Delivering babies, tending to the elderly, and treating anything that couldn’t be healed with the magic of shifting into animal form. It was good work, but from where I stood, being groomed to fill her shoes one day, it often looked less like service and more like servitude.
But maybe that wouldn’t have to be my fate. Thinking of Reuben, I offered Amanda a neutral smile and conceded, “No, my mother would never allow me to leave St. Ailbe for a Bridal Exchange in Scotland.”
“Maybe this is for the best,” Amanda answered in Wölfennite with a decisive nod. “Since our Ordnung makes us not allowed to send pictures, it would be perhaps misleading for you to correspond with someone who was unaware you do not quite…”
She tapped her lips with four fingers, searching for the right word, until she finally came up with, “…match. You do not exactly match the rest of the St. Ailbe she-wolves—with your size and distinct smell—now do you?”
Again, not wrong.
Ninety-nine percent of the eligible she-wolves in our village were thin, White, and well under six feet, with long hair demurely tucked into braids beneath their prayer coverings.
I was none of those things.
My hair was basically a large bush of kinky curls that couldn’t be fully contained beneath a prayer covering, no matter how tightly I braided it down.
I didn’t know who my father was, but he must have been Black, too, because I was easily the darkest person in our entire community. Darker even than Naomi’s Ghanaian father.
Also taller. Standing over six feet without shoes on, I towered over every other she-wolf and nearly every male in the village. I wouldn’t call myself hulking—though some of my classmates did before I finished at the village school—but with a huge chest and wide hips, I certainly wasn’t dainty or slender. My mother often complained about how much extra fabric she needed to barter for whenever it came time to sew me a new plain blue dress.
Thank goodness, I’d finally stopped growing.
But not soon enough. If photos were allowed by the St. Ailbe Ordnung, I’d stick out like an overlarge Black thumb.
Amanda wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t heard before. Still, her words sliced through me.
And that hurt made the fingers on my right hand tingle in that way they sometimes did—when angry, violent feelings rose up inside of me, despite my being raised a pacifist. Clenching my teeth, I rubbed my thumb against the piece of knotty wood I’d stuff into my apron pocket, grounding myself in the rough grain, pushing...the anger…down.
“Where is Reuben Yoderwulf, anyway?” Priscilla asked in English, crinkling her brows. “Isn’t the postmaster’s son supposed to deliver the mail?”
Another question I didn’t know how to answer—this time without giving my secret away.
But then I spotted Reuben Yoderwulf in the distance over Priscilla’s head, stealthily approaching the tree where we’d agreed to meet after I finished my route.
My heart soared, the tingling in my fingers stopped, and suddenly, Amanda’s words about me not matching didn’t feel quite so hurtful.
There was one male in St. Ailbe who knew exactly how I looked and smelled, and he’d decided to court me anyway.
“Enjoy your letters!” I gave Amanda and Priscilla a little wave and all but skipped away from that awkward conversation. Toward the man who would save me from my fate of living and dying alone in St. Ailbe.
It was only the second official day of spring, but I already had the feeling that my entire life was about to change along with the landscape.
By this time next spring, everything will be different, I promised myself.
Little did I know how right I was about that—just not remotely in the way I was thinking as I made my way toward Reuben.
Spring Fire
Reuben’s facewas ruddy after a hard few hours of making repairs on his family’s thatched roof in preparation for the incoming spring rains, and sweat had stained the pits of his plain-weave shirt. But he smiled above his chin-to-chin beard when he saw me coming and gave me a little covert wave.
However, before I could reach him, he gave the subtle signal: a tilt of his head toward the abandoned community barn, letting me know he wasn’t so glad to see me that he actually wanted to be seenwithme.
My heart dipped, and a little of the happiness faded from my step.
Only for a few more months, I reminded myself.
Reuben had promised we’d go public after the she-wolves left for the Bridal Exchange.
“That way I can tell my parents you’re the only option I had left,” he said.
