WOLVES OF THE SPIRIT
                                by Liz Williams

                                        ****

“When I sent my first story to Asimov’s, I thought it didn’t have a hope. I literally
could not believe the acceptance letter; it was rather like slipping into a parallel
universe. Things haven’t changed much. Great going to all of you and happy
thirtieth!”—Liz Williams

      Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in
Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply shop.
In the US, her novels and story collections have been published by Bantam
Spectra and Nightshade Books. Liz appears regularly in Realms of Fantasy,
Asimov’s, and other magazines. In her latest tale, she takes an icy look at
some haunting songs and some ominous...
                                        ****
       I am the keeper of the Baille Atha light now that my mother is dead, a princess
in an ice-colored tower. My kingdom is the last hummock of land before the wastes
of the Western Ocean, the final island before Darkland, and the enemy, and the start
of storms.
        Generations of women, generations of lighthouse keepers. It’s all kept in a
book, a real one, bound with leather and iron as well as being stored in the computer
database of the light. The book isn’t necessary, of course, and neither is it necessary
for a living person to tend a lighthouse—they’d even stopped it on old Earth, long
before we left for the stars, but something about Muspell, something about the sea
and the mist and the ice, the way that ships vanish between midnight and morning,
the way that you hear a sudden voice on the open ocean, seems to have convinced
my ancestors that you need a living soul in a lighthouse, a small stand against the
dark.
      And there’s a lot of darkness, on Muspell.
        My mother hated the winters here, the short bleak days followed by the quick
fall of the sun, and she loved the long light summers, with the Northern Fire playing
greengold above the horizon and the sky flowering with the summer stars. But I am
the opposite, liking the stormy nights and the crash of dark, restless in summer with
the gleaming length of days.
       Shoredwellers always ask if you become lonely, out on the ice. They don’t
realize that you are never alone: the weather is always with you, and the sea, and
these are the great presences beyond the smaller spirits, of birds and sealstock and
the selk. And others, too: once I went out onto the field at the end of winter to see an
old woman standing at the very end of the crags, above the sea. She raised a hand
and waved to someone, but when I reached her, she was no longer there.
       You would have thought that I’d have dreamed of a man, coming across the
sea to claim me, a young girl’s dreams, but I was content with what I had. There
seemed enough time for that; I would wait, I told myself, until I became lonely, but
somehow I never did.
      Then, one day, a man did come.
                                        ****
       This is the way things are done. My own father was an island-man from
Haut-terre, blown off course by the equinoctial gales, his little boat crashing onto the
rocks beneath the lighthouse. My mother nursed him back to health; they fell in love,
she fell pregnant.
       He left anyway, when the next provisions drop came. They winched him up
onto the copter and that, my mother said, was the last she saw of him. She cried, but
not for long. There was too much to do. He did not come back.
      She stayed, and brought me up, here at the Baille Atha light. We were not
confined to the lighthouse itself. We would skate out across the green expanse to
where the birds are, so thick along the ice cliffs that the air is one great shriek. And
beyond the birds are the selk, and in winter, the selk sing.
     Until the arrival of the man, I heard them only once, when I was a child and
my mother had taken me out onto the icefield.
      “Mother?” I said, when we had skated almost as far as the edge of the cliffs,
our high-proof slickskins barely keeping out the cold. “Where are we going?”
      And she said, “Why, we’re going to the end of the world.”
       Beyond the cliff, the sea was like metal. As we reached the top and looked out
over miles of silver water, the seabirds came up in a cloud and settled back down
again. Their shrieking ended. The icefield was suddenly very quiet.
       “Why have they stopped?” I asked. I looked up at my mother’s face behind
the translucent film of her slickskin; it was rapt and distant, her grey eyes fixed on
the far horizon.
      “Why?” I asked again, but she ignored me.
      I didn’t know what it was when I first heard it. It was thin and high, as cold as
the wind. It drifted out across the icefield and we stood still in its path, frozen in the
wake of sudden song.
