Page 12 of Wolf of Ashes
I can only guess he’s scrutinizing my shape for the purpose of conjuring clothing that will fit, but as far as my appearance goes, I don’t know what I look like.
Our jailer never gave us a mirror. My mother once described my features to me: golden eyes, black hair with gray streaks that turn to blonde at the end, and high cheekbones.
I was able to feel the shape of my face to verify her description and I could see the strands of my long, matted hair by pulling it forward, but the only way I’ve seen my eyes is in the blurry reflection off metal surfaces.
The keeper ceases scrutinizing me and returns his attention to the way forward, urging me onward once again.
He moves so quickly that for a second, I think he’s going to leave me in my cold clothing after all, but he waves his left hand in my direction as he moves.
A bright-yellow jacket takes shape and wraps around my chest and arms. It’s puffy enough to make my arms stick out a little at my sides and long enough to cover my butt. A moment after that, warm pants appear around my legs, wrapping from my waist to my ankles. And finally, a snuggly pair of boots covers my feet.
All while I continue to hurry along beside him.
Suddenly, I’m warm all the way to my bones and it feels like I’m walking on clouds.
It’s an uncanny feeling. I’m weirdly pampered.
I wonder if this is why people wear shoes.
I have hard calluses on the soles of my feet that protected them from the stone floor of my cage, butdamn, I could get used to this sort of comfort.
My teeth stop chattering now that my body is protected against the freezing air. “What about the panthers?”
The keeper’s focus continues to remain directly ahead as he pushes onward, his footsteps slowing even further when the air becomes colder.
At my question, he waves his left hand in the air again. Energy crackles around his fingertips and lights up the space around us.
Doggy jackets appear on the panthers, the kind I’ve seen in children’s book illustrations of cute puppies belonging to even cuter kids. The jackets are made of pink-and-white checkered material that’s fluorescent and glows brightly in the dark.
“Delightful,” I mutter.
One of the male panthers yelps and tears at the material with his teeth, quickly ripping it sufficiently to shimmy out of it. He gives me a self-satisfied grin as he resumes shivering in the cold. I supposed he’d rather freeze than wear such a brightly-colored jacket.
The female panther doesn’t attack her new coat, but she turns her eyes up at me and gives me a hard stare.
“Not impressed, huh?” I ask.
She bares her teeth at me before she slinks along beside me.
A step ahead, the keeper draws to a stop.
“Here,” he says. “There’s a weakness in the boundary. Something on the other side must have been eating away at it.” His brow quickly creases. “I’m not sure what could be waiting for us if we go through this way. I sense it isn’t the natural world…”
“What do you mean ‘not the natural world’?”
Even as I ask my question, he peers back the way we came and the tension in his shoulders grows. I, too, sense the increasing pull in our environment, which tugs at my back even as the cold pushes at my front.
“It’s this or nothing,” the keeper says. “We’ll have to chance it.”
Black claws grow quickly from his fingertips and he pushes them through the air in front of him, pulling the darkness apart with the same action he’d use to open curtains.
“Quickly,” he says. “I can’t hold it open for long.”
I squint at the much brighter light spilling through the gap he’s created. It’s impossible to see what lies beyond the narrow opening, and I hope the keeper isn’t sending me to my death.
I’m reassured when the female panther darts through without hesitation, followed quickly by the three males, all four of them disappearing within seconds.
I step in behind them, crouching so I can slip through the parted darkness beneath the keeper’s arms. The freezing-cold edges of his realm brush my shoulders as I pass by, and I feel the sting all the way through the puffer jacket like icicles ramming into me.
