The Hellhound’s UnChristmas Miracle

by Chant, Zoe

  “Whatever, Tinkerbell. And—come on. You must be used to everyone worrying by now.”

  “Yeah…” She was used to it, and she got it. Really. She’d been born premature, and her inner sheep had never grown larger than lamb-sized. She still had dodgy lungs. But being small didn’t mean she was totally pathetic. She wasn’t going to let it stop her going on her OE. In fact, it made the trip all the more tempting. She had months of freedom ahead of her, a chance to do all the fun stuff she could never do at home, surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles.

  All the fun stuff.

  “From the look on your face right now maybe we should all be worried,” Aroha deadpanned. “But you know why you’re doing the family rounds, though, right? They all think you’re going to meet your mate and be too busy fucking happily ever after to come back.”

  “Aroha!”

  It felt like everyone in the bus turned to look at her. Sheena slunk down in her seat, mouthing an apology. Her cheeks burned, even though she knew the other passengers were only staring at her because she’d squeaked her cousin’s name so loudly she drowned out the music blaring from the seat across the aisle. She was wearing earbuds. No one else had heard what Aroha said.

  “Why’re you looking at me like that? It’s true.”

  “That’s…” You can’t be serious, Sheena was about to say. Except she was the only one protesting. Her sheep thought Aroha was being perfectly reasonable.

  Like you could recognize ‘reasonable’ if it danced naked in front of you, Sheena huffed at it.

  Well… her sheep replied, dozily. I don’t think ‘reasonable’ would be naked? Though that would be nice.

  That’s not the point!

  Sheena rubbed her forehead and turned her focus back to Aroha. Her cousin was sitting up in bed, her back against the wall. Thank God. If Aroha had come out with something like that in front of the rest of the family, Sheena probably would have disappeared in a blaze of embarrassment.

  Which would be standard operating procedure for Aroha. But she hadn’t teased Sheena about it at her goodbye party, where it would have had maximum results. She’d waited until they were talking in private.

  Relatively private, Sheena amended, glancing at the full bus around her. The woman in the seat next to her gave her a tired look that said, as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud, Please don’t make any more noise.

  Sheena did her best apologetic grimace and turned back to her phone.

  Wait.

  Aroha had just dropped a perfect bombshell like that, and hadn’t immediately followed it up? She was the queen of the one-two hit, not the one-hit-and-give-you-time-to-recover.

  Sheena frowned. Aroha wasn’t even looking at her. Her eyes were fixed on something offscreen with an intensity that Sheena suspected meant she wasn’t looking at anything at all. Just looking away. If that wasn’t enough, she started twisting a strand of her hair so hard Sheena was worried she would yank all the strands right out.

  “Oh!” Sheena gasped, so startled by the realization that she had to fight back her sheep’s urge to leap up and run around the nearest paddock until whatever had surprised her had gone away. The woman next to her tutted ferociously. “Sorry!” Sheena said quickly. Her whole brain, sheep and all, was fizzing. “That’s why you’re not coming with me? Seriously?”

  “I have things I want to do with my life!” Aroha protested, throwing up her hands. The video feed swooped and then resettled to show her face. She was biting her lip. “Not that finding the fated love of my life and having babies ever after isn’t doing something, but I’ve got things to do here, first.” Her chin went out stubbornly, an expression Sheena knew as well as the back of her own hand.

  “You could have said something. I thought you just didn’t want to be stuck in a plane with me for thirty hours,” she joked.

  “Well, yeah, that too.” Aroha shot her a sly smile that dissolved too quickly. “Isn’t that why you’re going away, though? Don’t tell me you never thought about it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Why are you going, then?”

  “To get away from you lot,” she retorted automatically, but her mind was already leaping ahead, following the train of thought Aroha had shoved in front of her.

  Every shifter had a soulmate somewhere in the world. Everyone knew that. It was no question the most magical part of being a shifter, because it was the only thing Sheena had ever known to break through her uncles’ stoic Southern Man shells to reveal the tenderness and passion they hid deep inside. Very deep.

