The Green Man was packed elbow-to-elbow snug with locals steaming in pre-storm July humidity. They were drinking fast, repeating the little news they had and asking each other questions nobody had answers to.
“What do you think it is?”
“It’ll turn out fine – whatever it won’t come near us and if it did the Cutters will get it.”
“We’re thinking about going to the cottage until it all blows over – do you think we should?”
David, Maude, Sally and Dan were sitting at the corner table by the door.
“The Burners never announce the Cry unless it’s serious,” David said. “They’ve done it only once before in our time.”
“Must have been thirty years ago,” said Maude. “It held for about a month – the Cutters patrolled more often, and Blacksmith Andy never left the village just in case, but nothing came of it. Nothing pitched up here – we never even heard what it was. Then the Burners lifted it and that was that. Until now.”
“What could it be?”, Dan asked.
“No idea,” said David. “All we got was the same email you did, flagged as urgent, ‘Hue and Cry’ in the subject line. It used to be a telegram, but times change.”
“We thought it was spam until you called round,” said Sally.
“Hookland is on high alert too,” Maude said. “Claire called to say this morning, but they don’t know any more than us.”
“What do we need to do?”, asked Sally.
Maude shrugged at her. “The Cry just means be on the lookout, shout if we see anything out of the ordinary and make sure the Smith gets the message first and loudest.”
“Out of the ordinary?” Dan said. “In Willerby what does that even mean?”
David frowned. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I think we’d be wise to visit the hotspots - the cutting, the old fort on the hill and the other places. Check Jack is quiet. Put the word out the Shortcuts are even more out of bounds than they usually are.”
“And the borderlands,” said Mauve.
David nodded. “Yes, the borders – and we should go out there and check on the Cutters.”
“We should all go,” said Mauve, “let’s meet outside the pub early tomorrow morning – say eight, and we should check in with Tigist before we go.”
“Yes,” said David. “We should know more about her than we do. I know she’s had the training, and she seems a bright spark, but still. She’s new. We’ll check in on her tomorrow morning before we head out.”
…
While the rest of the village was drinking in the pub, Tigist was in her workshop pouring over university textbooks and surfing two factor protected discussion boards on secret corners of the internet.
She was scared.
For the Cry to be raised it had to be more than a vagrant ghost or ghoul, and she knew it was unlikely to be anything from the secret commonwealth because David and Maude - and now Sally and Dan - managed all that.
It could, she thought, be a revenant but these were almost always local things and not a reason for a national cry. That left the most serious threats – perhaps something like Jack, loosed from its chains and wandering free.
Or something even more terrible.
She knew her responsibilities– explained to her by the Burners, who’d tapped her on the shoulder at the start of her second year studying sculpture at a famous art school in London.
There had been three of them, two middle aged women and one middle aged man all in good quality off the peg charcoal office suits.
They arrived at her house in an unremarkable black Toyota Prius and asked to take her out for a meal. They had police identification cards and insisted she rang her parents to tell them where she was going and what time she’d be back.
“We’re funded by the government, but we aren’t the government, and these days it’s only the PM and Home Secretary who even know we exist,” one of the women explained as the car pulled away. “Officially we work for the Crown. These days that means we work for the people. Unusual, secret work.”
“Like MI6?” Tigist asked.
“Yes, why not? A bit like MI6,” said the man, thoughtfully. “That’s a good place to start. But there’s a lot more to it.”
Over dinner in the empty dining room of an upmarket hotel, they laid out an offer.
All tuition fees paid - and her accommodation and other expenses while she was studying her undergraduate degree and then a masters in something others called the occult.
She’d be busy – residential training during the holidays and many weekends and then a year’s intensive specific training at the House up in Northumberland.
“And after that,” said one of the women, “your assignment. It’s a ten-year commitment to a small village called Willerby, extendable each five after that if you want to stay.
She got a folder out her briefcase and showed Tigist some maps and photos. On a laptop the other woman showed her the village website too. “The chances are you’ll never need to do anything for us. Nathan – the blacksmith has been there fifteen years and never has and nor did Andy who was there before him. You’d be free to live your life there however you want. The people are friendly. There’s a fair salary, a good workshop and a forge. Anything you make from your other work is yours to keep – we need you to keep your eye in iron and silver, but we know already that’s what you like to work in most anyway. You can keep that part of your life quite separate – we won’t interfere. All we expect is you’re always ready. You can leave the village whenever you want but you must be able to get back to it within two hours. That’s the bit that puts most people off, but you’re lucky in that respect because Willerby is central compared to most other placements.”
“Ready for what?” Tigist asked.
The man looked her in the eye. “That’ll all be explained at the first residential – after that you make your decision – either in, or out. If you’re out, you’ll never hear from us again and that will be the end of it. If you’re in, that’s just the beginning.”
