“Lovely,” the smith said again, and Anrin looked up into his wide smile. “If you come inside, you can have more. I have sugar, and even a bit of cream.”
“No, thank you,” Anrin said. He gazed wistfully at the strawberries, but then pointed toward the half-hoed garden. “Master Tailor will be angry if I don’t finish.”
“Ah,” said the smith. “A pity. Well, you’d better get on, then.”
Anrin bobbed his head in thanks and trotted back across the road to the garden. He’d finished the hoeing before it occurred to him to wonder why the smith, who had never been kind to him before, had suddenly offered him such a delicacy.
No matter, he told himself. The strawberry had been ever so sweet.
Once upon a time in a tiny woodland village there lived an orphan boy. As his mother had been less than proper in her ways—she died unwed, known well to several men—the villagers were not kindly disposed toward the tiny burden she left behind. They were not heartless, however. They reared young Anrin with as much tenderness as a child of low breeding could expect, and they taught him the value of honest labor so that he might repay their kindness before his mother’s ways took root.
By the cusp of manhood—that age when worthier lads began to consider a trade and marriage—Anrin had become a youth of fortitude and peculiar innocence. The villagers kept him at arms’ length from their homes and their hearts, so he chose instead to dwell within an eccentric world of his own making. The horses and pigs snorted greetings when he came to feed them, and he offered solemn, courtly bows in response. When the villagers sent him unarmed into the forest to fetch wood, he went eagerly. Alone amid the dappled shadows he felt less lonely than usual, and the trees’ whispers were never cruel.
Indeed, Anrin’s fascination with the forest was a source of great anxiety to the old woodcutter’s widow who boarded him at nights. She warned him of the dangers: poison mushrooms and hidden pitfalls and choking, stinging ivies. And wolves, of course; always the wolves. “Stay on the path, and stay close to the village,” she cautioned. “The smell of men keeps predators away . . . most of the time.”
Old Baba had never lied to Anrin, so he obeyed—but in the evenings after his work was done, he sat atop the small hill near the old widow’s cottage. There he could gaze out at the dark, whispering forest until she called him down to bed.
On one of those nights, with a late winter chill making the air brittle and thin, he heard a howl.
The next day began the same as always. At dawn he rose to do chores for Baba, and then he went from house to house within the town to see what needed doing.
But as Anrin came to the smithy, he noticed an odd flutter in his belly. His first thought was that he might’ve eaten something bad, or perhaps pulled a muscle. After a moment he realized that the sensation was not illness or injury, but dread. So startled was he by this—for he had never feared the villagers; they were too predictable to be dangerous—that he was still there, his hand upraised to knock, when the door opened. The smith’s apprentice Duncas stood beyond, escorting another village man who held a new riding-harness. Both of them stopped at the sight of him, their expressions shifting to annoyance.
“Well?” Duncas asked.
“I came to see what chores the smith has,” Anrin replied.
“He’s busy.” Beyond Duncas, Anrin saw the smith talking over a table with another customer.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, then.” Nodding politely to Duncas and the goodman, Anrin turned away to leave and in that moment felt another strange sensation: relief.
But he had other houses to visit and other work to do, and by sunset he had forgotten all about the moment at the smithy.
That evening Anrin again sat on the hilltop and looked out over the dark expanse of trees. This time he heard nothing but the usual sounds of night, though he found himself listening for the mournful cadence of wolfsong. He heard none—but as the waxing moon rose he thought he saw something move in the distance. He narrowed his eyes and made out a fleet dark form running low to the ground against the tree line.
“Come down, boy,” Old Baba called up, and with a sigh Anrin gave up his darkgazing for the night.
Old Baba did not greet Anrin as she usually did when he reached the foot of the hill. Instead she gazed at him long and hard until he began to worry that he had done something to upset her.
“The gossips in the village are all a-whisper, Anrin,” she said. “They say the smith offers you gifts.”
