I melt in with them. Those I came too close to pull away until there is a clear space surrounding me as if I am the wolf they must avoid. Still, I keep my chin up and stride with them through the lanes.
The others are quick to flock away from me when we reach the Square. They spread out and find stones to climb onto or crates to perch on to get a direct view of the Priest, who stands in the centre of the Square.
Beside the steward—our only law enforcer, though we all know the Catholic Church is the law around here—stands the Priest, clutching a worn copy of the bible in his purple-gloved hands. A wooden cross hangs just below his grasp, and a hat so wide it looks like a dark halo shields his face from the drizzle of snow.
My boots press into the sludge that the snow has turned into at the Square. Here, the ground is trampled on and water is thrown out from the well to fight against the snow—but I find it’s now more difficult to wade my way over the slippery ground to the bakery. Out front, there is a stack of crates that I perch myself on. The baker eyes me a moment, but I purchase grain from him often so he says nothing.
Not all the villagers are here yet. Some still trickle into the Square from the lanes and, as I scan the faces of each, I notice that Abigail and Mildred are not among us.
Still, Priest Peter decides to start.
He holds up the bible above his head.
Silence.
Are we supposed to be struck with the imagery?
I’m not. I simply watch with bored eyes and hope to be on my way home soon.
“The word of our holy lord!” he cries. “Many times, he has warned us of the beasts the devils hath unleashed upon our world!”
He lowers the book and holds it at arm’s length, his thumb peeling the pages to where a bookmark protrudes from.
“Daniel 4:33,” he reads in a voice that roars louder than the bell. “And he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.” He pauses, runs his gaze around his gathered flock, then lifts the book for all to see. “Our Lord hath warned us!”
But he hardly offers a strategy, does he?
“He hath given us the tools to defend ourselves—our divine spirits—from the devils lurking around.”
I wonder why he says devils, as though there is more than one. Their religion isn’t a piece I take active interest in, but as far as I knew, there was only one devil in their precious book.
“And he hath given us a woman,” he shouts, “to protect us!”
Most frown at their religious leader. Even the altar boy looks up at his Priest with curiosity in his crinkled face.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Priest Peter turns his gaze on me. And with his stare, a near-hundred others follow. All to me. Too many eyes, too many people.
I shift uncomfortably on the crates, unable to fight off the sudden panic that surges through me.
“A witch?” Priest Peter points at me with the bible. “Or our gift?”
It is my turn to frown. Though, at what point it turned into a scowl, I am unsure.
I am no one’s gift.
“Our red healer,” he states proudly, “might save us from the beast! For she is the only villager to produce what it is we need—wolfsbane!”
I flinch.
Wolfsbane is deadly. To me, to the villagers, and to wolves. Each time I handle it, my hands are wrapped in gloves, and I ensure it never touches my skin. Even the slightest of contact can cause heart failure. And this Priest wants me to what? Hand it out like home ointments to a village of imbeciles?
Improperly, I shout back at the Priest, “Silver works just as well.”
There is a murmur that ripples over the crowd. I have confirmed a lore of theirs. I have confirmed a wolf’s mortality, and in a way I suppose I have granted them hope.
“Ah, you see!” Priest Peter pulls his attention back to his flock, of which I am not one, I am the outsider on a stack of crates. His voice gains momentum now, and he shouts the way men do in a fight outside the tavern, so loud his face grows pink; “With the healer’s wolfsbane at our doors and silver in our hands, who shall be most fearsome? A lone wolf, or a village of furious men?”
There is a roar of agreement. Some fists pump in the air, and scarce are panicked expressions. Priest Peter has drawn out the animal in them all—for to fight an animal, they must become one themselves.
