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

  He’s not going to have to wait forty years. I want to run after him, to tell him I didn’t mean it. He’s my friend. I’d never want to hurt him. I want to rewind time and take it back. He has to know that I wouldn’t expect an important position in the pack after I killed its leader. I’m smart enough to know that. I have to tell him that. But then I remember those icy eyes, burning with molten hatred. All he’s thinking right now is that he just lost his father. And I’m the one to blame.

  I’ve never seen more clearly than I do at this moment, sitting in the dirt wiping my face clean of tears and blood that is only partly mine. Mother’s said it, I’ve said it, but for the first time I truly understand that I’m not one of these people. I’m not even sure I can call them people anymore. They aren’t humans who turn into animals on occasion. They are animals disguised as humans. Their first instinct is to protect the pack. The second is to kill intruders. And I am an intruder. An intruder who attempted to murder their king.

  Part Three

  Sixteen

  1

  Mother drops a basket of clothes onto the floor in front of my couch. I startle, not having heard her come in over the sound of furiously sanding the leg I made for the coffee table downstairs. Even though I’ll never use the table, it keeps me busy, which keeps me sane.

  “Let me guess,” she says. “You don’t know how to sew.”

  I sit back on my heels and look up at her from where I was working on the floor. “No,” I say. “I don’t know how to sew.”

  She sighs to let me know it’s a huge imposition to teach me. But she sits down on my couch, still covered with a sheet. I’m not used to having company, and I find myself looking around the room to make sure nothing is out of place, nothing that will bring Mother’s wrath down upon me. In here, my only companions are the trusty Tom and Jerry, who still creep out to get crumbs after every meal. Sometimes, I lure them into my hands and let them eat off my palms. My sisters rarely come into my room now.

  Ever since the incident last spring, things have been different. People are afraid. No one goes anywhere alone. Since the day I incapacitated their leader, there has been a funeral for every two or three lunar meetings. The enemy knows the wolves are weak, acting on autopilot, unable to coronate Harmon until the next lunar eclipse. Elidi whispered to me one day that if Zechariah was still a functional Alpha, he would have declared war with the neighboring tribe. But that’s not quite true. The enemy would not be so bold as to encroach on wolf territory if they had an Alpha.

  But without a healthy Alpha, the pack operates on “pack law,” which is basically a state of emergency shutdown. No big decisions can take place until Harmon is coronated and takes over. Once, he said his first act would be to get me out of here. I know not to expect that anymore. Even Mother looks at me with more distrust, maybe even wariness, where she used to have only contempt for me. I almost killed their Alpha. It’s not just that I hit him with the blunt end of the hatchet. It’s that I didn’t scream the moment I saw that man, the one offering my salvation. I shouldn’t think about leaving, shouldn’t equate escape with being saved.

  But I still do.

  If I could do it differently, I would have thrown myself into Efrain’s arms the moment I saw him and told him to take me. Whatever price I had to pay, it would have been worth it. It would have been better to take a chance than to stay here, chained in the attic, trapped like a fly in amber, in the slow, monotonous life of an observer. It’s like I’m trapped in a glass coffin, waiting to die while I watch everyone else live.

  “Good,” Mother says when I’ve gotten the hang of wielding a needle and thread. She stands and pushes the basket towards me with her foot. “Mend all the tears in your finest, smallest stitches. Then maybe you’ll be ready to help me sew dresses for the coronation.”

  I swallow hard, my memory flashing back to the last time Harmon looked at me, with murderous hatred in his eyes. “Am I going?” I ask.

  Mother scoffs. “No.”

  A mixture of relief and longing fill me. “But…he told me I had to go.”

  Her eyes narrow as she studies me. Can she see the blush that still creeps onto my skin when I remember the day he said that, the day of my first kiss? My only kiss?

  “Harmon will learn to be an effective leader,” she says. “But he’s still young and naïve. He doesn’t know the danger that would put you in.”

  I swallow the baseball-sized lump in my throat. I don’t dare look at her as I utter my next words. “You could protect me.”

