by Eden Beck
I feel my muscles tense, as if in preparation for a fight.
“Free Territory? What does that mean?” I ask.
“Uh,” Kaleb stumbles over a response and looks to his brothers for help, neither of whom seems able to come up with a better explanation.
I put my hand up against Kaleb’s chest and push him out of the way. I’ve had enough of this.
That same phrase keeps running through my head.
Home. Home. Home.
I keep walking onward toward where I vaguely remember seeing a bridge. All three boys keep pace with me and flank my sides as I walk. I ignore their persistence as they try to dissuade me from going any further.
“My car is right near here,” Rory says. “Please just let me take you home. You can stay in your wet clothes. I still have blankets in there that you can wrap up in.”
“No thanks,” I say, still walking forward. It’s all I can do to keep from collapsing. To keep from falling apart completely.
“What about your other friends?” Kaleb asks, as if I care that I left Jess, Aimee, and Tom back at the other end of the river right now. They’re the reason I’m in this position in the first place. And honestly, I’d prefer it if Tom fell in the river.
I think I see a flash of metal from the bridge up ahead, and I quicken my pace a bit.
“I appreciate that you saved me from drowning, Rory,” I say, my lungs burning again. “Really, I’m super grateful. And I’ll repay you somehow, I can pick up the rest of the work on the school project or something. But right now I just want to walk home alone.”
“But you can’t,” Kaleb says again, his voice coming out almost like a whine.
“Unless you give me a good reason not to, I’m not stopping.” I know I’m being stubborn and headstrong, but that’s the only thing keeping me going.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marlowe says this time. “What if someone tries to follow you home or something?”
“You mean besides you guys?” Sarcasm is coming easier to me now that I’m freezing and upset.
Suddenly, I’m not the only one to have reached a breaking point.
“Alright, ENOUGH,” Rory howls as he stops walking and plants his feet firmly on the ground, grabbing me by the wrist as he does. “Please, Sabrina,” he says when I turn around to look at him. “You need to just stop RIGHT NOW.”
There’s something in his voice that sounds much more commanding than I’ve heard before. Even more than the night he caught me in the barn.
That terrible, foreboding feeling from earlier creeps back in. I should have listened to it. I never should’ve left the cabin, never should have gone down to the river.
Rory lets go of my wrist, which he had grabbed only long enough to get my attention and looks at me almost apologetically. I sigh.
“Okay then, Rory,” I start, “tell me what’s going on.”
Kaleb and Marlowe stand beside him and all three of them look at me as if they’re gaging how upset or freaked-out I’m going to be. They share a quick glance and then Rory opens his mouth to answer me.
“It’s …”
But before he can explain anything, I see something out of the corner of my eye. I know at once what it is, and this time, I know I’m not making it up. I’ve seen enough flashes of fur. I’ve heard their howls. It’s a wolf.
My mind might have played a lot of tricks on me today, but this … this I’m sure of.
Until what steps out of the woods isn’t a wolf.
It’s a girl. An absolutely gorgeous, long-legged girl looking like a wild gypsy. She has beautiful, vibrant hair that falls around her shoulders in messy bundles of sienna waves.
My mind must be totally, utterly fucked. I know I saw a wolf in those trees. I know it.
But …
But I can’t argue with what stands before me now.
Just as she steps out of the forest, I feel a flurry of movement behind me. At first, I think the boys are moving forward to introduce themselves—after all, this wild gypsy woman is ravishingly beautiful. There’s no denying it. One glance at her, and it’s as if all the savage beauty of the world is wrapped up neatly in a fur-lined skirt.
This is the sort of girl they should be giving attention to. The kind of girl who deserves to be argued over.
But they aren’t moving to greet her, I realize, but rather to stand between me and her.
All three boys visibly bristle and posture around me as if they’re dogs whose ridges have just raised. I start to feel like the prey in the middle of their protective circle. Kaleb’s arm stretches out behind me as if he’s reaching back to guard my back, while Rory raises his chest up and push his shoulders back as though he’s some kind of alpha male.
Even Marlowe, who’s usually less aggressive and impulsive than the other two, seems to be triggered into defense mode.
In any other circumstances, I’d find their reactions comical. Cartoonish, even.
But there’s no denying the sudden wash of strange discomfort that emanates off this girl as she takes another step towards me.
Me. It’s me she’s focused on, almost as if the other three don’t exist.
The look in Kaleb’s eyes gives me a sick feeling. I know, instinctually, that somehow this was the danger in the forest they were so worried about.
20
Sabrina
“Fancy meeting you here,” the girl says. Her voice drips with a taunt, and from the guys’ shifting postures, it garners the intended reaction.
“What are you doing here?” Rory asks. His voice is sharp. Curt. Familiar.
This is no stranger.
“Just roaming the Free Territory for a while, that is allowed after all, isn’t it?” she says.
Free Territory. There it is again. The way the girl keeps trying to look at me between the boys’ shoulders is very unnerving.
