by Tina Smith
When Amy awoke the next morning her sister Samantha was dead, and she was alive and sick. Soon she realized she was changing. As the wounds in her side seemed to shrink she became hot and writhed in pain. Her cuts healed into scars in hours leaving only the blood stains on her clothes and matted through her hair. The torn skin melted back into smooth flesh and the bruises disappeared, her spine aligned. She burned hot into the night. When she transformed Amy could move her feet. She could run. She ran all night, and then she returned to the house.
Amy had awoken able to use her previously useless legs as though she had been born again. The living sister Amy now called herself Mrs Samantha Thompson and she assumed her dead twin sister’s able-bodied life. Amy, now Samantha, or Sam as she came to be known, got Lily and Bianca through the first years - with trial and error. Lily and Bianca were indebted to her. Even if she hadn’t been their elder, she would have taken the reins anyway. It was her way or the highway and the girls followed her before they knew what they were doing, because they needed guidance. If they ever had thought to leave Sam’s side, she would have told them otherwise with her persuasion, but it had never been necessary. Lily was the only one who ever displayed an independent tendency, when she took Reid especially. She was barely more than a little girl at heart when they had joined forces and she remained loyal even when aloof. Bianca was easier. She had a buried conscience and didn’t know the secret. Nobody knew Sam was her twin, Amy, but Lily.
20. Bianca
Bianca Benson was from a well-off family. They weren’t rich but they owned a lot of land and after they stopped farming it, they sold pieces for good sums of money. Her mother had married the only son of a farmer - perhaps for his money - and had left him for a neighbour who had more land and was also the sole beneficiary of it, as his older sister was mentally handicapped and living in an institution.
Her mother remarried after bearing her new husband his only son. Bianca, with her sister and brother, lived between the properties. When they were old enough, after year twelve, they lived in one of the rentals with a pool on the other side of their stepfather’s farm. Most things were handed to them. They had an account at the local store, ponies and motorbikes, but Bianca would have given it all to be thin. Her friend Lily, a shy red-headed girl from a good family went bad one summer; not long after the October Halloween party on the farm at the abandoned farmhouse that was the talk of the town. The police had broken it up as the rain came down.
Her mother who had always enjoyed fixing social situations encouraged her to help her friend and Bianca tried - but Lily was unwell, perhaps mentally, though her eyes gleamed fluorescent green and her skin was luminescent. She must have dyed her hair a slightly different shade. It seemed that she hadn’t fallen in with a different crowd, just fallen out of public life all together, and run away from her parents. No one could understand it. Bianca’s mother had put it down to the overly strong religious values of Lily’s parents and felt sorry for the girl.
Bianca’s curly hair, freckles and chubbiness had made her a no-go zone for boys and some of the other kids teased her, especially now she was in high school. On the bus and in the crowded halls she was called “Fatty Benson” and “Bianca Bee Butt”. It had all, needless to say, taken a toll on her self-esteem, but she was quick tempered, too, making her an easy target. She thought she was generally unattractive, that her lips were thin; she hated her freckles and she thought her best feature was her eyes which were sky blue, a trait she and her sister had inherited from their grandmother, though when compared to her friend Lily, they paled in comparison. Bianca painted her eyes and did her nails up, in a feeble attempt to be more attractive. Her mother happily paid for Bianca’s salon visits.
When it hit the grape vine that Lily was missing and then that she was living with Mrs Thompson, Bianca's mother encouraged her to visit her friend, though they hadn’t hung out with her in weeks. The first few times she drove nervously to the gym teacher’s house the disabled woman who answered the door said they were out, the second time Bianca had her sister drive her, as she was too nervous to go by herself. Her sister waited in the car. This time she was either not let in, or was told Lily did not want to see her. Maybe both.
Nor was Lily at school and when the gym teacher, after an absence, quit without notice, rumour was rife.
