Heir of the Curse

by B. Kristin McMichael

  Sera didn’t look across at me as she looked into the fire like it held the answers she was looking for. I had to wonder if she was searching for the same answers I was. I never pictured Sera with friends because she was raised as isolated as I was. While she was a tree dweller, they never really invited her in. It was probably because they all knew she was the next Red, someone you didn’t want to get close to because it was a job that generally didn’t come with a long life. My mother was the only Red that made it past her thirty winters.

  As the flames flickered on, Sera looked up at me and smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ I mouthed across to Sera, where she sat staring at me now.

  Sera grinned and nodded her head to me as she laid her head back against the tree at her back and closed her eyes. She didn’t seem to have the answers either, but I was pretty sure if Red wasn’t going to help the wolves, I’d just made a new ally that would help me. Together, maybe, we could save them all.

  10th March

  The smell of the smoke from the fire dying woke me the next morning. I had tried to get up every now and then to stoke the fire and keep the girls warm, but by the middle of the night, I was too sleepy to stay awake. I heard the snoring of the girls, so it didn’t seem to matter. They made it through the night safe and warm.

  The day before had been perfect. Grace never stopped smiling as she fell asleep. It was everything I could have wanted for her, and it was thanks to Sera. I never saw her as anything but annoying, but that was changing with this trip.

  Growing up, she hated anything related to the wolves. She could barely tolerate Nikkan; then again, he could barely tolerate her. Most of the time, she kept her anti-wolf views to herself as she knew my mother was passionate about bringing together the two kinds of humans in the northern section of Elder, but I always saw it in her eyes. I really never knew what made her hate wolves that much, but yesterday, it was amazing how much she cared and made Grace’s last human day perfect.

  Slowly sitting up and stretching, I could feel the aches from sleeping on the forest floor. My one couch in my house wasn’t much, but it was still better than the hard ground. I really had no idea how Nikkan did it day after day. Then again, my wolf friend preferred my couch. I raised my arms and cracked my back as I twisted left and right. It felt like everything popped back into place, at least, I hoped so. We still had a walk back to my home, which would take half the day with the distance we traveled. At least as a wolf, Grace would be able to keep up with Sera and I when we were running full out.

  Looking around our meager camp told me all I needed to know; Grace was gone. Seemed she was up earlier than I was, which didn’t say much since the sun was already up. I wasn’t one for sleeping in, but then again, I was up half the night keeping the fire going. Surprisingly, Sera wasn’t up yet, but I could remedy that.

  Standing up as quietly as I could, I made my way over to her. As I pulled back my foot to give her a good kick to the bottom of her feet, I paused just to make sure she wasn’t going to fight back and was really asleep. One could never be too careful, especially with a highly trained warrior like Sera.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Sera told me, her voice groggy as if I just woke her.

  I dropped my foot back to the ground. That took all the fun out of it.

  Sera sat up and rubbed her eyes. She stretched just as I had, but it didn’t look like sleeping on the hard ground affected her at all.

  “Which way did Grace go?” Sera asked as she sat up, no longer stretching. She looked around the forest with a quick glance.

  “No clue. She was gone when I woke. Figure she had some morning business and would be back soon,” I replied, moving back over to where I was sitting before.

  Sera patted the ground next to her.

  “It’s cold,” Sera mentioned.

  Yes, the ground was cold.

  “Where Grace was sleeping. She has been gone longer than just a moment,” Sera explained like I was stupid.

  I hadn’t thought of that because it made no sense. Grace wasn’t the kind that would go wandering off to explore by herself.

  “She probably went swimming,” I replied. Then again, there wasn’t any noise beyond the water hitting the spring pool. “Maybe she’s soaking and enjoying the warmth since the fire is low.”

  Sera turned toward the spring pool behind the trees where we set up camp, and then looked back at me and the fire.

  “How long has the fire been out?”

  Great. I could tell the look on her face meant she was disappointed with me for not staying up all night to keep the fire going. Wasn’t my fault I ran warm and didn’t feel it die off. She was back to old Sera, bossing me around and being overall a pain in the butt.

  “I put the last piece on some time in the middle of the night. I don’t know what time.”

  “The ground’s cold,” Sera commented. “But I don’t know how long.”

  That much was normal. The ground was always cold in the spring. Guess she hadn’t slept outside in a while because she wasn’t making any sense.

  Sera stood up and began looking at the ground. Could she see a cold ground? That was a weird Red power my mother never mentioned. Her eyes darted around before she began to walk away.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I jogged to catch up with her.

  She peered over the bushes we had camped behind and looked over at the water. I watched with her but didn’t see anything. Grace wasn’t soaking in the water as I had hoped, but I had a feeling Sera didn’t expect that much.

  Sera held up a hand for me to be quiet as she closed her eyes to listen.

  I listened too but didn’t know what we were listening for. The forest sounded normal to me. Animals were waking for the day, and some had already been up since before the sun had risen. Yes, I had heard those birds that chirped when the sun wasn’t close to the horizon, but I was used to ignoring them.

