I slowed down rather than keeping up with her pace on a branch I wasn’t sure would support my weight. I knew perfectly well what it felt like to fall from the trees. We both did. That might have been why we were told we couldn’t tree top race by Red as she had to fix us both up. Too bad, we were both adults and grown-up. Red couldn’t stop us now. But the darn branches were stopping me.
The nearest trunk rose up another level, and I scrambled up it to get a better view. While we didn’t have to follow the bridges between the trees when we treetop raced, we still have to go between branches that supported our combined weight and the pounding of our feet as we ran. As I stared forward, I could see the spire at the top of the records building. It was a straight shot from where I stood. Running below wasn’t going to happen, and the branches nearby weren’t going to support my weight to run on them at the same time as Sera, but maybe they could support me hanging alone.
I took the nearest branch and bent it down to me. I pulled a little harder, and it didn’t break. I had an idea and couldn’t help but smile. I took ahold at the branch I was standing on and swung around it. As my momentum carried me forward, I reached for the tree nearest to me. I grabbed that branch as I let go with my one hand. I smiled as I saw the pathway to the record tree was much more direct if I wasn’t running. Without any hesitation, I swung to the next branch and the next and the next. With each swing I could feel my body moving faster and my arc becoming longer as I let go of one branch and took the next.
Luckily, as I swung between branches, no one could see me. They would have thought some sort of monster was in the trees. I had to look like a deranged animal as I swung. I was sure Red would be waiting for me to scold me for scaring the whole city if that happened. The records building came up fast as I made an almost direct route to it. Wasting no time, I climbed down to the door and leaned against it to wait.
I wouldn’t have much time to catch my breath, and I tried not to laugh out loud. It felt so freeing to fly through the branches, like I was meant to be soaring in the skies. I didn’t believe Sera that I could have magic, but maybe she could be a little right that I brought magic with me that stopped the curse last time. Perhaps the people that left me could fly. I could have lived with that.
Sera dropped down in front of me. She was a tiny bit winded from her run.
“How did you….?” She stared at me in shock.
I smiled and shrugged. I wasn’t giving away my secret. She’d either use it against me or perfect doing it herself. I wasn’t going to chance it either.
“Let’s get to looking,” I suggested before she could ask more.
Sera sputtered a bit more but didn’t say anything as she knocked on the door to the records. A little old lady, whose name I couldn’t remember, opened the door. She was at least a head shorter than Sera, but her gray hair piled on her head made her almost as tall.
“Hi, Doreen, we need to access the birth records,” Sera said with her authority. Doreen nodded and unlocked the door to let us in.
“Thank you,” Sera said, giving the older woman a nod as we walked into the large records building that wove around one of the most massive trees in the village.
I had only been inside the hall of records a couple of times with Red when I was growing up. I really thought there was nothing there for me, rooms and rooms filled from floor to ceiling with books. It wasn’t that I couldn’t read; it just didn’t interest me. I knew Sera had been there tons of times. It was all part of her training to take over a Red. I didn’t need to know or care about all those boring details.
The walls were lined with books of every shape, color, and size, and the hall itself was several stories tall. Sera weaved her way through the tightly fitted shelves, and I followed, trying not to knock anything over. There was so much history in those books. I wasn’t sure any one person had time to read them all, but I knew Sera had read a lot of them.
“I’ve already checked for records on the curse. There was nothing there,” Sera explained as she took another corner and climbed a tight spiral staircase.
I followed behind her, having to turn my shoulders at more than one point since I wouldn’t fit otherwise. This building wasn’t made for people my size. I knew I was larger than the average tree person, but it was a little ridiculous how tightly packed the building was.
The upper level of the record hall had a few more windows that let the light illuminate all the dust in the air. It seemed it had been some time since anyone had climbed so high.
“They are in order by winters, but you know someone always puts things back wrong, so it might take a few moments to find it,” Sera explained.
I went to walk with her to the shelf she was going for, but she stopped and gave me the Sera look. It said, why the heck are you following me. Guess I wasn’t really needed to help carry a book.
“I’ll just wait over there.” I pointed to the one waist-tall table in the room by the staircase. There might have been more stands, but I wasn’t finding them any time soon since I barely fit in the room.
It didn’t take Sera long to come back with a large book. She set it carefully on the stand next to me and began to page through it. The pages were yellowed with age, and beautiful writing filled the inside of it.
“You should be listed here in the first group,” Sera explained. “Since you arrived in the winter. These are all the recorded winter births.”
“Would that even have me since I was adopted?”
Sera nodded. “Adopted or born to their parents, every single person that was born here is added. It doesn’t matter. This book should say that you belong to Red, and you are her responsibility to raise. She would have put it in the book, but if not, it should have automatically been added.”
Sera pointed to the list and began to read through the names. She huffed as she turned the page and went through the next list of names. Again, she had to turn the page. After several pages, Sera seemed as frustrated as I felt at all of this. She went back to the beginning of the book and paged through again, slower this time.