Bianca would have left it at that, just like everyone else, gossiping about the rumours, if she had not been out late one afternoon during Daylight Saving, driving the rusty Suzuki trail bike on the farm, when she spotted two huge creatures on dry creek bed - huge dogs, wolves. She had never seen one before but Bianca knew the wolves existed. Like all children in Shade she grew up hearing their calls from the trees on a full moon night. She watched them as they quickly escaped up onto the hills.
Sam and Lily were reckless in those early days. They shot off into the trees of the distant mountains, risking being spotted in the afternoon light.
Were they the animals killing off her stepfather’s beef cattle? Bianca thought. The big beautiful wild dogs enticed her; she wanted to see them again so that she could be sure she hadn’t imagined it.
She drove out closer, across bumpy stones, to where she had seen them head across the dry creek bed and against her better judgment along the fringe of the trees. Remembering the area by tree stumps, she could tell her stepfather and little brother where she had seen the wild dogs. Before she could think what was happening she was ripped from the bike and dragged further into the trees. Her fleshy body made a track through the undergrowth. Lily bit her and dragged her away by her clothes. They both morphed and carried her up further the hill, hid the bike under bushes and waited excitedly for her to change. What would the venom do to her? they wondered in their newborn naivety. They had also bitten the grandmother who lived next door, who had been a little too observant. This had been Sam’s ‘experiment’. Fortunately either the venom or the bite had proved too much for the old woman and she had died. Sam wanted to see if she would be transformed to a younger state. There were no books, no one they could turn to. This was the only way to see, and who better to experiment on than the over curious?
Fortunately, Bianca was young enough to sustain the venom, and the subsequent changes. Bianca lost five kilos a day for nearly a week. Her hair became curlier and seemed more golden, her freckles faded, but not completely. Spider veins vanished, boil scars melted and her eyes sparkled as the darkness under them vanished. There was colour in her cheeks and her lips stained a deeper pink.
Sam was impressed and Bianca felt indebted to her. Soon after, they fled the town – just the three of them - as a pack. Had they not chanced upon Bianca that evening, had her mother not been so pushy about her visiting Lily and had she not skirted the rim of the trees that late afternoon on the property, they never would have taken her. Fate works in mysterious ways.
Sam was happier than if she had chosen her specifically and certainly if she had sourced someone to change, it would not have been the overweight heiress with no mind of her own. But in hindsight she made an excellent choice. Bianca was malleable, willing and the venom had shaped her and she had made a beautiful werewolf indeed. In fact Bianca rose to supersede Lily as unofficial second-in-command because she could be trusted implicitly to obey Sam. Especially when her gift was applied, which was only occasionally required. Bianca never took a mate at Sam’s request and she would report the slightest transgressions from within the pack. She was also inconspicuous, a trait too important and valuable to lose. Sam wished there were more like her.
Sam was careful not to reveal Bianca's position as she played the quiet right hand bitch to perfection. This was in part why she enlisted Giny. You could be forgiven for thinking Giny didn’t realize what a precarious position she was in, but she wished it were more so. No one cared enough to kill or change her. She was the go-between the real world - the gauge that they needed, as they could have easily lost contact with reality. Giny was their source of information about the town wh
en they returned. When the new girls arrived at the high school, Giane saw her opportunity, and Sam, though not as quick, saw hers. This girl was a 'nobody', who wanted in, who would be indebted and a shield for Bianca, and who knows, maybe as good as her? On the first tests she indeed had a malleable mind. “You’re with us,” was all Sam had to say at lunch one week after she first arrived with the redhead.
They integrated in separate weeks, so as to avoid unnecessary attention. She even renamed her Giny. “Gin, Gin-ie, I like it.” – And Giane was either too flattered or too obedient to protest. She was the gopher, the decoy and she couldn’t have been happier - until she found out what they were. Not because she was scared but because she wanted to be one, too. Sam instigated in her a healthy dose of fear and after that she kept her mouth shut. As the second youngest child in an all-girl family she had been somewhat ignored and dressed in hand- me-downs from her two older sisters. Her parents were separated. Her mother was currently living with another woman named Lorraine in an alternative relationship in which she had gained two stepsisters and a new baby sister - all of whom ignored her.