  “Yes, well,” she says. “After what you did, you can’t blame the pack for the way they see you. It would be too easy to lose sight of you. Even if none of them came around, you could be injured by accident. And we expect them to make trouble, with a new and inexperienced leader taking over. You know how often they’ve attacked since Zechariah hasn’t been at full capacity.”

  She doesn’t say the next words. She doesn’t have to. The attacks, the deaths, the injuries… As Zechariah would have said, they’re on my hands. The enemy is taking full advantage of the pack’s weakness. Even my mother isn’t cruel enough to rub that in my face, though.

  Still, when she leaves, the seed of anger inside me glows red. It wasn’t exactly an accident, what I did. But I’d rather they kill me and get it over with than leave me chained here like an animal forever. Apparently, Zechariah’s mental facilities can’t think up a fitting punishment, so I’ve been waiting here for my sentence for almost a year. Wondering what punishment Harmon will choose when he takes over.

  When Mother packs up my sisters for her trip into town a few days later, I don’t even hope she’ll bring home extra fabric to make a dress for me. I can hardly remember what it’s like to feel pretty. I can hardly remember what it feels like to be free, either. And somehow, that seems much more important.

  That morning, when Elidi brings me back from my outhouse excursion, she’s so excited she can hardly contain herself. “I’ve never had a real dress before,” she says as we climb the back steps and go into the house. She shoves my plate into my hands and whispers, “I can’t wait to show you.”

  “Me, too,” I say with a smile.

  Mother calls to her from out front, where she’s loading the pickup truck with bags of trash. Elidi calls back that she’s coming, so I step onto the stairs. My legs are trembling as I wait for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs behind me. But she goes out front instead, hurrying to do anything that will speed the process and get her closer to the big day. She’s not escorting me. For the first time in nine months, I’m free of both my chain and the watchful eyes of my jailers.

  I know all the way down to my bones that this is my last shot. I won’t have a chance again before the coronation. Though I don’t have a plan, I have to try. If I wait until they’re off in town, I can do the same thing I’ve done before—try to run. But even if my mother is not watching me, there’s the rest of the pack. There’s the creepy forest. And the rival pack.

  While they throw a bunch of trash bags in the back of the truck to take into town, along with a mower that needs to be repaired, I wait, my heart slamming in my chest. Even Zora has cut the surly act and is skipping around, excited about the dress she’ll wear to the coronation. I keep waiting for my chance, listening at my door. At last, Mother says they are ready. My heart sinks. I’ve run out of time.

  But then it comes. Mother goes to the outhouse out back while Zora runs up to Fernando’s to get something. I hear her calling out the back door, telling Mother to swing around and get her from his house. On bare feet, I slip down the stairs, my heart thundering loud enough to shake my entire body. This is it. I race out the front door, down the steps, and stop short. Elidi is not at Fernando’s with Zora. She’s in the cab of the truck.

  I meet her eyes in the side mirror, and for a long moment, we both freeze. Then I race for the truck, climb onto the bumper and over the tailgate, and nestle down into the bags of trash, pulling one over me just as the screen door sl
ams. Did Mother see the trash bags moving? I’m breathing so hard I think I’ll faint as she climbs into the cab of the truck and cranks it to life. The black plastic sticks to my face, and I try not to breathe in the stink of mildew and plastic around me.

  Suddenly, the truck rocks to a halt. Did Elidi rat me out? I swallow hard, trying not to puke. A screen door slams nearby. I wait for Mother to drag me out and throw me on the ground, beat me until I’m nothing but bone dust and blood. Instead, footsteps race along the side of the truck. I can’t breathe. The truck door slams, and I hear Zora talking excitedly in the cab. The truck begins to roll forward again.

  For a couple minutes, we bump along the rutted road through the community. My breathing slows. Though it’s not hot out, the trash bags give me no air, and I start to sweat. The truck slows again, then comes to a stop. What now?

  Someone comes up to the truck, and I hear a boy’s voice talking to Mother through the window. “Got room for a little more?” he asks.

