Posey
The snow is far too deep, but the air is crisp, and icy fog hangs low. I bounce and weave between trees, my body and mind feeling freer than it has in a long time. I would stay like this forever if I could, but… I’m untrained. Also, if I’m caught, I’ll be killed and made into a pair of expensive mittens, which I’d rather avoid.
It’s been months since I let the moon take over. When I was training in Moonrise, I spent three full months in the temple, sweating and in debilitating pain while chugging vial after vial of healing tonic to try to keep the shift from happening. I prayed for mercy. I often prayed for death. I mostly thought about Aris and let my mind stay in those golden memories from this summer, even though at any other point in time, I did my best not to remember.
But tonight wasn’t an option. I should have seen the signs this morning–my one-track mind and my inability to keep still. I couldn’t sleep, for one. I was ravenously hungry, thirsty, and bouncing off the walls with bursts of unusual energy that I funneled into my alchemy. And, most pointedly, when I was in the caves, my senses were sharp as a knife, and my fear was at an all-time low.
The last night I shifted was this summer, the night I arrived at Aris’s summer house. I hadn’t been able to schedule my arrival for the next day because Willow was driving and in control of the timeline, but they gave me an out when they went to that bar, leaving me behind to “study.” I shifted, made it quick, and tried to be as discreet about my scent as possible, running with the wind to carry my scent away from the house. I showered and had just settled my thundering heart when Aris came home in a panic over an unfamiliar scent outside. He’d come so close to catching me.
I often wonder what would have happened if he had, if everything that happened this summer ended there, on my first night in Gem Lake.
A rabbit bounds out of the brush. I chase it for the thrill. It’s nearly as big as me, all things considered, and the same flawless winter white. Being this pale had shocked me at first, especially when I got my first look at my snow-white paws. During the summer, my fur was an orangy pink, matching the season. I’m small but powerful. Sleek and quick. My senses bloom as my blood soars through my veins, leaving little room for rational thought. I chase the rabbit for a while. I’ll never catch it, but that’s really the point. Just moving like this, bounding through snow so deep I have to pounce through it, feels incredible. I get distracted when I disrupt a family of voles. They’re far more fun to chase, and the rabbit disappears into the swirling, glittering fog to be someone else's snack later.
The voles race between my legs in a tizzy. I let out a foxy, barking laugh, delighted. Absolutely light as air. What if I just… stayed this way? Raced into the distant mountains? Found a little hollow to sleep in? How bad would that be, to leave everything behind? To live for this–survival instead of heartbreak and the damning reality of what I am?
I’d miss him. That’s the hangup. I’ve already been researching potions, and admittedly, dark magic, which I know it’s illegal, but if there’s a way to get rid of this affliction, I’ll do it, even if… this is the best I’ve ever felt.
I wish I could just be this. Be accepted. Not be seen as a monster. I’ve always found it odd that people told stories about my kind like we snuck through open windows and stole babies in the night right out of their cribs and licked the tears of weeping mothers.
Me? This form? I’m barely a foot off the ground. My teeth are miniscule in comparison to a wolf. My cat-like claws are barely enough to puncture a vole, let alone a person.
The voles scurry into the hollow of a tree too small for me to follow, so I spend some time digging for them before growing bored and catching a new scent.
Copper. Iron. Metal.
Blood.
I follow the scent. The forest thickens, and the deep snow becomes more manageable. I’m not sure how far I’ve gone from the castle, but it can’t be that far, surely. Again, my brain bounces between rational and animalistic. The scent deepens–fresh and hot. I can’t help but follow it, even when prickles of unease begin to skitter down my spine.
I enter a clearing lit by moonlight filtering through the fog. It’s so cold that the trees are covered in frost, every branch coated in white and silver ice crystals. It could be daytime based on the way the moon reflects on the ice, highlighting the gentle shadows of the forest floor–and the puddle of blood just a few feet away.
The rabbit I chased is shredded, its white fur scattered in puffs across the snow now dappled red. What’s left of its body is still.
I lift a paw, then another, finding it suddenly, inexplicitly cold.
A soft click of teeth hits my ears. A crunch of snow. A twig snapping.
All of my fur stands on end. My ears twitch toward the sound.
My heart pounds just once, and then I’m running for my life.
A snarl breaks the snowy silence. A howl pierces the air, then more, until what sounds like six wolves make their proximity known.
One is on my tail, far enough away it’s only chasing my scent, but now their thick, bloody, smell is all around me.
I sprint through the forest, zig-zagging to try to lead them astray, but there are so many. Their howls make my blood race. My human brain and senses fight for dominance as reality settles in. I’m so much smaller. I’m not as fast. I need to hide.
