Hunted

by Quinn Blackbird

  I am first to look away. I step onto the platform and hear the groan of the gate open for Colton and his steed.

  This morn, the markets are bare. It is a downside of a heavy winter season. There is little meat to procure, no vegetables or fruits—and oh, how I would poison for an apple!—and a handful of seeds. All that takes my fancy is a packet of goat’s cheese and a loaf of nut-toasted bread and jam. Together, they should make a delicious lunch.

  Colours draw me in. Most of the unmarried girls in the village wear colours—blues and soft pinks and lilac. The married ones, as per tradition, adorn dresses of beige, grey and creams. But I wear the boldest colours of them all.

  Many fabrics catch my eye. Red velvet, soft to the touch; Silk, the purple of plums; A bag of wool, dirtied somewhat; and a red garter that shines at me.

  I take my findings home, and as I pass the well, I wonder—at the weight of the stash in my arms—if I spent too much on many things. But then, I do not always have time to attend the markets before the rush. Mostly, I am in the woods before the merchants have set up.

  So I decide that the fabrics are my treats and the food is necessary, because I cannot bake a decent loaf of bread no matter what I do. I was made without the touch of food, but with the touch of remedies.

  After fresh bread and some cheese fills my belly, I lay out my fabrics on the table by the fire and consider them. There are many things I can make from these. Stockings, shoe-linings, cloaks, an apron—

  My heart lunges to my throat and I freeze.

  A terrible scream comes from outside. It is far away, enough that I should think it comes from the markets. But the scream is so loud, so wretched, that I hear it anyway—whether by ear or my special senses.

  I’m on my feet and out the door. My cloak stays behind in my home. I must make haste. My boots whack into the snow, almost slipping out from under me, and my pale hair whips my face like a fine cane.

  Still, I run until I stagger to a stop at the edge of the lane.

  A crowd huddles at the well to my right.

  The wretched wails come from there—and I know those cries. I feel them behind my chest, as though my heart has been hacked out of me, and my insides gutted. I feel the pain. Grief.

  I inch toward the crowd.

  Each villager is so absorbed in whatever they see that none notice me or pay me any mind. My bare arms and shoulders shake in the wind, but I hardly feel the cold over the grief. Boldness takes over, and I’m shoving through the crowd until I only a few people stand between me and the well.

  I crouch down and peek between the legs of two men.

  A body hangs limp on the edge of the well. Droplets of water fall from dark grey hair and form a puddle at a woman’s knees—the woman who wails. I squint at the body, enough to spot the strands of dark brown that streak through a wiry mop of hair, and the wrinkled sag of a blue cheek.

  It’s the widow, Gunhilda. My neighbour … what is left of her.

  Someone—something—has filleted her. Strips of her skin dangle from her bones, hanging on by mere pinches of flesh. And I realise suddenly why I can only see a part of her cheek. The other half of her face is torn away.

  A jolt runs through my body. I slap my hands to my mouth and I think I might sick myself. Not because I have a weak stomach for the dead. I don’t. Sometimes, they even enchant me. But only a beast could have done this to her.

  The claw marks that shred down her body in thick lines. The teeth marks punched into her open throat. Missing chunks of her arms and face.

  Priest Peter pulls out of the crowd and all eyes follow him, desperate for him to speak, to deny all our worst fears. His hands lower to his thick cross where his eyes touch to. And he keeps his gaze down as he says it, loud and clear for all to hear;

  “Prepare yourselves, people of Westland. The wolf has returned.”

  8.

  Chaos is all around me. Too much—too many screams, too much panic.

  I cannot stay out here. Should they see me here, really see me, they will think I did this. Witches and wolves are two halves, says the lore. They come together, find one another. It is not true, yet I cannot reason with the fear that whips all around me. Fear that sees grown men race to their houses to board themselves inside, and mothers wail for their children to keep them safe.

  I turn my back on the village and sprint until I barge through my front door. The wooden slab cannot slide into its bolts fast enough. Even when it does, the sense of unease follows me. I am not safe here.

