by Tina Smith
As Tisane went from teenage phase to phase, she never acted rebelliously towards her mother who whole-heartedly supported her daughter’s investigation of humanity. Tisane knew eventually how lucky she was to have such a mother, perhaps too late to genuinely appreciate it. If Tisane suggested music festivals or piercing her mother booked the tickets or made the appointment. If she wanted to cut away or dye her blonde hair it would be joyfully discussed. It wasn’t what you would call a conventional upbringing, but it was hers. Tisane’s mother encouraged her, listened to her and was never angry or spiteful, the way her friends’ parents had been at times. She was a guide and confidante, her guardian angel. Tisane had never given her attitude or a reason to raise her voice, but then her mother had always listened and her daughter had always obeyed.
Tisane’s thoughts rolled like the waves. She decided if she was to stay on the brooding Sapphire coast, she would concentrate on improving her domestic skills and learn to cook, returning to the life she had run from. It was a silly thing for a woman with a one hundred and thirty plus IQ to dream about, but Tisane always baffled everyone. She was returning home, to the place she loved and feared.
3. Fever Pitch
We all have a path to follow. When darkness falls in the town of Shade the trees are haunted by the unnerving cry of wolves. Myths about them have been told for centuries until one thing has bled into another. The elusive creatures which lurk in the valley are said to be created in revenge for the death of a goddess by the blood of a God, raining down upon the townsmen who murdered her. The truth lies somewhere in between.
The secret hidden behind the crystal eyes of the pack is as bright as day and dark as the shadow of night. Any human who is attacked by a wolf is ravaged by a venom passed down through the ages by a wolf’s kiss, that breaks the skin. Only those strong enough to sustain its fury survive. The reborn fever under the infection as it rapidly turns back the ravages of time, or ages the very young to their prime – to live evermore frozen in eternal youth.
The bitten burn a constant temperature, which heightens before they phase at will. Under the height of a full moon they are awakened and devoured by the fire within, forever unable to free themselves from its grasp. The infected metamorphose to resemble a wolf, which stalks the woods at night, giving rise to the legends.
They are cursed to live between two irreconcilable worlds, one enigmatic existence in the forest and another in the town among us. Werewolves are strong, forsaken to live perpetually as man and beast. Their kind never feel the cold and can heal fast but the chill of death can still strike them. Like all Demi Gods they are not immortal. The greatest rate of mortality amongst them is caused by the hunters – the chosen few, selected by the goddess to protect the town from the monsters - the wolves that had kept me close but refused to change me. I had a different path, not yet clear to me. I understand now why they didn’t make me one of them. I couldn’t ignore the calling of the crescent moon.
That was the night the world went dark. My head thumped dully. The rain dripped. Heavy, clear slow droplets beaded over the green leaves across the valley, falling to the earth below my windowpane. I needed him in my life.
Tears toppled, streaming down my cheeks, seeping into my pillow. Every moment was like existing in an awful dream where I couldn’t move; as if dragged down by some achingly slow magnetic force, as though my bones were made of metal. I searched for him in my nightmares, helplessly stumbling through forest and over fallen logs. He was always out of reach. Voiceless, I screamed for him, but he had been taken from me, swallowed into the cold black dirt beneath my feet. He no longer existed. Alone, I sobbed for him, in a misery I had never known.
Suffocated by guilt and loss, I woke tired, and willed myself back to sleep. Engulfed in dread, burning and searing with it, my body hurt from the confinement of my bed, as my muscles longed to stretch and move. I only thought of him, beautiful and alive, before the horror of reality tore through me again.
If Reid said all I would find was ashes, then that is what I would seek. This was the only thing that kept me there, magnetized to the bed in pools of tears, my face puffy and swollen from endless weeping. There was nothing to be done but find his grave.
My skin began to freeze and burn alternately. I shivered as my joints ached and I descended into worse agony, coming down with a terrible flu. Fevering, I slept exhausted in a cold sweat that stained my sheets. My entire being in pain, I had no choice but to let it change me. I was the chosen.
