by Bonnie Vanak
“But Ella is not human.”
“She talks like a Skin, walks like a Skin, acts like a Skin and thinks she is a Skin and until she comes into her powers and shifts into wolf, she is human. Her world, friend. Her rules.” Gideon gave him a pitying look. “I know how difficult this is for you, and how much you long to find another jaguar as a mate.”
Kieran ignored him and turned to the door to look at the bed of verdant grass sweeping down to the riverbank, the crystal clear rushing water. Peaceful. Pretty, even. But not home. Home was a land far away, abandoned by his own kind centuries ago. Now he was in unfamiliar territory, with no hope of finding a true mate for life. No female to lounge with in thick tree branches at night, keeping watch below. No female to rub up against him lovingly and purr her special song.
Tightness settled in his chest. He’d spent his entire life in the Winter Kingdom, bound by duty and loyalty to the Winter King’s kin. He did it to honor his father’s memory and his code of honor, since Kieran was the last survivor of his family.
But always he’d expected that someday, before he grew old and frail, he would find a companion to hold, and love, and cherish.
Gideon removed a gold dagger from his hip, and traced a rune in the air. He fisted his right hand and when he opened his palm, a leather bracelet rested there. He flicked a finger and the bracelet was suddenly on Kieran’s left wrist.
“These are extraordinary times, and you need extraordinary aid. Wear this always, and never remove it. It will gain you access to the archives where Ella is translating the ancient scrolls.”
“What will happen to it when I shift?” he asked.
“It will appear as an ordinary leather band around your left paw. But you must limit your shifting,” Xavier said.
He touched the leather ringing his left wrist. It felt heavy and restrictive, like the bonds hunters used to tie him up while they killed his sister. But while he had broken free of those leather restraints, Kieran suspected this leather band would be harder to remove. “You mean I cannot hunt, eat or sleep as a jaguar?”
The wizards exchanged glances. “It’s too risky, Kieran,” Gideon told him. “The more you shift, the easier it will be to track you. The energy trail you emit will be like a beacon for the Dark Lord’s followers.”
Dryness coated his mouth. Never to shift? How could he protect himself? Or Ella?
Xavier squeezed his shoulder. “Fear not, cat. You’ll do fine.”
Gideon waved a hand, and an odd-looking machine appeared on the table. Kieran peered at it. “What is that?”
“It’s a laptop,” Xavier said dryly. “We’re going to teach you all about this world.”
Then he sent a bolt of energy zinging straight at him. Kieran’s senses tingled.
“What was that for?” he demanded.
“To accelerate more than 200 years of learning of human nature in this country.”
“Sit back, my friend,” Gideon told him. “We have a lot of work to do…”
3
Seeing the naked man at her special place near the forest had been the highlight of her week. Or perhaps even her month, or several months.
He certainly had been handsome, and tender in the way he’d cuddled the mewling kittens. If only he hadn’t been condescending and patronizing.
Her mother’s boyfriend was the same, and Ella wasn’t about to put up with it from a total stranger.
Dread filled her. It was midday, and her mother should be alone. Stan worked during the day. Thankfully.
Once she returned home, her sense of doom increased. Ella parked her bike by the warped front porch, noting ruefully that the paint seemed to have peeled off the house even more than when she’d left earlier this morning to go to the library.
But at least Stan’s battered red pickup truck wasn’t in the driveway. She wouldn’t have to force a polite smile, while seething inside.
She lifted Darcy carefully from the basket and set her down and then removed the kittens curled up on the blanket. The cat ran up to the front door and turned to Ella with a look as if to say, “Please, must we go inside?”
“I know girl,” she whispered. “Some days, I feel the same way.”
The front door was unlocked. As she opened it, it creaked as loud as an old man’s bones.
Her mother sat in the living room on the stained yellow and black plaid couch they’d found in a Goodwill store when they’d moved into the house.
