When Revisions Go Wrong

The sun’s rays lit up well over half of Hrimsby by the time Cora left her house. She fought against the irritation that balled in her chest; it was already hard enough to complete her double load of chores, now she would have even less time. Perhaps Gyda would understand and give her less work, although empathy was not an emotion the woman experienced often.

She raced through the outskirts and was almost at the village square when she heard a cry. It came from the direction of the woods. Cora hesitated. She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts, perhaps she just imagined it.

But then she heard it again.

“Help me!” The voice was clearer this time, and very young. Cora would have thought it was Thea, if she hadn’t just left her at home with her mother. Her spine tingled.

Cora glanced around. No one else was in sight. Why would a child have wandered into the forest? Even the youngest villagers knew about draugar, but they were close to the temple; perhaps the girl had become separated from her parents on the way to deliver tithes.

“Please,” the voice pleaded. And then it screamed, a child’s wail of terror. Or pain.

Cora gritted her teeth. She remembered the stories of girls lured into the forests by draugar. And Abelone had told her that Matroga could imitate a child’s voice. She should keep going. Try to forget the terrible humanness of the voice. And hope she didn’t hear news later of a child who’d died in the woods.

“Mama, where are you,” the child sobbed.

A needle pricked Cora’s heart.

“I’m coming,” she cried, and plunged into the woods.

The gaps between the trees narrowed the further she trekked. Boughs of pines, heavy laden with snow, brushed her shoulders like icy fingers. Cora stepped carefully, watching for covered bogs or frozen creeks. She couldn’t risk getting her feet wet, or she might lose them.

She stopped, listening. The sound of soft weeping drifted across the stillness. It was just ahead. Just a little further. Cora was shivering violently, frightened and terribly cold and unable to turn back.

“Hello!” she called out, but not too loudly. She didn’t want to draw anything else to her location. Even now, the trees could be carrying a message back to the witch of the woods, whispering to her of trespassers.

Cora glanced behind her, reassured by her footprints in the snow. She would be able to find her way back easily enough. She could move quickly, even with a child on her back.

When she turned back, a movement on the ground caught her eye.

Something crouched beside a clump of dinceweed. It was as white as the snow and its edges blurred and swayed, but even still, Cora knew who it was. Or who it had been. Even though she hadn’t seen him for eight years, she recognized the familiar curve of broad shoulders, narrow waist, and wiry legs.

“Father?” she said.

The figure straightened up, holding a wispy strand of dinceweed, and turned towards her.

Cora sucked in a breath. It was like seeing her father’s face in the reflection of a pond: swaying and distorted, but clearly him. She didn’t move closer, didn’t dare herself to hope that it really was him. She knew that draugar could take the shapes of the dead.

“Cora,” her father said, and held out the dinceweed. It was an urgent gesture, like he wanted to show her something.

Cora hesitated, and in that moment she heard the child’s voice calling again for her mother. The trees behind her father began to shake, shuffling snow off their branches, quivering and trembling in a violent dance. A child couldn’t make that much commotion, Cora thought.

Then, a nightmare of plant rot and claws and half-formed limbs stepped out from behind the tree. It was Matroga. It was death walking, and it passed right through her father’s ghost, scattering it like a cloud, but not before he spoke one last time:

“Run, Cora Quickfoot!”

Cora hadn’t been afraid of her father’s ghost. But at the sight of this creature, a wave of nausea swept over her. Where its mouth should have been, a hole opened and shut like a fish, and the little girl’s voice came out.

“Mama, mama, mama,” it said, and limped towards her.

Cora recoiled and stumbled backward. The horror moved slowly, but it was unhindered by the rough terrain, walking upright one moment, then shifting into a crawling, scuttling shape the next.

She turned and ran, choked by panic and terror.

Behind her, Matroga had abandoned the child’s voice, and the noise it made now was like the scratching of knives on rock. It was gaining on her. She couldn’t see the tree-line. She couldn’t run fast enough.

“Help me!” she screamed. A branch slapped her across the face. Cora sobbed and brushed snow from her eyes. Her hand pushed a holly bush aside.

She felt something warm and soft.

A white wolf ran beside her, winnowing its way through the snow drifts. Just touching it filled her body with strength. It moved so quickly that Cora feared she would fall behind. But it had answered her cry for help, and its back was as broad as a small pony. Steeling herself, Cora grabbed a fistful of fur and swung her legs over its back. The wolf ducked its head and ran faster. The trees were thinning. The light grew brighter. They were almost there.

Matroga cried out, and the sound was like a hundred voices all shrieking, furious. But it had come no closer. The wolf strained forward, and Cora buried her face in its thick coarse hair. Fear and exhilaration formed a single current and rushed through her body.

They burst out of the forest and into the market square, the evil tug of the forest receding like water sloughing off her back. Cora slid off the wolf and glanced back. She could see the monstrous thing slithering back into the darkness, disappointed.

Cora bent over double and caught her breath. When she straightened up, an old woman was watching her, her eyes widened in fear.

“She is wolf-kin!” The woman shrieked, fumbling to grasp the tassels on her belt. A dozen heads turned to see where she pointed.

Cora glanced down, but the wolf was gone. She stood alone at the edge of the woods.

“She was riding a wolf,” the woman insisted.

You’re wrong,” Cora said loudly. “The cold has blurred your vision.”

She ignored the stares and whispers of the villagers and walked with head held high across the square.