Necrophobia - Part 7
Sigh. x) Week 2 has been very hard, and I'm only into day 2 of it! A lot of stuff has just been coming up discouraging and distracting me from my goal to win. I'm determined to finish, but at what cost?
I've begun trying to step it up and write 500 extra words every weekday to cover up for my losses on the weekends. We'll see if it works or not.
Wordcount: 18,784/50,000
Today's goal: 18,337
Morning came terribly early for Anne the day after the Gathering and her big fight with Kennedy. She’d gone to bed feeling great remorse over the things said, and yet, her friend had had a point. Anne shouldn’t have said those things about Mr. Winters. She was completely out of line, but her pride was making it difficult for her to accept that she needed to get over Old Archie Winters’ planned marriage of an eighteen year old girl - and not just an eighteen year old girl, but Anne’s best friend - and honor her and Kennedy’s agreement. Live each day with no regrets, live each day like it was their last. It had served them well thus far, and with only a week or so to go before Anne took her vows, they had nothing to lose to continue to live life to the fullest.
Despite having gone to bed at a late hour thanks to the Gathering, Anne found it nigh impossible to sleep. Her mind was racing too fast and too furiously for her to think about shutting it off long enough to get some rest.
However, it seemed someone else in the village was having trouble sleeping too. About an hour after Anne got in bed, a persistent tapping noise on her window caught her attention. It sounded as if someone was throwing pebbles at the panes of glass - the classic way to get someone’s attention so long as they didn’t have a loaded crossbow or a tomahawk to retaliate with.
Anne slipped from her comfortable mattress and padded in slipper-clad feet to her second story bedroom window. She undid the latch and slid open the pane before leaning out and looking down to find Kennedy standing beneath her with a worried look on her face.
“Ken, what’s wrong? If it’s about the fight today, I’m sorry, it was all my fault.”
“No, it’s not that, Anne.” The tone of Kennedy’s voice hinted that whatever was wrong was bigger than any simple squabble.
“What is it, then?”
“I stopped by the Keiths’ house tonight like I said I would.”
“And?”
“Anne, Sara’s gone.” Kennedy’s voice had a touch of desperation to go along with the anxiety already drawing tense lines in her face.
“Gone?!”
“Gone. Missing. Mother Janet and Father Richard don’t know where she went.”
At this point Anne felt like jumping out of the window right then and there to go looking for her friend. Despite her panic, logic kept her slippered feet tethered to her bedroom’s polished hardwood floor.
“When!?”
“Yesterday they were going to let her out of the dark room since her sentence was over, and they found the room empty. They don’t know for how long, or how she got out.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Anne frowned, looking worriedly back at her own bedroom door just in case her parents were standing there watching. She hoped they wouldn’t be able to hear her - or at least were too deep in sleep to wake up. “Their dark room is more secure than ours.”
“Mother Janet started to tell me something but she stopped,” Kennedy whispered hoarsely. “I think she suspected Sara was taken by someone!”
“Who on God’s green earth would do that?”
“Creatures from the Wilds!”
Anne rolled her eyes.
“Kennedy, those are old wives’ tales meant to keep kids from crossing the borders.”
“Now you’re sounding like Sara,” Kennedy accused - but though a frown creased Anne’s brow, she knew that the other girl was right. Sara had always been the one filled with wild ideas about the creatures of the Wilds and that many were tame and friendly, unlike the old stories said they were. And now Anne was starting to have some of the same opinions and ideas as that adventurous Sara Keith girl.
“But Anne, you have to admit, the creature in the apple orchard had very sharp teeth and he looked very strong! He might have…”
“No! Don’t even think of such a thing! He’s been unconscious ever since we found him fighting that… that… white thing that vanished. Remember? He hasn’t even moved!”
“How do you know? When was the last time you went to bring him food?”
Anne paused, looked down, and scratched at the wooden window frame with her fingernail sheepishly. After running off that evening following her fight with Kennedy, Anne had sought solace in the apple orchard like she’d always done when things got hard or she needed to just get away and spend some time by herself to recuperate. After spending a few minutes wandering among the bare trees and crying out her troubles, Anne found herself wandering towards the tool shed. Her thoughts had scarcely left the white creature, and even during evening prayers her thoughts inevitably kept being drawn back to him. She simply could not resist peeking in on him for a moment.
When Anne had looked in the shed she found him largely where they’d left him, though he had rolled himself over onto his good side and was sleeping fitfully, muttering unintelligible phrases under his breath. She worried he was delirious from fever or shock, but there was nothing she could do about it if he was; anything beyond the most basic first aid was not something her mother had seen fit to teach her.
Anne fought with the temptation to go stroke his fur again with the knowledge that if she wasn’t back home in a few minutes there’d be hell to pay from her mother. In the end, she simply closed the door and left, wiping her eyes on her sleeves and hoping that by the time she got home her eyes would have lost some of their puffy redness.
As Anne quickly made her way back home she realized that there had been a strange scent in the barn; sort of a mixture between cinnamon, spices, and incense. Strange.
“I went to see him after the Gathering,” Anne finally admitted. “Just for a moment. Just to make sure he was okay.”
“Aaaaaaaaaanne, you know that’s dangerous! What if he’d woken up and killed you? I thought we agreed we weren’t going to go see him alone!”
“I couldn’t help it, I had to make sure. Besides, it’s not like you were there to come with me.”
Kennedy sighed and shook her head.
“Fine. Was he alright?”
“He was still asleep. I didn’t disturb him.”
“He probably needs food. Did he eat what we left him?”
“Not a nibble,” Anne frowned. She was starting to worry that what they had to feed him wasn’t going to cut it - Navala was a largely vegetarian community. Eating meat was reserved for only the most special of occasions.
Kennedy seemed to share some of Anne’s fears.
“What if he’s a meat-eater, and won’t eat our food? What if he needs to hunt for his meals?”
