“I'm going to return to my wolf form. I want to keep this between the two of us for a few days until I decide how to break it to the pack, if that's okay with you?”
“Well, sure. It's not like I've ever seen any of the other inhabitants of this sanctuary, except for a tiny pair of chipmunks, who you met, and I use that term loosely, yesterday. Oh, and I've seen a few birds fly over, but none have stopped to chat. If I told my mother what I've spent today doing, she would probably have me sent to the loony bin.”
“Alright, smarty pants, I get it. Let me just change and I'll walk you the rest of the way back.”
“That's okay, it's right around the bend. I may have to crawl that last ten feet, but I'll make it. You can watch me round the corner from here if it makes you feel any better.”
He grinned. “You got it. You can still reach me telepathically if you need me. I don't have to be in wolf form for us to use that type of communication.”
With an awkward little wave, I turned and walked away from him, fighting the urge to turn around and take one last look at him. It took the majority of my focus just to place one foot in front of the other without falling. My muscles ached right down to my bones. Never before had I felt so physically depleted.
Crossing the back porch, I noted that the chipmunks were nowhere to be seen, but the crackers had all disappeared. They needed names. Just calling them “the chipmunks” wasn't cutting it for me. They had such cute little personalities. Seeing as how I had no idea if they were male, female, or one of each, I'd have to make their nicknames something that could work for either. It seemed like a fun little project to let my brain rest from all the other serious problems I needed to solve.
Shutting and locking the back door behind me, I stood in the kitchen debating whether I wanted to put the effort into making something to eat. All I'd had so far was the lunch I'd packed and a bottle of water, and my body desperately needed the sustenance. But I didn't know if I had the energy to spare for cooking.
I decided on a compromise. I needed to eat, but only if I could find something that just needed to be popped into the microwave for a minute. Rooting around for leftovers in the fridge, I didn't hear my mom come in.
“Well, well, well. Look who decided to return.”
Smacking my head on the upper shelf as I jerked at the sudden intrusion, I peered up and over the fridge door. Rubbing my head, I sighed. My mother had become quite surly since we had been staying at the sanctuary. Since her sister had just died, I did try to cut her some slack, but it was beginning to grate on my nerves.
“Well, hello to you too.” I tenderly felt the lump that was already forming and sighed.
Silence greeted me. Pushing the fridge door shut, I came out empty-handed. My mother's attitude had killed my appetite.
“Look, I told you I would be gone most of the day. I didn't just take off and disappear with no warning.”
“That doesn't mean I wouldn't worry! You didn't even take your phone with you. What if there was an emergency?”
“I didn't take it because I figured I wouldn't get service out in the woods. I'm sorry if you worried.”
She harrumphed, not even bothering to answer me. Pushing past me, she began to rustle around in the kitchen cabinets, setting things out on the counter as she went.
“Why don't you go take a shower while I make us some dinner?”
“I think I just want to go to bed and get some sleep. I'm exhausted.”
“You look like you could use a meal.”
Nodding, I grabbed some pain reliever and headed for the bathroom. She wasn't wrong. The exertion from earlier made me sweaty and sticky, and I doubted I smelled very nice. The hot water would soothe my aching muscles and then I could have a good meal before bed, which hopefully would mediate the worst of the price I'd be paying tomorrow.
The shower ran hot while I lay in the bottom of the tub, letting the water fill it up. Getting over the edge without falling had been a chore in and of itself, making me thankful I had the tub walls to support me when the time to stand up came. While the heat had relaxed my muscles somewhat, they were now achy and refusing to obey the instructions from my brain.
Dressed in sweats and cozy slippers, I hobbled down the hall to the kitchen where my mom silently sat food on the table. She nodded at me as I entered, but didn't speak. The chicken alfredo and garlic bread she put out made me salivate, reigniting the hunger from earlier.
My body demanded I feed it, immediately. I ate more than I could normally ever dream of fitting in my stomach, thankful for the stretchy waistband of the sweatpants I had on.
“Mom. Talk to me. I know your sister just died, but you seem so far from yourself since we've been here. I don't know what to do.”
“There isn't much to talk about. You already said it. My sister just died. Apparently I'm not handling it very well. I'd prefer to just pack up and go home, but you seem to want to stay, and I don't think I'm ready to leave you here alone yet. I'd be too worried about losing you too. So I'm doing the best I can. I'm sorry if that isn't good enough for you.”
“That's not why I asked. It's not about being good enough for me. But you seem to forget that I am a human being who is also capable of worrying about the ones I love. I just wanted to be sure that you were as okay as you could be, based on the circumstances. If you aren't, I wish you would talk to me about it. That's all. I miss Aunt Aimee too. I also loved her and am struggling to cope with her sudden loss.”
For a moment she didn't respond, and I wondered if she was angry. Then she sighed, and a tear slipped down her face. While part of me was shocked and concerned, because she had never been one to show her emotions regularly, the other part of me was glad that she was going to let some of it out.