“Ella, thank the powers that be that you’re home.” Her mother fanned herself with a copy of the latest gossip rag magazine she’d bought.
Ever since her father had died, Ella’s mother had struggled to hold herself together emotionally.
Nellie Princeton was barely 50, but her gray hair, pinched face and hunched posture made her look far older. Today she wore a plain yellow housedress, with snaps at the front. Her body was lean and spare, unlike Ella’s.
If I didn’t know I was adopted, I’d have wondered if my mother had an affair with the Goodyear blimp.
Such cynicism was beneath her. Ella was glad the television wasn’t blaring. Sometimes she wondered what Stan saw in her mother, and then remembered Nellie would put on cosmetics and nice clothing when he came over.
“I’ll come talk to you in a minute,” Ella murmured, and she ran into her room. She set the kittens down, found a box and placed them inside.
After finding the eyedropper and warming milk, she fed the kittens. It was a painstaking process, but at last all four were dozing, content with the warm milk inside of them.
Then she called her friend Misty at the animal shelter, who promised to stop by and take the kittens and care for them. Misty was the one friend she could count on.
Darcy followed her as Ella returned downstairs.
Nellie struggled to stand up from the too-soft sofa. “Let me make you dinner. You need to eat, honey.”
Ella thought of the weight she carried. “No, it’s okay, Mom. I’ll grab something at the restaurant.”
“That food isn’t good for you. At least let me pack you something.” Nellie headed into the kitchen.
Ella followed. She busied herself opening a cat of cat food and set it down for Darcy.
“Mom, don’t worry about it. I’ll eat at work.”
She glanced at the pile of bills and sighed. “I thought you were going to write checks today, Mom. Some of those bills are due in two days. “
“I forgot. I’ve been busy, honey.”
And then Ella spotted the box sitting on the counter. Her heart sank. She knew, even before speaking, what happened.
“Mom, what is that?”
Guilt flashed across her mother’s face. “I saw it on the television. It will make you young and pretty. I thought you could use the products, Ella, and I could share…”
“How much?” she said flatly.
“They’re the best. All the celebrities use them and Stan suggested that they would make me look wonderful.”
“How much?”
“Only $300 for the starter kit,” Nellie blurted out. “And maybe you could become a distributor and sell them yourself!”
Three hundred dollars. It might as well have been three thousand.
“Doesn’t matter.” Feeling defeated and utterly weary, she headed for her room. “I’m going to change.”
“I’ll make you dinner and then I have a wonderful surprise for you.” Nellie headed into the kitchen.
Please, no more surprises. I can’t bear to see them on the credit card statement. We’re almost maxed out, Mom.
Leaving her mother to cook, Ella retreated to her room. Darcy followed.
On her bed, her narrow twin bed where no man had ever slept, Darcy jumped up and sat. The cat meowed as she glanced up, her big green eyes wide.
It was odd. Almost as if the cat knew how Ella felt. The cat picked up on the ugly scene that just transpired.
Ella wondered. She loved animals, and she had felt close to Darcy since rescuing her outside the
restaurant two years ago.
Imagination.
Ella flung herself on the bed next to Darcy and curled her fingers into the pillow. The cat walked over and snuggled up against her and gently licked her cheek as if to lick the salt straying down. Ella never cried in front of anyone. But it was too much.
"Oh, Darcy, I don't know what I'm going to do. I can’t leave Mom, but I’ll never free us from debt by staying here."
Darcy meowed again and licked her cheek again. Odd, it was almost as if the cat were trying to comfort her, as if the cat could understand every single syllable Ella uttered.
She rolled over to stroke Darcy’s fur.
“I don't see how were going to get out of this. We owe so much money. I can't believe my mother spent $300 on beauty products bought from an online shopping network. It's not fair. She knows how hard I work. She knows we have no money."
Here they were, deep in debt, but slowly working out of it, a light shining at the end of the very dark and long financial tunnel, and her mother turned out to be the oncoming train that was going to barrel her over.
