Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  And I'd realize that I actually enjoyed running. I enjoyed the speed, the pleasure of the wind in my nose, the flexing of my muscles beneath my skin. I liked that feeling, and—if I was being honest with myself—I liked the way my muscles burned a little when I was done.

  It was a little bit delicious, that strain.

  It meant my muscles were learning.

  They were becoming stronger...

  But then I never ran outside of school because life got in the way. And, anyway, running doesn't sound like most people's idea of fun.

  And...it was Ma's thing.

  She'd always loved to run.

  Ma...

  And it's that thought, that thought alone, that brings my speed down. I was running fast, furious, but then I'm loping, slowing down to a walk, and then a dead standstill, my flanks heaving as I try to take in enough air.

  I stand beneath the trees, the snow falling all around me, the forest hushed and still.

  I lower my head, breathing raggedly, eyes closed.

  Ma.

  If this is real. If what is happening is real...

  Then that means that Silver was telling the truth.

  And she wouldn't pick and choose what to tell the truth about. What would be the point?

  So now I have to face it.

  I have to face that Ma was killed. Murdered. Murdered by someone.

  And that someone is after me.

  These are ideas so large and heavy that I, alone, can not carry them.

  I am suddenly too exhausted to do anything but stagger, collapsing in the soft mound of snow.

  It swallows my body entirely.

  I lay my head down on my paws, my eyes shut tight. I still can't feel the cold, not really, but now that I'm deep in the drift of it, the cold, by degrees, is stealing through my fur and nestling against my skin.

  It would be so easy to keep my eyes closed.

  It would be so easy to let all of this go.

  To...just go to sleep.

  I've had the thought when I've walked the town late at night, lost in my grief, lost in my purposeless fog. I know, now, that my idea of how my mother died was wrong. She was killed, and that makes everything so much worse. It was unbearable before, losing my best friend, losing her, but now that I know she was killed, murdered...the weight of it pushes me into the snow, into the cold.

  Into the darkness.

  “...Ella...”

  Deep in the snowy woods, sounds have a muffled quality. Even the panting of my own breath is somehow hushed and still.

  But I can hear her.

  The cold is beginning to enter me, drifting through my skin and into my blood and bones. I am absorbing the winter, and soon I will become a thing of ice and snow, frozen entirely, lost.

  Or, I would be.

  If only she'd let me.

  If only she'd turn back.

  If only Silver would leave...then I would be truly alone.

  And I could lose myself forever.

  The cold consumes me. I've never felt anything like this, this slow freezing, my muscles seizing up, my limbs seemingly shrinking from the snow.

  “Ella...”

  She's beside me. She kneels down in the drift, and she reaches out to me. I know because I open my eyes to look up at her, my eyes that are suddenly full of tears, spilling down, over my face, over my fur...

  But...there's no fur anymore.

  The burning of the ice and snow is more than that. For my bones cry out inside of me as they bend and break and I curl inwards, spiraling.

  Hands press into the snow. My spine curves forward, and I'm weeping into my frozen arms, snow settling on my skin and melting upon contact.

  Human skin. Human hair. Human.

  Entirely human.

  “It...the change can't last long. Not with what's been done to you,” Silver mutters quietly. “I should have told you...I tried to. I'm sorry.”

  The word carries weight.

  Sorry.

  Something warm settles over my shoulders.

  She brought a coat.

  She wraps it around my back, my arms, draws me upward from my prostration on the ground. I am not naked because she is covering me.

  I am not naked because she is holding me.

  Holding me tight.

  A sob wracks me, breaking me more than the change ever could.

  I think about my mother.

  I think about someone hurting my mother.

  I think about my mother, know that maybe...maybe I could have saved her, if I'd known. Maybe I could have helped her.

  Maybe.

  What a poisonous word.

  All it does is hurt us, make us hate ourselves.

  Maybe we could have been better than we were.

  But we weren't.

  There's no do-over. No second chance.

  My mother is dead, and I did not save her.

  “Ella,” Silver whispers. She is strong in the way she holds me tightly, holding me together, keeping me from splintering apart.

  I take a ragged breath, lean against her, close my eyes tight, tighter, trying to shut out the pain.

  “I'm here, Ella,” Silver murmurs. “Just...stay with me. I'm here.”

  It's just a string of random words. But her voice...it's low, solid. Soothing. I hear her words, and I recognize them. And through the haze of pain and self hatred...I hold onto them.

  They are a light in the depths of my darkness.

  And I turn my face to that light.

  I don't know why, exactly. I guess because...she's warm against me. She doesn't just have that warmth radiating from her skin...it goes deeper than that, somehow.

  Because she came after me, in the snow. In the cold.

  Because she didn't leave me alone.

  Silver encompasses me in an embrace, her arms wrapped tightly about me, holding me to her.

  She's a stranger, or she was, just a short time ago.

  But now she cradles me in her arms, her chin tight to the top of my head. I can hear her heart beat, the sound comforting in the stillness of the snow.

  “I'm here,” she murmurs to me, voice soft, low. “I'm here.”

