast directly outside. Dusk clung to its outline like a second shadow.
“Come,” said the wolf.
“Where?” Faolan replied, slipping into wolftongue without realizing. They would have cursed their foolishness were they not inches away from an animal that could snap their neck in seconds if the mood stuck it.
The wolf huffed through its nose. Up close, Faolan noted the maze of scars that adorned its muzzle, the way its fur hung loosely on its bones. The wolf flicked its tail uphill towards the treeline.
“Our lady wishes to speak to you,” it said.
“Your lady?”
“The leader of our pack. She heard my report of your wolftongue and requests your presence.”
Faolan gulped. Only a day since they’d accidentally let their magic slip and already wolves were demanding an audience.
The grey wolf lifted his muzzle. “I am called Seamus,” he said. “I am our lady’s prime hunter, though you are by far the most curious thing I’ve brought back to the den.”
The den.
Faolan checked the dusk-drenched sky—a crescent moon squinted above the stone walls of Felshire like Seamus’ keen glare. Faolan had no doubt that the “prime hunter” of the local wolf pack would have no qualms dragging them by the arm if they refused.
“…I don’t have a choice, do I,” Faolan said, deflated.
Seamus whuffed what could have been a laugh. “No, you do not,” he said wryly. “No one refuses summons from our lady. Now, if those cloth pelts of yours are sufficient, fall in line behind me. And bring something to eat. An offering of food may ensure she doesn’t kill you.”
The wolves made their den in a limestone cave underneath a huge slab of brackish-colored clay. The stone walls were drenched in shadow as Faolan followed Seamus into the passageway.
The cave trailed down the dried-up path of a disappearing stream until it emptied into a cavern layered with flat limestone slabs. Faolan could not see in the dark, but slivers of silver moonlight streamed through cracks in the cave ceiling. Faolan’s breath caught as their eyes adjusted to the shapes within the shadows.
The cavern was filled with wolves.
Their gleaming eyes fixed on Faolan as Seamus led them into the cave. The wolves’ pelts could have been extensions of the land itself with how earthen their colors were, how they blended so seamlessly with the stone around them.
Sitting on a pad of dried grasses atop the highest limestone dais was a wolf the color of tree bark, her large paws a lighter shade of ochre. A long scar ran up one of her forelegs, fringed with fur and pale with age. She regarded Seamus and Faolan with regal coolness.
“Hail, Maeve, wisest of wolves,” said Seamus, crouching so his underbelly touched the ground.
Faolan knelt, too, splaying their palms on the cold stone for balance as they repeated the phrase in wolftongue.
The cavern was silent. Faolan almost forgot to breathe. Claws scraped the ground like nails over slate, louder and louder until two massive paws crossed into Faolan’s field of view.
“Rise,” said a deep voice past Faolan’s head.
Faolan obliged.
The wolf was big. Faolan was far from short, but the wolf’s withers came up to their ribcage, her head held confident and assured.
“I am Maeve,” she said, her voice dark as earth and just as rich. “I am the leader of the lowlands pack. You speak our tongue.”
“Yes,” said Faolan, the magic in their throat warm and livening.
“I see you have met Seamus.”
The grey wolf bowed his head in acknowledgement. Maeve flicked an ear.
“I apologize if his manner was brusque,” Maeve continued. “He is skilled, but he is no diplomat. We have not met one with the wolftongue in many years.”
Maeve sniffed Faolan’s chest, then their hip where they’d slung a bag of bilberries at Seamus’ request.
Seamus nudged Faolan with his scarred shoulder. Faolan fumbled the bag’s ties until they upended the contents into their open palm.
“I bring an offering of food,” they said.
At the mention of food, the wolves perked up, ears and noses trained on Faolan’s hands. Not wanting to seem disrespectful, Faolan offered Maeve the berries first; once she inspected them, she ate one straight from Faolan’s palm, her fangs grazing their skin. Once she’d eaten, the rest of the wolves gathered around, delicately taking one berry each in their front teeth without ever nicking Faolan’s skin. When the last wolf, a pup no taller than Faolan’s knee, licked the juices from Faolan’s hand, Maeve stamped a paw on the ground to call the pack’s attention.