The implications hung heavily in the air a moment before Anne shook her head and brought the conversation back to their real problem.
“We don’t need to worry about that now,” Anne reminded Kennedy, wagging her head. “What about Sara? What are we going to do?”
“Well we can’t do anything tonight without getting into trouble for it. Let’s go to bed and meet tomorrow morning at the orchard.”
“We’ll get up early and look for her.” Nodding, Anne agreed with her friend’s plan. “Maybe she went to the hot springs again.” The hot spring was a place Sara had found on one of her many adventures beyond the village boundaries. It was a few miles upstream and was one of the girls’ favorite forbidden haunts. Though Kennedy and Anne had never seen any, Sara had insisted that she’d seen the strange walking animals there before - but now that the two girls had encountered the wolf-creature, they were very much more inclined to believe her.
“I need to go,” Kennedy announced, looking up at the fully risen moon. “Mother will be worried.”
“Sunrise at the orchard?” Anne confirmed.
“Sunrise at the orchard.”
“I’m sorry about the fight,” Anne said quietly, searching for her friend’s forgiveness.
“I’m sorry too. Goodnight, Annie.”
Anne smiled. It was a good feeling to forgive and to be forgiven. Feeling much better, she blew Kennedy a kiss.
“Goodnight.”
The other girl smiled up at Anne’s window before turning to run back to her own home. Anne watched Kennedy go until she disappeared into the darkness before shutting her window and slipping back into bed. But sleep was a long time coming. It wasn’t until dawn was just a few short hours away that Anne’s exhausted mind finally stopped thinking about Sara long enough to shut down and go to sleep.
Bright and early the next morning she arose, almost before the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon. As Anne went about getting ready, she reflected on how life was going to change forever in just a few short days.
Little did she know that she had only hours, not days, until her world turned upside down.
---
’Old Archie Winters’ whistled a merry tune to himself as he walked through the misty morning air. The sky was overcast and the breeze was cool, but not too cold, and life was good. He had just recently gotten permission from Kennedy Oaks’ Father to wed her. She would make his third wife - a very fine catch after the somewhat trollish appearance of the first two - God rest their souls. He’d married them when they were pretty but both had quickly become less than the trim figures of their youth.
Archibald deserved a little beauty around the house to offset the nagging, overwhelming auras of his squabbling two sisters. They fought constantly with each other, and it was often that he had to leave the house in order to find any peace at all.
Kennedy, he hoped, would balance things out. The two older women would have a young ‘child’ to care for and turn their motherly instincts toward so they would stop smothering Archie with their doting. She would also help him with the apple harvest this fall - the older women absolutely refused, stating that they were too old to break their backs hauling around bushels of fruit and that picking apples off the ground was beneath them. Archie shook his head upon the memory of the numerous times he tried to persuade his sisters that you didn’t pick up the apples that were on the ground, but instead plucked them off the trees.
And of course, the two women - being women - wouldn’t listen to him.
Archie was the owner of the apple orchard that he knew was a favorite haunt of his bride to be. Her parents had told him as much, and he had observed Kennedy and her friend Anne Carter - and sometimes that rowdy Sara Keith girl as well - coming back from the orchard on many occasions during the summer, linked arm in arm and chattering about one thing or another. Archibald, being the gentleman he was, tried not to eavesdrop on their conversation but instead bid them a cheerful greeting. They never paid him much heed, but perhaps that was a good thing - if they’d noticed his gray eyes trailing after Kennedy on her way back home they may have questioned his intentions.
Oh no, Archibald Winters was a man of honor and integrity. He would not harm a hair on Kennedy Oaks’ head. But he would have her as his wife in just a few short weeks. His heart fluttered wildly in his chest as he thought of announcing his intentions to her and subsequently to the village at the next Gathering. Kennedy would welcome him with open arms like any honorable, respectable girl would. And if she didn’t…
…Well, he’d think about that later.
Yes, sir. Life was good.
Archibald made his way up the path to the orchard, continuing his merry song. But as he grew closer to the shed which housed his tools, he frowned when he saw the door hadn’t been properly shut. Had he forgotten to latch it at the end of this year’s harvest? Archie shuddered to think of the wind blowing the door open and shut, open and shut for the many weeks that had passed since the harvest.
Or had someone else opened the door? Kennedy and her friends, perhaps? Or someone not from the village at all?
Archie frowned and slowed his approach, listening for anything out of the ordinary. There was no sound to be heard, as he’d half expected. Chances were, whoever had been in here - if it was someone who didn’t belong - had already taken what they wanted or slept however long they needed and left. But there was also the chance that his whistling had alerted the trespasser to his presence.
Archibald wished he’d brought his shotgun with him.
He edged up to the door and peered inside for a moment before ducking back out of sight again. Archie hadn’t seen anyone, but there was a strange pile of blankets by the back wall that hadn’t been there before. There was also an unexplainable scent of incense coming from the building. Eh, it’s gypsy drifters probably. Maybe some of those furry inbred scumbags from the Wilds. I don’t know how they made it past the patrols.
He looked again.
Archie came face to face with a pair of eyes - two black holes of death- which had a dark, unexplainable power. They called to him like a magnet, pulling him further into the shed and making him feel as if his soul was being slowly and painfully sucked out through his face.
The creature blinked, and for a brief moment Archibald was released from the eyes’ mesmerizing spell.
He screamed.
---
Anne jogged up the orchard path, fearing she was going to be late for her meeting with Kennedy. She had overslept and it had taken her longer to get ready thanks to how difficult her mother made it to leave the house. Eventually she’d won the battle, however, and Anne was finally allowed outside after she did all of her morning chores.
Anne was within sight of the orchard fence when she heard a man’s scream. At first she stopped in her tracks, her blood running cold in her veins and her face paling. Her sole relief was that the sound had most definitely not been Kennedy or Sara’s - but there was nothing else that could abate her fears.