  I swallow hard enough to cause an earthquake. It’s Harmon.

  “Just throw it in the back,” Mother says. My heart nearly explodes inside me. Something heavy falls on the trash bag directly on top of me, knocking my breath from my lungs. But I can’t move, not now. He’s still there. Another bag crushes down on me, and I gasp for breath. Just my luck to die this way. Smothered under a heap of trash.

  “Let me settle your load,” he says, and I feel the truck sink as he climbs on. No, no, no. This cannot be happening. I’m so close. I’ve been waiting to sneak out in her truck ever since I decided that I couldn’t leave from here. This was my chance. It can’t end so soon.

  Suddenly, I’m blinking up into sunlight, blinded, gasping in a fresh mouthful of air. Harmon looms over me, his expression a mask of shock. Before I can think, I bring my knees up to my chest and release, my feet slamming into him where it hurts most. He cries out in pain, grabbing himself and falling to his knees in the shifting mountain of trash. I jump to my feet and punch him in the ear as hard as I can.

  I leap for the edge of the truck bed, but a bag rolls under my feet and I fall. Gripping the edge of the truck, I heave myself out and run. Damn it. I didn’t want to be running blind again, like a terrified animal. But here I am, with no plan, just running. Past his house, where the road ends. A small footpath leads into the woods, and I take it, racing past a long stretch of thorn bushes, darting around a scattering of green fruit lying under a huge walnut tree, leaping across the gentle trickle of a stream.

  Mother’s enraged screams echo in my ears, and I hear footsteps on the path behind me. I hear Efrain’s shouts in my memory. RUN!

  I run. Leaves and rocks slide under my bare feet, branches whip across my face and thorns tear at my legs. Still, I run. I should have run that day. I should never have joined a fight that wasn’t mine to join, a girl battling monsters. Today, I run like I’ve never run in my life, scrambling up a forested mountainside. I can make out something through the trees, at the top of the low mountain. Something white ahead looks like a lighthouse, but it must be some kind of observation tower. If it belongs to the Forest Service, maybe there is a person there. A human. If only I can get there before my burning lungs and shaking muscles give out.

  Suddenly, a tawny mountain lion is standing in my path. I scream, veering sideways, my heart convulsing inside me. With a burst of adrenaline, I shoot forwards. But something wraps around my ankle, and I pitch forwards. Instead of slamming to the ground, I’m suddenly whisked into the air. Another shriek tears from my lungs as I find myself suspended in midair, hanging upside down by a thick, ropy vine. Seconds later, the thick trunk of a tree comes speeding towards my face, and I slam into it, and the world goes black.

  When I open my eyes, my head is throbbing with blood. Somewhere below, I hear a snarl, a roar. Wolves howling and growling. My muscles begin to pull and contract. Pain. Blackness.

  I blink awake. The parade of nightmare images and hallucinations begins. My father’s face swims before my eyes. I blink again, and it’s my mother’s. The ceiling of my attic room, my arms bound with sheets. Harmon holding my sister while she cries, his face pale and stricken. The cardboard-like tea pellets. Blackness.

  Elidi is holding my hand, tears on her face.

  Dark.

  Harmon and my mother yell at each other.

  Dark.

  My mother stares into the mirror Zora loves so much.

  Dark.

  Dr. Golden hovers over me. My mother pours scalding tea down my throat. Blackness. No more pain.

  2

  Two days later, when they make their second attempt at trip into town, I’m back on my chain that holds to the chimney cutting through my room. It has just enough length to reach the window, so I can watch from above as the ancient Nissan truck bumps up the driveway and out of sight. Then I go back to folding laundry. Since last spring, I’m no longer allowed to hang it or take it in off the line, but I get to fold everyone’s, a job I can do in my attic room. A job I can do today, with bruises along my arms and legs from the sheets that bound me to the bedframe, my lips split, nose swollen, and eyes blackened by my run-in with a tree trunk.

