Who: Two werewolves — Vasha, bitten, and her mate Radu, born to the curse. The hags’ captives. The hags’ pantry.
Where: Vasha — in the treeline near the windmill, watching it, waiting for us. Radu — still chained inside.
Status: Vasha: free, by our hand, such as it is. Radu: captive. Us: sworn to come back.
First met: Session 6 (the muffled screaming in Granny’s cart); properly, by firelight, Session 7.
Vasha
The woman in the silver net. Bitten, not born — a Vallaki girl once, until a wolf-thing bit her and let her go. When the moon takes her she has no say in what she becomes, which is why she begged us not to cut the net: the silver was the only thing keeping her human. We dragged her out of that fight net and all, and at dawn she was a gaunt young woman with cropped hair and burns where the silver touched, saying thank you like she’d forgotten the words worked.
She fell in with the western pack because there was nowhere else to be what she is. She has no illusions about them: “I wouldn’t call them nice people.”
She stayed behind to scout the mill. When we come back — and we told her we would — she’ll know what we’re walking into.
Radu
Her mate. A werewolf born, who can control the beast — which is why the hags keep him: he is the sturdier stock. We have never seen his face. He is chained in that mill, and what the hags have been doing to him is written under “the pies,” below, because it should never be softened.
What they told us
- The pies are made of them. The hags hack off their arms; the curse grows the arms back; the millstone does the rest. Werewolves heal any wound not dealt by silver or magic, so the two of them are an endless larder. There were never any missing children. There didn’t need to be.
- Their pack lives far to the west, past the lake — the den of beasts from Madam Eva’s reading, we’d wager. Not an organized bunch: “they just do stuff.” Mostly born to the curse, mostly angry, and they kill strangers rather than talk to them.
- Their alpha is called Kiril — “K-I-R-I-L. She controls the pack” — and would sooner tear us apart than hear us out. The words “Radu and Vasha need help” might — might — buy an audience.
- Turning someone is rare. “Usually people don’t get turned. People get killed.” Vasha is the exception, and she doesn’t sound grateful about it.
Open questions
- Can we get Radu out before the hags carve him down to nothing that grows back?
- What does Lily’s tooth — “mends what otherwise cannot be healed” — have to do with a den of beasts far west?
- What happens to Vasha, and to a girl from Vallaki who can never go home, when this is over?