Two weeks later, after the most bizarre and intense weekend of her life, fascinated, Tigist had accepted their offer.
It would be an odd life, but a life with meaning.
Five years after that, her training complete and after some visits to look around, she arrived in Willerby to stay, her life packed up in the back of the brand-new car, given to her by the Burners as a goodbye gift.
She furnished her house with the relocation grant and bought a dog.
She named it Donny and settled in and until now it had all been quiet.
…
David, Mauve, Dan and Sally met as planned outside the Green Man the next morning.
Storms the night before had cooled and cleared the air and there was a fresh breeze.
“Lisa is working afternoons this week and says she’s good to have Sammy until lunchtime.” Dan said. “Might we be longer than that?”
“We shouldn’t be,” said Maude, “we won’t go that far, let’s go and see Tigist now.”
…
“You look like you aint slept well,” said Maude.
“I haven’t,” Tigist said, rubbing at her eyes. “I was up half the night studying.”
Maude nodded. “It’s good you’re taking it serious, swatting up,” she said, “but you need to be rested too. We’re heading out to the borderlands to try and find a Cutter. While we’re out you should get some sleep.”
Tigist nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’ll try – but it’s hard – I keep thinking about what it might be.”
“You heard nothing else from the Burners?” David asked.
“No,” Tigist said. “Nothing but the Cry. Once we’re qualified that tends to be it until the end of the placement and for me that won’t be for years and years.”
“It all falls hardest on her, poor girl,” said Maude as they walked away. “She’s the one must fight if whatever it is breaks through. And she’ll know she must win if it happens. Unlucky girl – Andy never had anything,” she paused for a moment. “Good thing too. He was nice enough but a bit of a lump to be honest. This one seems sharper. I’m glad we have her.”
“The stuff she makes is nice too,” said David. “Modern, but good, strong work. I like it.”
Sally nodded. “She’s got an exhibition in Beckworth next month – her parents are coming down to see it.”
Then they walked up road and onto the Meadow estate where the Borderlands began.
…
The Estate had not really been an estate for a generation, but everyone still called it that.
The family who owned it – the Gascoignes– had suffered a multi-generational run of bad luck and feckless sons, and over a hundred years they’d had to sell off more and more land until they were left with just a hundred or so acres of open fields, a pond and a small wood.
Even the family seat was gone, burned down in a fire in the early 1920s and replaced by a smaller chalet in which the elderly Lord, his wife and one of their children who’d never left home lived an amiable and alcohol-soaked retirement.
The grounds had once been a famous park and while almost all of it was now ploughed and commercially farmed, the rolling landscape beneath rows of wheat, the neat, planned ponds and the decaying ruins of follies and outbuildings showed the bones of what it had once been.
“Borderlands,” said David as he climbed over a style and into the estate, “aint Willerby, and not our responsibility to manage, but we keep an eye on them because things and people try to get in, and we have things and people that sometimes try and get out. It’s the Cutters’ job to watch over it, and they’ll have heard the Cry from the Burners before we did. I’d like a word with one, but they often work far away and can be hard to find.”
Maude shaded her eyes with a hand and looked over the dips and rises. “There’s no sign,” she said. “I can’t see or hear nothing. We should try one of the woods – that’s where we’re most likely to find them.”
The closest patch of wood to the style, Cotton’s Furze, was a long, narrow stretch running along the road that connected Willerby to Beckworth. It was a managed wood with a locked gate and “Keep Out, Private Property, No Trespassers” signs.
Maude lent over the fence and called in.
“Willerby here,” she said, “it’s about the Cry – anyone about?”
There was no answer.
“Hello!”, shouted David.
He waited a moment for a reply and then when there wasn’t one, took a key from his pocket and unlocked the gate.
“Keep out don't mean us,” said David, “they won’t mind us going in, not on business like this. Trespassers don’t come with keys.”
The gate opened onto an unsurfaced and rutted track about ten feet across that tunnelled its way past the trunks of old trees and meandered beneath their intertwined canopies like a green river.
“There’s a Cutter camp a bit further on,” said Maude, “but there’ll probably be nobody there. They’ve a few around this estate and a few further out, and they move between them without rhyme or reason any of us understand.”
“I don’t like this – something feels wrong,” David said a few moments later. “What do you hear, Maude?”
Maude frowned. “I get what you mean, love,” she said. “Nothing, and this feels a heavy silence.”
“Why is hearing nothing bad?” Sally asked.
“Even when they aren’t there, Cutter land is always alive,” said David. “Birds, insects, animals – but today there’s nothing about.”
They turned the last corner before the camp and saw why.
“Oh no,” Maude said, because the camp had been ransacked.
