The Wolf's Heart

by Rain Oxford

  “Are you okay?” Pelo asked, ignoring Methos’s frantic shouts that it was poisoned.

  After a moment, Kalyn nodded and gained her balance. “Yes. That was just a lot of memories coming back at once. A lot of bad memories. I wish that hadn’t happened.” She gagged.

  “What’s wrong?” Dreah asked.

  “I just remembered someone I never want to see again.” Then she looked at my body, and I saw deeper sadness in her eyes. “We can wake him, right?” she asked Merlin.

  “It will be difficult, but I refuse to accept that he is gone.”

  “So this is safe?” Hongo asked.

  She nodded. “It worked, yes. I’m Kalyn, by the way.”

  Hongo took a sip, coughed, and handed it to Pelo. Pelo drank some and passed it to Jevwen. Neither the warrior or sorcerer had the same reaction as Kalyn, but they both stared off into space for a moment. Then Hongo shook his head and inhaled. “Wow. I am deeply ashamed for my behavior, Merlin. I thought you were the enemy.”

  When Methos started shouting that it was a trick, Hongo clamped his hand over the magician’s mouth. “Be quiet, Methos. You were never this annoying before.”

  “Yes, he was,” Pelo argued.

  Realizing it wasn’t poison, Jevwen drank a sip and passed the cup to Dreah. I felt like I saw his whole life flash before his eyes. Judging by the sadness and shame on his face, Jevwen’s life wasn’t as great as he made it out to be.

  “Are you remembering?” Dreah asked.

  “Yes… I just realized I need to write a letter to my father. We left things on bad terms and I didn’t realize until now how petty I was. I’m his only son.”

  I was happy for him.

  I was also happy for his father.

  But I really wanted this curse broken so that I could get back to my body and go after Gmork.

  Then I felt a little fear creep in. What if Merlin couldn’t break it? What if he did, but I didn’t go back to my body and he didn’t know why? What if I can never talk to anyone again?

  Merlin groaned and rubbed his head with his paws, but I learned from his thoughts that it was habit. In this form, he couldn’t effectively rub his forehead.

  “What’s wrong?” Kalyn asked him.

  “Headache. Probably from the back-to-back battles with Gmork.”

  After Dreah drank the ashes, Hongo and Pelo forced Methos to drink it. That calmed Methos down, but not by much.

  Once everyone remembered that we were not the enemy, they focused on my curse. Kalyn unrolled the scroll, but she couldn’t read it and didn’t want to take the Siren from my unconscious body. Fortunately, Merlin could read it.

  Jevwen and Dreah gathered Gmork’s stray furs, while Merlin discussed the requirements with Kalyn.

  Aside from the requirements Gmork had told him about, we also needed rain water, white rose petals, sea salt, pepper, and dust from a window sill. I thought these were strange, but it was another world’s magic, so I wasn’t surprised.

  “I don’t know where to find half of these ingredients.”

  “They are all available at Magnus’s castle. The problem will be getting the apology of someone who betrayed him.”

  “Do we need his mother?”

  “No. Her only betrayal was that she could not feel love. We need an apology from someone who was his friend and then betrayed him.”

  She scowled. “Sven.”

  “Yes. Ayden saved his wife, but I suspect it will still be difficult convincing him to cooperate.”

  “I doubt he knows how to apologize. I get that the ingredients are all there, but we’re not there and I can’t transport us. Pelo can’t, either, because he’s never seen the castle.”

  “Perhaps I can teach you how to activate a portal to my---”

  “No,” she interrupted. “I can’t do that kind of magic.”

  “You are a Sjau.”

  “And because of that, I’m a powerful magician and I can shift into any animal. I would love to do what he does, but I’m not him.”

  He considered it for a moment until an idea came to him. “I will write a letter to Mason and Thaddeus requesting their assistance. How fast can you fly to the castle as a bird?”

  She grinned. “I prefer large land animals, but I’m fast in the sky.”