“Your offering is sufficient,” she said to Faolan. “I acknowledge your attendance and allegiance.”
The wolves woofed and thumped their tails. Faolan tried not to faint.
“Allegiance?” they asked.
Maeve flicked an ear. “Speaking wolftongue is no small gift. Whether by accident or fortune, you exist in our time of greatest need. The humans of your walled town continue to strip our forests and chase away our prey. We have already lost five packmates to the traps set around those herds of livestock. We cannot go on like this. Something must change.”
“I agree that Keenan MacLear’s orders are unfair,” said Faolan, “but I don’t see how I can fix that. He’s the elected official. I’m a forager.”
“One does not always need to address the pack leader to make changes,” Maeve countered. “If my wolves came to me for every dispute, I’d be up to my ears in nonsense. Talk to your fellows. Convince them to remove those traps, to sheath their axes and keep their affairs where they stand. I do not wish to see my pack waste away when there is perfectly good prey behind those fences.”
Faolan cringed. Asking the shepherds to just let the wolves eat their livestock sat acidly in their throat. They told Maeve as much, and she curled her lip.
“What else are we to do?” she demanded. “Our blood relies on the blood of others.”
“What about…?” Faolan didn’t finish the question, the berry stains on their palm enough of an indication.
Maeve sighed. “True, we can eat plants,” she said, “but we cannot live on vegetation alone. We are not rabbits. And all of the rabbits have long since fled these woods.”
The other wolves murmured assent. Maeve swept her gaze across them all, the creatures who depended on her as much as Faolan had depended on their father as a child. Bulging ribs and shaggy pelts stood out starkly under the streams of silver moonlight.
Faolan’s heart tugged at the sight. Maeve turned her focus back to Faolan and fixed her golden eyes on them.
“Be our voice,” she entreated softly. “Convince your humans to leave well enough alone so we may both share what we have left.”
Faolan bowed their head. The thought of setting a pack of ravenous wolves on the pastures made their stomach churn—but so did the thought of leaving them all to starve.
They need me, Faolan realized. They have no way to bargain. What good is having this power if I don’t try and do good with it? Surely I can find a solution, one that keeps my magic secret?
“I promise to do what I can,” they said, lifting their head to look Maeve in the eye. “I cannot promise the shepherds’ flocks or the farmers’ herds, but I can try to dissuade them from setting such harmful traps around the fields. I can try to keep the woodworkers from felling these trees. I’m only one voice—and human tongue is more complex than wolftongue.”
Maeve sighed through her nose. Her tail slowly lowered.
“That is all we ask,” she said, her voice heavy with resignation. “To try.”
Faolan tried.
They were shy at first—broaching such a subject among people who considered the wolves a volatile threat was no small challenge. Faolan slipped the subject into casual conversation—buying food, selling the flowers they foraged, even waiting outside the town clerk’s office—but no one seemed to listen.
Shepherds called them sympathizer. Merchants called them fanatic. Clerics thought something was deeply wrong with their psyche and demanded they go to church.
I cannot speak to them in a tongue they will listen to, Faolan thought, ire rising in their blood. For all my words and pleas, they refuse to heed!
For their part, the wolves of Maeve’s pack welcomed Faolan with wagging tails. Brave Naomh, prideful Redmund, even the youngest pup Lugh would sniff Faolan head to toe and inquire about Felshire. They laughed at Faolan’s stories and huddled against them in forest meadows, sharing their scent and knowledge of the natural world.
Seamus, Naomh, or one of Maeve’s other hunters would escort Faolan to and from the den most nights. Faolan found themself conversing with the beasts in wolftongue constantly, the warmth of their magic soothing the cuts of the townsfolk’s bristling attitudes.
But the townsfolk gossiped.
Whispers spun through town.
And, eventually, word traveled to the ears of Keenan MacLear.