The hoots continue, even as the Priest shouts again, “Our healer—” The urge to curse him takes me. “—will provide us with our wolfsbane to hang at our doors before the moon is full, and our blacksmith—” He looks to his left, opposite where I sit. I trace his gaze to a huddle of people and see Colton, disinterested, beside his mother. “—will coat our blades with silver to end the beast! Each home will be defended, as will our village, for we are one united, but the beast…” He jumps off the podium and people part for him as though he is Moses. “…the beast is none!”
Cheers tear through the Square.
The sound brings flutters to my heart—the sort I feel when bad nears. Their silver and rage will not protect them all. They are mere tools to delay the inevitable. Wolfsbane is their only hope—and it is likelier to kill them before it can save them.
White Snakeroot: So poisonous that once ingested, the risk of contamination to others is severe. Native to foreign lands, must be imported with the trade.
12.
I browse through the crowd slower than normal.
Some women offer me smiles. They are tight smiles that I see as grimaces, but they look at me, they acknowledge me, and all it took was the Priest to announce me as a healer, not a witch.
Fools.
When this is all over, I am under no delusions—I shall be a pariah once more.
Still, I move with ease and lock sight onto my target.
Colton has turned away from me, but I catch his profile under the clouded light from above. With the distance of the sun, his complexion has blanched to such a pallor that even his few freckles melt away; so similar to the woman with him.
His mother, Catherine, wears skin not unlike my own; a pallor so white it resembles, not snow, but the translucence of watered-down milk. Most people of our land are pale, but Catherine and I are more so—the veins beneath our skins are stronger than our own complexions, leaving branch-like marks to spread over our arms, wrists, necks, and—in my case—inner thighs.
“Colton,” I say.
I watch each of his back muscles tense, a ripple from the nape of his neck to his belt, and he slowly looks over his shoulder at me. He wears the scowl I had anticipated.
Catherine steps out from his shadow, and much like her son, she stares as me with such disdain it’s a wonder it doesn’t boil my skin. She snarls, “You address my son so boldly, girl? By his given name, no less.”
“I mean no offence,” I tell her. “I only mean to ask if your household should want wolfsbane, too. Given your obvious dislike of me, I doubt you should want my help.”
“We want nothing from you,” spits Catherine.
Literally—She spits at snow my boots are half-buried in.
All pretence evaporates and my face cracks. A lethal look settles on my stony face and I take a step towards her. Colton slips between us, but I have eyes for the spitting woman only.
“You must be a bold woman yourself to spit at witch’s shoes.” I turn my gaze on Colton. Under the heat of his stare, I don’t so much as blanch. “Should you want any favours from me, hunter, I shall want my own fulfilled.”
I want my ingredients. And if the blacksmith household want even a dusting of wolfsbane near them, he must procure what I need.
Colton lifts his chin and straightens his shoulders to intimidate me. It is not as effective as he might hope.
Colton’s face is grim as he says, “You could have warned me. I saw you in the woods the very day of the attack on the widow, and you ran right by me. All day
I spent out there, and when I returned, it was to a dead village.”
Surprised, I raise my brows. I hadn’t thought to warn him. I hadn’t considered that it would be dangerous for him in the woods during the hours of the sun. Night’s hours are for the wolf—then again, how much do I know about them, and how little does Colton?
“I was in a rush.”
Colton’s lip twitches, as if to sneer. “Yes, I know,” he says, the words rolling over his tongue, slick with meaning. “Every week, the same hour. I have seen him come and go. Tell me, what services does he purchase?”
There is no shame on my cheeks. I raise my chin and meet his stare with as much defiance as I feel lashing inside of me. “A patron’s business is their own, not mine.”
After a heavy glare, I trudge away through the snow.
I make it to the well before I am caught by the arm and turned around.
He stands before me, skin like moonlight—a glossy sheen to its pallor—and lips so pink and swollen that all their dirty deeds come springing to mind.
“Dante,” I whisper, aghast. Wrenching my arm free, I take a step back and glance around at the sprinkle of onlookers. “Whatever do you mean, grabbing me like this in the Square?”
