“I’m gathering mushrooms for Widow Kearney. Would you like to try one?” I ask, lifting the basket once more so they can see inside. The stench of the mushrooms is eyewatering even from here, so I can only imagine how bad it smells from over there. Enoch and his cronies wince, noses wrinkling.
Enoch may be fighting the scent of the mushrooms, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to give up on tormenting me just yet.
“They look tasty. You should try one,” he says slyly.
I swallow hard, shoving down panic. I did consider eating one before, but there are several reasons I decided not to. Namely, I’m not sure whether they’ll make me sick or not, and now isn’t the time to find out. Enoch and his goons will leave me here in the forest. Even if the mushrooms don’t kill me, there are plenty of creatures in the forest more than happy to finish the job.
And if I don’t… then what? Things won’t improve in the village. My garden isn’t giving me enough food. It hasn’t been in a long time, but it's been even worse lately, and I’ve been worried that someone is tampering with my food supply. I have no proof, not that it would matter if I did. Justice would mean someone caring about me, and that isn’t likely to happen. I’m all alone.
Anger rises in my chest and I make my decision.
“No, thank you. Have a pleasant day.”
I turn on my heel and march back toward the village, toward the sound I heard earlier. Whatever it was, it can’t be any worse than Enoch and his friends, muttering darkly behind me. They don’t follow, but I’m under no illusion that I’m safe. I won’t be safe even back in the village either, but at least then there will be witnesses.
And here I had thought, just once, that things might be looking up. My mistake for thinking my luck could ever be anything but terrible.
Is this destined to be the rest of my life? Just waiting for the day someone in the village is finally tired of me and decides I need to die?
Even worse… What if there’s nothing I can do about it?
CHAPTER 5
Gray
How lucky I am,to be blessed with a human mate who is my equal. She tries to feed me, her wolf. I am blessed indeed.
Leaves on the ground tangle in my tail as it wags quickly, watching my mate as she carries out a small table, lowering it to the ground in the garden. Nearly every vegetable has already been harvested, along with the berries, and it saddens me that my mate has fewer reasons to spend time out of doors tending to it. I resolve to ensure she is mine before winter, that we will be safely tucked away before the first snows threaten.
It is almost time.
With the table safely on all fours, she heads back into the cottage and I whine softly, the sound cutting off as soon as she returns, carrying a bowl. Not silver, thank the gods, although I would not be angry with her if it was; she knows not of my affliction, and therefore cannot be blamed for not catering to it.
Even from here I can hear the liquid sloshing in the bowl, but there is no distinctive bite to the scent, none of the strange sweetness of the wine the old humans insist upon drinking. Justplain water, but even that is enough to make my tongue loll from between my lips.
I’ve spent hours watching her, as I do every day. Only once night falls and the village sleeps do I finally leave her, loping back to my cave to sleep until it is time to watch again. Even now, hunger and thirst flood my body, with hours to go until the sun sinks below the horizon. I had expected to suffer through it, as I always do, but she has brought water. For me, I think, as I am the only wild thing she tends, and I hum happily in my throat.
“Thank. You,” I murmur, the words halting enough that I would be embarrassed if I were speaking in front of her for real. I am capable of speech, but this form, half human and half wolf, struggles. Add to that the fact that my words have been trapped inside my mind for the seven years I was fully a wolf, and it isn’t hard to understand why I struggle.
And yet, that knowledge does not frustrate me any less. I want to show my mate that I am clever, to woo her with words as I have seen other young humans do when I watch them, to see the flush in her cheeks when I tell her that her touch is my reason for living, that the flame in her hair is nothing to the one in my heart.
But none of those things will ever be said if I can’t learn to speak properly, and no amount of practice seems to help. I fear I will be stuck with these halting, strange sentences forever.
Suddenly glum, I sink to my haunches and curl my tail around myself, watching her as she heads back into the cottage. What I wouldn’t give to know her name, if only to have something to call her in my thoughts. After all, it is only far. She has given me a name, or so I surmise from hearing it when she speaks to me. I never heard it before she sent me away, but I hear it now, when she is alone and thinks no one is listening. She knows I’ve come back, and some tiny part of me hopes thatis the reason she is setting things out tonight, hidden behind the cottage where no one can see. She knows I’m here.
Saliva pools in my mouth as a scent floats to me on the wind, and I swallow hard. It’s sweet, like fruit, with a warm undertone that I can’t quite discern. It’s almost like bread, but not. Not so bland.
I lift my muzzle into the air and sniff deeper, tongue lolling. It smells so good, almost as good as my mate, but this isfood.
Some tiny memory nags in the back of my mind, although I can’t quite grasp it. I’ve smelled this before, I know it. I’m just not sure when.
Is that… pie? It looks like it, neatly sliced and placed on the table in the garden, but I’ve never smelled anything so wonderful in my life. It has never smelled like this before, of that I am sure.
My mate steps back, hands planted on her hips as she surveys the setup on the tiny table. It would make more sense if it were for someone else, and yet less. The bowl of water doesn’t make sense for a human, and yet the tiny table and the neatly sliced pie make more sense for a human. Partly human and partly not, just like me.
I shift forward instinctively and her head whips toward me, eyes searching the underbrush; just as quickly, I slink deeper into the berry bush. It’s only now that I realize how close I’ve gotten to her, closer than I have since the night she shouted at me to leave. I tense in case she decides to do the same now.
Not that it matters. I’m not that wolf any more, not truly; she wouldn’t recognize me if she did see me. But the food has started again recently, after months of nothing being left out, and a tiny part of me whispers that it must be for me. She doesn’t know who I am, or what, but she feels comfortable enough to leave food out for me. That must mean something.
