Victoria’s mouth twitched, but she relayed my demand. Acorn’s tail flicked in what I was fairly certain was a rude gesture.
I decided not to ask for translation to that.
Victoria worked for another hour, making notes and cross-referencing things with the books she’d pulled from my father’s collection. I watched her build a theory piece by piece, the same way I’d watched her work in the clearing yesterday.
Finally she set down her pen and turned to face me.
“I found something yesterday,” she said. “I was going to tell you at breakfast, but the patrol reports were more urgent.”
“Tell me now.”
She organized her notes. “I spoke with Helen.”
I nodded.
“She remembered your father performing ceremonies at specific locations. She couldn’t recall the exact purpose, just that he went alone.” Victoria pulled out my father’s old territory map, the one I remember seeing in my father’s top desk drawer. She’d marked it with small annotations in her neat handwriting. “She saw him head north once.”
I stood and moved closer to see the map better. “He never mentioned ceremonies other than regular pack functions.”
“Helen didn’t know much about them. She said he took them seriously, that he needed duskburst for them.” Victoria traced one of the marks on the map. “If the duskburst is growing at these sites, and your father was performing regular ceremonies there, then the plant isn’t random. It could be related to some sort of ritual.”
My wolf paced in the back of my mind. This felt important in a way I couldn’t articulate.
“What did he call the seal sites?” Victoria asked. “Did he have a specific name for them?”
I met her eyes. “The bones of the pack.”
She went still. Then she wrote it down in her notebook, underlining it twice.
“Did he explain what that meant?”
“No.” The admission felt like failure. “I was supposed to have time. He was going to teach me, and then he was gone.”
Victoria nodded. “The metaphor is interesting. Bones as structure. As foundation. The thing that holds everything else together.”
“Or the thing that gets left behind when everything else is gone,” I said.
She looked up at me. “Both can be true.”
A buzzing sound interrupted whatever I might’ve said next.
A sprite zipped in through the opening, trailing sparks, holding a scroll. Victoria held out her hand, and the sprite deposited it into her palm. It immediately expanded—magically—into a full-sized letter.
“Thank you. Please wait.” Victoria rose and hurried to the other room, returning with a nut and a few pieces of fruit.
Acorn’s scowl made it clear he knew she’d raided his bowl.
“For you, little one,” Victoria said, holding the treats toward the sprite, who took them.
The sprite perched on the window opening and delicately ate the offering before vanishing out into the late-day sunshine in a shower of silver sparks.
Acorn huffed.
Victoria opened the letter, her expression moving from surprise to concentration, followed by satisfaction.
She read it through again before she lowered it to her lap. “I wrote my grandmother yesterday, asking about pack rituals and duskburst, and she’s written back. She sent what reads like a small history lesson.”
Victoria’s eyes moved over the page. “Duskburst has appeared in old wolf pack ceremonial records dating back hundreds of years, though its specific ritual function varied by region and pack. Some accounts associate it with boundary rites. Others with healing ceremonies. A few with what she calls ‘territorial memory.’” She paused, lifting her head to stare out the window. “She doesn’t define that term further. Just notes that the old packs considered certain plants to have an affinity for magic already present in the land.”
