Verra of Wolves

by Blake Thunderport

  “I want to stop running away and be free, appreciated, loved. There’s no way I am giving all my efforts up.”

  His laugh quaked the bed, and the tower of books collapsed. I picked them up carefully so no pages would knitter. They needed to be in the same condition as I got them from the library.

  From Claire. She infested my days.

  “Love!” he exclaimed. “You know nothing about love. Look at you, closing your eyes in front of the bigger picture, afraid of losing sight on the Oracle. She consumes you but you enjoy it. Being in danger is your fetish. This has nothing to do with love.”

  “And what do you know? Cursed to love, you keep pursuing a barely grown woman into submission. A harem of Witches. Is that supposed to be your fetish?”

  His eyes lit up when he tossed the chalice on the altar, breaking it into tiny shards that flew across the room. One had cut my cheek. Veymor’s tight grip around my wrists forced me to show my face to him instead of covering it in pain. He scanned it and his iris blackened again.

  “My love for you is the purest you will ever encounter. I have loved the first of you, all in between and now the last. It’s endless, through life and death.” He let go of me and calmed his posture. “You look just like her, you bleed like her, too,” he said, kissed me on the cut and placed himself on the portal. “One day you will slit your wrists for me and realise what love is.”

  After he vanished, the energy I collected crawled out of my pores again and left me with a tense wrap around my neck, wrists, and pelvis. My bones rubbed against each other and forced me to lie down.

  On my way to the bed, I took Sosden flowers from my altar and burned them, inhaling the smoke. My heart slowed down and my limbs stopped pulsating.

  I never imagined I would anger a God or hear him say that he loved me.

  How was I supposed to cope with it?

  The numbing effect of Sosden let me recover until the sun reminded me of my mission. I rummaged through every shelf and drawer for the biggest spoon I could find, got some leftover meat from the cafeteria and made my way to the wolves den.

  When I encountered the wolfess, she snarled.

  I placed the meat in front of me and got on my knees so she could smell my head. The pups squeaked and jumped around me.

  “I need to get something,” I whispered to her, hoping she would understand.

  She licked the meat and gorged it down before laying down beside a fallen tree trunk and nursing her children. After watching them compete in who could suckle the longest without getting overjoyed, I committed to digging with a cake shovel.

  Sensing the Underworld became difficult, but I was certain I would find Vanna’s grimoire under the den. I would prove Veymor wrong and never get claimed. I could turn the wheel around in my favour and it would be me sitting in Doctor Di Centi’s seat instead of Tonio.

  After I had dug a hole deep enough to stretch my arm into it, I gave up shovelling. There was no buried treasure waiting to be discovered.

  I stuck my nose into the moss but it guided me nowhere, my gut longed for rest, not adventure. Shovelling the earth back into the hole, I accepted my failure.

  I wouldn’t need Veymor, I convinced myself. I had arrived in Roness without him, had climbed through the woods and gotten myself enrolled in the academy, all by myself.

  The muddy patches on my dress laughed at me. All I had to do was consider the warning on the loose grimoire pages. Though Veymor was right about one thing, I had the ability to sabotage my life and did so more than often. I had known nothing else but chaos, I became it. A whirlwind of misfortune, who dragged bystanders into a journey without providing a map. This time I would change the course.

  The ship was not sinking, yet.

  15. Promised Lifestyle

  The campus atmosphere shifted into a serious tone during the first week. I was glad to have chosen Harriet’s courses since he filled it with room for creativity. His art course started my week. It was the only course of that day and allowed me to sleep until lunch.

  There, I learned about architecture, aesthetics, and colour theory. It became my spiritual lair.

  “Beauty,” he discussed. “What is beautiful?”

  We gave many answers, like blooming flowers, pleasant colours, and round shapes. He let us vote on the beauty of them and concluded it with a phrase that stuck with me.

