Ghostly Snow: A Dark Fairy Tale Adaptation (Girl Among Wolves Book 3)

by Lena Mae Hill

  As darkness closes in, a pulse of fear clenches inside me, like the moment before you jump from a high-dive. But I can also feel Yvonne struggling to gain access to my body. So with a final release, I wrench myself away and let go.

  Chapter 21

  I fly, untethered by my body or the earth, for a second that is also eternity. And then, as quickly as I was free, I am bound. I stop short, like a dog that’s run full speed until it reaches the end of its chain. I am yanked back.

  From somewhere far away, voices invade my consciousness. I reel back towards earth, towards the body I left. I can feel it calling, pulling, as if I’m a rubber band that has been pulled taut. Terrified to have left my body abandoned, for the taking, I hurtle back. And then, I catch on something familiar, a chant in a voice I know. Haven’s voice mingles with Astrid’s, flowing over and then under it, both speaking rapidly as if racing to finish first.

  With a start, I’m deposited back in the world of the living. Except I can’t see anything. I can’t exactly hear, and yet, I know and understand the words being spoken nearby, as if I am absorbing them through my skin. If I have skin.

  “Done,” Astrid says, her voice slumping with exhaustion.

  “Me, too,” Haven says smugly, just seconds later.

  Is she in on this? Rage swells inside me, and I try to move, to sit up, but I can’t. I am frozen, solid and still. Panic swells in my chest, and I try again, but I can’t break free. I concentrate, trying to throw myself upwards again, but I am held fast. Is this how my tiger felt all those years, trapped inside my body by an enchanted necklace, unable to move? I want to scream, but I have no voice, no mouth.

  But someone else is screaming. A familiar voice screeches, “What have you done? I can’t enter her body!”

  “Oh, Auntie,” Haven says. “You taught me well.”

  If I had lungs, I’d suck in a breath. If I had lungs, I’d scream.

  “You bitch,” my mother’s voice shrieks. But it’s not really her voice, not really my mother.

  “That’s me,” Haven says, sound unconcerned. “In fact, I thought that was your cute nickname for me until I was like, eight.”

  “You did this,” Yvonne snarls. “Now undo it! As your elder, I command you.”

  “All those years of protecting your body while you were gone, of learning the spells to keep others from possessing whatever body you dragged home. You didn’t think I’d forget them, did you? Oh, I guess you probably would, though. Considering I’m so useless, and untalented, and blah blah blah.”

  “This will be the last time,” Yvonne promises, her voice wheedling. “I swear to you both, I won’t waste this one. I can be Stella. With a handsome husband who loves me, the leader of the Three Valleys. That’s what everyone wants. All the creature united under one leader. I am what they want, what they need. Just let me have her.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to have to say no,” Haven says. “No matter how young or beautiful or powerful you are, you’ll never be satisfied.”

  “You will pay for this!” Yvonne shrieks.

  “I don’t know,” Haven says. “You already tried to steal my body, but you couldn’t push me out. Remember? And since I have no talent for projection, you can’t steal it the way you’re trying to steal Stella’s now.”

  “But I need this,” Yvonne says, her voice edging back from hysteria towards desperation. “You don’t know what it’s like to spend your whole life jumping from one body to the next, always hoping you’ll find one that’s good enough to make you forget that it doesn’t belong to you. You don’t know what it’s like to go through life knowing you’re in the wrong body, to feel it like a panic crawling up your back, hanging there no matter how you try to shake it off, to forget it.”

  “Yeah, that’s sad,” Haven says. “But so is killing all those people, just to use their bodies and dispose of them like garbage when you get tired of them.”

  “It’s like an itch that never goes away, that drives me mad from within,” Yvonne rants. “Make it stop!”

  “Help her,” Astrid says. “What do you care whose body she takes, as long as it’s not yours?”

  “Maybe next time, it will be,” Haven says. “It could be mine, or yours, or anyone’s. She’ll never stop. And she gets stronger every time she does it. What if she gets so strong she can steal it from someone when they’re conscious? She’ll be unstoppable.”

