Ghostly Snow: A Dark Fairy Tale Adaptation (Girl Among Wolves Book 3) Read online

  “Ah,” she says. “That explains the murderous tiger.”

  She turns and lopes along the branch to a circular enclosure that looks like a hot air balloon turned upside down. “A lot of witches aren’t choosy about little things like gender,” she says. “All those people back there, they’re my collective. That’s what we call our circle of…what do shifters call it? Mates? Witches don’t get just one mate. We get a collective of mutually beneficial relationships.”

  “Those are all your mates?”

  “Yep,” she says, hopping down into the balloon-like room. I find that after so long as a tiger, I’m wobbly as a human, but also fearless about walking along the branches and dropping into the swaying capsule with her. I wriggle through the opening and look around. It’s a small enclosure, about the size of a closet, with walls made up of living branches of the host tree. I wonder if it’s haunted, and if it gets mad, will it open the branches and drop me twenty feet above the ground or crush me like a Venus fly trap?

  “Is this safe?” I ask.

  Haven laughs. “This will be your nest. Everyone in the hive has one. That’s what we call our little community.”

  “And…who all lives up here?”

  “Right now, just me and my collective,” she says. “We look out for each other, use our gifts to contribute.”

  “I’ll find something to contribute,” I say. “I can clean, build stuff…my cooking’s edible.”

  “For now, just worry about staying out of the way of that she-wolf,” she says. “Here’s a hammock to sleep in.” She pulls the item from a stub on the branch where it hangs and shows me how to string it up. “That’s about it. We don’t have much. We’re the rag-tag crew of the Three Valleys. Like Robin Hood’s merry men. Except we only steal by necessity,” she adds with a wink.

  “It’s perfect. I really appreciate you taking me in like this. All of you.”

  “Sorry you had your magic bound up. Or whatever shifters call it.”

  “I’m not actually sure. But maybe you can work on undoing it?”

  “No problem,” she says. “Just warning you, though, it might make it worse. I might turn you into a mosquito. Shall I try now?”

  “Um…maybe later.”

  Haven reaches up, and a branch thrusts itself into the hole at the top of the capsule. “Ready to go to dinner?”

  As we swing back, I ask, “Am I taking someone’s hammock? I could make up my own shelter if you have tools. I’m pretty handy with a hammer.”

  “No, that was Zinnia’s. She came here with Kale, but she couldn’t handle it, so she went back to live with the faeries. Broke poor Kale’s heart. He’s my newest addition. If you need to crawl in a warm hammock now and then, his is the one. I don’t mind sharing a little.”

  My heart twists at the thought of moving on from Harmon, and I shake my head. “That’s not necessary.”

  When we’ve descended from the trees, we follow a dirt path to a circle of stones. I glance around, my heart missing a beat. I’ve been here. I ran here once, when I was trying to escape the wolves. They attacked me in this very clearing, though Harmon tried to defend me. At the time, I thought it was my sister. Only later did I find out he’d risked everything, defying his father and Alpha, to protect me. I swallow hard and tear my eyes away from the spot where it must have been.

  “Are we in wolf territory?” I ask, turning to Haven.

  “Nah,” she says. “But we’re close. We hang out on the borders of the territories, where no one bothers us. If we tried to set up a colony in the valley, they’d chase us off. But no one’s using this spot, so they leave us alone. Once in a while, someone will come up and cause trouble. But they’re mostly harmless.”

  I keep my eye on the juniper tree standing at the edge of the clearing, though. I’m not sure it’s harmless.

  Yorn stomps around grumbling and shoving bits of wood and dry leaves into the circle of stones at the center of the clearing while Kale skins a rabbit nearby. Haven snaps her fingers over the pile of sticks and leaves, and a spark flies from her fingers like she just hit two pieces of flint together. She catches me staring and grins. “Fire witch,” she says with a shrug.

  Once the fire is blazing, she takes me to a little stream and fills a black kettle, which she hangs over the fire when we get back. Uzula comes back from the woods with a handful of roots, which she and Xela take to the stream to wash and then chop with short, dull knives on a stone plate.

