Wild Women Collection

by Rachel Sullivan

  “Sarah,” I said feeling calmer, more resolute in my decision. “The Hunters have stolen what we hold dear. They’ve taken our history, our identity, and twisted those things into unrecognizable evil monstrosities. I will not also give them our homes, our land, the places of our grandmother’s burials, our forest.”

  Shawna squeezed my arm in hers. “We will stay and fight them for it. For what is ours and should have always been ours.”

  Damn, my partner sister impressed me. Her strength and resilience. She inspired me.

  “Help us,” Patricia added quickly and almost in desperation. “Help us fight for the right to stay.”

  Sarah looked at her mermaid sisters before replying to my aunt’s request. “I will have to talk it over with my sisters, both here and those back in Greece. We’ve already uprooted ourselves and built a home there. This continent is no longer our home to fight for.”

  I thought of the man who captained the small boat that took me to the mermaid’s island. Gabrielle had later told me his ancestors were native to that island, and although they’d moved off the island for work, it had still been a place of great importance to them. She’d told me they were family to the mermaids.

  “You don’t have the same history in Greece,” I reminded Sarah. “What will happen to San Miguel Island without the mermaids protecting it? What will happen to the sacred lands of your family when there are no longer surprise storms and heavy winds keeping the humans from visiting and building on that island?”

  Sarah swallowed and gave one, stiff nod. My questions had hit a nerve. I figured this was a topic the mermaids worried about often. “I will bring this to my sisters,” she said. “We will have an answer for you soon.”

  Marie pulled out a piece of paper from the small pocket of her tight-fitting red slacks. “Here’s their phone number,” she said, handing Sarah the paper. Sarah took it and thanked the succubus. But the succubus wasn’t done. Marie caught Sarah’s eyes and stared deeply into them. “We can be done with this once and for all. Think about that.”

  “I will,” Sarah said, some of the indecision fading away from her face as her eyebrows and jaw relaxed.

  The mermaids turned and continued down the tunnel in the direction they’d come from, the opposite direction of our moonshine basement. My group made our way back to the house. Marie and Celeste held hands, murmuring their thoughts about what’d just happened. Marcus wrapped an arm around my shoulder.

  “Tell me a story, Faline,” my aunt Renee requested from behind me.

  I thought her request odd. “What kind of story?” I asked. “And why?”

  “One of the stories your mother told,” she said. “I know I used to scold you as a young girl when you repeated them; I did it for your own sake. I didn’t want you telling them to the wrong person, so I figured if you weren’t allowed to speak them at all, you wouldn’t share them with anyone. But I could really use your mother’s hopeful view of the world right now. I have none of my own to pull from.”

  Her words struck me with anger at being forced to suppress what little I had left of my mother, and with sadness at the decision she’d felt compelled to make. I thought of a bedtime story ready to be told as we made our way through the dark, dank tunnel.

  “Before people honored gods and goddesses, they honored their ancestors,” I said, thinking of the tiny crystal statue my mother carried of the Goddess Ishtar and how she used to let me hold it sometimes while she told her stories. “The greatest of the family line was their great mother, the woman who birthed their tribe. They believed pieces of her could be found in each mother who came after her. Her legacy passed down from womb to womb, heart to heart. Each of these great mothers, who birthed the people, who nourished them from the milk of her breast and who fulfilled them from the warmth of her arms, went on to be known as Goddesses, their souls continuing to nourish and guide their many children walking the earth.”

  My mother had once told me she carried a Goddess, other than Freyja, because Ishtar was one of the earliest great mothers and her legacy deserved to live on. I wished I had it with me now, but despite the many times I’d searched my tree home for the thing, I never found it.