  “We need to find Grace,” Sera told me as she went back to her bag and began packing up everything from the night before.

  “What do you mean, find Grace?”

  Sera looked up at me and rolled her eyes but didn’t explain.

  “Pack up everything; we’re leaving,” Sera told me.

  Orders. I hated being ordered around. I did much better with reasons, and Sera knew that. Why did the old Sera have to come back? I was doing perfectly fine with the friendly Sera that was showing Grace what an excellent last day meant. I wanted to protest, but the thought of Grace stopped me. It wasn’t the time or place to argue with Sera.

  I honestly was lost as to what to do. Grace still wasn’t back with us. I’d assumed she just got up for a few moments and would be coming back through the bushes in no time. I had listened to the forest with Sera. No human was anywhere nearby. Did Grace leave already to change and not tell us? Was she not wanting to tell us goodbye? Sera was much easier to get along with when Grace was there to balance out her crazy.

  It wasn’t hard to pack my stuff as I hadn’t brought much to begin with. I pushed the sweater Sera had thrown over to me and the blanket that had been covering Grace into my pack. Sera had less to pack as they ate half the stuff she had carried. She finished her bag as I finished mine.

  “I’ll take Grace’s bag if you make sure the fire is fully out,” Sera told me.

  I nodded as I took my canteen and poured it on the fire. It only made a small sizzling noise as the fire was almost out anyway. I wanted to refill my canteen but could tell Sera was ready to run.

  Without anything more to say, Sera stood and took the lead. She picked a direction and started a slow jog into the woods around us. The forest blurred by us as we picked up our pace to a full run, but I was getting more and more anxious as we continued away from our camp. I really couldn’t picture Grace running off without us. Was it possible that she was back there, and we just left her? She didn’t know this area of Elder. Sera was sure about where we were going, and if it had been the old wolf-hating Sera, I wouldn
’t have gone with her, but this Sera seemed more concerned than anything. She wasn’t leaving Grace behind but looking for her as I was. The only question was, where was Grace. The only thing I could think of was that Grace didn’t want to say goodbye to us.

  “This way,” Sera finally said as she took off running at a different direction.

  We wove through the new trees and growth as we ran farther from our camp. There wasn’t much the direction we were going but Aboria. The wolves were north, and the farm fields were south. We were heading due east. I knew we didn’t need to run that direction and into another kingdom if Grace had wandered off to head home without us, but Sera was tracking something.

  Within seconds of me wondering if we were going to make it to Aboria on our run, Sera turned sharply towards the south and the farm fields of Elder. I didn’t stop to try to figure out what Sera was seeing as I kept my eyes glancing around the forest while she concentrated on the ground. If Grace was around, I wasn’t going to have us run by her looking at the ground. My eyes needed to be looking up while Sera ran. I might not like to follow her orders, but I trusted Sera. She wasn’t about to leave Grace alone in the woods, wolf or not.

  As we neared the edge of the forest and I no longer needed to look around since the trees had thinned and I could see for longer distances, I finally saw what Sera was following. A trail of blood.

  My heart began to hammer in my chest. Was Grace hurt? Was she taken from us while we both slept, not that she just left to transform on her own?

  Sera finally stopped and reached down to touch the blood. There was more now. I didn’t see it immediately in the woods, but in the fields, I could see it plain as day. Something was bleeding and bleeding a lot.

  “Animal blood,” she told me as she smeared it on her fingers.

  Seemed her Red powers were more than a bit handy, but they still didn’t explain why Grace was gone and there was a blood trail left.

  “What kind?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t a wolf.

  Sera took another breath of the blood and closed her eyes.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “This is one of the new things I’ve learned this moon cycle. Your mother is better at this.”

  So human Grace wasn’t hurt, but that didn’t mean wolf Grace wasn’t hurt. Sera didn’t wait for us to speak further as she gave me the only answer she could and took off tracking again.

  Sera led us on the run into the southern half of Elder. There was nothing but farmers and farms fields, so I wasn’t sure why Grace would have gone this direction. Even as a wolf, she would have known to go north. I was glad to see she didn’t continue east into Aboria, but it was still confusing. And then on top of it, if she was hurt, how did that happen? Did a farmer see her?

  Sera paused as she looked around for the trail. The spots of blood were getting further apart, either the blood of whatever we were tracking was clotting, or the animal was running faster.

  “When did you last see Grace sleeping?” Sera asked as she looked around.

  She stopped and stooped down to touch the blood on the trail we were following. She rubbed it between her fingers again as she looked around.

  It was harder to track and find clues in the rows of a cut-down corn crop.

  “She was there the last time I put a log on the fire, but I don’t know when that was,” I replied as I looked around too. How in the world did Sera and I both miss Grace leaving us? Neither one of us could have kept sleeping if there was a predator close enough to take Grace from us.

  Sera stood and circled around again, where we were standing.

  “The trail just stops,” she said, confused as to why it would suddenly end. We didn’t find anything in the cornfield. “Like the animal just disappeared.”