  “A spring, full of refreshing, sparkling water, is beautiful to anyone but those who nearly drowned. A black canvas is meaningless unless you see yourself in such a void. Truly, beautiful is anything you can relate to.”

  That week, we were given the task of painting what we related to. Since I struggled to erase Claire’s moon-face out of my mind, I failed to submit a result.

  Whenever I focused on beauty, I saw her. She was the perfect collaboration of shapes and colours. We shared arts and ethics courses, during which she would hold my hand under the bench and clench it from time to time.

  Elvora’s eyes followed us, and I hesitated to act on my desires while managing Claire’s impulsiveness.

  In between courses, she would push me into niches of the hallway, just to kiss me, and the fear of getting caught added fuel to my passion.

  I brought her home on the first and second days of the school week and would stay until sunset.

  Doctor Di Centi’s dinners inspired me. He loved talking about his research and the wish of a never-ending line of Doctors and Magicians. During dinner, I would sit beside Tonio but ended up going into Claire’s room every time.

  On my free day, the fourth weekday, she visited my loft after her library duties and waited for Bryon’s training to finish so he could take her home. We studied together or I read to her until she fell asleep.

  After a few weeks, it became routine, and I forgot about the initial secret.

  By then, outsiders perceived us as the closest of friends and stopped following us around on campus, though Elvora’s minions continued brewing up fresh gossip.

  After we finished our second month of courses, Claire got obsessed with the idea of a birthday party for both of us. Ever since she saw my personal documents, she knew my date of birth. I had to find out hers through Tonio, afraid of giving her the impression that I didn’t care about her special day.

  It never appealed to me, as there were plenty of cultural holidays to show your appreciation—like the family-fest.

  Both Northerners and Southerners didn’t celebrate their birthdays, but the Isle-people did and I followed Claire’s lead.

  “I don’t understand you mainlanders,” she said. “I mean, I try, but your birthday is your personal holiday where we can celebrate your existence. Who wouldn’t want that?” She wrapped my blanket around her shoulders and marked the territory with her signature scent.

  “Maybe because time passes on its own and has nothing to do with you? We are nineteen days apart, anyway. Do you want to have a party across multiple weeks? We’ve got the porcelain holidays where all girls get celebrated. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. I want it to be about me! I mean, about you. Us,” she persisted.

  Unconvinced, I shifted my chin from side to side while chewing the dried skin on my lips. “I don’t know, Claire,” I sighed, “I’m not an Islander, this holiday doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Islander or not, it doesn’t matter. We’ll pick a date, have cake, a band, and guests that come to see us enjoy our day,” she said, and I agreed to her plan just to see her smile.

  During her afternoon naps, I would continue my alchemy studies.

  Professor Bloum was one of the most competent teachers I encountered, despite his young appearance. He found visual examples for every point, engaged in discussions and complimented every thought-provoking question.

  He informed me that he had signed me into his advanced course. I was upset about the extra loads of work on my shoulders but caught up to my coursemates quickly. Soon I distilled my very first potion. A waking elixir, that I diluted in tea on sleep-dep
rived days.

  While we waited for the liquid potions to collect, Bloum would teach to the courses’ interest. Practical magic and general knowledge about herbs, where to find and how to pick them, were his favourite subjects. He was demanding but never discouraging.

  Undergraduates visited us regularly and presented us with their newest achievements, like conjuring light orbs or floating objects with nothing but their minds. They were often rewarded with a milestone-certificate.

  Unlike the school I visited in Urai, the Dicheval academy had no fixed exams. Students could prepare for their milestones and show their skills at a requested date. The academy was privately owned, as long as the students paid their fees, they defined their own schedule without pressure.

  Coursemates in art and ethics would rarely apply for an exam. They studied out of interest instead of for certificates—Claire was one of them.