Anne shot forward as fast as she could manage, making a beeline for the shed. She knew the scream could have only come from two things, the first being the wolf-creature and the second being a man from the village. And oh, how fervently she prayed it was the former and not the latter. If someone had discovered the wolf-creature, she would be in enough trouble to cover three lifetimes should the elders find out she had helped the wounded wolf onto their lands. Hunting parties regularly patrolled the borders to drive out intruders; if they would have found him unconscious on the ground there’s no doubt they would have shot the poor creature, not brought him to the old shed in the orchard.
But though Anne thought she had braced herself for the worst, no amount of breathing deeply or pushing emotions aside could have prepared her for what she would see when she threw open the shed door and looked inside.
Archibald Winters’ body lay on the dirt floor, his eyes wide open and soullessly staring into space, his mouth stretched into a wide ‘O,’ with blood oozing out of one corner of his lips and his entire throat ripped out. A very small puddle of blood pooled slowly beneath him - a surprisingly small amount given the way he had been killed.
Anne put both hands to her mouth and gasped. She would have screamed except for the fact that she simply wasn’t able to remember how to at that point. Instead she rushed to Archibald’s side and put her hands to his blood-smeared cheeks.
“Mr. Winters… Mr. Winters! Are you okay? What…” It was then that Anne saw the bloodied pruning shears which were lying nearby. They normally hung on the wall, but… maybe the man tried to use them to defend himself. His defense tactics obviously hadn’t worked, however, because Anne received no response from Archie’s still form. He was dead.
Anne began to sob, but the sound of approaching footsteps from outside reminded Anne that if Mr. Winters was still warm, then he had not been dead long - which meant that his attacker was still in the area. She was still in danger.
The girl grabbed the pruning shears in her bloody hands and turned to face the figure which had suddenly appeared in the doorway.
Kennedy.
The other girl was breathing hard, almost doubled over, her eyes wide and bugging out at the scene before her. Her trembling gloved hand rose to cover her gaping mouth as the true horror sunk in. Her fiancée - or fiancée-to-be - was dead; murdered horrendously in a barbaric way.
“Kennedy…” Anne gasped.
“Anne, what have you done?!” Kennedy shrieked. “What… why… Mr. Kennedy, Anne!”
“Ken, you’re not making sense, and you don’t understand!” Anne begged, stepping toward her. When Kennedy backed up a few steps with a sharp yelp, Anne remembered the shears in her hands and dropped them. “I’m not going to hurt you. I found him - someone murdered him.”
“YOU murdered him!” Kennedy screamed with the full strength of her lungs. “I knew you hated him! Anne, how could you? I thought you would get over it and get on with life like you always do!”
“You don’t understand, Kennedy!” Anne, who was now crying as well, shouted back with fear putting a slight tremor in her voice. “I found him like this. I heard a scream…”
But Kennedy didn’t stick around to listen to Anne’s defense. Her face in her hands, she ran off sobbing as fast as she could. She had to tell someone about this who could take care of the situation; anyone who would be able to punish Anne for her horrible, horrible sin. And maybe in the process, everything would be made right again.
Anne’s heart sunk further into her stomach with each of Kennedy’s footsteps. Each step took the other girl father away from her, both physically and emotionally. But each step also took the girl closer to the village, where the alarm would be raised. Soon a mob would be charging up the orchard path - and Anne would probably be hung for her crime.
The overwhelming enormity of the situation crashed in on her then with the force of a tidal wave. Anne’s knees buckled and she collapsed to the ground in a little ball. She covered her face with her hands and wept - wept for Mr. Winters, wept for Kennedy, who may have liked him after all, wept for Timothy because he would hate her, and wept for herself. Life had been ruined in the span of only a few short minutes. And where was Sara in all this?! If she had not gone missing maybe this would never have happened!
Anne’s cries covered up the sound of approaching footsteps, so she didn’t notice when someone came up behind her and stood over her as she sobbed.
“What’s wrong?” A masculine voice spoke softly from behind her. Anne didn’t recognize the voice immediately but she was too wrapped up in her grief to care. She assumed it was someone from the village, so she didn’t turn around to look.
“They’ll think I did it,” Anne squeaked, wiping her nose on her sleeve before sniffing loudly. “They’ll never believe me when I tell them I didn’t kill him.”
“You have blood on your hands. You were holding the shears.”
“But I didn’t do it!” Anne shrieked. “I found th…em…” She had whirled around to face the speaker, but instead of someone from the village she instead found… him. The wolf-creature she and Kennedy had dragged into the barn a couple of days ago now stood behind where she had been sitting. Anne gasped and covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes growing wide as she looked up - way up - to see his face.
He was much taller than she had expected. When he was on the ground it was much easier to assume he would be not much taller than the humans in the village, but while the tallest members were only six feet tall, the wolf easily topped them by at least a foot. He was leanly built and scrawny - she could see his ribs - but he also had a good deal of muscle. A pair of dark sunglasses covered his eyes - where he found them she didn’t know, but she could only assume they came from one of the pockets in his torn black shorts.
Most notable was the fact that the gaping wounds which he’d had only a day ago were gone as if they’d never existed. His dirty white fur covered him from head to toe with no holes, cuts, or even scratches. There weren’t even scars where logically there should have been.
“You’re not hurt…” Anne whispered. “What happened?”
The wolf grunted.
“Fast healer.”
“What’s your name?” Anne’s curiosity was starting to take over her fear of the creature. Questions began forming one after the other in her mind. Her fascination with the furry creature was slowly pushing her fear for her life into the back of her mind. She was astounded that he spoke English so fluently and without the lisp Sara had said many of the furry-things had.
“Gabriel.”
“Named after the Archangel?”
The wolf’s nostrils flared and his tail flicked as he hesitated to answer for a moment. It was as if her question had caught him off guard or brought back a memory he had to sort through before formulating a reply. When he did speak again, he sounded irritable.
“…No.”
“What are you?”