Cresida joined the Calisthenics group Sam started for a few practice sessions. Cresida wasn’t coordinated, but she was pretty and popular. Once again she was a nice decoy, however she quit after three practice sessions and took up something else: Sky.
21. Learn to Fly
Sky knew about the dreams, and the symbol. Cresida had asked him in her innocence what it had meant. He knew the second he saw it what it was and what it could mean about Cresida. The last known huntress was dead.
“It’s an ancient symbol,” he replied looking at it in her room scribed on an unfolded piece of paper on the side table. “Don’t draw it again, okay,” he urged gently – curiously, she thought.
He knew it was dangerous for her to go around flaunting the sign of the warrior protection, the warning to all werewolves. He knew with one look into her open, unknowing expression that she had no idea of the significance of what she had drawn. Agrotera – Huntress.
Around this time Sam had begun to nose about personally. On a walk through Cresida’s house she found the piece of paper and her blood ran cold in shock at the sight of it.
She had not been so terror-stricken since her human life. She went through everything, turned over baskets, rummaged through drawers and under mattresses looking for weapons, evidence of anything that would suggest she was a hunter. Eventually after she had checked the roof, the laundry, the manhole, under the sink and in the toilet cistern, she stopped, suddenly calmer. Sam sniffed the air; nothing was out of the ordinary, only the drawing. A single thought made her laugh. Cresida didn’t yet know what she was - she was green.
Sam then put everything back, not as carefully as she could have, but when she was done Cresida’s home did not resemble the sight of a robbery any longer, and Sam escaped into the bush.
Sky was protective of her, this blonde child. Sam sensed it; she knew there would be a bitter fight over her. So Sam used her gift and though he resisted, she felt a level of compliance. Now her concerns were eased, she turned her emotions back to anger. He had chosen to be with a girl and not just any girl, but a hunter - over her - his mate; though he had not been physically her mate for many months, even before moving here.
It was easy for Sam to kill, and with a little effort she orchestrated revenge. A bored vengeful werewolf can be a cruel creature indeed and a scorned one can be brutal. But unlike humans, the well-seasoned werewolves have a patience only immortality instils.
Bianca wanted to kill her, but Bianca was not smart and she had a temper. Sam knew not to listen to her beloved adoptive daughter’s advice. Lily was smarter, and she advised of the hunters’ tendencies that if they killed one - more tended to crop up like buds on a pruned tree. A symbiotic relationship existed in this world of wolves and hunters but perhaps if they only maimed her emotionally she would be unable to go about her assigned duty. Perhaps Lily’s advice was intended to avoid more bloodshed, to save more butchering. However it inspired Sam's revenge.
Sky would protect Cresida fiercely, helpless as she was. Sam was repulsed at the idea of pushing him further away into her arms, it was wrong. The thought crossed her mind that he was doing it to hurt her somehow and the same feeling of failure she had felt about her sister rose up inside her. She was going to do something and it would have to be clever. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Cresida was resistant to her charm: strong willed, a trait of hunters. She had Sky to protect her but in some ways she was bare and tender, so pathetically easy. The symbol of Artemis with a bow, though not yet stained on her flesh, protected her, but not those she held dear. Though if Sam knew better she would have been slower to instigate revenge because werewolves are patient compared to humans, except when they are angry.
That was all before any of the young pack realized the magnitude of hurt they would inflict upon Cresida. That it would be so powerful it would still inspire the birth of another hunter, despite her life being left intact physically. Sam would take it in a manner of speaking; she had developed a taste for not only manipulation but inflicting suffering the way she had suffered in her bed and in her chair, and at the hands of her bigamist father, her immigrant mother and her twin sister. Her teeth were sharpened by torment, she had known suffering and wasn’t about to save anyone else the pleasure of it.
