Nocturne

by Christine Johnson

  "Yeah, trial by fire. That's what it's called." The timer on the oven began to beep, and Claire slid off her stool, picking up the oven mitts that Lisbeth had thoughtfully left on the counter. She pulled the chicken out of the oven and set the pan on the stove, breathing in the smell of the roasted meat.

  "So, what will I have to do?" she asked, pulling two plates out of the cabinet, shivering a little at the realization that she'd kissed Matthew in that exact spot. The heat that spread through her had nothing to do with the still-hot oven and everything to do with the ghost touch of his lips against the tender hollow beneath her ear. She could still feel his hands sliding around the small of her back, his palms pressed against her spine as he pulled her tighter against him. For one melting moment, everything else dropped away and she floated, lost in the memory.

  Marie's tea mug clinked against the table, and Claire shook off the daydream, embarrassed about the burn that lingered in her cheeks.

  The naming. Right. Focus.

  "You will light the fire." Marie said. "After you have done that, Victoria will give the baby her name." She reached up, fiddling with the clasp of her necklace.

  Claire slowly reached for a knife to cut the chicken with. "And then what?"

  She slapped the hastily carved chicken breasts onto the plates and put dinner on the table.

  Marie took a careful bite of her chicken, looked up at Claire, and gave her a thin smile.

  "And then, if it goes well—if the fire is lit correctly and Victoria chooses the right name—the Goddess will bless the baby by putting out the fire. At least, a part of the fire. But if something goes wrong, it is like getting a bad fortune. It predicts a lifetime of difficulty for the baby. It's mostly ceremonial—the fire doesn't actually go out, but the pack searches for evidence that some bit of it has been extinguished." Her mother's face hardened. "But it can go the other way, too. I heard of a naming where a tumbleweed blew into the fire after the name was given. The fire actually grew—it was devastating for the pack."

  Claire stared down at her plate, her mind racing.

  Marie cleared her throat. "But I'm sure it will be fine. I believe it will. And then after that, you will demonstrate your hunting ability and your long-distance hearing." A pinched look crossed her face. "We will have to separate the ceremonies somehow. Nothing is killed at a naming. I'll have to figure that out, too, I suppose."

  Claire wasn't the only one under pressure. They all had to play their roles or the baby would suffer.

  But not because of me. I'm not going to have my ear cut off, and I'm not going to be responsible for dooming Victoria's baby.

  She'd light the fire at the ceremony, no matter what it took.

  Chapter Ten

  ONCE IT WAS deeply dark, Claire followed her mother into the woods. The skin on the back of her neck stung with the embarrassment of needing her mother's help. The noise of the dried leaves beneath her feet sounded like snickering, like the forest was laughing at her ineptness.

  They ended up in a small clearing, much like the one Claire usually practiced in.

  "I'll go find some wood," Marie announced.

  "Wait." Claire looked around. "There's plenty of stuff here already." She bent down and picked up a few small twigs, stacking them in the middle of the clearing.

  "But that's nothing." Marie frowned. "The ceremonial fires are much larger than that—they take more energy, more concentration, to start."

  Heat crept up into Claire's cheeks. "But if I can light the twigs, then they'll feed the larger fire," she countered.

  Marie shook her head. "That is true when you are using matches or a lighter. But to do it with your mind, you must have enough power to shift the energy of the whole pile or the spark you create won't take. It will sputter and die."

  Claire's shoulders slumped. "I didn't know that."

  Marie smoothed back her hair. "Well, why don't you go see what branches you can find, and I will do the same. We'll make a proper pile and see what you can do with it."

  It didn't take long for them to build an average-size stack of wood in the middle of the clearing. Marie stepped back, leaning against a tree. "You may begin when you are ready," she offered.

  Claire crouched down in front of the branches, pushing at their heaviness with her thoughts, struggling against the cold inertia of the wood.

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again, but it was just like the new moon gathering. Her heart began to race with the memory of it.

  "You must be calm, chérie, or it will not work. You must be confident and focused."

  "How can I be focused when you're interrupting me?" Claire burst out. Marie straightened, adjusting the cuffs of her shirt. "I'm only trying to help, Claire."

  "Well, staring holes into my head isn't exactly helping! I was doing better on my own." Claire shoved her hair back from her face.

  Marie went still as stone. "If you want to be left to practice alone, I will go. It is your ear. It is your future. I leave the responsibility in your hands." She turned to leave, looking defeated. A sharp sliver of regret pierced Claire, but she was too proud to call her mother back.

  She'd just have to do it on her own. Claire listened to the near-silent retreat of her mother's footsteps and turned her attention back to the pile in front of her, trying to control her panic.

  She could do this.

