Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [161]
She continued to play the Five-Bone variant. The draugr insisted on this and even made a sort of ceremony out of the start, lining up the five dragonbones in front of her, picking up each one with exaggerated deliberation, and throwing them down one at a time. She insisted on lining up Skylan’s five dragonbones in front of him, watching him intently as he swept them up in his hand and gave them a careless toss.
Other than the nightly games, which Skylan came to dread with all his heart and soul, there was nothing to do on board the fog-bound ship except eat and sleep and talk to Wulfe. The boy was happy to relate the history of his eleven years. Skylan would have been happier if the boy had told the truth, but at least the version Wulfe recounted was entertaining.
“I’ve lived with the druids since I was four and they found me running with the wolves.”
“Wolves? What were you doing with wolves?”
“They raised me,” said Wulfe.
Skylan grinned. “Wolves raised you?”
“They were my family,” Wulfe said with a sadness he had never quite managed to overcome. “One was my father.”
Skylan snorted in disbelief.
“I’m not lying,” Wulfe said.
“You expect me to believe your father was a wolf?”
“My father wasn’t always a wolf. He was an Ugly One, like you. He was in the woods one day, stalking a deer, and not watching where he was going. He stepped inside a ring of mushrooms.”
Skylan shook his head. All knew that a ring of mushrooms—a faery ring, as it was known—was a deadly trap set by the fae to capture men, one to be avoided at all costs.
“What happened?” he asked.
“He tried to escape, but the more he struggled, the deeper he sank. He was buried up to his neck. That night, the faeries dragged him out. They tied him up in cobweb and took him to their realm and made him one of their slaves. He was working in the palace of the faery queen when he met my mother. She was a princess and the most beautiful woman my father had ever seen. She had never met a mortal before, for the faery queen had kept her daughter hidden away from the Ugly Ones—”
“Why do you call us that?” Skylan interrupted.
“It’s what the faeries call you,” Wulfe explained.
“We’re not ugly,” Skylan protested.
“Compared to the faeries you are,” said Wulfe.
“How do you know? Have you ever seen a faery?” Skylan challenged, laughing.
“I saw my mother,” Wulfe said. “She is more beautiful than you can imagine. I saw my grandmamma, too, but she was hideous. Should I go on with my story?”
“Go ahead. I don’t have anything better to do,” Skylan said, sighing.
“My father fell in love with my mother and she fell in love with him. They kept their love a secret a long time, but then my mother discovered I was coming and she was terrified, for she knew the faery queen would be furious at the thought of her daughter bringing an Ugly One into the world. My parents tried to escape, but they were caught by my grandmamma’s guards, terrible spiders that bound them up in cobweb.
“The queen locked my mother away and cast a curse upon my father and all his family, turning them into wolves. When I was born, my grandmamma gave me to my father and the wolf pack to raise. She forbade my mother to see me or have anything to do with me. My mother disobeyed. She would come to me in the night and hold me in her arms and sing to me.”
A tear slid down Wulfe’s cheek.
“My mother was so miserable that once she took me to the faery realm to introduce me to my grandmamma. She hoped that when the queen saw me, she would relent and forgive my mother and let me live with them. My grandmamma hated me. She said I was the ugliest of Ugly Ones. My mother wept and begged, but the queen threw me out. I lived with the wolves until the day the druids found me and took me away to live with them. I never saw my mother or father again after that.”
“What was it like, living with the druids after being raised by wolves?” Skylan meant the