Page 86 of Echo North

When I wake, Ivan is holding his torch high, the flames dancing violet and white and blue. Beyond the reach of the light a dozen pairs of eyes gleam orange—the wolves, crouching in the shadows, watching us. Waiting.

“Ivan,” I gasp.

“I will not let them harm us.”

“But how—”

He speaks a sharp, unfamiliar word, and a gust of strong wind comes whistling through the cave. The wolves yelp and whine, shrinking back from him.

“Whatareyou?” I whisper.

His hand tightens around the torch. “It seems I am a man with a little magic left. We’ll have to run. Can you?”

“Yes.”

He gives me one sharp nod.

I take a breath.

He hurls the torch behind us; it explodes in a shower of fire and we break into a run, dashing headlong into darkness. The wolves scream, and the awful stench of burning fur rises strong on the air. Ivan whistles three long notes. Light sparks in the air ahead of us, illuminating our way. Our feet slap hard against the frozen ground.

I don’t dare glance back—I don’t need to. Claws dig into the ice and teeth snap just behind my heels.

Ivan grabs my arm and we run faster, gaining ground from our pursuers as ice rains down around our heads.

My lungs scream for air. My feet stumble and slide—if not for Ivan, I would fall and be devoured.

All at once we burst out of the ice caves into open air. Stars burn bright and cold above; the whole sky glows an eerie, shifting green.

Ivan gives a shout, clapping his hands together, and a strong wind comes gusting past me. The caves shake, huge pieces of ice and earth breaking off, tumbling down, just as the wolves leap through the opening after us.

The wind whirls round Ivan; he gathers it up, holds it in his hands. He stares at it for a moment with a kind of wild joy, and then a hardness comes into his face and he hurls it at the wolves. They’re knocked backward into the cave, and with one downward jerk of his hands, Ivan pulls the entire cavern down on them in a roar of rock and ice.

He turns toward me, a fierce power shining in his eyes.

I gape at him.

He smiles, nods past me. “Look where we are, Echo.”

I turn to see a mountain soaring straight up into the sky. It’s thick with pine trees, and stars glimmer amidst their branches like jewels.

I stare and stare. “Where the mountain meets the sky,” I whisper.

“And the trees are hung with stars,” says Ivan soft beside me.

I look into his weathered face, and my heart seizes as I realize something. “You’re not coming with me.”

“I have been to the Wolf Queen’s court before. I cannot go back—the deal I made with her will be null if I appear again before her throne.”

Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. Once more I see the ancientness in his eyes. “What deal did you make with her?”

“I, too, loved a woman. I traded my power to the Wolf Queen in exchange for humanity. Mortality.”

“Youare the North Wind.”

He smiles a little sadly. “I am. Or was, long ago, before my deal with the Wolf Queen bound me in a human body and stranded Isidor and I both in a time that was not our own. But it seems the Queen did not take all my power, or else it creeps back to me, so close to her as we are now. I chose to please myself. I chose love. But in doing so I gave her greater capacity for evil than she possessed before. I have wanted to help you since you first told me your story. So you might defeat her, and undo what I set in motion long ago.”

I think of Isidor and Satu. I think of Hal. I would have done the same in Ivan’s place.