Orenda settled into the back of the wagon with Bella, Gareth, and Anilla. It was a tight fit, and she was surprised that all the boxes they were situated around managed to fit inside with them.

“Is it a long trip?” She asked as the wagon jerked. Outside, Falsie must have started up the horses.

“Yes and no,” Gareth said, leaning heavily on Bella and pulling down his hat as if he planned to sleep, “We’re going a bit of a long way round, to avoid most of the fighting and… because we have a certain schedule that we don’t want to break. We don’t want to be anywhere near civilization until about three days from now.”

“Why?” Orenda asked, “Why wouldn’t we travel as quickly as possible?”

“The moons will be full,” Bella looked away as she said it, “I don’t… trust myself in large crowds.”

“Oh,” Orenda said, and felt that she had said something offensive.

“Does it matter underground?” Anilla asked, “You can’t see the moons.”

“It doesn’t seem to have any effect whether or not I can see them or the rays touch me or anything like that,” Bella explained, “It just… happens, no matter where I am.”

She pulled her traveling cloak tighter around her and leaned against Gareth, and Orenda thought that if she ever came into some money she would get her a new one. Hers was old, threadbear, and dreadfully tattered. She did like that she and Gareth had matching color schemes, though. She thought it was cute. They seemed happy together.

“I’m sorry,” Bella said, “That I’m delaying us.”

“You aren’t delaying us, darling,” Gareth said, “It’s safer to go the long way regardless. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a war on.”

“Bella,” Orenda said cautiously, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Bella said without much enthusiasm.

“You don’t have a brand, a slave mark,” Orenda said, “You said you were from the frozen north. Have you never been a slave?”

“No,” Bella said, “I was lucky.”

“Then how did you come to be here? Why didn’t you stay where it was safe?” Orenda asked.

“It wasn’t safe,” Bella shook her head, “I wasn’t safe there. There was… an accident, when I was a child. I think it’s changing a bit now, because of Xaxac, but… when I was younger other humans were not so keen on shifters. We were run out of town, there was… there were some problems.”

“Oh,” Orenda said, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Bella shook her head, “It’s fine. It’s an interesting story. My father was a shifter, not my mother, but it does seem to be hereditary. I ‘caught’ it from him, I suppose. He was fairly good about hiding it- his mother was a shifter too, and she lived out in the woods a bit away from the rest of the town. She was a healer, a mage. She taught me, when I was young, how to work a little magic. But every month we would go out there, away from the other people, to wait it out. But… people can be unkind, and I suppose someone must have spotted him. I don’t know how they found out. I was very young.”

“My mother gave me this cloak; it was hers. It was an unusual color, and she made it herself- she often wove things to sell... people seemed to like them. Nearly everyone wore white in those days, in that place, but my mother made this, and she wrapped me in it. She gave me a basket of food and told me to go to my grandmother’s with my father, as I always did. I don’t know what happened to her, my mother. I don’t know if she just wanted us out of her life… or if there was a reason she never came back for me.”

“When we made it to grandmother’s house we thought we were safe.” Bella explained, “She was beloved. She was the healer. They had no reason to hate her. She was old, probably in her 70s or 80s, very much like Imperius in that regard, though he is older still, but my point is that she was a little old lady, no harm to anyone. We thought we would be safe there. I don’t think they knew she was a shifter, that any of us were shifters… but they must have, mustn’t they? I don’t know why we thought it was safe there, with them looking for us as they must have been… I don’t know why he… sometimes I think he put her in danger, but… none of it make sense to a child. I’ve given up trying to rationalize it.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“I can’t remember things… I can’t remember very well the time… when I’m shifted. I don’t really know when it all went so horribly wrong. The moons came out while we were there, and everything gets fuzzy. I remember thinking we were safe, because the adults told me that we were. But… we weren’t. They found us, and they had axes. They attacked my grandmother… even shifted she was weak. She was still old, frail- being a werewolf does not ease the passage of time. Father tried to defend her, I think. I can’t really remember. All I remember is the smell of blood in the air, the overpowering sense of wrongness, I… I don’t know what happened.”

