The SoulBorn Queen

The Forest was becoming a labyrinth of snow and ice. Having been monitoring the values of the thickest for an hour, I found my view from the bend of a tree branch to be useless. The howling wind carried heavy flurries to cover my tracks, but buried with them any evidence of possible quarry. 

Hunger had taken me farther from home than I normally would have dared, but winter was the difficult season. Going farther into the woods than I could follow, the animals had drawn in and left me to pickoff stragglers one by one, praying they would survive until spring. 

They hadn't.

Wiping my numb hands over my eyes, I removed the flakes adhering to my lashes. Here, the deer had not yet moved on to find any telltale stripped bark trees. They would stay until the bark ran out, then moved north past the wolves' territory and maybe into the witches' coven_ where no mortals would dare go, not unless they had a death wish. 

Thinking about it sent a tremor down my spine, and I pushed it aside to concentrate on my environment, on the work ahead. From my position up in the tree, barely able to see fifteen feet ahead, all I could do was all I would be fortunate to find anything Stifling a groan as my stiff limbs protested at the movement, I unstrung my bow before slid down the tree. 

I ground my teeth as the cold snow crunched under my fraying boots. Little visibility, superfluous sound I was already well on my path to another ineffective search. 

Almost just a few hours of daylight remained. Should I not depart soon, I would have to find my way home in the dark and the town hunters' warnings still rang clear in my mind: large wolves were on the prowl, and in numbers. Not to add murmurs of unusual people seen about, tall and haunting and fatal. 

Anything but witches, the hunters had begged our long- forgotten deities and I had covertly prayed alongside them. Two days' travel from the immortal barrier of witches' coven we had been spared an assault over the eight years we would have been residing in our village 

Though traveling peddlers occasionally delivered tales of far-off border towns left in splinters and bones and ashes. Once rare enough to be disregarded by the village elders as hearsay, these had in recent times become ubiquitous whispering on every market day. I had gambled much by coming so far into the forest, but the day before we had depleted our last loaf of bread and the rest of our dried meat. Still, I would have rather spent another night with a hungry belly than found myself satisfying the appetite of a wolf. Alternatively a witch. 

Not that there were many of me to devour. By this time of the year, I had gangly and could count a good number of ribs. Pushing a hand against my hollow and painful belly, I moved as swiftly and quietly between the trees. When I came back to our cottage empty-handed once more, I knew the words on the faces of my two older sisters. 

Few minutes of diligent looking later, I squatted in a group of snow-heavy brambles. There were half-decent views of a clearing and the tiny brook running through it among the thorns. Some holes in the ice indicated it was still rather often used. One hopes something will come by. 

I leaned my forehead against the rough curve of wood and sighed through my nose, digging the tip of my bow into the ground. Without food, we would not survive another week. And too many families had already begun to ask for me to wish for handouts from the richer neighbors. I had seen firsthand just how far their donations traveled.

Straining to hear the forest above the gust, I settled into a more cozy posture and slowed my breathing. The white pure and clean against the brown and gray of the planet, the snow fell and fell, danced and curled like sparkling spindrifts. And then, despite myself, my numb limbs, I calmed that unrelenting, cruel part of my mind to gaze upon the snow-covered woods. 

Once I had dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape, savoring the contrast of new grass against dark, tilled earth or an amethyst brooch tucked in folds of emerald silk became second nature. Every so often I would even find myself picturing a day when my sisters were married and it was just me and Father, with enough food to go around, enough money to acquire some paint, and enough time to apply those colors and forms on paper or canvas or the cottage walls. 

Not likely to happen anytime soon maybe never. Thus, I had moments like this, appreciating the pale winter light's glint on snow. I couldn't recall the last time I had it had to pay attention to anything beautiful or fascinating. 

Those times were hungry and hollow and sometimes brutal but never beautiful; stolen hours in a dilapidated barn with Isaac Hale did not count. The howling breeze quieted to a gentle sigh. 

Now the snow fell lethargically in huge, fat lumps that accumulated along every nook and bump of the trees. mesmerizing the dead, soft beauty of the snow. I would soon have to go back to the chilly, muddy roads of the hamlet, to the small sweltering heat of our cabin. Some tiny, broken bits of me shuddered at the idea. 

Bushes moved raucously over the clearing. 

Drawing my bow came naturally to me. I looked among the thorns, my breath caught. 

Less than thirty paces away, a little doe stood still not too frail from winter but desperate enough to tear bark from a clearing tree. 

A week or more could see my family fed from a deer like that. 

My mouth watery. Just as the wind hissing through dead leaves, I aimed. 

She kept ripping bark strips, chewed gently, completely oblivious of how near her death was. 

Half the flesh I could dry; we could quickly consume the rest—stews, pies . . . Her skin might be fashioned into clothing for one of us or sold. I wanted new boots; Amanda wanted a new cloak; Celina was naturally hungry for anything another someone owned. 

My fingers shivered. So much food, so much salvation. I exhaled evenly, double 

Looking at my aim. 

But from the thicket near to me, a set of golden eyes glimmered. 

The woodland went quiet. The wind dissipated. The snow stopped as well. 

We mortals no longer had gods to adore, but had I known their lost names, I would have prayed to them. Every one of them. Hidden in the underbrush, the wolf crept nearer, its eyes fixed on the unaware doe . 