  I continued to the silent, listening crowd of supernaturals, “But other forces, those who didn’t want the children of the earth to be protected, those who sought to enslave the children for their own greed and desire of power, took over the lands of the Goddesses. They created new myths to have the people recite, myths of how their Goddesses were raped and killed, or forced to be the daughter or lover of a more powerful, dominating God. They told the people lies that excused their use of domination and exploitation, placing the people’s intuitive ways of love and acceptance as faulty. Soon the people wore the chains of duty and expectation, believing suppression of self and emotions to be holy.”

  “I don’t think I like this story much,” Olivia said. “It’s depressing.”

  I smiled. I remembered feeling the exact same way as I lay in bed, a little girl gazing into the eyes of the Ishtar statue, small enough to fit in one of my hands, as I rubbed my fingers lightly over her wings. I couldn’t understand how my mother could say such things with a smile and a glint of light in her eyes. But soon I learned the glint was hope, because her story took a turn.

  “The great mother Ishtar has wings for a reason,” I said, smiling as I connected my mother’s story with what we were currently going through. “Those of her precise creation, Wild Women, have always been held in her bosom, and when they are ready to be nourished by her once again, she will flap her wings and rise, allowing them to rise with her.”

  Later, when I was a grown woman in search of my captured sister, I saw Ishtar again. Much larger, she stood carved into the cement wall of the main room in the harpies’ home. Only, to them, she is known as Inanna. The carving had sparked long forgotten memories of my mother’s stories.

  “Does that mean we’ll die and be reunited with the great mothers soon?” Oliva asked with the tightness of concern in her voice.

  I considered my sister’s question. I’d wondered the same thing a time or two, in all honesty. Especially after I’d seen the Inanna carving in the harpies’ home and found out they’d worshipped her as the Goddess who created them. Although, at the time, I’d kept the thoughts to myself, I’d wondered if that meant they’d lead us to freedom or to death. But today a new possible interpretation bloomed within my heart.

  “I don’t think so,” I said as we neared the brick opening to the basement, the scent of yeast wafting toward us. “Eonza, a harpy, is bringing new life into the world soon, and if her mother is at the North Carolina Hunter complex, she’ll be the last Wild we rescue. Along with her, we’ll be setting human women free who will no doubt tell their stories against the Hunters. The brotherhood’s shroud of secrecy will be torn from them, and their ways of manipulating the government from behind the scenes will come to an end. When the last Wild Woman is able to fly in freedom, a harpy, we will all rise with her.”

  “I take comfort in this story,” Lapis commented. “Thank you for sharing it.”

  We entered the basement and I smiled in response. Marie and Aleksander returned the candles to their dusty table. The soft quiet of self-reflection rested over the group as we walked the steps up to the secret hutch door and the dining area of the old house. I wondered where my mother played into all of this. Would she be at the Maine complex? The North Carolina complex? The rusalka Drosera assured me she was still alive.

  But Drosera never promised we’d survive the coming weeks. She gave no assurances to solidify my belief that my mother’s story foretold the physical freedom of the Wild Women. What if it spoke of our spiritual freedom? The freedom of our souls leaving our bodies in death, rising up to be reunited with the great mothers?

  I thought to share this little fact with the others. Lapis slid the hutch safely in place, covering the doorway to the basement. I almost opened my mouth to give another possible explanation to the sto
ry, when I looked up and Marie caught my eye. She gave the tiniest of head shakes and returned to her conversation with Celeste and Olivia.

  Marie felt it too. Something huge was coming. Something that would determine the fate of all American Wild Women. Something she wanted me to keep to myself.

  Six

  “You are in grave danger, wake up!”

  My lids flung open and I jolted up in bed. Drosera stood at the bottom edge of the mattress, trained on Marcus and I. My sudden movement alarmed the ex-Hunter, who’d been sleeping soundly beside me. Within a breath he reached for his dagger on the side table and shot up to stab whoever dared to attack us in our sleep.

  “Stop!” I hissed seconds before he bore his blade into the rusalka’s chest.

  She didn’t flinch. He pulled back in an instant, but stood anyway, prepared.

  “It’s just Drosera,” I said to calm him.