  I close my eyes tightly, and I settle against her.

  And, by degrees, my grief loosens.

  I still feel it, of course; years from now, I'll feel it: it'll always be a part of me. After the wound of pain heals, the grief will remain as a scar.

  But, right now, the darkness of that pain almost consumed me.

  And Silver came.

  And with her, the smallest sliver of light.

  It's enough.

  I relax against her, the tension pooling down my spine, through my bones, softer now.

  I hear the beat of her heart.

  My eyes are closed tightly. I'm gripping her shoulder with fingers that feel they might never loosen.

  But gradually, as the snow falls, as she croons to me, voice gentle...

  They loosen, too.

  I sag against her, exhausted.

  “Ella...” Silver murmurs then, tightening her arms about me almost imperceptibly. “When you can...when you can get up, we must.”

  I make a slight moan.

  I can't move.

  No part of me can move.

  Everything aches.

  Silver shakes me, so gentle: “we've got to get going,” she breathes into my hair. “This...isn't safe here. We've got to go.”

  I gulp down air. When I trust myself to not let my voice shake too much, I manage: “go? Go where?”

  Silver straightens a little, and I do, too. I'm suddenly aware that I'm naked, that I'm kneeling in the snow, and though she wrapped a coat about me, she's holding me tighter than a stranger should...

  It's not the time to get embarrassed. And I'm too tired for that. But I'm suddenly self conscious of where my skin touches the snow, self conscious of the flush rising in my cheeks.

  I crouch back on my heels, draw the coat a little tighter over my shoulders, gaze at
Silver.

  It's almost dark out here, in the woods.

  But around Silver...there's the ghost of light.

  “The people who murdered your mother...they are after you,” Silver repeats, her voice patient, her eyes searching mine.

  Part of me definitely wants to let them come. What do I have left? Nothing.

  But that ghost of light that plays around Silver's shoulders...around her head, a little like a halo...

  It holds my gaze.

  She holds my gaze.

  In the dark of the wood, in the soft brutality of winter...she crouches in the snow. She sits calmly, with that solidity and strength, a sort of grounding peace that I don't think I've ever known.

  She crouches there, and she watches me.

  Yes, I have never felt so hopeless. Yes, this knowledge has entered my heart like a shard of glass. I ache. My heart aches.

  But she sits across from me in the darkening snow.

  She sits with me.

  And I am not alone.

  She reaches out. Her warm hands find mine, fingers curling tight.

  “They will follow you to the ends of the earth. They won't stop until they get what they want.”

  We watch each other carefully. A determined light has come to her face, and she looks at me, peace in every line of her.

  Peace.

  And strength.

  “But I'm here,” she whispers, eyes bright.

  Her hands curl around mine as she murmurs her promise:

  “And I will keep you safe.”

  Chapter 9: On the Way

  The heat in the car is turned to full blast. A trickle of sweat descends down my back, between my shoulder blades.

  Normally, I always run hot.

  But even with my own internal heat, even with the sweat...

  I'm shaking.

  And I can't stop shaking.

  I cast a sidelong glance at Silver. Only one hand rests on the steering wheel as she maneuvers the car down the snowy road.

  Her other hand cups her chin.

  She's gazing with narrow eyes out the windshield at the driving snow, brow furrowed, lost in thought.

  Silver must sense me looking at her, though, for she turns. Her brows remain furrowed, and when she meets my eyes, her concern deepens.

  “Are you warm now?” she ventures. Though the heat is blasting, loud, I can still hear her measured voice above the sound.

  “I'm okay,” I manage, but when I say the words, they're marked with the staccato beats of my chattering teeth. This turns her frown into a small, tight smile.

  “Doesn't sound like it.”

  “I'll manage.”

  “The first change, when it happens...you can get these...sort of fever symptoms.” She worries at the bottom of her lip with her bright white teeth, something I notice even with the blasting heat, even with the driving snow aiming at the windshield, hypnotic pins that try to pull your gaze.

  It doesn't pull my gaze.

  ...She does.

  I'm not that “up” on psychology, but I'm also not stupid. She was there for me when I really needed someone to be.

  She saved my life.

  That kind of thing comes with...attachments.

  (Especially when she already ticks a couple of my boxes...)

  I try to bury that in the enormous mountain of Things I'm Currently Freaking Out About.

  It's not hard to do.

  But it remains in the back of my head.

  And my heart.

  Waiting.

  After what happened in the woods, everything else is a blur.

  I know Silver managed somehow to get me back to the motel, though I blacked out for most of it.

  What I remember is the woods.

  Her holding me tightly.

  The strength of her arms around me.

  And then, after that, there are gaps in memory, of blacking out, coming back into a very muzzy consciousness, then blacking out again.

  I remember being helped into the passenger side of an old, beat-up looking white car.

  And then Silver gazed down at me in the seat. Her jaw was tight. That furrow in her brow was there.

  It was almost as if she was making a decision.

  Then she tossed a few bags into the back seat.

  And she began to drive.

  It's fully night now, and—outside—a winter storm is rising. Again. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I'm no stranger to driving through snow...but the insistence of the pin-sharp snowflakes driving at the glass makes me uneasy.