  “I need help writing it, of course.”

  Kalyn grabbed a scroll, quill, and ink from my bag. Then she wrote the letter as Merlin described.

  Mason and Thaddeus

  Ayden needs help. He was put under a sleeping curse by Gmork. Please send a portal to bring us to the castle for supplies so that we can break it.

  “Is that all?” Kalyn asked.

  “I would normally write a long letter, but time is limited. Perhaps we should include a lock of Ayden’s hair to help them find us.”

  “Mason is a Sjau and Thaddeus is his brother, so I’m pretty sure they don’t need it.”

  “You are right. They should be connected to Ayden enough to find him with the magic mirror. Go now.”

  She looked at my body. “I know you’ll protect him, but I don’t like leaving him with Gmork free.”

  “The longer you wait, the more likely we are to have trouble bringing Ayden back.”

  She nodded. I wanted so hard to say something in case it was the last time. If Merlin couldn’t wake my body, I didn’t want to live the rest of my life being able to see her and not talk to her. Then again, I wasn’t dead. As long as I wasn’t dead, there was a chance. I wouldn’t give up because they weren’t giving up on me.

  Kalyn shifted into a raven, clutched the letter in her talons, and flew away. Merlin approached my body and sat beside it. I wanted to ask him what his plan was. “There are numerous people who would shed tears over your death. Alas, wolves cannot shed tears like people do. I need to know who you love so that we can wake you.”

  Of course I couldn’t tell him.

  I knew it would take a while for Kalyn to get the message. My body was moved to the bed in the pink cabin and Merlin slipped the hair and curing scroll into my robe pocket. I wanted to think it was just for safe keeping, but I knew it was so that if he failed, someone else could wake me.

  Merlin slept on the floor beside the bed. He didn’t rest well, though.

  Chapter 8

  I was running in a forest. Merlin was dreaming of hunting. When I became aware of my dream, I could control my actions in it. Controlling other people’s dream required dreamwalking. Merlin and I had practiced it a lot so that we could communicate over vast distances if we were ever separated.

  However, to dreamwalk, I had to go into a meditative state that was deeper than a regular dream, and I couldn’t do that with Merlin running. Then, suddenly, he stopped at a stream… except Merlin was already there, sitting at the stream in his person form.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What are you running from?” he asked.

  I looked behind me and saw nothing but the forest. At that point, I realized that I had control over my movement. “What… I thought it was you that was running.” I looked down and saw that my paws were white. I was myself in my wolf form.

  I preferred Merlin’s coat color and size to Gmork’s because it made life easier. If he was too big, it would be difficult for him to act the way he did. However, I wasn’t Merlin’s size. I was small and scrawny even as a wolf, and instead of having blond fur to match my hair, my fur was white as snow. I was as unintimidating as a wolf could be.

  “No, young sorcerer. This is your dream.”

  “Oh. When my body fell under the sleeping curse, I started seeing through your eyes. I’m still conscious.”

  “I suspected as much. Sleeping curses might be different on your world, but I am familiar with the one that you were inflicted with. I studied it for years without success. This one is the closest to death you can come back from, and I suspect that it would have broken the curse had your consciousness succumbed.”

  “Do you think Gmork’s mother’s conscious
ness went somewhere?”

  “Although it would explain her husband’s madness, I doubt it.”

  “Madness?”

  “No child turns to darkness if he knows anything better.” The world around us suddenly changed. We were in a castle, but not a fancy one like Magnus’s. This one was rustic with stone walls, richly colored tapestries, exciting paintings, and openings high in the walls for light. I liked it.

  This was one of Merlin’s memories.

  We were in a dining room with a massive table that was overloaded with rich foods, but there were only three people. At the end of the table was a man who exuded pride and joy. He was a little beefy, both muscular and fat, with a trimmed beard and clean, dark brown hair. The woman to his left was slender and tall with silky black hair and luminous green eyes. I knew that Gmork’s parents were magic users, not that they had been royalty, but the crowns on their heads made it pretty obvious.