  It won’t be long until some rabid villager declares that I hold the answers to finding the wolf. Or maybe that I am the wolf.

  It only takes one idiot to infect the minds of half-wits.

  And in this village, of half-wits there are plenty.

  Grandmother told me to prepare for such times. I listened.

  I move fast.

  Moments later, I’m at my rear door, sheathed in outerwear and my drawstring pouch fastened around my waist. Today calls for a darker cloak, one that blends me in with the rest. It’s black and fur-lined, heavy enough to hug my tense muscles with warmth.

  I sneak outside to the end of the lane ahead. There, the wall of the village stands tall; I dip behind a private privy and crouch on the snow. My hands make quick work of digging through the snow, and they only stop when the loose panels of wood are uncovered.

  Just as I am about to push the panels outward, a gentle breeze washes over me.

  I still, frozen in the snow, my senses prickled.

  Somehow, the touch of the wind warms me. It carries a flowery aroma I have not smelled in some seasons. Daffodils. Narcissus. A flower of pride and disdain.

  The scent lingers as I slip through the gap in the wall, and even as I run into the woods the smell follows me. But as I walk through the trees to the path, careful to keep the wall in my sight, the daffodils soon fade to a memory.

  Come spring and summer, the flower is not uncommon in these parts. In winter, there are none to blossom nearby. The warm breeze that grazed me with its fragrance was not one that the ordinaries would have felt. That breeze was an open. One I do not understand.

  Grandmother might know.

  Hidden, I reach the village gates, then slink up the trees alongside the path. Should I be noticed fleeing by any of the guards, it will not look so favourable on me. Yet, to stay in the midst of hysteria is equally as dangerous.

  Then, I think, danger lurks all around. The wolf may go where it pleases, whether in the woods, the village, or Grandmother’s cabin.

  The thought strikes through me; my walk quickens to a jog.

  Once the village is a half-hour behind me, I jump onto the path. Hood drawn, I stride up the hill and don’t stop once, not even when I spot one of Colton’s traps at the root of a tree. If he sees me on his hunting grounds, he doesn’t let it be known.

  Grandmother normally greets me before I arrive—and so I expect the same today. Yet, as I push through the gate, she isn’t in the doorway or in the garden.

  I rush to the door and shove it open.

  My gaze finds hers; she peers at me from the armchair where she knits.

  My shoulders slump and I rest my head against the doorframe.

  “Grandmother,” I say. “You are well.”

  She spares me a brief wrinkled frown. “You expected otherwise?”

  I kick the door shut behind me, then drop onto the couch opposite her. “You weren’t at the door to welcome me. I worried a moment.”

  “Too much time in that village is meddling with your nerves, girl.” Grandmother jerks her head to the cauldron above the flames in the fireplace. “Some broth should settle you down. I could sense your fear from miles away.”

  The cauldron goes ignored as I peel off my cloak. “Grandmother,” I say, coaxing her to look at me, but she does not. Her eyes stay on her knitting. “The village…I’m not certain I should return.”

  She hums, a half-answer.

  “Someone has been killed,” I a
dd.

  Now, she looks at me.

  Encouraged, I lean closer. “A widower from the house next to mine. The villagers think the wolf has come back.”

  “Nonsense.” Her fingers still and she holds my gaze with her stern eyes. “The wolf is gone, dear. It has been gone for many years and more to come.”

  I shake my head. “You did not see it, Grandmother. The corpse…No human could have done that.”

  “So it was a beast, of sorts,” she dismisses. I almost think her denial to be one stemmed from fear. “No matter. A band of men should hunt the beast and all will be settled.”

  Incredulous, I crinkle my nose at her. “Men from the village? They’re more cowardly than city men. And this was no ordinary attack, Grandmother. She was shredded like old linen, and her body dumped down the well.” My voice drops to a whisper as though I can be overheard. “I passed the well before they found the corpse. There was no blood, no scrap of cloth or any indication that a death happened there. Someone cleaned up—or something.”