“You’re not in here,” she declared, moving back to the front of the book and looking again. “How can you not be in here? That makes no sense. This is the official record of all the children in town. How would you not be here?”
I nodded to her and made my way back to the stairs. I had no idea why I wasn’t in the book. Again, our search led to nothing. I had hoped we could get an answer, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. My life was never that easy.
17th March
The next day, I spent with Sera in the musty old building of records. We had the winter right, so I knew we had the right book. She was convinced maybe it was the wrong book. After searching for additional books, we went through all of those also. While I was ready to move on and explore other options, Sera wasn’t.
She was determined to find something, whether it was an adoption or a birth record that I existed. I honestly had no idea what to think of all of it. Maybe it was because Red was the leader that no one questioned her, or maybe it was just that the curse was gone and they didn’t care. But book after book gave us nothing. I wasn’t officially a citizen of Elder. While I felt like I didn’t belong before, now I knew I didn’t. Both my mother and the magic that governed Azren records refused to acknowledge I existed.
While Sera wanted to spend more time in the books, I was finished. There was nothing there to find. Sera needed to give it up. We had to look for other clues and search in other directions. It wasn’t like this was our first dead end.
The next morning, Red left to go south to the farms, while Sera dragged me back to the records hall. It seemed like life had to go on in the kingdom even if the wolves couldn’t move on with their lives. I slightly resented Red for being able to just put them aside for something else. Did she only care about half her people?
It wasn’t fair of me to blame Red. She wanted everyone to be safe and to get along as much as anyone. I just wanted someone to blame. Who I really should have ac
cused was whoever cast the dark magic over Elder’s shifters to begin with. Since the curse was hundreds of winters old, I was pretty sure the person who cast it was long gone, but what if it was like the Red. What if there was something evil keeping the curse going just like the magic that made Red keep going in each new generation?
After our day of finding nothing in the books, Sera convinced me to spend one more night at Red’s cottage. Mainly because she was my personal guard, which she wouldn’t admit to, but I knew she was, and she wanted to sleep in her bed. I waited as the night turned dark, and she fell asleep before I took off. I wasn’t going to sit around Azren and hope a solution ended up in my lap. The records were a dead end. While the people of Azren felt mildly safer now that the wolves were locked up, my friends weren’t safe. I only felt a small bit of guilt for sneaking out in the middle of the night. Sera would be okay, probably just mad that I bested her again.
My run was typical through the first half of the woods. Night animals were out in full force and getting their nightly meals. Owls were hooting, and the possums ran from me as I made small noises so they’d know I was near. Large animals such as the few large cats that hunted near my place were out too. I didn’t hear them, but it was like I could feel them.
There had to be an answer that I was just missing. I wished I could have had Nikkan to talk with. While he wasn’t one for things such as helping whole groups of people since he was more of the loner type, he was great at coming up with crazy ideas. I knew the majority of them were just plain nuts to try, but at this point, any of his stupid schemes would have been welcomed. I needed a fresh view on all of it. There had to be something.
I was fortunate that my night vision was as good as my day vision. I didn’t need to rest or wait as I continued my run past my house. There wasn’t anyone waiting there for me, anyway. Nikkan was locked away with the rest of the wolves.
The howls began before I even got near the fence. Their voices rang out in the night air. The wolves were just as bad as the first night in the wall, and I didn’t blame them. There weren’t any animals for quite a distance; the animals were all staying away, which only made things worse. I knew since I just ran through the woods. You knew when you got into wolf territory as it got eerily silent for a few paces before you started to hear the howls. I had to imagine all the wolves were starving, and the ones not starving were huddled scared in their homes. It wasn’t good for those that already had the curse or those who didn’t and were trapped with them.
Trapped wolves were one problem, but trapped, hungry wolves were utterly worse. I knew they had already turned on each other. How far would it go? How long could Nikkan and Grace stay safe? They needed to eat.
I slowed my pace as I saw the shimmer of the foggy fence that kept the wolves in. Even in the dark, it was obvious where it was. I felt the magic of it but still wasn’t about to admit that I had magic in me. If I did, it was useless magic, it seemed.
The wall was still holding, and not a single wolf was near it. I could hear the skirmishes beyond the wall, but I couldn’t make out a single thing. The fuzzy wall was hard enough to see through, but I knew if there was some sort of movement, I would notice. I began to walk around the wall as I heard the wolves growling at each other. Every now and then, there would be an ear-piercing howl.
There was also the occasional human voice within the fence. I tested the wall more than once, wanting to help the human calls I heard. If they were human, they might not be cursed yet, but just being a wolf condemned them to the same fate as the ones changed by magic. I pressed on the fog wall again. There was no way a human was going through it. I could do nothing for the cries of the people trapped there.
“You can’t do anything,” Sera commented as she appeared out of the dark.
Of course, she followed me.
“I know that.” I hit the wall with my hand. Elder was safe from the wolves, but that didn’t mean my friends were safe. Being this close made it more real.
