The trees were so tall and menacing, the undergrowth so heavy and dark that they had been something of a hindrance even for the silver furred she-wolf, and her small ‘magic’. Threatening, foreboding, presenting a nigh impenetrable shield-wall against any ‘outsider’, there was such bitterness in the air, that even Isa had to think twice before continuing.
Few physical barriers could stop her. But one built of hate was another matter. It was so tangible, like a thick fog enveloping her, clinging to her thick fur, filling her nostrils with its stench of decay.
She crouched down a moment, lying close to the ground, the source of life, tilting her head from one side to the other.
She knew.
This was a bad place anyway. Many of the trees were angry. She had never known another forest quite like it. Not that she had journeyed beyond the confines of the Mark, in this World.
“Go away! Your kind are not wanted here. Enter, and we will consume you.”
If trees could speak (as of course they could, in their own way) they would shout out threats and warnings they would engulf you whole. But here, in this spot, it was about more than trees. Bitterness and hate fed the air till hope of life-giving change was all but removed.
‘Who in their right mind would choose to ever-dwell like this, she wondered?’
And she knew then she had answered her own question.
It wasn’t someone in their right mind.
The woman’s deep concern for the girl had filtered the little she knew about the ‘curse’ from the Rider through to her shadow wolf. The woman and her chosen cub were threatened. That would not do!
So Isa had spent the summertime, while the Rider recovered from his leg injury, scouting for the source. Swift though she could be, she had very few clues to help scent her prey. North, indeed, she travelled north fast enough, but then paw work began in earnest as she travelled from village to village, farm to farm, seeking the words or ‘sensing’ she was closing in. Many a star-lit night she had spent sitting and watching outside the domain of Men. Watching them. A successful hunt could take some time. A wolf was patient. She was patient. She could afford to be at that moment, but not for much longer.
Then came the morn she overheard what she needed to hear. It was enough that she did not have to blunder into Fangorn blindly. That place bordered on another world, almost as she did. Even she could be lost there, and that was certainly not her plan. Her keen senses had found it. Hearing the heaviness in the air, tasting the venom. No mere rumour, this curse, but a pulsating reality feeding on misery.
The she-wolf found it hard to understand. Her own folk could hate, could remember past wrongs against them, especially against cubs or mate, but this was something far beyond the reasoning of wolf-kind.
Silver-grey eyes saw through the illusion before her. She knew. And now, before late autumn truly set in, she would return to the woman and ‘show’ her what she had found. A far swifter return journey could be made than the outgoing one. But a blink of a wolf’s-eye, one might say.
