by Amanda Milo
My stepmother bursts into harder tears, bringing her blood-covered hands up to cover her face.
“Momma—” comes a sleepy voice at the top of the stairs.
My stepmother and I both startle, and twist to look up at the stair landing. There stands both of my stepsisters, their eyes showing more and more white the longer they stare at the scene spread out below them.
My stepmother breaks. “God help us,” she sobs out, and she lunges for me, wrapping her arm around my neck, hauling me to her bosom as she looks up at her children. “You’ll all be orphans! You’re just babies!” She turns me, sticky hands clapping to the sides of my face—
My father’s blood, I think to myself, still shocked.
—and pleads, “Ella, take care of them. Please. Go to Gareth; he’ll take them in if you bring them. You know he will. Raise them as your own, please, please, do this for me—”
At any other time, if we were not facing the situation we are, I’d kick up a dust cloud at the irony. After all, my parents’ reasoning for me not wedding Gareth this year was that I was too young to be raising babies just yet.
But the girl who would do that is exactly that—a girl, and so much has happened, I feel aged in an instant. At the moment, I don’t even recognize that foolish girl.
How could everything all go so wrong?
I’m breathing too hard, and I feel a prickle race up my spine, and shoot down my arms. I lift my hands, and grip my stepmother’s shoulders. “You know I will take care of them. They’re little twits half the time but they’re my sisters; no matter that we share no blood.” I squeeze her where my cold hands grasp her chilled skin, my chin quavering. “Just as you are my mother, even though you were not the one who birthed me.”
My stepmother lowers her head, broken.
I shake her, shocking us both. “No more crying.”
From the corner of my eye, I see my sisters staring at me as if I’ve turned into a vicious monster.
But maybe if we keep level heads and hurry, my stepmother won’t swing for this. “There will be plenty of time for tears. We need to start digging.” I drop my hands from her, and stand on legs that shake. “Right now.”
“You think we should...” my stepmother starts to look back helplessly, but gives a pained cry and squeezes her eyes shut. “I deserve the noose for what I’ve—”
I take her shoulders again, the prickles racing faster over me, biting like ants. “It was an accident. How were you to know the talking wolf was safe?”
My stepmother chokes. “The wolf talked?” She looks so absolutely shocked, I think I should have started with this. She’s almost stopped crying, her body just suffering through the inconsolable tremors that come with deep grief.
“I swear to you it did,” I pant, my chest feeling oddly tight.
“Ella?” my stepmother asks, sounding scared now, even through an after-crying hiccup.
“Wh-what?” I ask, my throat feeling strange. My ears twitch… and they snap out; I feel them expand with the flick.
Pain tears through my midsection.
“AhhhgGHHRRRRRRRAWW!” I howl, dropping to all fours, something sharp from my rucksack digging into my shin where I landed on it.
I have a moment to register that I feel itchy all over, when fur explodes through my skin.
Under the pelt sprouting over me, my bones reform, cracking, shifting, my organs and insides squelching. A scream tears out of me, a horrible, inhuman sound of pain and terror.
My stepmother scrambles away from me, and it’s not a moment before she returns. Dimly, I wonder if she’s retrieved the crossbow, and if she’ll put me out of this freakish misery.
Instead, I feel the cold steel of shears pass over my back, and along my side.
My deepening wolf-chest takes in a full breath, and my stepmother tugs and fights with me to get my lupine form free of my dresses’ remnants.
When we succeed, I struggle to stand, and I look down at myself.
I’m a wolf.
I’ve turned into a wolf.
I raise my head, and see Stepmother and my stepsisters are staring at me mutely, disbelief mingling with astonishment.
I sympathize. I twist my longer, more muscled neck, and eye my side, my flank, my legs—my tail.
Experimentally, I sweep it—and it gives a low, sad wag.
I’m a wolf.
