Wolves of the Thousandth Winter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Entry
Thora finds her own name in a thousand-year-old ledger, and the man whose name is on the next line walks in to stop her.
The ledger was the oldest thing in the Harrow Falls Historical Museum, and I had been told not to hurry with it.
I hurried anyway.
It was Monday, October nineteenth, a quarter to five, and the rain had been hitting the reading room window since lunch.
I was thirty-one years old, three weeks into a winter contract, and I had catalogued nothing but ice saws and church bulletins.
Then Edna Clavering, the director, put a canvas bundle on my table.
"The Hallsson donation," she said. "Nobody has opened it since 1964."
"Why not?"
"Nobody asked."
She went home at four-thirty, and I was alone with the bundle.
I pulled on my white cotton gloves and unwrapped it.
The book was bound in dark leather gone soft as a glove, with iron corners and a strap that had not been undone in sixty years.
It smelled of wood smoke and something older.
I opened it to the first page and my breath stopped.
It was Old Norse, in a clear brown hand, and the date was the winter of 1026.
A thousand years old, in a small-town museum, sitting under a desk lamp that cost eleven dollars.
I read Norse the way other people read menus.
The book was a pack ledger, and I do not mean a pack of cards.
Births of wolves, deaths of wolves, who led, who left, who was mated to whom.
The words said "wolf" the way a parish register says "baptized."
I thought it was a myth, written down by serious people.
I turned the leaves carefully, one at a time, and the years went by under my gloves.
Hands changed every few decades, the ink changed color, and the spelling slid toward Latin.
About two thirds of the way in, I found a page that was different.
The writing was larger, black, and slanted hard to the right.
At the top was a date, 1126, and a title, the seer.
Under it was one long entry, and a short line in Latin in the margin.
I read the margin first, because it was closer to my glove.
"She will refuse."
I smiled, because that is the sort of thing I say about myself.
Then I read the entry.
"At the Thousandth Winter, Gunnar son of the old Alpha, Alpha of the pack, will stand before his people with his mate."
"She is called Thora Asplund, keeper of this book, from the western country."
"You who read this: it is you."
I took my hand off the page.
The room was very quiet, and the rain sounded like someone drumming a pencil.
I read the line again, letter by letter, in case I was seeing something from my own head.
Thora Asplund.
My name, spelled the way my grandfather spelled it, with the little hook on the g that nobody uses in America.
The ink looked nine hundred years old.
I checked the paper under the lamp, because checking is what I do.
The fibers were right, and the iron-gall ink had eaten into the page the way it does after centuries.
Someone had written my name before my great-great-grandparents were born.
My first thought was a prank.
My second thought was that Edna would not do this to me.
My third thought was the sentence "You who read this: it is you," and the hair rose on my arms.
The bell over the front door rang.
I had locked that door at four-thirty.
I heard boots on the old floorboards, slow, and I knew without knowing how that they were coming for me.
The reading room door opened.
A man filled it.
He was six foot four at least, and as broad as the door.
Long dark-blond hair tied at the back of his neck, a beard cut close, a canvas jacket dark with rain.
His eyes were pale grey, and they were fixed on the book.
"Close it," he said.
His voice was low, with an accent I could not place.
"The museum is closed," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Close the book, Ms. Asplund."
He knew my name.
He crossed the room in three steps, faster than a man his size should move.
I put my gloved hand flat on the page to keep it from him.
He caught my wrist.
His hand was enormous and hot, even through the glove, and the heat ran up my arm.
It went into my chest and down through my stomach and stayed there, low and bright.
I made a sound I would have paid good money not to have made.
He heard it.
His grip tightened, and then it eased.
The grey of his eyes went to gold.
"It's you," he said, in a voice gone rough.
"It's every word on that page," I said. "I haven't read the rest."
"Don't."
"It's my name."
"I know whose name it is." He breathed out hard. "I have known it since eleven twenty-six."
"That's not funny."
"I'm not joking," he said. "I'm Gunnar Hallsson, I'm nine hundred and thirty-one years old, and my name is the one on the line above yours."
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