  But she hadn’t thought about it for herself. Finding your soulmate and settling down was part of being grown up, like buying a house and owning a matching dinner set. She’d spent so long filing it away with the other things she was definitely not going to manage anytime soon that she hadn’t even considered it might actually happen to her.

  Now, for the first time since she was seven years old and competing with Aroha over who could come up with the most fantastic-sounding mate, she really thought about it.

  She might find her mate out there. The one person in the whole world who was perfectly suited to her. Which was a bit of a worry, really. Sheena sometimes thought she wasn’t suited to herself, especially when something startled her sheep and the next thing she knew, she’d run off somewhere and got herself lost.

  But the thing that hit her like a rugby ball to the chest was the idea that being bound to someone so inextricably might mean she never came home again.

  It did happen. Aroha was right. Maybe that was why her parents had insisted she do this massive roadie and see all her relatives before she went overseas. They were worried that she would find her mate and immediately settle down wherever she was at the time, like a seed blown on the wind. Somewhere overseas, never to come home again.

  She looked out at the unfamiliar landscape flashing past the windows. Sheena had grown up in Central Otago, a land of endless skies and sweeping hills that changed their color by the season—green, then gold, tussocks that moved like an ocean in the wind, parting around the jutting tors of granite that pushed up like islands. Sunlight was sharp there, slicing flat shadows into the mountains and burning your skin wherever it touched.

  It was sharp here, too, but the land was different. Ngauruhoe straddled the landscape, its white cape of snow enhancing its classic volcano shape. Where the road cut through the sides of low hills it revealed rich red-brown earth, shot through with layers of black volcanic ash. A strange yearning twisted at Sheena’s heart. She’d lived in New Zealand all of her twenty-three years and spent all but a handful of weeks in the South Island. What was she doing, going halfway across the world, when she hadn’t even explored the country on her own doorstep?

  I’m not going forever, she reminded herself. It’s just a trip.

  Unless she met her mate.

  She swallowed.

  Aroha was still talking. “Hey, my shift starts soon, I’d better go. Wait—shit, your mum asked me to remind you about something and I’ve forgotten what it was.”

  “Hah, and you don’t even have my excuse.” Sheena’s voice didn’t give away the worry twisting inside her.

  “Shut up.” Aroha groaned and smacked herself on the forehead. Sheena grinned at her.

  “Do you reckon if you do that enough, you’ll knock loose your inner animal?”

  The woman in the next seat gave her a very odd look. Sheena wasn’t worried that she’d revealed the secret existence of shifters—you could get away with a lot, she’d discovered, being a tiny white girl with big eyes and a tendency to squeak when startled. The woman probably thought she was talking metaphorically. Or that it was a sex thing.

  She mouthed another ‘Sorry’ at her neighbor and tried to look like the sort of person who wouldn’t be talking about a sex thing over the phone on an InterCity bus.

  Aroha made a face. “Like I want some dumb animal inside me telling me what to do. Bad enough having the fam in my business all the—hah! Got it.”
She snapped her fingers. “Your mum asked me to tell you to find out what’s happening with Auntie Fiona and Auntie Rena. Remember at Christmas, how they wouldn’t shut up about that building development thing they were doing? Your mum says they’ve gone quiet.”

  “Oh, so she’s sending me in to get the latest gossip?” Honestly, the idea of serving up some gossip that wasn’t to do with herself sounded like a nice change.

  “Mm. Last she heard, they were approached by some overseas investor. Basically I think she wants you to find out if the aunties are suddenly multi-millionaires in which case they should put some money into doing up Nana’s place.”

  “All good,” Sheena said. “I’m getting dropped there, anyway.”

  “Cool. Call me when you’re actually overseas, okay?”

  Sheena reassured her that she would, both of them knowing full well that either Aroha or one of their parents would call ten minutes before she was due to get on the plane and panic about her having left something behind, and they’d talk then. She tucked her phone into her backpack and stared out across the landscape.