  Except she couldn't. Hours later, even though her eyes and knees and brain ached, nothing had happened.

  Exhausted and frustrated, Claire threw back her head and roared, her human voice echoing startlingly off the trees. She slumped over, her head buried in her hands.

  She sat that way, listening to the stunned silence of the forest around her, wishing the trees would swallow her up. Claire practiced on her own every night. Her fingernails were permanently dirt stained from being dug into the forest floor, and her back ached from spending so many hours hunched over like an old woman.

  Her mother hadn't said anything to her about the fires since she'd left Claire in the forest, but Claire could see her aching over Claire's failure. Claire knew that Marie could read it in the set of her shoulders, in the deepening of the circles beneath eyes. It just made her practice harder, determined to save herself.

  Saturday night, she stumbled home. When she made it back to the safety of her room, she called Matthew, aching for his warm voice the same way she ached for a hot shower— wanting something that would unknot her.

  "Hello?" His voice was vague with sleep.

  "I woke you up—I'm sorry," she said, her voice too loud in the quiet of her room.

  "No—well, I mean, yes, but it's okay." She heard his sheets rustle in the background and wondered briefly if he slept shirtless. "What's going on?"

  "Nothing," she spat, pacing the floor. "Really nothing. The same sort of nothing that's been going on all week."

  "Oh." He cleared his throat. "You're still working on that?"

  "Of course I am! I don't know how much time I have left before Victoria has the baby, and I'm getting scared, Matthew. Really scared. I still can't light the fire, and if I can't—" The words stuck in her throat. She took a ragged breath and tried again. "If I don't do it, the pack will cut off part of my ear. And there's no way around it."

  There was a long, heavy pause. Claire could hear him breath ing. "I don't know what to say," he finally admitted. "It's . . . obviously, it's awful, but there's nothing I can do about it. I mean, maybe you should just focus on doing whatever you've got to do to fix it, instead of talking to me."

  It was like she'd been punched.

  "You're—you're just going to abandon me?" she squeaked.

  "I'm not abandoning you, Claire. I'll still be here afterward. But there's no way I can help you." His voice dropped. "This is a pack thing. And I'm a human."

  She stood frozen in place. "You're a gardien," she whispered.

  "Yeah. I know," he said, the words heavy as anchors. "I love you, and I'm worried for you, but talking to me d
oesn't change anything. I can't change anything. You understand, right?"

  "I guess," Claire said. What she really meant was, Of course I don't.

  "Listen, you should get some sleep. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

  "Sure." She was so stunned that she could barely form the word.

  "Good." Matthew sounded relieved.

  Claire closed her phone, still not quite believing the conversations she'd just had. She didn't know what was making Matthew back away from pack stuff—why he acted like it was some sort of poisoned apple he'd been forced to eat. After the naming, though, she intended to find out.

  * * *

  The next day, she woke up under a tangled sheet of desperation. She had to do something. She needed help.

  One quick call, and a very worried-sounding Victoria agreed to meet her in the clearing that night, so she just had the long, miserable rest of the day to get through.

  The only thing that distracted her—that saved her—was running. She jogged for miles, until the pavement disappearing beneath her human feet was all that she could focus on; until her teeth ached with the exertion. If Victoria couldn't help her tonight, Claire didn't know what she was going to do.

  When she got to the clearing late that night, Victoria was already waiting for her.

  "Whoa. You look like hell." The words were out of Victoria's mouth almost before Claire was completely through the trees.

  "Right back atcha," Claire retorted, looking at Victoria's puffy face and lank hair.

  She laughed. "Fair enough. I take it you haven't become a fire-starting guru yet?"

  Claire shook her head sadly. "No. If you can't help me tonight, I think I'm screwed. How about the name?"

  Victoria shook her head. "Nothing definite yet." She sighed. "Let's focus on your problems. They seem more fixable at the moment."

  "Okay," Claire said grimly. "I'll build the fire." Mostly, she just went into the woods and pulled the same branches she'd been using back into the center of the clearing. She dumped them in pretty much the same spots each time. It didn't take long to retrieve them and put them back into a pile.

  "Well, you're fast at building a fire, at least," Victoria offered.

  "Yeah, but I don't think this is exactly a partial-credit situation. I have to light it," Claire said. "I'm sorry I had to drag you out here. Again."

  Victoria looked at her. "I'm happy to help you. I've needed help with plenty of these things." She snorted. "I mean, look at the trouble I'm having with the naming. I still need help. There's no shame in that. I think that's why we have packs to begin with. If we were supposed to be completely self-sufficient, why wouldn't we all be lone wolves, seules?"

  "I never thought about it that way," Claire said quietly.

