by Olivia Myers
“Why?” Imogen felt a sliver of dread melt down her throat.
“He’s gone,” Lucille said. “To the mountains somewhere. For meditation. He does it every now and again. But he’s usually back within a month. Right around the full moon,” Lucille finished with a wink.
Imogen did her best to share the smile but her heart was sinking rapidly. A whole month. If he’d already committed murder, there’s no telling what kind of damage Mundi could do in that amount of time. Especially now when he could be anywhere, gathering his pack, preparing for the strike at the time when his powers would be greatest.
“Imogen, you’re pale,” Lucille said, her voice full of concern.
“I’m okay. Just a little tired. I had a difficult night.”
“Okay,” Lucille smiled warmly. “Listen, don’t strain yourself too hard. Take it easier. Try to relax more. Remember that you’ve got friends to help you out when you need it. There’s no need to worry so much.”
There’s no need to worry so much. But no other words could have caused Imogen as much worry as these. There was a psychopath loose near her village, amassing an army of wolves with the intent of wiping out humans and vampires alike. All those who Imogen loved the most were targets, and the one she loved more than any was the most apparent target of them all.
Because now it was clear to her that Mundi had come specifically for Cerise. Whatever history they’d shared, whatever relationship they might once have had had been eaten up in this invisible monster’s consuming revenge, a revenge that had spanned years, a century.
And again Imogen was attacked with the sensation that had made her sick these past few days: the idea that once again Cerise was not telling her everything. The idea that something much more important, more important than even the threat of Mundi was lurking beneath the surface of what little information Imogen knew. Why was Cerise so important? Why was she Mundi’s target? Surely Darla’s murder in the strip club had been meant as a message for Cerise. But why? What did these people know that Imogen didn’t?
It was time for her to return to her friends. Imogen rose and embraced Lucille, trying to rid herself of the horrible gulf that separated them. You want to kill me, the thought nestled in the embrace of the other girl. You don’t realize it, but you will soon.
Back at her table, Alice and Agatha stared at her with incredulity and distrust. “What were you talking about,” they wondered. “What took you so long?”
But the unspoken conversation that lingered between her and Lucille was impossible to fit to words, and the turmoil knotting inside her choked her with its vast inexpressiveness. She swallowed it down, put on her best, most deceptive smile. She was tender and kind, just as Cerise was tender and kind when she let the unspoken secrets glide beneath her words, past Imogen’s understanding.
“Trying to make some new friends. That’s all.”
THE END
Wild in the Highlands
I should have known this day was coming, Bridget thought. She closed her eyes and buried her face in the rough fabric of her skirt. I should have known I wouldn’t be any different.
She sat in a small clearing just out of earshot of the village. Her back rested against the smooth bark of her favorite birch tree, and she was surrounded by early morning mist. It was easy to pretend that she was alone out here, that she was free. But after hearing her father and mother’s conversation earlier this morning, she knew it was time to stop pretending. Within just a few weeks’ time, she would be married.
Bridget exhaled slowly. It was going to happen. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
She ran her fingers through her hair – it was long and wavy and red, just like all of the other women’s hair in the clan, and she hadn’t brushed it yet this morning, so it was scraggly. Her eyes, which were a greenish hazel, were her only real defining feature; her mother had the same color of eyes that she did, but nearly everyone else had gray eyes.
Bridget looked at her hand, which was small and pale, and right now had dirt under the nails from yesterday, when she had climbed one of the tallest trees she was allowed to go to. Yesterday, she had been a girl. Today, she knew, it was time to start being a woman.
A snapping branch startled her, and Bridget spun around, peering around the side of her tree. But it was just her sister, Alisa. Alisa was two years older than Bridget, and they had been close when they were younger, but when Alisa got married off a year ago, the distance between the sisters had grown.
“What are you doing out here so early?” Alisa asked, carefully picking a burr off of the skirts of her dress. “Mother and Father are looking for you.”
“I’ll come back soon,” Bridget said, wiping the tears off of her face and hoping that Alisa didn’t notice them. She felt foolish for crying. Alisa, after all, had already faced the same fate that was now looming in front of Bridget. She knew Alisa didn’t love her husband, even after being married to him for over a year.
Alisa frowned, apparently having noticed the tears after all.
“What happened, Bridget?” She crouched down next to her sister, being careful not to let her dress touch the ground that was still damp with morning dew.
Bridget bit her lip, not wanting to admit to Alisa why she had been crying, but it spilled out of her anyway.
“I-I heard Father and Mother talking,” she said. “This morning. I woke up early, and they didn’t know I could hear them.” She paused. “Father wants to marry me off soon.” Her voice hitched on the last word, and Bridget went silent, fighting off another sob.
Her sister’s face softened. “Oh, Bridget, it really isn’t that bad. It’s scary at first, but once you get used to it, it isn’t much different from living with Mother and Father, other than the fact that you have more chores to do.”
