Chapter 28 — Introduction

His un-human had been gone for a moon now, and he could still sometimes sniff out her scent. Most of it was around the old den, even though now it was just a big hole in the ground. And in a season or two, all the grass would come back and the rain would soften its edges, maybe even turning it into a small pond. Of course by then what little scent of her would be long gone, which was why his feet kept taking him back to the place, day after day.

He still remembered when he first smelled his un-human. She smelt like something big, something dangerous, something whose territory was wherever it wanted it to be. He was so scared of her that he hid inside his parents’ den when some of the other adults brought her to meet the pack. But then his un-human did something funny: her smell changed—it went from scary to regular human in seconds.

He was annoyed that she was able to trick him, even if it was a very good trick. And he only forgave her when she showed him another trick, one she played on the back of his ears with her little human paws. He remembered being such a little pup, thinking that that was her best one, though even as an adult he felt it was still pretty close to the top. She had others too, like the trick where his un-human made food taste even better, or made it as if a hurt person wasn’t actually hurt anyone. It turned out that this last trick was the reason all the adults in the pack had let her live with them in the first place—or at least live near them, since she had yet another one where she grew her own den.

So the un-human lived with them for a while, using her tricks to help out the pack while the pack kept pesky intruders out of its territory like normal. But it all came to an end when they saw that their home was right in the path of a migration. There really wasn’t anything they could do but run. Worse yet, his un-human wasn’t going with them—she decided that she would look for somewhere safer to live, somewhere higher up.

Thankfully he had tricks of his own, tricks that every young pup could use, tricks that could turn even the meanest ‘no’ into a halfhearted ‘yes’. He used them mercilessly, both on his parents and his un-human, until he was allowed to travel with her off to who knew where.

Well, now he knew where: the forest he was living in now.

He shook his perfectly normal sized body; the sun had fallen away since he’d arrived at the big hole, and he couldn’t just sit by it forever. Breaking into a trot, he headed through the tiny bushes among the tiny trees towards the nearest pack of tiny wolves. It really was a very tiny place that he called home—he’d always assumed that the big mountains would have even bigger stuff in it, but maybe all the bigness was being taken up by the mountains themselves? If so, then the mountains would be the biggest bigness thieves to ever exist. But he guessed it didn’t matter, so long as the mountains didn’t try to take his normal-sized-ness.

Not that that would be the worst thing ever. As he arrived at the tiny pack and engaged in the customary salutations, he was all too reminded of how much his own size caused problems. His un-human’s den wasn’t just the warmest, comfiest, perfectly-sized-iest place around, but the only one. All the dens of tiny wolf packs were tiny—which only made sense—but he didn’t really fit into any of them. Also, none of them had any cushions, and were cold more days than not. And the more days were becoming a lot more more than the not days were not as the cold season got more cold.

The tiny wolves seemed to only have tiny complaints with their tiny dens, but he wasn’t tiny, and even if he were, none of them really talked like his un-human did. It was weird, but he thought that that might be his biggest complaint of these tiny places: there weren’t any real voices, just the tiny wolf ones.

Like all the other nice things… he missed his un-human’s voice…

Since she’d been gone he’d tried going up to regular humans, but none of them really talked—they just kind of screamed and ran away, really only saying one or two very simple words. Maybe the fact that his un-human never ran away was because of her un-ness? Could be; but her human pup also never ran away, well except for the first time.

Maybe that was the trick: maybe if he just stuck around long enough they would stop running and screaming. It was worth trying, especially tonight as he could already feel the cold getting even colder, the wind getting windier, and the cold fluffy white sky-y stuff getting groundier.

Yes, he would definitely try again tonight. He quickly bade his farewells to the tiny pack before running off to where he had stashed the special stick with the squiggles on it. He’d tried using it before, but all the humans would only look at him and not the stick before they’d go screaming. The last time he went up to humans he had snuck around and placed the special stick behind them, so that when they ran screaming away from him they’d have to run by the stick, but that didn’t work either. Maybe the special stick would only work once they stopped screaming? It was worth a try.

But which humans would he go up to? It wouldn’t make much sense to make friends with a human whose den was too small for him to even fit in, and all the dens in the human place seemed so tiny… Well there was that den at the top of the tiny hill; it was larger than all the others around, so if any of them would work it would have to be that one.

His plan set, special stick between his teeth, he headed for the human place to—

His stomach growled, shaking all the tiny leaves of the tiny bushes and trees around him.

Well, ok, first a quick bite to eat—maybe just a deer or two—and then he’d be off to the human place and the big human den in the middle of it. After that it’d just be a matter of time before the humans saw the squiggles on the special stick and they’d let him stay in their cozy human den—it was the perfect plan.

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A cry rang out through the darkened manor, gradually dragging a recalcitrant Veronica to consciousness. She eventually opened her eyes in defeat as she tried to rouse her voice to wakefulness.

