He wasn’t as big as she’d remembered him. Because you were smaller then, Celeste. So small. He’d been the Giant and she the Dwarf. The Giant who smashed everything in his path. But now she was as tall as he, and he’d grown old. His face was red, as always – red from the wine, the sun, and the rage. Rage against anything that moved.
It took him a moment before he realised who was standing front of him.
He flinched, as if from a snake, and his hand closed around the stick he was leaning on. He’d always had sticks or belts. He used to throw boots and wooden logs at his sons and Fox, as though they were rats hiding behind his oven.
‘What are you doing here?’ he barked. ‘Get out!’
He wanted to grab her as he used to, but Fox shoved him back and slapped the stick out of his hand.
‘Let her go.’ Her mother’s voice was trembling, but at least this time she said something.
‘Get out of my way,’ Fox said to the man she’d once had to call Father, even though he’d taught her to despise the word itself.
He lifted his fists. How often had her eyes been glued to those hands, full of fear of the tanned skin on the knuckles tightening, turning white. She saw him in her dreams sometimes, and he always had the mouth of a wolf.
She pushed past him without saying another word. She wanted to forget he existed, to imagine that he’d just disappeared one day, like Jacob’s father, or that her mother had never married again.
‘I will be back,’ Fox said to her.
Her mother stood by the window as Fox walked towards the gate. Just like the last time. And just like then, the three of them blocked her path, her stepfather and his two sons. He’d got his stick back, and his eldest was holding the pitchfork. Gustave and René. Gustave looked even more dense than he used to. René was smarter, but he did whatever Gustave told him. It was René who’d thrown the first stone.
Shape-shifter. Nobody had understood better what Jacob’s brother had felt as he grew a skin of jade. Yet unlike Will, Fox had always been able to choose to wear the fur.
‘Go on! Find a stone!’ she hissed at René. ‘Or are you waiting for your brother’s orders?’
He ducked his head and looked uneasily at the pistol on her belt.
‘Get the hell out of here!’ Her stepfather squinted myopically.
She was no longer afraid of him. It was an exhilarating feeling. ‘Where is Thierry?’ she asked. There was one more brother.
Gustave just gave her a hostile stare. His shirt was speckled with fish blood.
‘He went to the city,’ said René.
‘Shut your mouth!’ his father yelled.
Being his stepdaughter hadn’t been easy, but his youngest had it just as bad. Thierry had envied Fox her fur, and she was glad that he’d managed to get away.
‘You know what they say about shape-shifters.’ She held up her hand. ‘Everybody we touch will grow a fur as well. Who wants to go first?’
She shoved her hand into her stepfather’s chest, so hard he would be checking his skin for red hairs for days. Gustave stumbled back with a curse, and Fox was out of the gate before the three could regain their courage. As she mounted her horse, she remembered how she’d stumbled across the meadows, sobbing and bleeding, pressing the fur dress to her chest. This time she took the road. She looked around once more at the window where her mother had been standing, but all she saw was the reflection of the sky on the glass, and the primroses growing next to the door.
She made one more stop before continuing on to Gargantua. The house was dilapidated, and the grave by the crumbled garden wall was overgrown, its headstone poking out from a thick nest of grass and roots. A hazel bush had sprung up in front of it. The branches were covered in catkins, and beneath them lay a few nuts from the previous autumn. The moss grew thick on her father’s engraved name, etching it in green letters on to the grey stone: Joseph Marie Auger.
Fox had come here often as a child. She’d pluck the grass from the damp soil, place wild flowers on the stone, and search the abandoned house for signs of the life she and her mother might have had there. This was where she’d met the vixen for the first time, and it was in the woods bordering the crumbled wall that she had saved the wounded fox and her pups from Gustave’s and René’s clubs.
‘I know I haven’t been back in a while,’ she said. ‘I asked Maman for the ring. I’m not sure she used your gift wisely. Sometimes I wish you’d let her die and kept the years you gave her for yourself. You can only say this to a grave, but it feels good to say it. Maybe you could have protected me. I’ve found someone who did that for these past years. There’s nobody I love more. He’s looked out for me so often, but now it’s my turn to protect him.’
Fox gathered the nuts from the grave and put them in her pocket. Then she swung herself on to her horse. The sun was already quite low, and Jacob didn’t have time to wait for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THORNS AND TEETH
The wolf’s breath stank of the rotting flesh that was lodged between its teeth. The eyes were nearly as golden as the Goyl’s. Jacob had heard of the wolves in these parts. Supposedly, they took their victims even from their beds and parlours. Not important – Jacob knew this was going to be messy. Maybe drowning wouldn’t have been such a bad death after all.
There were now five wolves circling him. He tried to free one hand to get to his knife, but the choke vine dug its thorns into his flesh so relentlessly that the pain drew out a suppressed cry.
Scream, Jacob. Why not? Maybe Fox will hear you. No. She was probably already in Gargantua, waiting. What would she do if he didn’t turn up? Search for him, as the Goyl had said? But surely not for the rest of her life. The vixen would find out quickly enough what had happened to him. The thought was consoling in a way.
One of the wolves dragged its tongue over Jacob’s face, getting a taste. Jacob tried to free at least one leg so he could kick at it, but the thorns clawed even deeper into his flesh. Damn, Jacob, think of something.
They stopped.
The largest one licked its mouth.
The end of the prelude.
Jacob threw himself to one side. He heard teeth snap at empty air. The next one bit into the vines, but they weren’t going to protect him for long. Jacob desperately tried to remember what he knew about choke vines. He’d used them himself to slow down pursuers, though never to capture them. One of the wolves bit into the vines around his chest; another was pulling at the ones around his legs.
Choke vines, Jacob. How could you forget! What do they like most?
He threw himself around again, no matter how much it hurt, and he rolled around on the forest floor. The wolves let go with angry barks while the thorns tore through his skin.
Blood – the taste choke vines relished above all else. Of course, it also made the wolves even more frenzied. The next bite was so determined that the teeth actually found his flesh. Jacob howled as the teeth dug into his side. But the vines had also tasted the blood, and they began to grow even faster.
Fresh vines shot out towards the wolves, hardening as they grew. They clawed at their fur and enveloped Jacob in an ever-thicker cocoon. He found it hard to breathe, and his clothes were sticky with his own blood, but at least the wolves couldn’t reach him any more. They howled with rage and dug their teeth again and again into the thorny branches, even though the vines were now also growing around them. Jacob fought for air. His fingers found the hilt of his knife, but he couldn’t move his hands enough to get hold of it.