Darling, There Are Wolves in the Woods

by Lydia Russell

  Darling, there are wolves in the woods

  L.V.Russell

  Darling, there are wolves in the woods © 2019 by Lydia V Russell.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Jorge Wiles

  @JorgeWiles

  www.facebook.com/JorgeWilesillustrator

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Lydia Victoria Russell

  Visit my website at www.facebook.com/LydiaVRussell

  Independently published

  First Printing:

  ISBN-97810-9-0569899

  To all of you who wander the woods

  Prologue

  Luthien smiled, her full lips twisting upwards to lighten the otherworldly beauty of her face. From beneath the waves of bitter chocolate hair, her eyes sparkled and deep within their darkness shone nothing but malice.

  “One day, I shall rule.” She said. “You’ll see.”

  The man standing beside her only nodded, his own smile playing at his lips. Stealing a kiss from her, he turned back to the dancing mass of faeries.

  “Niven,” he called, voice soft and gentle and wonderful. He watched as each impossibly lovely creature parted for him, revealing a tired and bruised looking girl. He outstretched his hand and waited. “Come with me.”

  Luthien watched them leave, remaining under the deep shadows of the oaks, seeing the point in the distance where the trees merged, a disturbance in the air that belonged to both mortal and fey. There were places just like it all over the world, a weakening of the veil between worlds, where if one was not careful, it was easy enough to slip through.

  She lingered for a while, closing her eyes as the last of the music drifted away, leaving nothing behind save whispers of broken song and lost promises. Slowly she turned, her voice a sweet and subtle poison.

  “Did you think I had forgotten you?”

  Luthien crouched beneath the ancient oak, its huge trunk rotted through, countless strings of ivy choking it from within. The little girl hiding in the shadows nodded, flame red hair slipping over her face. Tears slid down her cheeks, the dirt on her face running with them.

  “You wanted to see the faeries, didn’t you?”

  A nod. Then a sniffle that made Luthien recoil.

  “Then why are you snivelling?” She asked, lip curling. “I gave you what you wanted, you danced with my fey, and I took what I wanted.”

  “Where’s Niven?” The words were little more than sobs, but they stirred up no compassion…no empathy with Luthien. Only disgust, as she reached forwards to swipe one away.

  “She is with us.”

  “When…when can I have her back?”

  Luthien bit back a laugh, allowing a cold, terrible smile to settle on her lips. “She belongs to me now.”

  “You can have me!” The girl cried, desperation leaking into her little voice. Even Luthien had to admire the audacity. “Take me instead.”

  “I do not want you.” Luthien said simply, rising to her feet. “We do not want you.”

  Luthien walked away as soon as the rain began to fall, causing her gown to cling to every perfect curve of her body. She smiled to herself…a rare, real smile at the thought of the hands that would free her of the silk later.

  As the sounds of sobbing girls drifted further and further away, Luthien raised her finger to her mouth and tasted the sweetness of that lone teardrop. She held it upon her tongue for a moment as if it were a fine wine. The taste of innocence soon faded away, leaving behind the headier flavours of fear and hopelessness.

  For the almost queen of Seelie, nothing tasted more divine.

  Chapter One

  Darkness so deep, I could hardly breathe. The sound of the wind as it sang through the trees, lifting their leaves so they danced as the fey had...a frenzied waltz I didn't know the steps to. A flash of teeth, a flicker of wings, the echo of a hundred things laughing and jeering...pulling and scratching. The nightmare lingered, hovering darkly in my memory, where even the faint light of morning couldn't quite chase it away. I lived with it always. A terrifying reminder of what I had done, of what was out there, hidden so very cleverly by shadows and dancing trees.

  It was my penance for giving Niven to Them.

  I knew I had to get up; lying there I could already hear the faint footsteps of my mother walking towards my door, her wheezing on the landing.

  “Teya? Are you up? If you need me to drive you to college then I need you ready in twenty minutes.”

  The nasal whine of her voice penetrated through the thin wood of my door. My screams would likely have woken the neighbours, so my mum knew very well that I was awake. I counted to three before mum barged on in anyway.

  “Are you meeting Moira later?”

  “I don't need to meet Moira, mother,” I replied with a sigh at the mention of my therapist. Moira was a nice enough person, a woman lingering somewhere in her early forties with bouncy brown hair and an even bouncier smile. Moira wanted the world to be happy, and was working on achieving that with one helpless person at a time. Moira was sunshine in a bottle, the type of person always with a song on her lips.

  I did not like Moira.

  “I could ring her...”

  “No, I'm fine.”

  Moira had been there from the beginning, happily jotting down my stories, searching for the metaphors within my words. Her perkiness had wavered slightly when she realised I meant actual monsters, the horned kind, with tails. Not the human type of monster that preyed on small children. I think she would have coped better with perverts.