“Wolfsbane,” he says, his eyes dancing to match his wicked smirk. “That is what you will offer us, is it not, healer?”
I fight a smirk. It would be the giveaway those onlookers search us for.
In a loud voice, he says, “I demand the most potent and largest of wolfsbane you can procure, Red.” Then, with that wicked smirk of his, he inches closer and says, “I shall collect tomorrow night, one night before the moon is full.”
“Of course.” I curtsey. “Yours will be the first I bottle.”
There is a huff nearby, an irritated onlooker who undoubtedly resents Dante’s place in the hierarchy of our village. The son of a Knight may do as he pleases here.
He walks away, catching many girls’ gazes as he goes. The fur shawl on his shoulders and the thickness of his velvet cloak bulk him up, some. The ensemble gives him the appearance of Colton—muscular and broad-shouldered. Yet, underneath it all, he is slender and fine.
I hum to myself then return to my home.
It is plenty fine that I started my own brew of wolfsbane this morn. Otherwise, I would never be able to meet demand before the full moon is at its fullest.
13.
I’m in need of more wolfsbane.
I realised that after I scooped the pasty residue of the brew into small phials, then used the last of what I had to fill the cauldron for a second brew.
Grandmother might spare some more from her garden. I hope for her generosity as I hike against the chilly wind that tries to push me back down the path to the village. Uncertainty seeps into my mind the quieter the woods become around me.
Wolves are beasts of the night, but should that suggest they do not lurk in the hours of the sun? Their bites, so long as the venom enters the bloodstream, are fatal to ordinaries. A witch can survive it, but I wonder if it hurts as much as it hurts the ordinary people who suffer days before death.
Grandmother waits by the ajar door, her arms folded under her bosom. She watches me shuffle through the gate and up the path with narrowed eyes.
I expect her to say something, but she just ushers me through the door, then closes it behind us.
“Eat.” Her voice is tough, the way it roughens at the dawn of a cold.
Grandmother sits on the armchair, leaving me with the couch and a bowl of…
“What it this?” I ask, stirring the green sludge in the bowl. I lift the wooden spoon and watch the goo slap back into the bowl in blobs. “Repulsive,” I add.
“Eat,” she says again.
At her demanding tone, I quirk my brow at her and sip from the spoon. A shudder runs down my spine before I even swallow the first glob. I was right. Whatever it is, it is repulsive. Under her stern stare, I finish half. I stop to dry-retch and that is when she snatches the bowl from me.
“I will put some in a flask and you will have more with your supper tonight,” she tells me. “It is a blend I concocted for you—for the pair of us.”
“For what purpose?”
Grandmother stands and gestures for me to follow. I shadow her to the back of the cabin to the Secret Room.
“Grandmother?” I say uncertainly. She is and has always been a stern, sometimes unreadable woman. But today there is an unsettling touch to her, the way her lips purse together, the manner in which her eyes crinkle whenever I speak the only name I have ever called her.
My grandmother. My only family.
She curls her fingers around the handle and looks at me.
A pause.
I inch closer, itching to know what lies beyond the door she touches. But I am afraid to push her some, to ask her to open it. One wrong move and she could draw away from it and forever change her mind.
“Behind this door, Ella,” she begins, holding my gaze, “is the truth. Yesterday, I told you the wolf is gone. That statement remains true. I know this because…” She takes a moment to inhale, then turns to the door. Grandmother pushes it open and steps to the side. “Because I killed him myself.”
I stand at the doorway, frozen.
Eyes wide, I stare at the beast opposite me. Across the room, a wolf’s head is mounted on a pike….and not just any wolf. The sort that tears through villages at night and is man by day. Its head is large, larger than I’d imagined. From the point between its ears and the curve of its neck, I could fit my whole forearm. Yellow eyes, like sunflowers, stare back at me, though they are dead—as dead as can be.