Another clearing expands before me. I race toward a tree where a hollow rests just out of view in the snow, but the snow is deeper here, and it slows me down to a near crawl as I fight through it.
A snarl rips through the air above me, and I screech when teeth latch onto my back left thigh, and then I’m airborne.
The second I hit the ground, I disappear into three feet of powdery snow that slips and deepens when I try to roll onto my belly, to find my footing, but it’s no use. A second wolf enters the clearing and begins the chase, the torture. I’m tossed back and forth like a rag doll, scratching and snarling, biting when I can, but they could crush my head in their jaws, and my narrow neck could snap with just one bite.
But I fight. Puncture wounds pepper my legs. I scratch, bite, and scream in pain but… everything grows blurry. My body feels slow and sluggish. My vision darkens, and the clearing is suddenly wet and warm. My blood is… everywhere.
One of the wolves bites down on my hip and tosses me again. My back hits a tree, and I slide to its base, where I lie limp, and my powers of shifting begin to fizzle. They must think I’m a wild fox. Some exceedingly rare toy to toss around like a rag doll. They’re not hunting me to eat me. No, the way they slowly approach, all six of them now, makes me believe this is just for fun. My gruesome, tortuous death will be for sport.
The snow around my body vibrates, pulling toward the center of the clearing. The wolves stop, hackles raised as they glance around, their gaping maws wet with my blood.
I see the shadow of a new wolf before they do. It rises out of the fog, twice their size, a deep, endless, unnatural black.
Then, it just goes… hazy. All these wolfen bodies. All the blood. New blood. Their blood. It washes over the clearing in a crimson wave that coats every frostbitten tree. I feel myself slip out of my fox form against my will, too injured to fight the change. My body curls into my human form, naked, and blood-soaked. My hair falls over my shoulders to cover my breasts, but otherwise, I’m totally exposed to the deepening, frozen chill.
With the last of my strength, I pull my knees to my chest and hug them, barely able to make out the shadows of the battle taking place ahead of me.
Three dead wolves lie in pieces only a few yards away. The fog lifts to reveal two more. The clearing goes dark as a moonless night when thick, heavy clouds roll in, and it begins to snow in earnest–thick flakes that stick to my hair and shoulders. I’m being buried, gently, in a snow-white casket.
This is gentler than I thought it’d be. Going into death… I always pictured it being violent, and it was at first, but now… I just feel warm and light. Dying terrifies me, honestly. I’m not a wolf. I won’t go to the Goddess’s kingdom. I’m not sure where I’ll end up. Somewhere dark, I think. Somewhere where demons like me are punished for eternity for things our ancestors, the ones who passed this curse through my bloodline, go.
Somewhere in my dwindling subconscious, I feel another presence. Someone warm and solid reaching out to me, tugging on the threads that bind us. I’ve been wondering about that. Those little strings in my chest that pluck like piano strings, filling me with either hurt or a deep, secure kind of warmth. Love. Security. Togetherness. Or dread. Pain and rejection.
It used to be just a fleeting, faraway feeling, like a whisper across a void. Now, as my blood drains, and my battered legs go numb, I feel these emotions like fingers curling around my heart, keeping it beating, like this is my final punishment, and this new wolf is here to finish me off in the violent way I deserve.
“Tell him I loved him,” I whisper, my lips nearly frozen from the cold. “I loved him so much it could have killed me. I wanted him. A life with him. I have so many regrets.”
The battle with the final wolf continues in slow motion, the black wolf tearing into its back and dragging it across the clearing under the disorienting snowfall. Snow is already starting to coat the other bodies, their hot blood sending mist into the air.
“I love him.” I choke, tears spilling and freezing against my cheeks. “I love Aris. I wanted to tell him. I should have told him, but I knew how much I was hurting him already.” My final confession is barely a whisper, no more than a puff of icy mist. “I did it all for him. So he could have a future with someone like him. Someone who isn’t a fox, who isn’t a monster. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
An unearthly roar rocks ice crystals from the tallest trees, and then a tearing, popping sound cuts me to pieces. I choke on dread, on fear, as the black wolf rips the spine from his opponent, and the clearing falls silent.
Then, he turns to me, his body and face distorted by the heavy snowfall.
But I feel it in my bones. The familiarity. The shadows that pour from him… I know them. They’re the same shadows that dance around my room at night to keep me company when I can’t sleep. The same shadows that curl between Aris’s fingers when he’s upset, or even… immensely happy. The same shadows I let him paint over my naked skin in throes of passion.
“No,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision. “Goddess, no.”