  I had learned quickly that mentioning the word 'faerie' too often around people resulted in uncomfortable questions. I had also learned that insisting monsters had abducted my sister would indeed result in a spell in hospital. I learned to perfect my smile, to say that I was coping better, and that I was slowly moving on. I told Moira that it was not my fault Niven disappeared and that there were no monsters lurking in the shadows, waiting for me. I could lie pretty well when the threat of a soft room was hanging over my head.

  “I'll be down in five,” I muttered to my mother.

  “You'd better be.” My mother reached out to touch my face, her hand curling for just a moment around the duvet. She had sent me to a clinic to deal with Niven’s disappearance, but used a more direct tack when dealing with her own feelings and had swiftly divorced my father.

  Deciding against the shower, I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and quickly ran a hairbrush through my hair, leaving it to hang loose over my shoulders. The pale winter light caught the soft strands and highlighted the different shades of reds, golds and browns that ran through it.

  “Have you got any lunch?” Mum asked as I slid into the front of her battered Micra, driving off before I had a chance to answer her.

  “I have money.”

  “You sure?”

  I shrugged as I fumbled with the seatbelt, cussing when I couldn't get it to click into the socket.

  “Be gentle with it, Teya, you need to be patient.”

  “Or you could just get a better car,” I retorted. “One that won't explode if something nudges against it.”

  “Hurry up and finish Art school and earn me money.”

  I really wondered what my mother wanted me to
do with a degree in Art; I was a mediocre artist at best and not talented enough to earn a living through it. For me, it was escapism and nothing more.

  My mother had higher dreams for me, and was nothing if not deluded. Though to be honest, I knew they were not truly dreams for me...they were what she dreamed for Niven.

  They had scanned the woods for my sister. Teams of policemen with dogs that strained at the leash all went out looking for her, turning over every stone and stepping into shadows that I still feared to tread.

  Niven was on the news, her beautiful face plastered over all the newspapers, alongside the wretched faces of my parents. Women fitting the pathetic description of Luthien I had given were taken in for questioning, and were released soon after. No one was ever arrested. Niven, it seemed, had just walked into the woods and vanished, leaving nothing behind to help us find her.

  As the months went by, my broken family slowly stopped being front-page news. Without any leads on Niven, there was simply no story to tell.

  “Do you want me to pick you up later?”

  I turned my head to the grey sky out of the window, the sun barely strong enough to penetrate the gloomy clouds, and nodded my head slowly. It would be getting dark early.

  “I'll see you around six then? Are you okay to stay on for a bit?”

  “I'll be fine.”

  She pulled up to Griffons College, nearly knocking into a couple of students who lingered at the gates. She kissed me gently on the cheek before I was able to leave, trapped in her car by the damned seatbelt.

  “I know you will, sweetheart.”

  We were both good at lying to each other.

  I didn't watch my mother drive off, but walked through the gates and towards my locker, my heart sinking when the key jammed. Bending down, I tried to prise the dried spaghetti from the keyhole, fighting the urge to slam my fist against the metal. It was just another thing I dealt with...the endless taunts and pranks that had followed me into college.

  It is worth noting, that if you mention faeries often enough, not only will you be forced to talk to people you'd rather didn't, you will also be socially shunned. Forever. It will not matter if later on, you change your story, there will always be that stigma around you. You will be labelled for life as the girl who believes in faeries. Throw in a crippling, piss-yourself fear of the dark and you may as well go buy a load of cats and enjoy life living in a hovel.

  I didn't attend College for my love of art, or a foundation degree, or a thirst for knowledge or even to broaden my life skills so that one day I could escape the village I grew up in. I went to escape from my mother, without actually having to leave her completely. I couldn't leave the woman who still wrapped Christmas presents for Niven in the futile hope that one day she'd come home. The woman who, after ten years of waiting for Niven and a messy divorce, still set the table for four people, only to sit and stare at the empty spaces.

  “Ah Miss Jenkins!” Mrs Reynolds called out to me as I wandered into the art studio. “I need to talk to you about your final pieces...” She hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right words to describe the work I had handed in. She faltered. “They are very...”

  “Odd?” I finished for her. “Peculiar?”

  “Well, yes,” Mrs Reynolds agreed, her little eyes narrowing beneath her glasses. “They are not your best work.”

  I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face and I watched her face soften. She looked at me with pity. Her glasses were at least three times too big for her face, and yet she pitied me.

  “Do you need to talk to someone?”

  “No.”

  “I know life can be difficult, Teya, I know you still miss her...”

  “I don't.” The words fell from my mouth before I had the chance to pull them back. Nasty, truthful words that caused the heat of guilt to flame up my spine.

  “It's okay; there is no time limit on grief.”

  There is no time limit on grief. Taken straight out of one of those awful self-help books, words that were supposed to comfort me, but just left me wondering if I would feel miserable for the rest of my life. It would be better if there were a set time limit, almost like serving a sentence. You would just wake up one day, and poof! Happiness, sunshine...hope.

  I turned away from Mrs Reynolds quickly before she could see me roll my eyes. I told her that I would re-do my work and that I would try harder, that I really did want to be there. I did not tell Mrs Reynolds how much I had hated Niven.

