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It was a simple errand.
All stories begin that way. The task of taking his grandmother for her weekly supplies, a day’s trip through the winding wood and back home again before first light. It was an errand his father had made, without fail, since the Kurtas settled on the edge of the forest. However, since his incident, Kurapika had stepped up to fill his stead.
“Be safe,” his mother said, smoothing back his hair.
“Be swift,” his father warned, giving him the hatchet he carried when he traveled.
“Be wary,” Pairo said, kissing his palms and crown.
Safe, swift, and wary Kurapika prepared for his journey as he drew his cloak over his shoulders, softer than a lamb, as familiar to him as his own skin. He gathered up his basket on the crook of his arm, weighted down by wax-wrapped parcels and the old hatchet. He felt proud that his parents trusted him with this errand and confident that he would reach his destination by the day’s end with time to spare.
He carried that confidence with him through the village, nodding to neighbors and friends, waving the basket to beg off longer conversation. He took comfort in the unfurling of the village in the morning; woodsmoke and fresh bread, the marketplace being set up, sellers calling their wares to potential customers, and the hunters gathering at the gates for their daily trek to check the traps and maintain their trails. Eight strong men stretching and yawning, calling out greetings as Kurapika drew near.
He paused for a moment at the village gate, running through a list in his head to be sure he had everything.
Kurapika felt eyes on him.
Had felt eyes on him since he left the house that morning, something following him through the village as he made conversation and wove through the familiar paths, but when he turned, Kurapika saw no one.
And when he stepped into the forest, wreathed in friends and song, he saw no one still.
Over the river and through the woods—
-
Safe. Swift.
Wary.
Kurapika had removed the hatchet from his basket to carry it in the folds of his cloak, a sharp surprise to any that come too near, and Kurapika felt safer with it in hand; thumb soothing over where the wood had worn smooth over years.
He could feel the weight of the forest closing in around him. Unlike the trees that clotted the village, the forest was immense, and dark. The thick overhang of trees often blotted out the sun and created an unnatural cool as Kurapika walked, boots crunching over pine needles and twigs, the dirt-path worn dark with trapped moisture, remembering footprints of travelers that passed either hours, or days, before him.
A long memory of tradition.
The hunters he had entered the forest with had separated from him awhile back, following their own trek and daily errands. Kurapika watched them go through the trees as their paths diverted, bows and long rifles strapped over their backs, happy songs trailing away on the wind.
There was no sound now.
No happy tales of hunts and grandeur. Not even birdsong.
Kurapika continued down the path, flickers of sunlight through the trees doting his walk. He had made this trek before, with his father, but never before on his own. He had never had to do anything on his own. Always held in the cradle of family and friends. He had not realized till now, stomach tightening into a worried knot, of how dangerous that was.
And those eyes he felt heavy on his back before had returned.
Fishing him out from the green so easily in his red cloak.
Kurapika had half a mind to discard it, fingers hooking at the clasp over his chest, but he knew the red coat was his security in the trees. As well as a gift from his beloved grandmother and she would be expecting to see him in it.
The snap of a twig went off like a gunshot in the quiet. Kurapika spun around.
Silent and swift, the great paw of a creature touched ground onto the open clearing just above Kurapika. He watched soundless as the creature’s hulking body materialized from the foliage. Coarse fur and hackles, long legs and thin toes, a touch too thin to be a regular wolf. A normal wolf. A real wolf.
No tail either.
He knew even as the creature started to shift, bones crunching under skin, that the nightmarish face would soon reveal what he knew from faerietales and horror stories—
The face of a man pulled out of a wolf’s snout, fur and sinew. The shape of an animal pulling and bunching into the body of a man; powerful shoulders and deep brown skin, hair falling down his back. And Kurapika recognized him, from the marketplace that morning, from the village over the last few months.
Of course, the man had been too odd not to remember, even among his companions. He was taller than any man Kurapika had ever seen, dwarfed only by a member of his own company, but his booming voice and penchant for going shirtless under the summer sun had made his presence more prominent in their band of travelers.
