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Frost covers the ground like spilled sugar, with the chill air pressing knife-like on his bare flesh. The sun has disappeared a long time ago, beyond the horizon, stomach and soles and fingertips numb. The forest stretches out ahead, pine needles nicking his arms through the cloak—though it wasn’t much to begin with.
A long time ago, it would have been edged with gold thread and dripping with precious stones polished as brightly as the sun. His hair would have been washed and brushed with scented oils, not braided practically down his back without so much as a painted bead. And he would have been surrounded by crowds, cheers and music intertwining until the knife came down.
Keith’s not sure he would have enjoyed the last part, even if that means someone’s comforting presence standing next him amid the grand festival, a spectacle of wine and masses and a marble altar, with the line of sacrifices trailing down the stage like an overflowing bouquet. Everyone enjoyed the day, it's said, because no expenses were spared and everyone had no labor until late the next morning.
From what he knows, the telling goes garbled but dark: The sacrifices, they say, rebelled. Some tried to run, or bite the priest, or even cursed the entire city as their blood spilled on the altar. Such things were terrible luck, and their patron god was not pleased, and from one thing to another, they all ended up here, forced to accept the bargain: Will you allow me to protect you now?
(It's said there was a coup, not a god's vengeance, and poor leadership razed the city to smithereens, not divine wrath. But those whispers have been stamped out long ago.)
No, it didn’t matter, he decides. It was all the same in the end. Except perhaps, he’d be less cold.
As Keith trudges forward, fingers slowly turning paler and paler, he prepares himself. Some say it's a monster, with horns and sharp teeth and jaw stained with dried blood. Some say it's invisible to the eye, creeping behind like a shadow but disappearing in a blink if you try to turn around. Some say it’s too frightening to describe, that either all men have died or gone mad at the sight.
But when he reaches the clearing, surrounded by a perfect circular copse of trees, there’s nothing. Still, he kneels and reaches for the pouch around his neck, strapped tightly to his chest and warmed with huffed breaths along the way. The paint still bears icy flecks on his fingers, but it’s better than being frozen completely. The sigils he knows by heart, forced to practice until he could do it in his sleep, and with each curve, he feels the ground thawing like springtime.
A wind strikes him, a whisper of a snarl hidden in it, blowing his cloak around his knees and the hood down his back, and Keith snaps to attention, standing to peer into the woods—and out of it pads a great white wolf, soundless as the dead. When Keith blinks, snow stinging his eyelids, there seems to be a new shape—a man, taller than anyone he’s ever seen, with long black-and-silver hair around his shoulders and sleet-gray eyes, wreathed in thick fur cloak similar to his own.
Keith blinks, then drops on the ground, the same way he sits for morning prayers, feet tucked underneath his knees. “My name is Keith, and for the protection of Daibazaal, I offer myself to you.”
A voice growls in his head. Keith wonders if it's displeased. Will it let him go, then, or simply tear him apart for pleasure? And even if he is spared, the village will shun him forever—or worse. What could they do with an orphaned runt?
He clenches his teeth to keep from chattering. He’s said the words, and was taught those would suffice, and he does not desire a slow death by frostbite, temper sparking.
“I said,” he begins—
Disrobe.
He takes a deep breath, and drops his robe, cold air blasting him from toes to head. Beneath, he wears no clothes, the village fearing a god’s impatience above the cold.
The wolf walks around him appraisingly, gray eyes inspecting, nose twitching. Skinny, it says.
What does it matter? Keith covers his chest, trying not to shiver, with his eyes cast on the ground. “I'm stronger than I look. I will not break.”
When the wolf speaks again, its voice is almost approving. No, you won’t. Something like fingers graze his cheek, filling his belly like hot soup, then he freezes in place again, as sharp teeth trace the back of his right calf. You are of Daibazaal, but somehow not.
“I wasn’t born here,” Keith says. The wind’s unraveled his hair, strands whipping against his neck and face, but does not move. “My parents died, and someone brought me to the village.”
Treated you as one of their own, then?
Keith closes his eyes. He’s never gotten so much as a second helping of a dish, let alone a playful tussle to his hair or warm embrace. His only solace had been the temple, just a cave now, and even that had the pressure of being useful, as if his presence there was his fault.
“No,” he replies, “but that doesn’t make me less willing.”
Willing. A hint of teeth on the inside of his thigh. Do you know how I became like this?
Keith keeps his eyes locked straight ahead, even as fur brushes against his legs, what he thinks is a tail curling around one of his ankles. “Yes,” he says. “They say you were captured by a great enemy, and you fought for endless days and endless nights. With each kill, you grew stronger, until...” He finds his voice leaving him.
Is that what he's meant to do? They didn’t tell him what to do after his plea, either, which seemed laughable at the time but is far from it now. Does he have to fight the god, die a warrior's death? Or be eaten, crunched between those heavy jaws?
Either seems likely.
I was not willing, the god says, like you.
Wordlessly, Keith shakes his head. Perhaps he’ll pay for his honesty later, but something tells him not to lie. He senses sorrow in the god, deeply wedged and festering, so at odds with the bloodthirsty tales he’d been told. You’re lonely.
In my day, the sacrifices were willing. That was my only wish if I were to have this…life, but it was men who sought more power to twist the word willing. There’s a long pause. You don’t seek power, like the others. What do you want? I’ll allow you to choose.
“Take me, either as nourishment or as a companion,” he says boldly. “No one will miss me, and I will not miss them.”
A cold nose, this time against the top of his foot, and hesitant. You're strange.
“But strange to your liking?” he dares to ask.
The wolf seems to stand, or shift—Keith doesn’t remember, even years later—then holds out his hand. As soon as their fingers touch, heat floods his body like standing next to a warm furnace, and he smells something sharp like pine sap, as nourishing as sunrise.
Something whispers in his mind, a name.
Yes, Shiro says. You seek something, and I will give it to you, but not without a price, as gods do: You will lay here three days and three nights. If you survive, you may come with me, but you will never see the human realm again. Are you willing?
Keith does not fear the cold, or death, or anything anymore. “Yes,” he says.