Dad shoots me a grin and ambles towards the stairs, as giddy as a boy going to see a surprise out in the garage on his birthday. I can’t help but smile back at him. I shoot a look over my shoulder, but my mother’s face is set in its usual pinched scowl.
Turning back, I take in my father’s light steps as he descends the stairs towards freedom. At least my mother didn’t torture or starve him—or lock him in a shed. He looks fine. No limping, no weakness, no injuries. I’m so busy checking him for signs of mistreatment that I run straight into him when he stops in the doorway. As I step around him, deja vous swims before my eyes for one awful moment. I’m sure the yard will be filled with wolves when we step outside.
But this time, the yard is empty.
30
As my father and I walk through the community, people stop to stare. My mother walks some distance behind us, assuring everyone that we’re leaving with her blessing, and we won’t be back. Strangely, after all this time, I can’t seem to find words to say to my father. I’ve asked him the questions, gotten answers. Not all of them were reassuring, but they were answers nonetheless. Now I don’t know what to say. He’s not the person I thought he was.
“Dad?” I ask as we approach the clearing. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going home,” he says. “I have that house here, where I grew up.”
We walk in silence a minute before the nagging thought that I haven’t wanted to surface finds its way to my mouth. “You have a house here. While I was stuck in Mother’s attic, you were buying a house and settling down like I never existed.”
“Stella,” he says. “Don’t be dramatic. I didn’t buy a house. It belonged to me before I moved to the Second Valley to marry your mother.”
I hold my breath as we step into the clearing. Deja vous sweeps over me again, sending a chill racing over my skin. A handful of kids my age are playing Frisbee on the lawn. The old toothless woman is lying on a picnic blanket in the sun, her veined legs exposed. Kids are digging in the dirt with sticks. It’s all so much like the day three years ago when I arrived that I can almost believe it’s the same day. That I got here and found my father and immediately left. None of this crazy, impossible world exists.
“Always nice to be admired,” Dad mutters as people stop what they’re doing to watch us pass. And then, because it’s not awkward enough, he starts to smile and wave, as if we’re in some sort of demented parade.
When at last we step out of the clearing, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Almost out of wolf territory,” Dad says. “Then we can shift. Faster that way, you know.” He grins and reaches behind his neck to untie the necklace.
“You haven’t shifted since the eclipse?” I ask carefully, testing him out to see if he’ll tell me the truth.
“Shifters don’t have time limits like werewolves. We can do it any time we want. And any animal you want, although it does take practice to shift into other things besides your natural form.” He holds it out and smiles. “I believe I have something that belongs to you, daughter dear.”
I close my hand around the stone, then open my fingers to study the swirling brown and gold patterns. I wore this for so long, never knowing its power. “What happened that night, Dad? The last time I saw this, Mrs. Nguyen had it, and she disappeared when trouble showed up. You were passed out on the porch, and I got thrown against a tree and knocked out.”
“That about sums it up,” he says cheerfully.
“So then what?”
“The wolves had me for a minute, but my brother and his son got me back. They said you’d asked the wolves to take you instead of me, and the wolves seemed agreeable. Everyone was happy.”
“Um, except I was a prisoner in a basement?”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, pulling back to look me over. “Yvonne said you chose to stay when she came to get you out. And you don’t look much worse for the wear. Nothing a hairbrush couldn’t fix.”
“I guess it’s good that I stayed with Harmon, or I’d never have known how to shift, would I?”
“Exactly,” he says. “Don’t wear that necklace if you want to shift. You could even throw it away if you don’t want it anymore. Now that you know how to shift, you don’t really need it.”
“No,” I say, slipping it into my pocket. “I think I’ll keep it.” I try to quell the resentment building inside me. Dad will never understand what it was like for me. He’s always known who he is. In a way, he’s always belonged here. He can’t know what it was like for me to live here as a disgraced daughter. Even if he could understand, he wouldn’t want to. I see that now.
He leads me into the woods, then stops. “This is probably far enough. Time to let your wild animal run.”
“Is there a protocol?” I ask, remembering that I’ll have to take off my clothes. “Who goes first?”
“I’ll lead you to the house,” he says. “I’ll keep a lookout while you go in and find something to wear.”
“Keep a lookout.”
“I should probably tell you, I’m still not on the best terms with the shifters,” he says with a goofy grin. “They let me go after that night, but I’ve laid low.”
“Wow, Dad. You got along so well with people back in the real world. Are you sure you don’t want to go back there?”
“They’ll come around,” he says. “But see, I kind of abandoned them when I married your mother.”
“Oh, right. Because it was an arranged marriage.”
He gives me an odd look. “No, it wasn’t. Where did you get that idea?”
“Harmon,” I say with a sigh.
“It wasn’t arranged,” Dad says. “We were very much in love. But I left the shifters without a king to marry your mother, give up my natural form, and become a wolf.”
“Wait…what?”
“I agreed to join the pack,” he says. “As part of the truce, I promised not to shift into anything but a wolf. I was going to be one of them.”
“Yeah, but what’s this about a king?”