“We thought you already left,” Marlowe says to her. He’s the only one out of the three who’s managed to keep his voice even. At first glance, he appears to be standing nonchalantly just to my left, but I can sense he’s ready to spring into action if need be.
If need be … for what?
“Oh, I know what you’re really saying. But after the last full moon we decided to stick around a while. I mean, what’s the fun in coming all this way if we can’t even enjoy the scenery a bit before we have to leave again. When’s the big day again, Kaleb?”
“We can talk about this later,” Rory says before Kaleb has a chance to open his mouth. “We were just on our way home.”
I feel the boys tighten their position around me and I start to feel my nerves heighten again.
“Who’s she, anyway?” the girl asks, coming a few steps closer and crouching down to look between the boys at me. There’s something predatory about her.
“No one,” Rory says too quickly.
The girl looks suspicious. She eyes the boys as if she doesn’t trust them, as if they’re protecting some secret that she wants to crack into.
Good luck, lady, I think. Believe me, I’ve tried.
But where I’ve found only questions, somehow, she finds an answer. I see the moment recognition dawns in her eyes as she looks at me, and then, a moment later, it’s followed by a building rage.
“So this is the reason, isn’t it? This human girl?”
“I think you should leave,” Rory says. This time his voice sounds threatening.
She works her jaw for a moment, deciding what sort of form her rage is going to take. There’s a second where I think she’s going to pounce on me. But then it calms and takes another baiting form.
Taunting me. Taunting them.
“Poor little thing. She probably has no idea, does she?”
“Shut up,” Rory shouts. I startle a bit at his voice. He’s definitely starting to lose his temper with this girl, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
Normally I’d say not, but something about this girl gives me the impression she’s able
to hold her own and if it comes down to it, fight back. I see the struggle in her for a moment. She wants this fight. She’s practically chomping at the bit for it.
But something holds her back.
“Down boy,” she laughs, “I’m not going to bite her. Just don’t go turning a human now, no matter how much she smells like one of us.”
The change in her tone causes a visible shift in the boys’ posture around me. It relaxes, just a bit. That’s their mistake.
Under any other circumstances, I’d have thought what she said was meant to be some kind of insult. Smell like them? Like everything else today, it makes no sense. And yet, somehow here, it makes all the sense.
I don’t know what it means, but I know it’s a threat.
A threat, apparently, for another day.
She turns around slowly to leave, but she glances back at me one last time with an expression that I can’t quite make out. I hear a low, almost growl-like sound come from Rory as he watches her every move intently.
“Careful …” he says. “Don’t do something that we’ll all regret.”
“Regret? I don’t have any idea what you mean.”
The girl flashes him a wide smile and then does the unthinkable.
She turns into a wolf.
21
Sabrina
There’s no other way to put it. No way to make sense of it.
It happens so quickly there’s no time to react.
Right before my eyes, this girl jumps unnaturally high up into the air. In the time it takes for her feet to touch back onto the ground, they’re no longer feet, but giant paws.
One moment, a wild gypsy girl stands before me in the woods, a wicked smile on her face. The next, there’s a wolf—with an equally wicked curl to its lips. I’d think it was a trick of the light if it weren’t for the wolf’s fur. It’s the same rich, red-hued sienna as the girl’s hair. A striking color. A memorable color.
The wolf in front of me lets out a bone-chilling growl that makes all the hair on my body stand up. It bares its teeth at me once before it runs off into the woods toward the swell of howling in the distance.
The boys all immediately turn to look at me with panic on their faces.
“Well, that didn’t go so well,” Kaleb tries to joke, but it falls flat.
Rory shoots him a glare before looking back at me.
“Sabrina,” he says as calmly as he can muster. “Don’t freak out. Everything is okay, just let us explain what—”
“Don’t touch me!” I scream at him as Rory tries to reach forward and help me to my feet. When did I end up on the ground? “Get away from me!” I scramble backward, using my hands to push myself up off the forest floor before I take off running in the opposite direction.
I can hear the boys crying after me to stop and wait, but I am NOT stopping.
So much happened today that I don’t understand. But that, that one fact I’m sure of. I can’t stop.
“Sabrina, please!” I hear Rory calling.
“Just give us a chance to explain everything,” Kaleb shouts after him.
I can hear their voices behind me. I don’t an explanation now. I don’t think I can handle an explanation. A million thoughts race through my head as I try to process what I just saw, while at the same time, trying not to.
I’m not even watching where I’m going when I slam into Tom’s back.
It might be the first time I’m genuinely happy to see him, because it means I’ve found my way back to the beginning. I’m not lost. I’m not in “Free Territory” and whatever horrors that now holds.
I’m almost home.
It isn’t long after that I actually am.
It turns out that the bridge was actually upriver in the opposite direction. Jess, Aimee, and Tom hightailed it back to her car to check the other side of the bank as soon as they realized I wasn’t coming back up. When they still couldn’t find me anywhere, they feared the worst and made a few frantic phone calls. They were just about to call my mom when I showed up, but there’s still going to be a decent amount of explaining to do.
