Big, Bad Wolf

by Bridget Essex

Synopsis:

Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?

From the outside, librarian Megan Upton appears to live a quiet, painfully ordinary life.  She’s lonely, but she’s content, more or less—that is, when she isn’t being haunted by wolves.

She sees their hulking shadows in blizzards, and their shapes stalk her dreams.  Even worse, it’s a family affliction:  her beloved grandmother, whose sanity seems to be slowly slipping away, raves about seeing phantom wolves, too.

When a twist of fate brings the beautiful, enigmatic, hungry-eyed Kara into Megan’s life, Megan’s wolf sightings intensify, even as her attraction to Kara grows.

Soon, despite the wintry weather, love begins to warm Megan’s heart.  But sharp-toothed danger lurks everywhere.  One dark, snowy night at her grandmother’s isolated cabin in the mountains, Megan will have to confront the wolves—and the truth about her family, Kara, and herself—face to face.

Part heart-pounding mystery, part epic romance, the novel Big, Bad Wolf, will leave you spellbound.  It is approximately 52,000 words (several days worth of reading or so).

"Big, Bad Wolf"

© Bridget Essex 2014

Rose and Star Press

First Edition

All rights reserved

No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews.  Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author.  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter 1

It was January--that terrible month where nothing is joyful since Christmas is over and there’s nothing to look forward to but snow and the wind, howling like wolves at the door.

Normally, I like winter.  I mean, sure, it can be terrible, you have to drive carefully; if you don’t own a humidifier the moistureless days tend to give you a lot of nosebleeds (or maybe that’s just me), but that afternoon, as I parked the car, shutting off the ignition with mittened hands, I realized that it was Friday and yes, it was kind of miserable outside, but normally Friday is my happiest day of the week.

Yes, I should be happy.  But last night’s dream had done away with any good mood that might have started growing in me.  I shuddered as I remembered the gray cast of the dream, like it was a horror movie and had been shot through a particularly dirty lens.  Part of me had almost wanted to go to the grocery store just to prove to myself that it had been just a dream, and it was ridiculous of me to even think about it anymore.

It’s kind of obvious that there are usually no wolves between the milk and bread aisles.

Wolves.  The dream was palpable in the air, like snow, and I swallowed. I’d tried not to think about it the entire drive to said grocery store, and I’d pretty much succeeded, and that was great.  But now I had thought of it again, and it was in my heart and head again as I stared at the sepia-colored brick of Big Al’s Grocery, wondering if when I entered through the creaky automatic doors if I’d be greeted by the demon from my stupid, I-really-needed-to-get-it-out-of-my-head dream:  a wolf with large paws and a blood-flecked snout.

Of course nothing greeted me in the entryway but a cart with a wobbly wheel that kept making it lean toward the right.  In fact, the grocery store was practically deserted, save for one pimply stock boy who stared at me from under hooded eyes, leaning, apparently bored, against the old-fashioned cash register.

I gathered essentials in my arms before dumping them into the squeaky cart.  Bread, two types, since Gramma is old-school and likes white bread and I can’t stomach the stuff.  Milk, eggs and cans of tuna fish.  The speakers overhead played something so inane it would have been outlawed in an elevator.  I shoved the cart up to the cash register and started unloading as the stock boy shoveled my purchases into thin plastic bags.

So, no, very much obviously, there were no wolves in the grocery store.  Nothing but rivulets of melted snow on the ground, and the monochrome tones of that hideous elevator music, pumped through the speakers.

So I really needed to stop thinking about that stupid dream.

I loaded the thin plastic bags into the trunk of my car, trying to kick the caked ice from beneath the wheels of the car before folding myself into the driver’s side and revving the engine in the winter stillness.  I let it idle for a long moment, keeping my mittened hands in my pockets as the windshield wipers went back and forth, back and forth, a pleasant rhythm that reminded me of metronomes and singing lessons when I was a kid.  Singing for my bread, my grandmother had always called it when I’d sing to her before dinner.

There.  Yes.  Think about anything but wolves.  I concentrated on Gramma’s smiling, wrinkled face as she folded the bread dough in the bowl with gnarled hands.

I put the car into drive and made my way out of the snow-covered parking lot.  My mind switched from focusing on thoughts to simply concentrating on the falling flakes diving into my windshield like a hoard of angry insects, large and hell-bent on blinding me.  The storm had come up fast, but the stations had promised me I had hours to go before it got super bad out.  I switched down from my high beams, and the snow pummeled into my windshield, still just as distracting.  Still just as fast.

Hours.  Hah.  Like weathermen have ever been right about anything in their lives.

I sighed and straightened in my seat, tightening my mittened hands on the steering wheel as I tried to make out the road in front of me.  I was going to be late and worry my grandmother.  And sure as anything, she probably didn’t have her cell phone on her or, worse, she’d probably let the battery die.

My mouth was dry, and I'd forgotten a bottle of water.  I took off my mittens because I wanted the connection to the wheel—it made me feel more secure, somehow—and my knuckles shone yellow-white against the wheel now.  I hadn't realized how tense I was until that instant.  I switched on the radio--the classical station usually helped--but there was a man talking in somber tones about a local weather emergency, some sort of blizzard warning.

Great.  The weathermen had been wrong.

Slowly, painfully slowly, I put miles between myself and town, and I was crawling now.  I'd already started up the incline of the mountain.  I could somewhat see the white line on the side of the road.  I could see nothing of the yellow in the center, but as long as I kept my wheels on the left side of the white, I knew I’d be fine.  I'd done this before; I was old hat at driving in these sorts of conditions.  I'd done white-outs before, had done blizzards, and I’d driven these roads probably thousands of times, if you counted up all the years.

But for some strange reason, no matter how many reassurances I tried to think of, my stupid dream kept coming back to me.  The image of the wolf kept falling over and into my disjointed ramblings of thought.  I couldn't shake the image; couldn’t shake the thick feeling of dread as I’d stared into the wolf’s eyes, and it had stared into mine, licking its lips and its blood-flecked snout with a long tongue.  My tension bled from my shoulders down my arms, into my stomach, my legs.  I was a ball of nerves, but I couldn’t help it.  And this weather certainly wasn’t helping…

It was a white-out, all of a sudden.  Gusts of snow puffed up walls of sheer white right in front of my headlights, and my visibility disappeared.  I couldn’t see anything but snow.  I nursed the brake gently, waiting for it to pass.  The road went on straight for awhile, I knew, but fear pooled icily down my spine, and I swallowed audibly in the darkness.

It passed almost instantly, a few seconds of complete white, and then I could see the side of the road again, but those few seconds had skyrocketed my heart rate, and I realized the car was crawling, about five miles an hour.  I hit the gas again as my vision cleared a bit, though I nursed the pedal gently.

A glint of light flashed in my rearview mirror through the swirling clouds of snow, and I saw lights behind me as I glanced at the mirror.  The lights were pretty high off the ground...a truck?  The vehicle came up pretty quickly, much too quickly for how fast the snow was blowing, and in half a minute, the vehicle was riding my rear closely, way too close.

Great.  One of my least favorite things about driving on winter roads is when some asshole in a four-wheel truck suddenly thinks he’s a better driver and has a better vehicle than everyone else.  Have you ever noticed, though, how many four-wheel trucks end up in the ditch?  I was already frazzled, but now I was getting pissed as the truck rode me even closer.  These were white-out conditions...a blizzard.  He expected me to go faster?  There was no space to pull off so he could pass, so I kept at the speed I was going.  I wasn't going to drive faster for some asshole in four-wheel drive.

Another moment, another white-out.  This one came up instantly, so dizzying that the blood drained from my head, and I almost slammed on the brakes.  There was a curve very close up ahead on the road, and I wasn't exactly certain where it was.  But I didn’t slam on the brakes, because that would have caused me to fishtail or worse.  So I tapped the brakes gently.

The guy behind me had had enough, apparently.  Though I couldn’t see a single thing out my front window, because of the guy’s headlights, I could see in my mirror.  And the lights behind me had drifted off to the left...  He was going to pass.

Asshole.  Didn't he know about the curve coming up on the road?  The roads on the mountain were without guardrails, and often had steep embankments on either side.  With no visibility, and if he didn’t know the area, he was either going to run into a wall or off the whole damn mountain if he misjudged how much road he thought he had beneath that big truck’s wheels.  And from where I sat, he was misjudging pretty badly.

I felt sick as I nursed the brake some more, but what could I do?  He drifted next to me as he started to pass.  He was going to get into an accident, and there was nothing I could do about it.  He kept alongside me for a little while, not revving or braking—I muttered a few choice expletives and chanced a look out the window into the truck cab, trying to see him (I assumed it was a him—bad, I know).  I could see nothing in the blowing snow but the truck’s shadow and the head and taillights, but the lights were a lot higher than mine, so he was definitely in a truck.  It's strange, how in these sorts of moments tiny details stick out to you.  The headlights are high.  It must be a truck.

I nursed the brake harder and drifted over to my side of the road more, trying to give him more room to pass since he still hadn’t pulled ahead.

The truck followed me, pulling over to the right, too.

“What the hell?” I muttered.  The classical music was loud in my ears, all screeching violins; I tried to switch it off, but I fumbled with the dial.  I was sweating.  As he veered almost into me to get into my lane, I realized he must be drunk.  He must be.  He was going to clip my car in half.  He wasn't ahead enough to merge into this lane again.  But he was moving and there was nothing I could do about it—I didn’t have room to nurse the brake.  I stepped down hard on the brake, because that's the only thing I could do.

I felt the car skid beneath me.

I was a good winter driver, but there are some skids no one can pull themselves out of.  This was one of them, with me spinning close to the wall of rock on the right side.  I overcorrected, spinning the wheel in sweating hands, and now I was spinning towards the drop-off.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  A violin practically screamed in the background, some sort of crescendo.

I was going to crash.

I stopped.  There was really no reasoning behind it or for it, but my trusty Chevy Cavalier skidded, somehow, impossibly, to a halt, and I knew without looking that I wasn't that far from the edge of the drop-off.

I shifted into park and got out of the car.  The violent chill of the storm hit me instantly, stealing my breath away with a hiss.  The roar of the blizzard deafened the tinny sound of the music from in the car as I wrapped my arms around me.  I couldn’t see anything, not the hand in front of my face, not the outlines of my car that, if I reached out, I would be able to touch.  Nothing but headlights and the flurried snow, dancing in my high beams like ghosts.

I couldn't find the road.  There was snow beneath my boots, deep snow that probably crunched as I stepped on it, but I couldn’t hear it.  I couldn’t see the drop-off, but I knew it was there.  So the mountain wall?  It must be there too...

My mind leapt from idea to idea, and I took a deep, too-cold breath as I tried to calm myself.  Things weren’t so bad.  I was a little stuck, but I could probably get the car out no problem.

I peered close to the headlights, gazing at the nose of my car.  The nose of my car that was entirely buried in snow.  The reason I stopped was because I was going so slow, and I’d simply run into a wall of snow that the snowplows had probably ploughed to the side of the road.

I was stuck.  And there wasn’t any traction beneath my wheels because of the quickly falling snow.  I’d never get the car out.

Okay.  I squashed my rising panic like a bug as I stared in the direction (I assumed) of the road curving upward.  Yes--I was on the mountain, far from a lot of things, and not that many cars used this road, so probably no one would be coming by soon. My car was stuck in the snow, and a blizzard was angrily dumping more snow on me by the minute.

So there was really no way out of this...but forward.

I wasn't that far from my grandmother's house.  It’d be okay.  I could walk the rest of the way, and even though I couldn’t see very well, as I kept a hand on the wall to the right of the road, I’d be fine.  For most of the rest of the way, anyway--the end of the journey would lead me out to a bit of forest before the cabin.  But I'd played there every day growing up.  I knew every tree, knew every branch.  I’d be fine. They’d lead me home.

There was a fierce resolve that welled up in me then.  I went back into my car and grabbed my suitcase.  There were more sweaters, thicker pants.  Wrestling in the tiny confines of my front seat, I pulled on two pairs of jeans and another sweater on top of the one I was already wearing.  And then the coat and the earmuffs and the hat and the gloves and the scarf and the boots.  I was shaking at this point--it was freezing in the car.  I'd turned it off, I wasn't stupid, I knew I could die from the fumes if the exhaust got clogged.

Okay.  I looked around, unhappy at leaving the food as I pressed my gloves together.  I was shaking pretty badly, but it was cold in the car.  But as I sat there for a long moment, wondering if I should bring anything, I knew I was shaking from more than the cold.  No matter how easy going I was about this, there was fear deep down in my stomach.  The woods and mountain were familiar friends in the waking hours, but in the dark, in the screaming snow, I'd transported myself into a nightmare world.

Nightmares.  Suddenly, the image of the wolf from last night’s dream came into my head.  Great.  I breathed out and closed my eyes.  I didn't have time to be ridiculous.  Not right now.

Because the absolute truth was that, no matter how close I was to my grandmother’s cabin, there was a blizzard raging around me.  And absolutely, if I wasn’t careful, I could die.  The possibility was very real.  No one would bother to look for me until Monday--maybe.  By then, I would have long become frozen...become a part of the mountain.  No one used these roads all that much, especially in a blizzard.  My grandmother might be having one of her episodes, might have forgotten I was coming.

So no, I had no time for stupid dream wolves.  I had to get out of this car and start walking.  I had to.  There was no choice, no direction but forward.  No thoughts to think but hopes…hopes born out of the desire to remain alive.

No one really wants to die. Even if people say they're perfectly at peace with death, could go at any time, I’m pretty sure they’re not exactly telling the truth.  I knew that; I knew that deep down in my bones and in my gut, as I grabbed my purse and took out my wallet.  I shoved it underneath the layers of coat and sweater to my jeans pocket.  And then I wrote a note with the pen from my checkbook:

I've gone on to my grandmother's.  She lives almost at the top of the mountain.

--Megan Upton

I didn't know what else to put on it; it sounded morbid, even to me.  It was the sort of thing that flashed on the news late at night as they get a sudden brief about a frozen body found in the wastelands of the mountains and her short note that would—tragically, of course—not be found until she’d become frozen solid.

I swallowed and bit my lip.  This was so stupid.  I wasn’t going to die.  I put on my sunglasses, because they were the only thing I had to combat the snow flying into my eyes.  Okay.  No time but the present.

I left the car.

Two steps away from it, I'd lost everything familiar…everything.  There were only snow devils and the absence of these walls of snow...which was me.

In blizzards, it’s very easy to get turned around.  You hardly even know which way is up sometimes, and I'd tried to set out in the right direction, toward the solid rock wall to the right of the road, but I hadn't been certain where the nose of the car had been pointing when it got stuck, anyway.  I put one foot in front of the other, but I stomped down before I stepped, listening to the sound of my boot hitting pavement.  Okay.  At least there was pavement.

The snow buffeted me back, and I lost a step.  I pushed against the wind, shoving against it as I took another step, boot grinding down through the snow against the pavement.

The cold bit like poison, stinging the only exposed skin--my face beneath the glasses.  It burned where the needle-like flakes hit, freezing pinpoints that seemed to be trying to tear my skin off.  I kept my mouth closed and tried to take deep, even breaths, lips in a firm line that shook from the cold.

After a few more steps, with my hands in front of me like a zombie, I still hadn’t reached anything.  Not the rock wall and not the drop-off.  But I was going in an upward direction, and that's really what counted.  So I tried to drift a little bit to the right, trying to find the wall as I felt forward with my hands.

I was rewarded for my efforts when my shoulder brushed against the solidity of rock wall.  I made a little yelp—I mean, there was absolutely nothing in the snow, and then there was suddenly something, and something so solid.  Even if you were looking for it, it comes as a surprise.  But then an immense relief bubbled up within me, and I slumped with relief against the wall.  The sunglasses made everything darker, but the wall itself was dark and imposing, towering above me.  A mountain.

I patted the rock and rolled my shoulders, taking a deep breath as I tried to get my bearings.

I had been walking how long?  Who knew--who could tell?  There was nothing to gauge my efforts and I hadn’t glanced at the time on my cell before I’d shoved it into my pocket.  Even if I’d been outside for five minutes, it didn’t matter—I was shaking from exhaustion at this point.

I was freezing.

I stood, then, because to rest for even a moment would be stupid in this snow.  I’d seen the television specials.  I knew that when you rested you began to get tired, and you might give up, and that’s how you get people frozen to death in snow banks.  So I kept going, my right hand firmly dragging along the wall.

Now I had the wall and the wind and the snow.  And I kept going, one foot in front of the other.  Had it been an hour? Had it been five minutes?  Everything began to feel less…well, real is the only way I can describe it.  I was now pressing myself against the wind, struggling against its mute roar.  The roar was everywhere, as was the absolute cold and the whiteness of snow.  I saw nothing, only white.  I heard nothing, only roar.  I felt nothing, only cold.

I was exhausted, utterly exhausted, but I kept going, because I couldn’t stomach the alternative.

In this compress of nothingness, the smallest things become noticed immediately.  The tiny points cause your heart to beat faster, cause your mouth to dry...cause a prickle on your skin that drives the cold even deeper.

This is when things started to get…weird.

I was trying not to think of my dream.  I kept forcing images of my grandmother baking bread over the pictures of the salivating wolf.  She'd come up to my waist in the dream--the wolf, not my grandmother.  My grandmother was tall; she was still taller than me.  When I was a little girl, I'd thought she could bite a leg through...No, that's the wolf again.  My grandmother uses just a little yeast in her bread.  She said it wasn't good for the mind when she made it, when she used her paws to shape the little loaves.

Okay, great.  Maybe I should stop for a second.  My teeth chattered against my skull, and even that loudness was swallowed up by the storm.  Chatter, chatter, chatter.  I was so tired.  Impossibly tired.

It happened suddenly.  It was almost natural, really.  The snow was dark and white to my right, but I knew that’s all there was.  Just snow.  But suddenly, there was something there in the snow.  A big black shadow that moved, twisting away from me.  And, just as suddenly, it was gone.

I swallowed and stopped, pressing the side of my body against the stability of the rock.  The shadow was black, but everything would be black in this white.  It was long and lean.  And it had moved like a living thing.

It must have moved, because my own lumbering movements were so slow I was hardly going forward.  I was basically crawling now, crawling on my feet against the wind and the howl of the snow.

It had swirled in front of me, that shadow, and was suddenly gone, but it had been physical.  I knew it--I'd seen it.

I couldn't think about it.  It had come and gone so quickly. I had to keep going.  I didn't have time to think.  I was going to freeze.  I was going to die.  And anyway, I reasoned with myself, it was probably a deer.  It was probably a deer trying to get to shelter as much as I was.

That’s what it must have been.

A deer.

So I set out again.  One foot in front of the other and, in spite of myself, eyes firmly glued on the space of whiteness beside me.  I kept shivering, but it wasn’t entirely from the cold this time.

There would be nothing out in this snow, in this night.  Probably not even deer.  I was being ridiculous, and I knew it, and I was getting pissed at myself.  Great.  I was starting to see things.  But I couldn't help it.  My skin was prickled, my hair stood on end, and I couldn’t think about what the shadow had actually looked like.

The snow was making me numbing my senses and making me stupid because I was so cold.  The shadow--it wasn’t a wolf.  It had looked nothing like a wolf.

But the small part of my mind that knew what it had been whispered:  yes, it was.

I pressed against the wall, curling a hand over my heart as I tried to take deep, even breaths, did my absolute best not to panic.

I grasped onto the first memory I could think of, tried to think about anything else.

I'm a little girl again.  I'm playing in our backyard.  The great woods rings its way around me, and I'm pretending I'm a fairy, though I think I really am one (I’m five—at the age of five, pretty much anything is possible).  I have my arms spread wide, like wings, and I'm running in tight little circles, legs pumping, breath coming out in whooshes as I laugh.

“Come in, Megan!  Supper's almost ready!”  The voice drifts out the back door, and I know my grandmother wants me inside, and I make my way there.  But I hear a noise in the woods, and I turn to look.

It's a wolf.  A gigantic thing, shaggy pelt the color of darkness.  She stares at me, one paw in the air, and I realize she is only a few feet away.  I will never be able to get away from her.  She is going to get me like Little Red Riding Hood in the story.  The big, bad wolf swallows her whole.

I run, anyway, screaming because I don’t exactly want to be eaten.   I scream my little head off.  I make it into the back door, and run to my grandmother, burying my face in her apron that always, miraculously, smells like fresh bread.  I throw my arms around her legs--I'm shaking.

“Goodness, gracious, child--what is it?”

“Wo-wo-wolf,” I huff between breaths.

Gramma lifts the curtain aside and looks into our backyard.  “There's nothing there.”

“There's nothing there,” I repeat to myself now.  Here.  Where is here?  I’m Megan Upton, and I’m in a blizzard.  I’m on my way to grandmother's house...and I’m not afraid of the big, bad wolf.

But that's a lie.  I'm still afraid--still terrified after all these years.  I've seen that wolf in all of my dreams.  I’m an adult, but part of me is still that little girl, arms spread beneath the trees of a forest she thought she knew.  But didn't.

How much worse is it now, thinking (no, my heart says, knowing) that there could be a wolf nearby?  It's stupid, but somehow I can’t stop staring at the open space beside me only occupied by wind and snow and gusts of harsh winter.  I keep staring at the spot expecting…well.  Something.

So if I expect it, it will come, right?  That must be it.  There's a dark shadow that moves in the white again to my left.  The shadow is there, flickering in my vision, and then it’s just…gone.

All of the blood drains from my head, and I hold on tightly to the rock wall.  It was unmistakably the shape of a wolf, that shadow. It's unmistakable (after all, I know it pretty well at this point:  it's haunted my dreams every night), and it's very real, and it's right beside me, going in the same direction I’m going.  It's...massive, almost towering over me.  A monster.

Just as suddenly, it's gone.  And as I stare out into the dark, my heart pounding its way out of my body from between my shuddering rib bones, I peer through the thick white of the blizzard.

And then, impossibly, I see other shadows in the darkness, other shapes.  They are all around me, shifting, moving like the snow.

I freeze and lean against the wall, fear circling my insides tightly.  I'm so cold that I can barely contain the shaking, barely contain the breath that goes in and out in a shallow rhythm from my lungs.  That breath is freezing me from the inside out as needles of ice, of snow, pelt themselves against my face that I can’t even really feel anymore.

Just as quickly as they appear, these shadows vanish, and I’m seemingly alone again.

Okay.  I scrub at my face with fingers I can’t really feel.  Are these hallucinations?  As much as I don’t want to face the fact…am I dying?  I think about this for a long moment, realizing that, just like I can’t feel my face, I can’t feel my feet either, and I can’t feel my fingers, can’t feel the rock behind me.

I take a deep breath, shaking.

I think I’m dying.

The shapes are gone. Whether they were in my head or actually real and out in the cold with me, I don’t know.  I do know that I’m feverish, my lips are cracked, and I lick them, tasting the metallic cool of snow.  I’m so numb, so dizzy.

I want to sit down...  I need to sit down.  Just for a moment.

I close my eyes and sink down against the stone as I feel the snow mounding up to hold me in an almost seated position, leaning my head against the rock wall.  I’m numb and much more comfortable than I thought I’d be.  I just need to rest, just for a minute.

I close my eyes.  I just want to rest, just for a minute, but when I close my eyes, I see a wolf there in my sight.  Black, of course.  My wolf from my dreams is always black.  But her eyes glow, like twin stars, and it seems so real.  Somehow, impossibly, real.

I open my eyes, because I want to prove to myself that there’s no wolf there, she isn’t real, and, instead, I see a form--physical, absolutely, definitely real—right there in front of me.  She’s standing on all fours, big, sharp ears pricked forward, yellow eyes glowing like stars.  This is no longer a shadow or a shape...or a dream.

She’s real.

I don’t know where I get the strength from, but I find it somewhere and wrench myself up, staggering forward, one hand on the wall, the other out beside me like a shield, ready to ward off the wolf’s attack, waiting for the crunch of sharp teeth against the sleeve of my coat as she leaps for me...

I'm almost running, but not really.  I struggle against the wind, against my own exhaustion and numbness, but I’m making progress.  I can’t see the wolf anymore, I've lost her in the darkness.  The storm howls angrily around me, pushing against me, trying to flatten me, pin me, but I ignore it as best as I possibly can and press forward.  I'm not running, I'm slogging, but I believe I'm getting somewhere, and, after all, I no longer see the wolf which is both a blessing a curse.

Are they shadows?  Are they wolves?  Ahead of me, shapes move in the darkness, and I pause, breathing shallowly as fear circles in my stomach until I nearly run into one of those shadows and, putting out a mittened hand, realize the shadow is a tree.

There are no trees near the wall or the drop-off…until you're close to my grandmother's driveway.

Is it possible?  The sheer hope of a “maybe” builds in me, and suddenly my fears are forgotten as I stumble from tree to tree in the snow.  I can’t see anything but the next long shape of a tree’s trunk, and now that I know what they are, I’m feeling their pattern.  I played under them as a kid, gave them names, swung from them on an old board.

I’m almost home.

I run into the pile of wood next.  It's half-buried in the snow, but the split logs are unmistakable, and I lean against them for a moment, panting in my excitement.  I fumble (At this point, I can’t really feel anything I’m so numb) to the right of them.  The shed door should be there.  And, miracle of miracles, it is.  After the shed door, there’s the clothesline...  I take hold of it in both hands, my fingers too frozen to clench or bend.  I follow the line steadily, as my grandmother did for so long in snowstorms, using the line to find her way to get wood.

I follow the clothesline to her front door.

I fell through the open door and into my grandmother’s arms.  Like she'd been expecting me.  I didn't ask questions, my teeth chattered, and as my grandmother peeled off layers of frozen fleece and wool, the fever made everything too bright as I began to thaw, pain moving through my body and every numb part of it.

And then everything else faded away as the blackness around the edges of my eyes ate me up.

“The wolves told me you were coming,” my grandmother whispers to me, as I faint on her kitchen floor.

Chapter 2

I didn’t dream as I drifting in and out of a heavy sleep that pressed me to the bed like gravity.  I came to and then I blacked out again, over and over... the parts I remember are my grandmother telling me I was fevered as she soaked a washcloth in cool water and patted my face with it.  She whispered strange words I didn’t understand, made strange symbols over me.  People always said she was a witch.  I remembered an old family friend coming to her once for a charm for her newborn baby, to keep her healthy.  But it was just old mountain magic, Gramma would always say, smiling.  She had the knowing.

I was hot.  Every last bit of me was on fire, flames eating me from the inside out.  At one point, I wanted to go lie in the snow, have the snow as a blanket.  Gramma came and muttered over me again.  I heard wolves howling outside the bedroom door.

I don’t know what day it was when I really and actually woke and found myself to be as close to my right mind as I get on any normal day.

I felt like I’d wasted away.  I was desperately weak.  I lifted up a hand to itch my nose, and leaned back against the pillows again, because it’s taken everything from me to itch my nose.

“I knew you'd be up today.”  Gramma bustled into the room with a wooden tray.  The scent of good black tea with just a pinch of cream and hot porridge with brown sugar filled the space between us, and we both heard my stomach growl.

“There was a blizzard,” I groaned, shaking my head at her.

“One of the worst in years,” she sighed as she grinned down at me.  “And you were out in it, my darling girl.  Here, eat this.  It'll put some spirit back into you.”

