by Abby Weeks
“What else?”
Aisha started to cry. She didn’t bawl, she didn’t lose control, but tears fell gently from her eyes over her cheeks.
“Everything,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid of everything. This place scares me. The forest scares me. The men, the way they seem to possess the women, raping them at the drop of a hat, that scares me. I’m trapped here. I’m frightened. I’m alone.”
Ma Hetty put her hand on Aisha, and for the second time, Aisha was struck by how much it resembled the way she calmed down injured animals at the clinic.
“Shh, child,” Ma Hetty said. “You’re not alone. That’s one thing you’re going to have to realize. You may have felt alone down in the south, but up here, you never will.”
Aisha didn’t know why, but she felt comforted by Ma Hetty’s words, even if she had no reason to take them seriously.
“It’s because I’m an orphan,” Aisha said. “My mother left me at the hospital. People don’t understand what that’s like. When you’re an orphan, you’re always alone. No matter what happens, you know you’re alone.”
“Shh, child,” Ma Hetty said. “You’re not alone any longer. You have me.”
Aisha smiled. It was a kind thing to say, but it wasn’t really what she’d meant.
“You don’t think that means anything,” Ma Hetty said.
“I appreciate it,” Aisha said.
“You think I’m just some foolish old woman.”
“I don’t.”
Ma Hetty smiled. “I know young girls. Believe it or not, I was young myself once, difficult as that is to imagine.”
Aisha didn’t know what to say.
Ma Hetty opened her dress again, as she had the night before. It fell down from her shoulders, exposing her breasts. There was something dignified in the way Ma Hetty revealed herself. She had so much confidence and self-respect that she didn’t look naked.
“I want you to look at this mark on my shoulder.”
Aisha looked at it. She said, “How did you know I had the same mark?”
“I knew it before you were even born,” Ma Hetty said.
“What do you mean?”
“Take off your shirt,” Ma Hetty said.
Aisha looked over at the door. There was no one there but the two of them. She felt safe. She opened her shirt and took it off. She was in front of Ma Hetty in her bra.
“Look at your shoulder,” Ma Hetty said.
Aisha looked at her birthmark.
“I’d bet it’s darker now than it was when you lived in Washington,” Ma Hetty said.
“It is,” Aisha said.
“And I’d also be willing to wager you’ve never seen a mark like that on any other person.”
“Apart from you?” Aisha said.
Ma Hetty nodded.
“Actually, I have.”
Ma Hetty looked surprised. “You have?”
“I saw it on Packer, right here in the village, just yesterday.”
Ma Hetty laughed. “So you’ve run into Packer already?”
“What’s so funny about that?” Aisha said, blushing. She wasn’t sure why she felt embarrassed, but she did.
“There’s nothing funny about it at all,” Ma Hetty said. “Nothing at all. It’s just nature taking its course.”
Aisha didn’t know what Ma Hetty was talking about. She wished the old woman would just speak plainly.
“Patience,” Ma Hetty said, as if reading Aisha’s mind. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I just have to tell you a little at a time. You have to be ready to hear it.”
“I’m being patient,” Aisha said. “I’m sitting here, and you haven’t told me a single thing.”
Ma Hetty’s look grew sterner. “You forget your place, child.”
“What place?”
Ma Hetty laughed again. “I suppose you don’t even know that much. You’re like a blank slate.”
“Please,” Aisha said, “please just tell me what’s going on.”
“All right,” Ma Hetty said. “Listen carefully. You’re not going to believe half of what I tell you, but I’m a seer. I’m a witch, I guess they’d say where you’re from. But my job is to answer questions, so I’ll answer yours. You’re not as much of a stranger to these parts as you think. Your mother came from these parts. She was a handmaiden.”
“A what?”
“A handmaiden.”
Aisha rubbed her shoulder where the mark was.
“That’s what the wolf paw on your shoulder means.”
“Then you’re a handmaiden too,” Aisha said.
Ma Hetty looked sad then. “I should have been,” she said, “but I chose this path instead. But yes, I have the gift. By birth I could have been a handmaiden.”
“And what is a handmaiden?” Aisha said.
“That’s something you’ll have to learn in time,” Ma Hetty said. “For now, all I’ll say is that you need to keep everything I tell you to yourself. People in these parts are suspicious of things they don’t understand. They used to kill handmaidens around here. That’s why your mother left.”
“Would they still kill them?”
“They might,” Ma Hetty said.
“Why?”
“Like I said. People always fear what they don’t understand.”
“So if someone sees this paw mark on my shoulder, I’ll be in danger.”
Ma Hetty smiled. “The paw mark is a piece of lore that they’re unaware of. They don’t know it’s the mark of a handmaiden.”
Aisha’s head was spinning. What was Ma Hetty telling her? Why did people want to kill handmaidens?
“What about my mother?” Aisha said.
“Ah yes, I remember her well. She was spirited, like you are.”
“You knew her?”
“Of course I knew her. I knew every single handmaiden that lived and died in these parts for the past eighty years.”
“There are others?”
“Not anymore,” Ma Hetty said. “They’ve all been killed or driven away.”
Aisha suddenly felt vulnerable. It was as if she was being told she was a witch, marked in some way, a target.
“Tell me about my mother.”
Ma Hetty smiled sadly. “I’m sorry you never knew her,” she said. “You would have liked her.”
“Why …” Aisha said, but she was unable to finish her question.
“Why did she leave you?” Ma Hetty said.
Aisha nodded. She was trying to be strong. She breathed slowly, stared into the fire.
When Ma Hetty started to speak, her voice was so full of sympathy it made Aisha cry anyway.
“Your mother was a lot like you. She was a handmaiden at a time when they were almost completely wiped out. She was one of the last of her species, as I am, as you are.”