Bridget stared at her sister. It was different for her. Alisa had always been the good one, the one who stayed home with Mother and washed the clothes, or prepared the evening meal. Bridget had been the one out climbing trees, trying to follow the men when they went hunting. Bridget had been the one who had dreamed of a different life.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life cooking for, cleaning for, and… and bedding a man I don’t even love!” She threw herself into her sister’s arms and started sobbing again. “Please, Alisa, can’t you do anything?”
Her sister’s arms wrapped around her, holding her gently as she cried. Bridget eventually sniffled and pulled away, looking down at the ground as she wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper. “I didn’t mean to get your clothes dirty.”
Alisa looked down at her now damp dress and raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t seem mad. Instead, she looked at her sister, watching her closely. Then she seemed to decide something, and her face set itself in an expression of determination.
“You’re sure you don’t want to marry anyone in the clan?” she asked.
Bridget nodded firmly. She knew all of the men in their clan, and couldn’t think of a single one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Some, life Ralf, were at least nice, but others were simply cruel.
“Then I have an idea,” Alisa said. “But if you do this, there would be no going back, do you understand?”
Bridget nodded again, her heart leaping this time. “What can I do?” she asked, gazing into her sister’s eyes. “I’ll do anything, if there’s even a hope of escaping this fate.”
Alisa nodded. “If you ran away, or pretended to run away, just for a couple of days, then the clan would have to question your purity. They wouldn’t be able to marry you off anymore. You’d be able to spend the rest of your life as an unmarried woman.”
Bridget nodded slowly. It made sense, and she would then be able to choose a different path for herself. Perhaps she would learn childcare, or midwifery.
“I’ll do it,” she said, her voice firm. She was beginning to feel confident again for the first time since hearing her parents’ conversation this
morning. “I’ll go now.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Alisa replied. “You will at least need some supplies.”
“But if I go back,” Bridget said, “they might try to keep me in camp. I’ll be fine, I know how to survive in the woods on my own for two days. I don’t even have to go that far.”
Alisa sighed. “Look, wait here. I’ll run back and get you some stuff. Food, a water skin, a knife, blanket, fire starter… can you think of anything else?”
Bridget shook her head.
“Okay, wait here,” Alisa said. “I shouldn’t be long.”
Bridget hugged her sister tightly in thanks. “I’ll be here, waiting.”
***
True to her word, Alisa wasn’t gone for more than half an hour. She had managed to stuff all of the supplies in a small pack, and handed it over to Bridget.
“Sorry,” Alisa said. “The food is leftover from yesterday, and the blanket is kind of old. I didn’t want them to notice anything was missing.”
“It’s okay,” Bridget said, hefting the pack and then slipping the strap over her shoulder. “Thank you, Alisa,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
The sisters hugged again, and then Bridget turned towards the forest.
“Are you sure about this?” Alisa asked.
“Two days,” Bridget said, taking a deep breath. “It should be easy. The men do it for much longer when they go hunting.”
“If you’re not back within two days,” Alisa said, “then I’m telling them everything. If you get hurt out there, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bridget said, meeting her sister’s eyes with a smile. “See you in a couple of days!” Bridget chose a direction away from the village and began walking. She could feel her sister watching her, blessing her with her gaze.
***
The going was easy. Bridget knew these woods well. She had been playing in them since she was a little girl. Even though she wasn’t allowed to go very far alone, she had often accompanied her mother on trips into the forest looking for herbs, and she had followed her father around on patrols. She knew that to really be out of reach of anyone at the village, she would have to go a ways past the normal boundary. She wasn’t scared, though. She decided that if she was going to be spending two days alone in the woods, she might as well take advantage of it. She would take the opportunity to explore.
Bridget paused at the stream that served as a marker for the clan’s usual territory. Past this, the forest was wild. Only the men came out here, for hunting, and Bridget knew she would have to keep alert so that she didn’t stumble onto a hunting party. But that should be easy enough; even the men tended to stick to the well-worn game trails.
Bridget chose a faint trail that was heading slightly north, and decided to follow it as long as she could. She wasn’t that worried about getting lost; once the clan knew she was gone, they would send people out to look for her. She could always light a signal fire if she got into trouble, and she would be found within a few hours. But she was determined not to do that unless it was an emergency. She didn’t want to be found too quickly, because then the clan elders might decide that she was still marriageable.
The day wore on, slowly at first, and then with growing urgency, as if the night was rushing toward her at a breakneck pace. She realized that she would have to stop soon and find somewhere to camp. She had never been this far away from her family, and she had never been this alone. She wasn’t scared, exactly, but she was very aware of her aloneness.
It was getting chilly out as the daylight fled, and Bridget thought longingly of the blanket in her pack, but she forced herself to keep going. She didn’t want to stop too close to the village and risk being found in the morning.
She rounded a bend in the trail and stopped in her tracks. A great gray wolf stood on the trail in front of her. Bridget felt frozen, too surprised to even be scared. The wolf regarded her with an oddly aware look. Bridget felt almost as if a person was looking back at her, instead of a wild beast. She met the wolf’s silver-gray eyes with her own. Something seemed to pass between them, as if their hearts were beating at the same speed, in rhythm with each other. Bridget felt a strange connection to the wolf. The wolf seemed to feel whatever it was too, because it cocked its head and continued to gaze at her, instead of running away or attacking, like she would expect a normal wolf to do.