“Is it my turn or yours,” she grumbled to the lightless room.

“Definitely yours,” croaked Eva in reply.

Veronica gave an exhausted sighed as she shuffled out of her bed and began groping her way through the dark. Her fingers soon found a candle and matches, creating a small sphere of light a moment later.

As she left the bedroom, Veronica couldn’t help but shudder—not merely because of the cold, but because this was how they usually started. A darkened room or hallway, with just enough light to contrast all the shrouded corners from which something could emerge.

Veronica had always tried to play the brave, stalwart woman whom circumstance had betrayed, both for her sake and Eva’s. As such she had come to term the nighttime narratives as ‘stress dreams’, but they were nightmares, plain and simple. She certainly was no stranger to them, but after the… revelations concerning Cathal, they had become far more common.

Most were some variation of Cathal somehow returning, though typically he would appear less human and more like some twisted abomination. It was ironic in a way, as Veronica thought she and Eva were rid of him. But no, he lingered, shifting from some corporeal threat whose proximity could be known, to a more intangible one, to a threat that haunted the corner of one’s eye and played upon all those reflexes that had been etched in bruise and blood. The only solace she could find was that the events depicted would never occur—Cathal would spend the rest of his life either in a locked cell or working a field while under watch.

But not all the nightmares were impossible: a good number of them were of a thing taking Cathal’s place. These were perhaps unsettlingly likely as all too many men of influence had begun knocking on their manor door. For now, Veronica and Eva didn’t have anything to fear. As the most senior wife, Veronica was the executor of the Leigh estate, which itself had grown fat with assets that the old magister had acquired through what was essentially legal embezzlement. But a few of the suitors had oh-so-innocently opined on the possibility that she and Eva would face troubles as a result of neither of them technically owning anything. Though of course such troubles, they claimed, could be avoided if the Leigh estate had a new man of the house. Most of the suitors had kept their manners about them, but Veronica could see their patience wearing thin, with one having the gall to outright propose during the unnamed woman’s funeral.

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The unnamed woman… that was the last category Veronica’s nightmares generally fell into: finding herself in whatever hell that woman had been subjected to. In truth, Veronica didn’t want to think about her, didn’t even want to know what happened. She felt heartless admitting it to herself, but her imagination—at least her waking one—had neither the ability nor the inclination to conjure the events. Instead, Veronica wished to simply excise everything about Cathal and that woman from her mind.

And she was far from alone in this. Eva seemed to be of the same mind, but so too were most of the people of Leighton. Or perhaps it would be better to call them the people of Forestton or Fairbreeze, or maybe Greenfield or any of the dozen other proposed names she’d heard circulating through town. Though most of the names were rather uninspired, she could certainly appreciate the sentiment—after all she and Eva had gone through the effort of legally changing their children’s surnames to that of their respective mother’s.

The cries began their second stanza after a brief refrain, pulling Veronica back to the present. Though dead on her feet, she heeded the call, shambling through the halls until she found herself at the source of the cries.

“Mom…” came Bran’s grousing as Veronica entered the small bedroom.

“I know, I know,” she said, planting a kiss on his forehead, “try to get some sleep.”

Veronica then turned to the crib, picking up little Calvagh and affixing him in place with an infant sling she looped over her shoulder. With the newborn secured but still crying, she quickly left the room, her feet taking her past the other children’s room, to the usual chair in the manor’s small library. And after a few seconds of shifting cloth, she felt the latch and simply leaned back into the generously upholstered chair, wrapping the two of them in a thick blanket to fight off the night’s chill.

It was only through sheer force of will that she kept herself awake, though every part of her body and soul begged for sleep. She was just so tired. Tired of feeling like the world was trying to pull her apart. Even when she was home and could keep out all the politics of their little town, there were still her responsibilities as a mother. In total, she and Eva had eight children, four apiece, with little Calvagh at Veronica’s chest being Eva’s newborn as of just two weeks ago. And though she loved and raised them all unreservedly, eight children was still eight children, especially when they were all still so young—the oldest being Veronica’s six year old son, Bran.

They had help from both of their families, of course, but for nighttime feedings like these, the two women were on their own. It would be years before either she or Eva could count on getting a good night’s rest, but Veronica had hope. She could imagine those far off nights when she could finally rest assured that her rest would be assured… when she knew that only the morning’s light would wake her… when she knew… that her pillow… and her thick sheets… would be a bastion… in which only…

Something was wrong.

The thought slammed into Veronica’s mind, and though she couldn’t tell what was amiss, her heart began pounding an alarm. Veronica rose to her feet as her once heavy eyes darted across the room, interrogating every darkened corner, but everything seemed as it should be. True, the candle was half the size it was but moments ago, and little Calvagh was suddenly fast asleep, but nothing looked wrong, and yet something was.

