THE WOLF WHO REMEMBERED MY NAME

The wolf at my father's funeral called me a liar. He was buried on a Tuesday. Blackwood Cemetery. Four people came. Mr. Hale, his lawyer, holding an umbrella that didn't cover him. Two old women from the village who kept looking at the tree line like they wanted to leave. And me. I was twenty-one and I had forgotten how to cry. They lowered the cheap pine box into frozen ground and I held white lilies that meant nothing. My father had never liked flowers. He liked locks. He liked rules. He liked telling me never go into Blackwood after sunset, Elena. Never follow the wolves. Never trust a man with silver eyes. I thought he was superstitious. The village drunk thought he was a prophet. Now he was dead. Heart attack, the doctors said. Fast. I should have felt something. That's when I saw it. Beneath the dead ash tree at the edge of the cemetery. The one tree that was dead even in summer. A wolf. No — not a wolf. Wolves aren't that big. Wolves don't sit that still. And no dog, no wolf, no animal alive has eyes that blue. Not sky blue. Flame blue. Like gas on a stove. Its coat was silver-white, so thick the snow should have slid off. Snow was on it. A perfect dusting on its back and head. There was no snow anywhere else in the cemetery. The wind stopped. It looked right at me. Not at the grave. Not at the men with shovels. At me. My hands locked around the lilies. "Go away," I whispered. The wolf tilted its head. Listening. One step. I took one step toward my father's grave because I was supposed to put the flowers down. That's what you do. It growled. Not loud. Not a bark. A low, breathy warning through clenched teeth, like a man whispering don't. I froze mid-step. "I'm not afraid of you," I said, and my voice cracked in the middle of it. Its ears flattened. Its lips pulled back. Then it spoke. "Liar." The word wasn't loud. It wasn't in my head. It came from its mouth, with breath, with teeth, with a voice that sounded like a young man who hadn't slept in years. The lilies fell from my hands. The blue-eyed wolf stood. Slowly. Its paws were bigger than my hands. The snow fell off its back and vanished before it hit the ground. I ran. I left the flowers in the mud. I left my father in the ground. I ran through Blackwood Cemetery in stupid funeral shoes, past the four headstones that all had my family's name on them, past the iron gate that was rusted shut. I didn't look back until I hit the road. The ash tree was empty. Only a circle of melted snow where it had been sitting. Perfectly round. Steaming in the cold. Three days later, I told Mr. Hale what I saw. He didn't laugh. He looked at the melted circle in his notebook where I'd drawn it, and his face went white. "Blue eyes, you said?" "Yes." "And it spoke." "Yes." He closed his notebook very carefully. "Your father told me you might see things. After he died. Grief does that." "Do you believe me?" "No," he said too fast. "Elena, go back to the city. Forget Blackwood." I did. For three years I made myself forget. I told myself it was a stray dog. A hallucination. Grief psychosis, that's a real thing. I Googled it. I moved to the city. I cut my hair. I got a job in a bookstore that smelled like old paper and never like pine and wet earth. I stopped dreaming about ash trees. Until the dreams learned how to say my name. Same wolf. Every night. Watching me from the tree line. Blue flames where its eyes should be. And every time I woke up, my throat was raw, like I'd been saying one word over and over. Liar. Liar. Liar. On my twenty-fourth birthday, the phone rang. Mr. Hale. Same voice. Older. "Elena. It's about your father." "My father is dead." "There's something he left for you. A house." I laughed, a short ugly sound. "My father rented a two-bedroom above a butcher shop his whole life. He didn't own a house." "He did. He owned it for twenty-four years. He paid taxes on it. He kept the key." Silence stretched so long I thought he hung up. "Where?" I finally asked. Another silence. Then: "Blackwood. At the end of the old winding road. The one your mother lived in." The air left my lungs. My mother died when I was six. That's what he told me. She left. She abandoned us. She never wanted to come back. I had built a whole life on that story. "My mother didn't own a house," I whispered. "She did," Mr. Hale said. "And your father said to give you this message when you were ready: Never go there after sunset." My blood turned to ice. That was his rule. His stupidest, most constant rule. I almost hung up. Instead I heard myself say, "Give me the key." Now I am standing in front of the old black iron gates of Blackwood House, and I understand why the wolves never left my dreams. Because I was supposed to come back. The house stands alone at the end of a road that shouldn't exist on any map. Ivy strangling stone. Roof sagging like a tired spine. Every window dark except one — the attic — where a light just went out. The front door is painted black. I unlock it with the key Mr. Hale gave me. It's warm in my hand. The door opens by itself. Cold air brushes my face, smelling of pine and blood and something sweet I almost remember. And somewhere inside the house, a clock begins to strike midnight. Once. Twice. Three times. It's three in the afternoon. I count anyway. Twelve. Then a thirteenth chime sounds, so loud my teeth rattle. I freeze in the doorway. From upstairs comes the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Coming toward me. Boards creaking under a weight no rat could make. I back toward the door. A man's voice speaks from the darkness at the top of the stairs. Not loud. Tired. Like he's been waiting. "You shouldn't have come back, Elena." I know that voice. It's the voice from the cemetery. My heart stops. I whisper the only name my mouth can make. "Kieran?" A figure steps into the thin moonlight falling through the attic window. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed entirely in black that is wet with melted snow, though it isn't snowing. Dark hair falling across his forehead. A thin white scar running from his left eyebrow to his cheek, like something with claws tried to take his eye and missed. But it's his eyes that stop my breath. Silver. Exactly as my father warned me never to trust. He looks at me as if he has been waiting years for this moment. As if he knew I would drop the flowers. As if he knew I would run. "You remember me?" he asks. I shake my head. My back hits the black door. "No." His expression hardens. Those silver eyes flare, just once, like the wolf's did. "You will." Then he turns and disappears into the darkness of my mother's house. And the clock strikes thirteen again.