She helped me sit up a little, set the tray on my lap.

“How are you doing, Gramma?” I asked.  She looked right as rain, as she always did--but it didn't matter.  What she said next confirmed it:

“Good.  The wolves looked after you--I'm glad of it.  You were in a heap of danger out there,” she muttered, crossing to the small window and looking out it.  She wore her baggy jeans and one of her hand-knit sweaters, her long gray hair up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck.  She looked like she always had, before she…well.  Before she’d started talking about imaginary wolves.

“There are no wolves, Gramma,” I said, before I remembered.  But then it was too late, and the gigantic black wolf was in my head again, stalking between my memories of the blizzard, jaws flecked with blood.  I visibly shuddered.

“Yes there are,” said Gramma knowingly with a twinkle to her eye as she sighed down at me, shaking her head as if I was the one saying weird things.  “Here, eat this up before it gets cold.”  She tapped the edge of the tray.

There was something comforting about the old mug with its strong-smelling tea, the ancient brown bowl with the little crack on its edge, and the shiny spoon, worn thin by countless scrubbings.  This was home.

“I thought I saw...”  I picked up the spoon thoughtfully.  “How…how long ago  did I get here?”

“Three days ago,” said Gramma shrewdly as she watched me with narrowed eyes.  “I called your work, not that it mattered much.  The whole village is closed, the valley, the mountain, everything.  This is one of the worst storms on record.  Certainly the worst I've ever seen, and I've seen ‘em all, child.”

I stared at her for a long moment before I shoveled a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth.

Had I really seen a wolf that night?

It wasn’t possible, and with my grandmother in the state she already was, I didn’t believe telling her was the wisest choice.  And besides, what did it matter?  They’d probably been hallucinations brought on by the fever...

“Clyde is towing your car out of the snow.  He came by at daybreak to tell you, but I told him you were certainly not fit enough to talk to anyone yet,” she folded her hands before her, gnarled and twisted like tree roots, inflamed almost beyond recognition from the rheumatoid arthritis.  “So, you'll have your car sometime soon, for all the good it'll do you.  They say the plows won't get to us until the end of this week, anyway,” she fixed me in her unwavering gaze.  I would always look into those firm, unflinching eyes and find it almost impossible that her mind was failing her.  “It'll be nice having you here for a while longer, Megan,” she patted my leg and turned in one smooth  motion.  “You finish that.  I'll be back.”

I stared down at the porridge as she left my little bedroom.  The room hadn't changed since I'd left it, there hadn’t really been a point to change it since I came up to visit her every weekend.  It's almost like I lived here part-time anyway.  Dolls lined the walls beneath posters of brightly-colored inspirational sayings and baby animals that had been all the rage as a teenager in the early nineties.  Thick blue paint covered a small desk and chair beneath the peaked window.  There were strips of white paper, used to wrap the meats Gramma bought from the town's little deli, that I'd confiscated and drawn on, hanging by yellowed tape around the corners of the room.  Badly formed unicorns and fairies stared down at me, as they had for countless years now.

It was all so familiar, so comforting.  But at the edges of my tired thoughts lurked something…well.  Toothsome.

I slept fitfully that night.  I was afraid of my dreams, of what I might see if I closed my eyes and drifted off into that place where I no longer held any control.  But I was exhausted.  And I slept.

And I was, thankfully, too tired to dream.

As the week went by, a little of the snow melted, plows came, and the roads finally became passable again.  Gramma told me again, now that I was fully out of the fever, that Clyde had brought my car over.  He towed it up the mountain, she'd said, not indicating whether this was bad or good, but having a little sniff in her voice just the same.  Modern technology, whether that be cars or not, seemed to inconvenience her, though I wasn’t exactly sure why—things changing had never really upset her.

Sunday night, I got into my little car (no worse for the wear of sliding into a bank of snow) and drove back down the same roads that had almost killed me, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel as I watched the drop-off to the my right rolling down the mountain.

My grandmother watched me go and said nothing, though she waved with a smile from the front porch.  I watched her grow smaller in my rear view mirror, gray hair set off by the magnificent sunset that wrapped all of us in a communal red blanket.  I felt a little lost and small and alone, as I often did on Sunday nights, but the feeling was more intense, this time.  Closer.  She looked so small, so far away as I drove off into the encroaching dark.

Monday morning dawned cool and cloudless.  I stood in front of my closet door in panties and a gray bra, and realized my hands would not stop shaking as I pulled on a plain black skirt and blue blouse and a blue sweater over that.  I didn’t want to go into work, but it was Monday, and I was over my fever, and there wasn’t an excuse in the world I could think of not to go.

So I went into work.

“Hey, Sharon!” I called as I slammed my driver’s side door.  My co-worker was struggling out of her Jeep, burdened by five cloth bags bulging with books.

“Hey, Megan!” she returned, shutting her door with her hip.  She was grinning sheepishly as she tried to reconcile the weight of the books on her two slim shoulders.  She laughed a little with a shrug.  “I think I got carried away!”

“Just a bit,” I returned the smile in spite of myself and took two bags from her, shouldering them as we walked up the icy front steps to the library carefully.

As we entered through the wide, swinging doors, the comforting scent of old books washed over me in the warmth of the foyer.  I deposited my coat on the coat rack and settled down behind the front desk in my swivel chair, glancing at the beeping phone that had three messages, apparently…

“Guess who,” hands slid over my eyes, and the scent of rich cologne masked the scent of the library.

“Good morning, Sally,” I sighed, and then I could see again, and my boss had stepped into that line of sight, grinning mischievously, her full lips rounding up at the corners as a stray lock of red hair fell in front of one of her bright green eyes.

Sally is the only boss I've ever had (I know, I’m one of those weird people who got a job pretty easily out of college), so what I assumed a boss should be was based entirely on her, and I’m pretty certain that most bosses didn’t flirt hopelessly with their employees.  Right?

“Good morning,” she practically purred into my ear as she leaned on the counter.  Her blouse was low-cut revealing some pretty nice assets that I always did my absolute best not to stare it.  “You were late by exactly a minute, you know,” she murmured, one brow up.

“I'll make up for it on lunch break,” my mouth twitched into a half smile.

“Ah-hah, there it is!  There’s my smile!”  And, satisfied, Sally walked away to ask (in a much more subdued tone) if Sharon thought she had brought in enough books.

“Man, late night?”  That was Rob.  He was in charge of the children's department and ran it as if he was still a kid himself.  Today, he wore a bright pink shirt and a tie with a rather frightening clown on it, his jet-black hair perfectly combed down the middle, just like the clown on his tie.

“What do you mean?” I asked, and, even to me, my words came out tired.  Rough.

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” he added helpfully to his earlier assessment.  He leaned closer to me, asked seriously: “It couldn’t possibly still be that blizzard, that was days ago.  Was it the dreams again?”

I massaged my temple with a cold hand and nodded with a very long sigh.  “Yep.  Lucky me.  I dreamed about wolves again.”

“Tell me,” said Rob, sitting down next to me in the other swivel chair, concern making his brow furrow, because that's what he always said and did.

So I answered him:  “It was the usual big, bad wolf.  She was running towards me, snarling, her muzzle covered in blood.  You know, all the usual.”

Rob cocked his head.  “Nothing different?”

I frowned.  “No.  It’s always the usual.”

He always tried to put my dreams together, like puzzles.  He was just about to do this when Sally called out:  “Okay, people--show time!” and unlocked the library doors.

It was a little hectic after that.  I found peace from the screaming kids in the non-fiction section, re-shelving books, but I kept thinking of my dreams and the blizzard.

I wasn't ready for it, what happened then, how it happened so unexpectedly.  But isn’t that how these things tend to go?  You can never expect something like this...

Because this is the day I met Kara.

I noticed her first between the biography shelves, prowling down them in soft boots that made no noise against the linoleum.  I noticed her because I felt someone’s gaze on me, and when I turned, I saw she was staring at me, eyes that seemed to see all the way into me.  I looked up and she didn’t lessen her gaze, only intensified it, deep blue eyes sharp points that left me speechless, they were so powerful.

“I need a little help,” she said then, smile soft, hands spread as she gracefully moved to the desk.  Her eyes were a sweet blue, like cornflowers.  I opened my mouth and closed it.

“How…how can I help you?” I tried to ask, but I stuttered over the words, and then tried again, after I cleared my throat and blushed and the woman had screwed up her features in a curious expression.

I wished I was under the desk.

“Art books,” she said, then, her head to the side.

Okay.  I could help with that.  “They're all over here,” I said, standing, smoothing my skirt, allowing my inner librarian to take over.  “Any title, author, specific art that you had in mind?”

“Nah,” she stuck her hands in pockets and fixed me with that startling gaze again.  It was…a hungry look, I realized.

I showed her art technique books and art history books and she gave me a luke-warm shrug until I put a slim volume of da Vinci's sketches in her hand.  Her eyes lit, and she flipped it open and thumbed through it carefully, like the binding would break if she turned the pages too quickly.

“Is this what you wanted?” I asked, unnecessarily.  I was almost preening, she was so clearly delighted with it.

“Well.  Almost,” her smile was warm, honey dripping off a spoon.  “Do you have any more?”

Moments passed, and she walked up to the check-out desk with an armful of art books, all different periods, all different artists.  She’d been so happy with each volume I'd given her, and it didn't seem to matter that we had an empty shelf in our tiny art section...because she was happy.

I sat down in my swivel chair and grabbed the rubber check-out stamp approvingly (other libraries have mostly computer check outs—but we’re so tiny, we still do everything the old fashioned way.  Which I kind of prefer).  She set down the books in front of me smoothly, and we locked eyes.  That expression again, that dark hunger as she gazed deep into me.  I knew I was blushing as I stared up at her.

There was something about her that captivated me utterly.

“Can I…can I see your library card?” I asked, not because I wanted to ask it, but because it slipped out of my lips.  Default words came while my mind wandered to other places.  I was on autopilot, pinned beneath her gaze.

“Library card?” she asked, surprised.

“Don’t you have one?”

“No,” she looked abashed, mouth open.  “My goodness, Megan, I'm sorry.”

“How did you know my name?”  I stammered.

“Your name tag,” she stared at my breast pointedly, grin chasing her features.  “It's a beautiful name.”

I was blushing again as my heart began to beat insistently through me.  “I'm afraid you have the upper hand.”  I said then, because I had to say something.  “I don't know your name.”

“Kara,” she said, the two syllables sounding rich and warm on her tongue, like she was saying a line of poetry.  I realized that I was leaning over the desk, as if my entire body was drawn to her.  I swallowed, leaned back, glanced down at the stack of books.

“Well then, Kara—it’s no problem,” the name was rough in my ears, sounding not nearly so nice in my own mouth.  “We can outfit you with one.”

“One...?”

“A library card.”

We stared at one another in frustrated silence for a moment.  She had a strong jaw, delicate hands.  I was distracted and flustered and I didn't understand why I was.

You find her attractive, a distant part of my mind practically sang.  I silenced it, but still took in this incredibly beautiful woman.  Kara.  (It did sound like a poem.)

She was saying something, and I hadn’t heard her.  Guilty, I tuned myself back as she repeated:  “...ID, right?”

“I'm so sorry,” I muttered, licking my lips.  They were suddenly dry.  My mouth was a desert.

“Do I need an ID to get a library card?” she asked again, patiently.

“Yes?”  My mind blanked as I watched her shift her weight, saw her hips move in the other direction.  I stared at her, and I couldn't remember if you needed an ID or not.  Did you?

“I don't have an ID,” her hands were in her pockets, now, not touching her glorious stack of art books.  I felt her posture shift, her slight shoulders starting to curve toward the door.

No one, in all of my years of being a librarian, had ever responded to the library card question like this, and my mind was grappling, trying to catch up to this strange turn of events, already made…different by her very presence.  She wore dirty jeans, and a black shirt...I could see the hint of finely formed black tattoos on her forearms, and a thin gold chain hung at her neck...her neck, which was long and curved up beneath the tousle of jet black hair, flecked with gray.  She was probably thirty-something.

And I was so attracted to her, it was all I could think about.

“Just…just take the books, Kara,” I whispered, caught again in her gaze.  It was gentle now, her eyes downcast, but still she pinned me in place with the beautiful blue of them.  “Just...take them,” I told her again, pushing the stack of books toward her across the counter.  I swallowed and gazed up into her eyes.  “I trust you.”

More silence.  And then:

“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice low, husky.  She gave me an easy smile so bright, so intense, I felt my heart skip a beat.

“Don't mention it,” I called after her.

But the door was already swinging.

She was gone.

---

I made spaghetti for dinner, straining the cooked noodles in a rush of steam that burned my fingertips as I held the pot.  I cursed and turned the cold water on to follow after the boiling water.  I didn't want to damage the drain.

I'd let her take at least fifteen books.  Fifteen art books, expensive things that had been mostly donated to our little library.  I didn't understand, couldn't understand, what had happened to my judgment...or why I'd allowed it to happen.  So she’d had a pretty face, a pretty body—so what?  I mixed the sauce in with the pasta with broad strokes of my metal spoon and did my best not to think about it.

And failed.

Dinner was bland, cheap and convenient.  I put the bowl of spaghetti on the table next to the salad I'd mixed, and I realized I wasn't hungry.  I wanted a bath.

I put plastic wrap over the top of the spaghetti bowl and set it in the fridge (waste not, want not, Gramma says), and made my way to the bathroom.  I drew myself a deep, hot bath...the kind of burning hot that would probably cook a lobster.  And then I sank into it, ignoring the scream from my skin.

Steam rose in see-through fingers as I stared at my bathroom ceiling and tried to think about happy things.  The library had just gotten another grant.  My car was fine.  It was only four days until I saw Gramma again.  I was frustrated, upset, and I didn't fully understand why.  The accident had made me overemotional, I supposed, as I leaned back against the wall of the tub.

I closed my eyes, and all I could see was short black hair with a sprinkling of gray, full lips curved into a smile that came easily.  Bright blue eyes, a sweet cornflower blue that pinned me down with a gaze of hunger.  A name that sounded like a poem:

Kara.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling again.  It was an ordinary ceiling, an apartment ceiling.  It was tired and old and crumbling.  But I saw it through a different gaze, just then.

Because I began to imagine something so surprising, so unusual for me, that instantly my face began to burn with a blush.  Because I imagined a mouth on my own, and my fingers were caught up in short, black hair, and I was staring down at her while a warm body crawled on top of me, spreading my legs with gentle knees and hands as she glided her hips on top of mine, between my legs, pressing against my center, there…

It was a fantasy, a cold, cruel thing that would only last as long and far as my imagination could take it.  It wasn’t real.  But in that small moment of my own devising, it was enough.

Her fingers had been long, I remembered them as I'd handed her a big, thick book of Picasso.  They were on my skin, now, pressing down against the small of my back, bringing my body up to meet her own.  She was fierce in her want, and I loved that she wanted me with such hunger.   Her tongue was in my mouth, her hips were on top of mine, and I felt defenseless and helpless and completely caught up in the moment as I wanted it maybe more than she did.

Here, now, I had only my own hands, my own fingers.  And I tried.  I closed my eyes and imagined my hands were Kara's, long and soft and pale, grazing flesh on their downward quest to touch me, repeatedly, her fingers languid and longing as they went into me gently, deeply, with a sweet, rich pleasure.  But it wasn’t Kara touching me.  It was only myself...these were my own hands.

I stopped, then, grasping the edges of the bathtub with a sort of resignation.

I stared up at the ceiling, my dull apartment ceiling, and I let loose a sigh that mingled with the steam, blowing the tendrils off course.

I’d probably never see her again.

---

“You look rough,” said Sally tactfully, waving a pile of bills under my nose.  “What the heck?  Bad night?”

“Yeah,” I croaked, taking the bills from her.

She stood for a long moment, surveying me with a raised eyebrow, and I squirmed, self-conscious.  “I just have a migraine,” I said then, and t was only a half truth, but it appeased her enough for her to nod and pat my shoulder as she left me.

“Make sure you take a pain pill or something,” she shot over her shoulder.

“What's up?” asked Sharon, then, because to be left alone was apparently far too much to ask the universe for this morning.  I looked at her with bleary eyes and realized I had no idea where to begin.  What should I say?  I’d been so attracted to a patron who didn’t have a library card that I let her take almost all of our art books?

Yeah, that probably wouldn’t have gone over so well.

“Nothing,” I answered, which wasn’t even a percentage of the truth.

“Well…”  She looked unconvinced, but set a large stack of books in front of me anyway.  “So, these were in the drop-off box...but I looked them up in the system, and they weren't checked out.  Any ideas?”

I hadn't really heard all of it, or comprehended it, at least, for there on my desk were the fifteen art books I'd let a stranger take yesterday.  All of them were in perfect condition, all of them back.

“Um,” I said, because I didn't know what to say.  Sharon gave me a concerned look, then cleared her throat.

“Anyway, if you could maybe look into it--or, at the least, re-shelve them?”

“Yes,” I answered.  And she left with a stack of fiction, heading off toward the children’s section.

Kara had stood right there, in front of my desk, behind the stack of fifteen books that she couldn't check out.  But checked out anyway.  I picked up the volume of Picasso, remembering how I'd placed it in her hands.  I knew I was blushing, and I didn't care.  She'd had long, pale fingers.

“Hello, Megan.”  Somehow, impossibly, she was standing there again, as she'd been yesterday, hands in pockets, hair tousled, smile gracing features I wanted to memorize with hands and lips and tongue.  I blinked a few times and stood up suddenly.  This was not a fantasy.  This was real.  My head spun.

“Hello,” I replied with a blink.  We glanced at one another for a long moment, the air crackling between us with an invisible spark.  Or, at least, I felt it.  I swallowed.

“I liked the books,” she murmured with a small, secret smile, as if she was uncertain of what to say.  “I brought them back like I said I would.”  She nodded to the pile.  “I always keep my word. I'd...like some more, if that's all right with you.”

I hadn't even checked them to see if they were all right, but I believed her utterly.  I nodded, still trying to find my voice.  “But…but we don't have anymore art books...” I said, wishing with all my heart that we did.  She looked disappointed, and it made me panic a little to have caused that expression.  “Look...is there anything else you might like?”

She cocked her head, and then shook it, eyes dark as she gazed into my eyes, and then her gaze drifted up and down my body.  My mouth fell open.  Stuff like this never happened to me.  “No,” she murmured softly, then, leaning on the counter as she stared deeply into my eyes.  “Not in books, anyway.”

My heart thundered.

“Listen,” she leaned forward more, then, face close to mine.  Close enough to kiss.  She smelled of dark perfume, a kind of incense.  “How many of these things do I have to read in order to get a date with you?”

I bit my lip and realized I'd stopped breathing.  “...Pardon?”

“I would like a date with you,” she folded her arms, “and I was wondering what it would take to get one.”

What do you say to that?  Nothing funny or smart or even partially clever came to mind.  I smiled, dazed and found myself saying:  “Nothing.  It doesn’t take anything.”

“Does that mean yes?” she pressed, her beautiful, full lips curving up into a heartbreaking smile.

“Yes,” I whispered.  My heart was beating too fast, and I couldn’t really breathe, but I wasn’t paying attention to things like that.  I was staring at her, spellbound.

“How about tonight?  I'll come when you get off work,” she said then, and was gone, hands still in pockets as she grinned confidently, striding fast and graceful out of the foyer, into the snowy parking lot.  She turned a corner, and I couldn't see her.

I didn't breathe or blink for a long moment, and then I coughed a little.  So I drank a mouthful of water, washing the cool liquid down a throat parched and hot.  I felt the water unfurl, cool and sweet, in my hot stomach.

Impossibly…that had just happened.

---

“You've been on edge today, Megan,” said Sally, that afternoon, “is there anything bothering you?”

Bothering wasn’t really the right word.  I still hadn't processed the morning's events.  Something bizarrely wonderful had happened to me.

I still hadn’t processed the events or understood them—and I probably n ever would.

I shook my head and closed the office door behind me.  “You wanted to see me, Sally?”  I sitting, sitting down across the desk from her and crossing my legs at the ankles.

Sally lit her cigarette from the scented candle on her desk (plumeria), both fire hazards, and both not allowed.  It didn't matter to Sally.  She drew a puff of acrid nicotine and blew it out into the foggy space between us.  “Are you…okay?” she asked me.

“Yes.”  Technically, I was more okay than I’d ever been.  “I…I think I have a date tonight,”  I said haltingly, memorizing the grain of her desk, refusing to look at her face, at her eyes.

There was silence, and I chanced a glance at my boss.  She looked surprised, thin brows arched over her pretty face giving away that surprise, but then she smoothed the expression away, took another puff of the cigarette.

I was pretty certain that we were the only lesbians (or, at least, the only two who admitted it) in the village.  I wondered if she was thinking about all of the times she’d asked me out on a date.  I wondered if she was thinking about all of the times I’d refused her.  I crossed my legs again, the other way, feeling uncomfortable as the silence dragged on.

“I’m…happy for you, Megan,” the words hung between us, as heavy as the smoke.  Her eyes burned into me, nothing like Kara's.  There was a different hunger there.  And a sadness.

“I'm sorry, Sally,” I stood and smoothed my skirt, my nervous habit as I tried to give her a smile.

“You don't need to be sorry,” her voice was soft in the silence, but a bell rang at the front desk.

“I'll get that.”  I said, leaving the room.  I couldn't think of anything else to say.

Five o'clock came, and the soft chime of the old grandfather clock in the foyer echoed through the empty library.  I'd been straightening up for an hour, the last hour that was usually slow.  There had been no patrons today during that hour, and I’d cleaned up things pretty well.  As I gathered my coat and gloves from the entryway, I turned and looked at the closed door to Sally’s office—the door that had remained close since I’d come out of it.  There really wasn’t any reason to say goodbye to her.

So I didn’t.

I’d never been attracted to Sally.  I couldn’t place my finger on it as to exactly why.  She was handsome and she was always very nice to me.  We just didn’t click together.

But now, as I stepped out into the twilight, drawing the coat closer to my chin, I sighed out into the chill, my breath coming out in a fog like a ghost as I turned to look at the parking lot.  I’d never really thought there was someone for me, but now maybe there was a chance at someone.  And if there was someone for me, surely there was someone for Sally, too.

Kara was standing beneath the old, guttering lamppost in the parking lot, leaning against it in her jeans and blouse, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  But it was thirteen degrees, and my breath crystallized as I sighed into the air.  She must be freezing.

“You need a coat,” was how I greeted her.  I really wanted to say:  “Thank you for asking me on a date,” but I thought it’d be awkward, so I became accusatory instead.

“Nah,” she inclined her head to me, her eyes dancing in the blue light.  “I'm fine.  You look lovely.”

I looked exactly as I had when she'd seen me last.  I think she said it because it's there in the book of nice things to say on a first date.  But she said it with this raw sort of meaning, her voice low and guttural, and with this intensity that made the words stand out in the air between us.  I blushed in the half-light.  I couldn’t help it.

“Thank you,” I murmured.  “You do, too.”

So there we were, at a standstill beneath the lamppost.  I shifted from foot to foot as Kara's breath came out in short puffs.  She must be so cold.

“Do you want some coffee?”  she asked, then, resolutely as she grinned at me.  It sounded like a plan.

“Yes,” I agreed.  So it was.

We walked, shoulder to shoulder, down the main street of the village.  Though it was only five o'clock, most of the shops had already closed up for the night.  People didn't normally roam the streets past dark here--what was the point?  There was nothing to do.  “Go home, stay warm with your families” was the motto of the day.

The reflection of the warm windows from the coffee shop was a patch of light in an otherwise deserted, snowy street.  The warm scents assaulted us even before Kara got the door for me.  She held it open with a cheerful smile, and I found myself staring down at my boots as I passed the threshold.

No woman had ever smiled at me like that before.

The place was practically deserted, though smooth jazz rolled out of the speakers, and the inviting smell of coffee pervaded everything.  The barista took our orders (two small coffees), and proceeded to ask me how my day had gone, and if we'd gotten in any new and exciting books.  It was the same conversation that I had with her everyday, but now it was different, new…exciting.  I had a woman standing next to me a head taller than I was.  She had her hands in her pockets, and a wide grin on her face.  She looked at me as if I was the only other person in the entire world.  So I told the barista that yes, we had gotten in exciting books, and she should stop in tomorrow.  And she promised she would.  I began to wonder what new, exciting books I could possibly give her, since we hadn’t gotten any new books in months.

We sat down at a cold booth, the plastic of the seats sending a shiver through me, even through the coat and skirt, and we nursed our mugs of house blend with freezing fingers.  Her hands were so elegant, long fingers gripping the mug tightly to draw out its warmth.  I nursed my cup gently, taking my hands away from the chunky pottery when it became too hot for me.  The heat didn't seem to phase Kara.

“So,” I smiled, staring down at my coffee.  “Kara.  That's an unusual name.”

“My mother gave it to me, and she's unusual,” she took a sip of the coffee, even though it was still practically scalding.  “Why are you named Megan?”

“My mother, too.  I wasn’t named for anyone in particular.  She just liked the sound of it.”  I paused, then, because Kara was leaning on her elbows easily against the table, her smile warm, inviting as her fingers curled around the mug.  I think I was blushing again, hoping very, very much that she wasn’t noticing.

“I really liked the art books you gave me.  I've been thinking about them since I read them,” she fingered the patterns on the pottery, chunky spirals that twisted slowly beneath her fingertips.  I couldn’t help but watch her fingers, and I couldn’t help but think of where I’d imagined those fingers.  “There’s so much raw power to art, I think,” she said, her lips twitching as she tried to keep her face serious.

“Yes,” I said, and swallowed.  “Definitely.  I've always felt that way, anyway.  I used to paint,” I finished and then cursed myself that I’d be so clunky.

“You did?”  There was so much eagerness in those words.  I looked at Kara, and her face lit up.  “What kind of painting?”

“I did a bit of everything,” I folded my hands to keep from biting my nails.  “Oils, acrylics, I liked watercolors.  I did sketching and inks and colored pencils, too.”

“That's amazing.  Can I see some of your work?”  She was still eager, and I found myself blushing, becoming shy under so much enthusiasm.

“I don't really do it anymore,” I said, and watched as her face fell in disappointment.  “I wasn't really good, you see,” I muttered,  “so I stopped.”

“If you loved art, why did you give it up?”

“I never said I loved it...”  I started.

“I could tell,” she cocked her head, gazing at me fiercely, her eyes burning.  “There was a certain way you said it.  Your voice lifted, your posture shifted.  I liked that.”

I stared at my coffee very hard, waiting for it to do something.  She noticed a subtle change in my body?

“Anyway,” Kara cleared her throat.  “We're treading into deeper territory on this first date.”  When she smiled, her entire face lit up, shone with impassioned light.  It was so genuine...

“Is this a first date, then?”  I asked, surprising myself with the question.

“Yes,” she said with conviction.  I didn’t question it.

We sat for a moment in companionable silence.  I sipped at my drink, inhaling the pleasant aroma of steam.  Finally, Kara cleared her throat and leaned forward.

“We can have another one of these, yes?”

“This one isn't finished yet.”

“I'm just making certain.”  Again a grin.  It was infectious, so hopeful.  I smiled, too.

“Yes, then.  Absolutely.”