She didn't see how they could get free of this, not without working even harder and putting in more hours than ever.
“I’m so exhausted. I can’t work 24 hours a day. I don't have a spare minute to myself. Even if I wanted to date someone like that cute guy, although he was kind of strange, I have no time for a social life. Look at me. I'm nearly 30 years old, I've never had sex before, and my last date was some old guy my mother set me up with, who basically forgot his teeth at the dinner table."
Darcy meowed and her little button nose wrinkled, as if to say in cat speak “Gross.”
It was so funny that Ella's natural good humor took over and she began to chuckle. Never one to let her problems get her down for long, because what was the point? She stroked Darcy’s silky fur.
“At least I have you. You seem to understand me. I guess I'm just going to have to work more hours at the restaurant and find the energy. But damn, Darcy, there has to be more to life than just this. When is my life ever going to start?"
She rolled out of bed and went to her desktop where her aging laptop computer rested.
Ella opened it up and powered it on. She accessed the files she had downloaded at the academic library.
The ancient books were kept in a dusty, forgotten corner of the library. Forgotten to all but Ella. Joy filled her as she scrutinized the first file. It contained ancient Celtic, which kept her brain honed.
The manuscripts had been carefully penned on parchment crackling with age, and she had taken it upon herself in her spare time to put them through a scanner so they would be preserved as digital files.
But more than that, Ella wanted to analyze these files because they beckoned to her. These books, bound and sitting on a shelf for who knows how long, almost seemed to sing to her with the music of ancient languages secrets and mysteries.
Ella glanced at her cheap wristwatch. Forty-five minutes to get to the restaurant. But if she pedaled her bike fast, she could make it to downtown in fifteen minutes.
The first two pages of the manuscript she’d already translated. It went on and on, a message of warning and doom about a terrible darkness seizing the land and destroying souls of innocents.
The words made her feel nauseated, as if she’d been reading prophecies. When she’d asked Danica, her friend and the head librarian at the university about the books, she’d shrugged and said they were a work of fiction penned by ancient Irish poets.
Yet there was nothing poetic about these ominous pages.
Pen and paper on her desk, she concentrated. And then, at the very end of the page, there was a word she recognized.
Dóchas. Hope.
Her eyes went to the word as if drawn by a lodestone. Ella struggled with the translation, saying the words aloud, writing them down and consulting her vocabulary list. Then she sat back and read aloud the entire translation.
“When the crystal of Calmach is claimed by the Wyld one, she will possess a power never before seen in the land. Only through bonding with the crystal of Calmach will the Wyld one defeat darkness and champion the feeble and unknowing. Fangs will tear and claws will rip, but until the Wyld one joins with the crystal, she will remain powerless.”
Darcy meowed, and swished her tail, her green gaze regarding Ella.
“What does it mean, Darcy? What is a wyld one? It sounds hideous.”
The cat jumped off the bed and onto the desk. Ella petted her. “Don’t worry, my friend. I’ll protect you from the beast.”
Her mother called out that dinner was ready. Ella shut off the laptop, locked it up and left the room, Darcy following.
In the kitchen, she sat at the table, not hungry, but wanting to please her mother. Nellie set before her a thick steak. Ella’s mouth watered, but all she saw was dancing dollar bill signs on the plate.
“Mom, we can’t afford beef,” she said gently.
“Yes, we can.” Nellie dished out a smaller piece on another plate, and sat down to eat.
Appetite gone, Ella toyed with her fork as Darcy wound around her legs and purred, as if to offer reassurance.
“Screw the bills. We don’t really have the money to pay for them. Maybe I should move out and go to Denver. I could find a better job, send you money and you wouldn’t have to live like this.”
She’d voiced this idea in the past, and before, her mother always looked pale and faint.
Not today. Nellie drew herself up. “I bought the steak with a small advance on my first paycheck.”
Ella sat up. “What?”
“And the cosmetics, I need the cosmetics, Ella. It’s an investment in my new job.”