  Victoria shrugged. "I have a ton of respect for your mother. I think she's an amazing Alpha, and I wouldn't go against her. But I don't think being her daughter puts you in an easy spot."

  Victoria had put Claire's tangled feelings into words so easily that it stunned her. With Matthew acting so weird and Emily needing to be kept in the dark, it had been too long since someone really understood Claire.

  "You don't know how awesome it is to hear someone say that," she said.

  Victoria smiled. "I've been the Alpha's daughter. It's hard as anything. It's like nothing you do counts, but everything you do gets judged."

  Claire looked over at the unlit fire, her nerves tingling uncomfortably. She knew that her own judgment was as close as the kindling. "I have to do this," she whispered.

  Victoria nodded, her lower lip caught anxiously in her teeth. "Try. Don't think about it too long, just reach out for it with everything you've got."

  Without even bothering to kneel down, Claire tried to push aside the wood, to find the fire, but it was like swimming with her clothes on: everything felt impossibly heavy and wet. She shook with the effort, searched desperately for the clarity that came with being a wolf. For one second, she pushed back the heavy curtain of her humanness, and she shoved at the dull wood with her thoughts.

  A flame danced along a single branch. Not deep or fast or consuming, but enough to catch. And spread.

  Enough to burn.

  "Yes!" Victoria did an awkward, hopping little dance toward Claire, who burst into laughter at Victoria's ridiculousness, at the giddy lightness bubbling in her own chest.

  "I did it! Did you see? A real fire!"

  "How could I miss it?" Victoria giggled. "Look how quickly it's taking off!"

  The two of them stood, admiring the flames.

  "You know you need to keep at this," Victoria warned. "Make sure that you can do it wherever and whenever you need to."

  "I know. There's too much at stake to ride on one success. But it's a start, right?"

  "Better than," Victoria assured her.

  The two of them sat around the fire until it had faded enough to put out.

  As she walked home, Claire thought about the naming. Victoria had helped her so much. She desperately wanted to find a way to return the favor. But names weren't exactly falling out of the sky.

  She slipped into the house, sifting through her thoughts like sand, searching for a solution. The next week passed in a blur. At night, Claire slipped into the woods, lighting the fires again and again, scouring the forest for anything that would burn. Until she knew she could do it.

  Until it was easy.

  Halloween—and the full moon—were just a couple of days away. They would have a short gathering—quiet, late, doing only the minimum required. Doing more would be too risky. There was too great a chance that some thrill-seeking human would be wandering through the woods.

  Marie's face grew even more severe as the Halloween gathering approached, and Saturday morning, for the first time, Claire noticed threads of silver appearing in her mother's hair.

  "Are you okay?" she asked, watching as the sun caught the glimmering strands while her mother stood near the window. Marie had a jeweler's loupe pressed to her eye, checking her lenses for tiny scratches and microscopic blemishes.

  "Hmm?" Her mother was distracted.

  "You just look sort of stressed is all." Claire wrinkled her nose at the box of cereal on the counter. She missed the days when Lisbeth cooked bacon and eggs on Saturday morning.

  "I'm fine, Claire. Did you need something?" Marie snapped. Startled, Claire grabbed her cereal and slunk toward the living room.

  "No. I'm going shopping with Emily. She's picking me up in an hour—I just thought I should let you know."

  "Shopping?" Her mother looked up. "You hate to shop."

  "It's for a dress. For the dance?" Claire prompted. She waited for understanding—recognition—to cross her mother's face. Instead, she just looked confused.

  "What dance?" her mother demanded.

  "The Autumn Ball. At school? I'm going with Matthew, remember?" Once again, anything that had to do with Claire's human life sailed right over Marie's head, as unnoticed as a distant airplane or a passing cloud. Claire's fingers curled around her spoon in frustration. She wasn't just a wolf. But that was the only part of her that her mother cared about. Obviously. "Oh. Fine." Marie nodded toward the back hall. "Take the blue credit card from my purse. Don't buy anything foolish, please." She turned her attention back to the lenses lined up on the table in front of her.

  Claire stomped down the hall and rummaged around in her mother's bag, pulling out the credit card and sliding it into her back pocket before flopping down in the den to eat her cereal.

  She wished Lisbeth was around to tell her not to spill milk on the couch or to ask her what stores she and Emily were going to. At least she'd be excited to see Claire's dress.

  Assuming she found a dress.

  Claire crunched through her breakfast. When she was finished, she stretched out on the sofa, watching TV and listening for the sound of Emily's tires against the gravel. The instant she heard it, she leapt off the couch, abandoning her cereal bowl and grabbing her jacket. She darted out the
door without saying good-bye to her mother. Why should she bother? It wasn't like Marie cared where she was going or when she'd be home. Not unless it somehow involved claws and fur in the forest.