My suspicions said she had a lot of unresolved guilt over her relationship with Aunt Aimee, and now there was no time left for her to make amends. We both harbored our own guilt, for different reasons, and needed to come to terms with it before we would ever fully be able to heal and move on. My aunt's death left a huge hole in our lives; she had been our only other living relative, and now it truly was just my mom and I together in the world. As cranky as she'd been acting lately, I knew I needed to cut her some slack. She was my only flesh and blood on this earth.
At least I knew Aunt Aimee loved me, and we had been on good terms when she passed. My mom didn't even have that. Of course they still loved each other, but their last words had been in anger, as far as I knew. I couldn't imagine being in Mom's shoes right now.
“I'm sorry, Mom. We are both struggling right now. I'm exhausted, and need to get some sleep. You should probably try to do the same. I'll see you in the morning for breakfast. I love you.”
Her eyes searched my face for a minute before she responded. “I love you too, Leah. I always will. No matter what happens here.”
I lay in bed, wondering at her cryptic remark. What did she expect to happen here that might make me think her love would change? Sleep claimed me before I had the chance to make any sense of it, giving way to dreams of my aunt, wolves and magic.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Four o'clock comes right early in the morning when dreams plague every moment of your night. Tired of fighting to banish the fear and unease, I decided getting up for the day was my best option. I needed coffee, and maybe to bake something. Baking soothed my nerves whenever I got frazzled, and I hadn't made Aunt Aimee's chocolate chip cookies in what seemed like forever.
Not bothering to change out of my pajamas, I headed straight for the coffee pot in the kitchen. As I passed by the main room, I noticed a lamp burning. Detouring to turn it off, I discovered my mother, sitting on the rug in front of the fire place, with boxes surrounding her.
“Mom? What are you doing up? Have you been to sleep at all?”
“I tried. For about three hours. But after dozing fitfully, I figured I might as well just get up; I can always take a nap later. And if I don't hopefully, I'll be tired enough to actually sleep
tonight.”
“I'm going to put on some coffee and I'll be right back.”
Aside from a brief nod, she gave no other indication that she heard me, once again engrossed in whatever she had found in the boxes. My curiosity deepened. While I waited for the coffee to brew, I stared out the window into the forest. The moonlight didn't reach past the clearing, as usual, but that didn't stop my imagination from running wild.
The peninsula had been reserved for the sanctuary in its entirety. It covered vast amounts of land, as well as different ecosystems. The ocean surrounded it on all three sides, of course. In the Northeast corner, a small mountain range sported a single high peak and numerous smaller ones. Rainforest covered much of the mountain's lower altitudes. Spread across the rest of the land lay a vast forest, interrupted only by the small villages where the packs made their homes.
My aunt had always talked of the variety of wildlife that remained protected here, not just the wolves. Knowing what I knew now, I wondered how many of them were shifters too. Some? Most? None? Or all of them?
The little chipmunks I had come to think of as my friends, what about them? I made a mental note to ask Isaiah the next time we got together, which would hopefully be soon. If they turned out to be humans stuck in rodent bodies, I wouldn't feel nearly so ridiculous about talking to them and trying to make friends. On the other hand, if they weren't...
The coffee pot beeped, announcing it was finished with its job and pulling me out of my reverie. Pouring two cups and doctoring them to each of our tastes, I made my way back into the living room where my mom still sat on the floor, surrounded by boxes and what looked like books.
I handed Mom a cup. “Here. I thought you could use some. What are you looking at?”
She reached into the box closest to her and pulled out a handful of photographs. “Pictures. Aimee loved pictures and took them of everything. There are some as old as when we were in grade school. Obviously they're ones she collected from someone else.”
She held one up, showing two smiling little girls wearing matching dresses, hair done in pigtails. They stood in front of a house I didn't recognize, with a small dog at their feet.
“That's you and Aunt Aimee? How old were you?”
She chuckled. “That's us. I was probably about five, which means Aimee was almost seven or so. The dog’s name was Teddy.” After ruffling through the box some more, she came up with another one. “Here we are on Aimee's tenth birthday. She asked for a crystal ball that year.”
“Well? Did she get it?” I reached out and took the photo from her hand, wanting to study it more closely.
Mom's brow furrowed as she thought back. “I don't remember. It was so long ago now.”
We rifled through the box, my mom telling stories and me asking questions as we went along. Flipping through the pictures, I noticed they were only of the two of them in the majority of the shots. Very few friends or family had any representation.
“Why aren't there any pictures of grandma or grandpa? Or any aunts and uncles? I haven't seen a single one.”
She stopped digging through the box, quiet for a moment. Then she said flippantly, “Your grandmother never wanted to be in the pictures. And your grandfather just wasn't around enough I guess.”
Both of them had died before I was born, I assumed, and neither Aimee nor my mother ever had much to say about them. It wasn't a forbidden subject, but one you could tell made them both very uncomfortable.
Pulling the next box over closer, she undid the flaps and pulled out an album that sat on top. Once opened, she gave a little gasp at its contents. Since she didn't make a move to share, I scooted closer so that I could see.
It was full of wedding pictures. Aunt Aimee's wedding pictures, from the looks of it.
“Whatever happened to her husband? My uncle? The look so happy together, yet I never heard her say much about him.”
After inhaling deeply, and letting it out slowly, she let the album rest against her legs and finally looked me straight in the eyes.