As the days dragged on, I heard my mother talking in low tones or walking past, peeking in at me through the bedroom door as I lay listless in my bed. Maybe even Cresida came to check on me. I didn’t have the energy to care or look and when I did they weren’t there, as if ghosts from a time when I was lucid. My nose dripped constantly and my throat swelled and cut like razors when I swallowed, my body inside and out felt as bruised as my heart. Towards the end of it, I walked to the window to feel some sun on my body, though I felt drained and weak; staring out at the trees for endless moments with not enough energy to move, yet not tired enough to sleep again.
At night I looked out to see the glowing eyes through the darkness - of the monsters that guarded me now, because I was dangerous. I was the only thing they couldn’t turn their back on. The wolves watched the house. But my window wasn’t locked. Even as the rain fell, I thought I saw her out there - Cresida - but I didn’t care about anything. He was gone forever. I opened the drawer by my bed and took out the necklace. I held the tag to my clammy chest, and wept, my whole body trembling, thinking all those things regret and grief causes; the excruciating ache of losing someone you need brings. He had died for no good reason. I begged for him. I wanted him back and it was my fault he was dead.
I crawled back under the covers, clutching the tiny cold piece of metal. Despondent, I lay with my back to the world. I coughed and blew my stuffy nose for two more days. Knowing nothing would bring him back. I felt painfully abandoned in this life, without him. Our relationship was doomed before it began and the world didn’t understand what torment it caused me to lose him. The sun rose and set as I lay indifferent to the passing days, as a painstaking sorrow that wasn’t supposed to affect me drained me of the will to breathe. Somewhere in the nothingness I told myself I was going to take action rather than die in bed a victim of the ache.
When we rise, shadows are supposed to fall behind us. I awoke and rose from my bed with a certain clarity of mind that I soon lost as the daylight wore on. One look out of my window confirmed it was a clear day and Cres wasn’t visible outside, as my gaze skimmed the grassy yard and woods. My digital clock read 10 a.m.
Peering, I noticed Ben our neighbour was missing also, his seat on the back verandah empty despite the clear weather. This explained the presence of the wolves - that and we had stolen his latest semi automatic. The house was still and quiet. Mum was out or at work. I didn’t know what day of the week it was. I didn’t really care. I was only up for one reason: to hunt. I checked the gun stashed in my wardrobe, the ‘mag’ was empty – no bullets. The one and only wolf I cared to track was the one who was already taken, if I believed what I was told and I can’t say that I wanted to. Cres had confiscated the ammunition. I contemplated her angle, she was either worried because I had shot at Reid or that I’d use the bullets on myself or on her. When I was ready I was supposed to kill her. I tucked the Colt 45 back under some clothes. I took the silver army tag from where it lay on my bed sheets.
I felt the headache that had plagued me for days was now gone as I slipped the necklace over my head, heading for the shower. Hot water burnt my skin, washing away the last few days, cascading down my neck and over the tag on my chest.
I was cursed to love the very creatures I culled - ironically Sky had been fatally wounded rescuing me from an attack, before I knew what I was. It seemed the mutual attraction the wolf and I felt for each other wasn’t meant to be. And now the overthrown female Alpha wanted me – dead. Sam wouldn’t l
et a little thing like Cres get in the way of revenge for me stealing her boyfriend. She’d taken care of Sky and it was quite possible she wanted me next. Sam had a taste for revenge.
The sun shone in the windows downstairs. Clean skinned, I descended the staircase in the silence, dressed in my grass-stained, ripped, thinning jeans and a clean singlet top, my dark hair soaking the material. The air was warm, it was late summer. The sounds of birds singing and fluttering in the birch and sycamore trees outside the kitchen screen door told of a fine day. Buds bloomed on the purple Agapanthus. I opened the fridge and made breakfast, surrendering to the hunger in my deprived stomach. I needed to keep my strength up.
