Stepmothers and the Big Bad Wolf eARC

by Edited by Madeline Smoot

  “Why did you wish for Coyote or Bear?” Wolf finally asked.

  “I had hoped that Coyote would trick the School into releasing me or that Bear would come and with great strength knock the school away.”

  “Coyote would have achieved your goal, but the trick would have been on you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Impure with a frown.

  “Coyote would have filled you with child.”

  Impure wrinkled her nose. That would have gotten her removed from the School, that was certainly true. She wasn’t sure though that she wanted a child now.

  “But Bear could still have smashed the School,” said Impure. Her eyes lit up as she imagined the massive Animal stomping on buildings and knocking down trees.

  “You know nothing of Bear.”

  Impure sat back sharply as if she had been stung by Wolf’s words. She did not need his reminder that she knew nothing about her culture.

  “That is not how Bear solves problems,” continued Wolf, apparently unaware of Impure’s embarrassment, “and even if she did knock down your school, do you really see the white men allowing such a deed to go unpunished?”

  Impure paused. Wolf had a point. Only last year the newspapers had been filled with tales of the massacre back home. The teachers had shook their heads and sighed and told the students how lucky they were to be safe at the School. Impure knew their safety to be a lie. No student had ever been shot, that was true, but students who had succumbed to illness filled the small cemetery behind the back gate.

  Although she didn’t think that any of her close kin had died, she would have preferred to be one of those killed in the massacre with family rather than one of the students who died alone in the infirmary’s bed.

  “We have arrived,” said Wolf. “You may climb down.”

  Even though they were a tremendous height up, Impure wasn’t cold, even in just a simple nightdress. Her fingers were not stiff as she unwound them from Wolf’s fur. She climbed down onto the rocky surface, but the sharp rocks didn’t poke or cut at her spirit’s bare feet.

  Still in his animal form, Wolf led Impure to the edge of the mountain. Spread out below like a drawing or a map lay the School and beyond it a town. The School with its walls and uniform buildings reminded Impure of a prison.

  “Look,” said Wolf. “Tell me what you see.”

  “The School and the town,” said Impure, “from very far away. I wish they would stay far away.”

  Wolf shook his head. “You are looking only with your eyes. Tell me what you see.”

  Matron, back down in the School, often said that God worked in mysterious ways. Apparently the same was true of the Animals. How was she supposed to see beyond her eyes?

  Impure stared down at the buildings she hated, symbolic of a life she loathed. She tried as hard as she could, using more than her eyes. She stared so long without blinking that the white buildings below began to turn into amorphous blobs that then started swirling together. The white seemed to drain away from the scene like the water flushing down the kitchen sink’s drain. Only varying shades of brown were left upon the landscape. Slowly the brown blobs began to re-form not only into tipis from her childhood but also into asi, adobe, and grass houses. For the students at the School came from many different nations, and all of the children brought their heritage with them, whether they remembered it or not.

  “You begin to see,” said Wolf. “Look closer.”

  Impure leaned farther over the edge. The ground seemed to draw closer as if she now possessed an eagle’s eye. Individual students slept in their historic homes, dreaming of moments from their past, moments Impure would have sworn they had forgotten.

  “It’s all still here,” she murmured, more to herself than to Wolf. “We are still ourselves.”

  “Yes,” said Wolf.

  “But we are still trapped,” said Impure. She turned away from the scene before her to stare in Wolf’s eyes instead. “We remain confined to this school.”

  Wolf growled. “Still you do not see. Perhaps this will help.” Faster than Impure’s eyes could follow, faster than a human could move, Wolf used his haunches to shove Impure off the edge of the mountain.

  Impure fell forward with a scream, flailing her arms in a futile attempt to save herself. Only her arms no longer existed. Instead two wings began to beat steadily at her side. The feet tucked under her body no longer ended in toes but taloned claws. Her eyes really had become those of an eagle. The panicked beating of her heart subsided as she flew.

  Beside her, Wolf ran in the sky; his feet pounding on a path only he could see. Impure felt glad of his company. As wonderful, as freeing, as flying made her feel, she would have felt isolated doing it alone.

  “Why do you persist in being alone?” asked Wolf. “The School you attend restricts you physically, yes, but the prison you speak of is the one you built around yourself.”

  Impure veered away from the invisible path Wolf ran and soared around in the air, circling once, twice over the School. It had returned to its usual white brick façade. She tried to fly away from Wolf’s words, but she knew that he was right. Since the day she had taken Impure Heart for her name, she had withdrawn from the others, too busy plotting impossible plans of escape to worry with friends.

  She circled one more time around the school and then lit on a branch in a tree near the fire where her physical body still sat, staring into the flames.

  Wolf, back in human form, stood next to the tree, his eyes level with hers. “In that School,” he said, “lives a boy who whispers the words of your native tongue to himself every night so that he will not forget them. There is a girl who keeps a Winter Count drawn on a page hidden in her room. There is another boy who writes down the stories his grandfather used to tell him in the evenings.”

  “Do you think the boy, the one who whispers, do you think he would teach me some words?” Impure held her breath, fearful of the answer.

  “I think you should ask,” said Wolf, in his inscrutable way. He held out a finger for Impure to perch on. “It is time for us to return, Zitkala.”

  Impure stepped on his finger, her head cocked birdlike to one side. “That is not my name.”

  “Not the one you were born with, nor the one given at the School, no, but it is your name nonetheless.”

  Impure said nothing, chewing over the new name in her head as he lowered her towards the fire.

  Wolf helped her spirit settle back into her body. Impure blinked once, and once more, her eyes refocusing on the fire before her. Of the Wolf, there was nothing to be seen. Except for a single eagle’s feather clutched in her hand, there was no sign that he had ever been there.

  Impure Heart slowly pulled herself to her feet. The stiffness she had not felt on the cold mountain had appeared. She could barely bring her legs to straighten. She began the long walk back to the School, with a heart a little lighter than when she had left there earlier in the night.

  Tomorrow she would find the boy and have him whisper words of their language to her. But first she would ask him the meaning of her new name.

  Madeline Smoot writes, edits, and talks about children’s books pretty much all day every day. It’s kind of annoying for family and friends. Join her for a chat about writing and editing kid books on her website at www.buriededitor.com.