Somehow it was already written, like the god of their world had seen it before. The wheels of motion were already turning in anticipation of the deaths in retaliation to a crime not yet committed, but as good as done. The wolves could manage one, but not two, hunters. Not when the pack was in its infancy, heading towards a mid century crisis with so much sourness around. Sam thought she was clever when she guillotined Cresida's life support, damaging the problem, but it came back to bite her. But not to worry, her successor in the adjoining territory would develop a better plan. Adapt when hunting your prey.
22. Soldier
My feet were wet and raw, caked in sand and covered in bites. Uncomfortably I rose and moved, jumping from the tree branch into the cold salt water with a splash as the tide receded. The smell of stale salt water burnt my nostrils as the sea stung my legs. Like always, like a backdrop to my mind, I thought of him. How much I hated him for leaving me, how much I missed him, and why. I felt the return of despair, for a moment. But I couldn’t let them catch me. I steadied myself and like a soldier I took control of my adrenaline-fuelled, trembling body, so Cres could not find me and put me back in my place, where I fitted perhaps too tightly. I felt for the tag on my chest. Grasping it, I asked silently for guidance as though it could lead me to him. So that the two halves could be placed back together side by side on the chain again. Gasping for breath, I asserted control over my diaphragm, constricting then slowly, tensely, easing out a longer steadier breath than I needed to take. I had been imagining this terrifying adrenalin-pulsing moment in time for too long - my escape. Now it was here I couldn’t revel in it because I would never know if she, or they, would be around the next corner or just a hair’s breadth away from grasping me back into the guise of confinement.
I had to find others like me, then I would find him. The only problem was that my fragmentary knowledge of this world left me no better armed than a lost child. Cresida’s protective dominance over me had served to both enable and disable me. I had no choice but to allow her to raise me, as it were, or remain even more stuck than I was now, ankle deep in wet smelly sand in the early hours of the morning, cold, struggling to remain hidden like an animal of prey in the dank black mud; being bitten by crabs and sand fleas, waiting for the stalking wolf, the prey and not the hunter. I was an organic creature with human thoughts, entwined in the twisting tree branches, engulfed by the forest.
I knew I didn’t know anything, that’s why I had to leave. Determination and the skills she had taught me would have to get me away, even if just for a few days, a few short weeks. Months were impossible. I knew she would find me; she wasn�
��t alone. Reid would help her, at least, and the best of both worlds would be after me, the police and the wolves and the hunter. God, what was I thinking? Reflection is a wonderful thing. I had to be the hunter on the defence and I called her from inside me. Whether it was adrenaline or the hunter’s effect, which took hold like never before, as though I had flipped the switch as nerve synapses, it cranked into overdrive. I could hear everything as I waited: the insects, the trees, the bird calls, the water, the distant traffic and people in their sleeping bags rolling over; the sound of urine in a toilet block.
In the warped and scratched mirror of the brick toilet block I saw what had become of me, dark grey mud streaked over my face. In four days I had become the trees, my eyes were as green as the leaves. I started to rinse it off.
23. Careful What You Wish For
What was a conflicting conundrum to others made complete sense to Tisane. She heard voices without sound and followed her intuition. Tis wished she lived on an island, and she had made her life as though she did, living as her mother and her mother’s mother had done before her, in a cabin on the edge of a forest with an ever-spreading town encroaching on its boundaries. In the evenings you could hear the river from the back verandah - when the birds weren’t chirping - while enjoying a cup of green tea. As far back as her family knew the women had been herbalists; it was intrinsic. How far into the past the talent went wasn’t known. She fantasized it went back into the dark ages; imagining her ancestors being burnt at the stake and drowned for their devotion to the ‘Dark Art’. A gruesome thought. Since returning to the valley the worship of the Goddess had brought her a sense of pride. She had reclaimed her heritage.