A whiff of fresh air that smelled of forest and sunshine tickled my nose. The flickering light illuminated another opening beyond the still. I jumped over the skeleton and headed out that way, not wanting to test whether the ghost would try to capture me in this form. The passage was wolf-sized, not human-sized, and the smells of outside guided me on through the darkness until the blackness grayed, and another two turns brought me to a cave where sunlight danced through some evergreen bushes at the opening.
The moment the yellow light hit my paws, they tingled, and my humanity overtook me. I lay on the ground panting and naked but not caring about being dirty. As soon as I was able, I lifted up on my hands and squinted at the black slash in the rock from which I had emerged.
I looked back to see if I’d been followed. I didn’t see anything, but I couldn’t know with certainty that it wasn’t just taking its time coming after me. Shaking, I rose to my feet and wished I’d at least snagged my shirt and underwear. The angle of the light told me I was on the west side of the mountain, which was a mixture of private land with fingers of national forest, so I should be able to find a trail to lead me back to the house, but I didn’t want to get arrested for indecent exposure to hikers. I also didn’t relish the idea of navigating rocks and pine needles with my bare feet, but the change in Arkansas had given them some toughness. My hands, however, felt sanded, and my left one ached from being squished in the floor.
Maybe I can change again. I closed my eyes and reached for that place at my center, but I again found myself blocked by memory, and this time I couldn’t push through it. I opened my eyes and blinked away the tears. What did they do to me in the woods? What was in that tranquilizer dart?
I glanced over my shoulder at the passage and caught my breath at the wisps of fog-like smoke that curled out of it like tentacles. That made up my mind. Fear shoved me through the memories and into the void, and I changed again, then pushed through the bushes that covered up the cave’s opening. As I suspected, I was on the west side of the mountain, and the trail was a familiar one that I’d hiked with my parents and aunt many times. Thoughts of safety and family love made me stumble on feet that tried to change. I need to keep focused on the danger behind me to stay in wolf form. That worked until I rounded a bend and crossed a stream, and I saw the house. I changed back so fast I collapsed and tumbled into a tree. Luckily it was a young one and gave way, so I only ended up with a bruise and not a set of broken ribs. Keeping low, I ran the rest of the way to the house…and found it locked.
“Son of a…” I pounded on the back door. “Max! Open up! It’s me.”
A look over my shoulder told me that there wasn’t anyone or anything on the trail behind me. Finally, Max opened the door looking sleepy and rumpled. His eyes widened at my naked, dirty state. He stepped aside so I could dart in.
“If I’d known you were going to go out and play wild woman of the woods, I would have skipped my nap,” he said with a slight grin.
I found a throw blanket and wrapped myself in it. “Not funny. You told me you weren’t interested, anyway.”
“I didn’t say I’m not interested, only that I’m not allowed to have that kind of relationship with you. I’m supposed to watch over you, not sleep with you.”
“Right, you were doing a just peachy job there.” I glared at him. No, it wasn’t logical of me to be mad at him, especially since I’d been the one to get myself stuck in the cave and nearly killed by a ghost. But I’d gotten used to him appearing when I need saving. That’s not a comfortable thought.
“Apparently I wasn’t. What happened to you?” He raised an eyebrow and looked at my chest. I followed his gaze to the tops of my breasts and thought he might be finally noticing them. No such luck. There was an imprint of a man’s boot in pink and red well on its way to becoming a nasty-looking bruise. Now that I paid attention to it, my breastbone and the rest of the area underneath it throbbed.
My brain didn’t want to allow my mouth to admit to my stupidity. “I went exploring and got caught in a dangerous situation.” I sat on the sofa and looked out over the waves of gray that would soon be greening with spring.
“Exploring where? I’ve got wards on the doors and windows of the house, and I would have sensed it if you left.”
“There’s a basement space, a cave.” I sighed. “Look, I’m feeling awful and dirty and exhausted. Let me clean up, and I’ll tell you.” What I didn’t say was that I also needed the shower to clear my head and figure out how much I could trust him.
A hot shower and a couple of ibuprofen later, I had decided to trust him and was ready to talk, but he didn’t seem in the mood to listen. When I found him in the living room, he was pacing, but he did pause to point to a mug on the coffee table.
“It’s tea,” he said, and then took a deep breath. “Let me heal your injuries.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Heal my injuries? Won’t that violate your non-interference clause?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Although my superiors disagree, I feel I’m violating my non-interference clause by not interfering, which may have prevented some of today’s wounds.”
“Ah, your lack of sense makes sense now. You work for the government.”
He glared at me. “In a sense, but not the U.S. Government. My organization presupposes a certain amount of knowledge on your part, and you obviously don’t have any.”
I shrugged. “All I know is that a wizard changed me, but apparently it was some sort of a family thing, anyway. My friends are still trying to figure out the science behind it.”
“Science and magic are not so far off,” he told me and sat beside me. “They intersect at the crossroads of intention and receptivity. Now, your hand.”