“When I was able to… to think clearly, to see clearly, the inside of her house, it was such a small house, only two rooms, I think, the whole place was covered in blood. The walls, the floor, the furniture… the corpses. There were more than just my father and grandmother, and I recognized them from town. I don’t know why they hated us so. My clothes were drenched- We wore very loose-fitting clothes, to keep from ripping them, you see... and they were destroyed.”

“It’s so cold in the frozen north… I didn’t know what to do. I was all alone. I drug the bodies outside, and I thought about going home, but… people… people had legends about shifters. They called us monsters. The people would assume I had done those horrible…” she paused, took a deep breath, and continued, “I took my grandmother’s cauldron and boiled a pot of snow to try to wash my clothes. I knew I had to leave. I scrubbed and scrubbed but they wouldn’t come clean. I kept thinking that my mother would come for me. I waited and waited, for hours in that house, alone, among the blood.”

“But she never did.”

“I couldn’t get the stains out, so I just set them out to dry, and still my mother never came for me. But someone else did. There was another crowd of them, of the people who had killed my family, and I was in fear for my life. I knew these people. They knew me. They knew I was a child… but I thought perhaps they saw the bodies from the first… I don’t know… I only know they were out for blood. I had only just dressed- I had no time to pack; I grabbed my basket and my grandmother’s wand and ran out the back way, as fast as my legs could carry me- but they could see me. The red cloak against the white snow stood out, and I could hear them, running through the trees, moving so much faster than I could- they were adults and they knew what they were doing, but I was smaller, and I could slip into places they could not. I remember it was snowing…”

She was looking at Orenda without seeing her.

“I ran for so long that night fell again. I was starving, and I couldn’t be sure that I would be safe again, but I had to eat or die, so I found somewhere I thought I could hide, to take out some of the bread in the basket, to eat- I remember it all so well… it was so long ago, but it just… it sticks out. There are some things you never forget. A great hunger comes over you, you see, the next morning, after the shifting… the kind of hunger people who are not shifters cannot imagine...”

“I heard more people, and I thought they had found me, the villagers. I thought they were coming to kill me, but… then I heard what they were talking about. They were on an expedition, looking for something. They weren’t from the village at all- they weren’t even from the Frozen North. At the time, I didn’t know where they were from. But then they said something… strange. They said they had gotten far off track, because they had messed up their camp the previous night- when they had shifted!”

“I ran from the treeline towards them, screaming for help. The man-”

“Was Xaxac?” Orenda asked, “Was that when you met the white rabbit?”

“No,” Bella said, and added, “Xac and I are nearly the same age, Orenda, I’m only a little younger than him. He wasn’t in this group- it was an expedition of shifters; they were looking for Morgani Magnus, but they hadn’t found him, couldn’t find him. I ran to them screaming, and they were as taken aback as they should have been, to see this child in clothes that were too big, covered in those stains, running and screaming.”

“But,” she shrugged, “They took me in. I lived with them for years.”

“Who were they?” Orenda asked.

“That’s another long story,” Bella said, “I don’t know that I want to tell two in a row. We’ve been awake such a long time.”

“It isn’t a particularly happy one, either,” Gareth added, which shocked Orenda, because she thought he had fallen asleep under his mask. “Why are all our stories depressing, darling? You would think we would have one nice story between us.”

“Gareth,” Orenda asked, “What happened in the dwarven city?”

“That’s such a broad question,” he said.

“I mean with Falsie,” Orenda clarified.

“I can hear ya,” Falsie said, “It’s burlap. It’s not soundproof. I told ya, nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened,” Gareth echoed. “Not everything is an interesting story, you’re just starved for entertainment without your little boytoy. Ugh. I’m going to have to do right by him one day or he really is going to catch me off-guard and kill me.”

“No, he won’t,” Bella said.

“He’d have every right,” Gareth argued, “Here, move, darling, lie down. Spread the cloak over both of us. Everyone has to be worn out.”

“Why are you wearing a cloak?” Anilla asked, “It’s so hot in here.”

“Yes,” Gareth said, “But I can’t sleep without a blanket. The monsters will get me.”