Shadow of the Wolf Read Free

beneath the great arching boughs of the Trystel Tree. The ancient oak, covered in burns and lightning wounds, wrapped in vines thick as rope, rose from the centre of the village. It spread its limbs so low and so far and so heavy through the lanes that many of the villagers had used them as top-beams for their barns or the rear walls of their homes.
    Joylessly, through habit only, Robin leaped onto a low branch and walked along it, toe-to-heel, his arms outstretched for balance, the way he had done so many times with his brothers – Mogon’s Well and Cooper’s Corner passing beneath his feet. The branch came to rest and he jumped off. He crossed the creaking bridge that ran across Mill Pond.
    He was passing the boundary stone, leaving the village, when raised voices stopped him. He looked back and saw Swet Woolward and Alwin Topcroft, heading his way. At their head was Narris Felstone, gripping in his solitary hand a fencing post, scratching at his ear with the stump of his left arm.
    Robin didn’t feel like tangling with Narris and the others today. He turned and broke into a run. Ahead of him Silver River glistened as it wound into the valley. He followed its course, two otters barking at him before diving out of sight, herons taking flight, a fox watching him from the far bank.
    At Bel’s Bridge he stopped and looked back. Narris and the others had followed no further than the boundary stone, content to strut there back and forth, still watching Robin, laughing among themselves.
    Work had begun now at the spirit fence – the
whump-whump
of hammers drew Robin’s eyes up to his old home, and up further, to Woden’s Ride, where the villagers were working at the forest edge. He couldn’t help looking higher still, to the shadowy movements stirring above. There, looming over Wodenhurst, dwarfing even the Trystel Tree, was the black-green mass of Winter Forest, stretching up and away with the hills, its highest reaches lost in low cloud.
    The wind was picking up, making the wildwood churn. He listened to its whooshing roaring noise, and he stared, transfixed …
    For three days and three nights he had wandered lost in the wildwood, shivering in the rain, running from visions in the mist. He remembered little of the ordeal – scattered impressions only – the half-glimpsed face of a young girl; an uncanny laugh.
    But he did remember, all too distinctly, finding at last the path he had followed with his father, stumbling along it and finally breaking free of the forest.
    And then staggering down into Wodenhurst, and drawing close to his home …
    Finding it dark and deserted.
    His family vanished.
    ‘They were heartbroken,’ Mabel Felstone told him tearfully, in the days that followed. ‘Your father came back alone, silent with grief, near madness. Those who get lost in Winter Forest are never found, you know that – never until now. They thought you were gone for ever. Your father blamed himself, and it was more than he could stand. They left that same day,taking a few things, barely saying a word to any of us. They left to start afresh – is all I can think – to try to forget.’
    None of this made much sense to Robin. He couldn’t begin to understand why his family would leave without him, or how his father had let it happen. He told himself he didn’t care
how
or
why
. His family were no longer here; he didn’t know how to find them. Nothing else mattered.
    He managed to turn away from Winter Forest. He stepped onto Bel’s Bridge and balanced across the frosted, moss-covered log. He entered Summerswood, following the man-made hunting paths and crossing the open rides.
    His stomach was growling. He went to his shelter, and his smoking frame, where he had left strips of cured rabbit meat. He reached inside the frame eagerly. But the meat was gone.
    He checked the soil for the claw marks of a badger; he looked for signs of a clever crow. But no, as he had suspected, this had been a human thief. Nearby he