My eyes refused to comprehend, fighting with me against the fear of falling to look upward and see what was there.
“It’s a painting.” Alex tapped the ceiling with his foot, his toe landing right where the suggested perspective said it should drop straight down.
Breathless, my gaze lifted itself to the desk on the real ceiling: a grand wooden one with a grey-haired man sitting at it—upside-down—his red dressing-gown belt hanging down past his ear. There was a lamp stuck to the desk somehow, splashing grainy light in a small circle around him, and even the typewriter he was using hadn’t fallen to the ceiling… er… ground. The bookshelves that lined every wall were all the wrong way as well, the tops of them suspended a foot or so off the ceiling where we stood, attached up there by an unseen force. The books had been stacked as if that perspective were normal, having won their fight with gravity long ago though, and sitting now with their spines up the wrong way in disordered leans where gravity demanded.
My ears tuned to the pinging sound of the typewriter as the old man completed a page and plucked it out, placing it under a rock on his desk, the edges curling in a desperate fight against normality.
“It’s magnetic,” Alex explained. “The rock. So is the desktop.”
“Oh.” I stepped in, still not sure about it all, and slightly cautious of this painted ceiling, as if it might flip suddenly and I’d fall. “For a second I thought he was magic.”
“Not magic,” said the old man loudly, in a bold but warm voice. “Magical!”
I rolled my chin up to look at his beaming, sort of wild grin. “There’s a difference?”
“Of course there is.” The old man bent down under the desk and a second later a shrill grinding sound shattered the calm in the library. The leather armchair he was seated in drew away from the desk on a conveyor belt of some kind that was hidden in the supposed floor up there, and then came slowly toward the ground… er… ceiling. No, ground. I saw the old man’s skinny legs sticking out from striped pajama shorts, gravity pulling the dressing gown apart, and as the chair did a turn around a few feet from the ground I finally met the man from a sane perspective. I instantly liked him for his knee-high white socks and brown Hush Puppies.
He unbuckled and rose from his chair, stumbling sideways a little with the obvious dizziness of blood that was unsure where to go. Closer up, his face wasn’t as old as the whitish hair suggested. I’d have placed him as being about fifty, or maybe younger but aged with laughter wrinkles. He was obviously a happy man, but a deep thinker, as the permanent lines between his brows suggested.
“The difference, my dear—” He took hold of the bookshelf beside us to steady his wobbly legs, “—is that magic requires a certain skillset, whereas anything in the world can be magical if you know how to look at it right.” His eyes moved to Alex’s supper tray then, and widened. “Ah! Sandwiches!”
“Actually, Dad,” Alex started, but before he could get a word in, the plate of sandwiches was gone and his father was already in his chair again. The smell of bread and cheese wafted away into the thick cloud of ink and freshly polished shelves, our midnight snack just a memory now.
Alex looked at the cookies and milk, then at me. “Back to the kitchen then?”
I laughed. “I think we better leave him to his work anyway.”
As we walked from the room and I glanced back to shut the door, Alex’s dad, who had not been given a name, took a bite of the sandwich, chewed it thoughtfully and then placed it onto the plate to press some sudden insight onto his typewriter. While the plate was stuck down by some force unseen, I watched the sandwich fall off without him noticing, and just laughed, wondering how he could swallow, let alone sit like that for so long.
“I like him,” I said to Alex as we reached the kitchen, the space all warm with the cluttered evidence of his father’s brilliance, or madness, stacked all around.
“My father?”
“Yes.” I sat up on the counter beside the chopping board. “He seems like a man with a lot to say.”
“More like a man with a lot to do.”
Though I took that to mean his father wasn’t ‘around’ much, I didn’t hear even a drop of spite or sadness in that statement.
“I didn’t get his name,” I said. “What should I call him?”
“Plain. He likes to be called Plain.”
“Plain. As in Mr. Plain?”
Alex laughed. “He would say, ‘Mr. Plain was my father. I am, as you will see’ —and here he’d usually bow—and add, ‘just Plain.’”
It made me smile. “So that’s your family name. Plain?”
“It is.”