Unnerved by her stare and the statement, Anrin said, “A strawberry, Baba. I would never have taken it if he hadn’t offered.”
“Did he ask anything in return?”
“No, Baba. He said I might have more if I came into the smithy, but I had other work. What’s wrong? Are you angry with me?”
She sighed. “Not with you, child.” After another moment’s scrutiny, she took hold of his chin. “You are not quite a boy anymore.”
The gesture surprised Anrin, for Baba had never been particularly affectionate with him, though she was never unkind either. He did not resist as she turned his face from side to side. “Such thick dark hair, such deep eyes . . . so like your mother. You’ve grown beautiful, Anrin, did you know that?”
Anrin shook his head. “The moon is beautiful, Baba. The forest is beautiful. I am neither.”
“No, you’re the same,” she said. “Just as wild, and just as strange—but innocent, at least for now.” She sighed almost to herself. “So many things out there would devour that innocence if they could.”
“Things . . . in the forest, Baba?” Anrin frowned.
She smiled a little sadly and let him go. “Yes, child. In the forest. Now get to bed.”
All through the next day, Anrin pondered the conversation with Old Baba. Should he have refused the smith’s gift? Baba had denied being angry with him, but if not him then whom? The smith, perhaps . . . but why?
He had come to no conclusion by the time he finished bringing water to fill the leatherman’s curing-cistern, and climbing trees to gather winter nuts for the trapper’s wife. At sunset he wandered back to Baba’s, intending to climb the hill again. But when the old woman’s cottage came into view, the door was open with a familiar man’s silhouette blocking the light from within. Voices drifted to him, sharp and angry on the chilly wind.
“—a fair price,” the smith was saying. All but shouting, and Anrin saw that his nearby hand gripped the doorjamb so tightly that the wood groaned. “I’m generous even to offer. It’s time the boy earned his keep!”
“Not like that,” Baba’s voice snapped from within. Anrin had never heard her so angry. “And you’ll not take him either, not while I still have lungs that can shout and hands that can wield a pitchfork. Now get out!” And her gnarled hand shoved against his chest; when he stumbled back the door slammed in his face.
The peculiar flutter in Anrin’s belly returned fourfold. He stepped off the dirt path that led to Baba’s farm and crouched in the bushes. A moment later the smith passed by, muttering imprecations and swinging his great clenched fists. When he was gone, Anrin climbed out of the bushes. He considered going to the house to talk to Baba, but already the day had been too strange; he wanted no more of it. He went to the hill, climbed up, and sat there too troubled to find any of his usual comfort in the night.
“Anrin,” Baba called after a while, and silently he went down to her.
Her lips were still tight with anger, though she said nothing of the smith’s visit and he did not ask. Instead she took him by the shoulder and steered him toward the barn as they walked. “Before you go to work in the morning, Anrin, I want to talk to you. Not now, of course; you’ve had a long day.”
“Yes, Baba,” he said uneasily. He suspected she meant to speak of the smith. He would be able to ask her all the questions in his mind at last, he realized, but he was no longer certain he wanted to know the answers.
“Sleep well tonight, Anrin—and be sure to lock the barn door behind you.”
Anrin blinked, for he had never locked the barn in all his years of sleeping there.
“Mind me, child,” she said, pushing him into the barn. “Bolt it fast, and open it for no one before dawn.”
He turned to her on the threshold, all the small disturbances of the past three days welling up inside him. He wanted to somehow vomit the strange feelings forth, expel them from his heart before they could poison him any further, but he could think of no way to do so.
She stood watching him, perhaps getting some inkling of his thoughts from his face; her own was softer than usual. She put a hand on his shoulder and he almost flinched as one more disturbance jarred him, for she had to reach up to touch him. Unnoticed, unmarked, he had grown taller than her.
“In case of wolves, child,” Baba said. “Lock the door in case of wolves.”
It was a lie, he sensed, but also a gift. Until morning, the lie would give him the comfort he needed.