      “Mama?” but I never knew whether I had spoken the word aloud or whether
the song had conjured it, was speaking to me out of the air. But my mother reached
out and took my hand and drew me forward, to the very lip of the ice.
       The sea churned, hundreds of feet below. I felt dizzy if I looked down, so I
stared ahead instead, out to the bright line between sea and sky, and let the song go
on.
      My mother nudged me. “There. Can you see them?”
       I looked down, wished I hadn’t, but she was holding tightly onto my arm and
then I realized that the song itself would not let me fall.
       The selk lay on the rocks below. They are nothing like the sirens of old Earth:
there is little that is womanly or fair about them, although they were interbred with
human genes. Like seals, but larger and more tapered, with front paws that are
almost hands and with which they are able to manipulate basic tools. But they had no
real need of tools, not with that song. It crept into my head and it spoke to me of the
northern seas, the deep green, the dive and the rush. Listening to that song, I knew
what it was like to be something other than myself.
       I don’t know why they stopped. Perhaps they glimpsed us far above and took
us for predators. But abruptly, their song ended and they slid over the edge of the
rocks and into the water, one, two, three. A ripple marked the point of their dive and
we did not see them again. The weather was changing, a storm driving down out of
the north, and we skated fast before it, arriving back at the lighthouse just as the first
flakes of snow hit. We locked the doors behind us and looked out at white sea,
white sky.
      “There,” I said. “That place, the cliffs. Is it really where the world ends?”
     “No,” my mother replied. “Beyond the sea is Darkland, the home of our
enemies, where the vitki come from.”
       “The vitki,” I said. I’d heard the word before; my mother had used it to
frighten me, when I was younger: don’t go out on the ice alone, the vitki will come,
they will take you away and change you into something terrible.
     “Who are the vitki?” I asked now, and my mother answered, “They are the
wolves of the spirit.”
      But that night, I dreamed of the selk, and of songs.
        When I was nineteen, my mother died, of an infection in the lungs that might
have been cured if she had lived on the shore. But the winter storms had come again
and we were too far from a medical center. She went downhill fast, so quickly that I
could not believe it, and I do not think I believed until several days after I had sent
her body, in its burial pod, down into the green depths of the sea. I used to see her
all the same, standing by the light, a younger woman than I had ever known, and
nothing about this ever struck me as strange.
      I ordered supplies, and a replacement pod, and carried on. That spring, I went
out onto the ice again, finding a freedom in not having to ask permission of anyone,
and visited the selk, but I did not hear them sing, neither that year, nor any year that
followed. I dreamed of it, all the same.
                                        ****
       When the man appeared, I did not know at first whether he was real. I was
used to ghosts, by then. I took up the binoculars and watched him trudge over the
ice: an ordinary fisherman’s slickskin, a half-moon of face under the hood. He was
dragging something behind him, something grey.
        I went down to the intercom. Moments later, his voice came through.
        “Is anyone there?”
        “I’m the lighthouse keeper. My name is Siri Clathe. Do you have ID?”
     The scan glowed blue and data showed on the screen: Edri Lailoken, out of
Harkness, the registry numbers of a fishing rigger.
        “You’ll do,” I said to Edri Lailoken through the intercom, and opened the
door.
        He wasn’t so much older than I was, perhaps ten years or so, in his early
thirties. When he pulled back the hood I saw blue eyes, dark hair, a face that was all
harsh, sharp angles. But he had a winning smile.
       “I’ve got a problem,” he told me. “Got blown down out of Uist last night; my
rigger’s a wreck. Spring gales, you see. Come up faster than the eye can blink.”
        “Where is it?”
        He gestured towards the northwest of the icefield. “Up there, at the base of
the cliff.”
        “You were lucky,” I said.
        He grimaced. “You won’t say that when you see the rigger.”
        He dumped a small pack on the floor and moved to open it, and it was then
that I saw what he’d been dragging across the ice.
       Dapple and pale, like a shadow made flesh. I felt as though he’d brought in
the flayed skin of a man.
     He saw me looking. “I know.” His voice was very quiet. “I found it.