  Actually, quite a lot makes me uneasy at the moment.

  I clear my throat, grind my teeth a little, try to relax my body. I keep having chills pass through me, bone-shaking tremors that are followed by a headiness that's entirely uncomfortable. It reminds me of the flu.

  Or, you know, changing into a wolf...

  “So...” I clear my throat, grimace. “Where are we headed?”

  Silver glances at me again, and her narrowed eyes widen a little. She looks relieved. “You feeling a little better?”

  “Sure,” I lie.

  She raises a brow, but glances back to the road. “Well, if you're not good yet, the effects should start fading soon. In my experience, anyway. It's...hard, because what you're experiencing is probably vastly different than what I went through. Your experience is very...unique.”

  I snort but say nothing.

  “When wolves change after not changing for a long while...it's awful. It's like exercising a muscle you haven't used in a long while, you know? It's always rough. But it doesn't last long.”

  My brain is starting to feel like it's an overheating laptop. “I...have a lot of questions,” I tell her slowly. “So...I think I'm just going to stick with the really simple one. Where are we headed?” I repeat.

  “Well...I mean, more or less, you're headed home.”

  Home?

  What a strange word to hear, coming from a stranger.

  But she's not a stranger, is she? I ask myself, glancing sidelong at this woman with the silver curly hair flowing over her shoulders, looking a little dampened from all the snow. She saved my life, she went after me into the winter woods...

  She found me.

  “Home,” I repeat, but even though I'm trying to keep my voice even, it shakes.

  Silver flicks her gaze to me, then back to the road, tightening her fingers on the steering wheel. “We're going to your grandmother's house. She's the leader of my pack...and yours. It was your mother's pack.”

  All of the millions of questions that are rising in me simply have no place to go. I open my mouth, but before I can begin speaking, Silver raises her other hand.

  “I can only imagine that you've got a lot on your mind,” she tells me gruffly. “But...I'm not the one to be telling you any of this. It's not my place. Not really. I've already done way more than I should have...I just needed you to trust me.” Her jaw tightens. “But...but now I think that changing you into a wolf was probably a mistake... You could have been in danger when you bolted out into the woods. What if they'd been lying in wait? What if they'd gotten you?”

  She sighs for a long moment, and again her teeth worry at her lower lip, her fingers tight on the wheel.

  My gaze follows her strikingly white teeth, the subtle curve of that lip and of how she moves her mouth when she speaks.

  I've never met anyone like Silver.

  She has this...this magnetism to her. I want to keep watching her, keep staring at her...

  It's hard to pull my eyes from her though, place them back on the road.

  “So...” Stick with the simpler stuff, Ella. I sigh. I remember a thread of conversation from earlier. “The woman who I thought was my grandmother...you're telling me she wasn't?”

  Silver shrugs, flexing her shoulders and doing a little stretch, as much as she can behind the wheel. “I don't know who that woman was. But no, she wasn't your mother's mother. Your mother left the pack right before you were born. Your grandmo
ther still runs it.”

  Concern is mounting. I feel uneasy.

  “Wait...what? Why did she leave?”

  A pause.

  “It's...complicated.”

  Is there a worse phrase in any language?

  I grit my teeth again, and when I inhale this time, I count to ten.

  “Maybe I could get a cliff notes version?”

  “Ella...please...” Silver murmurs. Now both hands are on the wheel, and her fingers wrap so tightly there that her knuckles begin to glow white in the dashboard lights.

  My frustration falls away from me, and I look at Silver in surprise.

  There was pain in her voice.

  “I've been watching you for a while. Since your mother died.” Silver stares out the windshield.

  It feels like she's avoiding looking at me now, but her voice is thick with emotion, her jaw tight.

  This staring out the windshield: it's purposeful.

  “I was sent here to keep you safe and to bring you back. Your grandmother thinks she can remove the lock that was put on your heart. Make it so that you can transform when you want to.”

  My breath hitches in my throat.

  “I was looking for a much better opportunity to take you back. I had a lot of plans, you know? I wanted it all to go so smoothly. I never wanted you to get hurt or be overwhelmed by any of this.”

  She's silent for another long moment, and when she speaks now, her voice is raw. Pained. “But I...I fucked up.”

  I stare.

  “I didn't realize they were coming for you.” She breathes out. “I mean...I really should have known. But I misjudged, and you could have been killed because of that misjudgment. Everything had to happen quickly...and I've already done more than your grandmother—Marie's— going to be okay with. And honestly, changing you into the wolf like I did might have hurt you, and I took a really big risk, but it was the only thing I could think of...” She speaks all of this quickly, in a rush, and then falls silent.

  Silver doesn't talk for a long moment. A moment that stretches interminably into the future.

  In the glow of the dashboard, I can see her eyes shining.

  Are there tears there, unshed tears standing in her eyes?

  She blinks, dashing the back of her knuckles over her face, and they come away shining.

  Yes. Tears.

  “I messed up,” she growls. “And I'm not going to mess up anymore.”