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She will have a Pack, and that is a good life too.
THE MEN IN the old world began to multiply. They came for the bison first, slaughtering the great beasts with weapons that boomed. We hid in our trees and licked the blood from the dirt. They came for the trees next, wielding sharp blades on their shoulders. We sat on the stumps and watched as they built, log upon log, dwellings with clouds of smoke rising from narrow chimneys, great palaces marked with crosses, quarters filled with straw and beasts of burden.
The more men who stumbled into our circle when we sang at night, the more who came in the light too, searching for our Dens, weapons on their hips. We laughed them off. They weren’t a danger.
Yet.
Mama, I call to her, just like the Small, but when the shadow turns, there’s a pale blur where her face should be. I can’t see her. My Mother.
I paw my ears and let out a low howl.
“Okay, I’ll take the bait. What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say, knowing my tone doesn’t convey it. I wish, for once, she’d ask me if I wanted to do something instead of making decisions for me like I’m four.
WE WERE WARRIORS on the old-world battlefields. Slicing the sky with our wings. Catching men’s swords in our teeth. Slithering into their camps and striking with our venom while they slept.
OUR HOME IN the old world had many names. Many kings and queens who claimed to rule it. Many lines drawn on the mossy floor. We didn’t concern ourselves with the affairs of men. Our concerns were the bison: that they remained fat and plentiful. The trees: that they were dense and tall. The streams: that they were clear and cool. The winter: that it was merciful.
What are you? Where do you come from? we were asked from time to time.
We are what was created by the gods long, long ago to protect the woods. The first of our kind—four orphaned sisters—were given the powers and knowledge to make others in their likeness. Only under the full moon that falls on Forefathers’ Eve, when the boundary between the gods’ world and ours is at its thinnest, the magic strongest, can we add another sister to our pack.
“It’s only wolves,” I say happily, glad to have solved one part of the mystery. Still, I’m not sure why they’re here.
Mom shakes her head like I am being naive. “They’re wild animals, Luce,” she says. She pulls me inside and slides the door shut. I can still hear them, though, their voices made softer and all the more haunting by the glass barrier between us.
I finish a few problems for show, and when I look up, I find the eyes again, glowing like distant fires, flickering as the trees bend in the breeze across my line of sight.
What would watch our house at night like this?
A predator. That much I know.
Her tone says she’s tired and to drop it, but the eyes are still there, almond-shaped and shining. My skin crawls with the sensation of being watched. No way they’re tricks of light. They are too yellow to be human and too close to the ground to be an owl’s. They belong to something large.