Heavy knocks on their front door woke Faolan one mist-strewn morning weeks after they’d first talked to Maeve. They scrambled out of bed and groggily stumbled to the door. When they cracked it open, fog swirled into the kitchen like smoke.
Keenan MacLear stared down at them with fiery eyes.
“You thought you could hide from me,” he said plainly.
He snapped his thick fingers. Two guards rushed past him, nabbing Faolan by the arms before Faolan could jump away. The guards twisted Faolan’s arms behind them and secured their wrists with rope.
“I—I’m sorry—” Faolan stammered.
“Apologize all you like,” said Keenan, “but you know your guilt as surely as I do. My eyes are everywhere in this town. My ears hear all rumors. My farmers and shepherds whose fields you border hear you speaking in tongues, see you cavorting with the very beasts I seek to destroy. I will not have you poisoning my town any longer.”
Faolan gulped. Keenan was an enormous man—arms thick as the trees he’d felled, chest wide as the stones he’d quarried. Even if he hadn’t been elected, his very presence radiated a physical authority that one would be foolish to question.
And Faolan had questioned it, the fool.
Keenan marched towards the walls of Felshire. The two guards hauled Faolan by the arms past the iron gates and through the streets to a wooden platform at the center of town. A crowd had already gathered, assembled in dour clothes and hungry expressions. Their eyes followed Faolan up the steps and onto a trapdoor.
One of the guards looped a rope around Faolan’s neck. Faolan finally shook themself to their senses past the shock.
I’m going to die, they realized.
The guards stepped back. Keenan MacLear sneered at Faolan before he turned his back on them to address the crowd.
Faolan didn’t listen to a word he said. Their ears rang with panic, their heart beating too fast in their chest, their body frozen in place like a mouse under the eyes of a fox.
But I am no mouse, Faolan thought with sudden ferocity.
A snarl surged in their chest. The wolftongue woke.
Faolan howled.
The sound shocked Keenan into silence, his eyes wide as the lupine wail echoed through the streets. Faolan howled again and again, their voice raw and ragged as they channeled all their rage and fear into a cry for help. When their lungs finally gave out, they stood with knees trembling on the gallows, fog coiled like smoke around their ankles.
The howl faded.
Silence stifled the streets.
Faolan listened as hard as they could, but they heard no reply—no signal from Maeve, Seamus, or any of the wolves they’d befriended.
Keenan MacLear scoffed. He waved an arm over his people, encompassing their wide-eyed fear and reverence.
“You see?” he proclaimed. “See what befalls those who speak against our way of life! See where those with magic end up!” He spat the word like it was a curse. “As your leader, it is my duty to protect you from the wickedness outside our walls. Once we hang this wolf-speaking heretic, I will personally go into those woods and burn the beasts from their den!”
The crowd applauded. Faolan felt sick.
Keenan looked over his shoulder and nodded at the guards. One put her hand on a lever, ready to drop Faolan to their doom.
Faolan’s ears buzzed. Their vision blurred. They had half a second to pray they fainted before the trapdoor fell away just to save themself the pain—
And then the crowd’s shrieks cut through their mental fog. Wolves surged through the people, pelts swerving through the sea of cloth and flesh to get to the gallows. Two wolves leaped onstage and tackled the guards with guttural cries of outrage. Maeve herself jumped on top of a fleeing merchant and used him as a springboard to land at Faolan’s feet.
“We heard you,” she said simply.
Faolan grinned, knees wobbling, chest light as the moon. Their throat had seized from fear, but they felt the wolftongue warming gently around their vocal cords.
At the edge of the gallows platform, Keenan MacLear glowered. His eyes burned. His beard could have been kindling.
He drew a sword from his belt.
Maeve rounded on him, snapping at his wrists whenever she could dart in past his blade’s reach. Faolan yelped a wordless cry of protest—and another wolf appeared in front of them, sturdy and scarred.
Seamus snapped Faolan’s bonds free with his nimble teeth.
“Go!” he ordered. “I’ll cover your flank!”
“But Maeve—”
“She is not the leader of our pack for nothing. She will be fine. You, on the other paw, are liable to faint or fall prey to one of those humans’ sharp sticks. Go!”
