Mal left so quickly I didn’t have time to ask her all the questions now swirling in my head. It was as if she were scared of the wolves. That was crazy. She was a healer. She couldn’t get the wolf curse if they bit her, and the wolves were fine during the daylight moments. I wished she would have stuck around just a bit more to explain things to me. I was left with fewer answers than before and in a direr situation as my friends were trapped. While I knew they wanted it that way, all the wolves did, they were still my friends, and I didn’t feel safe with them where I couldn’t protect them myself.
It wasn’t the best choice to stay near the wolf village. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard them all night long. The wolves were howling and growling enough to wake me, and I wasn’t anywhere near them. I feared for Grace and Nikkan. They were just two wolves in a cage full of them. Could they stay safe in all that?
The howls were terrible enough, but what was worse were the human calls. People were still human inside that mess of a village. I could hear screams and calls for help. It sounded like a war zone. Where the heck was Micco? Was he sick too? I knew he couldn’t control infected wolves, but it sounded like the whole village was ill.
Micco worried me more as I thought about the older man that was like a grandfather to me. I hadn’t seen him any of the last few visits to the wolves. He had been fine when we last spoke, but I saw how quickly the curse took Grace. Was Micco infected, or was he too busy keeping peace in the village? I didn’t want to think of the alternative.
I was up before the sun and pacing the magical wall. I wanted to see my friends and know they were okay. I’d stop every five saplings or so and peer through the fog. There was no one on the other side. It was like no one came in this direction because they knew they’d be trapped by the wall.
“It won’t change anything,” Sera said to me as she came out of the forest to where I was standing. “Mal stopped by on her way home. She told Red the wall is made and will hold against the magic curse. Elder is safe for now.”
I shrugged at her. Part of Elder was safe. The wolves weren’t part of that. My best friends were in the same place as before, maybe even worse, as they couldn’t escape the monsters that the wolves were becoming.
“Safe for who?” I replied.
Sera wasn’t there the night before. She didn’t know the agony going on behind the walls. Maybe if she’d been there, she wouldn’t feel so happy about the situation.
“You know Grace would want it this way,” Sera added more quietly.
She was completely right. Grace never wanted to be a monster. Her worst fear was hurting someone else. She wouldn’t do that now. But that didn’t mean I was giving up. The curse was broken once before, and I would figure out how to do it again. We just had to search every clue we could find.
“Red is waiting at your cottage to speak to you,” Sera added, finally explaining why she was there.
I nodded to Sera as I glanced through the fog one last time. I just wanted to see that they were okay, but not a single thing moved where I could see. I had to go on faith and believe that Nikkan and Grace would keep safe. The sounds were gone once the sun came up, both the howls and people crying. It actually sounded peaceful for the moment. I had to take it as a good sign that Grace and Nikkan weren’t at the wall. No matter what, they were strong. I had to keep telling myself that.
Sera didn’t wait to see if I was following her as she took off back into the woods. I just shook my head. At least some things didn’t change.
The wind whipped through my hair as I pumped my arms to keep up with and eventually pass Sera. It felt different than the wind that Mal pulled to us yesterday. Something about that struck me as odd. I wasn’t versed in magic; no one beyond the few remaining witches was. So, I really had no idea what Mal did, but I felt it. Like I could reach out and touch it. I had grown up around the wolves and even met a couple of witches, but it never struck me like it did yesterday.
Running through the woods was making my worry ease. Something about being surrounded by trees and the fresh smell of the pine needles made my head clear. It wasn’t just my sinuses, but my thoughts were clearer. I wasn’t meant to be hiding in the trees like the people around Red. I was meant to be on the ground, even if I didn’t have the magical Red powers my mother had. I might not have been her son biologically, but that much I could never deny we shared.
Even as I ran, I kept going over everything. I might have missed something. There had to be a clue somewhere we could go on. If I had to leave Elder to find help, I would do just that. Nothing would stop me from getting the wolves free.
It wasn’t like I could suggest to Red that I leave. Elder prided itself on being able to be independent of the rest of the world. I don’t recall Red ever asking for help, at least that I knew of. We had all we needed, but what if we didn’t. What if we needed help? Would Red be too stubborn to do that as she had been to even see that there was a problem in the first place?
Spring was on the horizon and typically was a season of growth and rebirth. The people of Elder broke their winter slumber, and flowers returned to the trees and the ground. It brought new life and hope. There was none of that now, and it seemed that even nature had been affected as the trees still were bare and the grass brown. It felt like the curse growing in power was sucking not just the life from the wolves but also from the world around them, my world, my home.
Mal had mentioned that it was a dark curse. That was a start. Beyond the werewolves and Red, Elder didn’t have magic. People were ordinary humans. If there was a dark curse, then someone had to have cast it. It should be easy enough to track down who could have this kind of power through the history books in Azren, but it would be easier to talk to Red, and she happened to be waiting for me. With magic uncommon to us, just knowing it was magic was a start.