  I looked around and walked back to the last drop of blood. I finally saw a good imprint from the animal that was running. It was a wolf. Reaching down, I touched the print. Was it Grace or another wolf? There was only one other wolf I would suspect would follow us so far south. I looked harder at the print and knew it wasn’t Nikkan. I had seen more than enough of his prints to tell him from other wolves. This print was smaller than his, and a little wolf would likely be female.

  The animal we were tracking was very likely to be Grace in her wolf form, but why would she run from us? And this animal was running. If it was Grace, then it wasn’t instinct but an intelligent mind running that animal. We had to not look at it like we were tracking a random animal but rather tracking a human. And it was different. If Grace thought she was being tracked, she would have been smart and backtracked to lose the hunter chasing her.

  “We have to go back,” I told Sera, certain that Grace was sending us a message. Maybe she was running from something. She would know enough that we would track her, but anyone else might get confused.

  Sera looked at me like I was nuts, but I didn’t care. She only saw the wolves as animals, but I knew better. They weren’t animals but a human in animal skins. If this wolf was Grace, then it would be smart.

  Sera took a moment to catch up with me as I left her. Instead of running and following the blood, I carefully followed the tracks and looked all around. We hadn’t gone more than five or ten saplings when I saw the barely visible trail of the animal leading in a different direction. She had run into the field to confuse anything following her and carefully headed back into the woods.

  Without a word to me, Sera took the lead to follow the trail again. I smiled at her back as she started a slower jog this time. She would never admit I had done something she didn’t do, but we both knew it was me that found the trail to continue on. Someday she was going to have to see the truth that the wolves weren’t just animals. They were smart and still the same human inside them.

  I know the curse had people thinking that the wolves were terrible and monsters, but the wolves I knew were different. They weren’t rabid animals; they were people. They could think, feel, and carry on a one-sided conversation as I had done many times over the winters with Nikkan. Maybe I had a better understanding from living with him, but I knew the wolves weren’t what Sera thought. Maybe Grace could get Sera to understand that.

  We continued to track Grace. This time, the tracks traveled almost entirely due west. That was a good sign that the animal wasn’t heading to Aboria, and The Vale was too far for an animal to run to in one days’ time. If we had been tracking for days, I would have been worried, but this was actually good. The wolf was going towards the center of Elder, at least for now.

  Sera and I kept the slow pace, making sure the trail never veered from the direction we were heading. It was getting easier to follow the blood as the wolf had seemed to slow considerably, and the blood splatter was closer together. I followed behind Sera as she ran but tumbled into her as she came to a sudden stop.

  We were standing in a clearing in the forest, the new spring growth already had the grass past my ankles, but that wasn’t the surprise. There in the middle of the clearing was a naked body, covered in so much blood I didn’t know who it was.

  I didn’t see a human anywhere and tried not to feel crushed. Grace would never forgive herself for attacking a human.

  “Grace,” Sera gasped.

  There, in the middle of a field, coated with blood, was my friend. I ran over to her at the same time as Sera. We both knelt down by her and searched for any injury that could cause all the blood. Had a wolf taken her in the middle of the night? It seemed impossible, but right now, human Grace was lying before us in the woods. We never saw a human track on the whole run.

  Sera patted over her friend and then had her bag open, pulling out the towel she had from the day before and their swim in the spring. She began to wipe Grace down while our friend didn’t move.

  I placed my fingers on her neck, feeling for her pulse. It was there and strong as ever. Whatever wolf took her, they didn’t kill her, at least.

  “She’s alive,” I told Sera.

  Sera got more of the blood off Grace and finally n
oticed she was naked. She quickly placed the towel around her and covered her up as she reached forward and tapped her face.

  “Grace,” she said quietly at first and then tapped a bit more. “Grace,” she said a bit louder.

  Grace’s eyes fluttered as she finally opened her eyes.

  “Grace, what happened?” I asked as I kneeled next to her.

  Pieces started falling into place. The blood was animal blood. There wasn’t a wolf around. She was naked.

  “Happened?” Grace asked groggily.

  “And why are you nude?” Sera added, not helpful in the least, as I was coming to my own conclusion.

  Grace’s eyes shot open as she sat up, grasping the towel around her. She frantically looked from one side of her to the other side. Her mouth hung open in shock.

  “What happened?” I asked as gently as I could. I could see the fear in her eyes as she took in all the blood. The new grass of the clearing was painted red.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, not taking her eyes off the blood around her. She wiped her face with the towel and spat blood out of her mouth.

  “Are you hurt?” Sera asked, still not putting two and two together.

  I bit my lip as I wished for her to answer yes. I had only one reason floating in my head as to why Grace was lying in the woods naked covered in blood.

  Grace patted her arms and legs before finally turning to look at Sera and me. Tears were welling up in her eyes. She’d come to the same conclusion I had. Neither of us wanted to admit it to Sera, who still seemed a bit clueless.

  “I’m not hurt,” she answered as the tears began pouring down her cheeks. “And I don’t remember last night.” She stared in horror at the blood all around her.

  I sadly shook my head. That only meant one thing. Grace was cursed.

  Carry on the adventure in Throne of Night

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