Someone’s been hunting.”
    “I’ll have to report this.” I felt sick. “The spring equinox was a fortnight
ago—you know they’re sentient, now?”
       “Of course. But Siri, there are plenty of folk even in the Reach who think the
selk are nothing more than animals. Even when they plead for mercy under a hunter’s
club.”
         “Why did they leave the skin?” I forced myself to look at it.
      “Maybe they’re just after the meat—but I think it’s more likely to be this.” He
tugged the skin over and I saw the black bands around it. “See? It’s a young one.
The pelt-merchants don’t like the banding, it’s not fashionable.”
         “So they just dumped it.”
      I could see the disgust in his eyes. It had struck me, of course, that he’d been
the one to kill the selk, but that expression convinced me otherwise. “You need to
get someone out here, Siri.”
        “I don’t know if they’ll come for only one selk.” The culls were another
matter; I’d seen those on the newsfeeds, the ice running red, the pups begging for
their lives.
      “It won’t be just one. It’s so far out here, I suppose they thought they’d be
undisturbed. Would you have gone out there, in this weather?”
         I shook my head. “I’ll put that report through,” I said, and did so.
       Communications this far out are often subject to delay. It was evening before I
got a reply, telling me that the report had been filed and a response would be with me
in the next couple of days.
         “When is the next provision copter through?” Lailoken asked.
         “Another week.”
         “I’m afraid in that case, you’ll just have to put up with me, Siri.”
         He said it with a smile. A lot can happen in a week, the thought came to me.
         On the following morning, we went out to look at Lailoken’s rigger.
       “I’m taking this.” I showed him the harpoon gun, the only weapon I had.
“Just in case the hunters are still around.”
      He gave a grave nod. “Good idea. I don’t have anything with me—I had a
small weapon, but it’s still in the rigger; I couldn’t get at it.”
      When I saw his craft, I knew why. Looking down from the top of the cliff, the
prow of the rigger had been stoved in and it was sinking. The back half was already
submerged.
      “You were really lucky to have made it up the cliff,” I said. “There’s no way
we’re going to be able to drag that up.”
         Lailoken cursed. “It’ll be gone by the time we can get a rescue copter out here
and anyway, I’d have to pay. Oh well. It’s insured, at least.”
      “Will you get the full amount back?”
      He snorted. “I pay a high enough premium.”
       When we got back to the lighthouse Lailoken, with an air of resignation, asked
if I had a spare fishing rod. I watched him walk across the ice, a graceful prowl, and
chop a hole in the ice with a borrowed prong.
      A fish supper, in pleasant company. Maybe I’d been lonelier than I’d thought.
      I had a number of tasks to do around the light: basic maintenance. I went
down into the base area to fetch some equipment; the skin of the selk was still there,
folded as neatly as I could manage it, and so was Lailoken’s pack. We’d made up a
bed for him on the couch.
      As I crossed the room, I heard a whisper.
      Iskir. Iskir.
       It was surprisingly loud and it startled me. I looked around, but nothing was
there. My head rang with it. Iskir.
      “Who’s there?” I said aloud.
       The whisper came again and it was coming from the pack. I was an idiot, I
told myself. Lailoken must have a radio in there. Not much use, however, if the
battery went flat. I didn’t like rummaging about in his bag, but I opened it a little way
anyway.
      There was no radio. A handful of clothing, a spare slickskin, a long, flat parcel
in a waterproof wrapping, that whispered, Iskir, Iskir.
      I flicked the parcel open and snatched my hand back. There was blood on it,
from a thin, shallow cut. I put my hand to my mouth and, carefully, drew the
wrapping aside. Inside, was a long black knife: black blade, black shaft. It looked
almost of a piece, the metal and bone blending into one another so seamlessly that I
had to look hard for a join. My mouth flooded with the taste of iron.
      I had a small weapon, but it’s still in the rigger.
      The door hummed and I hastily shoved the bag shut. Lailoken stood in the
entrance with a brace of limmerel, his face wind-reddened and smiling.