Faolan nodded and blindly stumbled off the gallows. The townsfolk who hadn’t turned tail the instant the wolves showed up parted for Faolan like they carried a plague. Keenan’s other guards as well as leather-clad town enforcers streamed from the alleyways, brandishing swords and raising bows made from the felled forest trees.
Behind them, Maeve and Keenan danced with steel and teeth. Faolan couldn’t bear to look.
They ran. Arrows whizzed past their head, nearly snagging on Faolan’s ponytail. Seamus stayed beside them, snarling and snapping at any who got too close. Faolan kept a hand on Seamus’ grey back, fingers twined in his fur to keep themself steady. Adrenaline coursed through their veins like liquid moonlight, filling them with single-minded determination to make it past the street, past the block, past the iron gates that sealed Felshire away from the world at large. Guards were trying to keep the gates closed, but the bulk of Maeve’s pack descended on them in a wave of teeth and claws. Seamus tackled the gates and broke them open. Faolan followed.
At one point, they recognized Maeve, her brown flanks bleeding and a cut across her eye, take the lead as the pack fled over the pastures and into the distant trees.
Faolan didn’t stop to breathe until they and the wolves were well outside of town, the walls of Felshire and its bordering pastures a distant memory behind the ash and hazel woods. Faolan flopped against Seamus and rugged-furred Redmund, panting for breath as their limbs finally gave out. Seamus snorted and begrudgingly licked Faolan’s arm—in all the chaos, Faolan hadn’t noticed they’d gotten cut.
“Thank you,” they said in wolftongue.
Seamus’ ears twitched, the tip of his tail lifting slightly. Faolan knew it to mean you’re welcome, pup.
Maeve circled the pack, stepping around roots and moss-covered stones as she checked on everyone. Her left eye was hidden behind a stream of blood, but she was alive. She let Naomh lick the wound as she finished inspections.
“We cannot stay here,” Maeve decided. Under the trees, her coat was truly of the earth, mottled in all shades of bark and loam.
Faolan nodded, grim understanding settling in their gut. The trace of the noose around their neck felt like a burn.
“Maeve’s right,” they said. “Keenan MacLear, as soon as he’s corralled the townsfolk, will come out of those walls with axes and arrows, bent on felling these woods and finding your den.”
“Then where do we go?” asked Redmund.
“We will find a way,” said Maeve. She lay down and stretched her forelegs in front of her, splaying her paw pads as she yawned. “Our kind are nothing if not resilient. When we have rested, half of you will fetch the pups and elders from the den, and we will move under moonlight.”
Faolan picked at the torn hem of their shirt; Seamus was still licking their arm, but Faolan fiddled with the cloth, running their fingers over the frayed edge.
They would have killed me, they thought. Just as Conall feared. I cannot go back to Felshire.
Maeve caught Faolan’s worried expression with her good eye and grunted, snapping Faolan from their thoughts.
“You’re in our pack now,” she said. “I still believe your presence is a good omen. Perhaps those in the walled town would never have listened to us. But you can still be our voice, our ambassador. Should other humans attempt to fell our woods, flush out our prey, and set traps to kill our kin, you can try to dissuade them. Surely that is worth some effort.”
Faolan bowed their head. Seamus had finished cleaning their wound and was busy with his own scrapes, and the wet wolf saliva gave Faolan’s skin goosebumps as it evaporated. And yet, strange as it was, it felt homely—a tender touch, a familial sort of comfort that Faolan had never found within Felshire’s walls.
Faolan couldn’t fix Felshire. And it was all too likely they’d fail again. But the wolftongue warmed their throat in honey, gave them courage wrapped in a pelt that promised change, if only they could get people to listen.
Faolan lifted their head and met Maeve’s golden gaze with their own.
“I’ll try,” they promised.
And that was all anyone could ask of them.
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Em Harriett is a speculative fiction author from New England inspired by nature and imagination. Her writing has appeared in Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, Voyage YA, The First Line, and All Worlds Wayfarer. Find more of Em’s work at emharriett.com. | |