“I’m the last shifter king,” he says, his chest puffing out with pride. “The last leader they had. When I left, they didn’t have a leader. People moved away, like Dr. Golden. And those still living here…well, they haven’t quite forgiven me.”
“You’re the one who left them with no leader? That’s why they’re lawless?”
“Shifters don’t have the same reverence for law and order that wolves do,” he says, peeling off his shirt. “But yes, I did leave them without a king. Now that I’m back, though, I’m going to make it right. I’m going to take the reins and bring us back to our former glory. And you can help.”
“Okay,” I say weakly.
“Great,” he says. “I just have to figure out how to do it. Guess I can’t marry your mother again. That was my crowning success. Making peace with the other tribes of the valleys, so we could all live in harmony. That’s always been my goal.”
“You sound just like Harmon,” I mutter.
We turn our backs to each other and undress. I don’t want to leave the necklace, but I can’t shift with it on me, so I stash it in the hollow of a small tree so I can come back for it. As I take my tiger form, my father’s words begin to sink in. When I’m an unstoppable beast, they become more believable. My father was once a king. He says he will be crowned again. Which means that in some strange twist of fate, I’ve gone from werewolf prisoner to tiger princess.
31
When we’re back to the little house where Dad grew up, he changes into clean clothes while I put on a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt. They swim on me, but I don’t have any of my own clothes. The second bedroom smells like stale old wallpaper and musty carpet, and the bed looks like it could be harboring more than a few spiders. I stand there, feeling so lost I don’t know what to do. All these years, I’ve wanted to go home to Dad. But this isn’t home.
And Dad…I can hear him whistling in the kitchen, so I make my way there. Stains mar the linoleum flo
oring, which is peeling in places and makes a crackling noise when I walk across it.
“It’s good to be home,” Dad says, casting me a glance. I can’t read his expression, and it strikes me that I’ve never really known my father at all. Maybe I never bothered to try. I loved him, but it was the blind love of a child for her only parent. I never thought he had his own life with secrets too big for me to fathom. When I try to imagine what life would have been like if he’d told me the truth, I can’t. There is only a big red blank.
“So we’re shifters, and you’re a king. What else did you lie about?” My voice comes out harsher, more accusatory than I meant. I wince at how much I sound like my mother.
“I didn’t lie,” Dad says, opening the refrigerator and retrieving a beer.
“Really? What is it with people around here thinking that there’s nothing wrong with deception as long as it’s not an out-right lie? You kept me prisoner inside my own body for fourteen years. Didn’t you think I could handle the truth about my own self?”
He sighs and sits down at the ugly brown Formica table. “Come on, Stella. We just got home. Give me a chance to relax. I’ve been chained up for the past week.”
“I’ve been locked in a basement for two months,” I say, my eyes narrowing. “Where were you all that time?”
“I was…here,” he says, popping open the can of beer.
“Here.” I shove my hands onto my hips and press them into my flesh until it hurts. I concentrate on the ache so I won’t feel the ache in the back of my throat. “You let them haul me off and throw me in a basement with an angry, injured wolf. And then you didn’t think you should, I don’t know, check in on me, until last week?”
He throws up his hands. “What do you want from me, Stella? You told them to take you instead of me. You’ve lived there for years, anyway. So yes, I let them take you back home.”
I bite my own tongue so I won’t scream at him. “You didn’t even come after me? You stayed here, living your sad little life, and didn’t even try to get me back.”
“Yvonne checked in on you a couple times at the beginning,” he says. “She said you were doing fine. And when you refused to leave, I assumed you’d chosen to stay with your mother permanently. I can’t blame you. I don’t have much to offer you here.”
“I should have left you to rot in her attic,” I mutter.
“I’m not perfect,” he says. “In fact, I guess I was always a bad father. That’s what you think, right? Because I didn’t teach you to shift and take you hunting? Because I sent Yvonne to check on you, because she could slip in undetected by the wolves, instead of risking my life to do it myself?”
“You’re not a bad father,” I say grudgingly. But I’m not sure I believe it. I used to think he was the best Dad in the world, but now, I imagine what Elidi felt like growing up. Mother is harsh, but she’s strong. She shifted with her daughters, ran beside them through these perilous woods, taught them how to hunt and kill and survive. Dad made a deal with a witch and hid behind her magic so he wouldn’t have to do the hard things.
“What did you give Yvonne for the necklace?” I ask.
“What?”
“Yvonne enchanted that necklace for you, right? To keep me from shifting. What did you give her?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, taking a large swallow of beer. “It was a long time ago, and it was between me and her.”
“I have a right to know,” I say. “You paid that price for me, right? It was for my benefit. For my own good. That’s what Mother always said. It wasn’t that you were too weak or scared or lazy to raise your own daughter as herself, right? You hid who I was, what I was, for my own good, I’m sure. You didn’t want me to know what I was capable of, or let me make the decision whether to live as a regular girl in the real world or come here and get to know my other side. My animal side. After all, that was too wild, right? I wouldn’t be able to control myself.”
“Stella, be reasonable.”