Suddenly a branch snapped somewhere, deeper in the forest. The wolf was gone, as quickly as a deer disappears when it hears a hunter. Bridget didn’t move for a moment after the wolf left. Her heart was pounding. What had just happened? And what had scared off the wolf?
She didn’t want to find out. She bit her lip and looked around. It was nearly dark enough to set up camp, anyway. She gazed at a nearby tree that had nice, sturdy branches. While spending the night in a tree wouldn’t be comfortable, it would at least be safe. She hadn’t been afraid of the wolf when it was standing in front of her, but now the thought of a wolf pack stalking through the trees around her made her shiver. Plus, there was something out there that had scared off the wolf.
Her mind made up, Bridget walked over to the tree and began to climb it. The lower branches were easy to reach, and she hauled herself up about twenty feet before she felt safe enough to stop. Two branches formed a sort of cradle near the trunk, and Bridget settled here. She pulled the blanket out of her bag, and then looped the strap of the bag around a branch. Then Bridget leaned back against the trunk and closed her eyes.
Sleep didn’t come easily. The sounds of the forest seemed louder than ever, and Bridget found herself jerking back awake every time she approached the edge of sleep. She kept reminding herself that she was in a tree, safely off the ground, and that there was nothing else in these woods that could climb, other than squirrels and bears. As far as bears went, the hunters said that only baby bears really climbed, since the adults were too big. This was a small comfort, and after nearly an hour of unsuccessfully trying to sleep, Bridget retrieved the old knife out of her bag and held it in its sheath against her chest. It made her feel slightly better; the solid weight of steel in her hand was always comforting. It didn’t do much to stop her mind from wandering to thoughts other than those of the immediate danger of being eaten, though.
She kept thinking of her home, and what her parents must be thinking right now. She wondered if Alisa had told them anything. Alisa had probably kept her word, and would remain silent unless Bridget failed to return after two days.
When Bridget thought of her future beyond returning to her home, it was fuzzy. She wouldn’t be able to be married off to one of the men of the clan, but she would still have to make herself useful somehow. If she ended up not having a natural aptitude for healing, then what would she do? She supposed that she could spend her days tending gardens and gathering herbs and berries when it was warm out, and in the cold seasons, she could repair clothing for the unmarried men. It wouldn’t be the most interesting life ever, but at least she would have more freedom than she would if her father forced her to marry some boorish man who wouldn’t let her leave the house without permission.
Bridget’s thoughts also kept wandering back to the wolf. She hadn’t been scared of it, even though she should have been. Something about the way that it had looked at her, the intensity of its gaze, made her feel like the wolf had really seen her, the person she was. It was as if the wolf had looked at her and known her, in a way that no one else ever had.
Sleep finally came to Bridget as she lay cradled in the branches in the tree. Her last thoughts before she sank into her dreams were of the gray-eyed wolf.
***
The morning dawned cold and gray. Bridget blinked in the pale light, disoriented at first. Why wasn’t she in her bed? Then she remembered the events of yesterday, and squeezed her eyes shut again. Yesterday, she had made the decision to take her life into her own hands. Right now, that decision seemed frightening and harshly real. But she knew that she would have made that same deci
sion again today, or tomorrow, or any other day.
A sudden rustling made her freeze. She exhaled slowly and opened her eyes. Shadows and sound moved beneath her. Something was roaming around her tree.
Bridget still had the knife clutched in her hand; it had grown warm with her body heat during the night. It was still in its sheath, though, and she didn’t want to draw it yet. Climbing down from a tree with a naked blade in her hand didn’t seem like a good idea.
She was getting ahead of herself. It was probably just a deer, or an especially large rabbit. Bridget gathered her courage and slowly moved her head, peering down around one of the branches that supported her. She almost fell out if the tree in surprise when she saw a man standing below her. He was dark-haired, but that was all she could really tell from this angle.
She shifted, trying to get a better view, and to her horror one of her arms snapped a small branch. She froze, and the man looked up. Their eyes met, and for a moment, Bridget flashed back to last night, when she had looked into the wolf’s eyes. She could have sworn that they were exactly the same color as the man’s eyes. And something about them, the intensity of his gaze, reminded her of the wolf, too.
“You’re awake,” the man said, jolting Bridget from her thoughts.
She blinked at him, and realized suddenly how foolish she must look, staring silently down at him from twenty feet up a tree.
“Who are you?” Bridget asked, trying to keep her voice from wavering. She didn’t think it would be good to show fear to this stranger. Perhaps running away from her village had been a mistake. She only wanted her family to think that she might be impure; being alone out here with a strange man seemed too close to the real thing for her.
“My name is Will,” he said. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to hurt you. I just—I saw you last night. There were wolves, and I thought you seemed like you could use some help.”
The man’s eyes were warm and sincere, and he wasn’t carrying any weapons that Bridget could see. Even though she knew, logically, that she shouldn’t go near him, something inside of her seemed to instinctively trust him. Still, she was wary.