Being raised in Elder meant I knew there were no official records of the start of the curse, but that didn’t mean there weren’t records on everything else. Elder liked to keep their history. We had a full building dedicated to just that. Several buildings held the books of Elder. We had books that kept track of all trade transactions, books that kept track of all citizens' birth and death records, books that kept a diary of the history of the people of Elder. I didn’t study the books much as I never knew I’d need them. But I did now.
After our quick run to my home, I entered my house to find Red had already lit the fire in my cooking stove and made herself a cup of tea. She was staring off toward the window that faced the woods behind my house, lost deep in thought. If she expected to see a wolf, it wasn’t going to happen. They were locked away.
“Thanks, Sera,” Red said with a nod to her, and Sera stepped back and closed the door, leaving me alone with Red.
“The wall is up,” I informed her as I grabbed a cup of tea myself to warm up from my night outside.
“Mmm-hmm,” Red replied as she took a sip of tea.
“It seems to be working. Not a single wolf was outside the wall last night.” I would have known.
Red nodded again.
“But Mal already told you that much since you sent Sera to come to get me…”
I stopped talking. Red always knew. I had no idea how or why she knew so much, but she did. That’s why I was more than a little worried that she didn’t know how to break the curse. If she didn’t know that, then it was going to take more than I could imagine to find the answer.
“Mal stopped by my place on her way home,” Red explained.
I nodded and sipped my tea, waiting for her to explain why she was at my cabin waiting for me. I had learned as a child that she wasn’t always great at answering questions. I had to bide my time and sip my tea. She didn’t continue talking. I stared for a moment more at her and then couldn’t help myself.
“She told me it was a dark curse,” I began the conversation while Red sipped her tea like she had all the time in the world.
Red nodded as she stared at me. Her deep brown eyes were studying me,
and I had no idea what it meant. I sat there and stared back at her. While she had aged considerably since this curse returned, she still had that authority about her that had made me never outright lie to her as a kid growing up. It wasn’t like I could have anyway. She knew everything.
“Mal said I need to keep an eye on you,” Red finally explained.
“Me?” I asked.
While I didn’t have her abundance of patience and tended to be rash sometimes, I wasn’t some hot head like the tree people of Azren that were no doubt biding their time to get their hands on the gun stock Red had been building for many winters. I didn’t need a babysitter even if it seemed like Sera was mine these days.
“I just don’t see it.” Red continued to analyze me.
Okay, I didn’t have half the patience of Red. I had to ask.
“See what?”
“Stand up for me and go back by the door,” Red ordered.
I did as she said purely because I had no clue what she was talking about or looking for. I walked back over to the door and turned around.
“Do I need to open it and leave and come back?” I asked. What the heck was Red up to now?
She shook her head and eyed me from head to toe.
“Jump around or lift something up,” she ordered.
I had no idea what this game was, but I did it anyways. I jumped a few times and then walked over to my sofa and picked up one of the ends. After setting it back on the ground, I returned to the door and stood where she could see me. What was she looking for?
“Hold out your hand and picture an orange in it.” Red was now giving beyond-crazy instructions.
I wanted to call her out on being crazy, but just did what she asked. Nothing happened, but I wasn’t sure what she expected.
“I just don’t see it,” she mumbled, going back to her tea.
I stood where I was and looked at her. Something strange was going on, or she was possibly going crazy. First, the meals and serious, truthful talks, then all the laughing and smiling with her friend, and now staring at me like I had a horn on my head. I really wanted it to be something strange because a crazy Red would be disaster for Elder and my wolf friends. We needed her in the best place mentally to deal with all this.
“You don’t have to continue standing there.” She motioned for me to join her again.
I crossed my arms across my chest and stared at her this time. I felt it. She wasn’t telling me the truth. She had finally told me how I got to Elder, but she just went right back to her old ways. I was sick of it. I wasn’t a child and deserved to be treated like the adult I was. I gritted my teeth and finally spoke.
“What the heck is going on?”
Red took another sip of her tea. She nodded to me, understanding that my anger was growing. She knew me well.
“Mal said you have magic. Not a little bit like the wolves, but a lot. Like possibly more than Sera or me,” Red explained like it wasn’t a big deal.
I couldn’t stop my mouth from dropping open. What was she talking about? I was a normal human. Always was and always would be. There was nothing magical about me.
“The people who gave you to me said you were special and would do great things someday, but they never said you had magic. Even now, I don’t see it. I don’t know what Mal was seeing. Maybe it had to do with being near the wall and the wolves.”
I swiped my hand through my hair and just shook my head.
“Do you have magic?” Red asked, peering at me with her all-knowing look.
It wasn’t on purpose, but I laughed.
“Mom, you’ve known me my whole life. I don’t have magic. Mal must have seen it wrong. We were in the wolf village and surrounded by their magic. She had to be confused. You are both older than you look. Maybe she’s going crazy like you or sensing things as she wants them to be, not as they are.”
“Mal’s never confused about magic. She’s worried that the curse could affect you. She told me that you have to be careful around the wolves. You need to be sure to never let the darkness in.”