  “I’ll stop,” Yvonne moans. “I promise. Just let me have Stella. She doesn’t even take care of it! Look at that youth, that beauty, wasted.”

  “You have a new body,” Haven says. “You’ve only been in that one for—what? A month? Two or three? You killed that woman for a month’s stay in her body? That’s disgusting.”

  “I needed it,” Yvonne roars. “It was all part of the plan, leading up to this moment. I’ve been waiting for this moment since the day she was born. I should have gotten her instead of this useless floozy.”

  “Me?” Astrid protests, sounding wounded.

  “Yes, you,” Yvonne snaps. In my mother’s mouth, those words sound so familiar, like it’s really her. But she’s gone. Dead. She’s been gone for months, even before Dad. I’m an orphan, and I didn’t even know it. The connections between us tangle my brain. It would give me a headache if I had a head.

  Instead, I have branches, roots, and bark. I can feel the leaves budding inside me, waiting to burst forth and unfurl. At the same time, I can feel the ache in my nonexistent gut at the news of my mother’s death. She was so far from perfect it’s not even funny. Maybe I should hate her. And yet…she was still my mother. Like with my father, I can’t hold onto resentment when she’s gone. There are still so many questions inside me that I never got to ask. But those stories died when she died.

  “If you won’t let me have her, she’s as good as dead,” Yvonne says. “Astrid has trapped her inside a tree, and you’ll never know which one. By the time it dies, her body will have wasted away. It could be centuries.”

  “She’s my friend,” Haven says. “And I’m not giving you her body so you can possess her like the demon you are.”

  Yvonne shrieks, and I am aware of their scuffle. My limbs tremble with the unbearable urge to jump in, to defend Haven and fight by her side. But my feet are literally planted in the ground. A scream bubbles up inside me, but it only festers there, building pressure that cannot be released. It’s maddening, like Yvonne described her itch to find the right body. I can’t help my friend, even after, somehow, she sealed my body from Yvonne’s invasion.

  At last, Yvonne speaks, panting and out of breath. “Take her to the tower,” she says. “Let’s see how she likes being trapped and helpless.”

  The scream wells inside me. They haven’t killed Haven—I can still feel her life force, her presence nearby. But she’s incapacitated, maybe unconscious. At least Yvonne isn’t ripping her soul from her body and acting as her mirror.

  “How am I supposed to get her up there?” Astrid asks. Compared to Haven, she’s waifish and small. I wonder if there is a door somewhere after all, one that Yvonne is about to reveal.

  Instead, she says, “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Where are you going?” Astrid asks, sounding like a little girl being left alone in the woods.

  “I’m taking Stella to the wolves,” she says. “I’ll tell them she’s dead. Harmon has already Chosen her, but once his mate is dead, he can marry someone else. It won’t matter. He might not love you, but you’ll be his wife.”

  “Me?” Astrid squeaks.

  “Yes, you dolt,” Yvonne snaps. “Now get that body hidden.”

  “I don’t want to marry a wolf. They’re scary.”

  “What does it matter? You’re a witch, you can have a whole collective of husbands. And you’re the rightful heir to the shifter throne. Harmon will marry you to unite the valleys. If he can’t have his mate, he’ll at least make an advantageous, loveless marriage. I’ll step down from challenging him as I mourn my daughter. And all will
be as it should.”

  “You won’t…try to take my place? Because you said that exact same thing about Stella. And now she’s as good as dead.”

  “Because she didn’t succeed,” Yvonne says. “You, my dear, will. You did as I asked at every turn, haven’t you? Unlike the others, you have not betrayed me. As long as you stay as obedient to me as you are now, no harm will come to you when you are queen.”

  After a moment, Astrid speaks, her soft voice barely more than a whisper. “Yes, Mother Dear.”