And now here he was, lying on the cut of rock from the bluff, naked as the day and relaxed as if he had not just revealed his other form to Kurapika.
Kurapika forced his grip on the hatchet to loosen, if only to return the blood flow to his hands, but kept it hidden still in the folds of his cloak.
He found his voice, miraculously without a tremble. “What do you want?”
The Wolf’s brows peaked. “My, what a rude little creature you are.” Kurapika sucked in a breath. Hearing him speak was worse. “Given the circumstances, you should not be so insolent, sweetling.” The Wolf grinned, toothy maw revealing a sharp row of teeth.
It made him think of the horrible marks that marred his father’s skin, laming him and forcing him to drag his leg when he walked. His eyes sadder with the weight of pity that followed him through the village. Once a provider, once so relied upon by the community, now set aside for someone more useful.
He had said it was a beast. An animal that attacked him and left him limping all the way home.
It sparked a flash of anger in Kurapika. Warring against the fear filling his gut. Burning till it won out, fingers curling tight around the hatchet once more. “Ar—are you the one who attacked my father?”
“I can’t recall.” The Wolf said, stretching. “Does it matter?”
Kurapika felt a tightening in his chest. “It matters to me you horrid—!” As quickly as his anger, the Wolf lunged from his vantage point and took Kurapika to the ground with ease. Basket gone flying, cloak billowing around him, the heft of his weight pinning Kurapika under him, but fear had wound Kurapika’s muscles tight.
The hatchet shot out in his grip, swinging blindly before he hit the ground, and caught against something solid and fleshy, and Kurapika pulled with the momentum.
He expected screaming. The creature rearing back in pain, but the Wolf hovered above him, blood welling in the open wound that Kurapika had cleaved from cheek to chin, slit like an opposing smile as the shock registered in those yellow eyes.
Blood dripped down the Wolf’s face and onto Kurapika.
It took Kurapika a moment to realize he still had the hatchet in hand and with numb, shaking fingers, he lifted it to the Wolf’s throat, as if intent to cut again.
The Wolf’s expression turned puzzled a moment, his face pulling, blood spilling, before a feral smile drew across his terrible mouth.
“You sweet creature,” the Wolf preened. “You fool.” He rested one massive hand on Kurapika’s chest, pressing the heel of his hand down against his sternum, adding weight until Kurapika grunted, bones singing under skin. He gasped in small breaths and the Wolf stared down at him, amusement dancing in his eyes. Delighted.
As if Kurapika were nothing but a mouse caught under his paw. Small, insignificant, quietly devoured as if his life were nothing—
Kurapika tasted something vile on the back of his tongue, panic welling in his gut.
And then, just as steadily as he applied, the weight seemed to shift off at him. Slowly, Kurapika dragged in a loose breath, stomach unknotting, panic of having his ribs crushed ebbing out with that spotting black vision, but his rabbit heartbeat continued its pace in his chest, thudding hard in his throat.
He drew breath, curled his fingers tighter around his hatchet, and a claw drew down the side of his throat. Right along where the iron kissed the Wolf’s skin.
“Shall we play a game?” the Wolf asked, casually as if the thought had just occurred to him.
Kurapika could not speak if he wanted to.
He was too struck by the horror of the morning. Daylight strung overhead and light filling up his vision, he had—up until now—thought that all unsavory things happened in the dark, but here he was at high noon, sweat beading against his and a monster from nightmares staring him down, massive with power, muscles shuddering with reflex to snatch him up at once.
At his lack of response, the Wolf smiled, broader now despite his wounded face. The hand on his chest moved to push Kurapika’s chin up until his vision filled with the forest, swimming under the scent of musk and pine. “There is a fork in the road, you see. Pick a path and I’ll pick the other, we shall see which of us gets to your dear grandmother’s house first.”
How did he know? Kurapika was struck dumb by his words, but slow rational began to coil in him. The Wolf had been living among the Kurta for a while now. He had time to note Kurapika’s habits, when he was alone, when might be the best time to strike—
Kurapika had felt his eyes on him for so long.
