“Because we’re shifters.”
“Yes,” he says. “The wolves don’t trust us because we broke a few treaties with them over the years. But they’re the selfish ones. If they shared what they had, we wouldn’t have to make these bargains with them, giving them whatever they want just so we can hunt on their land.”
I open my mouth to tell him that the wolves use that land, but then I remember that my loyalties aren’t supposed to lie with them. I’m not one of them, no matter how much I’ve come to think of myself as part of my mother’s family. The mad daughter in the attic.
My hands slowly ball into fists as my throat tightens. “And you didn’t think you should tell me all this at some point?”
“I was going to tell you,” he says. “I was, Stella. Don’t go getting mad. I was waiting until you were a little older. I moved us near Dr. Golden so she could keep an eye on you. And I had Yvonne help with your memories.”
“So I never fell down the stairs? Or did you toss me down the stairs on purpose, so I’d have something to blame for my suffering, when it was your fault all along?”
“Hey, now,” he says, holding up a hand again. “No one hurt you. We suppressed a few of your memories, that’s all. And you really did fall down the stairs—no magic involved. We focused on that enough times, and your mind filled in the gaps all by itself. The human mind is a remarkable thing.”
“It was all a lie,” I whisper. “All that to keep me from knowing my true self?”
“You were your true self,” he insists. “When we found the tiger eye, I had Yvonne do an enchantment to keep its wearer from shifting. See, I ended your suffering. You didn’t have the fits after that, did you?”
“The necklace,” I say, my hand going to my throat. He made me promise never to take it off. That’s why. When I lost it in the woods last year, I had one of the fits for the first time in years, because the enchantment is on the necklace.
“Yes,” he says. “When you were so obsessed with tigers, I knew you’d dream of being one again and maybe remember. We had to stop you. For your own safety and everyone else’s. A tiger roaming around downtown Oklahoma City? You would have been shot. I didn’t know it would end up around my neck, keeping me from escaping this prison here.”
“Wait, that’s why don’t you shift and get out of here?” I ask, looking around. If I’d known I was a tiger all that time, I would have busted down the door and gotten the hell out of here years ago.
“It’s on me now.” A rough cord peeks out from the neck of his shirt. My necklace. The tiger eye that kept me from shifting all my life is now keeping him from shifting.
“You still have it,” I say, reaching for it automatically.
“I was bringing it back to you, but they caught me before I could.” His face darkens with anger. “Seems I’ve been captured by every kind of being in the Three Valleys since I got here.”
My own anger bubbles under the surface. He wasn’t coming to rescue me. He was coming to bring me a necklace he used to trick me into being ordinary, human, and obedient. No matter what he says, he was never going to tell me. He was still trying to keep me from shifting a week ago, when he was captured.
Eyes narrowing, I glare at him. “You could have told me what you were. What I am.”
“I know,” he says, shifting his feet on the wooden floorboards. “But I didn’t want you to have to live with the secret I did, to have to hide it from your friends and everyone else. I wanted you to have a good life. A normal life, where you didn’t feel different. And you did, didn’t you?” He smiles hopefully, his eyes pleading.
My father used to be such a big, imposing man. Now he’s just pathetic.
“I did,” I admit. “But I wish you had let me decide what to do with that information. It’s my body. My animal. My life.”
“Maybe I should have.”
“And how could you just leave me, let me think you were dead?”
“There’s something else you should know,” he says. “Something we can do, besides shifting.”
“Projecting. I know.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “You do?”
“Mrs. Nguyen told me.”
“Ah, of course,” he says, nodding to himself.
“You projected out of your body and came here to check on my sisters.”
“Once or twice a year,” he says. “I never disturbed anyone or made my presence known. I just checked on them and your mother. Made sure they were doing okay.”
I smile a little. This is the dad I know, always looking out for me. My sister, too, it seems.
“But it seems projecting is not such a desirable skill,” he says with a wry smile. “In fact, your mother’s people are violently opposed to it.”
“I’ve gathered as much.”
“The only people who really want to do it are witches,” he says. “I only meant to check on your sister, same as usual, that night. But Yvonne caught me, and she kept me here.”
“Mrs. Nguyen?”
“That’s right,” he says. “She wanted me to teach her daughter how to project. She kept me here, and then arranged things at home.”
He doesn’t sound at all upset by this. In fact, he’s smiling. But my blood is boiling. He and Yvonne have been orchestrating my whole life. “How did your body get here?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Again, Yvonne,” he says, confirming my suspicions. “She set it all up, brought me my body. She said they even had a funeral. It took a little help from Goldie to pull it all off, but Yvonne…she’s always been clever.” A smile plays over his lips, amused and admiring. Dad’s always been a jokester, but I can’t believe he thinks any of this is funny.
“Do you even hear what you’re saying? I found your body. I thought you were dead. They had a funeral for you, Dad. You couldn’t have, I don’t know, sent a note? Had one of them tell me?” My hands begin to shake as I squeeze them tighter and tighter. How could he do this? How can he act so casual about it, as if it didn’t affect me at all?
“You were with your mother,” he says. “I thought you’d get a chance to know her. A girl, she needs her mother, especially at your age. You were getting a little headstrong for a single dad to handle, anyway.”