  I want to scream as they move away. To warn Astrid, despite all she’s done. Because she may have done what Yvonne wanted, but she also betrayed her. Maybe it was a small betrayal, telling me to leave my body instead of waiting for her mother to kill me before trapping me in the tree. But I have a feeling if Yvonne knew, she wouldn’t care how small the betrayal. I can only imagine what she did to Haven, and my nonexistent heart cries for the sacrifice she made for me.

  Chapter 22

  As time passes, how long I cannot tell, I realize the horror of my situation. I am here, but no one knows. At first, I only notice the people. They walk by, talking and laughing, bickering and silent. Wolf people pass my tree daily on their way to and from their camp. I want to scream, to kick and flail and wail, to have a tantrum. But I am entombed in this tree, like a fly in amber.

  And then one day, the talking multiplies. Everyone is chattering, and there is lots of activity under my branches as people pass back and forth. I hear my sisters. I hear Harmon. That’s when I know. Harmon is at my mother’s camp, helping them move. They are all packing up and leaving. The pack has been reunited.

  A wall of emotion hits me so hard I think I’ll expire, that the tree I’m inhabiting will wither and die. I send out a wave of energy like a shockwave across the valley, willing him to recognize me. To know that I’m still here.

  But he doesn’t hear me. He can’t. He is gone now, carrying a load down the path. Does this mean he’s married Astrid, whom he doesn’t love and who doesn’t love him?

  It hits me again, the true horror of this trap. He might marry her, and I’ll never know. And why shouldn’t he? He’s stuck forever alone even in marriage, forever without being able to give or receive real love. But at least he’ll have companionship if he marries Astrid. Maybe he’ll even have children. He can love them as a father. I’m sure he’ll make a great leader and a great father, as he wants to be. Once, he told me he wanted a big family. I wonder if Astrid wants that, and how it even works, if she has many husbands.

  I have lots of time to remember. Each day is an eternity in the forest, as I silently scream myself towards insanity. The wolves trickle away, and the forest is silent.

  Rain falls, but I am not cold. The sun beats down, but I am not hot. I am alone.

  But a while after the humans leave, I begin to hear other sounds. The softer sounds of the forest. An ant crawling up my bark. A mole burrowing beneath my roots. Birds flitting between my branches. The sigh of the wind, always carrying whispers.

  At first, I think I really have gone insane. I’m hearing voices. Whispery voices that touch whatever part of me is still aware enough to absorb conversations though I do not have ears to hear. Though I hadn’t noticed them, they suddenly wash over me like a wave of insect song in summer. They’ve been there all along, background noise, that I only now recognize when human voices are gone, when I have nothing to cut me through with longing.

  “—guess it is my just desserts—”

  “—didn’t know it would last so long—”

  “—wish I’d been on the mountainside that burned—”

  “—at least we’re still—”

  “—seen my granddaughter in a hundred years—”

  I’m jolted back from my misery. I can feel them all around me now, spreading out for miles. We are all part of this tapestry, this forest. Not all the trees have ghosts in them. Most of them are just trees. But I can feel the ones that do, the different energy of the ones with human souls.

  “Who’s out there?” I ask, sending out the thought in hopes someone will hear it.

  “The new one speaks,” someone says, with humor in her voice.

  “We got a newcomer!” another voice says.

  I’m reminded, with a pang, of Xela’s excitement when I joined them. I hope she’s safe from Yvonne, wherever she is. I hope that Haven has returned to her collective.

  “Are you witches?” I ask.

  “Goodness, no, child,” a voice answers. “We’re tree spirits.”

  “Or ghosts, if you prefer,” another says.

  “But what were you before?” I ask.

  A long silence. “I’m not sure,” one answers.

  “After a while, it doesn’t matter,” another adds. “This is who we are. Everyone’s the same when you’re a ghost. Doesn’t matter what size or shape you were. You’re just a ghost.”

  Yvonne’s words clatter through my mind, her search for the right body. Maybe this is what she needs—to not have one.

  “An angry ghost, right?” I ask.

