by Tina Smith
“Come on Lila were you ever normal?” she said reticently. I gave her a quizzical look. She shook her head and glanced at the artwork “As for the wings maybe you should ask Demeter?”
“Was that your grandmother?”
“No. There was a story, a legend that says when the Goddess Demeter’s daughter Persephone was taken, she searched high and low for her and she even gave the sirens wings so that they could help find her.”
“Is that why your grandmother added the wings?”
“Maybe...who knows?” Her eyes were wide with the childish possibility of the Gods being real entities, and she shrugged.
“Did they find her? Persephone?”
“Yes, she had been kidnapped by the lord of the underworld.”
“And did the sirens save her?”
“No, she was trapped by Hades. He gave her the seed of the Mortis Lily to eat on the night he was to set her free and she was forever trapped in the underworld.” She paused. “But the story goes that she was the goddess of spring growth and without her the earth would not seed, so she was allowed to leave Hades for half the year and when she goes back to the land of the dead, the earth becomes cold. When she returns to Olympus, it is spring again. She is the goddess of spring growth. The three curses are making it harder for her to control the seasons.”
“Because Zeus controls the clouds.” My brow puckered.
“He and Apollo are changing the atmosphere.”
“You mean it’s not all global warming?” I joked.
“If Apollo wins, the earth will be hot, and if Zeus continues to overpower him it will be too wet.” She advised with gentle frown.
“The seasons can’t come.” I thought a moment. “Can’t she stop them?”
“My mother said that to break the curse, Artemis would return to the earth in search of her lover, helped by satyrs sent secretly by Persephone from the underworld and they would break the thousand year old curse of Shade.”
“If only she had sent them,” I humoured her. We stared at the forest, the scent of pine and eucalyptus drifted as the sun warmed. “What do they look like?”
“What?” She pondered.
“Satyrs?”
“In legend they are the creatures that guarded Hades in the underworld.”
I indulged her make-believe for a moment. “Maybe they could fight the wolves?” I caught her eye, “They sound pretty scary.”
“My mother said Persephone sent them in her likeness.”
“Why didn’t she just send a lot of them to fight then?”
“Because Hades would stop her and only the huntress can undo the curse.”
I huffed “What if she can’t?”
“Lila I know it doesn’t mean much to you now, but in order to learn in each life what we have not experienced in the last, we must overcome challenges. Somewhere in the realm of unconsciousness our souls decide to be reborn into these situations.” She held my glance. Previously I had asked Tisane why life was as it was, and she had told me that she believed we lived many lives.
“We choose the lives we ultimately live?” I recalled.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“So it’s fate?”
“No,” her tone was serious as her blue eyes widened. “We can always change things, but you have to choose what you will and won’t resist; the harder it is to avoid, the more it is fated.”
“Because of reasons bigger than us.” I wondered why I got into these conversations with her, they never seemed to change anything. How could I be fated to love and murder? I wanted to accept the path I had been seemingly born to, but neither did I really have a choice. “So I shouldn’t waste my time fighting it?”
“Not unless you have to,” she was certain. “Some people are made stronger by hardship.”
I sighed. Light rain began to fall in a fine veil around the house.
“Why do you help me,” I was completely serious now, “when you know your sister is...gone?” Though she wasn’t dead she had been turned and not just to wolf, but also to the dark.
“I believe you will end the curse.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I am superstitious?” she offered. Her face stilled and her eyes widened in honesty. “It’s human nature to think the grass is greener. Lila, we all wish we were something we’re not. I believe you were chosen for this.”
I was inwardly frightened and touched by her genuineness. “Fine, I will believe and blame the underworld for all of my problems and take it in my stride.” I straightened up. “What’s for breakfast?” my lip curled. If anyone was going to end the war, I had my bet on Caroline.
“I’ll make some tea and toast,” Tisane offered pleasantly, as though it was a cure for all ills.
I gave a reassuring smile as she headed for the kitchen but I wondered what the view was like from the clouds as the rain pattered on the roof. My eyes traced the silvery clouds. If Caroline was the huntress she would return to us. I knew it.
The Gods were patient, if I was some prophet, then why was I the last to know it and why had it taken so many hundreds of years? How was I to break something that had lasted for so long? In my heart I held a secret, so absolutely against the huntress’s legacy – I knew I couldn’t be the one. I was sticking to my guns. If Caroline came I would train her, but only to take my place. Tisane was right, there was no choice, there never had been. I would have done anything for the huntress but he was a sacrifice I wasn’t willing to make. Anything could happen.
5. Dahlia & Aylish
The old pack was like a magnet that pulled you back in. Aylish watched the scenery through the car window as the desolate waving hills slowly became forest and then trees, which signalled the valley was coming closer. The temperature dropped as it only does in dense forest, especially on the mountain as they descended into the Valley Shire, past ferns and miniature creeks lined with moss, which ran only when it rained.
She had not intended to return so soon. It was, and had been, safer for them away from Shade Valley. Somehow, Sam had convinced her that the pack was the best place for them now.