  She had her whole future ahead of her. One day, that would include her mate. But Aroha was right: she had so much she wanted to do before then. Like come back here and explore the volcanic landscape. Staring at it wasn’t enough. She wanted to clamber over creek beds, feel the rich soil under her fingernails, chew on the tussock and heather to see if it tasted the same as back home…

  I don’t want to fall in another hole, her sheep bleated plaintively. Sheena snorted.

  Fall in a hole and see if they’re the same as the holes I fall in back home, she added to her to-do list. She grinned as her sheep bleated in frustration. Don’t worry. We won’t have a chance to fall into anything. We’re only here overnight, and then Fiona and Rena are driving us up to Auckland.

  No mud pits, her sheep said firmly.

  That’s up to you, isn’t it? I’m not the one who got us into the last one.

  The sun was shining through the windows. Outside, the temperature must have been in the single digits, but inside was warm and cozy. Sheena had been up early to catch the bus from Wellington, and those lost hours of sleep were tapping on her shoulder. She closed her eyes. Just for a minute, she told herself.

  * * *

  “Stop for Sheena Mackay—hey, chickie, wake up!”

  Sheena jerked awake. “’s me,” she garbled as the driver called her name again. “Here!” She resisted the urge to raise her hand like she was in school, and jumped up. “I’m awake—sorry, sorry…”

  It wasn’t completely a lie. Her sheep was instantly awake, but her human body clung to sleep like King Kong to the Empire State Building. She was halfway down the aisle when she realized she’d forgotten her pack and had to go back for it.

  “Sorry!” she burst out again as she grabbed her bag and fumbled it and almost crushed the woman who’d been giving her looks the whole trip.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the woman snapped in the exact right tone to send panic shooting through her sheep’s extra-nervous system. “Just get a move on, will you!”

  Sheena got a move on, sharpish. By the time the world stopped spinning and she began to wonder if her seat neighbor had some sheepdog shifter in her family tree, the bus was a distant speck and Sheena was alone on the side of the road.

  The world might have stopped spinning, but her head hadn’t. She bent over, hands on her knees, and waited for the blood to return to her brain.

  Well done us, she thought wryly once the world felt normal again. That was as bad as when I had Mrs. Powell for PE.

  Sorry. Her sheep sounded as baffled as it always did after something tripped its run-like-stink instincts. I just…

  I know. You’re just looking out for me. I’m just glad Fiona and Rena aren’t here yet, they’d probably confiscate my passport.

  Sheena brushed off her knees—it was more habit than anything else because she hadn’t actually gone head-over-feet in her rush to run, this time—and looked around.

  She was in the right place, at least. That was a good start. For having just been caught up in her sheep’s flight-or-more-flight response, it was a really good start. The bus had dropped her just off South Highway 5, right in front of a billboard advertising Silver Springs. The sign had a picture of a serene town center on it, complete with a fountain and small children playing with a friendly dog, and a helpful note about there still being sections for sale.

  And she had her backpack with her. Even better. Ten out of ten, Sheena told herself and her sheep.

  Except her aunts weren’t there. Eight out of ten.

  She checked her phone and swore. No signal. And since she’d been asleep for the last how-many kilometers, she had no idea how long she’d had no signal for. It could have been hours. Fiona and Rena could have been trying to get in touch with her most of the day to tell her the plans had changed, and she wouldn’t know.

  Sheena let out a long, slow breath than plumed in the air. “Well I can’t sit on my arse here waiting,” she told the Silver Springs sign. “They might be ages. Anyway, there’s only the one road…”

  Hitching her backpack higher on her shoulders, she started to walk down it.

  Winter in the middle of the North Island was almost as good as winter down south, she decided. The air was sharply cold, clean and fresh with the promise that whatever came next—hail, snow, sleet—would be here to stay, blanketing the land in icy sheets. And something was definitely coming: the sky had darkened while Sheena napped, and the clouds were thick overhead. Much earlier, the bus driver had reminded everyone to hire a locator beacon if they were planning to get out on any tramping tracks, but Sheena strode out into the cold with all the confidence of someone who had her own long woolen coat on standby and no desire to go farther off the main road than required to get to a warm, insulated house.