      “They’re shoaling. You could almost pull them out of the water.”
      “Oh, well done.” My voice sounded almost normal, I found to my surprise. I
kept my injured hand out of sight, behind my back. “That’s dinner settled, then.”
      Perhaps this was what marriage was like, all cheer and plans for supper, with
the hiss of secrets underneath. I got through the next few hours with difficulty, and
excused myself shortly after dinner. I told Lailoken I’d cut myself on a weathered
sheet of metal. He seemed hardly to hear me.
      My mother might have lived alone, apart from me, but that didn’t mean that
she didn’t communicate. She had friends all over the Reach: on the message boards
and the genealogy lists. One of them was a sea marshal named Kari Shoar. I sent her
a message, then went to bed and tried to sleep.
      I could still hear it, in my restless dreams. Iskir, Iskir.
      Around three AM, I found myself wide awake. The message-in section of the
console was blinking. I went to look at what Shoar had written.
       I’ve not met Edri Lailoken myself. Some of the older guys here know him,
though he hasn’t been out with the boats for years, since his accident. They say
he’s a miserable old bugger, keeps himself to himself. What’s he doing all the way
out at the Baille Atha light?
      I hadn’t voiced my suspicions yet, but I did so then. I did not feel able to
handle this on my own. I needed help and I asked Shoar to send a sea marshal out,
or come herself. Why would you take on someone else’s identity, unless you had
something to hide? And besides, identity theft in the Reach is not an easy matter.
Not easy, or cheap.
      I did not sleep for the remainder of that night. There was no further reply from
Shoar; her part of the Reach was several hours ahead of Baille Atha, and she had
probably gone on shift. I watched the moon drift down over the ocean, sliding into
its own silver track, and still the whispering went on.
       Towards dawn, there was a flicker of green in the corner of my eye.
Message-in, I thought, and ran to the console. But it was on another array to the
communications console—a small emerald light, telling me that the main door of the
lighthouse had been opened.
      I should have waited. I should have locked myself into the lighthouse, a
princess in my tower, and made sure that the override switches were on lock.
Because I knew what Lailoken was, now, and where that black blade had come
from: a land of dark glass cliffs, of echoing forests, of experiments and spells.
       Should have waited, but did not. I thought of that sad piled pelt in the base of
the lighthouse, of the selk singing at the ocean’s edge, and I could not stay. I picked
up the harpoon gun on my way out; he had not taken it with him. I suppose he did
not need to. I also checked his bag. The knife was gone.
      In the cold glow just before the dawn, the spires and pinnacles of ice gleamed
green with their own faint phosphorescence. Lailoken had left no tracks in the snow,
and that nearly made me turn back to the reassuring column of the lighthouse. But I
went on, following the whisper of the knife in my mind, and at last I came to that
same cliff, that my mother had called the edge of the world.
       Lailoken was nowhere to be seen. Cautiously, I made my way to the lip of the
cliff and looked over. The ice field extended some distance out from the shore, a
thin spring sheet, and he was already halfway across it. Ahead, shadowy shapes
marked the rocks. The selk were there. I raised the harpoon and measured a shot but
he was out of range. I could see how he’d made his way down the cliff, the
handholds. It was still dark enough that he might not see me even if he looked back,
or so I prayed. I shouldered the gun and went after him.
       When I was almost at the bottom of the cliff, and Lailoken’s figure was
approaching the rocks on which the selk lay, something changed. The world around
me became colder and seemed to darken, but at the same time, I could see more
clearly. I caught a glimpse of Lailoken’s face, as if I was kneeling before him. It was
white and rapt against the pre-dawn sky and I knew that I was seeing through the
knife itself, through Iskir. My blood hammered and pounded in my head and I came
close to falling. I snatched at a handhold of ice, half caught it, and slid the rest of the
way, luckily only a few feet, to the base of the cliff.
       Down here, the rocks were slippery, like wet glass. I did not know how
Lailoken had made such quick progress and my fear of him grew. I saw his face
again and he was speaking, whispering to the knife as someone might whisper to a
lover. Something pushed against the world; I had the sense of force—and then the
song began.
