The bedroom door opened and one of the “ladies’ maids” sent to prepare me entered. “It’s time,” she said. “You must complete the walk by nightfall.”
Mom stepped back to let me pass, but anyone could see it took everything she had to make herself move. I envied her then, and I adored her. I could see her strength and it reflected back on me, making it easier for me to walk right on past her, past the maid, and out of my bedroom door.
***
Just like the painting on my walls, a glistening white blanket lay over the hills beneath the mountain pass, and two lines of naked trees gave passage to the new life beyond them. I hesitated in the middle, my feet cold and my skin tight with worry, trying to find that strength I had back in my room.
Voices of the many rose in a chant to the gods around me, calling on them to bless this union and offer it many fruits. Fruits being babies. The word babies made me cringe. Having kids was always a distant future for me, like after I was forty, so to be staring down the barrel of motherhood at my age was unnerving. Way too real. I wanted them all to shut up before Carne heard them and zapped me with fertile blood.
I glanced back at the pack, those in wolf form mixed among those in human form, watching, waiting; and placed a veil between them and me, closing off the old from the new; my old life from my obligation. It helped me fight the urge to see if Alex was running up the hill from town to stop me. I wanted to see that as desperately as I didn’t, because as much as I wanted to be saved, I was also afraid of the big, bad wolf. I would not want an end like the hooded girl—to lose everyone I love and still be forced to marry Luther. This was the lesser of two evils.
The Elders moved in to stand behind me, and joined hands, chanting the rites of wolf union, while the pack howled at the sky. I thrust my shoulders back and held my head high. No matter what now, I would be the alpha female. There was strength in that, and Luther, kind or evil, would have to respect that. According to Mom, Luther thought he’d purchased his next Jane Austen submissive, but he’d get me instead. And he’d get more than he bargained for. I would not be bullied into submission. He would conform to this new society that he’d been hiding from all these years, or he would have a fight on his hands.
I was sold to him, but I was not lost to myself.
With that, I lifted my foot and took that impossible first step. I found it so much easier than I ever imagined. So I walked, ten feet tall in this moment, as though nothing could touch me. Not once did I turn back, cry, or even think about home. Everything that consumed my thoughts built layers around me, creating a world where this was the best decision I ever made, while in my heart, the other me—the one that met Alex and made a different choice—split away and built her own world. She would exist there with Alex for the rest of her life, going off on a path I was never able to walk. She would be so happy, living her days laying in the grass with George under the tree, Sacha at her feet, and Alex’s hand in hers. There would be sunshine and warmth and endless clouds to shape with new perspectives.
Above me, a crow cawed, and the warmth of the story world slipped away. I stopped dead, the cold air making visible circles in front of me, my hands stiff and contorted with the chill. I could no longer see the town behind me, and my hair was peppered with white flakes of snow that had closed over my trail as I walked, so lost in my world that I hadn’t realized how far I’d come.
The crow made his point loudly again, and Alex’s little poem came to mind:
One for luck. Two for love. Three for a gift that comes from above. Four for sorrow. Five for rain. Six for something to ease the pain. Seven is the number to call, for it brings with it the end of fall.
“One,” I counted to myself, taking the presence of each crow as a sign. “Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.” I stopped in front of the sixth one, watching as the silky black wings of a seventh came down and landed on the bare branch beside it, his steely black eyes bringing a message. His head turned then and he watched as another black bird landed in the snow, right in my path.
“Eight?” I asked it. “What does eight mean?”
“Eight is a warning, do take heed, for it brings with it an evil deed.”
I spun around to the voice, my heart shattering open and gluing back together a million times larger. “Alex!”
“I’m not here to stop you, Red,” he confessed quickly, putting both hands up and taking a step back as I went to run for him. He looked weak and yet strong and so solid and so real.
Sacha came up from the slope then, her doggy tracks covering Alex’s, and ran to my side. I squatted down and swept my arms around her, pressing my cheek into her furry head.
“Hi,” I said, my voice high like a child’s. “Hi, girl.”
She licked my face, whimpering.
“So why are you here if you’re not here to stop me?” I asked, on the brink of crying again. But I’d spent so long building my walls; they would tear down now if I let the grief back in.
“I came to give you this.” Alex held out his hand, a silver chain dangling from his closed fist. “In case you need to protect yourself.”
I laughed, standing up and patting my leg to make Sacha walk with me. My eyes took in Alex’s face to see if he was joking, and then moved back down to the small silver dagger on the necklace, about the size of my pinky, with a wolf head and purple stones for eyes. “The dagger might be a bit small to hurt a wolf?”
“Yes, but even the smallest things can be mighty. Plus it’s silver. Pure silver.”
I tried not to smirk. “You know silver doesn’t kill wolves, right?”
“That’s what the guy at the shop told me.” He pushed his gift toward me. “But I guess, in some ways, I see it as a kind of talisman, you know—like maybe… like maybe the way I feel about you will live inside it and protect you.”
“The way you feel about me?” I asked in a soft voice, taking the chain.
