by SJB Gilmour
Still, that did not stop her from aiding all within the temple walls should they need it. She stood, with many others from the Order, in a large circle, well away from Sarah and her pack, but close enough to come to their aid should they need it in dealing with the lycanthrope.
Mandy Kelly was in her human form, so Sarah adopted her human for too. Instead of wearing her golden armour as she’d been used to, she chose instead her normal civilian clothes of jeans, bare feet and a t-shirt. She knelt beside Mandy and placed one hand on her forehead.
‘Santicularus!’ she commanded, using the Magaeic healing spell.
Mandy stirred and sat up, moaning groggily. It took a few moments for her vision to clear and the rest of her senses to work, but the instant she realised just who she was facing, she leaped to her feet and into a fighter’s stance. She was all ready to attack, then obviously she heard the voices of Wolfenvald.
Sarah wasn’t sure what Mandy heard but she could see the effect of those words very clearly. Mandy seemed to shrink somehow. Her eyes welled up and she sniffed.
‘I…’ she stammered. ‘I’m sorry—’
Sarah held her hand out to her. ‘It’s okay, Mandy. I’m sorry too. I had no idea what I was back then. I didn’t mean to bite you.’
Mandy shook her head. ‘No, I know that now…’ The way she rubbed her temples for a moment told Sarah that Wolfenvald had given her some very specific information about her. ‘I mean… I’m... I’m just so sorry—’
Sarah smiled at her. ‘It’s over now, Mandy. Guntex is dead. Mautallius is dead. The Guild is gone and so is Conundrum Gate. You don’t have to be a lycanthrope any more. You can go back—’ She was about to say “to your parents” but Wolfenvald whispered in her mind.
‘No she cannot, Golden Mane. The goblin beast who captured her destroyed them.’
Mandy knew it too. ‘No I can’t,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t go home. I don’t have a home any more.’ She backed away from Sarah a few steps. ‘I know why I’m here. If you cure me, I’ll be normal again. I won’t be enchanted. I won’t have any power. I’ll just be another human.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Isn’t that what you want, though?’
Then Mel stepped up to her and put one hand on her shoulder. ‘Let me, Sarah.’ To Mandy, she said, ‘There are four ways you can get such power. You can be born to it. You can be infected or turned like you have been. You can be made a Silver Shroud, which I don’t think any of the Silver Shrouds here would recommend, or you can be taken on as a disciple by a deity.’
Mandy understood what she meant, but was feeling so miserable that she could not understand where exactly she was going. ‘What kind of god would want me?’
Mel grinned. ‘Let me handle that.’ She nodded at Sarah. ‘Let her cure you. Do that and I’ll take you to Mount Olympos personally. I know one goddess at least who will listen.’
Hope shone in Mandy’s stricken face for a moment. Then, as if it was some terrible evil that just refused to die, angry defiance once more took over. She glared at Sarah. ‘Right or wrong, it just doesn’t matter. Everything I’ve ever had, everything I’ve ever loved is gone because of you!’
‘Mandy, please—’ Sarah began.
Mandy cut her short with a foul obscenity and then flicked her fingers at the ground at her feet and created a portal. Before anyone could react, she had disappeared and the portal had closed itself.
‘I guess we haven’t seen the last of her,’ James muttered sourly. ‘The bad guy gets away, huh?’
‘We’ll find her,’ Benjamin replied.
‘No,’ Sarah told them softly in a sad voice. ‘She’ll find me.’ She looked around and sniffed. ‘Guess it’s time for us all to go home now.’
After she returned from Earth, Sarah found herself almost at a loss as to what to do next. Everything seemed so quiet and peaceful, and time seemed not to have as much meaning any more. She did not need to explore her new home. The home planet of the werewolves was alive and its entire memory was hers. The moment she became its queen, she knew every square centimetre of the entire planet. Wolfenvald, she discovered, was a lot like Earth. It had Arctic and Antarctic poles. One huge continent almost circled the northern part of the planet. Three more large continents extended south to the Antarctic pole. The remainder of the planet was made up of oceans and seas.
The forest she had already explored was in the very centre of the northern continent. If she had been on Earth, that part of the forest would have been somewhere near the southern border of Poland. Like all other planets, it had deserts, mountains, jungles and wetlands. There were some small towns and cities along various coasts and rivers. Not all werewolves spent all their time on four paws. There were even banks, schools, galleries and museums. Some parts of normal cities did not exist on Wolfenvald however.