        This time, it was not wordless. The selk, sentient now, was singing in its own
tongue of Shelta. I did not understand it, but I could grasp repeats, refrains—and
Iskir did understand, I somehow knew, and was spinning the song out of the selk
like a long skein of blood.
       Lailoken gave a single shout, a cry of triumph. He raised Iskir, brought it
down through the air. I had a dizzying rush, cleaving the air with the knife, as it cut
the song. Lailoken’s other hand held a bag; the song fell into it. From across the
icefield, there was a heavy, echoing splash as the selk rolled and fell. And I dragged
the harpoon from my shoulder, aimed and fired.
       The world slowed down. Lailoken turned as the bolt glided towards him and I
saw his face, clearly at last. He looked nothing like the blue-eyed, black-haired young
man from whom I’d sat across a table, eating limmerel. I don’t know what he looked
like, except that I wouldn’t have described it as human. The bolt crept on and
Lailoken smiled and stepped unhurriedly out of the way.
      “Iskir!” I cried. “Iskir!” My voice sounded thick in my mouth. Lailoken’s
smile widened, but out on the rocks, something stirred. A selk was singing.
      It wasn’t the plaintive, desolate song of a few minutes before. Lailoken’s spell
had been broken just long enough, the knife’s concentration shifting. This was a war
song.
       My hands hammered at my ears. I dropped to my knees. Time came back in a
rush and the harpoon bolt sailed past Lailoken and struck a spire of ice, which
shattered. But the ice was shattering, too, thin splintering cracks stemming out from
where Lailoken, suddenly, was flailing for balance.
       It happened quickly after that: the ice breaking, Iskir flying from Lailoken’s
hand like a black arrow, the vitki going down, down, into the killing sea. The selk’s
song stopped as abruptly as it had begun. I was crouching, my forehead nearly
touching the ice. A few yards from me, where the ice was unbroken, Iskir skittered
to a halt and lay waiting.
        After a moment, I became aware that the pounding sound in my head wasn’t
my own blood, after all, but the rotor blades of a sea marshal’s copter, landing
above me on the cliff. Slowly, I got to my feet. I stepped out onto the ice, picked up
Iskir, and put it in a fold of my slickskin. It felt slippery, as if coated with blood.
Then I climbed back up the cliff to where Marshal Shoar was waiting.
                                          ****
        An hour later, she and I went back up to the northwest quadrant of the
icefield. It was not long past dawn, with a strong morning wind blowing offshore.
Together, Shoar and I looked over the cliff to where the wrecked rigger lay. It was
not wrecked now. It hovered slightly above the surface of the water, quite safe, with
the flicker of a dying holo-form shuddering over it. In the moments where the
holo-form was failing, I saw that it was nothing like a fishing rigger, but a thin craft.
I’d never seen anything similar before, but Shoar nodded when she saw it.
        “Vitki,” was all that she said.
     “He wanted me to file the report about the skin,” I said. “He was prepared for
someone to come.”
      “Arrogance,” she said. But she did not sound sure. Then she added,
“Perhaps he wanted a copter.”
       Her team took the rigger back with them to Uist, proof of enemy incursions
into the Reach. The Baille Atha lighthouse was put on the nearest marshal’s sea
patrol and now a wing comes over perhaps every three days or so, undergoing
routine checks. But Lailoken still walks the ice, head down in its vitki hood,
stumbling along as if looking for something. I can see the ice spires through his
body; I have seen no need to alert the sea patrol to his presence.
       I keep Iskir in a metal box, up in the light near the storms and the sky.
Sometimes, I take the knife out and look at it; it seems to grow harder, more solid,
year by year. I have not told the sea patrol about Iskir, either. For if another wolf of
the spirit should come, searching for a knife that can cut a song from the air, I think I
would like to see just how far Iskir can pare, spiraling flesh and blood and bone
away, all the way down to the cold hollow of an enemy soul.
      Copyright © 2007 Liz Williams