I just stared at Red. She was definitely going crazy. I wasn’t magical. I didn’t have powers. I was just a normal human. Wasn’t I?
6
16th March
Red left after she stared at me more. I had no idea what she thought she’d see, but I didn’t shoot lightning from my eyes or throw fire from my hands. That was never going to happen. I wasn’t magical, but somehow, she believed her friend over what she knew was the truth. While she might not have always been very hands-on as a mother, she did raise me. Red, more than anyone, would know that I wasn’t magical, but that didn’t seem to affect her at all. Red left to go take care of business in Azren. Her parting words were that she believed Mal, and I needed to stay safe.
I don’t know how long I sat in my house after she left. I just couldn’t believe that she chose Mal over me. I was her son. Wouldn’t I know if I had magic? I mean, wasn’t that something that would have shown itself during my childhood growing up? If I had any special powers, they weren’t very useful, or I must have never had a need for them as I had never used them. Red and Mal were crazy. The both of them. That had to be it.
I had planned to go back to the wall and wait to see if my friends were okay, but Red left Sera with me, and she complained enough to make me stay at my place for the night as she didn’t want to sleep outside. Lucky for me, Sera waited outside the whole time I contemplated that my life was a lie. Well, it wasn’t a lie, but if what Mal said was true, though I highly doubted it, it meant that my life wasn’t what I thought it was.
Sera joined me on the floor and kept unusually silent the whole night. I appreciated that she could do that. Usually, she would have given me her opinion, and we would have spent the night fighting. I needed my rest after the previous night, so I was more than happy to just be in my house in silence.
“Mal’s right,” Sera told me as she ate breakfast with me. There she was, the annoying Sera I grew up with. “I know you don’t want to believe her, but she is.”
We were actually doing better than normal, and the fighting was almost non-existent until now. Why was life like this for us? She was like the sibling I never wanted. I guess we couldn’t go one whole day without an argument.
“I didn’t notice it before, but now that I look at you…” Sera looked me up and down. “I can’t see the magic, but I feel it. When I have the full Red powers, I should be able to see it too, at least, that’s was Mal said before she left.”
Sera shrugged like that was enough to go on. I knew Red was losing her powers to Sera, but was it enough that she couldn’t see it and Sera could? I felt a lump catch in my throat. Everything just seemed to be going by so fast. I always knew that Red would give her powers to Sera, and she admitted that it was already happening. But somehow, hearing Sera speak about it made it that much more real that it was happening sooner than later. It was just kind of hard to think of Red getting older and losing that magic that made me not only follow her orders but admire her my whole time growing up. Yes, I fought with Red almost as much as Sera, but I still was beyond thankful Red took me in and raised me. She taught me to be the person I am. Good and bad.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Sera taking over the Red position of Elder, but I knew it was hard to think of Red losing that special spark that made her Red. What was going to be left when the magic was all gone? Would she survive it leaving her? If Red died and my wolf friends were all locked behind a magical barrier, I would have no one left.
I would never admit it to Sera, but she was going to make a good Red. I just hoped it was later rather than sooner. I was pretty sure Elder needed Red more than anything right now. Sera would be a great Red, but we needed the wisdom of my mother. I just wished that wisdom came with answers.
“It would explain a lot,” Sera continued, not noticing that I wasn’t participating in her discussion. “That’s why you can run faster than me and beat me hand to hand.”
I almost laug
hed at that. Sera hated when I bested her in anything, which these days seemed to be about everything we did. That might have been one of the reasons I practiced so much. Beating the next Red was an accomplishment alone, but beating Sera was just fun. I couldn’t believe she thought I had magic, but it was a great way that she could accept that I was more skilled than her without giving me any credit. That was a typical Sera move. I hated her attitude, but admired her skill. More than anything, I loved that she still couldn’t beat me.
“So, it isn’t just that I’m better at hand to hand fighting?” I couldn’t help but goad her. She deserved it.
“You aren’t better. You are faster.”
I rolled my eyes at her. She was just as fast as I was. What was probably the truth was that I had trained harder than her, mainly because I had more time to. I wouldn’t tell her that, but it was the truth. Sera didn’t just learn about fighting; she had to learn about all the diplomatic aspects of being Red. I got to skip all that and keep training physically. I wasn’t sure who would win if she’d had as much time training physically as I had had growing up.
“I’m pretty sure I’m wiser than you, too,” I replied, adding more to tease her.
Sera’s face turned red as she huffed at my insult.
“Castiel,” she warned, wadding up her blanket and throwing it at me.
I couldn’t help but just smile. She was so easy to upset. Her competitive side always got her into trouble, as did mine most of the time. If I was honest, Red and the wolves were my family, but Sera fell somewhere in that group too.
I caught the blanket and threw it right back at her.
“Don’t make me,” she threatened, taking a fighting stance.
I grinned as I jumped the couch and twisted her into my arms, her back to my chest. I had her in a tight grip, proving my point that I was the better fighter.
Castiel: Son of Red Riding Hood (Kingdom of Fairytales Boxset Book 3) Page 21