Tom tries at some point to put his arm around my waist in some sort of creepy gesture to help me into the car, and I’m so shaken up by everything else that I don’t have the energy to stop him doing it. It’s as if I’ve re-entered that twilight state between wake and dreaming. I don’t know what’s real anymore.
The lights above the sheriff’s car. The chatter of voices in my ear on the drive up to the cabin. The howling in the woods beyond the trees … the wolves. It’s all a blur of disjointed images and sounds.
I must pass out again at some point, because I don’t remember actually getting back to the cabin.
But I do, somehow, because I wake there some hours later.
I have no idea how much time has passed when the knocking on the door wakes me up. I hear my mom’s voice talking to someone outside, and I faintly realize I’m not in the loft as usual.
“I’m sorry, but she’s still asleep. She’s exhausted. I don’t know the whole story of what happened at the river, but you can wait here and see if she wakes up if you’d like.” Mom sounds more parental than usual. “She’s been talking about you.”
Talking in my sleep? If my face didn’t already burn, it would. I wonder what I’ve been saying.
“Thank you, yes, we’ll come in and wait.”
That voice sends shivers up my spine. It’s Rory.
What’s he doing here? I listen closer and can hear the shuffle of all three boys outside the door.
While they’re waiting, Marlowe obliges both of us with a watered-down version of what happened down at the river.
I listen as intently as I can, the events resurfacing in my mind with each new detail.
Of course, he conveniently leaves out the part about them chasing me through the forest, and the part about the wolf-girl.
The wolf girl.
I feel a searing pain in my head. I’d forgotten about that. I wish I could forget about it again, that I could chalk it up to fever dreams.
I wish they would leave. I don’t want to hear them, don’t want to talk to them right now. I don’t even want to think about them.
I try to pretend that I’m still asleep, maybe that way they’ll grow bored and just leave on their own. I can hear my mom starting the tea kettle, which is usually a sign that she intends for visitors to stay.
The longer I lay here, the more I realize my head doesn’t seem to be clearing. My brain hurts, my body aches, and I’m still so chilled that my body is juggling between shivers and cold sweats. I just want to go back to sleep.
Despite my best efforts to remain still and silent, I sneeze.
I hear the pause in their conversation, and then I hear someone hurry over to the door and crack it open before my mother has a chance to intervene.
I shrink down under the covers as I stare up into Kaleb’s face. My eyes feel heavy and clouded.
“Hey,” he says, a hesitant smile fighting at the corner of his mouth. I don’t say anything in return.
Kaleb ignores the whispered words behind him telling him to leave me be and climbs up onto the mattress to sit at my side. Who does he think he is, exactly? He’s the main reason I’m in any of this mess.
He didn’t push me, sure, but he might as well have.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
I want to stay mad at him and to think of something sarcastically brilliant and cutting to say, but I can’t. Mostly because of the breathtakingly handsome smile that’s breaking across his face as he looks down at me, but also because my head feels like it’s going to explode. So, all I can muster to say is the truth.
“Like shit,” I say matter-of-factly.
He chuckles, but I notice a flicker of concern behind his smile.
“Listen,” Kaleb says. “We need to talk about what happened.”
“Can we do it later?” I ask. “I’m really not feeling well.” It’s the honest truth. As much as I want
to be short with him, to Marlowe, and especially Rory; I just don’t feel well enough to do anything except sleep and breathe.
Even that feels like a bit much to ask.
That look of concern grows across Kaleb’s face and he puts the back of his hand against my forehead.
“You’re burning up, Sabrina.”
I nod. “Sure am.”
There’s a frantic shuffle by the door, and more whispered words, but I’m too tired to keep up. Kaleb’s face is the last thing I remember before I fall back asleep. It’s a good image to have in my mind. Even with the frown, Kaleb’s face is gorgeous.
I think I dream about him. Actually, I’m not sure which pictures in my head are dreams and which are real, as the next few days blur around me. I have no choice but to embrace the delirium, so that’s what I do.
22
Sabrina
The next few days swim in and out of a fevered consciousness.
I remember bits and pieces, images that flash across my mind, fragments of voices talking quietly about me as I toss and turn.
Of course, as always here, the sound of howling mixes with the sound of voices.
I have dreams that turn into nightmares and then back again. Some of the dreams try to tease me with enticing half-memories, like Rory leaning over me and kissing my lips. But then they turn sour, and his face becomes contorted with yellow eyes and a jaw that opens and starts to scream with a wild girl’s voice. I dream of raging water. Of tall trees. But mostly, I dream of wolves.
That’s the one thing I seem unable to escape.
Even in dreams.
When I finally wake up and am lucid enough to realize that my fever has broken, I check my phone on the bed next to me and see that it’s already the beginning of the next week. I must have been out for a solid three days.
The screen is flooded with missed calls and unread text messages. So much for trying to keep to myself. My mom must have given the emergency burner number to Jess, because I don’t recognize half the people texting me for gossip under the guise of well-wishes.