Fell (2007)

Fell is a novel, written by David Clement-Davies as a follow-up to The Sight. The book was published in 2007 by Amulet Books. It follows the story of Fell, a wolf who left his pack after the events of The Sight.

Plot summary

The book starts with a pack of grey wolves walking through the snowy regions of Transylvania. One of the pups looks up at a hill and can see an outline of a black wolf. She tells her father, the Dragga, that it might be Fell, the ghost wolf that humans and Varg fear. Because, while Larka has become respected and loved among the Varg for the part she played in the death of Morgra, Fell became feared among them, and that he is a loner, which is unnatural to other Varg.

Lost in his grief and guilt over the death of his sister, Larka, Fell rejects the gift of the Sight, and becomes a Kerl, which is the wolf name for a loner. The pack keeps the thoughts of curses out of their heads, and Fell watches them leave. He then goes to a pool and looks into it. His dead sister, Larka, appears to him, and she shows him a picture of a girl with a tattoo in the shape of an eagle on her arm. Larka then tells Fell to find and protect the girl.

The girl who Fell saw is Alina Sculcavant, who is growing up in the care of Malduk, a shepherd who rescued her from the snows. He forces her to dress as a boy and work hard for him. The other villagers believe Alina to be a changeling, and fear her for it. One day Alina finds a parchment that holds the true secret of her past, but Malduk and his wife, Ranna, who have tried to hide it from her for years, find out. They murder a villager and frame Alina, so that she is forced to flee into the mountains to discover who she truly is.

Later Alina and Fell get trapped inside an ice cavern. While they are there, they discover that they can mentally communicate using the Sight, and Fell eventually decides to accompany Alina on her journey due to his vision of Larka.

On their journey, Alina goes to find a man mentioned to her by Ivan, who was one of her few friends in Moldov. She eventually finds the man, a blacksmith named Lescu. Alina stays with Lescu and his son, Catalin, for a time, during which Lescu teaches Alina to use a sword and Fell spends some time out in the forest, where he meets his adopted brother, Kar, and a she-wolf named Tarlar.

Later soldiers attack the house, killing Lescu. Catalin is forced to travel with Alina and Fell.

Alina finds out that she has a real family and that the Lady Romana is her real mother and the supposedly dead Lord Dragomir is her real father. However, Alina doesn't know that her father was murdered secretly by his best friend, Vladeran. Vladeran then had Alina taken away to be killed because she was the true heir to the throne, but Alina and her soldier escort befell an accident. The soldier was killed but Alina survived, and that was when Malduk found her. Meanwhile, Vladeran took over as Lord of Castelu and married Dragomir's wife, the Lady Romana. Vladeran and Romana now have a seven-year-old son, Elu.

Characters

This is a list of characters in the novel.

Humans

Alina, or "Alin"—her male alias—was found by Malduk in the snow when she was around eight years old with a dead soldier and his horse, also dead. At the beginning of Fell, Alina is fifteen, hiding the fact that she is female by keeping her red hair short and by binding her chest. Alina is an avid storyteller, and her stories usually consist of tales about goblins, Baba Yaga, and fairies—anything to take her mind from what Malduk and Ranna put her through. Over the years, though, Alina had gotten quite good at storytelling and likes telling stories for their own sake, and enjoys telling stories to others such as Mia. She lives with Malduk, Ranna, and their niece Mia. Because of a "magic potion" given to Alina by Malduk, she has developed amnesia and only in dreams can remember pieces of what happened to her before she was lost in the snow. Alina flees her home when Ranna frames her for murder.

Malduk - old shepherd who, because of his injured back, makes his wife and Alina do a lot of the work around his home. Malduk took Alina in after finding her in the snow, and constantly hangs the idea that Alina owes him for it over her head. He is a superstitious, often cruel man who hardly gives Alina anything to eat aside from bread and a "potion" that he claims will keep the goblins away from Alina, who is said to be a Changeling. A tsinga, or witch/gypsy, gave Malduk the mixture that in reality gave Alina amnesia. This was to ensure that the topic of where Alina came from would not come up, since the girl was already under suspicion because of her strange origins and red hair. Alina's red hair is mentioned in the book, and the villagers of Moldov seem to think that she's a Saxon. Malduk makes Alina do more work than even a boy is expected to do, and both he and his wife Ranna treat her cruelly. Malduk, while pursuing Alina with a band of villagers, is killed by Fell when the wolf moves to protect Alina.

Ranna - Malduk's wife, and a person who is even more cruel than her husband, who actually is somewhat afraid of his wife because of her temperament. Unlike Malduk, Ranna has no reservations about things such as killing—apparently Malduk would have killed Alina had he not been so superstitious, and had he not felt some affection very deep down for the girl. When Alina is accused of murdering Bogdan, who was another shepherd of Moldov, Ranna (who really murdered Bogdan using Alina's knife) pretends to be hurt by Alina's supposed act, saying she "loved him [her] so."