The Vigil of the Wolf-Bride

Ah, the hill was all knife and shadow that night, and Bran Castle stood upon it like a clenched fist against the moon. The villagers said the fortress kept watch; the soldiers said it kept count. But Mari—the candle-maker's daughter chosen as this year's Wolf-Bride—knew it kept silence most of all.

"Oh dear," she whispered as the wind bullied her cloak, "hold your horses." The mule balked, as if the mountain itself had a say in where girls should go when summoned by old rites. It had been better late than never, Father Ilie had told her, to restore the Vigil. The harvest had soured, the wolves had grown bold, and the lords in the keep had begun to count their dead.

The priest had said: "We will weather the storm."

A soldier, at the gate, took the mule and another took Mari's basket—the bread, the beeswax candles, the sprig of rowan tied with red thread—and led her through passages as narrow as a throat.

The keep smelled of iron and old prayer. "Ugh," she muttered, because dust is dust even in a holy corridor.

"Silence," said a woman in a fur-lined cap. "We are not in the market." The woman was called Lady Dorothea of the south tower, one who smiled like a winter sun. "You will need a steady heart, child. No flutter, no fear."

"It's not rocket science," said a page too young to be insolent and too insolent to be so young. "You stand. You pray. You do not run."

"God," sighed Dorothea, "give me patience."

The chapel burned with a dozen small flames. Mari set her candles among them. The ritual was simple: through the fifteenth hour, the Wolf-Bride kept the vigil, walking the lower hall with a single candle, whispering the nine names of Bran's first mothers, one name at each loophole. When the dawn was caught in the candle's cup—if it was caught—the village would see a toothless summer.

"Take it easy," Dorothea said, and pressed the thinnest taper into her palm. "Walk. Speak. Do not look into the slits. There is always something to see, and seeing it is always a mistake."

"Let sleeping dogs lie," Father Ilie added. "Even if they are not dogs."

Mari nodded. "I can do this," she said. She did not say that fear was a bitter pill to swallow; she had no intention of letting the castle hear her chew.

The first turn was nothing. She whispered Ana. She whispered Ilinca. She whispered Marit. The names walked ahead of her like tiny, invisible sisters. By the skin of her teeth, she told herself at the fifth slit, when the flame flickered. She steadied it. The taper settled, then stood tall, as if the candle had decided to come through with flying colors after all.

At the eighth slit, something answered. It was not a voice, only a temperature, like a memory finding it had hands. The cold pressed against her eyes, and she clenched her jaw. Do not look, Dorothea had said. And so she did not. She whispered Sorina and moved on.

"Damn," hissed the page from somewhere behind her.

At the ninth slit, there was a voice. "Child," it said from the black slit where the wind lived, "call it a day."

Mari stopped. The candle trembled. "The vigil is not over."

"And it need not be," said the darkness. "Make a long story short. Give us the light; go to bed. We will keep watch for you."

"Who is 'we'?"

There was a sound like fur remembering its animal. "Those who love you best."

She almost laughed: the best of both worlds, she bitterly thought. Flattery in one single breath, and terror.

"Speak of the devil," said Dorothea's voice, arriving with a swiftness that stole warmth from the corridor. "It always cloaks its lies in concern."

"Lady," whispered the page, "what if it is not the devil? What if it is—"

"That's the last straw," snapped Dorothea, and crossed herself as if the air owed her rent.

"Alas," gasped Father Ilie, joining them, "we are at the point where the vigil becomes the barter." He held out a second, unlit taper. "Grit your teeth, child. Keep walking."

Mari did. She moved on because the floor had decided to be a floor and she had decided to be a girl who kept promises. But she did something she should not have; perhaps every ritual carries the seed of its own undoing. At the thirteenth slit, she looked.

The arrow slit was just that: too narrow for a human glance to be a comfort, too wide for a human fear to be a companion. Beyond it, the ravine dropped into a torrent of pines, and the moon gave everything a bone-like flavor. But she saw—Oh!—not wolves, not bandits. She saw people. Dozens of them. Bareheaded, barefoot, walking the goat path with burlap over their eyes, and each carrying an identical small bundle, as if their guilt had been given to them at the gate and they were told to keep it safe.

"Look before you leap," said the darkness gently. "Look before you choose. The Vigil only takes what is offered."

"Who are they?" said Mari.

"Your neighbors," said the wind. "They have carried their fear. They have carried their hunger. They have carried their children's fevers... We can fix it all, if you yield the light to us."

Her heart hammered.

In the details is the devil, she thought, and a generous girl he loves.

Mari muttered "Ah, there's the elephant in the room," but it was the wolf wearing its manners like a man, not an elephant.

The Vigil was not a guard against beasts; it was a hinge. It kept the keep door from swinging in the wrong direction. She turned from the slit and kept walking.

The castle sighed. "We'll make it easy," it whispered. "No pain, no gain, they say. But why should you pay the price?"

She muttered "Because the early bird catches the worm." "Because fortune favors the bold." She kept moving; she would do it through thick and thin.

At the turn of the stair, the page blocked her way. "Listen," he said. "I know a back way. You could rest an hour. Break a leg and no one would blame you for sitting."

"Oi," snapped Dorothea from below, "out of the frying pan, into the fire: that is where you will put her with such nonsense." She moved the boy aside. "There is always a 'we' when the wolf speaks; never a 'you' with a choice. That is how you hit the nail on the head, no?"

The boy flushed.

He uttered "You don't have to fly off the handle."

They reached the hall's midpoint. "Take it with a grain of salt," she told herself, because if she didn't make every whisper a proverb she trusted, she might make herself a story she didn't want.

"Child," said the wind again, "your mother is among them."

She stopped so sharply her sandals slipped. "She is dead."

