“The curse before affected the wolves,” I tried to explain to Mal.
“Because there’s magic in their blood,” Mal replied as she looked back at the village.
More people had followed Grace and Nikkan to where they stood a few saplings away from Mal and me at the edge of the village. Curious eyes looked at Mal. She was a sight to see as she frantically pulled me from the village we’d just popped into.
I could hear the whispers of the people that were following us, the ones that still had the strength to walk. They wanted to know who she was. Some had heard she was a healer. More than one was looking at her with hopeful eyes. They desperately needed help, and here Mal was dragging me away and leaving them to fend for themselves. Not very helpful.
“I can’t fix this kind of magic,” Mal stated to the people that stood there watching her. “But I can protect you from hurting others. I can feel the good in all of you. None of you want to harm people, but the curse will make you do that. What I can offer is protection for you and the rest of Elder.”
I stared at the small woman. How in the world could she protect all the people of Elder if she couldn’t take the curse away? If her magic could protect Elder, then why not remove the curse? I knew very little about magic, but it seemed like they were both on the same scale.
Mal retook my arm and began to pull me back further into the woods. We couldn’t see the village from where she stopped, but Nikkan and Grace were following, just not too closely.
“First, I need to call all the wolves to the villages.”
She took a step in front of me and began to wave her hands in the air like she was swatting at bugs. I had no idea what she was doing, but after a few moments, she seemed satisfied.
“Next, I will erect the wall you’ve been trying to build with magic. It will allow things to go through, like the water from the streams or the animals like deer or birds, but it will stop any wolf or human from crossing.”
The people behind Grace seemed to have hope in their eyes at the description Mal was giving to them. There was actual hope. I knew the wolves didn’t want to hurt anyone, but to be told there was a way to keep everyone safe was something no one could feel until Mal spoke. I wanted to give them hope that the nightmare was all done, but at least this was something. It was a step toward helping all of Elder.
“That will keep both sides from harming each other,” Mal said more quietly to me. Red seemed to have filled her in at least a little bit.
I looked back at my friends. This wall was going to keep us apart. Yes, Nikkan had yet to forgive me, but now I wouldn’t get the chance to win him back. Until we found a cure to the curse, they would be there, and I would be here. Grace seemed to understand as tears began to trickle down her face.
“Step back, children,” Mal said to Grace and Nikkan. They were anything but children, but they knew her order was directed at them.
Mal began to take off her shoes. I had no idea what she was, let alone what she was capable of, but I wasn’t going to argue. She was keeping my friends safe from the tree people that seemed to want to hunt wolves now. Mal hiked up her long maroon skirt and dug her feet into the ground. Luckily, it was spring, and the dirt gave way instead of being frozen like it was only moons ago.
I glanced back at my friends. Nikkan was wrapped around Grace’s feet, and she had a hand on his head. She looked sad, but Nikkan looked more determined than ever.
“I will find a cure,” I told Grace as she didn’t try to hide her tears.
She nodded to me but didn’t respond.
Mal began to chant. I had no idea why, but it was like I could feel the pull. There was something coming to her. I couldn’t see it or smell it, but I could feel it. Mal was pulling more and more of it as she closed her eyes and kept chanting.
“Keep her safe,” I told my wolf friend at Grace’s feet.
The wolf looked up at me. All the hate and mistrust from the past week were gone. It was Nikkan, truly Nikkan, looking back at me. I knew his wolf side as well as I knew his human side. The look he gave me was all I needed. I knew, without a doubt, he would keep Grace safe.
“And you keep safe, too,” I told him.
They were like family to me. I wasn’t going to stop until I helped them, but until then, I needed to know they would be fine.
Wolf Nikkan nipped in the air, his way of agreeing with me.
“I will find an answer,” I told my friends. “I don’t care how long it will take or what I will have to do to find it, but I will help you guys.”
Grace smiled through her tears as the chanting of Mal next to me grew louder. The wind was whipping through the trees overhead and sending gusts down to the ground. I had to pull my hair off my face to still see my friends. Grace was standing holding onto wolf Nikkan as she looked at the lady next to me. The healer was again chanting loud enough to be heard over the wind storm.
I turned to Mal. Her dark, almost black hair was truly sparkling now. I could see hints of red, gold, silver, and bronze in her hair as it stood out from the wind. She didn’t notice it as she had her eyes closed while she waved her arms around in concentric circles in front of her. Her rings grew larger, and her chant grew to a yell. Tipping her head back, she continued to chant, her voice rising to almost a scream now. I refused to close my eyes as the wind brought up sand and small twigs into the air. I stared across the way at my friends.
This wasn’t a solution. It was a bandage on a wound much more significant than my mother wanted to admit days ago, and hence it was out of control. She didn’t have answers, but I wasn’t going to stop trying. Nikkan, Grace, and the wolves were as much family to me as Red. I didn’t leave family behind.
Mal let out a blood-curdling scream from beside me, and I turned back to her. She fell to the ground as the wind instantly stopped, and everything hanging in the air fell to the ground. I reached down to help Mal back to her feet as she struggled to stand again, but she batted my hand away and stopped trying to get up.
“I’ll just rest here,” she said to me, her voice gravelly.
“Is it done?” I asked as I turned back to my friends.
I didn’t need Mal to answer. There was a fog now between them and me. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew it was magic and the wall Mal had built. It wasn’t completely dense; I could see through it. Grace was still there looking back at me, and now there was a large crowd behind her. It was hard to be entirely sure with the foggy wall, but it looked like relief lined the faces of the crowd. It wasn’t a cure, but it was better than nothing.
15th March
After making the wall yesterday, Mal immediately disappeared. I didn’t ask her to drop me off back with Red in Azren. What good would it do? She didn’t have answers. It was better to stay in the forest and let myself think.
Mal didn’t give me much to go with. She said it was a curse and dark magic, not a sickness. So calling any other healers, no matter how insulting to Mal it would be, wouldn’t help. The wolves didn’t need to be healed. They needed to be uncursed. They needed magic. But where was I supposed to get magic? Mal said it was dark magic. Did I need someone who did dark magic to undo it, or did it need another kind of magic?
Magic was a lesson Red didn’t cover when I grew up. Yes, Red had magic. It was what made her the Red, but I never really knew what that meant. It wasn’t like she could do magic; it was more like there was magic inside of her.
No one in Elder studied magic. The few witches we had left all learned in a different kingdom. While some of the stuff we used had began magicked to do what they did, mostly Elder citizens stayed away from anything magic. It was a lot easier to trust what you did with your own two hands rather than magic. I hadn’t been taught much of magic beyond the few books that vaguely mentioned it in my childhood education. And I ignored those as I planned to live my life in Elder where magic wasn’t needed.
I thought I would head home for the night, but I couldn’t. My friends were trapped in an enormous magical
bubble with wolves that were going crazy with hunger. I couldn’t help them, but I couldn’t leave either. There had to be an answer; we just weren’t seeing it.
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 con
versation 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.
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