I was visited by a wolf, and I turned into a wolf. These two events cannot be happenstance. But… how? Why? Why me? Sally Brubaker told me werewolves are cursed by dark witches. I’ve crossed no witch, insofar as I know. I’ve not been bitten by a wolf either, and that’s the other legend I’m familiar with.
“You’re so pretty, Ella,” my youngest step sister stage-whispers, as if she thinks she probably shouldn’t say this, but can’t help herself. I have to agree with her; I’m reddish, gold, and grey-furred everywhere. A cinder wolf, they call this pelt color, because it resembles cinders and ash. It is striking, and I suppose, if one can claim such a thing, my wolf-self is very fine.
I rather thought my human self was nice too though, and I’d like it back.
I try not to panic.
Experimentally, I take a step forward, and find that walking on all fours is not much different than crawling on all fours as a human. As it happens, I’ve gotten down and, ahem, frolicked with Gareth more often than was surely prudent—thus it seems I have a fair bit of experience on all fours.
I lean my weight back on my hindquarters, freeing up my range of movement on my front half. I draw my wrists up, and my elbows bend and my paws lift and my claws, my long, granite-like wolf’s claws scratch the stone floor.
I can dig, I declare in my head.
And just like I heard the wolf speak, my voice travels to my family, and their wide eyes all go wider.
CHAPTER 3
It takes a long time to dig a hole big enough to bury a man. A shallow grave would have hid the evidence quicker, but predators would also make quick work of uncovering it.
I shudder. I’m a predator now too.
Thankfully, I have no urge to venture near my father’s flesh. I dig with a single-minded focus, dirt flying behind me, my tongue feeling gritty because it spends a whole lot more time outside my mouth as this new animal than it ever did while I was a person and it picks up everything.
If I concentrate, I can speak to each of my family members separately, otherwise the voice in my head broadcasts to whoever’s standing close, and the distance the mind-speak works is about the same as if they could hear my voice with their ears and not just their head.
Beyond that, I try not to think. Fear gnaws at me, mixing thickly with horror. Gareth will be coming for me.
Never before have I been frightened to anticipate his arrival.
Of course, I’m not the only one struggling. Weeping, sobbing children and a glassy-eyed and dazed stepmother dig beside me with a torpified determination.
It’s amazing what you can do when you have no other choice. Like the Parnell house, who had to burn creeping infection out of Harry Parnell’s leg. The whole family held him down for the procedure. They say that in their dreams, they can still hear him screaming over the sound of his flesh sizzling, and half a year later, the doctor diagnosed them all with a muscle weakness from a lack of meat in their diet. It came on because after cooking out Harry’s infection, no one in the house could stomach the smell of anything heating up but plants.
How will we pay for numbing our emotions tonight?
When it’s time to lower my father to his grave, we hit yet another obstacle. None of us are strong enough to move him. It takes the effort of all of us, and there’s no end to the wrongness of us dragging and pushing (let alone my teeth closing over his clothes and limbs and jerking backwards in hops and leaps with all my might).
The problem is compounded because he’s still joined to the wolf by the arrow that took their life. A crossbow’s bolt isn’t meant to exit a body, and none of us have the stomach for what we
’d need to do in order to seperate them, so together, we wrestle the pair increment by increment closer to their grave. The wolf is nearly a human’s weight, and it’s as long in body as Father is tall. Rigor makes folding its legs a struggle, but we manage to fit the both of them in. Before we close the burial, with numb gravity, Stepmother carries Father’s crossbow to the grave… but she can’t make herself place it on the man she loved.
Here I tell her, my voice sounding rough with emotion even in my head. It won’t take me long to dig it a hole of its own. It’s not that big.
Not as big as bodies, anyway.
The crossbow is actually quite large, and it’s a bit astounding that Stepmother was able to shoot it without harming herself. The string can tear you up; there are seasoned hunters who’ve lost fingers and thumbs the moment they let the bolt fly. It’s also an odd thing to wield, heavy in front. It’s not easy to balance when you’re used to practically any other weapon. And it’s hell to load. Gareth liked to tease me about my inability to ‘manage his weapon without help’—but in all truth, it’s simply not a weapon made to be friendly to a woman. Father must have kept a bolt loaded in his for emergencies.