“Red?” He looked up from the ground and sure eyes met mine, empty but full. “I should have told you this morning, but I… I was too dumb to admit it.”
“Admit what?” I fastened the chain around my neck and tucked it away so no one would see it.
Alex didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. Whatever he wanted to say was stuck in his throat.
“It matters,” I offered. “I know you think it doesn’t, because I’m leaving to marry someone else, but it matters. I need you to say what I think you’re trying to say.”
His jaw came forward and I watched as he built his own walls, fortifying his emotional fortress. “I’m not like you, Red. I don’t let people in as easily.”
“And?”
“And I love you… as a friend.” He cleared his throat. “That’s all I wanted you to know.”
“That’s how I love you, Alex,” I confessed, even though I knew it could be more if I let it. He made my entire heart fill up when I was around him. I wasn’t sure what kind of love that meant it was, or could be, but I knew it was love of some kind. I was happy with plain old friend love if that’s all it could ever be. “And, Alex, I need you to know that, even though I’m living with the wolves now, the version of me that you know has already left this world behind.” I touched my heart and made a circle with my finger. “You can find me any time with the strange birds.”
Alex nodded, his eyes shrinking with sadness. “I’ll be there too. So will George.”
I nodded, giving Sacha one last pet on the head, my heart aching for her. “I wish I could take you both with me.”
“You are.” He made the circle around his heart.
I made it again too, nodding as I turned away. I walked on then without looking back, because I didn’t want to see him waiting for me, and I didn’t want to see him gone.
Part Three: Chapter One
Strange New Truths
It was everything I feared. Nothing like I remembered.
I’d been here when I was child, and I could still recall the wood paneled walls, glowing red in warm firelight, and the m
any pretty dresses with swooshy fabric to hide behind. I did not remember this.
In broad daylight, the mansion might have been a grand place. I might imagine Luther pulling up on a horse-drawn carriage and taking the dual staircase to the grand front door. But as the last vestiges of the sun made the snow pink, the almost darkness left a grainy haze over that mansion, giving it a haunted look. It seemed to rise up out of the ground like black stone; or maybe not rise up. Maybe it was as if it had been carved right out of the mountain, the agony of smashing rock leaving it angry and resentful.
My worries were drawn upward then to the spired towers on either side, wondering if that’s where he kept the wives that were still alive, while between them, many rooms made for many windows, all dark and seemingly empty. No light to calm me, like coming home late in the night and feeling safe seeing a lamp on. Then again, it was still quite far away and not completely dark yet. Maybe I’d see lights in the window once I got closer. It wasn’t fair to judge a place from this far back.
Like a line of soldiers barring entry, the high brick wall that wrapped the estate eased its grip around a pair of grim iron gates, a decorative LR marked in an oval archway above them, with piercing black spires stabbing the cold sky in a seemly elaborate pattern all the way along. If these gates could talk, they would tell me stories of princes and kings that once dined here in the glory days, but to look at them now, with the stains of a ghostly past, I might hear instead the tales of tortured wives and screaming children. I hoped it was just my imagination running away with me, but the anxiety inside me kept suffocating my hopes.
The gates parted by way of unseen things, and I drew a deep breath, learning then that I was a lot smaller than I ever thought I was before. If I was shivering on my lonely walk through the forest, it became violent trembling now. I toyed with the iron ring on my finger, using its cold solidity to give me strength.
A freshly cleared path had been cut in a dead straight line from the gate all the way to the mansion through thick snow, a line of evergreens channeling a dry breeze toward my terrible fate. I wasn’t standing in front of a mansion now; it was standing in front of me—a living, soulless thing, holding on to dark, morbid secrets.
My eyes flickered with fatigue, and Alex appeared beside me—the Alex I saw by the tree that day, with the scruffy beard. He took my hand and motioned to my dress, both of us watching as it changed from a sensible woolly outfit to a dainty blue gown, like Cinderella. Behind me, my long, dragging red cloak became a sparkly train, and my weather-worthy boots were elegant glass slippers. The dark mansion transmogrified into a grand palace, with flowery vines dancing the white walls like whispers, and wide, open windows revealing classy ballrooms and crystal chandeliers inside. I was going to meet my prince, that’s all. I’d get to the door and instead of a mean wolf I might find a boy that looks just like Alex—not necessarily cute until you get to know him, but kind and warm and interesting.
My imaginary world kept me warm until I reached the wider area of gravel right before the stairs, where two lines of people awaited me on either side, their clothes white and clean beside the dark, grayish stone of the manor. No one made eye contact. No one smiled when I tried to greet them. All were human.
I stopped in front of them and total silence moved over the estate on all four sides. All the animals stopped moving and even the trees stopped whispering. The moon looked away as it rose in the sky, and the last of the sun slipped behind its own hands, as if it couldn’t bear to watch.
My heart beat so hard in my chest I could feel it in my throat. I swallowed the nerves and fought through the shaking in my limbs to take the first step, the cloak heavy behind me as it touched dry, gritty steps. When I curved back to tug it along, I had to at least admit that it did look elegant—the way it poured over the stairs behind me like a bleeding heart. It wasn’t a blue dress, and this wasn’t a palace, but it wasn’t all that bad up close, either.