  I spent the rest of the day in the studio, re-doing one of my paintings so I had something that would at least be accepted, that didn't scream crazy. When I was done, I watched the colours as they seeped from the paintbrushes, the blues and greens flowing under the cold water to merge into a muddy puddle in the basin. My fingers numbed against the cold, stained the same colours as the acrylics that bled from the brushes. I enjoyed the sensation, the dull burn at the tips of my fingers as the skin slowly felt nothing, but it ended at my hands. The rest of my body still felt everything. I gazed at my masterpiece and knew it was beautiful.

  Picking up a fresh brush from the collection on my desk, I dipped the head into thick paint and splashed it onto the still wet canvas. I erased the beauty much faster than I had created it, hiding the rich chocolate of Luthien’s hair behind unforgiving black. In one brutal stroke, the melting gaze of her eyes was gone. I continued until the entire board glimmered with new paint, until there was not a trace of the beautiful witch to be seen.

  I glanced at the clock, noting the time with both relief and anxiety, knowing that I would soon be collected from my purgatory, only to be forced into another when I arrived home.

  Chapter Two

  I waited in the car park for Mum, the evening dark and cold as I stood beneath one of the overhead lights. The orange glow caught the raindrops so they looked like little sparks falling against the black sky. My hands balled at my sides, my fingernails leaving little semicircles against my palms as I scanned the road for passing cars. I fought hard to keep my breathing calm, in and out...deep and slow, no need to panic over a drizzly winter's night.

  A startled cry gurgled from my throat as the sound of a car horn swore through the night, disturbing some nearby crows. They flew overhead, a flurry of shadows nearly sending me to my knees. I jumped back instead, smacking against the wall. My feet landed in a puddle, soaking my jeans with freezing, muddy water.

  "You couldn't pull into the car park?" I hissed, slamming the door to the Micra as I slumped in the seat, my heart still whacking against my ribcage. My hands shook in my lap, and I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to calm down. It was a car horn...not monsters, not faeries. My mother's car horn.

  “If I go over the speed bumps, I might stall the car and I'll never get it started again,” Mum said apologetically, glancing at me as she wrenched the handbrake down. The car lurched forwards rebelliously before it warmed up. “So how was your day?”

  “Same as usual,” I replied, offering nothing else so the journey home was finished in silence. We didn't talk about Niven, and we didn't mention my father. We simply sat as if it has always been the two of us, ignoring the fact that we could hardly hold a conversation, and that we felt like strangers.

  “I'm doing Lasagne for tea,” Mum said finally as we pulled into the drive. The once perfect white slabs outside our house now lay cracked beneath a forest of weeds, somehow managing to push up through the concrete. I had to admire their determination.

  “Sounds good.”

  “It's a frozen one from Tesco, they had a deal on. Any three for the price of two, I stocked up while they were so cheap.”

  I pictured the freezer brimming with cheap boxes of discounted Italian food and shook my head. “They've always got those deals on, Mum. It's a way of making money.”

  I hung back slightly as I watched her fumble in her handbag for her keys. Old receipts and sweet wrappers darted to freedom, swirling up in a chaotic mess before the wind caught hold of them and stole them aw
ay.

  “Don't be silly, Teya,” my mother replied, twisting the key into the lock and swinging the door open.

  I slunk in after her, breathing in the oddly comforting smell of fabric conditioner and cigarette smoke that hugged the house like a security blanket. Kicking off my shoes, and shrugging off my jacket, I escaped upstairs.

  The deep carpet gave way beneath my feet, a luxurious cream that snaked up the curling stair and along the narrow landing. It had replaced the old beige one after Mum spilled red wine over it. The wine glass had slipped from her hand as I watched on from the railings above, splattering crimson all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. She hadn't attempted to stop it rolling, her gaze only fixed on my father as he lingered by the front door.

  On the evening of the red wine disaster, my father did not come upstairs to kiss me goodnight, but I did hear him flick the catch on the front door as he walked out, allowing the frigid wind to sneak past him and chill me instead. My dad never came back for us, and it took only three days for mum to rip up the old carpet, and dump it outside with the rest of her husband's belongings.

  I had barely placed my hand on my bedroom door when I heard the microwave ping and I was called down to dinner. There used to be a time when dinner would take at least an hour, there was cooking involved and much less plastic wrapping. It was only out of habit that I went to my room before I ate.

  The smell of tomatoes and melted cheese wafted around the kitchen, mingling with the swirl of bluish smoke around mum. She smiled as I walked in, her lips twitching up at one end, her teeth still clamped around the cigarette dangling from her mouth. I took my place at the table, so used to seeing the two empty places beside that I barely glanced at them.

  “I was wondering, Teya,” Mum began, digging the end of her cigarette into the ashtray at the centre of the table, snuffing out the vile smoke in one violent stab. I looked up, my fingers curled around my fork as I worked at turning my food into mush. I waited.