That was how it began.  This is how it ended:

At my doorway.  I'd let us into the apartment building, and, hand in hand, we'd climbed the stairs together.  My heart thundered in my chest, and I wondered how this would go.  I didn't know what to do.

I was ridiculously nervous, but I wanted it.

“Goodnight,” Kara said, and she leaned forward at the waist gently, brushing her warm lips against my cheek.  She smelled of coffee and cream, and I turned my face to hers, but she had already moved away, the mischievous smile playing on her lips again.

“It’s…it’s so cold,” I called after her as she climbed back down the stairs.  “Do you want me to drive you home?”  My heart was beginning to sink in my chest.  That was…it?

“Don't worry, it's not far for me to walk,” she called back.  She paused on the staircase down, her hands shoved into her pockets, her lifting her eyes to me.  I shivered beneath that hungry gaze. “I'll see you tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow?”  My heart leapt up at the thought.

“I couldn't possibly wait.”  Her smile grew impossibly brighter, and then she’d turned, trotting back down the steps and around the corner.

I swallowed, placed a hand over my heart, tried to will the too-fast thumping to slow down.  She said she couldn't possibly wait.  I opened the door, let myself in, shut it behind me and leaned against it, waiting for my heart to stop thundering in my chest, stop the blood from thundering through my veins and head and limbs and hands, hands that couldn’t possibly stop shaking.

I couldn't believe this was happening.  To me.  Me!

But it was.

I drew myself a bath, almost crawled in with my pantyhose on before I realized what I was doing, that I’d not taken off my underwear either.  With a chuckle, I peeled it off with numb hands, and stumbled into the scalding water without really feeling it.

I lay down in the water, watched the steam curl, felt my heart rise.

She'd picked…me.

I was ridiculously happy.  The water made me lightheaded, and I traced patterns on the surface, on my own skin, triangles and circles that shone wetly on my legs.  And I couldn’t stop smiling.

Chapter 3

The second night, she met me in the parking lot, just like before.  Still wearing no coat, still probably freezing, but when she took my hand this time, slipping my fingers through hers like we’d been doing this a long time, like we fit well together, she was hot to the touch.

Almost like she was fevered.

“How was work?” she asked, like we’d been together twenty years and were walking together to get dinner like we always do.

“Good,” I told her, not exactly telling her that my boss had been frosty to me all day (that was okay), and that a little kid had thrown up all over some Clifford books (the flu was going around, and that was okay, too).  Because, let’s be honest:  the day had been good.

Because I’d known, the entire time, that I had her to look forward at the end of it.

“Good,” she repeated, glancing sidelong at me and practically purring as she leaned down and brushed her warm lips over my forehead.  An unbidden shiver moved through me, going straight down to my toes as she squeezed my hand.  “I have something I want to show you.”

The night was so chill that our breath came out like ghosts before us as we walked beneath the streetlights on the shoveled sidewalks.  The lights were still up from Christmas, and they twinkled brightly in the trees along the street and looping between the streetlamps.

We were headed toward the town park, I knew, as we turned right onto Cedar Street.  The town park was where they’d had the tree lighting ceremony over the Thanksgiving holiday, was where the holiday tree was still up, still strung with hundreds and hundreds of lights, the tree that still bore the decorations that the kids had made in the children’s room at the library in the first week of December.  As we walked toward it, I noticed that the little ice rink still hadn’t been taken down.  Every year they flood a part of the park, turn it into a little rink where kids can skate with their parents.  They do it just for the holidays, and usually have it down by the end of December.

But it was January…and somehow, it was still here.

Kara stepped out onto the ice.

A cold finger of wind almost lifted the hat off my head as she held tightly onto my hands, walking backward on the ice a little as she grinned at me.  Then she stepped off the slippery surface, trotting over to the little grandstand that stood along the edge of the rink.

She returned to me with two pairs of ice skates.

“Oh no,” I chuckled, shaking my head, crossing my arms.  “I can’t skate to save my life!”

“Really?  I thought everyone could ice skate!” exclaimed Kara, shaking her head as she all but threw herself down into a snow drift to sit and take off her boots.  She began to pull the skates onto her feet.  “These were left over from the holidays…”  Her mouth curled up at the corners mischievously, even as she looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes.  “And I thought you’d enjoy it.”

I shook my head, arms folded.  “I’ll make a fool of myself!” I groaned with a chuckle as she finished tightening her laces, holding up the ice skates to me with wide, pleading eyes, even as she laughed, too.

“You’ll never be a fool to me,” she murmured, and then she was kneeling on one knee, one ice skate out behind her, and one skate under her.  She was balancing perfectly on the blade and her knee.  “Let me put them on for you,” she cajoled.  “Please?”

I regretted it almost immediately, but what could I say when a beautiful woman was on her knees before me?  I stood awkwardly on one foot as Kara carefully took off my boot, slipping it over my ankle, and cradling my foot in her hand.  I was self-conscious as she slipped the skate on over my foot, cradling my ankle, and then expertly knotting the laces.  Her hands strayed to my calf, her long, warm fingers cupping my leg as she then took up my next foot.

I wobbled on that one skate on the ground, put out my hand and caught myself and held myself up by gripping her shoulder tightly.  But she knelt there like a strong rock, completely immovable, and I stayed upright clinging tightly to her.  Again, her warm fingers were against the back of my leg, and I shuddered beneath her touch.

Then she was standing, and I was wearing two ice skates.

Which meant that I was falling backwards.

She caught me easily, all but sweeping me off my feet as she held me tightly in her arms.  “It’s okay,” she told me softly, smoothly, her beautiful face engaged in a warm smile.  “We’re going to step over to the ice, okay?  Together…”

Well.  It was sort of together.  Mostly she dragged me gently while I wobbled on the thin blades of the ice skates.

I really was hopeless.  But I wasn’t noticing the fact that I couldn’t really balance.  I wasn’t noticing the fact that I was making a pretty good fool of myself.

All I really noticed was her.  The warmth of her fingers as they curled around my waist, all but holding me up (actually, really holding me up), the warmth of her palms that I could feel even through the thickness of my coat.  She held me tightly and pushed me gently forward, and I was leaning against her, then, and she held me up.

And I suppose that I was skating.

I wasn’t, really.  She was pushing me from behind, her hard, muscular body against my back, so warm that she made me shiver in the chill wind.

“Look, you’re doing it!” she whispered against my ear, smile making her voice soft and warm.  I smiled in spite of myself, but then I was starting to fall to the right.  She held me tightly, didn’t let me.

We skated across the entire surface of the rink, which is only about twenty feet wide, but it was still the most I’d stayed upright in an ice rink my entire life.  “I think that was pretty great!” I told her, once we reached the edge.  I turned around, or rather wobbled around, but as she let me go to let me turn, I began to fall.

I fell into a snow bank, at least.  Which meant the only thing injured was my dignity.

“Are you all right?” asked Kara, kneeling down beside me in one lovely, swift movement as I began to laugh.

“Thanks for that,” I told her, but I meant it as I stared up into her eyes.

She smiled, her eyes bright in the twilight.  “We need to get you somewhere warm.  Maybe get a warm drink in you.”

I watched her, mesmerized.

I didn’t have the courage to tell her that her gaze made me warm enough to face a blizzard.

---

“There's something different about you!” Sharon remarked, later that week.  I was stacking recently returned books and humming softly to myself.  I was grinning way too wide, kind of stupidly.  I guess if I’d looked in a mirror, there might be cartoon hearts and little birds spinning around my head.

“Really?” I asked, trying to hide my smile.  My skirt was shorter, with a definite swish, soft satin that cradled my hips lovingly.  Kara liked satin.

“Yes,” she watched me move around behind the desk, and cocked her head, “are you seeing someone?”

“You're somewhat behind the eight ball,” Sally was standing in her office's doorway, smoking with a frown.  “Of course she's seeing someone.  She’s practically twitterpated.”

“I really don't think it's anyone's business,” I murmured, feeling my spirits fall.  Her face was stony.

“Of course it's not,” said Sally, and she pushed off from the wall, sliding back into her office without another word.  The door clicked shut behind her.

Sharon shrugged, “Don’t worry about her--I'm glad you're happy, Megan.”

I was happy.  I finished stacking the books, feeling a little anger move through me.  And I shouldn’t feel guilty about it.

“Don't let her get to you,” Rob said a little later.  He was alphabetizing the Barney books in the kids section.  There were a lot of Barney books.  I picked through the “G's” trying to help, but finding my mind elsewhere.  Go to the Museum with Barney!

“Rob, it’s been…well, it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve dated anyone,” I said absentmindedly, as if it were an excuse.  Giraffe went before Go.  Giraffe Safari with Barney!  “And I’ve been spending so much time with her now, you know?  It’s been completely incredible.”  And then so softly, I wondered if he’d heard me, I cleared my throat and said:  “I think I’m beginning to fall for her.”

“Then don't let Sally get to you,” he said resolutely, beginning on the “H's”.  “She's just pissed off that you never gave her a chance.  But that’s okay.  This new girl, she make you happy?”

“Really happy, Rob.”

“Then go with it,” he smiled.  “Enjoy it.  It's really precious, you know?  Not everyone finds someone who makes you happy.”

Barney looked happy, dancing across the cover of his book with his tail carefully balanced.  He was wearing roller skates.

She made me happier than I’d ever been in my entire life.

I knew I was lucky.

---

I hadn't dreamed of wolves in days, blessed days that stood between me and my usually constant nightmares.  I was pretty certain that this was the longest period I'd ever gone without dreaming of them.  I woke in the morning, and breathed in deeply with a smile, and realized I'd been wolf free all night.

It was freezing outside--the weatherman assured us all over the tinny radio that this was the coldest winter on record.  Rob would snort and say it couldn't be possible, global warming and all.  Sally would bundle herself into her office without a word and stay in there all day.

I visited my grandmother that weekend in the best mood of my life.  I pulled into the long driveway at her cabin and parked my little car in the patch of light from one of the warm kitchen windows.  The cabin looked so beautiful at dusk with the winter snow laying around it, the pine trees rising above it, smoke curling out of its chimney and the snow contrasting so prettily with the dark color of the logs that had made up the cabin itself.  It looked like a postcard.  I pulled my hood tighter, got out of my car and walked the path to the door.  It took awhile to step through some of the deeper piles of snow but I didn’t care.  I whistled until I was standing on her rug, scraping off the snow on my boots.

“You're seeing someone,” said my grandmother, as she poured the tea, made the biscuits.  She still used lard from large tubs, taking a handful out with bare fingers, cutting it into the flour with forks.  I watched her work but didn’t really see it, my head to the side as I stirred the honey into my tea with a crooked tin spoon.

“Yes,” I told her, and watched her work.  She was so precise in her movements, twisting the fork around the edge of the old Pyrex bowl covered in snowflakes, the blue of the bowl scratched all over from all the thousands of times it’d been washed.

“Well?  Are you going to tell me?”  There was a sparkle in her eyes as she took out a mug, ready to cut the biscuits.  I left my steaming tea to help her.  Together, we floured the mug rims and sliced into the dough with the thick china.

“Her name’s Kara,” I said quietly—you could hear the smile in my voice.  “We've gone out on dates all this week…”  What else could I tell my grandmother?  There was so much to tell her, but I didn’t exactly know how to put it into words.  My heart was too full.

“That's good.  She's nice, then?”  Biscuits filled the baking sheet rapidly, evenly spaced, dashed with butter.  She put the first tray into the oven, and fiddled with the knobs to adjust the temperature.

“Yes, she's actually wonderful,” I swept the flour off my hands.  “She's just so…I mean, she’s gorgeous, and she’s funny, and she’s so good to me, so kind and thoughtful.  I'd never thought it could be like that.”

“It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?” my grandmother glanced my way, a twinkle in her eye.  Great.  Even she knew it’d been a long time.  I chuckled, grinning as I shook my head.  “Are you nervous,” she asked, then, leaning against the counter, “or are you enjoying things?”

“A little bit of both.  But it has been a while,” I told her, wiping the flour off my hands.

“Why sure.”  Gramma sat down at the kitchen table and traced a grain in the wood with a thumbnail.  “What do you know about her?”

“Not that much.  It’s just been a few dates…”  I began to blush.  Toward the end of the week, there hadn’t been that much talking involved.  Mostly, there had been a lot of making out on my couch.  “She really likes art.”

“Did you tell her you were an artist?”

“Gramma, that's ridiculous.  I was not.”

“You were.”  She glanced at me resolutely with a frown.  “And you were fantastic, but, for whatever reason, you put that behind you.  I'll never understand why you did it, Megan.”

“Can we talk about something else?” I snapped, and, immediately afterward, regretting snapping at her.  I sighed and glanced at my grandmother and was surprised to see her staring out the window at the snowfall.

“Going to be a bad storm tonight,” she said, switching the subject.  “It'll be hard on the wolves.”

It was added almost as an afterthought.  I swallowed and stared down at my tea.  The wolves again.

“There are no wolves, Gramma,” I said softly.

“Don't be ridiculous, girl.  They're out in the backyard right now.”  My grandmother took a swig of her own coffee, throwing her head back as she swallowed it down.  “They've been coming in and out all day.”

It sent shivers down my spine, the way she said it, though I knew she didn't mean it.  She couldn't possibly mean it.  The doctors had asked to up her medication, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good, might actually do harm because she was still taking care of herself so well.  And she firmly believed in what she said as honest fact.  They doctors had had big words for it, but what it came down to was that she was not a danger to herself or others.  That's what really mattered.

“Good tea, Gramma,” I said.

“They liked it, too,” she said, and got up to check on the biscuits.

---

I stood in the center of my room, looking up at the sheets of white paper, peppering the walls over the faded wallpaper.  Fairies and unicorns and giants and damsels in distress.  That's what had filled my heart as a child, and I'd taken pencil (sometimes pen) in hand, and had drawn out all the visions onto faded white paper.  I'd been proud of them, so proud, and Gramma had helped me hang them up, using a kitchen chair as a stool and tacks as nails.  We'd hung them up together, and afterwards had had a cup of tea, surveying our handiwork with the pride that a gallery master must have.  But this wasn't a gallery, and they weren't art.  They were only the scribbles of a kid, completely drunk on imagination.

I stared up at them now with a frown.  I could see all of the things wrong with each picture: necks too big, arms at bad angles.  I'd thought they were pretty darn good as a kid, but I'd grown out of such naive thinking.

It was time to take them down.

I had a kitchen chair with me again.  The same kind I'd dragged to the cupboards as a toddler, using them to climb up towards the cookie jar.  Now, I stood it against the far wall, near the small bow window.  I climbed up onto the chair’s seat, reaching my hands toward the paper.

I paused a moment.  A particularly soulful fairy looked at me across the space of time and wonder, scribbled effortlessly on a particularly white piece of paper.  So many creatures and flights of fancy, so many mistakes.  I stared hard at it.

The strains of a completely crappy version of the Canon in D washed over me--my cell phone was ringing.  I climbed down off the chair and fished it out of my purse.  I didn’t recognize the number.  “Hello?” I called into the receiver as I flipped it open.

“Hi!”   It was Kara, though her voice sounded far away, weeded out by bits of static and the “shushing” sound of a bad connection.  “Megan?”

“I'm here,” I said, louder than necessary.  The static grew louder too.

“How are you?”  It sounded cheerful, but I could barely make out the words.

“Fine!  Listen, where are you calling from?  I'm losing you, I can barely hear you!”

“Reception...mountain, yeah?”

“What?” I called into the receiver.  Technically, I shouldn't have been getting much reception at all.  The cell phone could be used for texting on the mountain, but calls were almost always lost.  I knew it was probably my phone causing the problems, and I put it on speaker, holding it up higher.  As if that would actually help.  I snorted.

“Kara?”  I called into the phone.

It cut out dead.  I'd lost the call.

Frustrated, I shut it and turned towards the door.  Maybe I could get a better reception in the front yard.

The kitchen chair and tacked up papers remained where they were, forgotten.

---

“...So you see, that's what those boys 'ought to be doin',” the man's voice drifted up to me from where I stood on the stairs, and I squinted in the half light.  Had Gramma left the television on?

But no.  There were two shadows in the hallway, and I heard my grandmother's distinct voice say: “No--that's all right.  I've got it.”

“Gramma?”  I called, hopping down the final two steps.  “Do you have company?”

“It's just Clyde, sweetheart,” she called from the hallway.  “He said that he hasn't gotten a chance to talk to you about the car yet.”

“Hi, Megan!” boomed Clyde's cheerful voice.

“Hi, Clyde!”  The entry hallway was small, but I peeked my head around the corner.  My grandmother was a tall woman, still not doubled by age, but Clyde towered over her.  “What can I do you for?”

“Remember when I towed your car last week, Megan?”

Was it really just last week?  It seemed a lifetime ago.  “Yes,” I said, uncertainly – wondering if he’d want money.  I hadn’t brought any cash with me.

“She been working right and everything?”

“Yes!”  He smiled hugely at that, nodding his big head.  He wore a big plaid shirt and a baseball cap with a Budweiser logo on it, the cap hiding his bald head as he wrinkled his big nose.

“That's great, then.  I just came by to make certain it was okay.”

I smiled at him.  “I really appreciate your helping me out.”

“Anytime,” he grinned and took his hat off to run a big-fingered hand over his bald head.  He put his hat back on.  “Ma'am, Megan.”  And he left the entryway, opening the door to the chilled outdoors.  I shivered in spite of myself as he left.

“Such a nice guy.”  I grinned at my grandmother.  “He came three miles just to ask that!  And it was so sweet of him not to charge me anything for the towing.”

“Do you want some more tea, dear?”  My grandmother asked, absentmindedly. “I just put a fresh kettle on.”

“Sure, Gramma,” I walked past her to the kitchen, where I now heard the insistent shriek of the teakettle, boiling on the stove.

I turned off the stove and took out the tea strainer from the drawer.  I glanced up, out the window, to the backyard, mantled with the deep blue of a sunset hidden by the snow.

I dropped the tea strainer.

She was tall, she would come up to my hips if I was standing there, in the snow next to her.  Her shaggy pelt was darker than midnight, scattered with stars…snowflakes clung to strands of her fur, and I could see her breath fog out into the darkness around her from a broad, long muzzle.  Her eyes gleamed.  She was looking right at me.

A thin pane of glass stood between the wolf and me.  She was only a few steps away from the window, staring up with eyes that shone from the depths like cuts of silver.  If she leaped, if she came for me, there would be nothing to stop her but a pane of glass.  A pane of glass as thin as a dream.

I stood without moving, without breathing as all the blood in my body began to pound through me with fear.  Everything was brighter and sharper, and it seemed in that moment that I could count the snowflakes in the air between us.

She sniffed the air, and didn’t blink or look away as I stood there, shaking slightly.  But then, as quickly as if someone had called to her, the wolf turned and with a graceful gait, loped away into the woods.

My blood still thundered through me, and I could barely take in a gasp of breath without feeling like I needed to faint, but I couldn’t believe it.  I leaned forward at the waist against the counter, gripping its edge with hands white knuckled.

It couldn’t possibly have been real.  In the snow, I’d been pretty darn close to dying—I’d become feverish and I’m sure there was the possibility of hypothermia.  I’d been hallucinating when I thought I'd seen the wolves.  I dreamed about them because people dream about things they fear.

This, just now?  It couldn’t possibly have happened.

I blindly staggered to the front entryway, sticking numb feet into boots, struggling into my parka.  I had to see, had to know for certain.  I wasn't like my Gramma, a woman believed that there were wolves in the cold who came to pay her a visit.

I wasn’t like my grandmother.  I wasn’t becoming crazy.

The cold was bone-deep and biting, a chill that moved right through me as I stepped out the back door.  Te drifting snowflakes, so lazy in their descent, clung to my  hair and eyelashes, freezing me.  I stumbled into the backyard, intent on showing myself the truth.

I tripped on a big, unexpected drift and fell face-first into the snow, putting out my bare hands to keep from falling in.  The cold stung my skin like bites.  I was shaking and my teeth rattled in my head, but the cold wasn’t why I shook.

There, next to my bare hands, thrust deep in the snow were massive prints, larger than spread fingers.

Paw prints.

---

“There aren’t any wolves in the mountains,” said Rob, continuing in his never ending task of re-shelving the children's books.  I didn't help him this time.  I stood there with my feet firmly planted apart, arms folded.  Even thinking about it caused my heart rate to skyrocket.

“I know what I saw, Rob,” I muttered, then--because, really--what else could I say?  It was obvious, and I knew it was true...there weren't wolves in the mountains, not for years and years, if there had even been any at all.  I was a little hazy on the local botany, but I knew there weren't wolves, just like there weren't panthers, there weren't wild horses or big cats.  They’d been killed out by our ancestors.  There were no wolves in the mountains.

“Maybe...maybe, honey…” he was standing, now, dusting his broad hands off on his tweed pants.  “Maybe it's been a little hard on you, recently, what with the accident, and getting a new girlfriend...and I mean...your grandmother's ailing health,” he wasn't meeting my eyes, and I felt a cold sweat pass over me.

It was kind of obvious that he was giving me the it's okay that you're crazy talk.

We both knew that mental illness ran strongly through my family.  I mean, look at my grandmother.

“I know what I saw,” I repeated through gritted teeth.  “Next time I'll take a picture to show you.  The paw prints were huge, Rob.”

“So, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do?”  The very idea was ridiculous.  What do you do with a wolf who comes to visit?  “Call animal control?” I said weakly.  He laughed.

“I mean, you could.”  He shrugged and stretched overhead.  There was another stack of books to go through, all Nancy Drew.  These were the old editions I remembered checking out from this selfsame library years ago.  I had read each page with rapt attention, turned them with careful hands.  I picked up one of the volumes, turned it over in my hands.

He looked at me for a moment, eyes unreadable.  “I mean—you could call animal control.  If you think it best.”

There was an added bit to that sentence, the part that didn't quite make it out of his mouth.  “If you think it best” meant “if you think they won't call you crazy.”  They knew about my grandmother, everyone in the valley knew about my grandmother.  I might be questioned, might be tested, and I knew I wasn't where my grandmother had gone quite yet.

I bit my lip and leaned against the shelves with a heavy sigh.  “I may be a lot of things,” I told him then, with resolution, “but I’m not crazy, Rob.”

“Honey, things have been tough on you,” he reiterated, now looking at me with a mixture of pity and something I couldn't quite place.  “Why don't you, I don't know... take a few days off?  Just for yourself?”

I snorted.  “After everything that’s happened, do you honestly think Sally would let me?  I mean…who wouldn’t want a little vacation?”  The very thought of a few days to myself—maybe myself and Kara—made my heart begin to beat a little faster.  “But Sally would never--”

“Sally,” his gaze became hardened, cold, “would give you anything you asked for.”

“I don't really think so,” I told him, meeting his eyes with a frown.  “I don't think I'm exactly on her top ten list at the moment.”

“Says you,” he muttered.  And wouldn't say anything more.

I was one of those people who never, ever, ever took a sick day.  I hadn’t actually taken off any days since I’d started this job.  I had perfect attendance, all of my sick days rolled over each year...Sally had said at the last quarterly meeting that I had something like three months' worth.  It made sense.  A little bit pathetically, I’d never had much of a life, and really never had any reason to use them.

But I did now.  I had Kara.  And how things were progressing was downright beautiful.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I actually did take some days off for myself?  I could spend some extra time with my grandmother, maybe take Kara to meet her.

Have some time for me.

It was an interesting concept.  I'd never thought about it, but now I couldn’t get it out of my head.  I loved my library work, but time off for myself…it had a nice ring to it.

I bit my lip and stood back on my heels, gripping my chair back behind the front desk.  And then I went to Sally's door and knocked.

“Come in.”

I entered and shut the door behind me, staring at the floor, at the shelves...at the myriad of rare books that Sally surrounded herself with.  Anything, but directly at Sally.

“How can I help you, Megan?”

The voice had softened, but the words were still a little tense.

“Can I talk to you, Sally?”

“What about?”  No ‘be seated,’ no asking how I'd been.  She had holed herself up in the office for the past few days, like she’d taken up residence on another planet.  I walked up to the chair across from her desk and sat down anyway.

“I was wondering if I could take a few days off?” I blurted out, all in one go.  “I got into the accident last week, and I've been a little stressed and tense, and I would consider it a very good thing if I could just take…a few mental health days.”  I’d rehearsed the speech, and it sounded all right.

There was no thinking about it, no mulling over.  Her expression and tone didn’t change in the slightest.  One second I was blurting out my request, and the next, she said:  “You can have the rest of this week and the next one.”

I looked up at her, then.  But she wasn’t looking at me.  She was typing on her laptop, her eyes never flicking from the screen in my direction.

“Wow…that’s really wonderful, Sally—thank you.”  She waved her hand, apparently deeply engrossed by whatever she was looking at on her laptop.  I got up from the chair, not questioning it, and then I’d shut the door behind me with a huge grin.

“What'd I tell you?” Rob winked at me as I walked past him toward the break room, my coat and bag in hand.  “She gave it to you, didn't she?”

“Yeah, lots of time.”  I was still grinning widely.  “It was very nice of her.”

Rob waved me goodbye.  “Have fun on your mini-vacation!”

I didn't really consider it a mini-vacation.  To someone who hadn't gone anywhere and done anything in years, it was a real vacation.  I went to the grocery store and helped myself to a few decadent things, and then ice cream, three different flavors, and then I found myself at the coffee shop, ordering the largest chai latte they had with whole milk, and most definitely yes to whipped cream.  It was just one of those days.

“Hey, stranger.”

Kara was seated at a booth, leaning back, arms up and hands behind her head as if she owned the place.  She had on a wolfish grin and a tight denim jacket.  I had to swallow before I could speak and knew I was already blushing.

“Hi, Kara.  What are you doing here?”  I drifted over to her booth, chai clutched in both hands.  The cup was too hot and I’d forgotten to take a paper sleeve to protect my fingers.

“I live here, practically,” she stretched, it was long, luxurious, lupine, and then she rose in one smooth motion, standing next to me.  She wrapped an arm about my waist and drew me to her.  She smelled of coffee, of cinnamon.  Her soft, hot lips brushed against my cheek, and I licked my lips nervously and brought my own mouth against her cheek, too.  She was grinning hugely.

“Sit awhile with me,” she murmured to me, then, indicating the opposite empty seat.  I slid into the booth across from her with a cheesy little grin on my face.

Kara leaned forward and brushed warm fingers across the back of my hand.  I shivered beneath her touch.  “What are you up to?” she asked me, voice low, practically purring.

“Nothing much.  I...I got off the rest of this week, and the next one.”  The happiness bubbled up into my voice as I searched her face.  “My boss gave me all those days.  Isn’t that exciting?”

“Yes.  Very.”  Her eyes were dark with hunger as they gazed into mine.  She grinned a little. “How's your drink?”

“Good.”

She still hadn’t taken her fingers from the back of my hand, and now she was tracing a pattern over my wrist.  I shivered again.  “Hey, listen,” she murmured, her head to the side as her grin turned more…mischievous.  “Can I come over tonight?”  She was beautiful and smiling for me.  Just for me.  “I just wanted to come over, maybe make you dinner or something.  Watch a movie?  You're going to have all this extra time...”