  Silent, she sets aside her wool and needles on the table beside her. I notice my bowl is there still from yestermorn.

  “Now listen here, girl.” Grandmother fixes me with her stare. “You have a wonderful gift. Unique, even for a witch. You see secrets in a person’s eyes—you read them as though you can see through their stares to their very souls. The first you notice of a person is their eyes; where they are looking, what swims behind the veil.” She points her finger at me. “But one day, you will look too closely at the wrong one and you will have no one to blame but yourself when that one looks right back at you.”

  “The wrong one,” I echo, piqued. “You mean the wolf? So you do believe it has returned?”

  She bats away my words as though they flew at her. “Pfft,” she scoffs. “A wolf is not an it, but a who. A man not so different to us. Our kind and theirs are alike. But a wolf is more animal than man, and when the full moon nears, the animal is released. Do not put yourself in his path with hostile intentions, for you will not survive it, Ella.”

  I study her a moment. Then I draw back into the plushness of the couch and cross my arms as I used to when I was a child in a strop. “How do you know this much of them?”

  “It’s all in the book.”

  Instantly, my attention is drawn to the picture frame on the wall. My eyes see a portrait of my mother, but my mind sees what sits behind it.

  The Book.

  Passed down from Hemlock woman to Hemlock woman, pages full of scribbled secrets and concoctions, tales of myth and where to separate them from truths.

  Grandmother does not let me have the book. She tells me it is only inherited when a witch proves herself. To her, my ‘silly medicines’ are no better than those of a doctor’s, but with a ‘dash of magic’ that ensures their success.

  I sink further into the couch and turn my narrow eyes on the fireplace. “How can I know whose eyes to look into and whose to avoid?”

  “Look into no one’s. Secrets are not yours to learn. They belong to the one who holds them.” Grandmother sighs and goes to the picture frame. From behind the portrait, she pulls out the book. “Wolves are drawn to our kind, Ella. Magic to magic, power to power. Many years ago, long before time as we know it, we came from the same place.”

  I look at her, my eyes creasing into dubious slits. “What place?”

  “A world in our own, around our own, parallel. Through a veil. We do not belong in that place, our home is here now. But that shared ancestry, the connection of our kind—wolf and witch—draws us in to one another. But that should not suggest our encounters are always of a friendly manner.”

  Her fingers dig into the leather-bound book. The leather groans in protest.

  I shift forward, my spine straight, eyes alert.

  Will I finally be allowed to touch it?

  No. I realise it the moment she hugs it to her chest, protective, as though the book is her new-born. Grandmother sinks back into her chair, then rests the book on her lap. With a flick of the hand, the book whips open and pages flip in a blur. It stops only when she lowers her hand to a page made from the thickest of parchment, sewn into the crinkled spine.

  “Wolves,” she reads, “are beasts of lore from across all the lands. The mere mention of them strikes fear into those of common ancestry, and even witches flinch at the sound of their howls. Raised with the terror of wolves in my heart, I, as did every witch before me and beside me, learned the ways to deter the beasts. A garden of wolfsbane, a silver brooch, and the venom of a vampire bat. It is with the deepest regret that I confess that while these methods protected me from the Werewolf stalking my woods for months, they have fallen to failure. In his human form, the wolf stalked and bit me in a field of daffodils. I will not perish from this bite, nor will I transform into a beast under the largest of moons. But I will never escape the beast now.

  “I set aside my duties as a Hemlock woman with a warning to all who come after me: The wind shall carry the smell of daffodils as an omen to a Hemlock woman whose path will cross with a Werewolf. Heed this omen, as I have not been so fortunate as to have one. Let the wind chase you to as far as you need go to be free of this fate.”

  Silence lifts between us. Only the crackle and pop of the fire speak.

  Grandmother locks her gaze with mine. “Do you know who penned this entry?”

  Puzzled, I shake my head.