There were no prisons, dumps, mining or manufacturing of any kind. Wolfenvald had no machines or any devices that could produce pollution at all. Werewolves rarely needed anything they couldn’t hunt and catch for themselves, or simply create if needed. Nor were there any hospitals. Cubs were born in litters, usually in the dens of their pack. Death was a very small thing to a werewolf on Wolfenvald.
In the valley where Werenmesse, the great calling together of all werewolves, had been called, a new building had been built. It was a large stone castle built to simple werewolf design. There was a main hall, much like the one at Uncle Benjamin’s property, where the other end of the new fixed portal shimmered in the middle of the floor. There was no throne or furniture in that hall. Instead, there was a large fountain, which provided plenty of fresh water for drinking and splashing in. There was also a large supply of padded, werewolf-sized mattresses scattered about.
Behind the main hall was a large gallery and library, and beyond that, there was a vault. There was a small wing including rooms equipped for housing guests should they choose to go about in their human forms. The other wing was made up of a simple house where all of Sarah’s belongings were now stored.
As Sarah padded around the castle, she realised that she would never need to live anywhere else. She could and would travel a great deal, but finally, she had a real home. Her parents and Felix were there, along with Rufus and every other werewolf that mattered to her. Sarah was home and she knew that no matter what happened from then on, she would never again consider herself an orphan.
It did not take her long to settle in. Werewolves have little need for ceremony, so they left her alone in her new den. An area of forest roughly the size of a small country around that den was vacated and proclaimed the range of Pack Kopernik. No other werewolf would hunt there without her express permission. Since there was plenty of forest elsewhere on the planet, that request was unlikely to be made very often.
Sarah was home and as much as she was part of her home, Wolfenvald was part of her. She was The First. She was the first Golden Mane female to have ever been born. She was the first werewolf ever to unite all the packs, and she was the first Queen of Wolfenvald. The castle that was her new den would forever be known as The Den of The First.
Werewolves, like all wolves, are nomadic creatures. After settling in for a few days, Sarah realised that staying put was actually quite boring and somehow wrong. She needed to travel. She needed to roam and range. And so, only a week after being made Queen of Wolfenvald, Sarah Coppernick decided it was time to go back to her friends. She packed her enchanted rucksack with her Amazon weapons and armour and a few of her favourite items, some clothes and, of course, her red bicycle.
‘Where would you go, Golden Mane?’ the ghost of Felix asked as he appeared beside her.
Sarah looked at him and shrugged. ‘Jilde, I guess,’ she replied. ‘I want to see Mel.’
Felix wagged his tail in understanding. ‘A wolf should allow his paws to range where they will,’ he commented sagely.
‘What do you mean by that?’
Felix shrugged. ‘You need to roam, so roam.’
Sarah smiled at him u
ntil Wolfenvald interrupted. ‘Times have changed, Golden Mane,’ commented the voices of Wolfenvald. ‘Once a land has a ruler, even if it had none before, then it should always.’
Sarah frowned. As she glared at Felix’s ghost, another shadowy wolf appeared beside her. This ghost was just as serious in his deathly form as he had been in life. Mannix’s ghost’s expression was severe.
Sarah gaped at him. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘You have a responsibility now, Golden Mane,’ Mannix told her.
Feeling quite obstinate, Sarah told Mannix what he could do with that responsibility. ‘Does Wolfenvald need me right now? Are we at war with someone?’
Mannix frowned. ‘No, First,’ he conceded.
‘Then until I’m really needed, I can do what I like.’
This made Felix laugh while Mannix did not change his expression.
‘If you leave, who will rule in your absence, Golden Mane?’ the Black Coat ghost persisted.
Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Alright,’ she told him. ‘If that’s how you want to play it, that’s how it’s gonna be. While I’m gone, you’re the boss!’
Then, leaving a great many excited werewolves yipping about, some happy, one ghostly one not so, Sarah, feeling quite old-fashioned, drew a quick nonagram on the ground and created a small portal to Jilde. She gave a delighted Felix one last wave and stepped through the portal, and vanished.
Extras
The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick and her friends will continue in:
The Lost Prince ©
Book Four of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick. ©
By S J B Gilmour.
About the Author
I live in Melbourne Australia with my wonderful wife and two fantastic daughters. I was raised in the family footwear business where I still work, but I’ve done a great deal besides. I’ve edited, researched, sub-edited and published. I’ve done a stint in the Royal Australian Navy, run a small café and pumped diesel at a bus depot. I’m a travel junkie, amateur birdwatcher and overall book and film nerd.
Sam Gilmour.
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