The cabin at the centre had been torn apart and its contents – clothes, cans and tools –scattered around the clearing with the ruined splinters of what had been a rough outdoor kitchen.
“There’s been war here,” said David.
Something in the debris caught Maude’s eye.
Grim-faced she walked to the centre of the clearing and held it up. It was the splintered halves of a red and black wood splitting axe.
“So, the Cutter lost,” she said, “and whatever beat him must close.”
“We got to get back to Willerby,” said David. “We got to get back there right now. Dan – you’re the fastest – run. Raise the cry to Tigist. Tell her she needs to be out on guard. For all our sakes.”
…
The thing that killed and ate the Cutter was not really a wolf, but it knew how to wear clothes fitting the worlds it moved between.
For its last hunt it had worn a suit of scales and glowing red eyes that hypnotised young ones into the oblivion in its jaws.
In this world the Wolf-suit was good because it had all the things it needed people to know about it – big teeth, big eyes, big ears- things to freeze its prey so it could catch and eat them.
Woodcutters never fell to thrall and were dangerous, but unlike the quick and cruel ones he remembered from the last time he had visited this world, this cutter had been soft, slow and clumsy.
Before he knew what was on him his axe and neck were broken.
The Wolf had feasted.
The Wolf wanted more.
Unseen between the trees, licking his lips, he watched the four pick through over his triumph. He read them with his pointed mind and learned their place was a nearby village full of other soft, easy creatures and their even softer, easier young.
They were returning it to now and he could see the way.
The village also had a Smith – the only one for miles and miles around. It would have to be dealt with - whether through battle or truce - but once it was The Wolf would have a territory again, a haunt to rule over it in an ecstacy of chewed flesh and splintered bone.
The thing that wasn't really a wolf howled and bounced joyfully towards the village.
He remembered this delicious world well.
It was good to be back.
…
Although nobody else in Willerby heard it, the howl woke Tigist.
She pulled on a pair of jeans and blouse, collected her weapons from the safe in the cupboard under the stairs and strode up the centre of the road towards the turn-off at top end of the village.
She was very afraid but mostly glad this had come so suddenly with no time to worry or overthink about all the places the Wolf could have gone instead of Willerby.
The iron hammer over her shoulder and the silver knife sheathed at her belt, Tigist passed the church the Green Man and Jack’s Pool.
She drew level with the old cutting and heard voices from next to the allotments up ahead.
“Not too far, Sammy,” Lisa said, “be a lookout for mummy and daddy – they’ll be back any minute.”
Tigist looked up and saw Lisa, Sammy’s babysitter that day, waving at him on his scooter a hundred yards from the turn-off.
Then rounding the bend and stalking into Willerby, she saw the Wolf, saw it see Sammy and speed up, saw it blurring the air as it moved to loom over him, where it stopped, swaying slightly.
It was impossible to see all at once.
Tigist could focus on only one grotesque detail at a time – its huge and twitching ears, its white rolling eyes and its mouth of white teeth that snicked together as it spoke.
“I will gobble this young one now,” it said, in a big, bad voice as dark and hollow as mineshafts, “and then I will make my home here.”
“You may not, and you will not, for I stand guard” called Tigist, speaking the steps of the ancient dance. “You will leave now. You will go back and never return, for if you do not, I will break your bones with iron and pierce your heart with silver.”
She held up the hammer and the knife.
The Wolf stepped back and tilted its head to one side, reconsidering, working out, planning. It knew the hammer and knife and what they could do to it. The way this Smith held them suggested she would be more dangerous than the Cutter. It would be wise – it thought – to take a small victory and make time to think. “I will take the young one,” it said, “I claim it, it is mine.”
“You will not harm the child, and you will go forever,” Lisa said.
“I am a Wolf not a Fox,” the Wolf said, in a voice now as soft as treacle, “it will not hurt. It will be quick. I will not play. And I will leave for a year and a day and come back for just one more small one.”
The Wolf opened its jaws wider and wider until it was just sharp white teeth in a red void stretching away and away without end.
The great mouth towered over Sammy, who was looking up at it, frozen to the spot on his trike,
“I am the Smith here, and Smiths do not barter”, Tigist said. “Leave forever or I will break your bones with iron and pierce your dark heart with silver. You will never leave this place. You will disappear from all the worlds.”
Forcing herself to steadiness, suppressing shudders and trembling she stepped forward to take a fighter’s stance. She raised the iron hammer above her head. “I will break your bones,” she said, professionally proud and pleased with how steady her voice sounded.
The great jaws widened, and Tigist stepped into striking distance.
Then – as she had been taught, they should -the jaws began to shrink and pull away from Sammy. The monstrous ears and eyes reappeared.
“It is only one small one, let me have just this small one,” The Wolf said, now sulky, sly and petulant.
