Unlikely Magic: A Cinderella Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 1) Read online

  Unlikely Magic

  Girl Among Wolves 1

  (A Cinderella Retelling)

  Unlikely Magic

  Copyright © 2017 Lena Mae Hill

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, and events are entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.

  Published in the United States by Lena Mae Hill and Speak Now.

  For more information, please visit www.lenamaehill.com

  ISBN-10: 1-945780-37-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945780-37-0

  Cover artwork by Mirella Santana. Typography by Desiree DeOrto.

  Part One

  Fourteen

  1

  The taxi driver tells me we’re almost there, that it’s just a little further. I want to answer, to be polite, but I can’t find words. The social worker probably told him what happened, that I’m an orphan. Technically, I suppose that’s not true. But I’ve never met my mother. The thought of her makes me need to swallow hard.

  Instead of speaking, I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes, blocking out the wave upon wave of blinding green assaulting my senses. I never knew so many trees existed, let alone grew so close together. A wall of ultraviolet, stifling forest flashes past on each side, as if we’re driving through an undersea tunnel. Dad would have known the name of every different tree, but they all look the same to me.

  My eyes snap open when the cab slows. It turns onto an unmarked forest path and rocks first one way and then the other as the wheels sink into potholes. I sit up straight and squint to see through the pattern of sun and shadow dappling the narrow road ahead. Trees loom on both sides, seeming to lean closer as we approach. It makes me shiver, how cocoon-like it feels, like a Venus fly trap ready to snap shut. Like the forest will reach into the car and pull me out, snakelike vines twisting around my helpless body, crooked roots dragging me into the ground to join Dad.

  I take shuddering breath and squeeze my eyes closed to force back the tears that threaten at the thought of him. Every time I think there can’t be any tears left in the world, especially not in me, I am proved wrong. I spent the last week in my room, sobbing until my throat was raw and my eyes felt like squeezed-out sponges.

  Even Emmy, my best friend since I was five, could not console me. She came over every day last week, telling me I needed to get out of my room, that her mom would take us to the mall. Any other day, any other week, those words would work like magic. I used to think there was nothing that shopping couldn’t fix. Now I know better.

  Ahead, a log seems to leap out of the dizzying pattern on the road, which has gotten progressively worse. Now, it’s not much more than a set of tire tracks through a narrow corridor of trees, grown up with a tangle of weeds. The driver sees the log at the last second, too, and he slams on the brakes. He curses under his breath as the cab rocks to a halt just before it would have smashed into the log lying across the trail that definitely no longer qualifies as a road.

  The driver turns in his seat to look at me. “I’m sorry, honey, this is as far as I go,” he says. He has an honest-to-God toothpick in the corner of his mouth. I want to tell Emmy so bad it hurts, but even more, I want to tell Dad.

  “Are—are you serious?” I ask, my fingers closing around the smooth honey-and-chocolate colored stone on the necklace Dad gave me when I was a kid. If I hadn’t promised him I’d never take it off as long as I live, I would have put it in the casket with him.

  “I’m real sorry,” the driver says, looking pained. “But I can’t ruin this car. It’s what pays the bills. Can you call ahead, have somebody come meet you? I don’t want to leave you out here alone…”

  He looks like he’s considering it, though. A dart of panic flickers through me at the thought of trekking through that shadowy passageway of looming trees. I pull out my phone, my hands shaking.

  No service. Not a single bar of my signal shows.

  I take a deep breath and stow my phone in my bag. “It’s okay,” I say. “I can walk in. They’re coming to meet me. You can go.”

  I don’t know why I say that. Maybe I just don’t know how long I can keep it together without bawling my eyes out. Again. And I don’t really want to do it in front of this guilty-looking stranger. Maybe it’s that I don’t want to admit how scared I am, and if he’s gone, he can’t see it. Or maybe I just don’t know what else to do, and I don’t want to hold him up any longer. He’s already driven across an entire state of Oklahoma to get me here. I hope Dad had enough in savings to pay for the day of driving, that the state didn’t have to pay to ship me out here like a charity case.

  “You sure about that?” the driver asks doubtfully.

  “Yeah, of course,” I say, climbing out of the back seat and shrugging into my puffy white jacket. The goose down is too warm for the autumn afternoon, which is only mildly chilly, but I didn’t have room for it in my suitcase.

  “How about I wait with you?” the taxi driver asks. He gets out and unloads my two suitcases from the trunk, all I had room to bring. I know I’m lucky. A lady at church got a foster kid once, and she said he came with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing. I think I would have died if I had to give away all my clothes. Emmy and I saved every penny of allowance, worked odd jobs, asked for money for Christmas instead of gifts—all to work on our wardrobes and buy makeup. When you’re planning a career as a model, looking the part is important.

  My former excitement at the prospect of that future is absent now. When I was packing, I kept telling myself that I might want cute shoes in my new home. But even then, I didn’t believe it. Nothing seemed to matter anymore—it was like I couldn’t see the colors or fabrics. Without Dad, the world has become flat and grey.

  “You don’t have to wait,” I tell the cab driver after an awkward few minutes of silence. “Really. I’ll be fine. They’ll be here any second.”