  “My great-great-great cousin, twice removed. Narcissus Hemlock. The book was found by her cousin—my grandmother many generations away—who never wrote of seeing Narcissus again.”

  There is a coldness inside of me. It brings to mind snow, stuffed down my throat until it melts in my lungs. I smelled the daffodils today, I smelled the omen of Narcissus. And by the glimmer in Grandmother’s eyes—though, I try not to look to hard—I suspect she knows this.

  “Wh—what happened to her?” I ask, my boots shuffling against the floorboards. “Did she flee from the wolf?”

  Grandmother closes the book and sets it aside.

  “My dear, once a wolf bites a witch there is no escaping him. We only know that we can survive the bites due to Narcissus.”

  “So I leave,” I say numbly. “I have no other choice but to leave.”

  Grandmother spreads her hands, by means of indifference. “A viable option, only if the wolf wants you.”

  “I smelled the daffodils, Grandmother. The breeze that carried the scent to me was warm and fresh. That means the wolf wants me, does it not?”

  “It means your paths shall cross.”

  I run my hands over my face, finding that my patience for Grandmother thins more each time I visit her. When I drop my hands to my lap, my face reveals my defeat.

  “What should I do, Grandmother?”

  “Find the witch.”

  In answer, I simply frown at her.

  “Child, are you naïve or a simpleton? A wolf can only be birthed by a witch. Never have I birthed a wolf, and nor have you or your mother. So, who birthed the wolf?”

  A chill runs down my spine.

  Another witch? No, I would have known, I would have sensed her presence among the villagers, or even in the woods that encircle us.

  “He must have come from elsewhere.”

  Grandmother does not look convinced.

  My fingernails pick at each other, a poor habit that irks Grandmother. But I am suddenly so lost in my thoughts that I find I don’t care.

  If I stay, I put myself in the path of the wolf.

  If I leave, I abandon all I have ever known to rebuild in another town or city—one that might not take too friendly to my kind.

  Still, if I stay, my only threat isn’t the wolf. The village might turn against me. I could be hanged or burned at the stake.

  I cannot—will not—risk my life for my lifestyle.

  It is final.

  “I shall leave this place,” I decide.

  9.

  Before I can leave, there are matters that must be seen t
o. This is the midday of Thursday, the day of an important appointment—or should I say, an important patron—of mine. Should my plans of leaving have any chance of success, I cannot leave this patron waiting. His payments fund my rent, he offers so much.

  I hope to make it back in time. As I rush through the woods, I track the sun through the clouds when I can. Even when Colton blocks the path, loading up fresh kill onto his horse-drawn barrow, I ignore him and hurry past.

  I don’t relax until I am slipping through the loose panels of the wall, back in the lane behind my home. But I am too late.

  At my rear door, he stands as still as a statue. Thick black gloves with golden thread hems are the first I notice of him. Those gloves are his giveaway—he risks much by wearing them so boldly behind my home. Yet, patience relaxes his stance as he hides behind a black velvet robe with a low-drawn hood.

  “Red.” His aristocratic voice is a purr that ignites tingles in my belly. “How ravishing you look.”

  However pink my cheeks might have been, they burn hot now. I must look horrid with my hair loose, my hood down, and mud on my skirt. “Dante,” I whisper and rush toward him. As I open the door, I glance around, then scowl up at him. “You risk much by loitering outside my home.”

  There is darkness behind the hood; I cannot see his face. Yet, I feel his mischievous smile all the same. He shoves the door open, then he herds me out of the cold and into the warmth of my home.

  My fingers reach up to the tie of my cloak. But I still as Dante reaches around me, his gloves damp, and unties the string for me. He is quite particular of how our engagements play out. Each time, Dante is the one to remove my cloak, untie my corset, roll down my stockings. I once asked him why he takes such pleasure from it, and he answered with a wicked smile—but his eyes told me of his increased lust. I suppose he enjoys the anticipation.

  Today, there is none.

  He peels off my cloak. It drops to the floor at my feet as he grips my waist and turns me to face him.