I thought about all of my imaginings involving her, my bed…hell, even my bathtub.  I was blushing fiercely, but I couldn’t get the single syllable out of my mouth fast enough:

“Yes,” I breathed, my heart beating much too quickly.  “I’d like that very much.”

Chapter 4

“So how are things?” I asked, hearing my voice echo in the phone.  It sounded tinny to me, a bad signal.

“Fine.  Getting stuff done,” Gramma sounded tired, distant, like she wasn't paying attention to the conversation.

There was silence for a beat, and then:  “Gramma, I have a really big date tonight.”

“Oh?” she gave me a bit more interest.  I swallowed.

“Kara is coming over tonight, Gramma.”

Silence again, but it was for different reasons.  I heard my grandmother grunt as she shifted.  I could imagine her at the moment, in front of the kitchen table, standing next to the phone.  The cord was too short to do much of anything, but she would be twisting it around her index finger.  Around and around until it knotted, and she would patiently undo it, and then twist it again.

“Does that make you happy, Megan?”

“I mean—I’m super nervous, Gramma,” I said, then, voice sounding small even to myself.  I didn't even know why I was talking to her about being nervous.  Gramma was fearless, she couldn't possibly understand fears.

“It can be a scary thing.  You've been alone for a very long time.  But...Megan, I think this might be the one for you.”

Now it was my turn to be silent into the phone.  I wished I had a cord to twirl around my fingers.

“I have a good feeling about this Kara,” said Gramma Molly with resolution.  “I wouldn't worry too much.  Just be yourself.  I think she really likes you.”

I swallowed.  “Gramma--”

“Gotta go, Megan...something's on the stove.”  Her voice was tight now.  “I love you.  Good luck—you’ll be fine.  Don’t worry.  Goodbye.”  There was a dull click in the phone, and she hung up.

I closed the cell phone and set it on my own kitchen table.  The table was small, much smaller than my grandmother's, which was round and could seat about ten people.  Mine could hardly do two, even if you squeezed.  My table was in a tiny kitchen, in a tiny apartment in a tiny town, far removed from the gorgeous view and picturesque postcard cabin on the mountain.  I spun the cell phone a few times on the table’s surface, nervously biting my lip.

What would I do?  How would I look?  What would happen?

I stood up and paced the kitchen.  I took four steps, and then I turned around and took four more steps.  And then four more.  And four more.  Back and forth and back and forth I stepped across the kitchen, deep in thought.  I didn't have anything to eat.  Some microwave popcorn... I think I had a few cans of soup in the cupboard.  I went to check.  Just one.  And it was expired.  Canned foods could expire?  I stared at it for a long moment, and realized that I’d taken this can from my grandmother's kitchen back when I’d moved from her cabin into town.  I’d loaded up paper bags with canned goods and dry goods from her cupboards, because she said I needed a well-stocked “pantry” to start, and then everything else would come together if I had a well-stocked pantry.  I remembered struggling to the car with the bags, weighed down by the cans and boxes of things I really had no desire to eat.  But would, if I had to, which was the point.  Gramma was like that:  she bought what was most nutritious, the best for you, what would put hair on your chest, as she’d told me constantly, growing up.

So the can of soup was expired, and I had used the last bag of microwave popcorn last night.  So…that probably wasn’t good, considering that this was supposed to be a super special evening.

And Kara had told me she wanted to cook for me.

I put on my coat, still wet from drifting flakes that had clung to me earlier when I’d walked to the post office, and the boots, still soaked through solidly because they were cheap and in the winter, they were never dry.  And then I found myself trotting down my apartment steps and getting into my car.  Soon the short drive was over, and I was pulling into the grocery store parking lot.

Because I needed to stock my cupboards.

And, according to my grandmother, everything good would happen to me if I had well-stocked cupboards.

I wandered the aisles aimlessly, pushing the stupid squeaky wheel cart again (I was beginning to suspect that every single one of Big Al’s shopping carts might have had a squeaky wheel) that was currently empty.  I wasn’t certain exactly what I wanted to get yet.  Pantry goods.  But there were a lot of choices, and, this time around, I didn’t want to care about if what I was getting was the most nutritious thing on the face of the planet.

I wanted to buy food that made me happy.

And then, I picked up a box of cake mix.  It was a triple chocolate mix with a picture of a drool-worthy slice of cake on the front, and when I set it into the bottom of the cart, I instantly felt better.  I picked up a can of icing.  It was pretty non-nutritious, considering that it consisted of mostly sugar and corn syrup, but that followed the box into my cart.  Never mind that the recipes needed eggs or milk or whatever you put into a boxed cake mix (it’d really been awhile since I made one of those).  I love chocolate cake.  So I’d gotten myself the means to make one.

I picked up cans of soup, and boxes of rice and noodles, bottles of spaghetti sauce and boxes of frozen pizzas.  When I was finally done, an hour later, my cart was almost overflowing with stuff that could fill my pantries, food that wasn’t necessarily nutritious (though there were definitely some things, like some organic soups and boxed rice meals that came pretty darn close).  I topped off the contents with cans of iced coffee, and called it complete.  I checked out, paid the boy my hundred something dollars and wheeled the cart through the slush to my car, triumphant.

If my grandmother’s superstitions were right, I now had well stocked cupboards, and now…anything was possible.

Fitting it all into said cupboards (in my tiny kitchen) was another story, but I got creative.  By the time seven o’clock rolled around, I’d spent most of my afternoon and early evening hours in the pursuit and housing of food.  I barely had enough time to wash my face and drag a brush through my hair before I heard the front-door buzzer.  There was someone at the door of the building, and they wanted to see me.

I'd never heard the buzzer before.  During the day, I was at work, so if the post office lady had a delivery to make, she left a slip of paper.  And during the nighttime hours?  I guess it’s kind of pitiful to say, but no one had ever come to see me.

Joy making my breathing fast, making my blood rush, I practically danced over to the door and pressed the button.  I could almost hear the below entrance click open.  She was in the building.  I heard boots on the stairwell, and then a rhythm of knocks came from the door, and--as if I wasn't certain--Kara said in a warm, low voice on the other side: “hey, it's me.”

I laughed, then, and opened the door, and the minute she was over the threshold, I was kissing her.  If Kara was surprised, she didn’t show it.  Instead, she went with it, kissing back sweetly, less passionate and needy than my own, but she wrapped her arms around my waist tightly and practically lifted me to her.

“I brought you cookies,” she said after a long moment, as my mouth moved to her neck.  I could feel her smile as she wrapped her fingers in my hair.  “Chocolate chip,” she whispered.  “Do you like chocolate chip?”

“I mean, who doesn't like chocolate chip?” I asked, my mouth turning up at the corners as I pressed it to the warm skin of her neck.  But I let her go, then, because one of her arms was carrying a plastic bag.  I let her into my tiny kitchen by moving my body, waving her in.  “Just set them on the counter.”

She'd bought two bags of cookies that looked ridiculously delicious on the package, sold by cartoon elves.  She pressed her hips against the counter, her hands out behind her, and her shoulders curving toward me as she grinned brightly.  “I was wondering if I could cook you dinner?” she asked, her voice a low growl that made me shiver with delight.

“You don’t have to,” I breathed, wanting to press myself against her, but taking a deep breath.  I returned her smile.  “We could order in pizza,” I added.  “Do you like pizza?”

“I was kind of set,” she whispered, licking her lips as her eyes languidly trailed over my body, “on making something for you.”

“Sure,” I said a little too quickly, my blush deepening.  But I wasn’t talking about the food.

I stepped forward, taking her hands in mine as I tugged her into my small living room and down onto the couch.  It felt comfortable as she settled against me, breast against breast, her form long and lean against my soft curves.  I pulled her down to me, her strong, warm hands at the small of my back, and I arched up to meet her as I reached up and kissed her.

There was such a fierceness to her kiss, to my kiss.  We moved together in a rhythm as I opened the front of her shirt with my fingers, as I breathed out in a hiss as her mouth found the skin of my neck.

When I felt her hands beneath my shirt, against the bare skin of my back, I moved so that I was tight against her, my back curved like a question mark.  Her palms were hot, hot against my cool skin and I shivered in delight as she spread her fingers and traced a line up beneath the fabric.

We kissed for a long moment, her fingers moving slowly until she was tugging at my shirt insistently.  I pulled it up and over my head, and found my teeth chattering as the chilled air of the room made my skin bump.  My bra was black, and it stood out nicely against my pale skin, I knew, which is why I’d chosen to wear this one back when I’d only been hoping that this is what this night might hold.

She didn’t look at me long, but her eyes were so dark with hunger when she bent down to kiss me again, trailing sweet, hot kisses down my jaw, my neck, down to the curve of my breasts, the tops of them still encased in the bra, as she delicately traced a finger under the fabric.  I shivered so intensely that I thought I’d die if she didn’t move the material, if she didn’t kiss me there.  I put my arms about her neck again as she kissed me, long, low and hard and I wondered if my lips would bruise, and I felt her hands behind my back, undoing the clasp of my bra, peeling the straps down my shoulders in such slow, tantalizing motions that I couldn’t take it.

I held the bra to myself, staring up at her, panting as I felt white hot need move through me.

“Please,” I whispered.  “Can we go to my bed?”

We stumbled there, every last bit of us touching the other that we could as we moved through the darkened hallway.  She kissed me as I stumbled backwards, and I bruised my ankle on the doorframe.  I fell, not gracefully, onto the bed.  But she was on top of me, and I was helping her out of her shirt.  She hadn't worn a bra--she didn't need to.  Her breasts were flat and rounded, large nipples that stood out darkly on her pale chest.  I bent my head up to taste them, and she pressed down against my lips and mouth.

I tasted sweat, and sweet, soft skin, and it was hard in my mouth, against my tongue.  I licked it, and I pressed my hands to the small of her back.  I wanted her closer to me, I wanted to taste more.  I needed more.

“Here,” she said, voice dark.  She was taking off my pants, her fingers at the waistband of my jeans, and then unzipping the zipper expertly, tugging the band down and around my hips, down to my thighs and down and off my legs.  She was taking off her own, then, half standing, half crouching at the end of the bed as she shimmied out of her jeans and then she was tossing them to the floor, staring down at me with hungry, dark eyes.  I lay on the bed beneath her, only in my underwear, breathing heavily, aware of the cold air on my skin, of the sound of our breaths, mingled in the dark room.  The light from the kitchen gave me her outline over me:  it was sharp and lean, and she was naked, and as I watched, her mouth descended against my own.  Her wetness pressed against my thigh, and need moved through me fiercely.  I pressed my thigh between her legs as she ground down on top of me, and suddenly her hands were twisting and pressing against my breasts, and one traveled down between my legs.  I was so wet, and she said as much, licking her lips next to my ear, and tasting my neck again.  “I want you,” she whispered.

“Please,” was all I could whimper.  Her hands left my breasts, and she pressed my legs apart, dipping her handsome head down, the handsome head of tousled black, flecked with gray...flecked streaks of moonlight in darkness in this half-light of the dark bedroom.  I pressed down with my fingers against her scalp as she moved down my body, and then she was licking me...licking me there.  I cried out.

What I’d imagined, and built up in my head was nothing compared to the actual moment.  I’d built a fantasy that I thought too impressive, too great, and yet now, as I experienced it, there was no way I could have ever know how wonderful she could be.

Waves of pleasure moved through me as she touched me and licked first gently, then almost savagely with her tongue, tracing it down and into me, and then back to my clit again that was small and hard with need against her tongue.  I rocked my hips against her mouth, her lips, her tongue as she wrapped her arms around my legs, pinning me into place.

It felt so good, blossoms of electricity beginning low in my belly, and all my veins seemed alive with it, blood pulsing and pounding, as I arched back, making incoherent, almost animalistic growls.  It felt so good, these waves of pleasure that began to pound through me and as I cried out, as the release came, I moved against her, and she moved over me and in me, and in that perfect moment, we were one and the same.

In the darkness, her nails traced over my leg, sharp and drawing scratches as I moved through the orgasm, but it all felt too good to notice that before and after sex, her nails were short and well trimmed.

She came up beside me to kiss me, her mouth wet and salty as we moved together in the dark.  She grinned against my mouth, her palms against my breasts, every inch of her warm skin pressing against mine.

I turned her over, climbing on top of her exquisite hips, and began to learn her in the dark.

---

I woke with a start, thick slices of sunshine pooling across my bed.  It was late.

The sheets were tousled, and I still smelled sex on me, my fingers and my lips.  I sat up, bewildered.  Kara was not in the bed.

I stood, then, stood on wobbly legs still somewhat held in the dream realm.  I made my way, naked, to the bathroom.  She wasn't there.

And then, to the kitchen.  There was a note on the table.  “Went to pick up some stuff for breakfast,” it was signed with a heart.  As I stared down at it, still not understanding, my own heart gave a different set of beats, and I had to swallow.  She'd signed the note with a heart.

Warmth and happiness moved through me as I closed my eyes, pressing the note to my own heart.  I knew I was grinning stupidly, and the grin widened as I put the note back down on the table and realized I wanted a shower, more than anything.  She’d be back soon.  With stuff to make breakfast.

So I took a shower.

I recalled each second of last night as I washed my hair, soaped my body, scrubbing vigorously at my breasts and arms and legs until they were red.  I wanted to taste her, touch her...journey every last inch of her again and become familiar with it, familiar like an old book in my hands, soft leather and sweet pages.

I closed my eyes and let the water sluice over my head and face.  I held my breath, let the heat of the water run over me so that it felt like last night again…

“I'm back!” I heard the door close with a bang, and I heard her voice.  It sounded happy, euphoric.

I was so excited that I dropped the bar of soap so that it banged against the side of the tub, and then almost slipped on it, getting out of the shower.  “I'm here!” I called out, as if she couldn't figure it out on her own.  I wrapped the towel a little self-consciously around me as I heard her feet on the floorboards outside the door, and then she was there, opening the door wide, smiling at me with a toothy grin that was almost wolfish.

“I got stuff to make pancakes,” she said, staring pointedly at the towel with her head to the side, her eyes dancing merrily.  She stepped forward, curling her fingers around the side of my waist.  My entire body responded to her nearness, but she only brushed her lips against the curve of my neck and shoulder and stepped back, putting her hands in her pockets, grinning mischievously.  “Do you want me to make you some pancakes?”

“Yes?” I replied, my hair dripping onto the linoleum as I stared at her with longing.  But she didn’t tease me long.  Instead, she stepped forward and kissed me.

Fireworks again.  In spite of myself, still dripping on the floor, I leaned forward and put my arms about her neck, leaned forward and enjoyed every last second of it.

The towel had fallen to the floor, and her hands were on my back, feeling me, caressing the skin of my back, cupping my ass with sure fingers.  I shivered against her.

“You,” she whispered, breaking away, laughing a little.  She kissed my nose as I stood on my tiptoes, trying to reach her lips once more.  She evaded me. “Do you want pancakes or not, missy?”

“Yes,” I whispered, and then she kissed me one last time and turned back toward the kitchen.

I put on socks and underwear and an old nightshirt as she mixed up batter in my one mixing bowl, the much abused glass one my grandmother had given me.  I chose a pair of jeans, but ignored a bra, laying on top of my neatly folded socks.  I felt, well, sexy, as I brushed my hair and put on a touch of makeup.  Where was I going?  Into the kitchen.  But that mattered.

I came in, just as the first splash of batter hit the frying pan.  The delightful scent of oil and frying food hit my nose, and I sat down at the table, perfectly content to watch Kara work her magic.

“How did you sleep?” she asked, flipping the pancake.  The satisfying sizzle was so comforting.  I watched it cook.

“I slept well.”

“Any dreams?”

“Not really.  Just silly ones,” I drew up my legs as I perched on the chair.  I considered her back as she flipped the pancake again.  A small thing had been bothering me—I’d never seen her in town before, and it was a pretty small town.  “Kara, how long have you been in town?”

She counted numbers off on her fingers.  “I guess about two weeks now, give or take”

I opened my mouth and shut it.  Only two weeks?  “Oh.  Well, why did you come here?  Why are you here?”

“Pretty existential questions for breakfast.”  She winked back at me.  I noticed just then that she didn't have a plate in front of her, wasn't eating. “I could tell you the story, but it'd be a lot easier if I showed you.”

“Show me what?”  The pancakes were delicious, and the maple syrup dripped off the sides, glowing bright in the sunshine.

“Where I live, what I do.  Seeing it would be easier, I think.”  She propped her elbows up on the table and gave me a devilish smile.  “If you don't mind my taking you back to my place tonight.”

I grinned.  “That’d be wonderful.”

“I have a few things to take care of today,” she stood, kissed me on the forehead.  She smelled of musk and skin, and I wanted to taste her again.  “I'll pick you up here tonight,” she said, with a smile.  “Did you like breakfast?”

“I loved it.”

“Good,” she said, her lips against my skin.

And then she was gone.

---

I made the bed, but not before dropping to my hands and knees and stretching on the wrinkled sheets with a soft smile.  I could smell her everywhere.

There were many things in my closet, but none of them seemed suitable for visiting Kara’s place. I went through my shirt drawer, my skirt drawer, tossing dresses on the floor closely followed by socks and slips.  There was nothing good enough.  This was a special occasion, and I wanted it to be perfect.

The perfectionism would consume me one day, Gramma had warned, putting calloused hands around mugs of green tea, pressing them between my own fingers, as I’d cried about something I couldn’t get exactly right.  I'd cried so many times over little things that I couldn’t quite make perfect...little things that I apparently had no control over…like my art.

My art.  I had a black dress in my hands, now, the soft satin of it pooling out of my fingers and sliding to the floor.  Kara had asked about my art, once.

It was strange to think about it in those terms, and I didn't understand why my head or heart had brought it up now.  It was about three o'clock on a lazy day, but I needed and wanted to get ready.

But now it was completely insistent.

When was the last time I'd made a piece of art?

The drive now was very single minded.  I felt a magnet, the pull of the earth drowned out logic and thought, and I realized I wanted a pencil in my hand, not a dress.  Mystified by these feelings, I let the dress fall completely to the floor, and then I was wandering into the kitchen.  To get myself a glass of water, I convinced myself, because I was thirsty.

But I didn't reach for a glass.  I dug around in the junk drawer, until near the bottom and the back, I found what I was looking for.  A small, thin plastic case, well battered and beaten with age and use.  I took it out, now, opened it with a small smile.  Inside were my drawing pencils.

I’d had occasion to reach for them recently as I measured the space on my wall to hang a frame, and penciled in lines.  I remembered, at the time, that it had felt pretty weird to be using my drawing pencils for something so mundane.  These had been used to make art, and I was now using them…to hang pictures.  It’d felt a little sad to me, but then I’d put them right back in their case, and reburied them in the junk drawer where they stayed.

Now, I set the case on the kitchen table and went to the living room. There was the overstuffed bookshelf, leaning dangerously to one side.  Along with all the art books on the bottom was a tall, thin binding of paper.  I pulled it out, brought it to the table.

Paper and pencil.  There they were, side by side.  Fresh memories flooded my senses, and I was suddenly eleven again, sprawled on my belly with sticky jam fingers, floorboards creaking as I made wide gestures with pencil gripped between thumb and forefinger.  I was sketching out my sandwich, because I’d sketched everything.  The jelly spilled out of the side onto the floor, and I made splotches on the paper for the seeds.  It looked good enough on paper, though a little black and white, to eat.

Now here I was again, with a pencil in my hand.  What was I going to draw?  It felt as natural as breathing, holding the pencil like I used to, and as the graphite pressed against the paper, the familiar scratching sound assaulted my ears, and I could smell the paper, and I smiled in spite of myself as a feminine curve came out of the pencil tip, down on the creamy smoothness of the paper.

I drew a woman.  She was faceless, nameless, but her body was familiar, the delicate swell of breasts that cupped, just so, along the floor where she lay.  Straight lines, and then I was drawing her arms in repose, her hips, rolling curves that made “swish” sounds with pencil, and I licked my lips as her body took form beneath my hand.  There was the perfect curve of her thighs and her knees.  She looked real, for all the marks of graphite and smudges.  I paused in my efforts and looked at her, really looked at her.

There were things wrong.  Of course there were things wrong--I hadn't drawn in years.

But somehow, I'd captured Kara in the image.

I stared for a long moment, then chuckled, so nervous about the fact that after years and years I’d made art that I set down the pencil against the paper as I stared down at it.

It was an imperfect sketch, of course.  It’d been a long time since I’d made one.  But it was beautiful, I knew, because it was Kara.

I put the pencil back in its case, then the case back in the drawer, and the book back on the shelf.  I went to my bedroom and picked up the little black dress, and as I tried it on, I breathed out, glanced at myself in the mirror.

Her body was so beautiful.  It was art, I knew.  But as I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought of how she’d looked at me last night.  She had thought this imperfect body, my body, beautiful.  She had traced its curves with her fingers and tongue, worshiped my skin, my form, and had found every inch to be lovely.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, watching my curves as they moved in the dress, wiping off the graphite smudges from my fingers that had found every inch of her to be perfect, too.

It was at that moment that I knew I was falling in love with her.

Chapter 5

She arrived promptly at seven, looking a little ruffled.  She still smiled easily, but her physical appearance was shabby.  She was wearing a sports jersey that was too big for her, and her hair stood out in odd directions like she’d been wrestling with someone.  Her jeans were stained.

“Hey, Megan,” she said, and kissed me, tasting of coffee.  Then she looked me up and down, brows arched, eyes perplexed.

“Do you like it?” I asked.  I was wearing the little black dress, and I’d actually curled my hair.

“You look lovely,” she breathed, and again, she was kissing me.  But now my neck.  Now her lips were against bare skin, and her arms were around my waist, and somewhere in all of this I’d forgotten to breathe.

She stopped and looked at me, really looked, locking nose to nose as she bent down and brushed her lips against me there, pecking me as she pressed her forehead to mine.  “You look lovely,” she repeated, voice thick, “but…you can't wear that.”

“What?”  I hadn’t expected this.  I felt aroused and strangely messy, her hands had roamed all over my body, disturbing how the dress had lain.  I wanted it off, I realize, then.  I wanted it on the floor, with nothing between us but warmth.

“You need to wear much more than this, Megan,” she was backing away now, leaving me cold.  I followed her, perplexed, into my bedroom.  She knew her way around the apartment as if she'd lived her whole life here.  With me.

“Here,” she withdrew from my drawer a thick sweater the color of mud that my grandmother had knit for me a long time ago.  I couldn’t help but stare at it, one brow up.

“I wear that when I hike,” I said, shaking my head, confused.  “When I hike up in the mountains.”

“Where we're going, it's going to be as cold as the mountains, and I don't want you to catch a chill.”  Out of my drawers, she drew tights and yoga pants and jeans, and then a thermal top and a turtle neck and that knitted sweater completed the pile of clothes that now covered my bed.  “Change into these,” she gestured.

“I thought we were going to your place,” I said weakly.

“You'll see.”  Her smile was impish, warm.  Though I didn’t understand exactly what was going on, her smile melted everything else away.  I felt a little awkward after last night and this morning doing something so mundane and unsexy (if you change into a bunch of clothes, it’s decidedly unsexy), but I undressed in front of her, and swathed my body in those layers.  It felt like I was going skiing.

“Are you warm?” she hazarded as we made our way back to the door.

“Yes,” I said, then shook my head as she got my gloves and hat and coat and scarf, a good, thick scarf that my grandmother had knitted for me too.  The wool always made me itch.

“Put these on,” she said.  “You'll need them.”

“I wish you'd let me know what this was about.”

“You'll see,” she repeated, mysterious, beautiful.  She didn't wear much herself, those faded jeans with several holes, and sports jersey shirt untucked at the waist band.  I offered her my second coat, but she refused it, holding the door open for me like a gentleman.  I didn’t resemble much of a lady as I waddled out of the apartment, into the hallway, feeling ridiculously overdressed.

Kara didn’t have a car, so when we reached the ground level and let ourselves out into the snow, I wondered if she'd bundled me up because we would be walking a ways.  I offered to drive, but Kara waved it away.  “It's not very far,” she said, impish smile wide and bright, and:  “wait and see!” she added, when I tried to protest.

We found the sidewalk despite the snow and ice, and briskly began to walk down it toward the direction of the large Lutheran church on my apartment building’s street.  We passed the church and made a left hand turn, and then another turn, and another.  After awhile, I forgot the lefts and rights, because I was paying attention mostly to the fact that we were heading for the bad part of town.

We were a small town, nothing like the big cities with their skids and projects, but there was still a “bad part,” a part that was incredibly poor, that had been industrial, back in the day, but had become a ghost town, over time.  There were small, run-down houses along the edges that held two families each and countless children.  Dirty, half-starved dogs wandered the streets, growling at people who passed by, and, somehow, the snow looked impossibly gray.

“Don't worry, you're safe with me,” murmured Kara, looping an arm around my waist. This declaration put me at ease a little, but I still couldn’t help thinking that the wandering dogs, no matter how I tried to imagine them otherwise, reminded me of wolves, and I could hear babies screaming from behind thin walls.  We walked along, and as we did, snow began to fall.

Kara drew her shirt closer about her frame and dug thin hands into pockets.  As we walked along, I drifted closer and closer to her in the half-light.  We turned another corner, and we'd left the occupied places, and had journeyed into the industrial side--the abandoned side.

Well, “abandoned” would be almost a lie.  It was “abandoned” on tax documents and on official papers, but not in truth.  People lived here, people made their lives within the walls of abandoned factories, lighting fires that they desperately needed to stay warm, fires that sometimes went out of control.  Some of the town churches took bibles to the homeless, urged them out of the buildings, offered warm meals and rooms, when they could.  But often as not, there was no place for them to go.

“Are you all right?” Kara asked now, as a realization began to dawn in me.

“Yeah.”  I glanced sidelong at her with wide eyes, cleared my throat.  “Kara, do you live here?”

“Yes,” she answered simply, flashing that easy smile at me.

I had no idea what to say as I tried to process that.

We walked in silence a little further, and then Kara stopped. I stopped, too, but suddenly, almost tripping on the slushy sidewalk.  There were potholes that I had to keep eyes firmly down to avoid.  I glanced at her questioningly.

“We're home.”  She waved to the large factory that towered over us both.  It was three stories of abandoned stone and brick that might once have been great.  I could imagine smoke billowing out of the stacks that boasted a 70's italic cursive.  “Jameson” it read, with a chipped cheerfulness, “Fine Metal Parts.”

“Here.”  Kara gestured, and she held up a bit of the chain-link fencing that still stood around the property.  I scooted underneath it, maintaining enough balance to keep myself from spilling onto the ice.  Kara followed me, and put the fencing back exactly as she'd found it.

And then we followed a well-pounded path through the snow toward the building.  Boots and shoes and even a bare human footprint here and there spoke of how many times people had been this way.  Many people seemed to live here, I realized, as we neared the building.  The air was crisp, and my nose was partially frozen, but I still smelled smoke.

“Kara...”  I paused, clearing my throat again.  She turned to look at me, eyes wide in the dark, questioning.

“Yes?” she asked.

I looked around us, at the darkness betrayed by town lights, at the stark, cold lines of the building, dilapidated beyond repair, rising before us.  I heard singing in the distance.  It sounded like a hymn.

I saw how hopeful her face was in the dark.

“Nothing,” I replied, digging my hands deeply into jacket pockets.  I glanced at her in her shirt and jeans, no coat.  She must be frozen solid, but with a reassuring smile, she took me by the arm and gently lead me into that place.