  When Mother returns, she brings enough fabric for each of my sister’s dresses. They run in from the truck, their bags overflowing with slinky satin and voluminous mountains of tulle. I listen to them squeal and giggle downstairs, and for the first time in months, I let myself think of Emmy. I push the thought away, though, because it’s not helpful anymore. It only hurts.

  Though I crush memories like mosquitos when they arise, I welcome fantasies. Some days, it’s the only thing that keeps me breathing. In some tiny part of my mind, I can’t quell the hope that they came home with a little extra, that Mother will say that wolf law dictates everyone attend the coronation. But hope is now nothing more than a fantasy worn as thin as the lace-like leaves of the bean bushes at the end of summer, when the bean beetles have eaten away everything but veins.

  Instead of bringing material for a dress, Mother unchains me to help her haul up a yellowed mattress with rings of stains, something she must have bought used or picked up off the side of the road. It’s a full-sized one, so it doesn’t fit exactly on the frame I made, but it’s better than a couch.

  Over the next several months, Mother does most of the sewing on a machine downstairs, making each dress from patterns she bought online. Then it’s my turn to do the hemming and detail work, something I’ve practiced for hours every day since she taught me to sew. After all, I can do that while chained in the attic.

  I’m edgy when my sisters enter my room, taking their turns standing in their dresses while I pin the hems. I’m on Zora’s one day when they finally break their silence and start talking to each other, unable to hold in their excitement. For weeks, months, all I’ve heard about is this eclipse party.

  “You don’t understand,” Elidi says with a sigh. “This is a big deal. It’s the changing of the guards.”

  “You do know that happens every day, right?” I ask, although I’m not sure myself. Movies and TV shows where I learned things like that seem hypothetical now, something that only exists in theory.

  “Whatever,” Zora says, kicking out the fabric on the side of her skirt and getting my knuckle in the process. I wince, but I don’t say anything. “I’m sure it’s no big deal to you and your fancy city clothes, but getting a nice dress doesn’t happen very often for us. If ever.”

  “We weren’t rich,” I say. “I don’t know where you and Mother get that idea. Dad was a professor, not a rock star.”

  “Whatever,” Zora says again.

  “It’s just, well, we don’t need dresses,” Elidi says. “We have everything we need. It’s not like we’re starving. But when will we ever wear a dress?”

  “That’s true,” I say, thinking of the few sundresses I brought, crumpled in a suitcase for over two years, undoubtedly too small now. Mother took my measurements—awkward—and ordered clothes online when she went to town to o
rder fabric for my sisters’ dresses. I imagined her bringing home a surprise, something to flatter my pallid, prisoner-in-the-attic complexion the way the buttery yellow satin Zora picked out will flatter hers, and the delicate blue tulle with silvery beading will complement Elidi’s. But even then, it was a vague fantasy, one I knew would never come true. After all the cutting and sewing, the scant bit of extra fabric goes into a scrap basket. This is my life. Not one of fancy dresses and coronations.

  I don’t want to go, anyway.

  “So, how does this party work?” I ask without looking up from Zora’s hem. I try to make my voice come out even, like I’m just making conversation. I’m still an outsider, even if Mother has broken me like a horse, trained me in the ways of obedience.

  “A new pack leader can’t take over until a total eclipse,” Zora says haughtily, like I’m a peasant who just asked about the ways of royalty, and she’s bestowing me with a great gift by telling me. “That’s why Harmon didn’t step in after the attack.”

  “What happens during an eclipse if you don’t get a new leader?”

  “Other things go on during those parties.” She smiles smugly at me, and I know she’s enjoying my ignorance.

  “That’s when we have our mating ceremonies,” Elidi pipes up. I catch Zora’s annoyed glance at her sister.

  I try to hide my disgust at the thought of a werewolf orgy. “Mating ceremonies?”

  “Yes,” Elidi says. “When we Choose our mates. I told you, we mate for life. Of course, Harmon does his Choosing first, since he’s the leader. But others will be mated that night, too, if they’ve already Chosen.”