  Gmork was sitting to his father’s right. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

  “It is time you find a wife,” his mother said.

  “Sigrid had wanted him to marry since I met him,” Merlin explained, appearing beside me. “Gmork was shy until I came along. He got it from Geir.”

  “Geir is his father?” I asked. Merlin nodded.

  “I will marry when I find a woman I love,” Gmork insisted.

  “You will learn to love the woman you marry,” Sigrid argued. She looked at her husband, who nodded compliantly.

  “You married Mother out of love, didn’t you, Father?”

  Geir looked at Sigrid for the acceptable answer. Sigrid rolled her eyes. “It was different for us.”

  “Yes, you fell in love with Father and married him against your mother’s wishes because he wasn’t the rich and powerful king she’d chosen.”

  “No, it was different because magic brought us together. Against my mother’s wishes, I did a spell to find my soul mate, and it brought me to Geir. Even my mother had to respect the will of destiny. We’ve had some hard times because every love is tested, but we are complete and happy.” Geir took her hand and smiled at her with pure love. “Why don’t you do the spell yourself?” Sigrid asked her son.

  Gmork scowled. “Never. I want to choose my own destiny.”

  “You are too young to understand destiny. As you know, my sister is visiting for a few weeks for your birthday festival. She is bringing her new husband and his daughter from a previous marriage. I want you to show his daughter around the castle and make her feel welcome.”

  “Princess Gaya was second-born and did not have the royal title Sigrid did,” Merlin said. “However, in Sigrid’s bloodline, males rarely had magic, so Gaya was expected to have children of her own. She married a man she knew could give children, but she still couldn’t bare them.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Actually, she hated children, but her mother pressured her constantly about it.”

  “You want me to marry my cousin?” Gmork asked his mother.

  “Only if you like her, and if you respect me as your mother, you will like her very much.” It was a mild warning, not a request. “Besides, she is not really your cousin, now is she? You’ve never even met her and she’s not related by blood.”

  Gmork stood with anger. “I will not marry her or show her around. In fact, I’m not even going to show up for my festival.” With that, he stormed off.

  Geir stood to go after him until Sigrid sharply ordered, “Let him go.”

  Geir sat. “He’s upset. We need to explain why we’re doing this.”

  Sigrid sighed. “He wouldn’t understand. I don’t want him to marry the first girl to cross his path out of fear. We still have two weeks left until his birthday.”

  “We can use a love spell on him.”

  She shook her head. “Whatever tragedy will strike on his birthday if he is not married will be nothing compared to being bound to a woman that isn’t right for him. This is our failure, not his, and I won’t trick him into marriage.”

  “Maybe we can break the curse,” Geir said.

  “The curse is the price we pay for our magic. Ten generations have tried and failed to break it. I want to enjoy the remaining time we have with him while he is ignorant of it. Whatever tragedy befalls us, we will get through it together.”

  I didn’t know what to feel, aside from shock. “How do you remember this if you weren’t here?” I asked Merlin.

  He pointed to the servant’s door, were a teenaged Merlin was peeking through the small crack in the door. “I was a very nosy youth,” he explained.

  “Did you tell Gmork?”

  “Of course I did. I thought he deserved to know.”

  * * *

  The world changed again to show the teenaged Merlin and the teenaged Gmork in Gmork’s room. The horror on Gmork’s face told me Merlin had already explained what he saw. “Maybe they were lying to get me married,” Gmork said.

  “They didn’t know I was there,” Merlin said.

  Gmork thought about this for a moment before nodding. “I’ll get married.”

  “To who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whoever is available.”

  “You said that marriage for your people was an unbreakable bond and that it would destroy your magic if you were unfaithful.”

  “I don’t plan to be unfaithful.”

  “But you can’t make yourself love someone.”

  “Yes, I can. There are permanent love potions.”

  “Your parents can’t ask this of you.”