The first thing that stuck me was the sheer monstrosity of this forgotten factory.  We entered in a lopsided door, half decayed and rotted, covered in a sheet of ice.  Then, before us, stretched the long width of the first floor.

This part didn’t have a second story, only skylights above us, far above us.  The room rose, seemingly limitless.  The windows were broken or cracked, and I could see stars on the other side.  Bits of white cloth draped down from the rafters, and they looked for all the world like ghosts, moving in the breeze from the broken windows.  As I stepped forward, I almost fell again--the floor was thick with ice.

“Watch your step,” murmured Kara quietly, and she tightened her grip protectively on my arm.  Then, we were walking along the corridor, hugging the wall.  There was less ice here, I saw, and footprints, where the snow had drifted in from the windows.

We followed a particularly hard pounded path, past gutted rooms full of snow and papers rotting on the floor, with doors off their hinges, or hanging eerily in the half light by a single hinge.  It wasn’t pitch black--the moon shone overhead, and there were streetlights that cast the place in a half glow, but it was still dark inside.  I pressed myself against Kara, and realized I was shivering.

She wasn't.  In fact, she was warm when she put her hand in my coat pocket, gripping my fingers between her own.  They were hot and welcome.  I held her hand tightly, stepping around chunks of broken glass and records, bits of newspaper and single shoes.

“Here,” she indicated a staircase through another doorway.  The paint on the walls and ceiling had been peeling for years, curling up to meet the cold air.  It was a kind of weird effect, as if the entire room was trying to molt.  The stairs were made of cement, but had cracked in places, there was glass everywhere, and our feet crunched sadly in the darkness.  I followed her as she began her descent downward, but my grip tightened.  “What goes down must come up,” said Kara quietly, with a grin.  I heard the singing; it was fainter, now.

In the basement, there was no redeeming light.  Kara fished around in a hollow in the cement and came up with a stub of candle and a match.  She flicked it along the wall, and the scent of sulfur and bright glow surrounded us.

“How are you doing?” she asked.  I was shaking, visibly now, even in this poor light.  I nodded, rubbing my hands together, trying to keep my spirits up.

“I'm just cold,” I told her.

We continued on.  There were long shelves along the wall, splintered in places, covered in cobwebs, and icicles where the floor above us had broken, and snow and rain had gone through.  My breath came out in brief puffs, even close to the warmth of the candle, and I tried not to look in the corners.  I could have sworn I saw small things moving, and I didn’t want to notice rats.

“Here,” Kara paused and indicated a door, propped open by a block of wood.  She moved it, with some difficulty, to be wide enough for us to pass through.  “Go on,” she muttered through clenched teeth.  The candle was held in shaking fingers as she tried to hold the gargantuan thing open.

I slid through the crack she'd created, and then instantly regretted it.  It was pitch black here.  As Kara came in behind me, I let out a small squeak, as did the tiny, furry inhabitant we’d rudely interrupted.  He scampered away into the darkness.  There was a set of stairs that went upward here in the corner, and more peeling paint.

“Going up?”  She was trying to keep a lighthearted tone about it all, and I assumed this was for my benefit.  I gripped her arm again, and we ascended the stairs.  These were not cement, but wood, and they were broken in parts.  The landings, however, were reasonably sturdy, and by the time we'd reached ground level, I was ready to try for the next set.

We rose a step at a time as I listened to the weary creaking with my heart in my throat.  “Don't worry,” Kara was saying, “people go up and down these a lot—they sound bad, but they’re actually pretty strong.”  Somehow I didn't believe her, but I must have, because I kept going, and then we’d reached the second level of the building.  There was another large door at the end of the landing.  A piece of sturdy cardboard was placed between the jam and door to block its complete closing.  I heard music, strains of a violin, which made me crinkle my forehead, turn to Kara, but she shushed me with a long finger to her lips...and then she stepped forward, and pushed the door open.

Fire danced along the walls, licking dangerously towards the ceiling, but as my own heart went into my throat, my eyes began to adjust to the light again.  So, no, the building was thankfully not going up in flames.  The fires were in burning barrels, set on concrete blocks.  There were grills with flames, and pots full of live coals.  And candles--it actually looked a little like a Catholic church along the walls where hundreds of candles, burning on metal sheets, had made the walls black.

Milling around the fires were people, many people, I realized.  At least fifty.  In the center of the group of people, a man stood on top of an overturned crate, cradling a violin to his chin and coaxing a sweet melody from it.  It filled the air, as did the smoke.

There were scents the beckoned me closer, the scent of cooking meat and simmering incense, lavender and herbs.  We walked into the place, and I realized it was no longer so cold.  I took off my hat and gloves, my stomach growling.

The people turned towards us as we came closer, and the violinist paused in his playing.  Kara walked proudly by my side, squeezing my hand.  “This,” she said, then, gesturing to the crowd, “is my family.”

These people, clustered close to the fires to stay warm, were piled with layers of dirty clothes to keep away the cold, but regardless of their circumstances, smiles shone, easily, on faces that, for all apparent hardships, glowed with health and joy.  They were a bright, warm group of people—they reminded me of the firelight they stood around.

“Everyone, this is Megan,” said Kara, then.  I smiled a bit, shyly, and they stepped forward as one.  Some to pound my back, some to shake my hand.  They all touched me in one way or another, but I wasn’t self conscious like I usually might be.  They moved with grace and gentleness, striding with power and fluidity.  One woman stepped forward and kissed my cheek.  Her lips were warm.

“We made a stew—we weren’t sure when you’d be coming,” the man declared on the crate.  He held his violin up and grinned down at the both of us, hopping down to the floor.  He wore a long plaid coat and his longish black hair back in a ponytail.  He looked remarkably like Kara.  “I don’t know if it’s any good because the dumpsters were a little lean this week, but if you’re hungry, we’d love to share it with you.”

“I’m actually very hungry, thank you,” I told him, then.  I felt a little out of place, like I was in a dream, or in one of the pictures of my fairy tale books when I was a kid.  I should be beneath trees and a full moon in some far away land, a storybook land.  And yet, something about these people was strangely familiar, and I remembered the scent of lavender and herbs, the same scent as my grandmother’s drawer satchels.  She’d gotten them from the traveling people, once, she’d told me.  People she’d helped…

As Kara ushered me forward, towards the largest fire, I felt a faint memory leave me.  There were random pillows and blankets around the fire in a rough circle. I sat down on an old Barbie comforter and drew my legs up.  The floorboards pressed into my bottom, even through the cloth, and I realized I hadn’t noticed the cold here, but I was shaking a little again.  But the man stoked the fire and Kara brought me a plain bowl of steaming liquid.  I couldn’t name all of the vegetables or herbs in it, but what I tasted was very good.

“You're Megan, then?” the man came and sat down on my other side, as Kara sat on my right.  All around us, the people sank down on pillows and blankets, sprawling like puppies in the dancing light.

“Yes, I am,” I smiled again, wincing at how hot the stew was on my tongue.  I was burning my mouth and felt the heat of it shoot through me as I winced.

“I'm Ledo,” he grinned a crooked grin.  “I’m brother to our dear Kara.”

“I thought you two looked alike,” I smiled, a little shy.  I looked down into my stew.  The steam curled like a plant, climbing towards my nose.

“We've been waiting to meet you.”  His voice was easy, kind.  “You see, our Kara never stops talking about you.  I feel like I know you already”

I blushed and hoped that the darkened room would hide it.  “How long have you been living here?” I asked then, because I was curious.

“Not very long,” said Ledo, reiterating his sister's estimate as he settled his elbows on his knew.  “We...travel.  A lot.”  His gaze darted to Kara, but she was staring at the fire, her eyes softened and unfocused, as if she was thinking of something else.

“Are you staying long?”  It was something I hadn’t considered, and even as I asked it, I swallowed, fear churning in my belly.  If they traveled a lot, that meant Kara might leave.

He shrugged.  “We go as the wind goes.  We don't really make plans.  You're a librarian?” he asked then, smoothly changing the subject.

I smiled a little, blew on the stew as I tried to cool it.  “Yes, yes I am.  That's how I met Kara, actually…she came in asking for art books.”

“She loves art,” he watched his sister rise, leave us for the moment.  He kept talking.  “She said you were an artist?”

“I am,” I felt my cheeks color.  “I don't think I've ever even shown her any of my stuff.  I just mentioned it--”

“She seemed to be of the opinion that you were quite good.”

Odd.  I hadn’t remembered showing her any of my old things, and only that day had I drawn her.  And I hadn’t shown her the sketch.

“Megan?”  Kara's comforting voice washed over me, and I glanced up at her quickly.  She'd come back over to us.  She curled a finger toward me with a secretive smile.  “Can you come with me?  Are you done with your stew?”

“It's very good, just too hot...”  I told her.

“No matter—it can cool.”  She helped me stand, took the bowl from my fingers.  “There's someone I want you to meet.”

We crossed the circle of people, and came to stand in front of an older woman.  She had wrinkles creasing her face, but her hair was still jet black, and plaited into a long braid down her back.  She wore red, all red, mismatched gradients of the color in different shirts, sweaters, skirts and even pants that she wore beneath the skirts.  Her eyes were dark, I thought, as she looked up at me.  So brown they were almost black.

“This is Nedra,” Kara whispered in my ear, her hot breath against my skin making me shiver a little, and my body curved toward her.  “She already knows who you are.  She's a very good friend of mine.  I guess you'd call her a psychic.  She wanted to do...a reading for you?  Is that okay with you?”

I sat down in front of the woman, my head swimming.  I felt pretty hot, now.  My throat and tongue burned, but my entire body felt warm to the touch.  I looked into the woman's eyes and blinked.  It was impossible, but they seemed to be even darker now.

“Welcome to our home for the time being, Megan,” the woman was saying.  I’d never gotten a psychic reading before.  I didn’t know how to tell Kara that I thought anything psychic was, not to put too fine a point on it, a load of crap.  But this was obviously important to her, and I didn’t want to insult a friend of Kara’s.  I blinked as the woman took my hand, gentle fingers tracing my skin.

“Are you reading my palm?” I asked, trying to hide my smile.  I bit down on my lip.  I really didn’t want to insult her.

“No,” she said, one brow up as she pet my palm over and over with her fingertips.  “I'm trying to calm you down.  Your heart is racing.”

It was... but I hadn’t noticed it.  My body was now hot, but it was also numb.  I blinked owlishly a few times in this dull light, a roaring filling my head.  I was feeling like I had that night in the blizzard…I felt feverish.  The heat spread out from my belly to distant limbs, fire in my veins, in my head.

Everything was burning up, now.  An inferno.

The woman's edges blurred.  I tried to look at her, tried to pin her down in my line of sight, but I couldn’t.  She wavered and danced like the edges of a flame.  I saw nothing but shadow.

But her hand, the fingers that gripped my own...those were solid and real, even as her own edges waxed out of focus.  I tried to understand what was happening—how could a fever come up so quickly?  As she traced her fingers on my palm, I realized she was speaking to me, but I couldn’t make out words.  Swarms of flies, locusts maybe, made a crescendo in my ears.  There was only the dull roar.  I watched her lips work.

“Sit,” Nedra pushed me down onto a pillow next to her.  It was done gently, but there was no strength in me and I fell hard.  The pillow was flat and dirty on the ground.  I bruised my hip when I fell.

My tongue was thick in my mouth.  I was so thirsty.

She lit a braid of what looked to be hay and waved it around us.  It glowed at the tips from the match.  “Bless us both,” she said, moving her mouth.  “Come, Megan...”  Nedra was whispering now, and I heard an accent thick in her voice.  Funny that I hadn’t noticed it before.  “Look and see.”

I'm looking, I wanted to say.  My tongue was too thick to form words.  My breathing continued, quicker, the smoke choking me…

The light snuffed out like a flame.

Chapter 6

I’m twelve.  I wear a cast off dress, covered with holes that Gramma hasn't gotten around to mending.  But I'm wandering in the crick today, so it doesn't matter.  I'm in a state of undress anyway, a wild child, a hooligan.  My bare feet squelch in the mud.  I’m home.

There’s a frog evading me.  I sit very patiently on the bank, waiting for his head to pop out of the hole.  He dashed in there when he heard me coming.  Too smart for me.  I'll show him.  I'll catch him and bring him back to my Gramma to proudly display in my hands.  He's gorgeous, pretty big.  She'll praise me for catching such a beauty.  And then I'll bring him back to his home.  It's a game we play often.

As I sit there, my breathing becomes steady and quiet.  I don't blink.  I watch the moving surface of the stream, and I will my heart to stop beating...almost.  And then he raises his head, and I dive my hand beneath the surface for him.

A larger hand, a much larger hand, closes around my tiny wrist and keeps it from darting forward.  I let out a surprised huff and look up angrily at this intruder on my space.  It’s Clyde, my grandmother's neighbor.  I contrive to look angry, but I'm not.  No one can be angry at Clyde for long.

“It's not nice to catch the frogs,” he admonishes me, as if I’m just a kid.  I’m twelve years old!  Almost full-grown!  I know right and well what I can do and what I should be up to.  I open my mouth to form an angry retort, and he puts his other hand on it, leaning forward.

“All right, all right, I didn’t mean to make you mad,” he says, face gentle.  “If you want to catch the frogs, that’s all right.  I can help you!  I have some boxes, back at the house, big ol’ boxes that would make catchin’ them easy.  We should go back and get them, then we could play a game at my house.”

“I can’t, Clyde…Gramma says be home before sunset.  She’s making my favorite for dinner,” I explain as if it should be obvious.

“Well,” he says quickly.  I listen as he explains there is something in the woods he wants to show to me, then.

“It’s not far?” I ask

“Not far at all.”

I put my hand in his, willingly, and we walk into the green together.  The trees tower over us both, and we are almost equal in our smallness beneath them.

“There,” he points, and I step forward, curious.  His finger bends down towards the earth.

On the ground is a carcass:  a dead deer, gutted.  There is blood surrounding it, staining the grasses and moss, sucked in by the hungry soil.  Her eyes have been ravaged out of her head.  The sockets look like they’ve been bitten--gnawed clean through--deep red messes that have paused in their leaking to the earth, dried by the summer heat.  The stench is overpowering.

“Wolves did this,” whispers Clyde.  “Gramma Molly says you don't know enough about the dangers of the wood.  I want to teach them to you, Megan.”

I stare at the deer.  I can't breathe.  I'm shaking.

“Big, bad wolves,” Clyde shakes his head.

I back away from the thing, I can’t breathe, I still can’t breathe.  Clyde puts his big hand around my arm, eyes wide.  “You’re not leaving, are you?” he asks, “what about the frogs…the boxes?”

“I have to go home, Clyde,” I say, tears coming down my cheeks.

“Maybe next time,” he mutters, as I race away.

---

I gasped and sat upright as cold water splashed on my face.  There was a moment of sputtering and I sucked in air through my mouth...barely.  My limbs were too heavy to move.  My body sunk back down without my telling it to do so.  I had no control on my limbs, on my thoughts.  I felt like I was underwater.

“That was interesting,” came a wry voice.  Nenna?  Nel?  I couldn’t remember her name.  The woman who was Kara’s friend.  I blinked and tried to make sense of what I could see.  A broken ceiling.

“I'm here, Megan.”  It was Kara.  Her deep, soft voice washed over me, and the fear that had gripped my heart began to recede.  I could still smell the dead animal, could still feel the tension from finding it.  There was heat from the summer sun all around us, and I was self conscious…my dress had holes in it...

“She's not coming out of it.”  Kara's voice was distant, but distraught.  “She's going back in.”  I wanted to say something, tell her I was here, what was she talking about?

More water.  I was drowning--I’m twelve years old in the mountain stream, and I’m drowning.  I breathe in water.

“Wake up!” Kara shook my shoulders, and from wherever I'd been, I came back.  I was cold, so cold...my body wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Get some blankets.”  That was Nedra.  Names and places rushed back into my head like waves.  I remembered where I was now, when I was.  I wasn’t a kid...I sat in an abandoned factory, surrounded by strangers.  Friends of Kara’s, I remembered.

“She's freezing,” Kara breathed, and she snatched up a blanket from the ground, covering my body with it, rubbing my arms, my legs.  She normally moved so smoothly, so fluid, but right now fear made her ungraceful, all jerky motions done in quick time.  Seconds passed, I saw the way her lips formed a hard line.

“She'll be fine,” said Nedra then, moments later, when I was swathed in blankets and had a mug of coffee in my hand.  I was in Kara's lap, where she sat on the floor.  I hadn’t stopped shaking.

I didn't know what to do, so I asked a question.  I asked it with anger in my voice, but Kara's body beneath mine absorbed most of it.  It came out sounding soft, quiet:  “What just happened?”

Nedra sat down next to me, then, and I saw in her eyes a vast amount of pure youth.  She was not as old as she appeared, with her jet-black hair and deep wrinkles lining a face that could have mirrored my own.  What had she gone through, what had she seen to appear so old?

“You blacked out.  I’m pretty sure you have the flu.”

It would explain everything, but I couldn’t let it go: “No...no.  I saw something.”

She regarded me with hooded eyes.  “What did you see?”

I thought:  Big, bad wolves...  I was shaking as I stared up at her.

“What did you see?” she repeated, kinder this time.

“I don't know...”  I muttered then. I didn’t want to speak another word.  I was tired and I wanted to go home.  I felt too weak to stand, though, so I remained where I was...seated in the lap of a perfect stranger.  I looked at her.  She wasn't that strange.  She was Kara.

I felt…weird.

“Try...” Nedra said.  I blinked at the woman, this odd, little woman...  “It was dead...”  I said, then, clearing my throat. I told her what I could.

“Interesting.”  And out of the depths of her sleeves (long bell sleeves the color of blood), she drew an old piece of cream-colored cloth, frayed at the edges, tattered.  It was wrapped around a deck of cards.

I stared at the deck stupidly as she spread the cards in a long line before me, face down on the dirty floor.  “Pick three,” she said solemnly, as I sighed.

The memory was so fresh that I still felt warm from the sunlight, still self conscious (there were holes in my dress).  But I drew three cards and handed them to her with a shaking hand because she was Kara’s friend.

“Interesting,” she said then, and turned them over, one by one.  They weren't tarot cards—everyone knows what tarot cards look like.  But no, these were different.  Something I’d never seen before.  They were cards, yes, but they had strange pictures.  Bright, over-saturated pictures that bled off the page onto the floor and into my brain.

“This one,” she pointed to the first, the image of a woman that looked a lot like me.  She was standing in a park, in a snowstorm.  She seemed to be wandering.  Lost.  I looked at it, still shaking.  “This one, Megan…what do you see in it?”

“Myself,” something else was working my tongue.  The thoughts in my heart came spilling out of my mouth.  “I was caught in a snow storm a little while ago.”

She looked up at me quickly, eyes flashing, but just as soon her face was downcast once more, staring at the cards.  “And the next one?” she murmured.

It was the image of two women, their backs to us, striding forward down a long, winding path.

“Myself and Kara,” I muttered before I could stop myself.  “Happy.  In love.”

“And this one?” she didn’t miss a beat, didn’t skip it.  She turned over the last card, and I let out a rush of breath.

It was a great black wolf, staring off the stiff paper with deep patience and wide, dark eyes filled with power.  Her great, shaggy pelt was speckled with white, and she was tall and lean and lank.  I knew her well.  After all, she’d never stopped haunting my dreams.

“The wolves.  The big, bad wolves,” I whispered, then.  My eyes were full of tears, and soon they’d start to fall, and I was too weak to resist it as the sobs began, shaking my body like a dog shakes a toy.

“You think too much in your head, Megan,” Nedra said then, clucking her tongue.  I straightened up, tears still on my cheeks, feeling the fever blaze through me.  But I was outraged.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked angrily.

“This card.”  She pointed to it.  “It shows a wolf, yes?”

“Wolves have haunted me ever since I was a little girl,” I said resolutely.  “They are in my dreams every night, and I see them…I see them all the time.”

“Why do you think they are bad?” she asked then, letting the question sit between us.  Beneath me, Kara stiffened—I could feel her at my back become tense.

“I’m…I’m very tired, now,” I said, confused.

“This wolf represents something good in your life,” she whispered, words hard.  “It would be best for you to try and found out exactly what that is.”

---

Kara helped me home.  She half-carried me all the way back, me draped in her arms, her slight frame holding me up like I weighed nothing at all.  She must have looked so beautiful, walking down the sidewalk with the streetlights flickering overhead, how strong and tall she must have looked, proud.

I thought of how she'd climbed the stairs to my apartment, taking them slowly, carefully, helping me up each one as the fever pounded through my head.  How she fished the keys out of my pocket, trying one key in the lock and then another until the final one fit (that's the way it always works), and then swinging the door open.  And then she helped me gently on the couch, and stretched, placing long fingered hands at the small of her back.  And then she sat down beside me, staring absentmindedly at my closed off features, lost in thought.

She never told me what she was thinking, though.  I just thought of it after I woke up--who knew how many days later--and I was in my own bed, and she was sitting next to it in an uncomfortable armchair.  She hadn't changed her clothes, and her hair was messy. I wondered if she'd even left.

Not that I did that much thinking, mind you.  I lay like a good girl and stared at the ceiling as my brains leaked out of my ears.  Or that's how I felt, anyway.  It was the worst hangover feeling in the world, but it was the flu, and it was supposed to feel like you were dying, after all.

“You're awake,” said Kara, leaning forward, gripping my hand tightly.  There was a little sob in her voice, and I turned to her.  Tears stood brightly in my eyes.

“Yes,” I whispered.  I didn’t have the strength to say anything else.

Kara came to my side, cup of water in her hand.  “Here, drink this,” she said, her tone encouraging.  I stared up at her for a long moment, and then the memory (or was it a dream?) came back, and I stared at her with wide eyes.

What exactly had happened to me?

“You really must drink it,” she said, this time with a soft edge to her tone as she stared down at me with wide eyes.  I gulped down the water, closing my eyes, “do you want to eat something?” she asked me quietly.  I was too tired to respond.

We sat in silence for a time.  She on the edge of the bed with an empty cup in her hand, myself securely tucked beneath the covers, flat on my back, staring at the inside of my eyelids.  What had happened to me?  Had I dreamed it all?

“Do you remember what happened, Megan?” she asked, then, surprising me.  I opened my eyes and stared at her.  There must have been disbelief on my face, for she smiled and leaned down, kissing me soundly on my cold lips.

She was delicious, warm...sweet.  I lay there and let myself be kissed, caressed and gentled by her body and hands.  She touched my cheeks softly and twirled her fingers in my hair.  She sat up after a moment and gazed down into my face, searching my eyes.

“What happened, Kara?” I asked then, afraid.  My head felt full of holes, but I knew there was something important.  Something I had to remember.

“I took you to the factory, remember?  Where I live,” she picked up my hand and lovingly traced the back of it with her hot fingertips.

“I remember the factory, but...”  I trailed off.  Things were hazy. I bit back frustrated tears.  “I can't really remember what happened.  If you could just please tell me...”

“You fainted, Megan.”  Her voice was solemn, but her eyes were burning.  “From the fever, from the flu…you don't remember fainting?”

Could I?  I tried, but nothing appeared in my head as I desperately tried to remember

“Kara...”

She cocked her head and glanced my way in surprise. “There's no need for that,” she said softly, gently, then, as tears spilled from my eyes.  She stood suddenly, seemingly to hunt for a tissue.  She found one and knelt down beside me again, gently wiping away the tears from below my eyes.

“What do you remember?” she whispered, tracing a finger over my cheek.  I didn’t look at her, I looked at the ceiling.

“Wolves,” I said, flatly.  “Big, bad wolves...that's all I remember.”

“Wolves?”  She took my hand again, down on her knees by my side, her eyes wide as she stared at me.

“Gramma...”  The words twisted in my throat, and I had to spit them out, almost choking in the process.  “Gramma Molly--she's the woman who raised me... I've told you about her, haven't I?”

“Yes.”  Her voice was quiet.

“She sees wolves all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“She sees things that aren't there, Kara.  All the time.  They say she's mentally unstable.  Delusional.”  The words were choking me, but somehow I had to get them out.  “She sees them all the time.”

“Don’t you…don’t you remember what Nedra said…?” she asked, but then she swallowed.  She looked at me with clear eyes and watched as she silently wept, the tears tracing down her cheeks, but she said nothing.

I shook my head, continuing:  “I'm afraid and ashamed,” I said then, bitterly.  “I'm afraid that I'll end up just like her.  Crazy.”

Once it came out, there was no taking it back.

Kara’s face was expressionless.  Somehow, I felt like I’d failed her, but didn’t yet know how.

---

I woke up when it was light out.  I didn’t know what day it was, what time.  My bedroom door was closed, and as I struggled to a sitting position, there was a polite, soft knock at it.

Kara pushed it open a little, stuck her shaggy head in.

“Come in,” I croaked.

“I left you this morning,” Kara explained, “when did you get up?”

“Just now,” I told her, my voice still croaking.

“Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Let me make you something...”

She did a surprising thing, then.  She helped me out of bed.  I was wobbly, but my feet stayed under me as she helped me take small steps to the kitchen.  I hadn’t expected to start feeling better so soon—I thought the flu lasted a long time?

I sat at the table, head in hands, as she busied herself in my kitchen.  Pots and pans gently clinked, and there was the sound of running water, spoons against metal, and then, somehow, there was a steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of me.  I stared at it for a long moment, and she had to say “eat,” before I remembered she was there.

I did.  I took the utensil she gave me and forked sticky grains into my mouth.  I chewed them and swallowed.  They stuck in my throat.

“Megan.”  She sat down next to me, but felt a million miles away.  I took another mouthful of the oats.

“Megan,” she repeated softly, quietly.  “You're okay,” she told me, reaching across the space between us to gather my hand in hers.  Her eyes were shining.  She repeated, slowly, softly: “you're okay.”

“Am I?”  I asked, then, tongue as wooden as I felt.  I needed her to say it again, needed to hear it from someone outside of myself.  I needed to be told that everything was all right.

“Yes.”  She said it with conviction, but her eyes wavered, and I saw it, and she knew I saw it.  She swallowed and looked away, “If…if it’s not okay.  I want you to know, I would help you.  I would always help you.  I kept you safe, didn’t I?  I always keep my word.  I think…I think you know that.”

Help you...I blinked and stared at my bowl of oatmeal.  Bits and pieces of the previous days were coming back to me. I remembered fires and circles of people, and a strange violin, music spinning in the dark.

I remembered a dress in tatters, and I remembered a dead deer.

I closed my eyes and took a shaky breath.  I felt her squeeze my hand, felt her wrapping long fingers tighter around my own.  I felt her lean forward, and then I felt her sweet, soft warmth as I was embraced.  It was so comforting, her body against mine, and for a moment, I felt like everything would be all right.

“You're okay,” she repeated.  She whispered the words into my ear, and they were soft and loving.

Okay.

I breathed in and out and leaned my head upon her shoulder.

I was okay.

I don't know why, but I wanted to believe her.  So I did.

---

“Welcome back, Megan!”  Sharon put an arm around my shoulders, steering me away from my car, the parking lot, toward the library.  My purse dangled at the crook of my elbow.  “How have you been?” she asked me.

