The House, Prologue 1—The Wolf

Prologue 1—The Wolf

The wolf stepped out of the shadows into the dim light falling through the domed glass ceiling. Frost formed in its paw prints as it crossed the open space surrounded by towering shelves. The winding balcony connecting the access ways was empty, as were the ladders climbing up the rows of metal racks. The Archives’ record keepers unlucky enough to be assigned to the restricted stacks had finished their shift, abandoning their charges to the silent whispers of long-forgotten times.

The wolf shook its ruff, shedding more frost across the polished floor. A thousand years had passed since it had walked these halls, and much longer since the Builders had vanished. And though their treasures still haunted the glass cabinets, iron boxes, and polymer crates stacked high on the steel grating, these weren’t the only ghosts haunting these halls, nor was it treasures the wolf sought.

The airlock’s glass panels frosted over as the wolf crossed to the next hall. The air in the second hall felt dry and cool, almost brittle. Time-worn volumes and yellowed manuscripts lined the shelves, their leather-bound spines cracked and their pages fragile from age. As the wolf crossed the hall, starlight glinted in golden lettering as if tiny eyes followed its progress. But it was not the written word the wolf hunted today.  

The final hall greeted it with the metallic scent of machinery tinged with a hint of ozone. Night lights illuminated the stacks, casting shadows across the metal towers and countless shelves housing the active part of the Archives’ collections. The meticulously organised and labelled racks held the history of the last decades in layers from etched drums, microfilms, and magnetic tapes higher up in the stacks to the quartz coins, data cubes, and spelled holos on the ground level. The wolf sniffed the sleek reading desks and the stools neatly tucked underneath, but the scent it sought was not to be found amongst them. 

Outside a clock rang the last bell of nightturn. The wolf gazed upward at the glass dome and crescent moon. In its glacial eyes, blue skies fell into the void between the stars like sand trickling through an hourglass. 

The vision faded, and the wolf circled back to the first hall where it found a dark, cavelike space underneath a wooden crate stamped with faded letters and filled with the familiar scents of times long gone and shadows passed.  

It lay down, resting its head on its paws. The boy was not here, but he would come, and when he did, more than one of the restless ghosts would wake. 

—