“Alex Plain.” I said the words to myself, then looked at Alex, who was anything but plain. The eyes that saw him earlier as dorky and homely now saw a depth to him that they wanted to explore. “A remarkable boy named Alex Plain.”
“A remarkably unremarkable boy,” he corrected, handing me a plate. “You’re the one that’s half wolf.”
“Yes.” I thumbed the sandwich. “Which, among my people, is incredibly unremarkable.”
Alex hopped up on the counter beside me. “Then maybe you and I can be unremarkable together for now. What are you doing tomorrow, Red by the Way?”
I looked at the clock on the wall—one that was clearly made by some mad inventor. “It’s already tomorrow. So I guess I’m eating a sandwich with my new friend Alex Plain.”
He bit into the corner. “After that, we should catch bubbles from my bubble machine.”
My brow moved up judgmentally. “Why?”
“The question is,” he said, sounding just like his father, “why not?”
Part Two: Chapter Two
The Selection
Until I met Alex Plain, I didn’t know that the sun could set in a bubble. If you watch it float to just the right spot as the sun lifts over the horizon, you can see your own mini sunrise in a pearly circle. It felt like magic, and yet I knew it was simply magical. Alex, just like his father, had a way of viewing the world that altered the way one perceived things, giving them little gifts and pieces of magic where others would find only normality. It left me thinking, as I lay in my bed trying to sleep, and it was nice to finally be thinking about something other than the fact that my friends had slowly stopped talking to me. I missed them. All of them. I missed having someone to talk to, someone to call when I’m bored or a bit lonely. I just couldn’t believe they would all drop me because I couldn’t walk on all fours under a full moon. It didn’t seem fair. And yet Alex, a human, someone I had seen and never given the time of day, had plucked me from my misery and brought me into a world I never knew existed. A world that had always been right in front of me, hiding under a lack of imagination.
My ordinary pale blue walls felt flat then, and my white bed seemed as unremarkable as a name like Plain, so I shut my eyes tight and imagined it was a sleigh—that my walls were white and blue, with straight gray lines for trees and flocks of birds vanishing over a painted horizon. The carpet, I decided, would be made of wolf fur.
“April?”
My eyes flicked back open to the plain walls and the real world. “Yes, Mom?”
“Are you up? Do you remember what today is?” She rattled the door handle. “Why is this locked?”
“Because I snuck out my window last night and I didn’t want you to know,” I called, climbing out of bed. And standing up, in my room, looking across the park to Alex’s house, the misery of my ordinary life seeped back in through my pores.
Mom unlocked the door and her smiling face appeared. “Did you really sneak out?”
“Yes, and I went to an upside-down library and watched the sun rise in bubbles.”
Mom laughed. “It’s nice to see you have your sense of humor back. What are you wearing today?”
Today, today? What was I supposed to do today? With a quiet gasp my eyes went to the calendar above the pile of homework on my desk. The Selection Day.
I ran to my mirror and
poked at my cheeks, horrified. “Mom?”
She turned to my panicked tone.
“Mom, look at me!”
“I am. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“I look like a zombie, Mom. And this is my only chance to be accepted by the pack again.”
“I know,” she said calmly. “But you can’t control the outcome, April. If you’re chosen by the alpha then—”
“But Mom. Look at my face!” I turned around to show her the horror.
Mom just smiled in that loving way moms do. “You’re beautiful. Of all the girls lining up today, you, with your dark eyes and dark hair, will stand out. Luther won’t be able to walk past you.”
I sat down on my bed, cursing my all-nighter. Had I not been so wrapped up in self-pity, I would have remembered how significant today is—how important it is to be chosen as the next bride for our alpha. Now that I knew I’d never be a wolf, this was the only way to make my friends like me again. The only way to feel like less of an outsider.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said, sitting down beside me, her fluffy blue dressing gown making her look fatter than she was. “This is my fault.”
“What is?”
“When I left your father that year before he decided to marry me, I… well, if I hadn’t dated another guy—”
“Mom.” I laughed. “If you hadn’t dated that guy, you wouldn’t have me.”