She could feel the wrongness growing around her. Veronica found herself whipping her head every which way, as if to spot the unseen source that hovered just behind her, waiting to sink its teeth into the back of her…

Neck. She could feel it. Truly feel it along the hairs on the back of her neck. It was a noise, a rumbling that saturated everything around her; so low as to be on the very edge of human hearing. It was a pervasive herald of something larger, a warning that rattled Veronica’s bones just as it caused a quiet trembling in all the floorboards and windows throughout the manor.

The noise might have been gusts of wind, battering the manor. But the would not explain why, as Veronica continued her frantic surveillance, she met the gaze of two bestial, bronze colored eyes staring back at her from the darkness beyond the library’s window. She held the gaze as she forgot to breathe, forgot to move, forgot to do anything except recall the horror stories the woodsmen had been telling of late.

And then it was gone.

The darkness of the night seemed to blur, then the eyes and their baleful call ceased to exist. In that moment Veronica was left in utter silence, even the noise from the wind seeming to flee. She took a shuddering breath as both realization and lucidity graced her with their presence. But she was only given a second of respite before the call returned twofold, accompanied by a thunderous clawing upon the manor’s front doors.

Veronica nodded as with trembling hands she picked up the candle and made through the manor’s halls to the entrance. In the sling she wore, little Calvagh seemed to have been awoken by the noise, but all would be alright in a moment—she only wished that she would not wake him in truth.

The sounds of clawing upon the door continued unabated until Veronica reached and began unlocking the large double doors. As she undid the final latch and opened the doors wide, the night’s cold immediately flooded in. And there they were again, those bestial eyes staring straight into her, only meters away from the doorway. But by the light of her candle, she could see that they were accompanied by the silhouette of an enormous wolf. And rather fittingly, on the ground before her lay a large inscribed piece of wood, reminding her of nothing less than a tombstone.

The monster stared at her just as she responded in kind. She waited patiently for yet another night’s violent conclusion to come, not wishing to be delayed by a foregone chase, but it never came. A fresh gust of wind blew, snuffing out her candle, taking from her the light and leaving in its stead of unmistakable smell of fresh blood. Though blinded, Veronica felt like she could still see those eyes, still feel them on her, still know that that thing was waiting there just out of reach.

Her heart continued its hammering, and for a time it was the only thing she could hear, at least until she heard the softest sound of crunching snow. Then another crunch came, then another—they were footsteps getting ever closer.

With a gulp and a heavy breath, Veronica withdrew from her pocket a box of matches and relit her candle.

A blood stained monster stood before her. She could have reached out and touched it, and yet if not for her sight and smell of blood, she would have no notion of its presence. It leaned forward, opening its maw in a display of teeth that could rip her body in half. She closed her eyes and—

A slobbery tongue smacked into her face.

She cleared her eyes of saliva only to see the monster pick up the wooden tombstone in its mouth, then casually brush past her into the manor.

“That’s… new,” Veronica hesitantly said to herself. A sliver of doubt entered her mind as she absentmindedly shut the doors and followed the creature further inside. Veronica could hear parts of the house slowly waking despite the hour, but she paid them no mind as the giant wolf seemed to be looking for something, though wholly unfamiliar with the home in which it found itself.

Eventually it wandered into the manor’s parlor. It was an ostentatious room meant to entertain guests, with a small alcohol bar in the corner and a number of couches placed about, but for whatever reason the monster seemed excited by what it saw. The wolf immediately dropped the tombstone with a loud clatter upon the floor, then leaped upon the nearest couch, instantly shattering the furniture's wooden frame with its weight. Unperturbed, the wolf quickly pushed the seat and back cushions together before contentedly flopping down on the makeshift bed it had made for itself.

“Doggy?” Squeaked Mealla’s voice.

Veronica turned to see her four year old daughter rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she stumbled out of the darkness.

Confusion gripped Veronica more than anything as she watched the small child’s face light up and—

“DOGGY!” Mealla rejoiced, darting towards the monster. Veronica was too dumbstruck to intervene, only capable of staring as the giant wolf perked up its ears at the girl’s approach and… played with her. In a moment Mealla was giggling with delight, her arms and legs wrapped around a forepaw that the monster was slowly moving about just off the ground—as if that paw alone was some kind of hayride.

“Vee, what’s going—”

Eva’s scream pierced through the air as the woman rounded into view of the parlor.

Veronica furrowed her brow as she took in the scene before her. Now, a person seeing a blood stained monster playing with a child and then screaming: that made sense. A monster playing with a child while seemingly being careful not to hurt said child: that did not make sense. An inscribed tombstone of wood was… nonsensically sensical.

Veronica’s full attention fell on the object as she was faintly aware of a panicking Eva demanding answers from her. What was nonsensical was that the words on the plank of wood made sense, or rather Veronica could actually read them, which was never the case during these kinds of things. Doubt again began to stir in her, but perhaps this latest piece of evidence could be discounted. As though the words were legible, their content was utterly ridiculous.

Veronica slowly looked to Eva, “His name is Felix.”