There was no use for bargains or begging, and he knew that as intimately as the palm on his throat pressed tighter.
He could only think of his grandmother. The woman who had helped raise him, the one who lived at the edge of the old settlement before the forest got wilder and more dangerous, refused to leave the house her husband built her. An act of love in exchange for the comfort of close relations.
Kurapika closed his eyes, throat bobbing against the collar.
The Wolf grazed his nails against his skin, continuing with his game. “If you refuse, or play unfair, I shall run along ahead and devour that sweet little grandmother of yours.” He leaned closer, heedless of the sharp iron poised for his throat, to whisper against Kurapika’s skin. “Then, I shall hunt and have you for dessert.”
And Kurapika did not at all like the leer in the Wolf’s eye when he was called dessert. He liked even less the way the Wolf’s teeth flashed over the words have you.
His fingers felt very numb now.
“How will I know you’ll keep your word?” He asked, finding his voice in the tangle of his own panic.
“I’ll keep my word as you keep yours.” The Wolf’s laugh was all timber, gleaming teeth and shaking shoulders. Bellied as if it were all some great joke. Kurapika would have liked to laugh too. The cruelty of it twisted on the Wolf’s face before his teeth flashed, more maw than mouth. Hand falling from his neck. “Now choose .”
Kurapika eyed the two paths before him with new clarity.
Both were roughly the same, terrain-wise, undercover of trees and pine. If pressed—and he was pressed—Kurapika could not remember why his father favored one over the other, but then he recalled.
The hunting party.
His father had often strayed on the lower path so that, even while wearing his bright red cloak, he would not be mistaken for an animal when he traveled. The upper trail would put the Wolf right in the hunters’ way and then his malice would be turned upon them rather than Kurapika.
Or.
The hunters, wound with caution and armed to the teeth, would see the Wolf as he was, a terrifying creature of nightmare, and do away with him before he could harm anyone else.
Kurapika weighed his choices, pros and cons, the world infinitely more complicated in the upside-down, when he felt something brush against his throat.
The Wolf’s mouth, tipped with fangs, pressing against his skin where his pulse beat the quickest. The gesture was as soft as a kiss against his skin.
Kurapika stiffened, pulling his arm back to swing, but his hatchet hissed through the open air.
The Wolf too clever to be caught the same way twice.
And suddenly he was free, cool rushing back to him without the heavy blanket of body. He found his way to his knees, unsteady and bruised, and collapsed under himself, gasping at the phantom brush of lips on skin.
The Wolf was caught in a similar position, on all fours, blood rolling down his throat, to bare chest, to belly. He looked like he had put up a fight already, but there was something so hauntingly present and electric about him that let Kurapika know he was far from done.
His hatchet was gone, lost somewhere in the foliage from a too desperate swing.
His gaze caught the Wolf’s, burning bright with blood and game and hunger . Anticipation that had Kurapika weak at the knees, fear sinking the hopeless stutter in his chest.
“Run now,” the Wolf said, voice rough with the command. “Run, run and save that poor sweet granny of yours.” His body pulled up, bones singing under skin. “If you can.” He said, voice coming out warbled and crunching under bone, and laughter coming out as a howl.
Kurapika was on his feet in an instant.
Basket forgotten. Hatchet lost.
His hood fell from his head and the cape flared out behind him as he set off down the lower path, out of the way of the hunting party, and further into the thicket of pine and brambles.
He assumed that it was a trap. That the Wolf would follow him all the same with no bargains to bar him. And Kurapika saw himself falling over and over, the Wolf landing on top of him, human or wolf, or some horrible mix in-between, teeth bared and tongue rolling, skin on skin on skin—
But when he chanced a look back, the Wolf was gone.
-
Kurapika had run until his muscles lagged.
Noise had returned to the forest. The sun filtered gold through the trees. A beautiful summer day not amiss in the myriad of others, but so marked that Kurapika could not get his heart to calm as he flew over berry bushes and tore through wildflowers. Ears strained for anything in the tapestry of noise—birds calling to each other, the sway of the trees, the crunch under his boots.