“There’s no time for your questions,” he growled, irritation canting his ears backwards as he looked over his shoulder toward the door. “They’ll be returning any minute to take you. If you want to live you’ll need to come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
The absurdity of Anne’s question was not lost on Gabriel. He scowled at her and pointed to the door. Her predicament suddenly came back to her and her face paled again as he spoke.
“If they find me here I’m as good as dead, like you! If you want to stay and face your own fate that’s up to you - but I’m not waiting around for you to make up your mind.”
“Where would we go?”
“Somewhere safe.”
His vague answer alarmed her, but at the moment Anne didn’t have a lot of choice. Did she want to stay and face a shameful death for a crime she didn’t commit, or did she want to escape death, be brave, and go on an adventure far grander and wilder than any of Sara’s escapades with a wolf-creature whom she was insatiably curious about?
“Let me at least get some clothes and food.”
“There’s no time,” Gabriel grunted, turning toward the door. “They’ll be here soon. We have to leave now. They’ll form a search party and go through the woods - we have to get as far out as we can, and with you with me, I doubt that’ll be far. Let’s go.” Anne started to object but Gabe cut her off. “Let’s go!”
Anne pouted but she finally got up and followed the wolf out of the shed. Her heart hammered in her chest - both with the realization and guilt of what they were doing and what the village would think she’d done and with the excitement of going off on an adventure with a creature of the Wilds.
This revelation stopped her in her tracks. She was going into the Wilds with a creature from the Wilds. What was she thinking?! Was she crazy? This thing could kill her at any moment! Just because it spoke English and was named after the Archangel didn’t mean it was a saint!
Gabriel noticed she’d stopped moving and turned his head over his shoulder expectantly.
“Keep moving,” he growled quietly.
“I can’t do this,” Anne whimpered. “This is crazy! Insane!”
“It’s suicide if you stay,” Gabe reminded.
“It may be suicide if I go! I don’t know what’s out there!” Anne jabbed a finger toward the forest.
“The chances of you dying out in the real world with me, away from your sheltered little village, are much less than if you stay here.”
His argument was simple but persuasive. It made Anne realize that he was right. If she wanted even a chance at living, she had to leave. The village elders did not abide murder, regardless of who committed it. No matter how much she or her parents objected, and regardless of her status as a saint-in-training, she’d be stripped of her honor and sentenced to death. Anne shuddered at the thought.
“Alright,” she said softly, starting forward again. “I’ll stay with you.”
Gabriel turned forward again with a small huff and set a quick pace toward the orchard fence. Anne could barely keep up with him in her tight, painful shoes - but she was better off in them than without them. Her feet, which had scarcely felt a rough surface in their lifetime, were so tender that running through the forest barefoot would probably cause them to bleed in a matter of seconds.
Anne was panting by the time they reached the fence. She was astonished to see that Gabriel leapt over and cleared the four foot tall barrier like it was nothing. Anne had to pull herself up, hook a foot over the top, and ungracefully throw herself over the top to land unbalanced on the ground - and by then Gabriel had already ran on a good fifty feet.
“Wait for me!” Anne complained. “I can’t run as fast as you!”
“And you never will.” Gabe answered as he looked back over his shoulder with irritation showing plainly on his face. But despite his impatience with her, the male slowed his steps until she caught up to him, huffing and puffing from such a hard and fast run. “It would be best if you learned how to clear obstacles gracefully. Saves time.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Anne demanded as she took off after him again. She was infatuated with this strange wolf creature and was astonished at all the things he could do with such little effort, but at the same time his attitude was grating on her.
“Watch me. Do what I do. When you come to an obstacle, don’t stop moving forward. Plant your hands on it first and push off with your feet. Let your momentum carry you over the obstacle and swing your feet out in front of you to land. That way you save time and conserve energy.”
Anne frowned and tried to picture it in her head. She’d have to pay closer attention to him the next time they came across something that needed vaulted over.
However the next obstacle that ran through their path was the border stream. The icy waters rippled soothingly down the streambed, splashing over rocks and fallen branches, carrying fallen leaves downstream to new lands. As a child Anne had believed that, in the fall when the leaves fell off the trees, they all floated downstream to find a warmer place to stay for the winter, like birds. Then in the Spring, they returned. Though the notion seemed silly now, it had made perfect sense when she was little.
Gabe didn’t slow his pace as he approached the stream. He just bunched his muscles when he reached the near bank and leapt clear to the other side without effort - a distance which was easily twenty feet. Anne pulled up at the stream bank, breathing hard.
“You can NOT expect me to be able to jump that.”
“No, I don’t,” Gabe answered flatly from the other side. He’d turned to face her. “But I do expect you to cross before they see you.”
Alarmed, Anne spun back toward the orchard, but found no sign of pursuit - yet. Gabriel crossed his arms and shook his head.
“No, you can’t see them. That’s because they’re just now coming into the orchard. They’ll be at the shed soon and then you can be sure it’ll be only a matter of time before they head this way.”
“How do you know that?” Anne turned back to the stream and gathered up her skirt before stepping gingerly across a few scattered stones whose surfaces poked above or only just beneath the water. “You can’t possibly see that far.”
“I can hear them.” Gabriel’s large white ears twitched; Anne realized then that they were noticeably larger than the proportions of a normal wolf’s ear.
“Do all of your people have such sharp senses?” Anne asked before she teetered precariously on a rock she’d misjudged. It wasn’t nearly as stable as she’d thought it was. However she did manage to move forward to a different rock before she fell into the water.
Gabe was fidgeting on the other side of the stream, clearly irritated by her slowness.
“No. Look, we’ve got to make better time. Don’t worry about getting your feet wet, we have to get going.”
“If they get wet I’ll freeze!”
“No you won’t. The blood rushing into your feet as you run and the body heat you generate during activity will keep them warm until we stop. And we’re not stopping for a very long time, so let’s. Get. Moving.”