Chewing my cereal with little appetite, I could feel that my nose had dried up; the sharp pain in my throat had subsided completely. The horrible dread, though, dragged through me still like the hands of death raking down my skin. The nightmare feeling of reality was worse than a dream, torturing me. I had to localize this feeling… and then I caught her scent.
When I turned around in the kitchen, Cresida was there. I had smelt her shiny olive skin. I knew I had waited for this opportunity.
“Teach me…everything,” I said dully, turning back to the sink.
“You look better,” she commented. Apprehension kissed her tone. I wasn’t to be trusted anymore - hence the missing bullets.
I turned again and stared at her, my lip curled. I knew what she meant. My skin was pale and glowing and the ghostly grey was gone from under my eyes, which glistened a clear green/blue hue. A stranger’s face had looked back at me from the bathroom mirror this morning, with pale smooth, luminescent skin. I had awoken as her or had she awoken as me? Any evidence of pain and sorrow was not apparent from the outside. I now donned the huntress’s shell. My hands were her hands now. She had become me.
It seemed Cres wouldn’t let me out of her sight until I fulfilled my destiny as the next huntress of Shade. My predetermined fate.
Cresida did not share my urgency for action. “Your mum’s at work. She wants me to get you to school today.”
I could tell she was just a little pleased about this, and my transformation. I looked at her soft angelic face in the daylight. Loathing what she saw in me.
I got straight to it, the thing I didn’t want to skip around. “Does the school know that he’s de-.”
She cut me off. “Yeah, it’s okay, they all think you’re in mourning. I had to convince your mum it was normal behaviour, she wanted to take you to the doctor.”
“Wasn’t I in mourning?” My voice echoed. I was almost tear-swollen still.
“Yes, or something similar,” she offered smoothly, in agreement.
I wasn’t sure if she was saying this to irritate or upset me on purpose. She should have known better than to push me now.
“Haven’t you mourned?” I asked through gritted teeth, struggling unsuccessfully to keep the corners of my lips from pulling downward in sorrow. I wondered if she’d keep up the irritating, nonchalant act. I knew she had to care more about him than she showed. I wanted to believe he was alive, and that she knew it.
“I am… But hunters don’t generally.” Her voice was cool and slippery.
She had certainly cared in one way or another about me, not to leave the outskirts of the house in a bedside vigil, while I was in self-imposed isolation, standing guard even during the rain. I had seen them out of my window with their glowing eyes. I ignored her now.
“His funeral?” Anguished, I turned to rinse my bowl.
“It’s being – been - held in Tarah beach. You didn’t go,” she said quietly. I could hear the buzzing of a blowfly in the other room.
I huffed, throwing the spoon with a clank into the ceramic bowl. “Did you?” I accused. I closed my eyes. Don’t believe it, a voice whispered inside my head. I had so many conflicting emotions storming inside me, crashing like waves on top of me. The blowfly bounced against the wall. My eyes pricked with tears. My throat tightened as I regained control of my heart. I tried to figure it out. What was really going on?
A part of me hoped she would say he was alive, yet strangely I didn’t want her to say that. Then I’d have even more to deal with - more raw emotions, more anger, and there’s only so much one person can take. My heart was still human. The last few months of my life had been a roller coaster and now my mind almost willed my body to break. As some sort of evil justice, here I stood, strong, cleansed anew and more damaged than I could comprehend. Part of me had died too, and been poisoned with hunter, the way Cres had been poisoned with wolf. And here we stood two enemies or two allies. I was purged into an emotionally distant, manipulative pawn in this game of wolves and hunters. I knew with certainty I would remain an unwilling participant in an ongoing war that no one could win.
I was going to instigate my plan to find him but sorrow and illness had temporarily side-tracked me, calmed me and instead of boiling, I now simmered. Cres seemed completely cooled. I wasn’t fooled by her casual demeanour; I was potentially a delicate explosive.