“I’m done being reasonable,” I say, slamming my palms down on the table. “For all those years, I thought I lived a great life, but it was all a lie. You’re as bad as my mother. At least she didn’t pretend I was free. But I was never free with you, either. I wasn’t free to be myself, my whole self. I was forced to be the person you wanted me to be. I didn’t get a choice. I had to be what was easiest for you.”
“I was a single dad,” he says. “And I never said I was a great one. It’s not my fault that you had some skewed idea about me. I mean, sure, I liked you being my little girl. What father doesn’t? But I’m only human, Stella. I have flaws like the next guy.”
“Except the next guy isn’t also a lion,” I say. “The next guy probably couldn’t raise a tiger. But you’re not just a human. You could have taught me how to control myself, how to enjoy both sides, just like you did. Didn’t you? All those late nights when you were working late? That’s what you were really doing, isn’t it? Shifting into your animal form and enjoying that. You didn’t give it up. You just made me give it up.”
“You didn’t miss it,” he says. “I had her wipe your memories of here so you wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge of this place and everything that happened here.”
I suck in a breath. The blackouts were caused by trying to shift when I was under a spell. The nightmare images were flashbacks. “No,” I say, suddenly fighting back tears. “You gave me a necklace that was supposedly a gift to bring us closer, and had my memory wiped by a witch so I wouldn’t ask questions. All you really did was look out for yourself. You didn’t care if it was best for me. If you had, you wouldn’t have blocked everything special about me.”
“Everything dangerous,” he corrects. “You’re special all on your own, Stella.”
“You could have let me decide that,” I say, my voice flat. “Now I know the truth. Never trust you, or anyone else. You’re all shifty shifters. And I’m done with all the lies.”
“Fine,” he says, holding up his hands. “No more lies. Happy now?”
I’m not happy, but I have nowhere else to go. The wolves don’t want me in the Second Valley, and I don’t want to go back. I’m free, but I don’t feel free. I keep waiting for a knock at the door, for someone to leap out behind me and throw me to the ground and try to murder me.
Dad may not be the person I thought he was, but he’s giving me a place to stay. And so, I stay.
32
Over the next month, we clean up the house, which is a disaster. Thanks to my mother, I now know how to really make a place shine, and I have a great work ethic, according to Dad. “You never used to work this hard,” he says admiringly as I scrub the cracking linoleum floor in the kitchen. “And I’ve never heard you go more than five minutes without complaining.”
I sit back on my heels and flick my frizzy white hair out of my eyes. “I probably complained because I had you standing over my shoulder saying stupid stuff like that.”
“Guess your mother didn’t kick all your bad habits,” he says. “You still got the attitude.”
Instead of answering, I go back to scrubbing. The house is old and small, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room with a new patch of drywall Dad installed but hasn’t painted yet. While he works on putting putty around the drywall sheets, I clean the kitchen, which is full of things a house accumulates over the years when no one lives there. Apparently, during the past few years, he didn’t live here much. And when he did, he only cleaned enough to make it livable—sweeping the floors, washing the countertops. The drawers are full of mouse droppings and dust. The corners are full of cobwebs and grime.
“I think it’s best if we establish ourselves here, let them know we’re not leaving,” he says. “Let’s slowly work our way into the community before we start making claims about being their ruler. That was my mistake last time. I thought they’d be happy to see the prodigal king return. Turns out they’re still bitter about my leaving.”
I try to imagine my big happy Dad r
uling anyone, or having enemies, but it’s impossible. He’s like a big silly oaf, more the court jester than the king. Although, after he explains that the king is basically just an old title referring to family lineage and means next to nothing, it makes more sense.
One day, he goes into town to get loads of paint, and we start painting the house, inside and out. I have plenty to do, fixing up the house and helping Dad put in a late garden. And though my hands are always busy, my mind wanders too often back to the wolf community. I think about Harmon every single day, wonder what he’s doing and if he’s still in his basement, if he’s alone now. When it rains, I wonder if the scent finds its way in the windows to him, and if the roses are still blooming. I wonder if he wonders about me.
I’m free now, not my mother’s servant. I’m Dad’s daughter again, as I’ve wanted to be for the past three years. Everything is as it should be. But something in me is still restless. For years I dreamed of going home, having my life back. And now that I know who we are, I recognize the truth, that we can never go back to that life. But the dream of something more lingers.
As I climb into bed late one evening, exhausted from working in the garden all day, I think of my sisters. Of my mother, her secrets and mysteries buried somewhere no one can find. Of Harmon, prowling his basement, waiting for the full moon to deliver his sentence. I turn to the window, where the big, round moon hangs in the clear sky, the light washing the night in its eerie, pale glow. No storms or clouds hide its ominous face tonight.
For a few minutes, I lie there, unable to sleep. I think of Harmon, his bones and ligaments snapping. I remember his head in my lap, his delirious voice asking me to stay with him. His burning frost eyes as he told me he loved me, and the resignation on his face when he told me it was time for me to go. He’s alone there now. Alone in that dungeon, without even the comfort of an angry girl with a fork on the other side of the wall. With only his aunt to lower down his basket of food each day.
Beastly Beauty: A Fairy Tale Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 2) Page 19
