stared at his shredded mouth, not quite closing over his teeth. She stared at the place where his eye used to be. She looked at those five cuts and realized—with a small twist of guilt—that she would do it again.
“He tried to chew off his foot because of you.”
At her words, Jakub’s shoulders sank.
“How could you be so cruel?” she asked. “He was suffering. I could hear his cries even with human ears. I could smell his blood even with a human nose. Surely you knew.”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t think,” said Ren. “You saw a wolf. You saw an animal, and it never occurred to you that he might feel the same things as you. The same fear. The same pain. The same instinct to survive, no matter the cost.”
Ren remembered how it had felt, turning into a lynx for the first time. How it had felt to lose control. To feel blood between her claws. To be feared.
Ren loved being feared.
“Forgive me,” whispered Jakub.
“What are you doing?” asked Ren as she emerged once more at the campsite.
Felka looked up from going through Lukasz’s things. Neither Lukasz nor Koszmar had yet returned, and Ren quelled a brief moment of panic. They could look after themselves. Felka lifted an extra coat from the pile, while Król watched them suspiciously.
“Looking for a light,” said Felka. She gestured to a lantern on the ground.
Ren folded her arms.
“I do not like flames,” she said. “No matter how small.”
The other girl shrugged. At length, she extracted the contraption from Lukasz’s pocket. It was small, gold, and square. When she held it up, Ren caught a glimpse of an embossed symbol: crossed antlers and a wolf’s head.
“There we go,” she said triumphantly. She leaned down to the lantern, and with a small snap a flame sprang to life.
Ren stepped back too quickly.
The girl watched.
“It’s just a lighter.” She clicked the contraption a few more times, and the flame died and was resurrected several more times. Ren hated it. “It’s totally harmless. Just a little fire, see?”
“There is no such thing as a little fire,” said Ren. “Only a fire that has not yet spread.”
Felka put down the lighter. The stripes of her skirt looked duller than ever in the flickering light from the lantern.
“Listen,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did, earlier. It’s not your fault people think that about you.”
Ren blinked.
“About you being the one killing us,” said Felka. “It’s not your fault. It’s just easier to blame someone, sometimes. You know? I think that’s what we do.”
“Why did you say it, if you knew you should not?”
“Listen, Ren. It hasn’t been easy for us,” said Felka. “For the past five years, we’ve been telling stories of a forest monster who eats people alive. She’s what happens to people who leave the village, go looking for trouble. Don’t you see? It’s a lot easier for us only having to fear one monster. Not the whole forest. Evil with a name is a little less terrifying. The evil that you recognize, that you can avoid—that’s an evil you can live with. Surely you can understand that?”
“So you just follow blindly?” asked Ren, a little testily. “Fear the monsters someone else invented? Told you to fear?”
Felka shrugged.
“Don’t we all?”
Ry? and Czarn wound back through the trees. Ren could hear them arguing in low, growling voices.
Felka picked up the lantern. She was very small, compared to the rest of the humans. Her wrists, poking out from the lace cuffs, looked fragile. She sat down on the ground.
“Why didn’t you leave?” asked Ren.
Felka looked up as Ren sat down beside her.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The village,” said Ren. “If there was a whole world out there, and if this place is so horrible, why stay? Why not go?”
Felka snorted.
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Ren curiously.
Felka laughed. Ren was not used to the laughter of humans, but it struck her that this had no humor in it.
“I don’t have parents, Ren,” she said levelly. “I don’t have a family. I grew up on the streets, sleeping outside. When I was old enough, I worked as a dancer at the village inn. They gave me these red boots—” She lifted the muddy edge of her skirt, to show the shiny things. “And I danced every night, for five years. It was okay, you know,” she said thoughtfully. “We slept in a stable loft. We got two meals a day. It was good. But when I turned fourteen, and