  “Ah.” He sat at the side edge of the bed and caught his breath. “Okay.”

  Drosera stood in darkness, the light of the half-moon barely filtering through the bedroom window, not touching her directly. I’d seen her kind in the moonlight, their skin seemed to glow. Tonight, though, I couldn’t even make out the hue of her auburn hair and green eyes. She wore what looked and smelled like two pieces of deer pelt. Her top had no distinct shape; the animal skin looked as though it’d been cut with a dull knife and tied under her armpit to cover her breasts. The deer fur skirt hung at her hips and extended to her upper thighs.

  “What kind of danger are we in?” I asked, my heart still thrumming from being woken up in such a creepy way.

  “A journalist threatens to reveal the harpies,” she said in her wispy voice. “As we speak he is gathering evidence of their existence.”

  “Why?” I asked. But I immediately realized that was a stupid question. Because he was a journalist, it was his job. That’s why.

  She answered anyway. “He believes he can win a Pulitzer for his efforts,” she said.

  I considered her warning for half a second before my first thought escaped my mouth. “By the time he goes public, we’ll probably already have taken down the remaining Hunter complexes. I don’t see the problem. Living out in the open may feel freeing.”

  “Whether or not it is freeing makes no difference,” she said, peering around the room as though she were looking for something. I didn’t risk asking what she looked for. Rusalka had a way of talking in circles, so when they were actually speaking in a straight line, a person would be smart to keep their mouth shut or risk letting the conversation spiral out of comprehension.

  “You are not the only Wild Women in the world,” she continued. “Others who live happily do not wish their peace to be disturbed.”

  I sat up taller and threw my covers off to swing myself over the side of the bed and let my legs dangle. My first instinct was to complain about the fact that even if we became free from the Hunters, we were still not truly free if women from the other side of the world had the power to dictate how we lived. But then I thought of it from their perspective. Maybe a small part of me could see why rocking the boat could scare some Wilds. I remembered the Hunters’ warnings to us during our monthly lessons. One of their reasons for us attending check-ins was to make sure we didn’t use our abilities, because once we started, we wouldn’t have the control to stop and eventually humans would notice. Humans feared what they couldn’t understand, and in their minds they’d only understand us after they’ve dissected us and studied us in cages.

  But that brought me back to my original thought: how free could we be if at the end of all the fighting, we were still hiding?

  Either way, I didn’t have the right to make such a decision for every Wild Woman in the world.

  “Okay,” I finally said, deciding to back down this time. We could deal with the idea of outing our kind once the Hunters were taken care of. Maybe certain groups would opt to reveal their existence and others wouldn’t. “If the journalist reveals that just the harpies exist, because he couldn’t know of the other types of Wild Women, then why are you worried about the others being upset?”

  Drosera stared at me before speaking into my mind. No one is perfect.

  I stared back in awe. Not because of her oddly cloaked statement, but because she’d talked in my mind! She hadn’t done that since her sister Azalea died.

  “You did it!” I said, excitedly. I almost bound to her and wrapped her up in a hug, but I couldn’t be sure how she’d take that and I still feared those birch scissors she and her sisters carried around, able to cut life down with one snip of a strand of hair.

  She barely nodded, but a hint of a smile lifted her lips. “Our abilities are slowly returning.”

  “Well I’m happy for you,” Marcus said with a warmth and genuineness that almost choked me up. “It’s a huge step in your grieving process and you should be proud of where you’re at in your healing.”

  Drosera’s smile dropped and she peered at her toes. “It has not been easy,” she admitted. She looked up and met Marcus’s gaze in the dark room. “Death is nothing more than a transition, than a life changing its form.” She cleared her throat. “But such a change aches down to the marrow of your bones and touches every part of your soul.”

  Marcus swallowed and nodded. The moonlight caught his glistening eyes. “I don’t remember my mother, but just knowing I’ll never experience the cadence of her voice or what it feels like to hug her cracks my heart in two.”