“All right.  Sort of.  Actually, I haven’t been that well,” I murmured, still cold.  “But I’m better now.”  My car hadn't warmed up on the drive here.  It was a bitterly cold day, the kind where your nose freezes if you breathed through it.  I couldn't stop shaking.

“Oh!  Have you been sick?  There's something that's been going around lately—how terrible to get sick on your vacation!”  She patted my arm but took an exaggerated step backward as she grinned at me.

“I'm fine now, Sharon, really…it was the flu, but it’s gone.”  I lifted my key and unlocked the library doors.

Rob arrived a bit later, and Sally last of all, making her way hurriedly through the stacks of books and then locking herself in her office.

“How have things been?” asked Rob, a little late in the afternoon, after all of the books had been shelved.  He’d been trying to decide what new books to order for the children’s department, and was taking a break.  “More importantly,” he told me, leaning on the counter with a single brow raised and a big grin, “how have things been going with Kara?”

“They've been good, and--” I trailed off, smiling a bit, wondering how I could possibly ever describe the events of the past week. “…odd.”

“But good?”  He waggled his eyebrows and I sighed, eyes heavenward

“Good,” I replied with a small smile.  But then Sharon needed him for something, and I didn’t get a chance to recount the “odd” parts.

I wasn’t even sure what I would have told him.

Chapter 7

If I’d thought my nightmares had been terrible before, I had obviously not understood how terrible they could become.

I did, now.

I hadn’t been sleeping that well, not since the trip to the factory, since the flu.  When I slept, my eyes would close, and big, bad wolves would run across my vision, shaggy pelts, wet with snow, noses frozen, eyes burning, black pelts seeming to blot out the light.  Their paws were larger than dinner plates, as they galloped across the snow-bound earth.

I would wake up, then, and my blood would be rushing, and I would find, more often than not, that it seemed like I didn’t have enough air in my lungs.  So then, I would take in big gulps of air, and I would turn on my bedside lamp, try to burn the demonic image from my heart.  And I would find that I couldn’t.

So every night was terrible.  There was no reprieve from the monsters.  When I slept, I dreamed; when I woke, I was exhausted... if I didn’t sleep, I stumbled through life, too tired to be of much use to anyone.  This couldn’t go on, I knew this couldn’t go on.  But there was nothing I could do.

Wasn't there?

That night, before my date with Kara, I found myself picking up the phone.  I found myself dialing a well-worn number.  And I heard my grandmother answer after the third ring.

“Megan.”  Her voice was gentle, though distant.  “I haven't heard from you in awhile, sweetheart.”

“I'm sorry, Gramma…”  Just hearing her voice made all of the tension seem to drain from my shoulders.  I sat down at my table.  “Things have been...pretty weird...”

“Same here,” she grunted.  And then there was silence.

“Listen... Gramma,” I gulped in air, and then I was blurting out the truth: “Gramma... I'm afraid.”

“Of what, honey?”

Where was the phone cord when I needed it?  My fingers made spirals in the air beneath the phone, wishing they had a cord to become tangled in, to help me think better.  “Do you...have you...seen the wolves, lately?”

“Often,” came her confident reply.  “They’ve been very good to us, Megan.”  And then, as if that hadn't mattered: “but what's wrong?”

“No...nothing,” I gulped down my tears, and got up, leaning against the kitchen wall.

“How are things with Kara?” Gramma asked me, then, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation, and we were two perfectly normal people living a perfectly normal life.  It was untrue.  It was so untrue.

“They're good,” I told her after a long sigh.

“That’s good, honey.”

More static.  More silence.  She seemed…distracted.

“Gramma...” I began again, trying to figure out what to say to her.  I breathed in and out and prepared to tell her everything.  I would tell her I’d seen wolves.  That I can’t stop dreaming about them.  I would tell her…

But then I heard a man’s voice in the background.  It was far away and distant, indiscernible; a low, gruff voice.  She must have left her stories on the television again.  Gramma cleared her throat and said, very firmly:  “Megan, I have to go.  It's been nice talking to you, dear.”  And then there was silence on the other end of the phone, followed briskly by the dial tone.

I stared at my own receiver for a moment, open-mouthed.  And then I started--there had been a knock at the door.

Kara, the dashing woman who made my heart beat faster, breath coming quickly, was standing at the door, a bundle of carnations in her hand, a brightly hued pinwheel of colors that brightened the kitchen the moment she'd entered, but I hardly noticed, for she caught me up in her arms, and she was kissing me, warm and sweet and scented of peppermint.

“Hello,” came her soft murmur, then, as we broke away.  I felt breathless, but I still managed to take the carnations from her, still managed to find a vase to put them in, buried in the back of my glasses cabinet.  I splashed water on myself as I filled it at the sink, as she leaned her hips against me from behind.

“What sort of movie would you like to see?” Kara murmured into my ear.

“Whatever you'd like,” I breathed out as her lips found my neck.

The filled vase languished on the edge of the counter as her hot mouth breathed a trail up to my ear, and I shuddered beneath her.  The colors in front of me, in the vase, velvet soft petals brushing against one another were so lovely, so cheerful, in this dark, deep season.  I stared at them a moment, absently running a finger along the counter’s edge as Kara sighed behind me.  She took my hand, then, took it and kissed it, curling those fingers in towards palms, bringing me close.

“Megan...” she said, and there was a little uncertainty to that word.  “How are you?” she asked me, then, turning me gently so that her hips pressed against mine, so that her body was against mine, and she was hold me close, tight.

“I’ve just…been having bad dreams,” I whispered, breathed out.  I smiled, then, as she gazed into my face with wide eyes, her brow furrowed.  “I’m all right,” I told her, which wasn’t the complete truth, but what else could I tell her?

“I want you to be all right, honey,” she whispered back, touching my nose with her lips.  “You’re okay,” she told me, her long, warm fingers curling around my waist, holding me in place, holding me.

We drove in silence to the movie theater.  I drove, holding her hand in my lap almost absent-mindedly.  Kara sprawled in the passenger side, watching the world change outside the window.  We arrived a little bit before the movie, paid our ticket prices and bought a large tub of popcorn to place between us.  We split everything in silence, as if we'd been doing it all our lives.  Then, when we were in the darkened theater, when I realized that I didn't even know what movie we were seeing...when we were all alone (in the back row, with the best view), she leaned across the arm rest between us, and she kissed me.

It was a desperate sort of a kiss.  A “come back to me” sort of kiss that I understood without really thinking about it.  She kissed me, and the popcorn was crushed between us, and the movie credits were rolling--or perhaps it was the trailers, I couldn't really tell.  I was hyperaware of the scent of old soft drinks embedded in the cushions, and I heard music from the screen, and she pressed her fingers around my neck, pulling me forward.

After we’d broken apart, as she searched my eyes in the dark, her mouth curled up a little at the corners.  She seemed to shine.  And then she placed my lips against mine.  And she whispered:  “I love you.”

It settled between us like snowflakes, softly falling, resting between us.  I stared at her, breath coming fast, and the lights in the theater dimmed, and then the credits were rolling, and we were still the only ones in the theater, alone—together—in the dark.

“What did you say?”  I whispered to her, eyes wide.  I watched her shrug in the black, place her gaze on the screen, as if she was paying attention.

But she wasn’t.

“I said that I love you,” she whispered back, after a moment, curling her fingers around mine in my lap.  When I had turned my own eyes to the screen.  When I thought that was the end of that.

I turned back to her, heart beating too quickly, breathless.  “Do you mean that?”  My chest was tight--it was all I could think about, as names paraded across the scenes of autumn and winter, and the music wound its way about our bodies, barely listened to.  She nodded, once, twice, without taking her eyes from the screen.

She loves me.  The title came up.  She loves me.  A man's face came into view.  She loves me.  Feet were running on forest paths.  She loves me.  There was an old barn.

In the darkness, she took my hand, gently cradling it in her own palm, pooling fingers together, so that they twined and merged, and I couldn’t tell, in that dark, which fingers were hers, and which were mine.

It was an art film, which explained the lack of people in seats.  As the movie progressed, I realized how lost I was in the plot—I hadn’t paid enough attention in the beginning to even understand who the lead was.  I’d stared at the flickering colors and shapes on the screen, and hadn’t translated them to images in my mind.  My mind was full of...other things.

Gradually, as it went on, I was more aware of Kara, sitting to my left, her warmth pulling me in.  The half-eaten bucket of popcorn was removed from my lap, and we were holding hands, watching a movie.  How simple, really, I thought, continuing to stare at the screen.

The simplest and most wonderful part of my life had just unfurled:

She loves me.

I laid my head down on her shoulder, leaning, by degrees, until it rested there.  She smelled of wood smoke and foreign spices, and she moved easily so that I was the most comfortable.  She moved with me, and I was pillowed, gently, upon her shoulder.  As if I had always been there.  Comfortable, comforted, at home.

In the dark, there was only us...us and the movie chairs, and the movie, looping, for all I knew, before us, spinning stories that I didn’t listen to. Instead, I was listening to deeper stories--richer stories--all transcribed in the beat of her heart.

I could hear it here, even though I was pillowed on her shoulder, I heard it in her veins...perhaps it was my own.  Did it matter?  I shut out everything but the sound and sensation, and she tightened her grip on my fingers, but gently. I could hardly feel her squeeze.  But it was there, and--just the same--I squeezed back.  She sighed.  It sounded happy.

I had never experienced these small moments, these seemingly insignificant times in a relationship when it is you, and it is her, and it is what lies between you.  Nothing more.  I was adding them together, spinning them like pearls on thread, so that I could keep the precious memories for later.  I tried not to think about the future, there in the dark, with my fingers squeezed and my head pillowed, and my heart racing.  I tried to think about this present moment, this clear moment, when there was us and what was between us.  But I was human, and I wondered how long it would last.  I couldn’t help it.

She had said she loved me.  But Ledo had said “we go as the wind goes.”  When would the wind go?  And would Kara go with it?

She had said she loved me.

Surely, surely that would be enough...

The credits were rolling again, but this time, it was for the ending.  Sad, soft strains of violin music surrounded us as we both stood, I clutching the popcorn bucket, Kara stretching, long and luxurious.  She bent her back and grinned, yawning.  “That was pretty good!  Did you like it?”

“Yes,” I whispered, staring at her, drawn to her.

I wasn’t talking about the movie.

I stood on my tiptoes, setting the popcorn bucket on the bucket seats.  I slipped to the side, a little popcorn spilling out onto the floor as I wrapped my arms around her neck.

“I love you, too,” I whispered.  The truest thing I knew.

When we came home that night, I whispered those same words to her again, saying them in the dark like a charm.  We were learning things, we were learning each other, and my heart sang to say them.  There was something different, between us.  Something changed.

---

I was out of bread.  Not that this was any sort of major surprise since it was one of my favorite things in the known universe, but I still sighed as I rummaged on the top of the fridge and found only empty bags.  It’s difficult to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without a vehicle to hold the peanut butter and jelly, so I sighed, put on my parka and walked down to the corner store.

Last night…last night had been magic.  And I didn’t have a single dream.

Everything seemed to be a cause for celebration.

Entering the corner store, the bell dinging overhead, I made a beeline for the tiny baking section they had.  I grabbed a box of instant cake mix, cream cheese icing and picked up a loaf of white bread from the end cap.  I wandered through the rest of the aisles, wasting time, until I came to the line of coolers.  I needed milk, too.  I opened the door and took a half-gallon of two percent off the shelf.

In the reflection of the glass was a wolf.

I stood there for a long moment.  I almost didn’t react.  I stood and I stared and I knew it must be a dream, or it couldn’t possibly be real.  A delusion.  I turned very slowly, my heart thundering in spite of myself and saw a tail and legs disappear around the corner.  There had been a wolf there.

Not possible.  Completely not possible.

“Megan!” Kara came around the corner, basket in her own hands.  There was nothing inside of it.  A quick smile blossomed on her face, and I put the milk down, feeling stupid.

“Hi,” I said, voice small.

“What are you getting?” she asked, curious, looking over my shoulder.  “You’re making a cake?”

“Yeah…for you,” I said, feeling the blood begin to calm down in my body, feeling the rush of pulse subside.  It had been a teeny, tiny delusion.  Nothing more.

Nothing more, I thought, as Kara put an arm around me and steered me toward the cash register.

I thought I saw wet paw prints on the floor.

Chapter 8

I turned on the library coffee maker with a flick of my thumb, listening to the comforting whirr of power as the hot water began to drip onto the grounds.  I watched the colored water drip out into the pot.  Drip, drip, drip.

I had such a headache.

“Good morning, Megan.”

I turned to nod to Sally, stepped out of her way as she moved past me in the tight space.  Since I’d taken the time off, since I’d started to see Kara in earnest, Sally had completely stopped approaching me in any other way but purely business.  It was a welcome change, and I was beginning to warm toward my boss.

“How are things?” she asked, leaning against the counter with a pin-stripe clad hip as she watched the coffee drip out, too.  It was much too slow for the both of us.

“Wonderful,” I told her, realizing I was blushing a little as I ran my thumb over the edge of the counter.

“You look really…content,” she said, her mouth turning up the corners as she watched me.  “I wanted you to know I’m really happy for you.”

I glanced up at her in surprise.  “You are?”  I asked her, voice small.

“You deserve to be happy,” she told me firmly, softly, as she grinned a little.

I was so surprised, so delighted, that I did something I might normally not have done to Sally.

I gave her a big, tight hug.

“Megan.”

The male voice was so very familiar.  I turned as I straightened, as Sally remained, leaning against the counter.  Clyde stood in the entryway to the library, across from the little alcove that held our library coffee pot.  His dirty baseball cap was in his hands, twisting it.  His face was contorted in anger, but as I looked at him, it softened.

“Megan,” he repeated, and coughed a little.  “I apologize--am I interrupting something?”

“Hi, Clyde—and no—this is my boss, Sally,” I told him, brows up.  “What brings you down the mountain?”

“Supplies,” he muttered.  Then:  “I came to see where you work.  Your gramma was saying nice things about it.”

“It's a nice libary.”  I moved past Sally and took my station behind the front desk.  “Do you want me to give you a tour?  You could tell Gramma about it.”

“I don't want to be imposing.”  He shook his head.  He still looked angry, which was very strange.  I’d never seen Clyde angry—I didn’t even know he could get angry. “I just wanted to see you.  You’re looking real good.  Happy.”

I blinked and stared at him, at his giant hands, crushing the cap, at his face, contorted and changing.  I watched him swallow, watched him turn.  “Stay well, Megan.  Take care of yourself.”

He went out, and through the fogged window, I saw him get into his tow truck, start the engine, drive away.  Sally came up behind me, coughing a bit.  She had an unlit cigarette in her hand, lighter in the other. “Who was that?”

“A family friend,” my skin crawled.

---

That night, Kara had invited me back to her and her family’s home in the abandoned factory.  There was to be a party of sorts—it was Nedra’s birthday, though no one would tell me how old she was.  The older woman winked at me when we finally came through the entrance after all the steps and the paths that led us to that place.  Kara brought me there, then darted away for a long moment to speak with her brother, Ledo.

She left me with Nedra.

“You're the light of her world, you know,” she muttered after a moment.  We both leaned against the far wall as I watched the fires being built up, as I watched Ledo and Kara’s dark heads bent together in conversation.  I turned to the woman in surprise, but her brows were up, and she was shaking her head.  “Kara can’t eat or sleep or walk without thinking of you or how it will affect you.”

There was warmth in her words, a certain kindness.  I turned to her, eyes wide, but then she leaned forward a little, her voice low.

“Megan, much will change very soon,” she said quietly, quickly.  I had to lean forward, straining, to hear her.  Her eyes burned.  “Kara…Kara loves you and protects you more than you could ever know, more than I could ever tell you.”  She breathed out, searching my eyes.  “You must stop concentrating so hard on what you fear, and think more on what you love.  You have all the answers you need,” she gazed toward the assembled people, the fire, Kara talking with a young man with a broad smile on her face.

As she walked away, I thought on what she'd said…it had touched me in such a strange way.  I watched shadows flicker along the wall, and I listened to the distant murmuring of many voices.  When the fiddle finally began playing again, I rose and walked stiffly toward the firelight.

Had there been this many people when I came before?  I didn't remember much from that night, but I seemed to recall very few, not a great crowd.  A multitude.  But a multitude stood now, in a rough circle.  At the center was Kara and Ledo.  They stood back to back, Ledo cradled his violin to his chin, and Kara's lips brushed against a flute.  Together, they began to make a music that was wild and fierce, and entirely captivating.  I wrapped my arms about myself to shield myself from the cold, and stepped closer to the circle.

The people began to dance.  It was slow at first, it didn’t startle me, but their bodies began to move.  From statues to flickers, they changed, becoming firelight themselves.  They whirled faster and faster, becoming a blur of bright colors and muted shapes.  I watched them move, stepped closer and closer to the whirling circle.

It stopped.  The cobweb of light and energy silenced as Kara stepped forward and put her arm about my shoulders, bringing me close, kissing me with a mouth that tasted of metal and myrrh.  I felt the energy within her, still spinning, still dancing.  I kissed back.

I took her hand, took the slim fingers that had moved over the flute, coaxing rhythm and harmony from them, and placed them on my skin, over my neck, sliding down my shoulder, over my heart.  I pressed it there, pressed it until I was absolutely certain that this was physical, this was real.  This was happening.

“It was beautiful,” I said with fierceness, then, gazing up into her face.  “It was wonderful,” I reiterated.  The people were breaking apart, were talking and laughing together.

“We’re a little…wild…” said Kara, her head to the side as she smiled, as she gazed into my eyes.

“You forget where I come from,” I whispered, then. “I was born in the woods, I will die in the woods...I’m part wild.”

Her eyes grew dark for half a heartbeat, as she shook her head.  “I was born in the woods, I will die in the woods...” replied Kara, then, sadly.  “But I’m all wild.”

It made no sense to me, but in some small place deep down, it did.  I drew her close, and kissed her again, a long, slow kiss that made my hands grasp her hair, made her hands go about my body.  The flute dropped to the ground, made a metallic clank against the boards.

This was a private place, a bed of cloth and rags behind propped up boards.  Kara’s bed.  Kara touched me there with a quiet reverence.  I was part of her wild world, as I placed my own fingers upon her skin, learning patterns, writing language with kisses and tracings of tongue and words I murmured into her secret places as she laid back upon the rags and whispered my name.  Somewhere, a violin was playing; somewhere, a circle was dancing.

We were one with it.

---

No dreams.

I awoke to soft light, shining upon my feet.  The windows were caked with grime in this place, but as I blinked, waking, I saw that the one above me had been wiped clean.  Puffy, white clouds moved across a bright blue sky.  Morning.

“Hey.”  Her voice was soft and warm.  I turned to see Kara waking beside me.  Her eyes reflected the blue of the sky as she opened them to see me.  She smiled wide, beautifully.  I pillowed my head on her shoulder and realized I was happy.

“I love you,” she whispered then, voice soft.  She seemed to search my eyes for a long moment, as if she wanted to tell me something.  But she didn’t.  Her face changed, smoothed, and then, with a soft smile, she murmured:  “I believe you love me, too, Megan.”

“I do,” I said, breathless.

“I keep you safe,” she said, taking my hands in her own.  Nedra had something something about that last night, hadn’t she?  Safe?  It was so strange.  I looked into her eyes, tried to see the secrets within, but they were shut to me.  And then she gathered me into her arms and held me.

I kissed her brow, I kissed her eyes, I kissed her lips...and between us came nothing more than truth and love.  My heart quieted as we embraced and believed.  It was enough.

A throat was cleared, and I drew rags about my naked body as Ledo stepped around the boards, looking down at us with a lopsided grin.  Kara sighed.

“I was just wondering if our lovely guest was going to be staying for breakfast,” he grinned, “and what she would like with her eggs.”

I sat up suddenly, rags clutched to my chest.  “Is this Friday?”

“Of course it’s Friday.”  Ledo's grin didn't falter.

“I have work!”  I moaned, trying to find my clothes in the mass of fabric.

“I'll miss you,” Kara sighed as Ledo ducked away, giving us privacy.  I slipped on my bra, clipping it behind me.  Kara put her chin in her hands as she gazed at me, sighed.  “You'll go up to your grandmother's tonight, right?  When will I see you again?”

My grandmother's.  I paused with my shirt half over my head.  I had gone to my grandmother’s house every weekend since I'd moved down from the mountain, but it was amazing how frequently I forgot.  Now.  Now that I had her.  Kara.

A strange idea came into my head, and I turned to her then, grinning widely.

“What if you…well, what if you come up with me?”

Kara appeared surprised.  “Me?”

“Of course!” I was back beside her, in her arms, kissing her.  “Please, Kara!  You're all I ever talk about to her--I'm sure she would be absolutely thrilled to meet you!”

Kara looked uneasy, though nodded.  “If you want me to, Megan.  I'll go up with you.”

“Meet me outside of the library at closing, okay?”  Another kiss.  She smiled up at me.

“Get going, you'll be late,” she said, with no small amount of remorse.

I pulled on my wrinkled skirt, my heels, and dashed down and out into the sunshine, heart light.

---

Kara came at closing time, moving into the library with snow on her hair and her hands deep in her pockets.  She smiled at Sally and Sharon and Rob and proffered her arm to me, a sweep of her hair over one eye.

It made my heart beat much too quickly as she grinned at me.

We stopped at the grocery store, then drove up to my grandmother’s house.  The trip didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would.  We talked a little, listened to classical music, stared out the car windows at the pristine winter night.  The moon was low and long over the mountain, casting shadows on the trees and on the road.

A few times, I thought I saw shadows move beneath the trees.  But when I looked closer, there was nothing there.

When we came upon the cabin, I stole a glance over at Kara to see what she’d think of it.  And really, my grandmother’s house looked so ideal on a moonlit night in winter.  It was a frosty evening among the tall, languid pines, and there were the lights of the stars overhead, and there were the lights in the perfect log cabin.  It was a picture out of a fairy tale as we pulled up the driveway, as I dimmed the headlights, as I turned off the car.  The pines stretched themselves around us, up to the glorious stars overhead.  I stepped out of the car into the welcoming crunch of snow, bringing my jacket closer about me, seeing my breath crystallize in the air.  Watching Kara.

She still wore no coat, yet she never looked cold.  She slammed the car door behind her, startling a branch-load of snow to fall in the yard.  She watched it clump onto the ground, turned her eyes to me.  She didn’t smile, her face bore no expression...which was strange for Kara.  I reached out a hand to her.  I didn’t want her to be nervous about meeting my grandmother.

“I love you,” she murmured to me, a surprise.  She drew me close and embraced me, there in the cold, beneath the trees, the stars.  We remained that way for a moment, and then the spell was broken.  The door to the cabin opened, and my grandmother stood there, silhouetted gracefully by the light.

“Megan!” she called, “you'll catch your death!”

I wouldn't, but I smiled and gathered bags from the back seat.  Kara helped, and together we wound our way through the beaten path (beaten by my grandmother's worn boots) and then we were at the door, and in the half-light from inside, my grandmother kissed my forehead and smiled warmly at this stranger.

“Kara,” she said with a grin:  “I was expecting you.”

For this moment, it was all like old times.  I was a child again, a child with a treasure to show my grandmother, and she was pleased as punch.  She ushered us inside, and she was smiling and Kara was smiling, and I was happy, I thought I might burst.

“Megan is always too good to me,” Gramma was saying, taking the grocery bags that Kara proffered.  “She does all my shopping, all my errands--she's just too good.”

We followed my grandmother into the kitchen.  It smelled like oatmeal cookies. Candles lined the kitchen sink, and only one light bulb burned.  Memories came flooding back, and as I set my own bags on the counter, I felt a strange sense of de ja vu.  Perhaps it was just nostalgia, but Kara and Gramma trading pleasantries…it wasn’t awkward, far from it.  It was as if they’d known each other all their lives.  I got a glass from the cabinet and poured myself water from the pitcher.  The candles danced, and I drank deep, watching my two favorite people in the world talking.

“Megan, show Kara upstairs to your room.”  Gramma waved a hand to shoo us. “I'll put away the groceries, and then serve up dinner--you both must be famished.”

The old banister felt freshly polished beneath my hand as we ascended the stairs my great-grandfather made.  Everywhere I looked were pieces of my family, there a portrait, there a carving.  We were born and bred from the woods, and my ancestry had made these forests their home.  I pointed things out to Kara, explained their origin.  She only smiled.

“This is it,” I said, then. We’d reached the landing.  The cabin wasn’t large, but the first room on the right had always been mine, to do with as I would.  Now, I flicked on the light and let Kara by.  She stepped into the center of the floor and stared.

“I know it's small,” I apologized, “and it's just a twin bed, but I know Gramma won't mind if we share it...”

She still said nothing, staring up at the wall and ceiling.  I followed her glance and saw her taking in my drawings.  Her face was still carefully guarded.

“Oh, these...” I said, clearing my throat, “they're my art... remember?”  Now I was chuckling, but she still said nothing.  “...Kara?”

“These are beautiful.”  She said it with conviction.  I stood and looked at her as she carefully took her eyes from the drawings, placing them on me instead.  “They're absolutely beautiful, Megan.”

“Now I know you're stretching the truth.”  The smile came easy to me, but left after she didn’t return it.  She looked serious, very serious.

“Why did you stop,” she asked, then, “creating art?”  I had no good answer.

“Megan!  Kara!  Dinner!”

Obediently, we filed down the stairs, me behind her, taking in the wisps of hair that lay gently against her neck.  I had never seen her so serious.  It was such a silly little thing, that my art was good, but she’d meant it.

Stew and fresh baked bread.  Kara and Gramma made polite noises back and forth to one another, and I buttered my bread thickly as we told Gramma about the snows we’d gotten in the valley.  Finally, it was time for bed.  My grandmother kissed us both on the forehead and shooed us upstairs once more, as if we were little children, about to have a sleep over.  If Kara thought this was a little bit strange, she made no mention of it.  I brushed my teeth beneath the same flickering light I’d brushed my teeth under when I was a kid.

This was a little weird for me.

Moonlight spilled in the window, making shadows of branches and panes across the floor.  Kara propped herself up in my small bed, looking up at the drawings.  I felt self-conscious and flicked the light switch off, climbing into bed beside her.  It was so small, but it would make do.  We pressed against one another, I beneath the covers, her on top.  She pillowed her head on her hands and made no move, so I turned, ready for sleep.

“Megan,” she said after a moment.  The word was small in the darkness, small against my back as she turned and molded herself along my form.  I pretended I was asleep.

“Megan,” she hissed into my ear.  I grumbled and turned a little.  Her face was close to mine.

“Yes?” I whispered.

“Your grandmother is very nice.  I thought you should know.”  Her voice was quiet in the dark.  The shadows played tricks with her eyes, and I saw shapes in them, around her face.  I tilted my head and watched the darkness and light fold and compress, elongate and shift.

“Yes, she is pretty nice,” I said after a moment, after she blinked a few times thoughtfully.  I put my arms about her neck and drew her down to me for a sweet kiss.  It was light, soft as down; she brushed lips against my own and then against my cheek, against my forehead, against my eyes.  Long, languid movements that made me shiver.  I wasn’t really cold.