“Smiths do not barter,” Tigist said. “Leave forever or I will break your bones with iron and pierce your dark heart with silver.”
“Only one, and so small”, The Wolf said, but it was shrinking and moving away from Sammy as it spoke. It knew the rules and although she was smaller and slighter than those he had known before, he recognised Tigist as a strong Smith and felt no shame at being afraid.
The Cutter had been soft, but this Smith was not.
There were other haunts in other worlds where the young and weak were less well protected.
Had it not been for what happened just an instant later that would have been the end of it.
…
Dan rounded the bend still at a sprint and had only a moment to take everything in.
He saw the back of the Wolf, huge and black and his son in thrall below it.
He saw Lisa and he saw Tigist with the hammer above her head.
He sped up and put everything into the only strike he knew he’d get.
…
“You broke the promise!” roared the Wolf, joyfully, as Dan’s punch landed harmlessly on its back.
In an instant its jaws were a void again.
It spun to Dan, but before it could swallow him Tigist took a great overhead swing and hit it square with the hammer.
It landed with more force than her muscles alone could generate and hurled The Wolf away from Dan, over the road and in and then through the thick old hedge.
“Get back!” Tigist shouted. “Get behind me and run!”
Dan scooped Sammy up under his arm and did, calling to Lisa as he went past her to follow.
Lisa knew she should, but she didn’t – she stayed out of something more than thrall and was the only person to see the full battle all the way to its dreadful end.
Jaws hanging open to reveal teeth now grown as long as knives, the Wolf burst from the hedge in a shrapnel of broken twigs and leaves.
Tigist had just enough time to get the hammer back above her head before it was on her. She swung overhead and down again but knowing the Wolf would expect this she pulled it into a feint and then swung up hitting and shattering its lower jaw in a hail of bone and splintered enamel, sending it head over heels up in the air.
It landed on its back, but it was almost instantly on its feet again, new teeth erupting from its gums as its broken jaw began knitting itself back to together.
Tigist ran forward and struck again, swinging from the side, smashing at the side of the Wolf’s mouth and once again knocking it to the floor.
This time she did not allow it to gain its feet.
She stood over it and battered down on its writhing body with overhead blow after overhead blow, not allowing it the time to remake itself, barely aware of the sickening thumps and cracks or the anguished cries of the defeated monster as it was beaten out of existence.
There was only one thing left to do.
She reached down to her belt and pulled out the foot long silver knife. It was impossible for her to know where in the creature’s wrecked form its heart was, but she knew the knife would find it.
She pulled it up to her chest ready to thrust in and finish it.
And then the dumbest, silliest bad luck as she shifted her stance to get a better angle and slipped on a loose pebble.
It was nothing, but it was enough.
Something like a tentacle, black and reptilian, formed from the puddled Wolf and wrapped itself around her neck. She had just enough presence of mind to shove the knife as deeply as she could into it before the tentacle squeezed, lifted her up off her feet and then brought her down hard on the concrete, breaking her neck with a sound like the snap of an underfoot dry twig.
She was gone so fast she never heard the horrified screams of those who saw it happen or saw The Wolf turn to steam and boil up and away into the bright blue morning.
…
Three Burners arrived just minutes after the redundant ambulance left the village.
They were shaken and one – a middle-aged woman – wiped away tears when she heard how Tigist had died.
They took the hammer and the knife, Tigist’s computer, books and a few other odds and ends. They said new Smith would be sent soon and told them to be especially careful until they arrived.
David told the police she’d been killed by a hit and run.
The village was only nearly a cul-de-sac and sometimes when the traffic on the bypass was bad frustrated drivers used it as a rat-run, pitching up in Willerby where they weren’t wanted or welcome. They said they were all too shocked to get the plate or even remember the make and model of the car, said all they could remember was that it was either dark grey or black.
With three other witnesses all saying the same thing nobody questioned their story.
Tigist’s exhibition in Beckworth went ahead as something like a memorial or wake. Her family, friends and many villagers came.
It was very sad.
Her parents took her body and buried it in a churchyard near the family home.
Dan and Sally took in Donny.
They knew it wasn’t anywhere near enough to pay the debt they owed but it was something they knew she’d have wanted someone to do.
It didn’t seem right there was nothing in Willerby to remember her by, so the village commissioned a monumental stonemason.
He carved a simple inscription below a hammer and anvil motif, and it was mounted in the rear wall of the church bell tower.
Tigist Kebede.
November 1st 1998 – July 27th 2024.
Village Blacksmith, September 2022-July 27th 2024.
She killed the Wolf.
Long sword technique?
Too sad, poor brave Tigist!
This is scarily good writing...;The thing that killed and ate the Cutter was not really a wolf, but it knew how to wear clothes to fit the worlds it moved between.;