She smiled timidly, reaching down to pick up my hand. “Your dad loved you, you know—even after he found out.”
I squeezed her hand back. “I know. And you know he loves you too.”
“I know.” She looked up to Heaven. “He made sure I knew that before he left.”
My eyes lifted to Heaven too, then came back down to the worry lines around Mom’s flat mouth. “I’m going to be selected, Mom, and we’re going to use that money to pay off the house and all Dad’s medical bills.”
Mom wiped her cheek and I only saw the tear as it slipped away under her hand. “I know.” She stood up. “Like I said, you’re the prettiest, funniest and cleverest girl in our pack. Luther would be mad not to choose you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any more confident. You have to say that, you’re my mom.”
“It’s not just a mother’s eyes, April. You are a pretty girl by any standards, and I knew from the day you were born that you’d be the next alpha female. So stop worrying.”
I smiled reassuringly as she left my room, but inside my stomach was tight. I had nothing special to offer Luther, and being that I was only half wolf, my chances of being the next female alpha were slim at best. But Mom was right. I was, at least, pretty. And I was the only girl with such dark hair and dark eyes. The last three brides he chose over the past sixty years had all been dark haired and dark eyed. Everyone knew it. And everyone had me pegged as the next shoo-in; well, until news spread that I was only half wolf. Now, no one said a word to me or about me. At least, not to my face.
***
In the cold gray day, while the autumn breeze taunted thirty teenage girls in scanty dresses, all looking their best, the alpha descended from his townhouse on the hill—a place on private property away from town and away from humans, buried behind a wall of unnaturally thick forest. I’d never seen Luther of Ravenswood up close. I’d only seen painted depictions of him, and I once saw the back of his head at a party when I was five. I knew he was tall, and from what my mom had said, I knew he had that born-in-another-century kind of handsomeness you didn’t see in boys these days. He also became immortal at the age of twenty-five. The only immortal wolf and, therefore, the only wolf that could have immortal sons. No child born to Luther had been female, and when it was first suggested I offer myself as a bride, I had to resign myself to the fact that I would never have a daughter. I’d accepted it now, but for the sake of my mother, I would not accept being passed up for this opportunity.
“What’s she even doing here?” I heard someone whisper. At first I didn’t realize she was talking about me, until I felt the girls staring at me, keeping the canards behind their hands, as if I wouldn’t hear them. I was only half wolf, but my hearing was as sharp as any full-blood.
“She has no right,” I heard some old hen cluck from behind me. “She’s barely even wolf.”
“She has as much right as your daughter, Karen,” my mom snapped.
I filled with dread. Oh no. I could see it now: a full pageant-style mom war. Hair ripping. Cussing. Purse whacking.
I glanced back and saw Mom separate herself from the pack, standing a meter or so away while they all whispered about her as well. But she didn’t seem fazed—either that, or she was just taking the high road—so I didn’t let it faze me either. They’d all see. I’d do something to make Luther choose me, and then they’d have no choice but to accept us back into the fold. In fact, they would have to bow at my feet.
“Who is that man taking notes?” a girl whispered to her friend beside me. She couldn’t have been older than twelve. I wondered why her parents would offer her up so young.
“That’s his first son, Theowulf,” her friend said.
My eyes followed theirs to the tall man, of about thirty years, walking between the two lines of girls, shaking his head at some and nodding at others. Those who received a no backed away, heads bowed sadly, and ran to their moms.
The gaps in the lines closed up, and when the two girls beside me were cast away, I lifted my chin and puffed my chest slightly, determined to stay in the game.
He stopped right in front of me and his eyes became small. “Name.”
“Pardon?”
“Name. What is your name?”
He was pretty. He had jet-black hair and a short beard atop his clear, radiant skin. His eyes were sharp and unkind, his brow low and thick with intolerance, but there was a hidden warmth beneath it all. I couldn’t think for a moment, thrown off by the fact that he was actually pretty cute. Should I tell him my name’s Red or April? “Redwood,” I said. “April Redwood.”
“You’re not wolf.”
“I am. I’m half wolf. My father was human.”
