Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
What does get my engine running?
I have no idea.
I hope my engine runs.
But then again, based on watching my sister and sister-in-law’s lives up close and personal, it might be better if my engine is a lemon. I learned that expression in Human Linguistics. One point for Mr. Riley.
Whatever. I don’t have to worry about Cadoc Collins or crushes or anything right now. It’s time to forage.
I stroll up the twisting path, through the thickening rowan and elder and oak. The leaves are turning, their edges curling and crackling in the stiff breeze, and the earth is soaked with rain. I let the woods and wind do their thing and sweep the noise out of my mind.
My wolf shifts forward in my consciousness. There’s my co-pilot. She settles in, alert and content.
I close my eyes and breathe through her lungs. First frost is coming. Either tonight or tomorrow night.
With her nose, I trace the trails of deer and foxes that have run through our territory today. A sick coyote is huddled under a bank by the river. A black bear blundered down from the foothills, but he’s gone home now.
Abertha is always on me to “listen on another frequency” or “feel for the reverberations,” but I have no freaking idea what she’s talking about. All I can do is this—smell and listen and notice.
She still swears I’m a witch. Or I can be if I want.
My only witch skills at this point are decent eyesight and the patience to search on a grid system. I’ve divided the woods and the foothills into parcels, and I search them methodically, one by one. Once I clear a section, I mark it off. Abertha has no idea. She thinks I’ve got a knack for finding herbs and mushrooms.
I’m just an ordinary female with a map, a ruler, and a grease pencil.
Today, I’m foraging in quadrant G16. There’s not much of interest there. A willow split in half by lightning. A blackberry thicket. That’s all. Before I head out, I stop by the shack.
Apollonia streaks out from under the trailer to greet me, yowling. She has cobwebs in her whiskers.
“How are you doing, girl?” I kneel and give her scratches while I dig her treats out of my bag. “Have you been hanging out with the spiders?”
She headbutts my shin. I squat, and when she snarfs up her snack, her rough tongue tickles the meat of my palm.
“Watch out for skunks under there.”
I stand, and Apollonia winds between my legs, rubbing her scent and her black hairs on my leggings, dodging me whenever I lean to trail my fingers down her side.
When it’s clear that I’m not doling out any more snacks, she wanders off. She’s a weird cat. She hates dogs, but she tolerates shifters, although she actually doesn’t like any of us except Abertha.
Abertha tells me that one day my familiar will find me, too. I’m not convinced.
I think when she claimed me as her apprentice, she made a mistake, but since she’s stubborn, she committed to it. I was only seven when she dropped by our place and gave my uncle an eighth of dragon’s tongue so he’d let me go with her.
I was convinced she was going to eat me, but she only made me weed her plants, and she sent me home by bedtime.
The many failed magic lessons came after. In retrospect, it was a good thing she started with the horticulture.
I return the cat treats to my ripped backpack, tie the sides together like a bindle, and go check on the shack. It’s locked up tight. No evidence of any rogue packmates trying to swipe her rumored stash of magic mushrooms.
Then I head for the Airstream. In daylight, it looks like a metal toaster oven. I swing open the door and inhale the potting soil, Formica, and stale cigarettes.
Besides the dragon’s tongue, this is where Abertha and I keep our cuttings and hot house plants.
We took out the cushions around the dinette, replaced them with plywood counters, and built racks for jars. We grow the more common medicinal herbs—feverfew, gingko, echinacea, chamomile, grapeseed, and lavender—as well as nightshade, snakeroot, and castor bean. Abertha says it’s good to be prepared for any eventuality.
First, I check the dragon’s tongue. It dents in the middle when I poke it. It needs a little more time to harden.
I change out the water in our cutting jars, dumping it into the plants we have crowded on the kitchen counter and outside on an old picnic table and weathered benches. I’ll have to move those inside before I leave today. The nip of frost is definitely in the air.
There’s something else, too. I pause at the bottom of the trailer step and close my eyes, drawing the crisp air deep into my lungs. My belly thrums. It kind of feels like excitement, but also a little like fear.
Am I having a premonition? This late in the game?
I breathe in again and focus.
No. There’s definitely something new in the woods.
It’s not an unfamiliar presence, and it’s not a scent exactly. It’s—of the forest. Whatever it is, it doesn’t raise my hackles. My wolf is quiet. She notices it, but she’s not alarmed. She pays it close attention, though, as we head off to G16.
I’m not gonna skip foraging just because I have a weird feeling. Abertha would somehow know, and I’d never hear the end of it.
As I make my way between towering trees, I keep my eyes cast down. Ashbalm sprouts in shade, and it likes to hide, creeping along the ground like a vine. You have to look for flashes of white among the undergrowth.
I follow a stream until it disappears into a thick patch of red osier dogwood, and then I hike up a steep bank to stand at the top of a ridge. I stand there a minute to catch my breath, surveying the gully. My nose quivers.
There’s a scent on the edge of the breeze, all tangled in with the loam and wood and metallic tang of rocks. It’s flowing the wrong way, over me, down the hill. I turn, but there’s nothing to see, and I can’t tease out the source.
It isn’t a predator. My wolf would lose her shit if it were, but she’s not worried. She’s listening.
There’s nothing to hear but the warblers and the burbling stream.
Maybe it’s a weather system moving in. A change in barometric pressure. I do feel a tightness in my chest, and my head’s kind of thick.
I’m also starving, and I’m wasting the daylight.
I continue on, stopping occasionally to brush aside some ivy or poke my nose into the knot of a tree. I find an empty robin’s egg, whole except for a pin prick. I leave it. They break too easy to keep.
As I walk, the sun begins its descent, and the shadows lengthen. The wind whips up, but I don’t get cold. I’m so overheated that I take off my sweater and tie it around my waist. I’m not this out of shape. I must be sweating because I’m hungry. That happens sometimes.
My stomach growls. I snort. Called it. I should—
Crack.
I startle. It came from the distance, not loud, like a twig snapping. I freeze and sniff. My wolf’s ears shoot straight up.
An owl hoots.
There’s silence.
Something’s out there.
I force my feet to move. My heart beats double time, but still, my wolf is calm. It’s definitely not a feral from the foothills. She’d be going nuts, and besides, they reek, and they’re not disciplined enough to stay upwind.
It’s probably a fox.
I’m not investigating. Interlopers are not my problem. I look for plants, not trouble.
I hoof it down the slope and jog along the stream. I’m at the mouth of the gully where the stream veers into a thicket when—for some reason—I glance over my shoulder.
There on the ridge, exactly where I was a minute ago, Cadoc Collins stands like a conqueror, shoulders wide, square chin high, Seth Rosser at his side. His face is cast in shadow, but his eyes glint silver. He’s watching me.
My wolf bounds to her feet. My heart leaps and gets stuck in my throat.
I run like the devil is after me.
A hundred warnings whisper in my ears as I pump my arms.
Don’t go into the woods alone.
Don’t stay out by yourself after sundown.
For all that’s holy, don’t catch a nob’s eye.
It doesn’t take long to get back to Abertha’s. I pound up the steps into the trailer, slam the door, and sink to the floor, bracing it shut with my back, my ear to the cold metal, listening. Nothing.