  I watched my boyfriend, sitting there in his boxer briefs, his huge body weighing his side of the bed down, and my heart broke for him. I’d been so focused on learning whether or not my mother was alive, and figuring out how to get her, that I’d forgotten to ask Marcus how this was affecting him—all this talk of mothers and the upcoming motherhood of a harpy.

  “Drosera,” I said, thinking out loud. “Would you be able to find out if Marcus’s mother is alive?”

  The two turned from one another to look at me. Marcus waved his hand in the air. “Don’t worry about that,” he said, dismissing my idea. “You shouldn’t use precious woman-power to locate a ghost. You don’t have time for that right now.”

  “No we don’t,” Drosera agreed.

  I refused to accept that as an answer. “Then afterwards,” I stated unwaveringly. “After this is all done and over with, we will find your mother’s grave.” And if we found no grave, maybe I could convince him to ask the rusalki to help us find her alive.

  “I’d like that,” he responded, his brows slightly furrowed as he fought back emotions I doubted even he understood. The loss of our mothers at a young age, and the weeds of unfamiliar feelings such a loss seeded, was something we had in common.

  I pressed a gentle hand to his bare back. He leaned in to kiss me on the forehead.

  The rusalka cut in without so much as an apology. “If the other Wild Women learn of this journalist, they will expect you to take care of him.”

  “And if I don’t?” I asked, a little perturbed at her interruption and the fact that strangers expected things of me.

  “Many value their anonymity,” Drosera said in a serious tone. “And as I told you, they are not perfect. Like many, they could be pushed to the point of killing for their way of life.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I accidently yelled.

  “Is it?” Drosera sharply answered right away. “Is that not what you’re doing?”

  “I’m killing for my right to be free,” I countered. “Huge difference.”

  “Is that not what they would also be doing?” she asked. “Killing for what they deem their freedom to be? Freedom from being known.”

  Shit, she had a point.

  I exhaled. “So you’re saying if I don’t get this journalist under control I’ll make enemies of a bunch of Wilds who are well versed in their abilities and not afraid to use them?”

  “Yes,” Drosera answered.

  She peered at the door as though she had done what she’d come for and anticip
ated walking out of here and disappearing into thin air. She may have been done, but I wasn’t.

  “Before you leave,” I said quickly to gain her attention. “I wanted to let you know where we’re at with our plans to attack the Hunter complexes.”

  Drosera’s gaze rested on me again and she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Her brown animal skin skirt moved down her hip, exposing more of her lean lower abdomen muscles. “You have chosen to end the Maine complex first,” she stated.

  Oh yeah, if she was able to speak into my mind again she was also able to hear my thoughts. Still, I decided to say my next question to keep Marcus in the loop. “Is this a wise decision? Will we survive?” I asked with a little more desperation than I realized I felt.

  Drosera cocked her head and studied me. “The trees have lost their leaves for the winter,” she started. “Who can say, once their inner work and self-reflection is complete for the season, and they begin to blossom leaves once again, which branches will be most plentiful and which branches will produce little to no leaves?”

  “Are you saying you don’t know?” Marcus surmised, and I could have laughed and kissed him for it because I’d done the same thing when I’d first started dealing with odd Wilds. I also winced a little, worried that his interruption of the rusalka meant we’d never learn the meaning to her parable.

  Her gaze shifted from me to the ex-Hunter. She narrowed her eyes and I wondered if he felt the massaging fingertips on his brain, a side effect of having your mind read by a rusalka.

  “As you are not a tree woman I should not expect you to understand,” she said to Marcus in a way that lacked the tone of belittlement, but also didn’t exude acceptance. “The huldra is a tree with many branches. Where she flows her energy, those branches will produce leaves. Where the energy is blocked, those branches will not produce leaves and they will eventually die, grow brittle, and break. She chooses which branches receive her energy and which do not. In one form or another, we each choose our own destiny, so it is not for me to divulge one’s future when what I see is merely one possibility of many.”