“Your Uncle Rick disappeared less than a month after the wedding. The went on their honeymoon to Europe, then came back and settled into this house. Not even a week later he went out into the forest to go fishing in the stream and never returned. They searched for him for days. Even some people from town came through and searched the forest.”
“Did they ever find any clues at all?”
“None. He vanished without a trace. She even tried using her so-called magic spells to find him.” She shook her head. “Aimee used to claim he was a werewolf and could change into an actual wolf. She actually suspected he was with one of the packs somewhere.” My mother laughed harshly. “Can you believe it?”
I weighed my words carefully before speaking. “And how do you know she wasn't telling the truth? Aunt Aimee never seemed like that type, the kind to make up wild stories just for the hell of it.”
She scoffed. “Leah, please. Have you ever met a human that could turn itself into an animal? Let's be realistic here. That's even more far-fetched than the idea of magical spells and such.”
“What if Aunt Aimee was right and magic does exist? You might be able to do magic too, after all, the two of you are closely related. What would it hurt to try? You saw me do it.”
“That's preposterous. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring it up again. I realize that you are your own person now, and you can believe in whatever nonsense you so choose. I, on the other hand, prefer only to believe in things that make sense. People turning into animals does not make any sense.”
After finishing her sentence, my mother replaced the album in the box and stood up. Her pursed lips announced without a word that I had taken it too far and she no longer wanted to continue the conversation.
“I think I can finally get some sleep now. You're welcome to continue looking through the boxes. Many of the photos have at least the dates written on the back.” She tossed that last sentence back over her shoulder as she stalked down the hall and out of sight.
Frustrated at her lack of open-mindedness, I grabbed a few more albums and flipped through them. Aunt Aimee had gotten married when I was about four years old. While I had no memories of the wedding itself, or actually meeting this Uncle Rick, plenty of pictures provided the proof that I had, indeed, been there. As a flower girl, even.
With a sigh, I studied one of the close ups of the two of them together. Was Aunt Aimee's husband still alive out there somewhere? And if so, would I be able to find him? He'd be much older now, and probably look different, but I figured I'd be able to recognize him if our paths ever crossed. I slipped one of the wedding photos into my pocket, intending to ask Isaiah if he'd ever seen him the next time we got together.
Putting the photos back, I wandered to the kitchen to bake some cookies from Aunt Aimee's favorite recipe. We'd always made them together, and the process helped me to organize my thoughts. Questions without answers swirled around in my head as I measured and mixed.
Something had happened to her husband. The question was, what? The correlation between him heading to the stream which we now knew was the source of a curse upon all the shifters, and his disappearance was way too connected to just be a coincidence. I didn't know where the curse fit into the timeline of the wedding, though.
It broke my heart to think Aunt Aimee had been living with the consequences of this curse for so long. Once again, I wondered whether the two of us would have been able to work together to reverse it long before now.
She must have known about the other pack Isaiah had mentioned, though. She knew everything about the sanctuary, or so I had always assumed. She would have looked there if she thought she would find him.
Isaiah would have been a small child, like me, when Rick disappeared, but maybe someone in his pack knew of the situation. Aunt Aimee had talked to the pack, so if they knew something they likely would have told her. Even if it didn't lead to finding him, it would still be more information than I currently had.
Once I ate breakfast and packed most of the cookies I had baked, I called out to Isaiah and headed down the trail. He answered that he was already on his way and would see me in just a minute.
“What are you doing out and about so early?” He walked around the corner, very human and very handsome.
Just seeing him made me smile. “I couldn't sleep, so I got up at four o'clock and came downstairs to find my mother looking through boxes and boxes of Aunt Aimee's old photos that she found. Including her wedding albums.”
I watched him for a moment to see if that triggered anything for him. Nope. “That sounds like fun,” was his only response.
“Yeah, but it gave me more questions than answers.”
I relayed every detail about my uncle’s disappearance that my mom had given me and pulled the photo from my backpack. I asked him if he knew anything about it, or recognized my uncle.
Head shaking, he reached around and rubbed the back of his neck. “Some of our older members might know, and I can ask them. There is a smaller pack on the East side of the reserve, situated in the foothills of the mountain range. It's possible he somehow ended up there. Technically, though, he would belong to my pack, because his house is here, and this is his territory.”
“So, there are more wolves? For some reason I thought your pack was the only one, although my aunt often talked about other animals that lived in the safety of the sanctuary.”
“Yes, there are others. The sanctuary is a home to both shifters and normal woodland creatures. The magic that protects the land here keeps our kind hidden, should anyone wander out into the forest and come upon us. Our elders say the other pack is made up of not just wolves, but a variety of shifters who didn't have a family or group when they came to these lands to settle here.”
“How far is it to the other territory? Could we go there at some point?”
“Our two packs usually stay on our own sides of the sanctuary, but I might be able to arrange a visit. Not today, though. And it's a fairly long way to walk, which is our only mode of transportation available because of the terrain. It would probably take at least five hours for you to walk it. Even as my wolf I couldn't carry you.”
Crescent Marked: StarHaven Sanctuary Book One Page 8