Dieter had a plan and they had been seduced into believing he had somehow made a better life for the wolves now, and was convinced they were needed. The more she thought about it, the more she knew they should have stayed away. For some reason she found herself in the black car being driven back into the arms of the pack she had abandoned, her original territory, and her brow crinkled.
She knew she wasn’t there in the back seat willingly, but returning for Dahlia’s sake? She told herself she would leave again soon, when the time was right, because surely a holiday would be fun? But she sensed in herself a seediness that wasn’t only caused by the car swaying into the depths of Shade, down Brown Mountain that guarded the valley from the wastelands and led to the sea. She had a sixth sense that told her something sinister was afoot and she told that part of herself there was little she could do now they were in the car, so close, with Sam at the wheel. Yes indeed, she had the distinct, dreadful feeling they had been trapped back to the pack. She remembered the promises Sam had used to persuade them back and she knew she had not even wanted to hear them.
When Sam had appeared at the door, Dahlia’s striking blue eyes had said it all as they lit up like Christmas lights. Sam asked them how old they were, as immortality made it hard to tell, but when they didn’t answer, she realized they didn’t have to. They wore Ra Ra skirts and ripped jeans, it was easy to tell in which decade they had been turned.
“I’m done with Shade,” Aylish said.
Sam knew it was unnatural for wolves to live in the city, but she resisted saying it.
“Paws needs you, needs all of us to work together. Once we have the town under our thumbs and the hunters trapped, we will no longer have to live in fear; we will be the police, the law, and the hospital.” The copper flecks in her eyes glimmered. She secretly wondered how they could stand the tiny confines of the unit.
Aylish knew i
t sounded too easy. “There is danger in everything.”
“No, we have already done the hard part, taken all the risks. We just need the numbers, the support of our kind.” She glanced at Aylish’s expression, “You can be given an easy role if you like - and the pack will be bigger than ever, stronger than ever,” she preached passionately.
“No, we won’t go back.” She looked at Dahlia who had been listening on the fringe of the room and she knew this saddened her as she looked downward, her black lashes sweeping her deep caramel cheeks on her overly made up face.
“We are happier here, away from all that…pain,” she said to Sam, but her sharp words were for Dahlia, to remind her.
“Very well, we will just have to find support elsewhere, or if need be, take a few more members to make up numbers.”
Aylish imagined Sam stalking Queenbeyan for fresh blood. “You know that may spawn another huntress.” Secretly, she hoped the hunter wouldn’t appear near their place in the city, instead of in Shade. If the wolves began to break ranks and multiply, it was possible hunters would follow.
“If you are so frightened, why not join us? There’s strength in numbers.”
Aylish just looked appalled at Sam. “Safety in numbers,” she repeated glumly. She knew numbers could turn on their own and Aylish only trusted herself.
It was then, in the car swirling down the mountain road, that a feeling struck her, like she had forgotten something and silent terror made her panic. Lonnie. For some reason they had left him. She looked about as if in a dream, only to see Dahlia in the front passenger seat and Sam at the wheel. She recalled vaguely the way they had packed suitcases and Sam had helped load them in the car, but Lonnie hadn’t been home and they hadn’t spoken of him, had they? They hadn’t left a note. Something wasn’t right. Why had they left without at least discussing it with him?
She touched her temple. This wasn’t right; she did not want to return to Shade. Only horrible memories awaited her there. Sam had used some witchery to get them here in the car with her. Aylish felt as though she had just awoken, but her eyes had been and remained wide open since they had left their home in the dark car. She recalled in a daze the last few hours since Samantha had arrived at their door with her long white hair, and with a wave of creeping nausea, she knew perhaps Lonnie would think they had abandoned him. But then she was hopeful he would follow, and then frightened he would be as hypnotized as they were. Would Samantha return for him?
Suddenly she couldn’t stay quiet any longer in the silent car. One of her pack was missing.
“Where’s Lonnie?”
Sam glanced at her as she navigated a corner swiftly with the wheel, “The other one? He's coming,” she soothed with painted lips as her phone rang. Promptly she answered it.
6. Welcome to the Jungle
When the black car rolled down the gravel road into the compound, Aylish had no choice but to emerge with Sam and Dahlia as the doors opened and Paws, with a small toothy smile, greeted them. Aylish gritted her teeth hard inside her tightly closed mouth.
“Sam, only two?” he teased upon seeing them, arms out. Like Aylish had never left, there he was, frozen in time, except his hair was longer and he hadn’t shaved. She had to remind herself neither had she changed in all these years, her face was always the same every day in the mirror. He tried to hide the edge in his voice as he plastered a fake smile over his concern and greeted the girls.
“Two’s better than none,” Sam said, lightly kissing his cheek. They exchanged a momentary tense glance as something unsaid passed between them. He patted her back as he gestured wide with his right arm for the other girls to enter the front door. Sam went ahead and met Narine inside. Aylish still felt wide-eyed, like a deer in headlights and the sun hurt her eyes in the dimming daylight of afternoon. However, she knew exactly where she was, but not why she was here. Somewhere inside herself she sensed she should have been more fearful. It wasn’t the dream state that allayed terror in her, but the fact that she had faced horror before, more brutal and gut wrenching than anything they could force upon her.