  Our alchemy course, on the other hand, was eager to succeed at every milestone. We encouraged each other to request exam dates and studied past the regular hours. Tonio would guide us and reveal his personal tricks whenever he caught us in the laboratory after patient visits. He also helped to oversee the ingredients every other week, alongside Elvora, who never stopped smiling, showing her large teeth. She was present constantly and walked past me countless times. Her stare was icy enough to bruise my confidence.

  There, I asked about the whispering they did before conjuring things out of the air since I suspected it to be spellwork.

  “That has nothing to do with spells,” Bloum said. “It’s more of a personal poem. To calm yourself and concentrate. Were you confused by the language? Many students speak in their native dialect.”

  To me, it sounded like intent that I used to manifest my wishes. For them, it was a method of relaxation.

  Witchcraft and magic weren’t so different, it seemed. There could’ve been more of a Mage inside of me than a Witch.

  A theory not far from reality, since I excelled at every task Bloum gave me, whether they were potions or knowledge of herbs.

  During one of our field trips, he praised me and called me a natural talent, as expected from a Volkov. He helped me with my personal poem and I sang it like a chant, trying to manifest the last bits of my witchiness.

  Ever since Veymor shattered the chalice, he had failed to appear. The picture of his body vanished from my memory, and so did my practices. I stopped burning herbs to banish unwelcomed energy and rarely applied the chamomile essence.

  The Witch in me fell asleep.

  16. Successor

  The weeks flew past and I found myself conjuring water inside my hand during the alchemy course.

  I stretched out my palm while Bloum instructed me. My coursemates watched attentively.

  “Feel the water inside the air and collect it,” he said and I began whispering my chant with closed eyes.

  “Free the wolf within me.

  No more need to keep it in.

  No doubt there to shake me.

  Let go of the sheepskin.”

  They gasped when a ball of water smacked onto my hand. I opened my eyes and witnessed their shocked faces take a step back. Professor Bloum stood frozen beside me. All their chins, beside Elvora’s, had dropped.

  “Forgive me,” I stuttered.

  To my surprise, they applauded and nodded their heads. They were Magicians after all and needed time to analyse before reacting to it.

  “Looks like we’ve found a successor,” Bloum said with his arm around my shoulders, “we were only expecting a few drops. If you continue, you will beat Gerogy’s records for sure.” He signed the certificate and handed it to me.

  When I sat down at my table to take the advised rest, a prickling sensation overcame me and warmed my body.

  I gained weight as ate every meal with pleasure, and my cheeks flushed with colour again.

  Claire’s presence healed me from within, and her family’s influence turned me into a real Mage. I clung to it with all my might, even if that meant following Tonio’s orders. He became invasive in scheduling my time and imagining our future with his father while promising that it would never escalate into an actual wedding. He integrated me into their inner circle, him, Kress, and Bryon to prove it.

  I learned about their goals and responsibilities, which made me come to peace with mine.

  Kress had to get control over his mother and sidetrack her so she would leave Roness for the Lagoon—a sacred place for Sirens, their home, separated from politics of the outside world. His mission was to take over her title.

  Bryon needed to convince his older brother to join the circle or get rid of him, as he owned half of the heritage. His parents forgot how to return to their human form and remained as panthers in the wild, he explained.

  It sounded natural, comming from him, and I wondered if he accepted the same fate for himself.

  After a while, I felt like a part of a family. A family beyond bloodline, as Tonio used to say. We enjoyed tea together on the weekends, though I didn’t understand every matter they discussed. Politics, their connections outside of Roness, and Prince Fellis of Heior—whom they hated passionately—were the subjects I stood silent on.

  My mission was to get as knowledgeable as possible.

  A successor.

  I began writing a protocol for my water conjuration. At this pace I would beat Gerogy’s records and prove myself to him, make him proud.

  Elvora walked up to me while the course continued their studies. I stopped seeing her at the Di Centi mansion, apart from official gatherings. She looked at me with pinched eyes and undermined my joy. “You should know,” she whispered, “that it will be me, who gets him.”