  As she made her way along the freshly sealed road, the rolling paddocks gave way to thick bush. Spiky-leaved manuka and tree ferns battled with bushy titi for space—or would when spring broke later in the year. Now they rested in each other’s arms like siblings who had forgotten what they were fighting about.

  Sheena scowled. She wished she could forget her constant battles with her family. She loved them, but… sheesh. They just couldn’t find it in themselves to see her as anything other than an under-cooked, helpless lamb. They were so determined to cotton-wool her that none of them except Aroha would even give her the satisfaction of even a good argument about it! They thought she was so helpless. As though just because she was smaller than them, she couldn’t handle anything.

  Bad enough being the youngest cousin, she thought, batting a low-hanging fern frond out of the way. Being literally tinier than some of my cousins’ kids when I’m shifted… No wonder no one takes me seriously.

  Her sheep sighed. Remember when wee Mikey was the same size as me? He almost flattened me when he jumped on me the other day.

  Well, there’s another upside to traveling by ourselves. No giant ten-year-olds tackling us to the ground. Sheena blew out a cloud of vapor and looked around.

  Her breath wasn’t the only cloud under the trees. White steam seeped through the branches. Sheena sniffed.

  “Oh, nasty,” she muttered at the smell of rotten eggs.

  Silver Springs was a few kilometers out of Rotorua. Far enough she had no idea what direction the city was, close enough that the smell that made Roto-Vegas famous permeated the air. The geothermic activity around Rotorua gave it a distinct rotten-egg smell. She remembered the worst thing about it being that it wasn’t a constant smell. It came in waves. Stinky, stinky waves.

  The hot pools made up for it, though. Maybe. If you had a blocked nose.

  But the smell and the steam told her that there might be a creek nearby. A hot-water creek, even. Maybe she could get a soak in before she headed up to Auckland. She needed one, after that bus trip. And before the next trip. And the long-haul flight…

  She was five meters in
to the bush before she realized what she was doing. Frozen leaf litter crackled under her feet as she stumped back towards the road.

  “Come on,” she muttered at herself. “Dumbarse! Being a shifter won’t help me if I fall into another sinkhole. Remember last time?”

  Sorry, her sheep bleated, and Sheena sighed as she made her way back to the road.

  “It’s not you, it’s me. No wonder everyone still treats me like I’m a little lamb. I never stop and think…”

  Sheena wrinkled her nose. That last blast of wholesome natural air hadn’t just smelled like sulfur. Her sheep wasn’t great at sorting scents into more categories than ‘try to eat it’ and ‘scary, run away’, but it smelled like… smoke.

  Good smoke? her sheep suggested. Wood fire… bonfire… nice fires?

  Could be. Could… not be.

  It smelled like a lot of smoke. Bonfire? It’d have to be a massive one.

  Something Aunt Fiona had said last Christmas trickled into Sheena’s mind. Building around Rotorua was a real hassle, she’d said, because even if the ground didn’t literally bubble away underneath you, the constant sulfuric gases ate away at the wiring.

  Could something like that have happened and caused a fire at Silver Springs?

  Forget stopping and thinking. Sheena dropped her pack and ran.

  Branches whipped past her face. She made it back to the road just as it broke out from the surrounding bush, revealing a shallow basin in the clearing: Silver Springs. Her brain felt like it was short-circuiting as she stared out over the clearing and its just-finished houses.

  She’d seen the plans—they all had, that Christmas just gone. Sheena’s mum had grumbled that she was surprised Fiona and Rena hadn’t given them all copies of the blueprints as presents. Not the properties themselves; oh, no. Silver Springs was the result of years and years of investments and planning. Once the houses sold, Fiona and Rena would be set for life.