  When the food is boiling in the pot, everyone sits along a fallen log next to the fire. I take a seat at the end, next to Xela, who begins combing her long, straight hair with a forked twig. “Who do you want to start us off?” she asks. “We have so many stories you haven’t heard. What do you want to hear first?”

  “Maybe we should let her tell her story first,” Kale says. “None of us have heard that one.”

  “I don’t think you really want to hear that,” I say.

  “Sure we do,” Xela says. “You’re an exiled tiger princess. Sounds exciting to me.”

  “It’s pretty boring, actually.”

  “Tell us,” Haven says. “How’d you end up an enemy of the wolf people?”

  “Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I thought my dad died, and I came here to live with my mother. She kept me in her attic for a few years, so not much interesting happened then, except I found out about the werewolves. And I’m guessing you already know about them. And then I found out my dad was actually still alive, and a shifter, so I went to live with him. But I guess you already know about shifters, too.”

  They all nod, and Yorn picks up a twig and runs it back and forth in the large gaps between his square teeth.

  “That’s why your mother wants to kill you?” Haven asks.

  “I don’t think she wants to kill me,” I say. “But she’s glad I’m gone.”

  They all exchange looks, and I get the feeling I’m missing something important. Haven goes to stir the pot of soup hanging over the fire. “Exactly how long were you in tiger form without seeing your wolf family?” she asks.

  “Since last summer.”

  “What happened last summer?”

  I quickly fill them in on my brief captivity with Harmon, and how I had to leave him so he could run his pack, and how my mother told me never to come back.

  “There may have been a few changes since then,” Haven says, picking up a stack of stone bowls. She ladles soup into them, and Kale passes them to everyone along the log. At last, they settle onto the log with us. “Of all the people in the Three Valleys, the wolf people are most secretive and isolationist,” Kale explains. “The shifters, as you may know, have incorporated themselves into human society, while keeping their…alter identities a secret. But they send their kids to school and all that. And us…well, in this valley, there’s the coven and a faerie troupe. Witches and faeries have a tense relationship. At one point, we were allies. But mostly, we inflict unspeakable cruelty on each other.”

  “Unspeakable,” Haven agrees, nudging him with her elbow and giving him her cheeky smile. She lifts her bowl and slurps soup from it. Everyone else is doing the same. Since there’s not a spoon in sight, I follow suit.

  “All the other creatures live here, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not, but we make it work,” Kale says. “Wolves are very territorial. They’ll attack anyone who sets foot in their valley.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I tell them.

  “You hunted there as a tiger, though,” Xela says with a belch. “Your Alpha is not happy.”

  “Our Alpha?” I ask, remembering Harmon the night I left. Does he hate me for that? I thought he’d understand, that he’d be grateful after the hurt wore off. I did the right thing.

  Didn’t I?

  Haven wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “She knows you’re out here. She knows you come and go from her valley at your convenience, and she doesn’t like it.”

  “She?” I ask, confused. “That can’t be right.”

/>   “A-yup,” Haven says, nodding grimly. “She’s offering a reward for your capture.”

  I swallow hard and set my bowl on my knees, my stomach knotting. Is this a trap? Have they rendered me a helpless human, and now they’re feeding me sleeping potions, planning to turn me in for some reward money? Yeah, I killed some deer and groundhogs and stuff. I didn’t think that warranted a Wanted poster.

  “Don’t worry,” Kale says, resting a slim hand on my forearm. “We’re not going to turn you in.”

  “We could turn her in,” Yorn grumbles. “Who knows what we could ask in return. Use of their land for gathering things we need, immunity from wolf attack…”

  “Wolves don’t attack here,” Xela points out. “They never leave their valley.”

  “How about we turn you in?” Uzula asks, her black hair shimmering like a waterfall in the firelight. “You don’t bring much to the group.”

  “We’re not turning anyone in,” Haven says. “We take in any manner of outcast, remember? All sins of the past are forgiven.”