Once loaded, it is technically easy enough to loose an arrow: just follow the sight and pull the trigger.
I stare at the corpse of my father and the wolf he didn’t fear. The wolf who spoke.
The talking wolf who told me I inherited this ability to shapeshift.
CHAPTER 4
Sand dumped on the basement floor soaked up the blood, and the fresh sand will cover the evidence until the stains themselves fade away from the stone.
Does blood fade from stone? In truth, I don’t know. I suppose it would be fitting if it doesn’t. This night will be burned into our memories forever. Why would the physical evidence wash away easily?
My stepmother looks as if she’s aged twenty years in two hours. My sisters have undergone the same transformation; they’ve been responsible and quiet and serious all night, the gravity and heartbreak maturing them at breakneck speed.
We were a happy family. We experienced our share of hardships, as does everyone, but nothing like this night’s tragedy. Tonight...
Gareth and I were going to elope, I cry out in my head. Out loud, I howl. We were going to be so happy. And now we’re in a whole lot of trouble!
My stepmother blinks at me as if I’ve grown… well, as if I’m wearing exactly what I am: a tail. “You’re too young yet…” she starts, but even as she utters the words, she’s breaking down, unable to process it all. Before tonight, the age of two soulmates who desperately want to embark on a life together was forever a bone of contention between us and our parents. That was the only real bone of contention. Now?
Because I haven’t shown up to our meeting place, I warn her, he’s going to assume our plan was found out, and he’ll believe I’m being held back and punished.
“The eldest prince of the realm believes we’re keeping him from his beloved—perhaps punishing her?” my stepmother chokes out, stricken. Her hands, which she hasn’t stopped worrying, twist and clutch at themselves faster.
A loud pounding at the front door startles us all. Gareth’s voice barks through the door, “Let Ella out to me!” His voice grows in volume until it’s an indignant, proud, bellow: “I WILL HAVE MY WIFE.”
For a moment, I’m emboldened by hope—and love. I need Gareth more than ever right now; and here he is. He’s a reasonable man. Yes, he’s young, but no younger than me. If I haven’t gone hatter-mad over what’s happened, he won’t either. He can handle learning of my family’s tragedy and my mysterious development. I’ll speak in his mind, and he’ll hear me, and he’ll help me. We do everything together. I don’t know how we can fix this, but at least I won’t be alone with my confusion and sadness and fear.
My claws thunk into the wooden steps as I bound up the staircase.
“Wait!” hisses my stepmother. “Ella, you’re not thinking clearly, you can’t confront the prince as a—”
I hear her fine as I outpace her easily, and I’m at the door, where I huff a disbelieving wurf that I’ll need help to unbar it to open it. Such a simple thing, until I suddenly find myself in paws.
My grunt of irritation comes out as a small woof.
And on the other side of the door, an answering, excited, massive wolfhound’s bark makes the wood vibrate.
It sets off another and another canine cry; there must be the whole of the king’s pack of hounds outside our door.
Ice stops my heart.
It’s said that the king’s wolfhounds have never lost their quarry. Of course, I’ve always imagined their prey as hares and foxes, which didn’t particularly cause me upset considering too many hares means robbed gardens, making for lean winters. And a swift fox spells a bloody end to dear egg-laying hens.
But everything takes on a startlingly different perspective when I’m suddenly the one on the wrong end of the hounds.
And make no mistake; I am on the wrong end. The dogs are getting more and more riled, as if there’s a wonderful surprise for them just on the other side of the door, and they can smell it.
They can smell me.
They call our king The Wolfslayer. The people of the realm have given Gareth a name too. The Wolfslayer’s Son.
I don’t realize all my wolf’s hair has raised until my sister’s hand brushes it down softly. Tears are in her voice as she whispers, “Hide, Ella!”