Rage boils inside me, and something loosens within. All this time, I’ve held onto this. While I was in a dirt hole, I repeated these thoughts like a mantra. I will get my father out and leave this place forever. I will save him and myself. We’ll go back to Oklahoma City and live there like this never happened. Life will go back to good again.
But he doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t even want me back.
“Whoa, Stella,” he says, retreating a step. That’s when I realize I’m starting to shift, that while I’ve been seething, my limbs have begun to pull and strain.
I snap back to myself. “You knew I’d get sent to live with my mother, and you thought that was okay?”
“I thought it was time you got to know her. I know she’s a little stricter than I was, but that seemed like what you needed then. I projected here and visited every year. Your sisters always seemed happy.”
“Dad,” I say, my voice measured. “I’m not my sister. Mother was horrible to me.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. But it was for the best, don’t you think? Now we’re all together again. We can be a family again.”
My temple throbs, and I don’t think I can hold back this time. That’s what I’ve always wanted, even when I was a prisoner here. Just to be part of the family, equal to everyone else. But it’s too late now.
“I don’t want to be a family,” I yell. “I hate her. I hate it here. All I’ve wanted every day since I got here was to go back home, to go back to when you were alive. Now I finally find out you’re alive, and you don’t want to go back?”
“Go back to what?” he asks. “We’ve been gone three years, Stella. Our house was sold a long time ago. Your mother says you already got your GED, so you wouldn’t go back to school. What would we
go back for?”
I can’t answer. My head is pounding with blood, black spots flowering on a canvas of red behind my eyelids. Not my father, too. Everyone my whole life has let me down, betrayed me. He was the one person I could always count on to be strong, and solid, and good. But he’s not. He’s just another flawed, selfish human being like the rest of us.
I turn and run down the stairs, my feet pounding the wooden steps, my joints loosening, transforming as I go. I scramble to the door on hands and feet, burst out onto the porch, then pitch forward into the grass. Instead of falling on my face, I land on my hands. My fingers snap like twigs, and I scream in pain. But instead of stopping, the pain stabs deeper. I watch as my fingers expand, lengthen. Hair begins to sprout from my hands, and a band of iron seems to be caught around my stomach.
I jump to my feet and unbutton my jeans, rip them down before I lose the ability to use my hands. Now I know what Harmon meant about this not being sexy. I have no time to think of modesty as I rip at my clothes, tearing them off on the lawn in broad daylight. All I can think about is getting out of them before they strangle me. When I’m mostly rid of my clothes, and my hands are no longer able to remove the rest, I collapse onto the ground. My skin feels raw where the fur came through, and my head is so heavy I don’t think I can lift it. For a minute, I can only lie on the grass and pant.
After it passes, I stand. It takes a few strides before I’m comfortable on four feet, my legs moving in sync. But it happens faster than I expected. And let me just say, my tail is amazing. I’ve never really thought about an animal’s tail before. I know the regular things—dogs wag when they’re happy, cats wave theirs when they’re mad. But this isn’t just something hanging off my butt. It’s a limb. I don’t even have to think about it, but it’s there, helping me balance, gain my stride. It’s almost like a wing, helping me be lightweight, floating along. It streaks behind me, catching the wind, dancing with it, curling around it.
I bound up the driveway in seconds. I’m fast, and each stride covers more ground than I expect. The rush that came over me last night comes again as I race down the path. I race away, over the hills, heading away from the Second Valley and its wolves.
27
I don’t have a plan. I don’t know where I’m going. After prowling up hills and down valleys, along ridges and bluffs, I end up at a sparkling green river. Standing on the rocky bank, I lean my head down and drink. It’s a little odd at first, but soon my tongue scoops up the water, delivering it to my parched throat. It’s summer now, and in my thick fur coat, I’m roasting.
When I’ve had my fill of water, I flop down in the shade of an oak tree and fall asleep. Some time later, I wake to the sound of voices. I raise my head, on alert for the wolves to be here, ready to capture me. Instead, I spot a procession of canoes floating down the river. The smell of them assaults my nostrils—sunscreen, beer, bug spray, and the blood and sweat of human bodies.
My father’s words echo in my head. You’d be shot. Harmon’s words come back, too. What are you going to do, live in a zoo?
And a small part of me understands why my father kept this secret from me. It is dangerous to be seen by humans. There’s a reason the wolves live in the valley, in solitude, protective of their privacy. They are both right. I can’t go back now. And even though a part of me has known it for a while, the stark realization only now sinks in. My dreams disappear, floating down the slow-moving Buffalo River and disappearing around the bend. It’s taken me too long to realize it. But I’m a part of this place. A part of their supernatural world. I belong here as surely as Harmon does.
I stand and step back towards the woods just as a shout of surprise echoes down the river. I’ve been spotted. A girl shrieks. A few others yell and laugh, pointing and talking excitedly over each other. Someone has a phone out, trying to snap a picture. If I thought I was done being a freak, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Everyone wants to take a picture of the white tiger in the Ozark Mountains. And if they get it…they’ll call the police, or animal control, and they’ll comb the forest for me.