  “Especially if they make great stories,” Xela says with a grin. “Isn’t that right, Doralice?” She looks up, and at first, I think she’s talking to the sky. And then the juniper tree sways, and I freeze. I knew that name sounded familiar. That’s what my mother called her, all those years ago. Doralice. My father’s first wife. My stepmother. A freaking tree in the Enchanted Forest. And a friend of this band of oddballs who have taken me in.

  Chapter 5

  When we’ve eaten, I offer to go wash the bowls in the stream, but Haven stops me. “You got a job to do first,” she says.

  I glance around, noticing the way the others are all watching me intently.

  “A-yup,” she says. “You’ve got to meet Doralice.”

  “I do?” I ask, swallowing hard. The tree stands sentinel over the clearing, looking as innocent as any other tree.

  “You get to feed her,” Haven says, placing a bowl in my hands. I hadn’t noticed the extra bowl they’d left out to cool while we ate.

  “Do I have to?” I whisper. “What if she doesn’t like me?”

  “Doralice likes everyone,” Xela says. “She’s just lonely. That’s why we come up here to eat and tell stories, give her some company. And feed her.”

  “If you say so.” I take a tentative step towards the tree. It stands motionless. Waiting.

  It didn’t hurt me before. It just grabbed me and didn’t want to let go. It gave me a memory I didn’t know I had, and told me it was my mother.

  I’m at the tree before I’m ready to repeat the creepy experience. It’s so tied up with the wolf attack that I can’t separate it. It seems ominous and dark, as dangerous as that night. Glancing back, I give the others a questioning look.

  Xela motions me to go on. Kale gives me a sympathetic smile, which is a little more terrifying than encouraging, since his teeth look like they could slice off my hand in one bite. I kneel down beneath the tree and set the bowl down. Someone clears her throat behind me.

  Oh, right. Trees can’t eat from bowls.

  Carefully, I tip the soup out onto the ground at the base of the tree, though I wouldn’t have minded having another bowl myself. Besides lacking salt, it was pretty tasty. And it seems a waste to dump it on the ground. I don’t think trees actually eat anything but water and sunlight, but I don’t want to offend the others by pointing out the silliness of their tradition. People have given sacrificial offerings for thousands of years. That’s all this is.

  Something scratches the back of my head and I almost scream. Instead, I hold myself very still while the spiny juniper needles rake over my scalp. “My daughter,” her voice whispers into my head, as if it’s coming from inside my mind instead of from the scratchy fingers in my hair. “You return to me at last.”

  I jerk away and scramble backwards on my hands and feet, out of her reach. Terror grips me as I remember those clinging branches that didn’t want to let me go. Just one more thing that wants to trap me, imprison me.

  The others are laughing. I jump to my feet, anger bubbling inside me. “What’s so funny? Did you set me up?”

  “Meeting Doralice for the first time is always an experience,” Haven says. “What did she say?”

  It strikes me then that they don’t know. Of course they didn’t set me up. They couldn’t hear what she said to me. They don’t know that she’s my stepmother, that I’ve met her before. That my father married her.

  I take in the faces of the others, amused and curious. No malicious intent. After living with my mother, it’s hard to believe someone can laugh at me without it being spiteful or hateful. That someone might not have ulterior motives for each morsel of kindness dealt out. But I know better than to hope they might be a family to me. I’ve had two families—the father I grew up with, who was a selfish liar, and the mother who treated me like a disease. I’m not sure I want to tell the group what Doralice said, to tell them who I am to her. I don’t know if I can trust them yet.

  Taking a breath, I force a shaky laugh. “She spoke inside my head,” I say.

  “It’s weird at first,” Xela agrees. “But you get used to it. I like to sit on her branches and listen to her stories. And she likes us. She’s a misfit like us.”