My husband-to-be stood in the gentle orange light coming through the doorway with his hands behind his back, watching me come toward him, a hard look on his face. I was embarrassed by my probably red-tipped nose and my shaking knees, when he seemed to be so calm, maybe even a little bit princely standing there in a double-breasted blue coat, short in the front to reveal the high waist of his black pants, but longer in the back, like something out of a film. Despite that classic wolf look of sharp eyes and refined features, and the apparently old-fashioned ways, he was unshaven today. I liked him with more hair on his face, and if I had to look at that face while I lost my virginity, on my period, then I was sure as heck glad he was at least cute, even if he was a few centuries older than me. Another gross thing to put out of my head.
I stopped in front of him, a full head shorter even though I was the tallest girl in class, and I couldn’t help but note that Luther was a bit shorter than Alex.
Aerik, who seemed to arrived here out of nowhere, stood suddenly behind me with Agnes, nodding forward when I looked back at them. I pulled myself up, and turned to my fiancé again, offering a smile he didn’t return. In fact, I’m pretty sure he looked down his nose at me.
Agnes picked up my hand and laid my wrist over Luther’s, binding them with twine and a layer of white silk. She spoke words about fertility and the influence of the moon, then Aerik bound our wrists in red silk. An echo showed each hollow in the design of the forest then as our pack howled, and as bad as I wanted to howl with them, I kept my throat tight, doing everything Luther did—which pretty much meant standing still and looking disinterested. I was good at that.
The sly alpha made eye contact with me then. I thought, or maybe hoped, I saw the ghost of a smile there. When the wolves hushed, Agnes stepped back in offering, and Aerik gave a single nod to Luther. It was all very silent and formal. I listened to see if I could hear a pin drop, but what I heard instead was a whisper about being hungry and something to do with a feast—the same feast my new husband and I were supposed to miss because we’d be consummating our silently made vows.
As was tradition, our hands were then unbound and Luther bent to pick me up. I almost squealed but reminded myself not to, staying instead as poised and composed as he was. He carried me over the threshold into a large, airy place with too-high walls and dark corridors on three sides, all splashed with an overuse of decorative weapons and animal skin rugs. It was a place that looked both grand and scary at the same time, as though there was once a warmth to it but was gnawed at over time until all that remained is an echo, a memory. There was sadness here. Too much of it. But who it belonged to, I couldn’t tell.
Out of the darkness of the corridor to my right a sturdy silhouette approached. A part of me was scared, but a bigger part wanted to run up the steel spiral staircase in the middle of this room and explore all the nooks and crannies this mansion would have.
When the front door closed, Luther practically dropped me to the floor, taking a long stride away and dusting his hands off. “She smells like a dog. And she’s bleeding. Clean her up and tell her the rules; we will finish this ritual in a fortnight when she’s fertile enough to conceive a son.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes as he stalked away and vanished into the darkness. I couldn’t believe my luck as my ears made sense of what he just said. No consummation tonight! No icky period grossness! I wanted to jump for joy, but Theowulf was looking at me. It was an apologetic look.
“You’ll get used to him,” he offered.
“It doesn’t matter to me if I don’t.”
“Why is that? Have you not just now become his wife?”
“Yes, but from what everyone says, I’m not a wife. I’m a Give Birth Barbie—Regency Edition.”
Theowulf laughed loudly, his head going back to reveal wolfish fangs. “My goodness, what rumors must circulate out there.”
“Then it’s not true?”
“April.” He reached out kindly for my hand.
“It’s Red. No one calls me April but my mom.”
“Red,” he corrected, taking my hand when I didn’t give it to him. He closed it inside both of his and patted it, creeping me out. “Welcome to the family. Officially, and please, take some time, settle in, and try to disregard what you’ve been told by those who have never seen inside these walls.”
“Okay,” I agreed, stealing my hand back. But I would be hesitant to see this as anything more than a sad, dangerous prison. One thing was certainly true so far: the Regency thing. Even Theo was dressed in a coat similar to Luther’s, but black, showing white high-waist pants. And they all seemed to have high collars, too, with scarf things and brooches hiding their throats. I wondered for a moment if they were vampires with scars to hide.
Theowulf cleared his throat. “Come. I’ll show you to your room and you can… freshen up.”
“Are you saying I stink?” I turned my lip up at him. “I showered before I came.”
“And you have touched a dog since,” he said, his lip lifting a little too. “We’re not partial to the smell here.”
I sighed, rolling my eyes.
“Don’t do that,” he warned. “He does not like that.”
“Who?”
“His Lordship. It will be in your best interest to refrain from modern acts of teen rebellion henceforth.”
I stopped walking and purposefully turned my body to face him, giving my eyes a big, slow roll.
Theowulf smiled, shaking his head. “I see my father got more than he bargained for.”
“Believe me, you have no idea,” I said sassily and walked past him. “Which way?”
He pointed to the right corridor. “Your private quarters are in the west wing. There’s a staircase down the end of this hall.”
Red: The Untold Story Page 10