Anne frowned at him but continued her dainty trek across the stream. Finally she reached the other side and Gabriel turned to run again.
“We’re running out of time; they’ve found the body.”
I've begun trying to step it up and write 500 extra words every weekday to cover up for my losses on the weekends. We'll see if it works or not.
Wordcount: 18,784/50,000
Today's goal: 18,337
Morning came terribly early for Anne the day after the Gathering and her big fight with Kennedy. She’d gone to bed feeling great remorse over the things said, and yet, her friend had had a point. Anne shouldn’t have said those things about Mr. Winters. She was completely out of line, but her pride was making it difficult for her to accept that she needed to get over Old Archie Winters’ planned marriage of an eighteen year old girl - and not just an eighteen year old girl, but Anne’s best friend - and honor her and Kennedy’s agreement. Live each day with no regrets, live each day like it was their last. It had served them well thus far, and with only a week or so to go before Anne took her vows, they had nothing to lose to continue to live life to the fullest.
Despite having gone to bed at a late hour thanks to the Gathering, Anne found it nigh impossible to sleep. Her mind was racing too fast and too furiously for her to think about shutting it off long enough to get some rest.
However, it seemed someone else in the village was having trouble sleeping too. About an hour after Anne got in bed, a persistent tapping noise on her window caught her attention. It sounded as if someone was throwing pebbles at the panes of glass - the classic way to get someone’s attention so long as they didn’t have a loaded crossbow or a tomahawk to retaliate with.
Anne slipped from her comfortable mattress and padded in slipper-clad feet to her second story bedroom window. She undid the latch and slid open the pane before leaning out and looking down to find Kennedy standing beneath her with a worried look on her face.
“Ken, what’s wrong? If it’s about the fight today, I’m sorry, it was all my fault.”
“No, it’s not that, Anne.” The tone of Kennedy’s voice hinted that whatever was wrong was bigger than any simple squabble.
“What is it, then?”
“I stopped by the Keiths’ house tonight like I said I would.”
“And?”
“Anne, Sara’s gone.” Kennedy’s voice had a touch of desperation to go along with the anxiety already drawing tense lines in her face.
“Gone?!”
“Gone. Missing. Mother Janet and Father Richard don’t know where she went.”
At this point Anne felt like jumping out of the window right then and there to go looking for her friend. Despite her panic, logic kept her slippered feet tethered to her bedroom’s polished hardwood floor.
“When!?”
“Yesterday they were going to let her out of the dark room since her sentence was over, and they found the room empty. They don’t know for how long, or how she got out.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Anne frowned, looking worriedly back at her own bedroom door just in case her parents were standing there watching. She hoped they wouldn’t be able to hear her - or at least were too deep in sleep to wake up. “Their dark room is more secure than ours.”
“Mother Janet started to tell me something but she stopped,” Kennedy whispered hoarsely. “I think she suspected Sara was taken by someone!”
“Who on God’s green earth would do that?”
“Creatures from the Wilds!”
Anne rolled her eyes.
“Kennedy, those are old wives’ tales meant to keep kids from crossing the borders.”
“Now you’re sounding like Sara,” Kennedy accused - but though a frown creased Anne’s brow, she knew that the other girl was right. Sara had always been the one filled with wild ideas about the creatures of the Wilds and that many were tame and friendly, unlike the old stories said they were. And now Anne was starting to have some of the same opinions and ideas as that adventurous Sara Keith girl.
“But Anne, you have to admit, the creature in the apple orchard had very sharp teeth and he looked very strong! He might have…”
“No! Don’t even think of such a thing! He’s been unconscious ever since we found him fighting that… that… white thing that vanished. Remember? He hasn’t even moved!”
“How do you know? When was the last time you went to bring him food?”
Anne paused, looked down, and scratched at the wooden window frame with her fingernail sheepishly. After running off that evening following her fight with Kennedy, Anne had sought solace in the apple orchard like she’d always done when things got hard or she needed to just get away and spend some time by herself to recuperate. After spending a few minutes wandering among the bare trees and crying out her troubles, Anne found herself wandering towards the tool shed. Her thoughts had scarcely left the white creature, and even during evening prayers her thoughts inevitably kept being drawn back to him. She simply could not resist peeking in on him for a moment.
When Anne had looked in the shed she found him largely where they’d left him, though he had rolled himself over onto his good side and was sleeping fitfully, muttering unintelligible phrases under his breath. She worried he was delirious from fever or shock, but there was nothing she could do about it if he was; anything beyond the most basic first aid was not something her mother had seen fit to teach her.
Anne fought with the temptation to go stroke his fur again with the knowledge that if she wasn’t back home in a few minutes there’d be hell to pay from her mother. In the end, she simply closed the door and left, wiping her eyes on her sleeves and hoping that by the time she got home her eyes would have lost some of their puffy redness.
As Anne quickly made her way back home she realized that there had been a strange scent in the barn; sort of a mixture between cinnamon, spices, and incense. Strange.
“I went to see him after the Gathering,” Anne finally admitted. “Just for a moment. Just to make sure he was okay.”
“Aaaaaaaaaanne, you know that’s dangerous! What if he’d woken up and killed you? I thought we agreed we weren’t going to go see him alone!”
“I couldn’t help it, I had to make sure. Besides, it’s not like you were there to come with me.”
Kennedy sighed and shook her head.
“Fine. Was he alright?”
“He was still asleep. I didn’t disturb him.”
“He probably needs food. Did he eat what we left him?”
“Not a nibble,” Anne frowned. She was starting to worry that what they had to feed him wasn’t going to cut it - Navala was a largely vegetarian community. Eating meat was reserved for only the most special of occasions.
Kennedy seemed to share some of Anne’s fears.
“What if he’s a meat-eater, and won’t eat our food? What if he needs to hunt for his meals?”
The implications hung heavily in the air a moment before Anne shook her head and brought the conversation back to their real problem.