  I wonder how a tree can be a misfit, especially if there are lots of haunted trees out here. But I keep my mouth shut, not wanting to offend. Uzula comes down to the stream with me, and we wash out the dishes. My hands are numb with cold when we finish, and I hurry back to warm my hands by the fire when we’re done. Xela goes to say goodnight to Doralice, and then we all tromp back through the woods to the hive. The night is cold and damp, and our breath makes little clouds in the deepening dusk. Leaves crunch underfoot, and I feel exposed and endangered in my human form.

  “Want to sleep in one of our nests tonight?” Haven asks when we stop. It takes me a second to realize we’re back at the hive already. If I wasn’t looking up, searching for oddly rounded branches, I’d never notice the nests. I have to admire the camouflage.

  “I’m okay,” I say, remembering her invitation to climb in bed with Kale.

  “It might be wise, just until the trees know you,” she says. “They’re not always hospitable to newcomers.”

  I glance around, my earlier ease gone. It was easy to feel safe while sitting around the fire with this lively bunch. Now that she’s telling me the trees aren’t so kind, I remember my mother’s warning about the Enchanted Forest. I remember my own experiences.

  “Once they know your intentions, you’ll be fine,” Haven says, squeezing my arm.

  I pull back instinctively. “How long will that take?”

  “Not long,” she says. “Just give them a chance. Send out good vibes.”

  “Good vibes.” I give her my best no-B.S. look.

  “You’d be surprised what nature picks up on,” she says. “Witches believe in energy. We harness the energy of the universe, of the elements. That’s our magic. Don’t be deceived by the apparent non-sentience of inanimate objects. You’d be surprised how much they channel your energy.”

  “Okay, sure,” I say. “I should probably not trust the trees to carry me around until I actually believe that, though.”

  “You can stay with me. Don’t worry, we’ll grab your hammock on the way. Unless you’d rather stay in mine…” She wiggles her eyebrows at me.

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’m not interested in a relationship right now.”

  “Who said anything about a relationship?” she asks with a wicked grin. “You’re not a wolf. Tigers don’t mate for life.”

  I shrug, kicking at a mossy stone. “It feels like it right now.”

  “Too bad,” she sings, skipping over to grab a vine. “Witches are rad lovers.”

  “I thought you had like five lovers already,” I say, joining her. I wrap my arms around her and cling on while the vine lifts us up to the first platform.

  “I’m a people person,” she says. “And t
he others aren’t all my lovers. I get something different from each of them.”

  “Ah. That’s why you want to share Kale with me? Because he wants more than you are willing to give him?” Together, we swing towards the nests.

  “Kale the person is like kale the vegetable. You know it would probably be really healthy and good for you to stick with it, but after a week, you just really want some chocolate.”

  I can’t help but laugh.

  We gather my hammock, which belonged to another girl who couldn’t stick to her Kale diet, and return to Haven’s nest. “Have you thought any more about whether you want me to try to break your magic block?” Haven asks when we’re ensconced in our hammocks in the dark. I wish I had a fox to sleep beside me and keep me warm.

  Even with my hammock pulled tight around me, the chill evening makes me shiver. I should be out prowling the forest right now, hunting, warm inside my thick coat. The strangeness of the day catches up to me—being forced to shift and getting stuck that way, being captured and then befriended by a bunch of supernatural beings, talking to a tree who is also my dead ex-stepmother…or whatever a father’s secret ex-wife is called.

  Watching Haven snap her fingers and conjure fire.

  I’m not especially anxious to have an amateur fire witch learn magic on me. “I’ll give it a couple days,” I say, shifting in my hammock. “Maybe it’ll wear off.”

  “Have you tried shifting into something else?” she asks. “Maybe you’re just blocked from your tiger form because, you know, you tried to eat a witch. Not saying you deserve it. But maybe she just put a spell on you so you couldn’t be an enormous deadly predator.”

  “What else would I be?”

  “I don’t know, a frog?”

  I turn restlessly in my hammock. “Why would I want to be a frog?”

  “Just to see if you can?”

  “I can’t. I’m a tiger.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not really. A werewolf is a wolf. You’re a shifter, not a weretiger. You can shift into anything.”

  I go still at last. “I can?”

  Haven laughs. “Of course you can.”