Finally, the rush of adrenaline slipped from him and he fell to his knees beside a stream.
Thin enough to jump over, Kurapika’s father would have stopped here to refill on water and cool the heat on his skin.
I have to stay hydrated. I’m useless otherwise. He crawled on his knees to the edge of the slope, staring into the clear water with flickers of sunlight and tadpoles darting beneath the surface.
Kurapika plunged his hands up to the wrist and felt the cool water run over them, knocking him back into clarity.
He took a moment to splash water on his face, washing away the sweat and grime, scratches of branches. He pushed his fingers into his hair, tangling with the knots until he felt the heat settle on the back of his neck, sweat burning under his eyes.
He needed to be calm. He was no use to himself or his grandmother if he ran like a headless chicken.
And he did not trust the Wolf to keep his promise.
He did not trust that if he got to the cottage first, he would escape with his and his grandmother’s lives. He would need a plan. A new weapon. Something.
The thought of her, waiting by the window, arranging flowers, knitting needles clicking together as she wove him new hats and scarves for the winter, making little cakes in her kitchen, sneaking him sweets for his trip back.
Kurapika felt a well of emotion open in his throat and he closed it with his palm, cold water burning his skin.
He needed to calm down .
Useless was panic. The Wolf would feed on it and toy with him.
Running another palm full of water across his face, Kurapika sunk his hands in again to drink, but when he lifted his hands back to his lips, all he tasted was tin. Nose scrunching, eyes peeking open, momentarily derailed with confusion—
His hands were cupped with red.
Kurapika jumped back, a silent oath fell from his lips. The stream which had run clear and beautiful a moment before, reflecting the midday sun, now ran red. Deep whorls of it swimming through the tendril of the tides until it was thicker than wine.
Revulsion curled at Kurapika’s stomach, the cold splash of water on his neck turning clammy.
The stream ran through both trails. The upper gave way to a small basin and waterfall that led down to the lower. An ideal resting spot for the hunters when they traveled together, sharing stories and lunch near the cool water.
Kurapika closed his eyes, bloodstained palms digging into the soil.
Their deaths had been soundless. No gunshots or screams, but quietly devoured by the Wolf.
And he had doomed them.
-
There was no way the Wolf would follow his own rules after the slight.
Kurapika swallowed the bubble of guilt as he ran from the stream, his cloak knotted in his fists. He had thought up a quick plan, tearing long strips of the scarlet fabric and running off the trail to leave them in bits.
In trees and bushes, caves and ravines. Spending the time where he should be running to plant traps of scent to throw off the Wolf.
With some reluctance, he shoved the remains of his cloak into the hollow of a tree; he would not need it if he was dead. He then ran back to the stream, the water clearer now, but still muddled with tin and began coating his arms with mud, dampening his scent as best he could before turning to the west.
It would be harder to make it along without the path, but he would have to manage. He had grown up in these woods, had played in them with Pairo as children before their settlement moved east.
He thought about those days, childhood when he feared nothing but disapproval, running through the dormant forest screaming like a banshee, unperturbed by what slept in nestles of shadows.
He picked his way quietly through the dips and drops of the unbroken forest, trees pressed closer and brambles wilder. Here Kurapika felt more pressed by the forest, surrounded on all sides with little light to guide him.
Kurapika felt a prickling on the back of his neck, something crashing through the trees, distant but too close for comfort. He made his footsteps soft, like a deer, lengthening his strides as he focused on getting further and further away from where he stashed his cloak.
Not a run. Not a walk.
Not a run.
Not a walk.
Safe and swift.
Safe—
He heard a howl sing through the trees, a singular and violent warning, but the longer it went on, a long-held note, an answering howl returned it. And another, echoing on. Other creatures, other wolves, running through the forest. Set on snuffing him out.
He thought back to the caravan that had taken refuge in their village, the strange collection of people, as foreign to him in dress and manner as they were in acquaintance. They kept to themselves in a knot at the corner of the settlement, enjoying their safety in numbers and fortified walls, but not in the on-goings of village life.