The door shakes, creaking as the chinks are stressed, the bolting bar jostling mightily. “ELLA!” Gareth booms. “I’m here for you, love!”
Never before in all our years together have his words—especially these words—struck terror in my heart.
Gareth, I whimper.
And for one indescribably painful moment, I think Gareth heard me in his mind, because the door abruptly stops sagging with his weight.
I need you to listen to me, I tell Gareth urgently, hoping he can hear me as easily as my family has been able to. Terrible things have happened tonight.
The hounds are in such a frenzy, I can barely hear myself think, and I’m afraid it must be worse for Gareth with the pack swarming around his legs.Then I hear the voice of our king rise over the din, “You there, new person—what’s that in your hand? Put it down before I use it on you. Do you know what the pack’s barking means? They scent wolves, that’s right. And that means you stay back and let the damn dogs work. You get in the way, I’ll feed you to them.”
Our king is a good king. But don’t you ever cross him. And don’t you ever interfere with his hunts.
We have no close neighbors, but I’m able to make out familiar voices of people who live nearby. I suppose the sight of the prince and our king and the royal guard marching to a Baron’s house is worthy of watching if you have too-curious ears and eyes. The king, the prince, a royal hunting party and townsfolk. There’s a whole spectacle out there.
And my father lies murdered behind our house.
Not to mention the illegally destroyed wolf.
This is a nightmare.
I glance at my stepmother to see she’s white as her fine china, and looking just as breakable too. “What do we do?” she whispers, her eyes almost staring through me.
“Momma, the window,” my youngest sister pleads. “Ella can fit through the window and run.”
I look at her like she’s mad. That window will snap your fingers in it every chance it gets—it’s an evil contraption, and with the way things have been going, it’ll catch me by the tail so that I’ll dangle down like a hound’s toy.
My stepmother’s already shoved it open though, the screech of old, swollen wood drowned out by the cries of what sounds like many men—and more dogs.
I need to talk to Gareth. But I’ve seen the frenzy of the hounds when they hunt. I’ll be in shreds before I can convince Gareth to hear me as a wolf.
I shiver, and whine. A wild animal’s panic builds up inside me. Steps light, claws clicking the floorboards
, I begin to jerkily pace.
“Save yourself, Ella,” my stepmother insists. “Before the Wolfslayers get you!”
With a quiet woof at them all, I leap out into the dark of the night.
CHAPTER 5
Nettle is a cruel little creation, with thorns that stab, with vines that slice, and to add insult to injury, the furrows they scratch into your skin burn like the dickens.
At night, even with a wolf’s vision, I find I’m not able to avoid them.
Especially when I’m racing for my life, with all the wolfhounds of hell on my heels.
The king’s dogs are his pride and joy, right after his children. His dogs are the finest in the land, and each litter his bitches produce sells for a fortune.
Now I know why. His hounds seem to have endless endurance. I suppose they really might; they’ve been running down wolves for far, far longer than I’ve been a wolf trying to keep ahead of their giant, powerful jaws.
I grow mindless, my only focus to run, run, escape.
The snap of the trap is so unexpected, I leap into the air more from the sound than anything, because at first, I don’t feel the pain.
But that changes fast. Horror floods into me with startling swiftness, like falling through cracked ice on a half-frozen lake. I don’t want to believe this has happened, but the agony spiking up my limb until I’m yelping tells me what I see is real. Steel jaws hold my rear leg in an iron grip.
Even though I know it’s futile, I leap and lunge and panic, tearing up my leg in the process, but not freeing the trap from where its chain trails around an ancient, solid-as-hell tree.
There’s no escaping this.
I force myself to cease my shrill whimpers of panic. Unfortunately, any headway I made from the dogs is being eaten up as I stay stuck in place. Thanks to my cries, I’ve given each and every one of them my trapped position.
Dread rolls over me, making my fur stand out, the tips of each hair quaking with my shivers of pain and fear.