I dart away into the woods, my heart hammering in my chest. I have to get back. It’s not safe here. Even in my tiger form, I recognize the irony. I’m going back to a place that kept me in captivity for years. Out of all the places in the world, I never thought I’d voluntarily return to the valley or think of it as safe. But my legs take me, bounding over rocks and between trees, grateful for the cover of the full foliage of summer.
Maybe I’m not a werewolf, but I’m also not a human. Not entirely. I’m a tiger now. If I belong anywhere, it’s in the Three Valleys with the rest of my people. Not in Oklahoma City, and not among ordinary humans. I am not ordinary.
The thought fills me with more rage than I know what to do with. I may not be an ordinary human girl, but I’m not a freak. I’m not a monster. I’m not a worthless, weak, useless burden, the way my mother made me feel for years. She could have told me the truth, let me go live with the shifters, or explained to me how it all works. I may not be like them, but I’m more like them than like those humans who want to take pictures of me. She could have helped me. Instead, she chose to shun me, to imprison me, to make me believe I was nothing.
But she was wrong. I am something. I’m a strong, fearsome, capable tiger. And she’s about to see what I’m capable of.
28
Within minutes, I’m back at the sharp turn into the rutted, sloping drive with rocks showing through the soil. The same driveway I watched from my window for the past three years. My stride slows just a bit, and I have a brief thought that I shouldn’t be here, but I ignore it.
And then I see her. My mother is standing at the clothesline along the south side of the house, a single line strung between two wooden posts. A row of clothespins juts from between her lips, the old-fashioned wooden kind with the rounded heads that we once made into tiny dolls in craft class at school. She pinches the corner of a t-shirt around the line and pushes a pin over it before reaching for the other corner. Out hanging laundry on this warm summer evening, she looks like a woman who could be a good mother. Anyone looking at her might make the same mistake my father did.
Anyone but me.
As I watch her, the weight of the last three years crushes down on me. The hope and despair of the first few weeks, when I’d lost my father and everything I’d ever known, and I needed a mother more than anything. When instead of being a mother to me, she threw me in the attic and slapped my face when I dared to question it. Then there were all the times she told me to go to my room because someone came over, and she didn’t want me to be seen. And the times when I tried to speak to my own sisters, and she punished me for it.
Any hesitation I had is swept away by the anger burning through my veins. She could have been the person my father thought she would. She could have treated me like her own daughter. I am. I’m just as much her daughter as Elidi, every bit as much her flesh and blood and DNA. But she treated me like an imposition, an imposter, and a parasite.
I bound forward, covering the driveway in seconds. I misjudge the corner of the house, or my body, and scrape the edge of a board. The wood bites into my skin, tears out a chunk of fur, and sends me stumbling. My mother looks up.
A scream cuts through the air as I leap at her. But it’s not her scream. It’s my sister, who was hidden from view by the house. She screams again, a mindless, terrified shriek, as I bowl my mother over. My mother flies backwards, hitting the ground with so much force she bounces a few inches off the grass. Elidi screams again, but to my ears, it is nothing more than the annoying whine of a mosquito.
And that’s as much as she should mean to me. In the years I’ve been here, she’s done nothing to defy my mother, nothing to protect me. The most she’s dared is a covert smile, a longing glance, a few stolen sentences, and once, a lie that was quickly discovered. That was the very first time I ran away, when I saw them turn to wolves. Since then, she hasn’t stood up for me once. All she’s d
one is ask me to help her escape.
It’s my mother who rules this house like a tyrant. My mother who terrorizes us all, who not only let me believe my father was dead but exploited my loss, using my grief to control me. She didn’t just ruin my life for the past three years. She ruined me.
Now it’s my turn.
I strike at her with my huge paw, relish her cry of pain. Placing both front paws on her chest, I stand over her, open my mouth, and blast a deafening roar into her face. Another scream joins my sister’s, this one on the road. I don’t care. I want my mother to suffer, to experience a quarter of the terror and humiliation I experienced at her hands. Still holding her down, I roar into her face again as she squirms and flails under me.
I roar again, as loud as I can. For all these years, she hasn’t listened to my pleas to go home, to get out of the attic and be part of her community, to be seen as a human being. She ignored my questions and withheld answers. She turned her back and pretended not to hear me when I cried for help, for mercy. No more.
Spittle flecks her cheeks, and her hair blows back from her face with the force of my breath. My teeth are inches from her skin. I could rip out her cold, frozen heart right now. But that would be too kind. First, I will revel in my power, in her fear and helplessness.
Somewhere far away, people are screaming. Running footsteps pound the trail. I drown them all out with the volume of my new voice. Can she hear me now?
I want everyone to hear, not just my mother. I want them all to come running, to see what the commotion is about. I want them to see my haughty, arrogant mother on her back, cowering and begging for her life. I want them to see the terror in her eyes, to see how small she really is, how pathetic and mean. And I want them to recognize the strength in my massive body.
“Stella.” Harmon’s voice is not loud, not panicked. It cuts through the chaos of voices, screams, and shouts. It’s calm and strong.
Beastly Beauty: A Fairy Tale Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 2) Page 17