I gave him my left hand, and he examined it. His hands were large and gentle, his fingers long and tapered to nails he kept buffed and trimmed. The softness of his skin confirmed he wasn’t one of us.
“How did you do this?” he asked, oblivious to my examination of him as he looked at me.
“It got caught in a trap door mechanism.”
Again, a raised eyebrow. “I really can’t leave you alone for an hour, can I?”
“Nope.”
He sighed, but a smile played around his patrician lips. “Now be aware that if I use my magic on you, there will be a price.”
“What kind of price?”
“No one knows what it will demand, only that when it does, you need to accept it.”
I pulled my hand away. “That’s like making deals with the mafia. What if I don’t allow you to heal me?”
“From what I can tell, you’ve damaged some of the ligature with heavy use after your injury. Your hand will work, but you may never regain full use of it. If you do regain your wolf nature, you would always run with a limp.”
I flexed my stiff fingers and hissed at the pain that radiated all the way up to my elbow. “Heal it, then. I’ll deal with whatever comes.”
He nodded. He held the hand between his and whispered something. A tropical breeze blew through the room, the heat gathering between his palms. I smelled the fuchsia of his magic and knew he’d been watching me before I became aware of him. My hand tingled, and when he released it, all the pain was gone.
“Now your chest.”
“I know it looks ridiculous, but if I don’t know the price, maybe you should just leave it alone. It’s only a bruise, right?”
He put his hand palms flat between my breasts, covering up the visible part of the mark, and nodded. “You’re lucky. You could have ended up with cracked ribs. How did this happen?”
I took a deep breath. “If I tell you, is it going to get back to your superiors?”
“Perhaps, although I only need to report what I feel is relevant.”
I heard the promise of discretion behind his words. “Then I will leave it up to you what you report. I just don’t like my family stuff being the subject of study and curiosity.”
“Perhaps if you tell, I can kno
w what to reveal to you about your family. If you’re already on the way to discovering it…” He shrugged, palms up.
“All right, then.” I told him about the trap door and the photos as the key, then about getting trapped. I related everything like we’d been taught in graduate school, just facts, no nuances or emotional interpretations. He mostly stayed quiet through the whole thing, only raising his eyebrows or nodding at a few points, and asking for clarification. It was like talking to Joanie, and I had to pause and swallow around the pang of loneliness that split my chest or the guilt about not telling him about the box. But I still didn’t know him well, and it felt disloyal to reveal my family secrets to someone who was still technically a stranger.
“There is more ‘family stuff’ than you know,” he told me after I finished. “I’ll explain why the ghost wolves stalk you. I thought they might have appeared at the hospice because they were trying to claim your aunt, but since you heard them, and it may have helped you break past your block a little bit, you need to know who and what they are.”
“I’m all ears,” I said.
He sat back and told me a story.
Chapter Thirteen
Once upon a time, there was a mountain town in Italy. It was a very isolated place, and the people were solely dependent on the crops they forced from the rocky soil every year and the cattle and sheep that grazed in their small fields. There was never any grass between the cobblestones because the sheep ran free through the town, and no one minded. If one farmer or herder did well, they all did. Every blade was precious and meant another bit of fat or muscle for the animal that ate it, which meant another bit of fat or muscle for the person who ate the animal, and so the circle was complete.
There was a small monastery in the town with a few monks. It was nothing like the days when the brothers spread through the land preaching the word of God and bringing new farming techniques to the people. No, these monks kept to themselves, tended their small vineyard and small herd on the monastery grounds, and traded wine and cheese for what they needed from the villagers. They kept the old orders, and their prayer bells kept the time of the village better than any clock.
As you know, nothing can last in these ways forever. A new family moved into town—a mother, father, and boy of about seven. They looked lean and hungry, and their eyes were blue like the people in the north, although their hair was as dark as the other villagers’. The man was a blacksmith, for which the people rejoiced, as the old blacksmith had died leaving no apprentices, and the villagers’ plows had been dulled by the rocky soil and their knives from the grainy bread. The new blacksmith did good work, and soon their plows cut through the soil like it was soft loam. They cut down forests around the village to increase their fields, and there was a surplus of food and grain.
The son went to the little school and made friends, but he never invited anyone to come play at his house, even though he was welcomed everywhere. He told his playmates that his mother was ill, but she refused the help of the village’s healing woman. The new family would also not trade directly with the monks, which created some messy dealing back and forth, complicated bartering patterns that left those in the middle wondering if they had been cheated.
An especially hot summer and drought came to the mountain one year when the new boy was nine. The villagers, who had always cooperated, argued over who would irrigate their fields from the small stream that flowed into the village. If they had kept their fields as they were before the blacksmith’s family arrived, they would have been fine, but now each inhabitant of the town fought to keep his or her new prosperity. Those downstream felt that those upstream were taking too much, while those upstream felt that the downstream farmers exaggerated their need to hoard the water. The well in the village got low, and the women argued over who could draw first. Whereas the bells at the monastery had punctuated their day, now it was an hourly discussion over who would get how much water and why.