  “They should have explained long ago so that I could have found my soul mate like my mother did. Although I don’t want destiny choosing for me, it would be better than a stranger.”

  * * *

  Time skipped again, but I felt it wasn’t a long jump. Gmork and Merlin were sitting in a magic room, looking hopeless. There were potion ingredients scattered all over the floor and table. It looked like someone had destroyed the room on purpose.

  “Gmork had attempted the spell, but it didn’t work. We redid it three times with no success. Our only conclusion was that he had no soul mate. The next morning, when Gaya arrived with her step-daughter, Gmork waited on the girl hand and foot.”

  The world changed to show Gmork and a young woman in a grand library. She was a beautiful girl with light auburn hair and deep blue eyes with a gold dress. Gmork laughed, told her stories about his adventures, and awed her with demonstrations of magic, but his eyes were full of sadness. He couldn’t love her out of determination, and the pressure of the curse over his head was preventing him from connecting with her.

  Nevertheless, time skipped forward again to show him proposing to her in the library, which was her favorite room in the house. When she agreed to it, it was relief in his eyes, not happiness.

  The world changed again to show Merlin and Gmork in Gmork’s room. Gmork was sitting on his bed with his head between his knees. “It’s three hours until my birthday, my fiancée is missing, and the worst part is that I don’t want her to be found.”

  “It’s just nerves,” Merlin rationed. “Mazelina is a great girl. I’m sure she’s just as nervous as you and she’s taking a moment to prepare herself.”

  Gmork scoffed. “It figures you would like her.”

  “We like the same type of girl. That should comfort you because it means once this formality is over, you’ll realize she is perfect for you.”

  Gmork straightened, taking a deep breath. “You think so?”

  Merlin nodded. “You’re blinded by duty. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. Out of all the women you could have chosen, she is the one I would have picked for you. Give her a chance.”

  The tension melted out of Gmork’s shoulders and he took another deep breath. “Okay. I trust you.” He stood. “I guess I need to go find my fiancée so we can get to the part where we can enjoy it.” He left Merlin and took the hall to the right.

  Despite his confident words, Young Merlin was worried that th
ey wouldn’t find Mazelina in time, so he took the hall to the left. He searched every room until he became desperate. When bells chimed, he felt dread.

  I could feel this through Merlin, even though it was just a memory. “Those were not the church bells,” Older Merlin explained.

  A moment later, Gmork ran up to Merlin, panicking. “She didn’t show! It’s my birthday and I’m not married!”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Father is leading a search. Mother never showed up, either, so I figured she was looking for Mazelina.”

  Merlin wasn’t so sure, though. He hadn’t seen Sigrid during his search, and the only room he didn’t check was hers. They ran to Sigrid’s room and threw open the door to a scene neither of them could have expected. Gaya and Sigrid looked similar enough to be twins, but there was no confusing them.

  Sigrid was held in a chair by magic while Gaya pressed a dagger to her throat. Gaya ignored Merlin and Gmork, but Sigrid reached out her right hand for help. “You think you can have everything and leave me with nothing just because you were born first?” Gaya asked. “I was always more powerful than you, but I’m nothing because I can’t have a child! You have a boy who can do magic! You have your soul mate! You have all the money and love and respect you could ever want! I have nothing!”

  “Gaya, please,” Sigrid whispered, shaking. “I’ve always offered you anything I have.”

  “It should have been mine! Your son should have been mine! Your husband should have been mine!” Gaya pulled back the knife and raised it above her head to stab Sigrid in the heart. Sigrid’s cry of fear was drowned out by Gmork’s shout of protest. His eyes glowed gold for an instant before Gaya went flying across the room. Gmork ran to his mother as she clutched her throat.

  “Did she hurt you?” Gmork asked. He pulled his mother’s hand away and saw that the dagger had nicked her throat. “It’s nothing. This won’t even require healing. Stand up.”

  She tried to stand, but her legs buckled under her. “I don’t…” She gasped as if she couldn’t get air.