"Yes," said the ravine. "But tonight is once in a blue moon. Tonight the river listens. Give us the light; we will give her back."

"You lie."

"We lie," said the darkness with something like courtesy. "But not always."

Father Ilie's hand touched her shoulder. "Time flies," he said softly, "and sorrow chases it. Keep walking, child."

"Spill the beans, priest," purred the wind. "Tell her why the Vigil truly turns the summer. Tell her what the lords of Bran feed the darkness."

Dorothea made a small, sharp sound. "It is exactly the question," said the priest. "Mari. The Vigil is not a gate that keeps out evil. It is a beam that bears a weight. Every year the keep must give something that belongs to itself—a fear, a pride, a vow—to shore up the world against its slipping. The light chooses which detail to claim when the dawn touches it."

"The lords choose," the wind corrected. "They always have."

"Is that," said Mari slowly, "why war never reaches us? Why bandits come to the ravine and forget what they wanted to do? Why we have fewer wolves than the villages over the hill, and more taxes than God?"

The page whispered, "We do not speak of this."

"Ah well," said Mari. "The pot calling the kettle black," she added.

"You see? You understand. Stir the pot, child. Give me the light and I will spare your village a tithe. Give me the name you want taken from the ledgers. I will write it myself."

"No," said Dorothea, a hidden blade in the syllable. "We keep our bargains with heaven, not with ravines."

"Heaven," said the darkness, amused, "is a ravine with better print."

"Damn," muttered the page.

They walked. At the fortieth slit, Mari stopped again. "If I must pay," she said to the air, "I will set the price."

"Be careful," Father Ilie warned. "Give him an inch—"

—he'll take a mile, she finished for him in her head. "Listen to me." "You take what the keep gives you every year: a fear, a vow, a pride. This year, you take mine."

The priest gasped.

"My fear is simple," Mari said. "I am afraid of belonging to the story you tell about me... Take the part that makes me useful to you."

"Ah!" whispered the wind. "You would kill two birds with one stone: end the Vigil and end your place in it."

"That is not what I said."

"It is what you meant."

"Take it anyway," she said. "And leave my neighbors' names alone... Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater—take the dirty water. Leave the baby."

"Child," Father Ilie choked.

"The die is cast," said Dorothea.

There was a very small sound. The candle flame thinned, blue at its core, and a taste of iron filled her mouth. "We accept," said the ravine gently. "Your fear is bright; it will hold."

"What happens to me?" Mari asked.

"You become the girl who belongs to no story but her own."

"That sounds lonely."

"It is. But not always."

"Good," she said. "Take it."

"Oh!" cried the page.

"Ah," said Mari. She moved on. At the end of the hall stood a door she had never noticed.

At the last slit, the wind returned. "One last favor," it said. "Because you paid with the only coin we respect."

"No," said Mari. "If I begin to bargain now, I will never stop."

"How about this," the ravine murmured, "and you have no say: when you leave the keep, you will be on thin ice with those who loved you for your usefulness. But every cloud has a silver lining—some will love you for your choice."

"That is not a favor," she said.

"It is a weather report," the wind answered. "Time is money in a keep like this; I have spent enough of yours."

The candle burned to the sugar of its last minute. Mari stood where Dorothea had placed her as the first vague blue news of dawn stitched itself into the slit. The light touched the flame. It flared and died, clean as a bell.

"All's well that ends well for now," said the page.

"Go ring the tower bell," Dorothea told him.

They walked out together, and walking was easier than it had a right to be. On the goat path, the veiled villagers had stopped. They turned back the way they came, the bundles still in their arms, their eyes still blindfolded, but their shoulders lighter.

"Look," said Father Ilie, pointing to the battlements: three ravens wheeled above them, the black punctuation of the castle softened to commas.

"They've come back. The ravens always come back when we have done things right."

"Don't assume success before results," Dorothea said so in a low voice.

They reached the courtyard. A steward was already advancing with his book. "Girl," he called, "what was given?"

Mari looked at Dorothea. "My fear," she said. "Write that down."

"Your—" The steward blinked. "That is not standard."

"Be cautious when believing statements if you must," she said, and smiled. "Write it down."

He wrote.

“Mistakes made may cause future trouble.”

He shut the book.

Mari handed the stub of her candle to Father Ilie. "Keep it in the chapel." He nodded. Instead, he said, "We shall see, child. We'll handle the issue later."

“Beyond the entrance, the air carried scents of damp rock and baked food.”

Time would tell; time always told.

The mule raised its head and decided it belonged to her after all.

"Oh!" Mari laughed and placed her palm on the beast's cheek. "Quiet now." She looked once over her shoulder at the castle; it looked back with all the eyes of its loopholes and none of its answers.

"Child," Dorothea called from the archway, and when Mari turned, the lady offered a small purse. "For the road."

"What is it?"

"Coin. Money for bread."

Mari said "I can't."

"Waste not, want not," Dorothea said sharply. "Go on."

Mari went. Below, the villagers were already untying their blindfolds. Some would look at her and see a girl who had shirked a bargain; some would see a girl who had kept one. It's not over till the fat lady sings, someone would say later.

When she reached the footbridge, the river talked to itself. There would be years when she missed the story that would have owned her. There would be years when people blamed her. There would be years when it rained so hard men swore it was raining cats and dogs.

She would say we live and learn and keep walking. She would say through thick and thin and light her own house's candles. She would say there's a method to this madness and pay her neighbors' debts.

Happens extremely rarely over time, she would stand on the ridge and feel, dimly but surely, the hinge hold.

"Well," she said to no one at all, "that's that."

"Wow," answered the morning, because even a day needs an interjection when a story refuses to swallow its own tail.