  Laughter dances through the leaves on the trees. I can’t remember how long I’ve had leaves, but I have them, too. “Oh, no,” one says. “Anger doesn’t last long. It isn’t real.”

  “Try telling that to the new ones, though, and they never understand,” another says. “Once you’ve been in the spirit world a while, it goes away. Some people wish they could get out and move on, but most of us don’t mind staying between the spirit and physical world. We can see our families grow, or hear about it. When a person passes by, we pass along the news. Somewhere, someone is waiting for it.”

  “What about the angry wraiths?”

  “Oh, that’s just the new ones,” one says. “We got one recently. Won’t even talk yet. Refuses to join in with us.”

  “Is my father here?” I ask hopefully. For a while, there is just the whisper of the wind through the trees, the sigh of their voices. But eventually, the news comes back.

  “No one thinks he is,” an answer comes. “Was he angry when he died? Vengeful? Was he murdered?”

  “No,” I admit. “Holding onto his petty prejudices about werewolves, but that’s about it. I don’t think he was actually angry.”

  “Then he passed on peacefully into the spirit world. That’s okay, too.”

  “Even better,” another voice says.

  “So how do I get out of here?” I ask.

  “Oh, child,” a ghost says. “You don’t.”

  “Not until your tree dies.”

  “And you seem young and healthy.”

  “But you can watch your children grow, then your grandchildren. Maybe even great grandchildren.”

  “I don’t have kids.”

  “No kids?”

  “Such a shame.”

  “I’m not dead,” I say. “I was put here by a spell.”

  “Same as the rest of us,” says a ghost.

  “Yeah, but we were bothering the living world,” says another. “This was our punishment for haunting.”

  “There’s nothing I can do?”

  “If a person touches you, you can sometimes speak with them,” a ghost says.

  “You can always talk to us,” says another. “And to other ghosts as they pass on. That way, you’ll know who enters the forest, and who goes on to the spirit world.”

  “What about my mother?” I ask. “She’s pretty much the definition of angry and vengeful. Is she here?”

  Another long pause while the message goes through the forest. The answer comes back eventually. “I think she’s the newcomer who won’t talk to us,” a ghost says.

  “Figures,” I answer. “Whoever is near her, please tell her that her daughter is stuck here, and I’d like to talk to her when she feels like it.”

  “She can hear you,” the ghost says. “We can all hear each other.”

  Great. So she just heard everything I said.

  *

  Life as a tree spirit wouldn’t be too bad
, maybe, if I was already dead and the alternative was to just vanish into the spirit world. The ghosts have tons of stories, and despite what the wolves believe, most of them are not angry. They’re mischievous, and will snatch up unsuspecting humans to have a laugh about it. But they rarely carry any malice. Mostly, they tell stories and gossip like they’re at a quilting bee instead of trapped in a secluded forest. The thing is, they’re not alone. They’re all together, and they treat me like one of them, even though I’m not.

  Whenever I feel myself slipping into their routine, though, becoming one of them, I remind myself fiercely that I’m not. That I will get out. But as the weeks pass, it becomes harder and harder to believe.

  Until one night, when the moon is full, I hear howling so close it almost makes my bark tremble. I can feel the vibration of the lonesome, mournful howl all the way through me, from my roots to my topmost leaves. It’s Harmon. I can’t see him, but I know. My heart knows, and it cracks for him, though he can’t see me, either. He can’t see that this is me, that I wish I could let his cry split my trunk as if struck by lightning. That’s how it feels.

  I reach for him, only now beginning to control the motion of my branches. The effort exhausts me, but I stretch towards him. If only I can touch him, let him know I’m still here. But he races off, the motion so close to my leaves that I’m left swaying in his wake. I want to scream again, to laugh in the maniacal way Yvonne does. I know what it’s like to be trapped in the wrong body. Oh, I understand that, all right. The difference is, I didn’t choose to be here, in this tree. I didn’t kill this tree and steal its form.