“We don’t need to worry about that now,” Anne reminded Kennedy, wagging her head. “What about Sara? What are we going to do?”
“Well we can’t do anything tonight without getting into trouble for it. Let’s go to bed and meet tomorrow morning at the orchard.”
“We’ll get up early and look for her.” Nodding, Anne agreed with her friend’s plan. “Maybe she went to the hot springs again.” The hot spring was a place Sara had found on one of her many adventures beyond the village boundaries. It was a few miles upstream and was one of the girls’ favorite forbidden haunts. Though Kennedy and Anne had never seen any, Sara had insisted that she’d seen the strange walking animals there before - but now that the two girls had encountered the wolf-creature, they were very much more inclined to believe her.
“I need to go,” Kennedy announced, looking up at the fully risen moon. “Mother will be worried.”
“Sunrise at the orchard?” Anne confirmed.
“Sunrise at the orchard.”
“I’m sorry about the fight,” Anne said quietly, searching for her friend’s forgiveness.
“I’m sorry too. Goodnight, Annie.”
Anne smiled. It was a good feeling to forgive and to be forgiven. Feeling much better, she blew Kennedy a kiss.
“Goodnight.”
The other girl smiled up at Anne’s window before turning to run back to her own home. Anne watched Kennedy go until she disappeared into the darkness before shutting her window and slipping back into bed. But sleep was a long time coming. It wasn’t until dawn was just a few short hours away that Anne’s exhausted mind finally stopped thinking about Sara long enough to shut down and go to sleep.
Bright and early the next morning she arose, almost before the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon. As Anne went about getting ready, she reflected on how life was going to change forever in just a few short days.
Little did she know that she had only hours, not days, until her world turned upside down.
---
’Old Archie Winters’ whistled a merry tune to himself as he walked through the misty morning air. The sky was overcast and the breeze was cool, but not too cold, and life was good. He had just recently gotten permission from Kennedy Oaks’ Father to wed her. She would make his third wife - a very fine catch after the somewhat trollish appearance of the first two - God rest their souls. He’d married them when they were pretty but both had quickly become less than the trim figures of their youth.
Archibald deserved a little beauty around the house to offset the nagging, overwhelming auras of his squabbling two sisters. They fought constantly with each other, and it was often that he had to leave the house in order to find any peace at all.
Kennedy, he hoped, would balance things out. The two older women would have a young ‘child’ to care for and turn their motherly instincts toward so they would stop smothering Archie with their doting. She would also help him with the apple harvest this fall - the older women absolutely refused, stating that they were too old to break their backs hauling around bushels of fruit and that picking apples off the ground was beneath them. Archie shook his head upon the memory of the numerous times he tried to persuade his sisters that you didn’t pick up the apples that were on the ground, but instead plucked them off the trees.
And of course, the two women - being women - wouldn’t listen to him.
Archie was the owner of the apple orchard that he knew was a favorite haunt of his bride to be. Her parents had told him as much, and he had observed Kennedy and her friend Anne Carter - and sometimes that rowdy Sara Keith girl as well - coming back from the orchard on many occasions during the summer, linked arm in arm and chattering about one thing or another. Archibald, being the gentleman he was, tried not to eavesdrop on their conversation but instead bid them a cheerful greeting. They never paid him much heed, but perhaps that was a good thing - if they’d noticed his gray eyes trailing after Kennedy on her way back home they may have questioned his intentions.
Oh no, Archibald Winters was a man of honor and integrity. He would not harm a hair on Kennedy Oaks’ head. But he would have her as his wife in just a few short weeks. His heart fluttered wildly in his chest as he thought of announcing his intentions to her and subsequently to the village at the next Gathering. Kennedy would welcome him with open arms like any honorable, respectable girl would. And if she didn’t…
…Well, he’d think about that later.
Yes, sir. Life was good.
Archibald made his way up the path to the orchard, continuing his merry song. But as he grew closer to the shed which housed his tools, he frowned when he saw the door hadn’t been properly shut. Had he forgotten to latch it at the end of this year’s harvest? Archie shuddered to think of the wind blowing the door open and shut, open and shut for the many weeks that had passed since the harvest.
Or had someone else opened the door? Kennedy and her friends, perhaps? Or someone not from the village at all?
Archie frowned and slowed his approach, listening for anything out of the ordinary. There was no sound to be heard, as he’d half expected. Chances were, whoever had been in here - if it was someone who didn’t belong - had already taken what they wanted or slept however long they needed and left. But there was also the chance that his whistling had alerted the trespasser to his presence.
Archibald wished he’d brought his shotgun with him.
He edged up to the door and peered inside for a moment before ducking back out of sight again. Archie hadn’t seen anyone, but there was a strange pile of blankets by the back wall that hadn’t been there before. There was also an unexplainable scent of incense coming from the building. Eh, it’s gypsy drifters probably. Maybe some of those furry inbred scumbags from the Wilds. I don’t know how they made it past the patrols.
He looked again.
Archie came face to face with a pair of eyes - two black holes of death- which had a dark, unexplainable power. They called to him like a magnet, pulling him further into the shed and making him feel as if his soul was being slowly and painfully sucked out through his face.
The creature blinked, and for a brief moment Archibald was released from the eyes’ mesmerizing spell.
He screamed.
---
Anne jogged up the orchard path, fearing she was going to be late for her meeting with Kennedy. She had overslept and it had taken her longer to get ready thanks to how difficult her mother made it to leave the house. Eventually she’d won the battle, however, and Anne was finally allowed outside after she did all of her morning chores.
Anne was within sight of the orchard fence when she heard a man’s scream. At first she stopped in her tracks, her blood running cold in her veins and her face paling. Her sole relief was that the sound had most definitely not been Kennedy or Sara’s - but there was nothing else that could abate her fears.