If her mother told her that she’d won the lottery, Ella couldn’t have been more stunned. “What job? You’re too frail to work.”
“Work at most jobs, which require me to stand for hours.” Nellie beamed. “I applied for a part-time position at a hotel in town. They need help with billing. And I have years of experience in accounting. It’s mostly desk work, and sitting. It’s only 20 hours a week for now, and from 5 to 10 at night. If I prove myself, it will grow to full-time. The pay is real good, honey. $16 an hour!”
Ella felt faint herself. With that much money, she could work less hours at the restaurant. And with the fall season nearing full swing, tips would cover the rest.
We could finally start climbing out of debt. Maybe even buy a secondhand car.
It was too good to be true. “How are you going to get there?” Their car had been sitting, dead in the driveway for six months, in need of a new battery.
“Stan promised to drop me off in town and I can get a ride home from one of the girls at the office.”
Ella’s hopes sank. Stan. Not him. “I can get a new battery for the car,” she mused aloud. “It won’t cost that much.”
Nellie frowned. “Stan said he wants to help. Please, Ella, try to be nice to him. He might end up being your new stepfather.”
I’d rather be nice to Jack the Ripper. She set down her fork and voiced the words she’d been gathering the courage to say for weeks.
“Mom, maybe it’s time I moved out. I don’t like Stan, and he doesn’t like me. I can get a good job in Denver, and send money to you when I get settled.”
Alarm tightened Nellie’s face. Oh, boy. Here we go…
“Ella, please don’t leave me," her mother cried out." I need you so much. Please, please. Don't be mad at me. Haven’t I been good to you? Your father was all I had, and now you’re all I have. It doesn’t matter how much you would make in the city. I can’t be alone."
When her mother began showing signs of the telltale crystalline tears in her eyes, Ella knew she was beaten. Feeling utterly defeated, she mustered her bravest smile." It's okay, Mom. It's okay, Mom," she said quietly. “I was just thinking aloud. I won’t leave you.”
They ate dinner, Nellie talking about her new job and responsibilities. Ella forced herself to eat the stea
k, though it tasted like cardboard in her mouth.
Nellie’s cell phone buzzed. Her mother went to get it and then vanished into the living room. When she returned, Nellie looked far more animated and happy than Ella had seen in a week.
Since El Creepo had last visited.
“Stan is on his way here to drop me off at my new job! He just called. I have to get ready. Can you entertain him in the living room until I can put on my face, do my hair and change my dress?”
A quick glance at her watch and she cringed. “Mom, you told me I had to get to work two hours early.”
Her mother’s watery gaze darted away. “Well, it might have been five o’clock instead of three. I needed you here, Ella. I worry about you when you’re not home.”
Terrific. Now she had no excuse not to talk with Stan. I’d rather eat a bucket of worms. He’s such a creep. Can’t she see that?
No, her mother had stars in her eyes, and she was desperate to find a new husband who could take care of her.
Nellie’s belief that a woman needed a man in her life was one reason Ella seldom dated in the past. Now she was simply too busy.
When had life spiraled so much out of control? As Nellie went upstairs, Ella dumped the dirty dishes into the sink. Then she rushed upstairs to snag her backpack with her waitress uniform and plodded into the living room, dropping the pack on the floor. Maybe Stan would get a hint and entertain himself.
Darcy jumped on the armchair where Stan liked to sit. “Good girl,” she murmured.
Suddenly the cat raised her head and hissed, her ears drawn back. Ella heard the cough and sputter of an old truck ramble up the mountain road.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Maybe if she ignored it, he would go away. Think her mother was asleep or in a coma or had been spirited away by aliens.
Another insistent ring, the buzzer sounding sickly.
“Please, Ella, answer the door,” her mother yelled.
Sighing, Ella opened the door.
Thumbs jammed into the pockets of his faded jeans, Stan Nestito stood on the stoop. “You gonna let me in, dollface?”