Moonlight drifted across the floor as stars shifted in the sky, and our bodies shifted beneath them.  We stayed silent, though our breath came quick.  We moved in rhythms both ancient and wise, wild and unknown.  I learned to breathe in the darkness, as we touched and trembled.  I closed my eyes and could still see her shape above me.

We moved together.

---

I'm in Gramma's kitchen – I'm playing with her wooden spoons--she has several.  I line them up in size, I make shapes with them, sometimes, if I think she can't hear me, I bang them on pots and pans.  It makes a delightful sound that echoes through the kitchen, and I know she really can hear it, but she's never admonished me yet.  I think she likes my music.

There's a knock at the door.  I get up to answer it, straightening my overalls as I run, pellmell through the kitchen and the living room and the hallway and then there's the doorknob, and Gramma already has it in her hand, and she's opening it, and now she is admonishing me, but only with her eyes, and I know it's because I ran through the house.  I'm not allowed to.

“Good morning, Clyde,” says my Grandmother, squinting up through the morning sunlight at the hulking figure in the doorway.  I've always thought of Clyde like a big brown bear.  I'd seen one in the woods, once – it moved slow, lumbering along through berry patches, snuffling through the thorns to the sweet fruit.  I look up at this bear now, take in his hands, as big as paws, and his face, as thick as a snout.  It's smiling down at me.

“Good morning, Molly!  Good morning, Megan!” and then he hands me a small bunch of meadow flowers.  They are the first flowers that anyone has ever given me, though I've seen them given as gifts in storybooks.  They delight me, even though I could have gone and picked my own.  He took the trouble to bring me flowers!

I laugh, happy, and take them up to my room.  I put them in a tin cup on my  bedside table, and, in my haste, spill the water from the cup over my latest drawings.  It's a sudden motion, and there was nothing I could do to stop it (Gramma would have said that I shouldn't run through the house).  But one moment, the water is in the cup on the windowsill, and the second, it's splashed over the floor and the rocking chair and my sketches.  I stare, horrified, as girls and horses meld together to one ugly entity, as brown as mud, as dirty as hide.

“Megan!” Gramma calls up, from the living room.  “Clyde is staying to dinner!  Come down, you must help me with the cooking.”

There isn’t a thing I can do.  I cram the flowers in the cup hurriedly, and then I glance about, wondering where I can put the mess.  I wad up the papers (sticky, messy papers), and crumple them as small as they go, and then they are under my bed.

Lost forever.

Chapter 9

I didn’t know if I slept, or if I stayed awake, lulled by a bone deep exhaustion I could hardly feel.  But suddenly I was awake, and Kara was not with me.  Had she been gone a moment?  An hour?  I placed my hand on the indent in the mattress she’d made with her body.  Cold.

I gathered my clothes and slipped them on, moving quietly to the bathroom in the darkness.  She wasn’t there.  My blood pounded in taut ears as I made my way down the steps, avoiding each creak by heart as I moved from plank to plank with nimble feet.  She wasn’t in the living room, not in the kitchen.  And the door to my grandmother’s bedroom was closed.

My heart pounded faster now, harder.  Kara was gone, as if she had vanished in the night.  I tried to remain calm, tried to think logically, but in the darkness, my fears were all real.  I stared at my reflection, lit by moonlight, in the window, my eyes too wide.

That's when I saw it.  The kitchen door was slightly ajar.  I crossed to it and peeked around the corner, out into the night.  Still, white snow spread across our backyard; moon and stars made it seem like day.

There, in the snow, were footprints.  They looked like Kara's boots, and they set off in the direction of the deep woods.  Was she sleep walking?  She didn’t know her way here... Even I could get lost in these woods.  They were wild, untamed.  There was nothing dream-like about them in the dead of night, when animals are half-starved from the winter.

I didn’t think that Kara could take care of herself in the woods at night.  I knew little of her past, her upbringing, but what I did know consisted of a woman who lived in an abandoned factory.  This could hardly be suited for a winter's night among trees and beasts.  I shook my head and darted to the entryway, slipping my bare feet into winter boots, arms into coat, head into hat.  I didn’t think about it for a second, but slipped myself out into the night.

It was so cold, but so clear.  As I set off after the boot prints, I began to feel a little foolish, but still urgent.  Anyone could follow boot prints, and anyone could follow boot prints home.  But Kara...had she ever been in the woods?  What was she doing?  She could get lost anyway, couldn't she?  I was afraid, and I didn’t know why, but I crunched through the snow quickly, ignoring the cold, cruel beauty in favor of my inner worries, now dark and distant.  Where was she?

I followed her tracks until I couldn’t feel my hands any longer.  I stuffed them into coat pockets and realized I couldn't feel my nose, couldn't feel my feet.  It didn't matter.  Stubbornly, I continued on, placing boot into boot print, watching the long, sharp shadows, taking in breaths and letting them out to cloud the night.  As each step moved, as my body followed, I became more and more afraid.  I couldn’t think of anything but finding Kara, nothing but seeing her long, lank form ahead in this half light, half darkness.  But I didn’t see her.  I kept walking.

Gradually, the strides lengthened, and though I struggled myself, I couldn’t duplicate the stride.  I sighed and followed them as best I could, down a hill and then up another, between tall, dark trees.  Finally, I crested it, following the footprints down into another knoll.

I stopped.

The footprints ended here.  Or, the boots did.  They disappeared in a circle of disturbed snow, kicked up and altogether displaced.  I stared stupidly at the circle, stared stupidly at the tracks I now could see.

Wolves.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and though I was so cold, a sudden sweat rose on my skin, making the fabric cling to my body.  I shook, staring at the tracks, staring at the silent snow.  I shook and I couldn’t stop.

In the silence of the woods, my heart hammered against my chest.  Clouds scuttled across the moon, and the brilliant reflection of white on snow eased, replaced by darkness.  Darkness and then light, darkness and light.  I shook, and my heart hammered and I didn’t know what to do.  I was too afraid to breathe, too afraid to lick my lips, frozen in the night.  But I managed to, managed to wet them with a stiff tongue, running over the chapped surface without feeling it.  There was a rushing in my ears.

Kara had been mauled by the wolves.  Then why wasn't there blood?  Kara had been taken by the wolves.  Wolves don't take anything.  Kara had been killed by the wolves.  There was no body.  And there were no wolves.  Strange thoughts seeped through my brain like running sap and I tried to remember the truth, and as I stared at the circle, lost in a haze of rampant fear, I almost didn't hear the movement, didn't hear the branches breaking or the crunch of snow.  Didn't hear the panting in the darkness.  But I turned, because I had heard it, and on the brink of the hill, I saw the wolves, and my heart came up into my throat, and I thought I was dying.  Terror, deep and dark, opened up a hole beneath me and swallowed in a single bite.

They were long and sleek, dark and sharp, shadows that moved within the darkness and fading moonlight like nightmares.  I watched them move, watched them circle at the top of the knoll, and I knew that if they wanted, I would be theirs.  I would die in the cold, in the snow, in the winter, and my grandmother would never find me.

No one would ever find me.

I must be dreaming this.  It was a delusion, like the kind my grandmother got.  I watched the largest beast step down the knoll, watched the snow slide from beneath large paws.  The yellow eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, and it moved toward me as if in a dream, slinking quietly.  Stalking me.

But it was no dream.  I was too cold, the moon was too bright, and I could hear the wolf breathing.

It was real.

Big ears pricked, then.  The wolf swiveled its head and stared up as if at the trees.  No, in another direction...it stared toward the moonlight, and it was moving, then, leaping from haunches up the hill and over it, lost from my view.  The other wolves stared down at me for half a heartbeat, and then followed the other.  Snow crunched away until I could hear nothing but my pulse, pounding, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.

“Megan!”  Kara's voice echoed down into the valley as she appeared, up on the ridge, her familiar, beautiful shape dark against the moonlight.  “Megan, what are you doing here?”

My voice came out as a muffled sob, and I could form no words.  She moved down to me, quickly, taking me into her arms, shushing my sounds as deep, animal noises came from within me and I wept against her shoulder.  I was still shaking, but my body could no longer afford the energy for it, so they were small shakes, now.  It quaked with sobs, with the cold, and I could hardly feel it all.  She was so warm, as she held me to her.  She said not a word, and we stayed that way for a moment.

“The wolves... the wolves will come back...” I muttered, taking her hand in a daze.  I began to drag her back up the hill, following the footprints like breadcrumbs in the dark.  She pulled against my hand, expression unreadable.

“Wolves?”

I pointed wordlessly to the tracks.  But they were no longer tracks.  I looked down at them, still shaking.  There were no visible paw prints, only Kara's boots drowned in a circle of disturbed snow.  I didn't understand.

“I thought they'd gotten to you,” I said, muttering the words, but even I could hear how ridiculous they sounded.  I couldn’t stop shaking.

“Let's get you inside.”  She made soothing noises, and placed an arm about me.  Together, we followed her boot prints back, back through the woods, through the night.  I stared wildly about us at any noise, any break of branch or slump of snow.  The trees looked treacherous in the half light, and the shadows played tricks with my eyes.  I could almost see lupine shapes in the darkness...I could almost see...

“Almost there,” Kara said shortly, ushering me the final way across the yard.  Soon, we were inside the cold kitchen--I had left the door open... What had I been thinking?

“They were there,” I hissed, then.  When the door was shut, when we were safely inside the cabin.  I could still hear my heartbeat, but I could hear Kara's, too.  It gave me courage.  In the darkness, I shook, but my voice remained steady.  “I saw them, Kara.  They were there.”

“What did you see?” she asked, voice gentle.  She stripped away my jacket, my boots, my hat.  My clothes were soaking, but still she pressed me to her, took me in her arms and carried me up the stairs.  Nothing creaked.  We moved soundlessly in the darkness.

“Wolves,” I said, whispering, adamant.  “I saw wolves, and I was afraid that they'd taken you... killed you...”  Despite my best efforts, tears welled up in my eyes, and then I balled my hands into fists and put my arms around her neck, and I was sobbing quietly.

“I'm fine,” Kara said quietly.  Her voice was so kind.  “You're fine.  It's all right...”

“It's not all right,” I whispered the obvious.

She didn’t act as if she'd heard me.

---

Gramma calls these flowers bluebonnets...these ones are daisies.  She's shown me what I must do if I fall down and cut my knee in the woods, she's shown me what flower is good for a stomachache.  I remember all of these things and repeat them to myself, small truths beneath the trees as I wander.  It's so warm, and the sunshine is so bright.  I trail my fingers along the bark and smile, a wild thing of the woods.

“It's good to get your lungfuls of air in the summer,” Gramma always tells me, “Winter isn't good for you.”  So she shoos me every morning into the out of doors in the warmer months, and has, since I can remember.  Not that I argue.  I long to race outside into the beautiful day, long to find new places, play adventures, make friends.  Everything wild here is a playmate, nothing can harm me.  This is my wood.

Gramma has given me cautions, though.  Stay far from bears and porcupines, don't touch coyotes.  She shows me their pictures from a big book and describes them to me.  It's not that they would harm you, she says quietly.  It's that they're more wild than you.  They wouldn't know what to do with you, they wouldn't understand you.  Just give them their space, and they'll give you yours.

When I wander through the trees, sometimes I think I see shapes.  I'm never certain, but sometimes there are bears, or is it just my imagination?  I don't know.

Now, when I see the shadow, I stop.  This is no maybe-creature, no shadow created by my imagination.

This is a wolf.

Or what I've seen in my grandmother's book as a wolf.  It looks sort of like the picture, but not really.  The picture was so small, so flat.  Here, the thing stands, almost as tall as I do.  There are muscles, and it's black, not gray like on the page.  Its eyes are bright and fierce, but I’m not afraid of them.

“Are you a wolf?”  I ask it, because it's a perfectly logical question.  I like to think it looks surprised; instead, it cocks its head at the sound of my voice, curious.

I’m not afraid as I hold my hand out to the animal with an encouraging smile.  “There, there, wolfey, are you lost?  I've never seen you here before.”

The animal doesn’t respond to my question.  Instead, it bows its head so that it looks up, up and up through long lashes.  I stand, surprised.  It looks like it's bowing to me, a pretty little bow...but it's really sniffing the forest floor, and suddenly, it lifts up its head again, and turns as if to leave.

“No, wait!”  I cry after it, and then before I can check myself, I'm following after the wolf.  It runs away, much faster than my child's legs can match, but I still try.  It disappears into the overgrown brush beside the trail, and as it slips away, I’m alone.

It isn’t the last time we will meet... I feel it.

---

I was so cold.  As I woke, groggy to the wan, new sunshine, I wondered what had happened.  Why was I so chilled, why were my bones aching?  The covers were off my body, wadded up into a bundle at the foot of the bed.  I dragged a corner over my legs, not able to work my fingers for anything more.  I shook.

I remembered the dream and the previous night almost at the same time.  One filled me with horror, the other with deep unease.  But I sat upright, holding my arms around my shoulders, rubbing my skin, still shaking...desperate for something.  I didn't know what it was, but I wouldn’t find it in bed.  I crawled out, stood on my own two feet, found a sweater and went downstairs.

The sweater smelled of cedar, and as I wrapped it tight around me, it quieted my shaking a little.  My slippered feet hit the living room floor, then.  Kara sat on the couch with a book pillowed on her lap, my grandmother made sounds from the kitchen.  I smelled the hot warmth of the griddle, of frying flapjacks.

“You're up early.  Your grandmother said you wouldn't see daylight for another few hours.”  Kara's grin was mischievous, and I tried to smile back as I crawled onto the couch beside her.  But I was still so cold, the teeth chattered in my mouth, and I leaned against her shoulder, hungry for something I couldn’t quite describe.

“What do you want to do today?”  Kara put an arm about me.  “I don't really know what you guys do up here for fun--”

“Not much in winter,” I replied, as her voice trailed away.  “We…read, a lot.  We take care of things in the house.  When it warms up a tiny bit, we go out for walks.  It's really--it's a dreaming time, mostly.”

“A dreaming time.”  She seemed to like that phrase, turning it over in her head.  She was grinning again.

“Yes.  Like, you know...”  I waved my hand, trying to come up with the words,  “It's a time when many animals sleep, when they dream.  Native peoples thought that a dreaming time was one of the most spiritual things you could experience.  That this was when all the wisdom of the next year came to you, while you dreamed.”

She held me close as we both thought for a long moment, and then I cleared my throat.  “Kara, about last night...”

“Yes?”  She didn't stiffen, didn't change her tone.  It was lighthearted, and gentle.  But still, something had flickered in the air.

“Why did you leave?” I asked.  I tried to keep my voice as casual as hers, and failed.  It faltered at the end, became almost accusatory.  I cleared my throat and tried again.  “You went for a walk?”

“Yes.  I was a little restless,” she squeezed my arm.  “I'm sorry I frightened you--I didn't think you would wake.  I assumed I would go for a walk, come back...you'd never even know about it.”

“I’m sorry…I was just worried about you…”  My heart sunk low in my ribs, and I wondered at my questions.  What was wrong with me?  She couldn't go for a walk?  Well, yes, she could, but it was dangerous here.

She glanced at me for a long moment.  “I talked to your Gramma about it this morning.  She said you were afraid of the woods now, and that you were probably afraid for my safety.”

My hackles rose.  “I'm not afraid of the woods.”

“It's perfectly natural if you are,” she shrugged.  “It's an ancient fear...older than man himself, even...from when we were all still animals.  We come to fear the dark, feared those wide open spaces that dwell in darkness.  That's where fairy tales come from, after all,” Kara chuckled and gestured to the book in her lap.  It was a collection of stories from the Brothers Grimm.

“Ah, Megan, you're up!”  Gramma came into the living room, bowl of batter in her hands.  “Will you help with breakfast, darlin'?”

I couldn’t refuse.  With a chagrined sigh, I followed my grandmother into the kitchen and took over the flipping and the stirring and the measuring.

Darkness and fairy tales and fears of forests.  I burned one batch of flapjacks on the griddle, as deep as I was in my tangled thoughts.  I burned my hand when I tried to remove the blackened evidence.  I cursed and sucked on the offended thumb, still lost in thought.

“The wolves have not come for tea in awhile,” Gramma said conversationally, almost testing the waters.  “I've missed them.”

The old, familiar feeling of sadness and despair climbed back into my heart, and I turned to her, scraping the black off the griddle.  It seemed pointless to tell her this, but I had to, if only to try and forget what might have (but didn’t really, not the wolf part) happened last night.  “Gramma, there are no wolves.”

She shrugged, continuing to stir.  It was such a beautiful morning, sunlight danced in the kitchen, and it smelled so good in here.  Gramma wore her favorite apron, and her hair was back, pinned neatly atop her head.  She stared down at what she was doing with the same logical air that she approached everything.  There should have been nothing strange between us.

But there was.

“You know I don't like it when you bring them up,” I muttered, unable to leave well enough alone.

“Megan, I wish you would believe me,” she countered.  She hadn't said anything of the sort in a long while.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“What are you gals going to do today?”  Gramma asked, when we’d devoured breakfast, washed the dishes, and had retired to the living room with fairy tale books and quilt squares and little else.  Kara looked to me, and I bit my lip, wondering what had occupied my lazy Saturday mornings for the past few years.  Before her.

“In winter, we don't have much to do, us folks up here,” my grandmother said by way of apology.  Kara smiled.

“It's no worry to me, Molly,” she said quietly.  “I would be pleased as punch if we stayed in all day.  I’d don’t often get to just relax and enjoy myself, and I’m doing both here.  It’s wonderful.”

“Flatterer,” my grandmother chuckled, though you could see the remark made her happy.

I shifted in my seat, opening my mouth to a possibility, then closing it when I realized it was too silly.  I sat for a moment, regarding and discarding individual ideas until my grandmother spoke up again.

“What about the Red Bear, Megan?”

I choked on my own spit, in mid swallow, and coughed for a half moment before looking at my grandmother.  I guess she had no idea what she’d just suggested.

“What's the matter?” Gramma chuckled.

“Gramma, if I may remind you,” I sighed, my eyes heavenward, “that the Red Bear is a bar for old men.  That's...not exactly...I mean, they're really old.  They don't...”  I trailed off with my hands in the air, trying to explain how wrong, exactly, the situation was.  But I couldn’t think of anything else to say except this:  “They wouldn’t like us.”

“Pish posh,” Gramma responded with.  “How do you know?”

I remembered the last time I'd been there, many, many years ago—I’d still been a teenager.  Gramma had taken me on a particularly slow Saturday night at the end of March when the winds and snows were just about to change, but hadn’t yet.  We were going “stir crazy,” she'd said...we had cabin fever and needed to get out.  So we went.  I recalled the pelts and animal bones up on the walls, grinning skulls and skulls still covered with their furs.  And then there had been the men at the tables.  They’d made crass jokes about things I couldn’t yet understand, but would, years later, and be more than a little revolted at.  My grandmother herself had taken me out of there pretty quickly as soon as she'd had a little something to “warm her spirits,” citing that this was no place for young ladies.  Here, now, I looked at my grandmother, wondering what she could possibly be thinking to assume that the Red Bear would be anyplace for two women...in love with one another.

“They're red necks,” I said with a sigh, then, folding my arms.

“Now you're just being uppity,” Gramma declared.  “Kara, what do you think?”

“I think there's no harm in it--I'd like to get out, if Megan would be up for it.”  I couldn't believe my ears and looked at Kara, who was grinning.

Part of my heart shuddered, but I couldn’t stare down both of them.  “Whatever you want,” I sighed, biting my lip.

I had a bad feeling about this.

Yes, the place might be different now, but I kind of doubted it.  The thing is, not much changed in the mountains.  Places could grow and go wild or go tame, but their innate essence remained.  This is how I looked at the bar, that even if the older men had left, their bones too cold to make the nightly trips, newer, fresher men would take their places, sons and grandsons of the previous breed.

Every bit like them.

We bundled up around eight o'clock, after a tasteless dinner.  I drove us there, remembering the way by more intuition than my grandmother's direction.  She hadn't been back in nearly as long as I, and there were only so many roads to go.  I turned into the icy parking lot, the tiny, icy parking lot, and shut off the car, taking the warm keys into my hand, staring up at the flickering sign.  It was lit by one fluorescent bulb that seemed to be close to its end of days, and the whole contraption swung back and forth, back and forth over the parking lot.

Kara drew me close, warming my nose with her lips.  Her smile was comforting. “Come on, have a fun time with me,” she whispered.

We got out of the car and I tried to smile, but it came out half-heartedly.

The same old music filtered from the same old speakers as we opened the same old door and entered the bar.  I could have sworn that the same old men turned from whatever they were drinking, talking, doing, to stare at us.  But no...there were new people, young people, scattered among the watering eyes and badly groomed beards.  I walked up to the bar and obviously surprised bartender (the same I remembered from my childhood) and ordered a rum and coke while I held the dirty counter and bit my lip.

“We don't get many strangers,” the bartender said brusquely, by way of apology, when he took longer than usual to pour my drink.  Kara came up behind me and ordered something I couldn't quite hear over the loud twang of the country music.  I stared down at the greasy counter and saw my reflection--or, something like me--wavered and wavering, looking up to regard my own eyes with murky ones.

“I'm Molly's granddaughter,” I said to the bartender, a little louder than necessary.  The talking resumed after that, though a few men continued to look on, obviously curious.  I wondered what sort of stories Gramma had told them, told them about her incredible, smart granddaughter.  I'd heard her speak to Clyde on occasion, telling him in a quiet voice exactly how wonderful I was.  It made me a little uncomfortable, but that’s what she’d always done...

“Megan!”  The booming voice was all too familiar, and I shuddered as I turned, back already being pounded by Clyde.

“Hello,” I said weakly, trying to muster up my best smile.  “Fancy seeing you here!”

“I come here every night!” he said, in response, a bit shocked.  “I never thought I'd see you here, though--it's wonderful!  What are you having?  I'll buy it for you!”

“No, that's all right, you really don't have to...”  I began, stammering.

“I was buying for her,” said Kara then, voice even and strong.  Clyde did a double take as if he hadn’t seen her.  He stood a full head taller than her, impressively large to her slight frame.  She didn’t waver.

“Who are you?” he asked, good-naturedly.

“Kara.  Megan's friend.”

“Ah.  Well, any friend of Megan's is a friend of mine!  I'll buy yours, too!”

“I would prefer to buy for myself and Megan.”  Again with the same evenness of tone and civility, but there was now a new edge beneath the words.  I blinked as Clyde silenced, staring down at her not with his usual jovial expression, but a calculating one.

“Where I come from, the men buy the ladies their drinks,” he said slowly.

“Only if the ladies are theirs,” Kara replied.

“Really, it's no trouble,” I began, but lost the words as they continued to stare at one another, expressions unreadable.

“Clyde...” I cleared my throat, “how have you been?”

“Well,” he looked at me, then, and smiled, though a bit reluctant, “I've been making big bucks plowing the roads.  Your job been going well?”

“Yes!”  This was safe territory--we could discuss this.  I took a small sip of the drink the bartender placed in front of me. It burned the whole way down.

There was a small silence after a moment.  I couldn't speak, my throat hurt.  Kara was looking over the crowd, eyes open, body tense.  Clyde sat on the bar stool next to me, breathing through his mouth.

They had a jukebox, one of the old, upright ones that stood in a corner, looking sorry for itself.  Kara took that moment to stand up and fish out the appropriate change from a coat pocket.  Then, she was playing with buttons, and the beginning strains of “Unchained Melody” emanated from the rusty speakers.  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and for some strange reason, my glass was full again, and Kara was walking towards me, extending her hand, and I knew she wanted me to dance.

Everyone was watching.  I knew it--I could feel their eyes boring into my body. “What are you doing?” I whispered, when she took my hand.

“Dance with me,” she said, as I knew she would.  I struggled out of her grasp and remained where I was, crouched on a barstool next to the bulk of Clyde who still breathed evenly, still watched both of us with unreadable eyes.

“Who is that woman to you?” Clyde was speaking to me, now, somewhere in the distance, far removed from the muzzy reality I was currently taking part in.  I was already tipsy.  How many I had had?  My glass was full again.  I breathed out and lifted the hair out of my eyes and realized that Clyde was leaning close, that he was whispering into my ear.  “Who is she?” he repeated.  I couldn't place his tone.

“Kara,” I said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world as I downed the contents in my glass in one swallow.

“What is she to you?”

I shook my head, staring at the drink which seemed to magically be full again.

“Megan.”  Kara was there again, and the same song was starting over again, and she was giving me her hand.

The world was spinning as I stood, as I somehow drifted toward her.  I had never been able to hold my drink.

She took me in a gentle embrace, and guided me over the floor.  No one else was dancing--everyone was watching, even though Kara found a small corner of the place, a small, dark corner where few eyes could pry.  She put her arms around me, held me up, rocked me from side to side.  It was not slow dancing so much as propping me up and swaying, but it worked.  She held me so tightly, so sweet, that I could forget, for a moment, where we were.

So we danced, and I moved back and forth to the rhythm and we were together in a corner when it happened.

“What are you doing?”  It was Clyde.  I knew his voice, I couldn’t mistake it.  Kara stopped and stiffened.  I could see him over her shoulder, tall and imposing, blocking out the dingy light from the dingy bulb.  I couldn’t see his face.

Kara ignored him, and I found that I couldn’t speak.  We danced a little more, and then Clyde repeated it.  This time, I heard it... I understood the anger in his voice.  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice gravelly, a hard edge cutting between Kara and I.  I could hardly breathe, and my stomach twisted.

“Dancing,” Kara replied curtly, not giving him the satisfaction of a glance.  We were close to the jukebox, and the melody was loud and tinny--I couldn’t hear Clyde breathing, couldn’t see his face, didn’t understand what he was thinking.  He stepped forward and took my arm, and I hadn’t been prepared for it.  I winced.

“The lady doesn't want to dance with you, friend,” he said levelly.  I could see his face now--it was expressionless.

“Perhaps you should let the lady decide for herself,” replied Kara, glancing into my eyes.  Hers flashed such a light blue they were now almost silver.  She looked so angry, and I felt so sick, and I wanted to lie down.  Now.

“Megan?” they both said.  I didn’t really realize what I was doing until I was pushing away from Clyde, and I was veering my wobbly body toward Kara, to Kara, my safe harbor, my good Kara.  I fell into her chest, hard, but I didn't feel it. I only felt her arms come about me, and how she didn’t waver, and how Clyde stood behind us, empty handed, fingers curling in the air.

“She’s mine,” he said.  “I should dance with her.”

I didn’t understand. “Let's go home,” I said, voice slurred, “I’m…drunk.”

“Megan,” he said.  There was something in the word, something I couldn’t quite place.  I turned and looked at him, at his bulk against the light, at his large hands.  I shook my head and laid it against Kara, feeling her warmth through the thin flannel, through my cheek, into my bones.  She picked me up, put her arm about my shoulder, and beneath my knees, and suddenly I was against her chest, cradled.

“You don't know what you're doing,” said Clyde.  I heard it far away, as if part of someone else's dream.  And again:  “she’s mine.”

Why the hell would he say that?

“Get out of my way,” that was Kara.  She didn't sound like I remembered.  Was I dreaming now?

There was a long moment of silence, and then we were moving.  We must be, for suddenly I felt the cold come around me like water, swallowing me whole, and I gasped.

“Sh...I'm sorry.”  Yes.  This was Kara.  She sounded so sad.  I tried to reach out to her, but couldn’t move my arms.