Anne shot forward as fast as she could manage, making a beeline for the shed. She knew the scream could have only come from two things, the first being the wolf-creature and the second being a man from the village. And oh, how fervently she prayed it was the former and not the latter. If someone had discovered the wolf-creature, she would be in enough trouble to cover three lifetimes should the elders find out she had helped the wounded wolf onto their lands. Hunting parties regularly patrolled the borders to drive out intruders; if they would have found him unconscious on the ground there’s no doubt they would have shot the poor creature, not brought him to the old shed in the orchard.
But though Anne thought she had braced herself for the worst, no amount of breathing deeply or pushing emotions aside could have prepared her for what she would see when she threw open the shed door and looked inside.
Archibald Winters’ body lay on the dirt floor, his eyes wide open and soullessly staring into space, his mouth stretched into a wide ‘O,’ with blood oozing out of one corner of his lips and his entire throat ripped out. A very small puddle of blood pooled slowly beneath him - a surprisingly small amount given the way he had been killed.
Anne put both hands to her mouth and gasped. She would have screamed except for the fact that she simply wasn’t able to remember how to at that point. Instead she rushed to Archibald’s side and put her hands to his blood-smeared cheeks.
“Mr. Winters… Mr. Winters! Are you okay? What…” It was then that Anne saw the bloodied pruning shears which were lying nearby. They normally hung on the wall, but… maybe the man tried to use them to defend himself. His defense tactics obviously hadn’t worked, however, because Anne received no response from Archie’s still form. He was dead.
Anne began to sob, but the sound of approaching footsteps from outside reminded Anne that if Mr. Winters was still warm, then he had not been dead long - which meant that his attacker was still in the area. She was still in danger.
The girl grabbed the pruning shears in her bloody hands and turned to face the figure which had suddenly appeared in the doorway.
Kennedy.
The other girl was breathing hard, almost doubled over, her eyes wide and bugging out at the scene before her. Her trembling gloved hand rose to cover her gaping mouth as the true horror sunk in. Her fiancée - or fiancée-to-be - was dead; murdered horrendously in a barbaric way.
“Kennedy…” Anne gasped.
“Anne, what have you done?!” Kennedy shrieked. “What… why… Mr. Kennedy, Anne!”
“Ken, you’re not making sense, and you don’t understand!” Anne begged, stepping toward her. When Kennedy backed up a few steps with a sharp yelp, Anne remembered the shears in her hands and dropped them. “I’m not going to hurt you. I found him - someone murdered him.”
“YOU murdered him!” Kennedy screamed with the full strength of her lungs. “I knew you hated him! Anne, how could you? I thought you would get over it and get on with life like you always do!”
“You don’t understand, Kennedy!” Anne, who was now crying as well, shouted back with fear putting a slight tremor in her voice. “I found him like this. I heard a scream…”
But Kennedy didn’t stick around to listen to Anne’s defense. Her face in her hands, she ran off sobbing as fast as she could. She had to tell someone about this who could take care of the situation; anyone who would be able to punish Anne for her horrible, horrible sin. And maybe in the process, everything would be made right again.
Anne’s heart sunk further into her stomach with each of Kennedy’s footsteps. Each step took the other girl father away from her, both physically and emotionally. But each step also took the girl closer to the village, where the alarm would be raised. Soon a mob would be charging up the orchard path - and Anne would probably be hung for her crime.
The overwhelming enormity of the situation crashed in on her then with the force of a tidal wave. Anne’s knees buckled and she collapsed to the ground in a little ball. She covered her face with her hands and wept - wept for Mr. Winters, wept for Kennedy, who may have liked him after all, wept for Timothy because he would hate her, and wept for herself. Life had been ruined in the span of only a few short minutes. And where was Sara in all this?! If she had not gone missing maybe this would never have happened!
Anne’s cries covered up the sound of approaching footsteps, so she didn’t notice when someone came up behind her and stood over her as she sobbed.
“What’s wrong?” A masculine voice spoke softly from behind her. Anne didn’t recognize the voice immediately but she was too wrapped up in her grief to care. She assumed it was someone from the village, so she didn’t turn around to look.
“They’ll think I did it,” Anne squeaked, wiping her nose on her sleeve before sniffing loudly. “They’ll never believe me when I tell them I didn’t kill him.”
“You have blood on your hands. You were holding the shears.”
“But I didn’t do it!” Anne shrieked. “I found th…em…” She had whirled around to face the speaker, but instead of someone from the village she instead found… him. The wolf-creature she and Kennedy had dragged into the barn a couple of days ago now stood behind where she had been sitting. Anne gasped and covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes growing wide as she looked up - way up - to see his face.
He was much taller than she had expected. When he was on the ground it was much easier to assume he would be not much taller than the humans in the village, but while the tallest members were only six feet tall, the wolf easily topped them by at least a foot. He was leanly built and scrawny - she could see his ribs - but he also had a good deal of muscle. A pair of dark sunglasses covered his eyes - where he found them she didn’t know, but she could only assume they came from one of the pockets in his torn black shorts.
Most notable was the fact that the gaping wounds which he’d had only a day ago were gone as if they’d never existed. His dirty white fur covered him from head to toe with no holes, cuts, or even scratches. There weren’t even scars where logically there should have been.
“You’re not hurt…” Anne whispered. “What happened?”
The wolf grunted.
“Fast healer.”
“What’s your name?” Anne’s curiosity was starting to take over her fear of the creature. Questions began forming one after the other in her mind. Her fascination with the furry creature was slowly pushing her fear for her life into the back of her mind. She was astounded that he spoke English so fluently and without the lisp Sara had said many of the furry-things had.
“Gabriel.”
“Named after the Archangel?”
The wolf’s nostrils flared and his tail flicked as he hesitated to answer for a moment. It was as if her question had caught him off guard or brought back a memory he had to sort through before formulating a reply. When he did speak again, he sounded irritable.
“…No.”
“What are you?”