He thought maybe, maybe, that the Wolf had been a clever sheep hiding among them, but now he was not so sure.
The howls were getting closer, closing in from all sides.
He pressed on, lungs on fire.
-
As a child, Kurapika had made the pilgrimage with his parents out of the woods when the trade roads wore thin and stories of creatures from nightmare began to drop into adult conversations usually perforated with numbers and weather.
He had not been old enough yet to be privy to those conversations, or the decisions to leave, but the Kurta had packed up their textiles, their fine art, their traditions and left the forest that protected them for generations in order to continue on.
He remembered crying though, when he left, thinking they were leaving his grandmother to die.
He could hear the wolves, but by sight they were harder to catch. Kurapika only caught glimpses of them, in the corners of his eye, lumbering ahead or darting behind—coats all the same coarse dark fur, eyes alight with moonshine, four-limbs, and no tails.
It struck him with a note of hilarity that the wolves had no tails. Ears, claws, fangs, legs hinged backward, elbows at angles, but no tails.
He would have laughed if he had breath.
He would laugh when he survived.
He was so close. So close.
They were trying to veer him off course and lead him running blind through the wood, but Kurapika would stay steady on.
Things were more familiar here. Weather-worn signs dilapidated with disuse, arrows at angles, marking the distance from the center of their old settlement, once the center of Kurapika’s whole world.
-
The house was in the distance.
The house was in the distance, wreathed in twilight, windows lit, and impossibly small now. Smaller than Kurapika had ever seen it, with the high chimney, ivy-twisted walls and squat stone steps.
He bolted forward from the break in the trees, snagging on twigs and branches, the forest’s hands weighing him down and holding him back, limbs heavy and dreamlike as the end drew near.
He felt exhaustion and then exult.
He won.
He won. He won. He won.
He had made it to his grandmother’s house before the Wolf. He had done it.
But Kurapika kept running, stride unchecked as the tremble of fatigue curled at his thighs, threatening to give out.
He won.
He beat the Wolf. He won.
He—
He heard a thundering coming up beside him, unlike before when those wolves played him through the wood, and as he broke the tree line into the clearing of the yard, and in the corners of his eye he made out the shape of something lumbering and furry—
Closer now.
Almost.
Kurapika felt something tearing, wet and sharp into his side, and he dared not scream, but he felt it ripping through him, electric pulling at nerve-endings and straining the cords of his throat. The Wolf swung again to get another hit on him, but Kurapika veered left, barely missing the following swipe.
He was nearly tripping over himself when he collided with the door, lungs burning, the scent of blood and that horrible fur thick in his nose.
He felt as if something inside him had torn.
But elation, quick and fickle as candlelight rose up and then snuffed out.
A body pressed up against him in the next instant, pinning him against the door, chest heaving with each breath bearing down over him. Neither human or animal.
They stayed like that for a moment.
“Well done, sweetheart.” The Wolf breathed. Kurapika felt a mouth against his hair, breath wet and foul against his skin.
“I won. ” Kurapika hissed in indignation. A deep unfairness boiling in his gut, accompanied by the guilt of sacrifice. The Wolf’s mudded-blooded claws clenched tighter around him, pulling Kurapika uncomfortably close. Kurapika pinched his eyes, hoping, praying, that his grandmother would not come to the door, would not see—
“You cheated.” the Wolf exhaled, hot breath rolling over the clamming sweat of his neck, his cheek. “Sending me right to those hunters, I was surprised. You sacrificed your own people just to survive.” Those hands stroked down his sides, heavy, searching, palms pushing against his ribcage and pulling across his chest. “You lucky, lucky little lamb.”
The Wolf hummed to himself as those hands moved lower.
“You won,” the Wolf growled, low enough that Kurapika felt it rumble through him. “But you must travel through the woods again and again,” His nose slid under Kurapika’s ear, pressing into the skin there as if to memorize his scent, his anxious sweat. “And I,” the Wolf sighed, almost euphoric, and Kurapika could feel the wandering hands on the tops of his thighs, claws tapered sharp. “I only need enough luck to catch you once. ”
Kurapika felt his entire body shiver, bracing for a blow that never came.