Either she was with me or she wasn’t. Rather than her leaving me, I was hell bent on running from her, when the time was right. She had done it alone as a hunter, and so would I.
I was determined to find him or his ashes, but I was willing to compromise for a short time. In order to find him I would have to find the other pack, or hunt them, for which I hadn’t yet developed the skills. I couldn’t track wolves. We hadn’t got that far yet. I had an inkling why.
On the drive into school from my seat on the ripped vinyl in the jeep, I eyed Cresida suspiciously. She couldn’t be trusted.
The school hadn’t changed. The lot was quiet because it was nearly mid day.
“You were down a while.”
I didn’t answer.
“Here, sleeping beauty.” She offered me my bag, as I hadn’t moved to get out of the Jeep when it stopped in the school parking lot.
I ignored her, too raw for jokes. I had been wondering if the same thing had happened to her when she became the hunter, before she was the wolf as well. I was now a huntress, and I could feel it.
“I’m not going back to school. Either you teach me everything now, so I can kill them all, or I die trying, Cresida,” I threatened.
She narrowed her eyes and replied quickly, “You think you’ll find him but you won’t.” Having me take off and turn up dead was something she wanted to avoid.
“Is that a prediction or a fact?” I wanted to scream at her, but I had a feeling that’s what she wanted – for then she could control me. I hated her. She had loved him once too, and she had been his, for however long. I wanted him, his memory to be only mine. So I just scowled. I had to use her to get to him, or trace his memory at the very least. Her complacency and lack of concern about them was unnatural for a hunter.
She didn’t reply to my question. This could be a deal breaker. Instead she softly said, “I’ll teach you if you go to school.” Her brows lifted. She had the trump card.
I took the bag.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday,” she said equally as unenthused, sliding the keys from the ignition.
“Let’s go,” I muttered, “but my training starts now, Cresida. Everything we talk about will be about training.”
She walked ahead of me. I couldn’t see her face, and I hoped she wasn’t smiling, smirking at me. I had the feeling she felt as sick as I did, somewhere behind that casual façade; the front that was so practiced for the world and the school, which we protected. We were both trapped in these pallid vessels and in these roles not of our choosing. She could only wish to die because she was an immortal with an expiry date. She wasn’t happy the way she was either. After she taught me all she knew about hunting I felt then that I could pull the trigger, because I decided to hate her. I was numb, partly from anger and partly from the hunter’s venom, the venom inborn, inescapable - and maybe a little from grief.
I consoled myself from the heartache with the thought of him, thoug
h he was nowhere, but being around her was the closest that I could be to him and my key to finding his body. Whether it was dust or if he was alive, I could only hope. I didn’t care if he didn’t want me; perhaps I didn’t consider it, amongst other things. The only thing I knew for sure was how I felt. I just had to see him, to make it real. A hunter has a one-track mind when on the hunt. I was unshakable from my mission, my silent hidden agenda. While I was alive I would search for him, and on the way take some heads. The hunter inside my mind somewhere liked that, and I let the assassin emanating within me think it, to appease her.
I was now destined to finish Cresida’s job because she had been bitten, infected. I had wanted that too, once, but now I knew it only sealed a death warrant - one that more of my kind would be sent to fulfil. Something was missing again in me now, but it was more than I thought. The last part of me that wasn’t hunter had evaporated. The growing urge had snapped and spread its toxin through my system. My lips would no longer pull at the corners when I was sad, I wouldn’t be capable of blushing or nervousness. But there must have remained some part of it imprisoned in my soul, because my desire for the now dead Sky remained, betraying the huntress. I was a warrior; in love with one of the enemy, the animals I wanted to track and kill in cold blood. I was a true hunter, with a flaw. But beginning to rule above all else, my thoughts filled with the ecstasy of my first kill, nearly more than I thought about him. If he was dead I wanted and had the means to make them all that way.