Another human cry came from inside the wall. It was the scream of a man. Part of me wanted to see him and see what was wrong, but another part was thankful I couldn’t see him since I couldn’t help.
“Nikkan, Grace,” I yelled, hoping to see my friends. Maybe not hoping either if they were locked up safe. But it didn’t sound like much of anyone was safe. “Micco.” I tried yelling for the older man instead. He would be out there in the thick of it, trying to protect those that couldn’t defend themselves.
There were now groans and moans mixed into the snarling and howls of the wolves. Amazingly, someone staggered into view. I didn’t recognize them as they got close. They had dark hair and were twice as wide as Nikkan. It had to be a male.
“Are you okay?” Sera yelled.
We could hear the wolves and people in the village. They had to be able to hear us.
The person looked around and finally noticed us. He looked like he was going to run to us, but before he could take two steps toward us, a wolf popped out of the tree line behind the person and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back to where we couldn’t see them. The man barely made a sound, like he was resigned to his fate.
“They are dying,” I complained to Sera. “The wolves are killing the humans.”
“We can’t be certain,” Sera replied as she began to pace beside me and occasionally check the wall also.
More yells and cries came from the village. Sera began to pound on the wall as she walked not too far behind me. She might have disliked the wolves before, but she was different now. Grace had changed her. Sera cared.
“I know Grace wanted to keep the people of Elder safe, but she isn’t safe,” I complained. There was nothing Sera or I could do. It wasn’t fair. “What if something happens to her or Nikkan?”
Sera nodded and pounded on the wall. No one else came near the wall, but we could hear it all. Sera wasn’t sugar-coating it. She could hear what I heard, and it wasn’t good. There was a fight going on within the walls, and I couldn’t do a thing to help them. All my training and power was for nothing if I couldn’t get within the wall. I knew how much Red feared me being bitten, but I feared losing my friends more than becoming a wolf.
“This isn’t fair,” I complained as anger started to build inside me.
I pressed my forehead to the wall and tried to see something that would tell me what was going on. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt. I doubted that, but I kept a small sliver of hope.
“It isn’t,” Sera agreed. That was a first, and some of my anger deflated at the thought that Sera and I could agree on something. “But what can we do?”
My anger came back. What could we do? We only got to sit safely behind the wall and listen to our friends die. We were helpless. I hated the magical wall even though I knew it was needed. I hated that they said I had magic, but I couldn’t help my friends. I hated that this curse was destroying the people that felt like home to me. I hated all of it.
I began to pound harder on the wall. If I was magical, couldn’t I just break it? Could I go save my friends? Was my magic strong enough to keep them safe?
“Castiel,” Sera said as she came over and caught my hands. She gently wiped away the blood on my knuckles. “Beating yourself up won’t help anything.”
I blew out my breath before responding. I wasn’t angry at Sera and didn’t want to take it out on her. I was mad with the world, angry with the curse, and angry that I was powerless even though the healer and Sera both said I was filled with magic. I never really wanted to be unique or have magical powers, but at this exact moment, I wanted to be able to help my friends. But I was useless.
I turned from the village and leaned back against the wall and slid down until I was sitting with my back to it. It might have been torture to listen to them fighting, but I couldn’t leave. I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew Nikkan and Grace were safe. I hoped that morning would come quickly, though I knew night time had just begun.
“We can’t go in there as it keeps
wolves and humans apart. We can’t change what we are,” Sera explained what I already knew. She continued to stand and scan the woods behind me now. Sera leaned her head against the invisible wall and closed her eyes. “There has to be an answer. We have to be missing something.”
I wished with all my might that she was right. I couldn’t just accept that we failed. My friends and all the wolves were counting on us. Failure wasn’t an option. But man, it felt like we had failed.
“Castiel,” a voice called from the other side of the fence.
I scrambled up and looked through the wall.
“Help,” she said louder as she stumbled near.
I could see her red hair glowing in the soft moonlight. Her clothing was ripped, but she was still in her human form. I could make out that her arms and face were covered with blood as she neared us and collapsed on the ground in front of us.
“Castiel,” she cried as she saw me. “I can’t help him.” She sobbed more.
Where was Nikkan? I waited for him to appear from behind her, but he wasn’t there. I pounded on the wall with my cut-up hands.
“Grace,” I yelled, trying to get her to look up at me. I had to know. “What’s going on?”
Grace’s eyes fluttered between Sera and me.
“He tried to keep me safe, but I can’t help him. I can’t shift. I’ll become a monster like the rest of them. I’m not strong enough to fight the curse. He should never have stayed to protect me. He’s dying, and there’s nothing I can do.”
Grace tried to push herself up to stand, but her legs wobbled, and she ended up back on the ground. She gave up trying and lay down, sobbing. A feeling of uselessness settled in me. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t as magical as everyone hoped. I was just me. And I failed. Nikkan was going to die, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.
“What can we do?”
Sera looked like she was almost in tears. Her forlorn face was what I needed to find my motivation. I couldn’t give up. My friends needed us.
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