Anything that happened could never retrieve in her the same pain; it would be a pale comparison no matter what was to happen here this time. She couldn’t sit back and take it. She hoped in her heart that the reason he fetched her and Dahlia was innocent, but she knew everyone in this place had lost any gentle innocence long, long ago. She was here for a strategic reason that she could not put her finger on.
And worse yet, they knew her history well, and hurtfully they still dragged her back to poke her wounds. They had once taken from her that which made life worth living. She was there to grow their power, that’s it, she thought slowly dragging her feet up the stairs to the first floor as a nervous dread drained her face of colour.
Sam had wanted numbers, insurance for a fight, because they knew better than to think there wasn’t any fight left in her. They had trapped her; she was not here of her consent or free will. Sam had the ability to drag her kind from wherever she found them, back to the place they had escaped. Aylish knew that Sam was one of the gifted wolves, and she had only ever known of one other. Aylish had spent the worst part of her life here. She looked around the room that hadn’t changed in two decades, except to deteriorate. It was as though time had not moved.
A good marker in time was death. Dahlia had watched her family decay from a distance and buried them all here until she was all that remained of them. Aylish envied the fact that they had died slowly. Dahlia had had time to grieve them well before they passed. She had not so long ago bemoaned the life she lost, of dreams she could never reach. She seemed happy to fill the void with pretty clothes and petty dramas.
They all at some point had to grieve the lives they had lost. Like a past life remembered all too clearly. For Aylish, the memories of Shade festered like sores. She had Dahlia pretend they were reincarnated, and so they left to outrun the decay they felt inside and tried to forget it and in a way, forgive themselves for outliving their loved ones. Like the others time and companionship had healed Dahlia. Something neither could have done on their own. And now the pack had them back, as though they were pulled by an invisible string, bit by bit, so that they didn’t realize it until they were there. Packs were usually self-feeding mechanisms. The major players set the rules that the members enforced, to show loyalty in some vain hope that recognition was love.
“You’ve been gone a quarter of a century,” Paws said. “Please come in. Welcome back to the jungle,” he announced behind them as they faced many of their kind, reclining casually, evenly spread about the room. She recognized old faces and infuriatingly some new ones, still full of fresh innocence about them, no doubt blindly listening to his propaganda.
They would live and die by his rules, their charismatic leader. She wanted to vehemently scream why! at him, but knew it wasn’t smart to make her protest known. She had at least learnt in her many years to pick her battles; she had feared this for the longest time and now it had come. Paws had seen a surge in numbers and she knew this wasn’t all of them; there were more like her, surely, out there. Wolves that had, for one reason or another, escaped. She focused on her sister and knew, unfortunately, Dahlia was happier here now in this second than she had been in many years in the city with Lonnie and her, pretending to be a normal twenty-something, denying the bigger part of her being.
Paws was a decent leader, and he ran the pack like a gang. If anyone messed with his kin he had it taken care of, preferring to punish one of his own. The only thing that ever rattled him in many years was Aylish. Perhaps it was what had softened him over the years, allowing Narine to rise to power, as his mate.
The pack was his family, Aylish chose her children over the wolf, but no one leaves the wolf pack. The gang was reinvented most recently as the Born Again Beings. Paws knew there would be headlines, but he had grown egotistic over the years. There was part of him that loved the attention, after so long hiding from it, but he wasn’t only deluded, he
was calculating. Despite his immortality he was tired. Narine had the drive he now lacked. Perhaps it was a lucky twist of fate, that he had turned her.
There was now a deadline, an expiry date on the pack; he had taken a risk and he knew it better than anyone. They would never age and never change, the rapidly aging humans would notice in time that they were immortal but he planned to either kill or turn them all before that time came. This afforded them ten maybe fifteen years max to take the whole valley. It was now or never. Narine knew it was now.
They knew the huntresses wouldn’t go easily and he predicted a war. Narine and he started with the hunters, the main opposition to their plan; the reason they had not infected the whole of the town. At the same time the highest members of society needed to fall into their pack, so that they would be able to pull all the strings. Genna was taken and initiated first, then Blair, with plans for politicians, business owners, farmers and influential community members such as teachers and council members to be taken in.
Shell had been a high school teacher, and they started to recondition her to realize he was family and to fight for them, but it was taking longer than expected for her to reject her human life. She didn’t easily adapt or conform to the gang mentality. The harder they tried the more she resisted, placid as she was. Maybe this caused Paws to retrieve Aylish; something about Shell reminded him of her. It was unacceptable to refuse pack orders and disrespect him; it was blood in blood out. Fortunately, it seemed Aylish had broken her own rules and created another wolf for them, he was surprised and pleased, another easy member to the Cult, and it seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