“Who was your father?”
Cringe. Crud. I never asked that. “He was a great man. An inventor,” I lied. “He made sunrises in bubbles.”
Theowulf seemed amused by this, even showing a small smile before he tied it back up in a stern face. He said nothing in reply to my wild tale, but he nodded as he walked on to the next girl, and I shut my eyes with relief. I could almost hear Mom squeak with the same relief from behind me.
Far up the hill to my left, I could see Luther emerging from the green embrace of the forest, while in the distance to my right a busy and radiant little town readied itself for a long day, taking the nine chimes of the clock tower as its cue. From here, I could count the rows of shops and businesses running in six well-organized lines at the center, with two large schools on either end and a giant lake that cut the business district off from the houses and parks. It was a beautiful town, surrounded by hills that couldn’t be walked in just one day, and clean, fresh air that couldn’t be found anywhere else. I loved this town, and I knew that if Luther came down off his hill right this moment and picked me as his next wife, I would have only one month left in the place where I grew up. After that, I would belong to him. I would only see these people at parties and town meetings, if at all, but they would respect and adore me.
The line of girls had become a short selection of ten, all nervous and timid. But they looked good, standing out in their carefully chosen and probably expensive dresses.
I needed to stand out. I didn’t have money or a lot of style, but I did have eyes. I could see they were nervous. So I would be brave.
I rolled my shoulders back and relaxed my face, wriggling my toes to send all the nerves there instead. I knew I looked pretty enough in a cute woolen dress with long sleeves, my knees warm in leggings, feet warm in ankle-high black boots. I wasn’t showing much skin in comparison to the other girls—just a bit of neck
, really—but I felt like my lack of skin showed my increased intelligence, given the climate. I felt like that, combined with some forced confidence, gave me a better chance than all the expensive dresses in the world.
As Luther got closer, our shoulders did too, each girl pressing into the other, a few joining hands. None of them wanted this as badly as I needed it. Not one shred of me wanted to be married off to an ancient wolf at seventeen, but if I didn’t do something soon we’d lose our home, and with the mounting debts and interest on those debts we’d be homeless and hungry. Mom might resort to drinking, and I’d never get an education and end up working a low-paying job for the rest of my life. Then Dad would cry in Heaven.
This had to be done.
“Father,” Theowulf said, smiling his greeting. “Come see what I have chosen for you. I think you will find them all to your liking.”
It was only then, as I leaned out and looked down the line, that I realized we all had dark hair. Mine was the darkest, though, with a reddish hue to it that I’d always hated, but against so many plain girls I felt like it helped me stand out. So I made a point of bringing it over my shoulder and angling it into the bleak sun so it shone.
Luther moved down the line slowly, taking a minute to study each face. He made a few of the girls turn to show their backs, leaving them in line after he passed them. He picked up the wrist of a girl two spaces away from me and studied her tattoo. That was Luca. She was in my Biology class. And that tattoo was for her dead cousin.
“No,” he said simply, and dropped her hand, walking away from her.
We all took a step sideways to close the gap as she ran to her mom, crying.
Luther stopped in front of me then, and I looked him in the eye—square eyes with sharp corners, thickly rimmed with dark lashes. I forced myself not to see how pretty he was—to see him as an equal. But we weren’t equals: he scared the H-e-double-hockey-sticks out of me. He was only half a head taller, yet cast a long shadow that flooded out all the light in my soul. I could sense his age, his wisdom, and while he was only about twenty-five to look at, I could tell he’d seen things in life that scarred him—that there was a depth to this man as deep as his strong silence. He was all wolf; a dark peppering of hair on his jaw that had grown in since he shaved—most likely this morning; a deep devil’s peak at his brow, soft dark hair flowing back in a slight wave, rippled at the temples, as though a set of fingers had run through it. It was intimidating to feel so afraid of him and yet so attracted to him. I could almost see his wolf form in the human one. But I did not falter. I held his gaze, letting him see me, see right through me. I had nothing to hide. Nothing to fear. Nothing else left to lose. But everything to gain.
Red: The Untold Story Page 2