“There’s no time for your questions,” he growled, irritation canting his ears backwards as he looked over his shoulder toward the door. “They’ll be returning any minute to take you. If you want to live you’ll need to come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
The absurdity of Anne’s question was not lost on Gabriel. He scowled at her and pointed to the door. Her predicament suddenly came back to her and her face paled again as he spoke.
“If they find me here I’m as good as dead, like you! If you want to stay and face your own fate that’s up to you - but I’m not waiting around for you to make up your mind.”
“Where would we go?”
“Somewhere safe.”
His vague answer alarmed her, but at the moment Anne didn’t have a lot of choice. Did she want to stay and face a shameful death for a crime she didn’t commit, or did she want to escape death, be brave, and go on an adventure far grander and wilder than any of Sara’s escapades with a wolf-creature whom she was insatiably curious about?
“Let me at least get some clothes and food.”
“There’s no time,” Gabriel grunted, turning toward the door. “They’ll be here soon. We have to leave now. They’ll form a search party and go through the woods - we have to get as far out as we can, and with you with me, I doubt that’ll be far. Let’s go.” Anne started to object but Gabe cut her off. “Let’s go!”
Anne pouted but she finally got up and followed the wolf out of the shed. Her heart hammered in her chest - both with the realization and guilt of what they were doing and what the village would think she’d done and with the excitement of going off on an adventure with a creature of the Wilds.
This revelation stopped her in her tracks. She was going into the Wilds with a creature from the Wilds. What was she thinking?! Was she crazy? This thing could kill her at any moment! Just because it spoke English and was named after the Archangel didn’t mean it was a saint!
Gabriel noticed she’d stopped moving and turned his head over his shoulder expectantly.
“Keep moving,” he growled quietly.
“I can’t do this,” Anne whimpered. “This is crazy! Insane!”
“It’s suicide if you stay,” Gabe reminded.
“It may be suicide if I go! I don’t know what’s out there!” Anne jabbed a finger toward the forest.
“The chances of you dying out in the real world with me, away from your sheltered little village, are much less than if you stay here.”
His argument was simple but persuasive. It made Anne realize that he was right. If she wanted even a chance at living, she had to leave. The village elders did not abide murder, regardless of who committed it. No matter how much she or her parents objected, and regardless of her status as a saint-in-training, she’d be stripped of her honor and sentenced to death. Anne shuddered at the thought.
“Alright,” she said softly, starting forward again. “I’ll stay with you.”
Gabriel turned forward again with a small huff and set a quick pace toward the orchard fence. Anne could barely keep up with him in her tight, painful shoes - but she was better off in them than without them. Her feet, which had scarcely felt a rough surface in their lifetime, were so tender that running through the forest barefoot would probably cause them to bleed in a matter of seconds.
Anne was panting by the time they reached the fence. She was astonished to see that Gabriel leapt over and cleared the four foot tall barrier like it was nothing. Anne had to pull herself up, hook a foot over the top, and ungracefully throw herself over the top to land unbalanced on the ground - and by then Gabriel had already ran on a good fifty feet.
“Wait for me!” Anne complained. “I can’t run as fast as you!”
“And you never will.” Gabe answered as he looked back over his shoulder with irritation showing plainly on his face. But despite his impatience with her, the male slowed his steps until she caught up to him, huffing and puffing from such a hard and fast run. “It would be best if you learned how to clear obstacles gracefully. Saves time.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Anne demanded as she took off after him again. She was infatuated with this strange wolf creature and was astonished at all the things he could do with such little effort, but at the same time his attitude was grating on her.
“Watch me. Do what I do. When you come to an obstacle, don’t stop moving forward. Plant your hands on it first and push off with your feet. Let your momentum carry you over the obstacle and swing your feet out in front of you to land. That way you save time and conserve energy.”
Anne frowned and tried to picture it in her head. She’d have to pay closer attention to him the next time they came across something that needed vaulted over.
However the next obstacle that ran through their path was the border stream. The icy waters rippled soothingly down the streambed, splashing over rocks and fallen branches, carrying fallen leaves downstream to new lands. As a child Anne had believed that, in the fall when the leaves fell off the trees, they all floated downstream to find a warmer place to stay for the winter, like birds. Then in the Spring, they returned. Though the notion seemed silly now, it had made perfect sense when she was little.
Gabe didn’t slow his pace as he approached the stream. He just bunched his muscles when he reached the near bank and leapt clear to the other side without effort - a distance which was easily twenty feet. Anne pulled up at the stream bank, breathing hard.
“You can NOT expect me to be able to jump that.”
“No, I don’t,” Gabe answered flatly from the other side. He’d turned to face her. “But I do expect you to cross before they see you.”
Alarmed, Anne spun back toward the orchard, but found no sign of pursuit - yet. Gabriel crossed his arms and shook his head.
“No, you can’t see them. That’s because they’re just now coming into the orchard. They’ll be at the shed soon and then you can be sure it’ll be only a matter of time before they head this way.”
“How do you know that?” Anne turned back to the stream and gathered up her skirt before stepping gingerly across a few scattered stones whose surfaces poked above or only just beneath the water. “You can’t possibly see that far.”
“I can hear them.” Gabriel’s large white ears twitched; Anne realized then that they were noticeably larger than the proportions of a normal wolf’s ear.
“Do all of your people have such sharp senses?” Anne asked before she teetered precariously on a rock she’d misjudged. It wasn’t nearly as stable as she’d thought it was. However she did manage to move forward to a different rock before she fell into the water.
Gabe was fidgeting on the other side of the stream, clearly irritated by her slowness.
“No. Look, we’ve got to make better time. Don’t worry about getting your feet wet, we have to get going.”
“If they get wet I’ll freeze!”
“No you won’t. The blood rushing into your feet as you run and the body heat you generate during activity will keep them warm until we stop. And we’re not stopping for a very long time, so let’s. Get. Moving.”
Anne frowned at him but continued her dainty trek across the stream. Finally she reached the other side and Gabriel turned to run again.
“We’re running out of time; they’ve found the body.”