Beneath it, in a cage, is what I assume to be the beast’s body. Only, it’s a human body without a head. Naked, blue and purple in some places, yet not a mark of rot touches the flesh.
The shudder returns, and I feel the aftertaste of the concoction with it.
“Grandmother,” I whisper. “What is this? What do you mean by showing me this?”
Her gaze is heavy on my face. She reaches out and brushes away a lock of stray hair from my cheekbone. “You are so beautiful, my dear.”
I turn to her, eyes wide, brows drawn. Never once has she said such things to me. Compliments from her are not welcome. I am unsettled and it shows in the way I tangle my fingers together.
“Are you feeling all right, Grandmother? You are not yourself today.”
“Not myself,” she repeats and looks to the Secret Room. “I’m afraid you do not know me as well as you might think, Ella. Come.”
I hesitate a moment before I shadow her into the room I have wished to enter my whole life. Even those time I forgot about the Secret Room, a flame of itch lingered within me, buried deep in the embers of other dreams and wishes.
Inside, there is no odour of rotten flesh to greet me. All I can sniff out in the stagnant air is musk and pine needles.
A table is tucked to the side of the door, hidden from me until I am inside. Some folded letters are propped up in a velvet-lined box, and there are two portraits in oval frames that I notice.
“This,” says Grandmother; she stands beside the cage with the headless corpse and hits her palm a few times on the wooden edge. “This is my former love, Silas.”
No words. I have no words.
As still as the corpse opposite me, I stare at her.
“Silas and I,” she begins, then falters a moment. “We met in the village, a long time ago. I was there on errands, and he approached me to let me know…” A shadow of a smile reaches from her lips to her distant eyes. “…I had my moon blood. A few drops had leaked to the back of my dress, and Silas offered me his cloak to save me from eternal humiliation.”
“That was kind of him.” My voice is quiet, a mere whisper, and I am uncertain she heard me at all. Her eyes are so far away that I wonder if she knows I am here with her.
“I did not know what Silas was, but of course him having the nose of a wolf,” she says with a light shrug. “He knew the mo
ment he smelled my moon blood. To him, it held a scent of fertility. That is what he told me.”
This talk, even for myself, has my cheeks burning hot. For a man to smell—and comment on the odour of—my moon blood, I might die from mortification.
“I loved Silas, very much. And I believed he loved me. Wolves are drawn to witches for one reason, Ella. Lineage.” She looks at me, a heavy stare than means more than I can read right now. “Only a witch can birth a wolf.”
Narcissus.
The wolf who pursued her, the cause for her sudden abandonment of the book, her old life. Grandmother speaks my slow-paced thoughts—
“It comes from the old world we once lived in, it binds us here. A wolf’s only option for a mate is a witch. That is why they seek us out.” She strokes the cage once, a gentle caress as though she is touching a live, breathing Silas. “Naturally, I imagined that is what the future held for Silas and I. Until he married someone from the village.”
“Why would he do that?” My frown returns. There is a bead of sweat rolling down my temple that I swat away. It isn’t hot in here, still I itch to remove layers and dunk myself in a fresh bath. “You said, but a moment ago, that a wolf needs a witch as a mate,” I add. “So what could drive him to…to…marry another?”
“His chosen wife was the best of the two witches in the village. He chose the witch who concealed her gifts, attended church every Sunday, and who was a friend to most in the village. He chose camouflage.”
I swallow back a trickle of stomach bile that has somehow managed to crawl up my throat. It must be the goop that has made me unwell.
“I let him go.” She turns to me and levels my gaze. “And months later, I birthed your mother from his seed. Silas paid no mind to her. She was a girl, a witch, and he wanted a boy.”
“He wanted a wolf,” I say, my hand on the table to steady me.
“Werewolves…You’ll find they are not so different to the regular man-filth around here.” She catches herself and clears her throat. “Many years passed. Your mother loved, then she died. And you were brought to my care.”
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 6