Finally, the village healing woman, who had felt snubbed since the blacksmith’s wife wouldn’t seek her help, stepped in.
“There must be a witch in our midst!” she said. “And I bet I know who it is.” She cut her eyes to the blacksmith’s cottage.
“Why do you accuse her?” asked the mayor. “The village has prospered since they arrived.”
“Aye, we always had what we needed, and now that we have more, it’s become a problem,” she said. “Look at how it’s caused everyone to fight with each other.”
They bickered back and forth until it became apparent no one would win. Finally, they decided to take the argument to the Father Superior at the monastery.
Neither the mayor nor the healing woman had been into the monastery, so it was with some trepidation that they rang the bell for entrance. A gray-haired monk—the brothers were all older than fifty—answered the door and ushered them inside. They walked along a gallery open to a courtyard, where the monks’ vegetable garden lay. The plants looked a little dry, but overall healthy, and the mayor pointed to them and raised his eyebrows. The healing woman nodded.
“We saved the rain water all winter,” the monk leading them said without turning around.
“How did he know what we were thinking?” the mayor mouthed, and the healing woman shrugged. Both of them straightened their spines and looked ahead, fearful the monk would read their thoughts again. He brought them to an office and bade them wait. Soon the Father Superior, a stooped man with a swarthy face and keen black eyes, appeared. He gestured with his right hand but kept his left folded in his sleeve and held against his chest.
“Welcome and God bless you,” he said. “What brings you to the monastery? It has been years since we had visitors.”
The mayor and the healing woman explained their cases, his for and her against the family who was still referred to as “new,” even though they had been there for two years. The Father Superior nodded and stood. They did also.
“We will need to investigate this matter,” he said. “Return in one week’s time, and I will have an answer.”
“But how will you investigate?” the healing woman asked, exasperated. “You never leave the monastery walls.”
“One week’s time,” Father Superior told her with a gentle smile. The monk who had led them in took them out and gave them each a squash and a round of fresh mozzarella for their trouble.
The healing woman decided she would watch the monastery for evidence the monks had taken her complaint seriously. She gathered wild herbs around it for the first few days, then, when the plants were picked to the point she dared go no further for fear of killing them, she pretended to harvest the leaves. One afternoon, tired from the heat and her strange vigil, she curled up under a tree on the mountainside overlooking the monastery. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but a cool breeze caressed her cheeks, and soon she was asleep.
When she woke, the moon was high in the night sky, and she leapt to her feet, startled she had slept so long. What she saw next frightened her more: a band of gray wolves roamed the mountain between her and the village. They circled the walls toward the village, and she sank to her knees in prayer, sure the livestock would be scattered and maimed. She braced herself for their cries, but she heard nothing but the wind through the trees. The wolves returned to the side of the monastery away from the village and entered one by one through a crack in the wall. She tensed again, waiting for the monks to cry out, but again heard nothing. She waited for an hour, and when nothing else happened, she made her way back to the village, where everything was peaceful, although the animals rolled their eyes at her when she passed.
The only cottage with a light on was the blacksmith’s, and when she passed, he opened the door, wringing his hands.
“Oh, please Wise Woman, help my wife, for she has been gravely hurt!”
The healing woman’s curiosity got the better of her, and she entered, not sure what she would find. What she did see was herbs hanging from the ceiling in bundles, a collection to rival her own
, but ugly-looking plants with spiked leaves and black flowers. They seemed to whisper as she passed under them. The woman lay in a bed in the back, and she was bandaged from head to toe like she had been in a great fight.
“You,” she hissed at the healing woman. “You have brought this upon me!”
The healing woman had a sense of these things and knew she had been right. “You’re the one who was causing the drought. You and your husband have been trying to destroy our little village. You come not from the North, but from the devil!”
The blacksmith’s wife’s breath labored in her chest. “Beware,” she said. “For you have upset the balance of the village more than I by calling down the Benandanti upon us.” She gestured to her wounds. “They will demand their price.” With one last, rattling breath, she died.
The blacksmith and his boy cried and wailed, but the healing woman felt justified, especially when she walked outside and into a soft rain. She offered up a prayer of thanks to whatever had stopped the witch.
The next morning, the blacksmith and his son had gone. The cottage was empty, and the tools the blacksmith had forged or sharpened had gone back to the dull state they had been in before he arrived. The people crossed themselves and offered prayers of thanks to whatever had saved them.
A monk appeared at the healing woman’s cottage and bade her to follow him. She did so with some anxiety, remembering how she had seen the wolves entering the monastery through the crack in the wall. He brought her to the Father Superior’s office, where she waited again. Soon he appeared, and he had a gash along one cheek.
“Welcome, and God bless you,” he greeted her and gestured her to sit, which she did.
“Father Superior, your cheek!”
He dismissed his injury with a gesture. “It is only a scratch. As for you, my dear, are you satisfied with your work? It seems your suspicions were correct, and the blacksmith’s wife was a witch, but she has been taken care of.”
Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Page 12