Though I had been cautioned about their numbers, my mouth went bone-dry; he was massive the size of a pony. 

But his unnatural stealth was worse than his size; even as he crept closer in the brush, he remained unheard and unobserved by the doe. No creature of that size could remain so silent. But if he was of Witches coven, if he was somehow a witch wolf, then being eaten was the least of my issues; he was not regular beast.

Still, maybe … maybe it would be a favor to the world, to my village, to myself, to kill him while I stayed undetected. One would suffer little burden from shooting an arrow through his eye. 

Still, he moved like and appeared to be a normal wolf size notwithstanding. Animal, I said reassurance. 

merely a creature. Not when I needed my head clear, my breathing steady, I detested thinking about the alternative. 

I had three arrows and a hunting knife. Simple and effective, the first two were basic arrows; they probably caused no more than bee stings to a wolf of that size. I had purchased the third arrow, the longest and heaviest one, from a roaming peddler during a summer when we had enough coppers for additional pleasures. An mountain ash arrow, cold iron head armed. 

From songs sung to us as lullabies over our cradles, we all knew from early on that witches despised cold iron and silver; it makes their magic fail long enough to produce a fatal stroke before they vanish. Or as legend and conjecture said. 

Now I drew it, with little, effective movement anything to avoid that terrible wolf gazing in my direction. If I aimed right, the arrow would probably kill him but surely caused damage. 

My chest tightened so much it hurt. And in that 

At that moment, I understood my life reduced down to one question: Was the wolf alone? 

I drew the string farther back and gripped my bow. While I was a good shot, I had never encountered a wolf. I used to believe it made me lucky, even divine. 

But these days, I had no clue where to strike or how quickly they went. I could not allow to miss. Not when I had just one Cold iron arrow. 

Good farewell if it was truly a witch wolf's heart pounding under that fur. Good riddance, after all their kind had done to us. I wouldn't gamble this one later entering our community to kill and harm and torment. Let him die here and present. 

I would be glad to get rid of him. 

The wolf moved closer; under one of his paws each larger than my hand twig broke. The doe became stiff. She looked side, her ears straining toward the gray sky. She could not see or smell the wolf downwind of her. 

His big gray body sank head first. 

so ideally combined with the shadows and snow 

sank onto its haunches. The doe was staring the incorrect way still. 

From the doe to the wolf and back again, I looked. At least he was alone; at least I had been spared that much. Still, if the wolf frightened the doe away, I was left with only a hungry, oversized wolf maybe a witch wolf seeking the next-best food. And if he murdered her, annihilating priceless quantities of fat and hide . . . 

My life was not the only one that would be lost if I judged wrongly. These past eight years I had been living had been reduced to nothing but dangers 

hunting in the woods, and I usually chose correctly. Most of the time. 

His yellow fangs shining, the wolf erupted from the brush in a flash of gray and white and black. 

In the open, he was even more gigantic, a wonder of speed, muscle, and sheer force. The doe had little possibility. 

Before he damaged much else of her, I shot the frigid iron arrow. 

The arrow found its mark in his side, and I might have sworn the ground itself quaked. So ruby brilliant, his blood sprayed on the snow as he screamed in agony releasing the doe's neck. 

He spun toward me, raised hackles and those yellow eyes wide. As I shot to my feet, snow swirling about, another arrow drawn, his soft growl echoed in the void pit of my stomach.

But the wolf just glanced at me, his mouth crimson, my frigid iron arrow jutting so painfully from his side. Once more the snow started falling. He gazed and with a kind of awareness and astonishment that prompted me to fire the second arrow. Just in case that intelligence was of the immortal, malevolent kind. 

He did not seek to avoid the arrow as it went straight. 

via his broad yellow eye. 

He fell straight to the ground. 

Color and dark whirled, eddying in my vision, together with the snow. 

His legs were vibrating as a faint whine cut through the air. Impossible—he ought to be dead, not dying. Almost at the goose fletching, the arrow went across his eye. 

Normal wolf or witch wolf, however, had no significance. Not unto that 

cold iron covered in his side. He would die soon enough. Still maintaining a decent distance, my hands trembled as I brushed off snow and moved closer. The cuts I would have him gushed blood over, marooning the snow. 

Breathing already slowed, he scratched the ground. I wasn't sure I wanted to know if he was in great pain or if his whimper was merely his effort to push death away. 

Around us, the snow swirled. I stared at him till that coat of charcoal and obsidian and ivory stopped going up and down. Wolf—certainly just a wolf given his size. 

My chest tightened let up, and I sighed, my breath misting in front of me. At least the cold iron had shown itself to be deadly regardless of who or what it claimed off. 

A quick look at the doe indicated the animal could be carried and even that would be a fight. Still it was sad to abandon the wolf. 

Still, it wasted valuable minutes—minutes during which any predator might detect the fresh blood—I skinned him and polished my arrows as best I could. 

Should anything, it warmed my hands. Before lifting her over my shoulders, I wrapped the bloody portion of his pelt around the doe's death cut. I didn't want a blood trail leading every creature with fangs and claws right to me several miles back to our cabin. 

Grunting against the weight, I grabbed the deer legs and gave a last look at the steaming wolf carcass. His last golden eye now gazed at the snow-heavy sky, and for a moment I yearned I had it in me to be sorry for the dead. 

thing. 

Still, this was the forest and it was winter.