  “I don’t know,” he says, rubbing at the back of his head. He turns to look down the shadowy trail, deeper into the woods.

  I stifle a shriek.

  On the log in front of the car, just inches from his bumper, stands a woman.

  A woman who appeared out of nowhere, out of thin air. How long has she been standing there?

  “Come along, then,” she says, looking down her nose at me. I don’t have to ask if her name is Talia to know she’s my mother. Her hair is a few shades darker than mine, burnished gold rather than white, but it falls in the same soft waves. Though her heart-shaped face is severe, the pointy chin and wide-set golden eyes are familiar. Unlike me, she has apparently never heard of fashion. And why would she, living out here in the middle of nowhere? She’s wearing a brown wool sweater that hides her shape, a long green maxi skirt with brown hiking boots under it. When she steps off the log, I catch a glimpse of wool socks bunched above her boots.

  I try to formulate a greeting, but nothing comes. In the past week, I’ve imagined a hundred scenarios, pictured everything from tearful embraces to unending, probing questions to doubts about my identity. I’ve wondered what she’s like, this mother
who didn’t die in childbirth like Dad said, and what she’ll think of me. But none of it prepared me for this moment. It’s so…flat. So nothing.

  She gestures impatiently, and I pick up my two suitcases, staggering under the weight as I stumble towards the log.

  “You can go,” she says to the cab driver, flicking her wrist as if dismissing a dog.

  I cast one last pleading glance over my shoulder at him, but he’s already getting into the cab. And he can’t take me back there, anyway, back to my life. My life isn’t there anymore.

  As I struggle to drag one suitcase and then the other over the fallen log, my mother stands motionless, emptyhanded, regarding me with her cool gaze. I flash back to the moment Emmy asked if I wanted to move in with her. Now her charity seems more appealing than this mother I never knew existed.

  This morning, I was going to wear the same ratty grey sweatpants and one of Dad’s comfy sweaters that I’d been wearing all week. But I got nervous at the last minute and put on a pair of designer jeans, a tight long-sleeved t-shirt, and a pair of ankle boots. Now I wonder if it’s too much. Obviously, I should have worn hiking boots instead of heels But if my mother told the social workers that she lived in the middle of a freaking forest, they failed to convey the message.

  Talia strides ahead, leaving me to drag my suitcases over the rutted path. Thorny weeds choke the trail and scratch at my jeans, and I turn my ankle when my heel hits a soft spot where the dirt crumbles. I’m out of breath within minutes, already hot inside my puffy jacket. I blow my hair off my forehead and stop to shake out my arms.

  As I reach for the handles of my suitcases again, a movement in the woods catches my eye. Dread lurches in my gut. But when I turn, it’s only a deer, watching me with its wise, wide eyes. After a moment, it resumes chewing the leaf hanging out of its mouth. I pause, captivated by the its nearness, its serene beauty. I’m so close I can see each individual long, black eyelash on its deep brown eyes. Suddenly, its ears and tail shoot up, its eyes go wide, and it lets out a loud snort. It turns bounds away, disappearing into the trees within seconds.

  And there, standing twenty paces behind where the deer stood, is a crouching mountain lion. Adrenaline bursts through my chest, but I stand frozen, my body turning to liquid inside my skin. I open my mouth to scream, but all I manage is a pathetic, squeaky whisper. “Mother?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I turn, calling out in a slightly higher, tremulous voice, “Mother?” But she has disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. The path ahead is completely empty.

  2

  My heart is beating so hard I can’t hear anything but the rush of blood inside me, throbbing in my ears, choking me when I try to swallow. The mountain lion lowers its head and stalks forward, its eyes fixed on me. Why isn’t it chasing after the deer? What am I supposed to do? Unable to think of anything else, I crouch and unzip my boot, yanking it off as fast as I can, hopping around on one foot as I do so. When I set my foot down, a thorn pierces into my flesh, but I hardly feel it. I pull back and take aim, as if my chunky ankle boot will save me from the crushing jaws of this tremendous beast.

  Just as I’m about to release the boot, I hear one sharp, low bark. The mountain lion’s head whips around, and it bears its teeth. I can see its long, white canines gleaming with saliva as it growls at the grey wolf that has just stepped into view between two trees. I catch a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, and turn my gaze, searching the woods. After a second, I spot another grey wolf sliding gracefully through the forest towards the first one, this one a dark grey that blends in perfectly with the bark on the trees. A moment later, another one steps into view beside the one having a face-off with the lion.

  I don’t stick around to see what happens next. I’m an unarmed girl in a strange forest that’s apparently crawling with deadly predators. I shove my foot back into my boot, grab the handles of my suitcases, and take off at a hobbling run. Without looking back, I charge forwards, my entire body shaking so hard I don’t know how my legs are holding me up at all. A minute later, my mother steps into view, around a bend in the path ahead.

  “What’s the hold up?” she snaps.