  Our legs brushed when she sat down beside me, awaking the image of an experienced Mage tutoring the new student. Bloum bought it and smiled upon meeting my stare that begged for rescue.

  “I know about your sloppy little secret, don’t forget.”

  I remained silent at first, but couldn’t let her go unpunished. “That’s for the Doctor to decide, I guess. I heard he isn’t fond of you. You’re the first Mage of your line and quite weak, to be honest.”

  “You’re a leech,” she snarled, “uncultured, irrelevant, replaceable. You learned to talk and dress like us, like a puppet. It won’t last. You’ll see who’s weak.” When she got up, she pulled my chair and made me plunge on the floor. “Oh, goodness, Verra!” she exclaimed. “Be careful.”

  She had me tied up and I could not scream at her, no matter how much I wanted to.

  After Bloum checked up on me, I excused myself to go to the infirmary but proceeded to the Di Centi mansion instead.

  Elvora’s nasty behaviour took physical form and I would not allow it. I could set Tonio on it or Evrett, even Kress. Either way, I had to tell Claire all about it first.

  I rushed past Loyra who looked at me with her eyes ripped open before she bowed down to me and I did the same. She must have been surprised since alchemy took up all three course hours of the day. Usually, I fell straight into bed afterwards, alone. That particular day, anger powered my legs.

  When I entered her room. Bryon was lying on Claire’s bed. He chewed on grapes while she rolled around on the carpet. She jumped up as soon as she noticed his quietness.

  My knees liquified. With wobbly steps I approached them, figuring out the situation.

  “Verra!” Claire squeaked and hugged me. She led me to the bed, but I refused to sit until she said something, anything, to calm my suspicions.

  They looked at each other before Bryon inspected my body. I didn’t expect to see them together until I realised that he brought her home more often than I would.

  “Did something happen? You’re whiter than usual,” he asked and reached out to me so I would sit beside him.

  “Elvora, she-,”

  “Will get herself executed,” Claire completed my sentence, and I didn’t doubt her ability to invoke that punishment.

  “Let’s kick her out of the academy a
lready,” Bryon said.

  “Her great-grandparents donated most of the books to our library. Murdering her would be less complicated.” Her seriousness made me remember how scared I was of her power, and rightfully so.

  “Anyway,” she said, “now, that you’re here. Why don’t you join us?”

  When Bryon unbuttoned his shirt, I shrugged back. My assumptions were true, and I tried to hold back my words. I had a lot to say after a long day. In my mind, I expected Kress, not Bryon. He was supposed to marry her.

  We never agreed to be exclusive in our relationship, but I wanted her to be obsessed with me so much that agreements would be unnecessary. They were for me.

  “I thought, assumed, we…,” I stuttered.

  “Oh no, don’t be scared.” Claire brushed back my hair and kissed my cheek. She smelled of alcohol more and more recently.

  “She told me, you can’t enjoy guys. Let’s see if I can change that,” Bryon said.

  I rushed away from the bed. She told him about me, and I hoped that she kept my biggest secret to herself. “No, I–I don’t want this.”

  They looked at me with questioning faces. It may have been natural to them, but I couldn’t concur. It struck my core while I was vulnerable, and it defeated me.

  I stormed out of her room and locked myself inside my loft for the weekend. Apart from sneaking in and out for food, I pretended to be absent—even when Claire knocked on my door, asking me what day I preferred for our birthday celebrations.

  17. Happy Birthday

  During the next days, I cried, studied and picked up witchcraft again. I had read every history book I could get my hands on and found out about prince Fellis’ Oracle bloodline and their connection to The Eye. His family had ruled Heior for centuries. Because of that, their calculation of time had stopped focusing on Eras. Instead, they counted years and months only. The Eye was ever-present, watching over the citizens and the jurisdiction. All family members of Fellis were initiates of this organisation. They founded a supervised, utopian state and expanded Heior’s territory by eliminating crime in nearby villages and promising protection under their rule.