He endured a moment longer of pressing, pushing, tension before the body with hot breath and clawed-hands fell away and Kurapika crumbled with it.
He did not bother to watch the Wolf go, returning to the forest now thick with horror and nightfall, but forced himself to stand. He fumbled with the latch on the door, unlocked, and stumbled inside his grandmother’s cottage.
-
Kurapika was not sure how long he sat there, back pressed tight against the door as his breathing became even and his heartbeat returned to normal. His mind on the Wolf at his door, behind the wood, in the wood, watching, waiting, wanting, when the barest hint of consciousness eked into his being.
Why had his grandmother not come out to check on him?
The thought hit him cold, like the blood-run water in the stream.
Kurapika could taste tin in his mouth.
There is something wrong in the cottage.
His body had been cramped against the door since he shut it, finding feeble comfort behind a lock and four walls, hands pressing against the shallow wound in his side, a reminder of the almosts of the evening, but not deep enough to warrant fear.
The small, dark room was lit with the hearth—smoky tendrils and pinewood burning sweetly. His grandmother’s stew pot was on the fire, glowing obsidian as steam rolled off the top, thick with the scent of rosemary and brined meat.
It was wrong.
In the summer, his grandmother peeled fruit to eat, made elaborate meals of leafy greens and vegetables from her blooming garden, hair tied up off her neck as she worked.
It was wrong.
His grandmother’s hutch was sunk deep with shadows. Heat making the closed-quarters almost unbearable, and the smell—
How had he not noticed it before?
Slowly, body protesting against every move, Kurapika rose to his feet, back sliding against the door until he was at his full height, breath caught in his throat, eyes wide to take in the shape of banality in the darkness.
His gaze settled on the bolt of wool thrown over his grandmother’s chair, crimson as his own cloak. A basket of ribbons slithering across the ground. A knitting needle stabbed in a ball of yarn. The preparations for the winter well underway.
Unconsciously, his hand reached for the lock on the door, but found nothing but busted hinges in its place.
Kurapika moved forward, footsteps muffled on the thick carpets, he called out, “Grandmother?”
No answer.
Kurapika peered closer in and found the table had been set for one, a note scratched out in an unfamiliar hand. He picked it up and, with a sinking heart, turned back to the only other door in the cottage, the bedroom, and shoving open the door that hung at an odd angle.
His grandmother was laid out on her bed, silvery hair framing her face, slack with sleep. Kurapika drew nearer, even as the smell grew worse, needing to confirm to himself what he already knew.
Buzzards had taken roost in the room. Thick, black and swirling in a frenzied mob, riddling the lace details of her nightgown and slipping beneath the thick covers of her quilt.
Fingers shaking, Kurapika’s hand curled around the blanket and yanked it back. The swarm of buzzards lifted—many and more than he imagined—and then the smell.
Kurapika flew for the window, busting the latch before pushing himself up to his shoulders through the opening, taking long drags of warm night air as sickness soured the back of his tongue. One breath, then two, then a heave, Kurapika emptied his stomach over the side of the house, gasping as tears sprung to his eyes.
She was not asleep—
She was—
—hollowed.
Beneath her ribs, everything had been shredded to ribbons, her paper-soft skin peeled away to a gaping lack that had Kurapika’s stomach turning over to heave again.
But in that lack, there had been something that had bumped under the fabric of the quilt, creating an unnatural curve like a pregnant stomach.
It was his cloak.
Taken from the knot in the tree and shoved beneath her rotting ribs—because she had been rotting, long before the Wolf had asked him to play his game.
In the forest beyond, in the blood-soaked sunset, Kurapika could make out a pair of eyes watching him from the trees, yellowed like an animal, as heavy as a starving man. The note crunched in his hand, the rough scrawl, you cheated, you cheated, you cheated.
And for it, Kurapika paid.