“Like the wolves down south,” Aisha said.
“Yes, like the wolves that were hunted to near extinction. Up here, the handmaidens were almost wiped out. As were all the shifters.”
“The shifters?”
“Their story is long,” Ma Hetty said, “but that’s not the story I’m telling you now. I’m telling you about your mother. As you can imagine, she felt like an outsider. She felt alone. She felt isolated.”
“Did she have parents?”
“Everyone has parents, Aisha. But your mother was alone like you. Her mother was a handmaiden of course. She’d been killed years earlier, when your mother was very young. In fact, your mother had been there to witness the crime.”
“The crime?”
“Those were brutal times, Aisha. But they’re still within living memory. Things haven’t progressed so far that the same things couldn’t occur again. Back then, the men in a village would gather together, get drunk, form a posse, and go out to kill the handmaidens. They’d have liked to kill the shifters, but they were harder to kill, so they’d go after the women. They can’t defend themselves the way a shifter can. If the men heard that a handmaiden was alone, unprotected, th
ey’d gather together, go to her cabin, and string her up.”
“Hang her?”
“Hang her, rape her, kill her.”
“That’s what happened to my grandmother?”
Ma Hetty nodded.
“And what about my mother?”
“Well, they brought her into the village to be raised.”
“This village?”
“This is the only village for hundreds of miles. They brought her here to be raised as a human. That’s what they used to do. It was their way of being humane, of justifying their killing of the handmaidens.”
“And they’d let her live?”
“As long as she stayed away from shifters, offered sex only to the ordinary men, they’d let her live. They’d keep the handmaidens in the brothel down the street. That’s where your mother lived until she ran away. That’s where all handmaidens lived, until there weren’t any left.”
Aisha’s head was spinning with questions. “So handmaidens,” she said, “are female shifters?”
Ma Hetty took a long draw from her pipe. “I guess that’s what they are,” she said, “but they’re more than that, and less.”
“Can they shift?”
“No they cannot. At least, not outside of the old myths. Handmaidens are like ordinary women, except for one important difference. They can mate with shifters. They can bear their pups. If a shifter mated with an ordinary woman, it will kill her. Once she gets pregnant, the pregnancy will kill her. But a handmaiden can bear a shifter’s young.”
“Can she bear an ordinary man’s young?”
“Yes she can. If she mates with an ordinary man, the child will be ordinary. If she mates with a shifter, the male young will be shifters, the females will be handmaidens.”
“How come the people in the town don’t recognize handmaidens by the paw marking?”
“That’s simple,” Ma Hetty said. “Because they can’t see it.”
Aisha felt faint. The heat of the fire was beginning to be too much for her. The information was too much for her. Her head was spinning with questions. Could all of this really be true? Could she believe such farfetched stories from a crazy old woman like Ma Hetty? How could it be true?
Aisha stood up. She swooned as she did so, and had to hold onto the table to stop herself from falling over.
“Slowly, child,” Ma Hetty said. “You’ve just learned a lot. I’m afraid I may have told you too much.”
“No,” Aisha said. “I’m glad you told me.” She walked to the door. “Now I just have to decide whether or not I believe any of it.”
*
Chapter 69
WHAT AISHA LEARNED FROM MA HETTY marked the beginning of the end of her previous life. She knew it as soon as she left the cabin. She knew that things would never go back to the way they were. For better or worse, her life was going to be completely different from now on. Even if she was afraid to believe it, even if it took her time to realize the full implications of everything she’d heard, from this point on, everything was going to be new.
And she had conflicted feelings about it. On the one hand, she was terrified. She was scared of being different. She was scared of what Ma Hetty had said about handmaidens and shifters and the people of the village hunting them. She was scared of how Heath was going to react if he found out that she was different. And most of all, she was scared about what it was going to mean for her, for her idea of who she was.
But she was also excited. She knew that there was power in the words she’d heard. She knew there was potential in them, hidden beneath the surface. There was the potential to recreate her life, take everything that was in a shambles, and recreate it. It was like being offered a completely new life.
And maybe in this new life, things would go better for her. Maybe she would find someone who would treat her better than Heath did. Maybe she would find true, lasting, deep, passionate, love. Because that was what she wanted, more than anything else in the world, she wanted to be truly loved.
As she looked out the window of her room in the inn, a gentle snow falling from the sky like flakes of ash, she thought of Packer, the man with the golden eyes. He was strong. He was brave. He was muscular. Was he going to be her man? Was he going to come and claim her, take her off to live with the shifters in the forest? She prayed he would.
Heath called her name. He was lying in the bed, recovering from his wounds. Aisha didn’t respond. She just kept looking out the window. And then, in the distance, she heard the howling of a wolf. To Aisha it felt as if the wolf was calling out directly to her. She put her hand up against the glass.
“I’m coming,” she whispered.
The howl grew louder. It was almost like agony. It pained her to hear it. She knew it was calling to her. If all the things Ma Hetty had said were true, if Aisha really was a handmaiden, then this howling out to her was something that made perfect sense.
And she wondered, how many shifters were out there? And how long would it be before they were all calling to her with their howls? How long would it be till they came for her?
“I’m coming,” she whispered again. And then, almost crying, “Come and get me.”
*
Thank you for reading The Wolfpack Trilogy. This series only gets more intense as Aisha realizes that she is beautiful and that Heath can no longer control her life.
GET THE NEXT BOOK NOW.
I am very grateful that you have chosen to read this book. I know my experiences are dark and I thank you for staying with me to the end.
If you have any thoughts or concerns you can always email me at [email protected].
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I look forward to hearing from you.
Abby Weeks
2015
Get the next book in the Trilogy.
Taken by the Pack
[Book 2 in the Wolfpack Trilogy]