  I open my mouth to tell her, but suddenly, I feel so stupid that I can’t. She’s looking at me like I’m a nuisance, and I haven’t even had a chance to get to know her. Somehow, I get the feeling that telling her I just saw a mountain lion facing off with a pack of wolves is not going to gain me any points in the “not a total liar” department. Already, I’m beginning to wonder if I hallucinated the whole thing. I mean, there are still wolves in national parks and stuff, but I’ve never heard of them roaming the woods in the wild. They all got killed off, didn’t they?

  And what are the chances that the first time I step into a forest, I’m going to see something like that? I mean, this is real life, not freaking Little Red Riding Hood. I must have been daydreaming, my fears about these creepy woods and all the shadows playing tricks on me.

  “Do you need some help with those?” my mother asks when I catch up to her, not as if she really wants to help, but as if she’s impatient to get going.

  “No, I got them,” I say, ignoring her scowl. Gripping the handles, I push onwards. I’m not going to ask for help from this frosty woman who abandoned me…when? At birth? I don’t remember her. Maybe she was there and I blocked it out, like the accident that has shadowed my life since I was three years old.

  I don’t remember the accident, either, but Dad told me I fell down the attic steps and hit my head on the floor so hard that I had a seizure. We moved to Oklahoma City after that, to be close to a brain specialist who could monitor the after-effects. These took the form of seizures, night terrors, and migraines so bad that I’d hallucinate strange, nightmare images or black out entirely. Lucky me.

  It’s been the two of us all my life—me and my nerdy dad, with his corny sense of humor, his overprotectiveness, and his stories. Stories like how my mother was madly in love with me the moment she found out she was pregnant. How she bawled her eyes out with happiness when she saw the ultrasound, how she agonized over twenty names because she only wanted the very best for her baby girl. How she finally chose Stella, which means star, because I was her whole universe now.

  How much of it was a lie? All of it? This woman sure doesn’t act like I’m her whole universe. Or even a speck of dirt in her universe.

  At last, when it feels like I’ve hiked ten miles and my shoulders are cramping with pain, I hear voices ahead. Not wild animal noises, not roars and howls and snarls and screams of agony. Just normal voices. Laughter, even. For a second, I think that somehow, it will be okay.

  Then we step out of the woods into a long clearing, and everything goes silent. Ahead a group of kids probably not much older than me are tossing a Frisbee on an expanse of grass. An old woman with flyaway hair reclines nearby, sunning herself, her long skirt pulled up to reveal wrinkled, blue-veined thighs. Two little kids sit in a patch of sandy soil, intently digging with bent spoons. A worn wooden platform stands at the edge of the trees, and beyond that, a huge ring of stones. On the other side of the path, picnic tables crowd under and around a covered pavilion, and then the forest resumes.

  My attention returns to the kids my age. A black guy and an Asian guy, both wearing glasses, sweaters, and dark jeans that actually fit them, are playing Frisbee with a purple-haired white girl wearing skinny jeans and a vintage t-shirt featuring the faded outline of some rock band. They don’t look like backwards hillbillies. They look impossibly cool and sophisticated, as if I’ve stumbled onto the commons at a liberal arts college instead of some forest encampment.

  The moment we appear, the purple-haired girl catches the Frisbee and stumbles backwards, towards the trees. Every pair of eyes turns to us. Before last week, I might have enjoyed the attention. If I wasn’t sweaty and disheveled, a blister burning on my heel, my ankle throbbing where I turned it; I might enjoy it. If I’d worn makeup, if my eyes weren’t swollen and red, if my dad was
still alive, I might enjoy their attention.

  Instead, I feel like a little kid who fell into a mud puddle in front of all the big kids.

  My mother takes a determined step forward, her head held high. After a second, I square my shoulders and do the same. Maybe they’re staring at her, not at me. But as we pass, they each retreat a step or two, keeping their backs to the woods and their faces towards us. I refuse to analyze their expressions. No one turns away. It’s like some kind of procession of the damned.

  “Weird,” I mutter under my breath, another shiver wracking my body.

  We pass the cluster of kids my age, and I take in my surroundings. On our left, the huge circle of rocks forms a fire ring, ashes and charred bits of wood from a bonfire still inside. Then we are passing the pavilion and picnic tables, stepping back into the sparse woods, though they seem lighter here, less threatening. My mother leads the way along a wide, well-worn dirt path that looks way better than the road we drove in on.

  “What’s going on?” I ask when we’re alone again. “Why is everyone staring at us?”

  My mother gives me a look that could make coals shiver and picks up the pace. We emerge from this set of trees into what looks like a summer camp. There are little log cabins all around, with dirt paths leading to each door. Some have smoke coming from chimneys. A little boy and girl are stacking wood on the front porch of one house. When they see us, they start whispering and casting curious glances our way.

  My mother does not slow.

  I run to catch up as she leads us past a few more cabins. Ahead, a group of kids who look about my age are approaching along the red dirt path. Only then does my mother falter, muttering under her breath.

  “El-lee,” one of the boys calls out in a sing-song. “Ba-by.” I wonder if he’s talking to my mother, and I marvel at how casual he is to her. He’s walking just in front of the others, a swagger in his step. He’s taller than the others, with thick, shiny hair the color of spilled ink and a luscious-lipped smile. He is, as Emmy would say, delicious looking.