“This was such a mistake.  I didn't know he’d be there... I'm sorry.”

I heard nothing more.

---

There is a piece of candy in my hand.  A lollipop.  I've been playing with it for almost an hour, twirling the plastic wrapper with small fingers as Gramma and I talk about the kittens she found in the shed.  I like the gray striped one, and she's thinking I might get to keep him.  I've never had a kitten.  She's telling me what it was like when she was little, when they fed the barn cats out of saucers of milk, still warm from the cow.  I'm trying to imagine what warm milk from the cow tastes like.

Gramma drives much slower than other cars.  This is why they always pass her.  One roars up behind us now, and I pop out of my seat, trying to see who it could be.  It's Clyde--he waves a large hand at me, grinning from ear to ear.  His truck is so much bigger than our car, and I have to peer very far up to see him.  He waves his hand in the direction of the car now, and I turn back to Gramma.  “He's going to pass!”  I say grandly.

The truck passes quickly.  Gramma slows down, he speeds up, and before I know it, it's over.  He's ahead of us, but he's not going any quicker.  He puts an arm out the window, waving us on.  To follow him, I think.  I suppose he wants us over for supper... we've just been down the mountain, getting supplies.  But we still won't refuse a free meal.  Gramma nods, following him at the turn.

I watch the trees go by.  If I concentrate, I can make out individual trunks and branches.  We're not going fast enough for them to blur.  I like to unfocus my eyes sometimes, see the bright wash of green as it passes, and imagine they look like that because I’m underwater.

I turn back to say something to Gramma, but I stop.  There is a color out of place here.  It should all be cool, bright living trees, vibrant.

There's red.

A splash of it, across the back bumper of the truck.  I look at it, really look at it, and wonder what it could possibly be.  It's dripping out of the back of the pickup.  Something's leaking in the bed of the truck.  It looks like red paint, and I wonder for a small moment if Clyde is painting his back shed, and if he'll let me help.  I love painting things, because I paint little scenes first, stick figures, then cover it over with the color…

The paint drips slowly, getting lost in the blur of brown that passes beneath the truck and then under our car.  We eat up the road, and I watch the drip of it, almost mesmerized.  This reminds me of the time I twirled so much I became sick--I couldn’t hold myself up, but tumbled down in the driveway.  I scraped my hands, and blood welled up there.  “Nature's bandaid,” my grandmother had called it, shushing my whimperings with a kiss, cool water and a cookie.

It drips.

We pull into Clyde's driveway--it appears out of nowhere on the left.  There's thick forest, and suddenly there's a break, and there's a cabin and a spit of gravel.  We pull up behind him, and turn off the car as he gets out and strides toward us, grandly.

“I bagged myself a twelve pointer,” he says, then.  I don't understand what that is, and tell him so, looking up at this great bear.  He's grinning hugely, obviously proud.

Gramma puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me, heading toward the house.

“What's the hurry, Molly?  There's no harm in showing her.”

My grandmother protests, but he's already taking down the back of the pickup truck.

This deer has eyes.  Bright, glassy eyes that stare at me as if it's alive.  But it isn't.  It can't be.  There's so much blood in the back of the truck that when he lets down the end of it, it spills out onto the gravel, washing into the earth.

“It'll look so great...” he's saying.  Something about a wall.  Something about mounting.

There are long jagged wounds across its body.  I see the shot hole, see where the bullet sank in, but then I see the long marks of a knife raked across fur and flesh.  There is a roaring sound in my ears as I think of the wolves, as I think of the deer, as I think of things dead I have seen and not seen.  This looked like a wolf killed it.  But there are no wolves.  Only Clyde.

I don't really hear anything.  I turn, run around behind the house, and am sick against the logs.

Creeping, crawling things move beneath my hand.  Ladybugs scurry across the log, and I stare at them stupidly as they continue marching, over my fingers and nails.

I hear Clyde's laughter.  Gramma just said something, angry.  I'm too far away to make it out.

---

When I wake from these things, from these dreams and nightmares and memories, I feel so sick, so disgusted.  So angry.

I sat up slowly, staring at the wall, feeling the twitch in my eye.  It was my bedroom wall, the same shapes and drawings and faded wallpaper I’d known my whole life.

Kara was beside me, sprawled out with an arm over my torso, a leg over my legs.  She laid on her stomach and snored a little, a tiny, comforting sound that happened when she took in her breath.  There was a catch in the back of her throat that I had to listen very hard to find.  I listened now.  There was nothing else to hear, save for the scrape of branches against the window.  It was bright outside.  I supposed it was morning...or, almost.

I crawled out of bed and sat on the floor for a moment.  My world was spinning and I thought I might be sick.  Sick like the little girl, leaning against the logs.  I held my head and tried to forget what I thought I'd forgotten.  Or remembered...or...

Everything swirled.

I should never drink.

From where I sat, I could just see under the bed, just a little.  Odd.  I remembered I’d put something down here.  I reached under the bed, listened to Kara’s long, quiet breaths in sleep.  My hand felt around under the mattress, brushed against dust bunnies,, long hairs (from a cat), and pencils... until, finally, it found a crumple of paper.  A large, awkward crumple.  I dragged it out.

My drawings.

I knew it before I smoothed out the paper, before I took the thing, the trash, and made of it my masterpiece once more.  It wasn't.  How could it be, with its smeared sketches of girls and horses?  They were mere lines, now, suggestions, really, from the badly faded pencil marks.  They were nothing like I'd hoped they’d look when I first created them.  But they were there.  My fingers traced this one's smile, that one's ears.

I’d wanted, so much, to make beautiful things with my life.  And I’d given up on them.  Like I’d almost given up on myself.

“Megan?” it was dull and gravelly.  Kara sat up in bed, her head tousled, her eyes half closed.  “Megan, it's too early.  Get back into bed.”

I watched her for a long moment, watched her even breathing, watched her blink, slow and sleepy.  She put up a hand and rubbed her eyes and yawned, stretching her body in a lupine curve.  I followed it with muzzy eyes.  I could see my breath.  Gramma must have turned down the heat.

“Bed,” Kara said.  It was so soft, and she fell back against the pillow.  Her breath meant she might have already started sleeping, but I knew she hadn't.  She was waiting.  Waiting for me.

I left the crumpled paper, left the pencils beneath the bed.  I got up to hands and knees, and then, far from graceful, crumpled my own self against Kara’s body, placing myself into her hands.  She held me, comfortable, easily, and she was asleep before I'd pillowed my head on her shoulder.

I watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall.  So steady, like clockwork.  I timed my own breathing to it and found my shoulders lose their tension, felt my eyelids creep closed.

In that moment, I found that I could sleep.

---

I slammed the car trunk with a satisfying “thud,” and turned back to my grandmother who held out a basket of muffins, eyebrows raised.

“You really must take them,” she was saying.  So I took them, placing them between the front seats, half listening to her parting words.  Kara sat in the passenger side after she'd given a quick hug to my grandmother.  I'd watched it in the rear view, thinking she looked so strong next to frailty.  Kara whispered something into my grandmother’s ear and then came into the car beside me.  I started the engine and waved out the window.  Gramma waved until we'd reached the bend in the road, and she probably hadn't stopped for a long moment after.

“She's a really good woman,” Kara said, glancing my way, then back at the road.  What she said next, I could never have predicted:  “I...was just wondering what you thought of the wolves?”

“What wolves?” I asked, perplexed.  “The ones in my dreams?  The ones my grandmother thinks she sees?”

She coughed a little and stared out the window.  “Well.  I suppose those.  I mean, I don't really know what you think of all of it, and I'd like to know.”

I laughed and shook my head, staring at the dry pavement in front of my spinning tires.  “I hate them.”

She was silent for a moment.  “You hate that you're seeing them.”

“No,” the word was dry on my lips.  I tasted it again as I said:  “No.  I hate them.”

She surprised me with her next question, it was so small:  “Why?”

“They're...” I grappled for the right words.  “I see them all the time.  They're destroying my grandmother.  They're...taking everything from me,” I sighed out a little brokenly.

“I'm sorry to have brought it up,” she said gently.  She reached across the basket between us and placed her hand on my leg.  “I'm...I'm sorry, Megan.  I just wanted to know, is all.”

“I might turn crazy like my grandmother,” I snorted and breathed out.  “I hate them because they took away my grandmother, and I worry…”  I breathed out, glanced sidelong at her.  “I’m worried they’ll take you away from me someday, too.”

There was silence for a moment.  She still had her hand on my leg, and I could feel the warmth through my jeans.  It was comforting.

“They'll never take me from you.”

“What?” I glanced at her.

“Nothing could ever take me from you,” she said, then.  She stared into my eyes, and the intensity in her own rushed through me.  I could feel it deeply, from her expression, from her gaze, from the way her hand burned on my leg.

“You say that.  It's very nice.  But who can know what will happen?” I said.  It sounded hollow after her passionate declaration, but it was the truth.

“I promise you.  Unless you want me to go, nothing will ever take me from you.  I swear it.”  The way she spoke, the way the words spilled out of her mouth, from her lips, held me spellbound for a moment.  My heart pushed against my bones, and I felt my heartbeat swell beneath her gaze.

“Kara...”

“I mean it.”

I looked back at the dashboard, at my hands gripping the wheel, at her fingers against my jeans.  I breathed in and out.  She...meant it.

“You fear them,” she said, and then looked up quickly when I snorted.  “No, I understand it.  I mean, they’re wolves.  I get it…but I think you don’t really see what could be there.”

“What could be there, Kara?” I asked quietly.

“We often fear what we don’t understand,” she said then, looking out the front window at the setting sun.  “But did you know…?  Fear and love, they’re often the same thing.”

I sat there for a moment in silence.  “The same?”

“People say that there are only two emotions at the root of every other emotion.  Fear and love.  And that they’re so close together that they’re almost the same thing,” she shrugged.  “What I’m trying to tell you…basically…is that maybe you could feel love for the wolves, too.”

“Why,” I said bitterly, spitting out each word as hate rose within me, “would I ever love the wolves?”

“I don’t know,” she said, voice quiet, soft, “but it’s really not good to hate things.”

The way she said it made chagrin pour through me.  “I’m sorry, Kara,” I said, then.  “What about you?  Do you like wolves?”

She smiled.  “I…happen to love wolves.  Very much.”

I looked out at the road.  They were just wolves.  They weren’t really demons, they weren’t evil.  They were just wolves, and my own delusions and my grandmother’s—they were not something I could or should hate.  And I’d never thought of it before.

“Let's go home,” said Kara then, the power gone from her voice, words soft in the darkness.

I dropped her off at the outskirts of the factory.  The third floor was well lit, and I could hear violin music through the broken walls.  Kara came around to my side of the car and bent down as I rolled down my window, suddenly shy.

“I'll see you tomorrow?” she asked.

“Of course,” I answered her, unable to meet her eyes.  She leaned forward and brought my face up, gentle hands against my skin, twining up and into my hair as she kissed me through the window.  It was gentle and soft, warm and inviting.  I took it in as I took her in, as I breathed.  She tasted of cinnamon and wood smoke, heat and need.

“I would ask if you'd stay...” she began, but I shook my head before she could encourage me further.

“No...I have to work in the morning.”

We both stopped for a moment, staring at each other in the darkness.

“If you...if you need me,” Kara cocked her head.  “Well, I'm never far away.”

“I know,” I smiled up at her.  “I love you, Kara.”

She looked surprised for a small second, but then, a grin cracked across her face and she shone.  She leaned down and kissed me again.  This time, it was strong.  I tilted my face back and saw above her head, stars.

“Megan…” she pulled away, for a moment the radiance was subdued.  The car grew cold as I looked at her face, as I felt the earth rush away from me.  She looked pained.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, heart in my throat.

“I…I have something to tell you,” she said, voice very small.  “I just…I’ve been putting it off.  I can’t…I can’t do it yet.  I can’t say it yet.”

“I don’t understand,” I murmured.

“You don’t…you don’t have to,” she smiled again, stiffly.  “I’m sorry.  This is the wrong time to bring it up, anyway.  This moment…this moment is special.”

And then, in the darkness, with night sky as witness, she repeated those three little words back.

“I love you,” she said.

It washed the black away.

All the way to my apartment, I smiled again.  It was a small one – the corners of my mouth turned up a slight degree, but in my heart, it was bright.

There were many horrible things happening in the world, but the knowledge that she existed, that she loved me, somehow made it all a bit better, if that was possible.

I drew myself a deep, hot bath when I got home.  I sank down into the water, and undid my hair, and I swirled my wet fingers on the surface and thought of everything and nothing.  But mostly, I thought of Kara.  I had a small misgiving about how she said she needed to tell me something…but it was fine.  She had said ‘I love you,’ hadn’t she?  That was the important part.

That night, I dreamed of sitting in a coffee shop, chai in hands, staring into the smiling face of my lover.  We were laughing, though I don't know why, and we were perfectly happy.

If there were wolves in the dream, I didn’t see them.  I only had eyes for her.

Chapter 10

That morning, the parking lot was not plowed at the library.  I pulled in and my wheels spun as I sought a parking space.  Sharon was already there, Rob, too, struggling out of their cars with bags of books in their hands.  It was City Mission day.

It was busy from the start; women brought in their donations, children checked out books, men wandered the shelves on their lunch breaks, choosing surprising finds.  I usually had a knack for thinking up the type of book each person might need or want, but today, slim volumes of poetry and philosophical treatments were flying off the shelves as quickly as children's books and dating manuals.  It was a quick day, and we embraced it with relish.

It was only after I got back to my apartment that I realized I’d left my cell phone at the library.  I’d wanted to call Kara, and her number was programmed into my phone—I didn’t know it by heart.  Well, I could stop back at the library, get the phone, and then go on to Kara’s.  I’d wanted to head over there anyway tonight.

I was deep in thought, not really noticing much of anything when I pulled back into the library parking lot.  I pulled alongside a car, and it was then that I realized it was Sally’s car.  Her car that was in the same spot as it had been this morning, covered in snow.

I got out of my own and breathed out into the cold night--it collected like a cloud about my head.  She’d been working much too late, lately, and I needed to tell her to get some food, go home.  I plowed through the brown snow in soaking boots, determined.  At least, I thought I was.

I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts when I climbed the library steps, that I almost stumbled when my hand sought the doorknob.  It wasn't there.

I stared at the door for a moment, bewildered.  It was left ajar, partially open into the library proper.

I looked back at Sally's car, then at the door.  She had to still be here.  I pushed open the door, calling out her name in the dark.

“Sally?”  I called again, boots squelching wetly on the wet carpet.  I wandered through the shelves, angling toward her office.  “Sally, it’s Megan—I left my cell phone, and I’m just grabbing it…”

I thought for certain I had wiped up the area outside her office since I’d mopped up at the end of the day.  But the floor right outside of her office door was so wet, puddles forming from beneath the door.  I frowned and pushed it open.

It was pitch black inside, no lamplight.  I called out her name once more.

I heard moaning.

I flicked the light switch on the wall.

I stared, my breath coming in quick gasps.

The top of the desk dripped with red liquid, and there were red handprints along the book bindings in the back bookshelves, and there was Sally, sprawled on the floor with a tear in her shoulder and back, her shirt covered in blood.

Blood everywhere.

I stood, quaking.  I could smell the blood now, could see the paw prints in it, circling around it.  Could see the pools of it, moving away from her body on the floor.  There weren't simple tears in her shoulder, in her back--the skin and bones were broken, and it was ravaged, and I couldn't breathe, and I needed to be sick, and…

She moaned again.

“Sally?”  My voice shook, and tears leaked out of my eyes.

Her voice sounded wet, it gurgled.  But she said my name, and I was down beside her, rolling her over as gently as I could.  He face was covered in blood, her hair was ripped open; her head was cracked, everything was blood.

“The wolves...” she said.  I laughed a little, then--it was a quick, sharp staccato thing that trembled through me and came out of my mouth.  I turned away and was sick, my hands were drenched with red ichor.  Blood.

This couldn't possibly be real.

“Megan.”  It was so hoarse--I could hear gasping...there was a hole in her chest. I could see soft bits of skin around the edges of a jagged wound that went so deeply there was movement.  I made a little sound, my hands over her body, not sure what to do, not sure what to do to try to stop the blood…

“The wolves...” she tried again.  Her lips moved, but a soft hiss came out from between them.  No more words until, “... please--safe...your grandmother.”

She breathed out, a jagged breath, like the wounds and bits of bone that peeked out from the tears and blood that seeped into the floor and my skin.

Her chest no longer rose or fell, her body didn’t move.  I called her name, I shook her shoulder gently, but her head rolled away from me, her eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling.

I felt myself crumple onto the floor and blood.

“No, no, no, no, no...” I whispered, tears squeezing themselves from wide eyes.  I put my mouth over my hand again, and it was wet and smelled metallic.

I struggled up, stepping over her gingerly, slipping on the red boards.  I stretched my hands for the phone, fumbled with the receiver, put it to my ear.  There was no dial tone.

Somewhere, in the tremors of my heart, I began to put small things together.  No big things, not even ideas.  But I remembered the word she'd said.  “Grandmother.”  I looked at the paw prints in the blood, I saw them go out of the study, out into the library.  I stared through the stacks out of the giant picture windows and saw the mountain.  My mountain.

I stumbled into the library proper and snatched up my cell phone from the desk and dialed “911.”  I told them I’d found my boss, that she was hurt, dead.  I slipped on the blood as I ran out of the room, out between the stacks, out the door.  I saw the paw prints merge with the sludge and slush and I saw them aimed for the mountains and I couldn't think or perhaps I did.  If this was a nightmare, or if this was real, it no longer mattered.  I got into my car, slammed the door and began the journey to my grandmother’s house.

All I could smell was blood, the blood on my hands, the blood on my coat.  I could hardly see my way for the wetness in my eyes.  I breathed out and made the wide turn onto the road that would take me to my grandmother's cabin.  I had to concentrate--I had to think, or the crystalline night would take me in the stupidest of ways, like skidding on an icy road and plunging down the cliff.  There were so many thoughts that pecked at my heart as I swerved and floored it up the hills, around the curves.  I was whimpering now, lips dry.  I licked them and tasted blood. I swallowed once, twice.  The moon lit the road.

It takes one hour from the library door to my grandmother's cabin.  One hour.  I hadn't looked at the time, but I knew I'd taken far less than this when I finally reached the driveway.  There were lights on, inside; smoke curled from the old chimney, twining about branches and away into the night.  I left the car running. I could hardly launch myself out the door before I was running up the path to the porch.  The door was open.

She would be inside, and she would be knitting--or making cookies.  She often made cookies.  My boots were suddenly heavy, and the last few steps I could hardly move my feet…for why was the door ajar?  My grandmother wasn't holding it open, smile on her face.  All the warm air was getting out, and she hated to waste heat.

Something wasn’t right.

I stood in the threshold, eyes dilated.  It was suddenly too bright, and there was a wash of colors, and besides--there were tears blurring everything--and it took me a long moment before I called out for my grandmother.  There was no answer.

Save for:  “Megan.”

Kara stood, crouched by the fireplace.  Her shirt was open in the front, her hands were dirty, her face surprised.  We stared at one another for a long moment before I could take in the rest of the place: the rocker was overturned, the couch cushions were ripped.  The lamp was on the ground, but still it shone.  I stared stupidly at the chaos and back to Kara.  She licked her lips and swallowed.

Outside, in the darkness, the paw prints came to our door.

“I can explain,” she said, then--it came out quickly, rushed--and she was moving towards me.  “Megan--”

“Where is my grandmother?”  It was so soft and low, I could hardly hear it come from my mouth, but she’d stopped, hands upraised to me in petition.  She shook her head, swallowing again.  I could see blood on the knees of her jeans.

“Megan, I need to explain things to you... please let me.  Sally--”

“Where is my grandmother?”  My hands were balled into fists and my voice was so quiet I couldn’t hear it, but still, Kara stepped toward me, brows furrowed.

“She's... gone,” was all she said.

And then we both heard it.

It was a low, thin wail--and it came from beneath the trees.  It chorused around and around, prickling the back of my neck, stepping forward and out of my deepest nightmares.  A wolf howl, and there was an answering one...and it echoed back and forth in the night in my woods.  In my woods.

My grandmother was out in the woods.  Wolves were out in the woods.

My grandmother was out in the woods.  With wolves.

I turned, as Kara called my name--I turned and ran.

This was a nightmare.  Then why was it so real?  This was a nightmare.  Then why did the cold air burn in my lungs, why was the moon so bright, why was the snow so deep?  None of it made sense, and as I ran away into the woods, I thought I saw shadows, blurred along the line of my vision.

The moon was obscured as I ran, dark clouds swarmed it and blotted out the stars, and then thick flakes began to fall, and they caught in the air as if suspended, coming into my mouth as I huffed in the cold and out the warm and called for my grandmother again, and again.  If wolves heard me, let them. I needed to hear her voice, feel her wrinkled hand in mine, see her eyes smile before her mouth did.  I needed to know she was all right, simply out for a stroll with her walking stick, warmed by her shawl and wool hat.

I heard the howl again, heard how it chorused around me.  I shook, but I didn’t falter as I continued to run. My muscles burned, my lungs gasped and shook, but I screamed out for my grandmother, and somehow it sounded louder than the wolves.

The snow fell, thick and silent around me.  Before the wind came.

There were sheets of white, and then there was whirling white, biting white that drove itself into my skin and face.  Out of my mouth came a word that was whipped away by the wind that suddenly wound itself about my body, about the trees, pinning everything into place.  I faltered and fell in a snow bank and my ankle throbbed brightly in the darkness.

Was it wolves howling now, or the storm?  I pushed my bare hands in the snow and got up, feeling myself limp before I consciously knew what I was doing.  Pain blossomed up my leg each time I put weight on it, and I felt sick, but I continued to move through the walls of white, hands out before me.  I shook, my teeth chattered, and my skin felt the needles of the driven snow slicing my skin.  Pin-pricked and frozen, I walked into a tree and clung to its generous bulk for a moment.  I wondered if I would die in this storm.

If she would.

“Gramma!” I screamed into the wind, felt it take the word from me, felt it toss it away, obscured into darkness.  “Gramma!” I screamed again, feeling numb.

The howl again, but was it the howl of wind, or the howl of wolves?  I stepped away from the tree, and the tree was lost to me.  There was so much white, and it needled my skin, needled my hands and face.  I could hardly open my eyes to it, but I tried, as I tried to keep moving.  I couldn’t feel my foot, but moved it beneath me, and the dull memory of pain came from it.  “Gramma,” I whispered, angry.

Shadows crawled along the edges of my eyes, and I could see lupine shapes there.  They whirled away and were gone as quickly as the snow, as quickly as my trees, replaced by shapes of white; tall, towering shapes that looked like ghostly riders in the darkness.  My skin crawled, and I found another tree, and I realized how terrified I was.  I couldn’t breathe; I took in great lungfuls of air, and felt as if I was drowning.  Thick, heavy, everything was cold and heat and great despair and numbness.  I couldn’t go on into the white and black--my legs were too exhausted to carry me, so I sat down.  It was comfortable in the snow, and I leaned against the tree and realized it wouldn't be so bad.  I would sit here, and I would fall asleep and I wouldn't feel anything.  Not anymore.

“Gramma...” my lips murmured, head pillowed against the tree.

A great hand reached out of the darkness and took my shoulder.  I stared at it stupidly before the rest of the bulk came, a great shadow from the black.  “Megan!”

It was Clyde.

Tears ran down my face and I felt the warmth of them prickle against my skin.  “My grandmother,” I tried to yell at him through the snowstorm, feeling the words taken away before he could hear them.  “My grandmother is gone.”

“No she isn't!”  He sounded surprised.  “I found her wandering in the woods tonight and took her back to my cabin--your grandmother is safe and sound, Megan!”

“Why was she...was she...” my lips couldn’t form words and everything was dull and blurred.  I felt myself slump against him as he tried to help me stand.  His hands were so strong.

“Let's get you inside,” was all he said, and I could hear it, as he picked me up and cradled me like a doll against his thick brown coat.  I was moving then, moving through the walls of white as trees danced past, and I could hear the howling in the dark.

I must have been wandering close to his cabin, for it didn’t take long.  We were struggling in the woods, and then we walked past the great shadow of a shed, and we were on a porch and a door was open and there was light.

“Megan!”

It was my grandmother, and I was suddenly in her arms, weeping and shaking and feeling numb parts of myself stumble back to life.  She shrugged me out of my work coat, made sounds about the heels and tights and skirts and admonished me about the woods and darkness and snow.  I laid my head against her shoulder and shook, so cold--but I didn’t care about anything else.

Because she was safe.

The door clicked shut behind us, and Clyde was in the entry, taking off his hat.  “Megan, you could have died out there,” he admonished me, taking two gigantic steps toward the fire and poking it into a roar.  “Molly, get her out of those wet clothes--she'll catch her death.”

My grandmother pushed me into another room.  There was a giant bed, deer head along the wall.  His bedroom.

“Megan.”  I could hardly stand, hardly press myself against the logs, but I looked up at the sound of my grandmother's voice.  Her eyes were wide as she shut the door, as she pressed it closed.  I saw the shape of Clyde get smaller and disappear between the boards.  “There's something wrong.”

My skin crawled, but I knew it wasn’t frostbite.  I ran my hands along my arms and shook as I stared at my grandmother.  “We're safe,” I told her simply, seeing shadows along the wall, ignoring the memory of wolves.  “There's nothing wrong.”

She stared at me, eyes helpless, taking a giant woolen blanket and placing it about my quivering form.  “You have to get out of those clothes,” she muttered, words dull, wooden.  “You'll catch your death.”

There were my clothes, on the bed.  A pair of jeans, freshly ironed, and a thick sweater.  I looked at them stupidly for a moment, then took off my wet things, slipping into the warmth and heat of the new ones.  My grandmother looked out the window, at the window, lips pursed, body stiff.

What the hell was going on?

“Megan!” Clyde called from the other room.  We looked at one another for a moment, my grandmother and I.  Her eyes were like a rabbit's, frozen and wide.  I stared at her, perplexed.  It was so warm in the room it was practically stifling.

“The weather report is calling for a blizzard.”  The door was open, and he was there, staring down at the wet clothes in a pile, then at me.  “You could have died out there!  What were you thinking?”

“My grandmother...”  My lips were numb, and I couldn’t stop shaking.  “She was out in the woods.”

“You could have called me.”  His admonishment was soft: “you could have asked.”

“I didn't think about it.”  My grandmother had looked away, now, back at the window.  There was swirling snow, outside, swirling snow, and then blackness.  There were no shadows in the snow.

“Come by the fire and warm your bones,” he said.  So I did.

My grandmother trailed behind us, her hands together, in front of her, picking at spots on her sleeve.  She sat down beside me and stared at the fire as she'd stared out the window.  Everything was dull and then sharp in my eyes, in my lungs.  I quaked, and had brought the blanket, still warm and full about me, but it made no difference, and we all looked at the fire for awhile, as I shook beneath the layers of heat.

It was strange and silent for a long time.  I became dulled to it, almost mesmerized by the fire, by the sound of my own breathing.  My lungs were now warm and I could breathe without aching.

“Are you hungry?” Clyde asked then.  I was surprised, for my stomach rumbled in answer.

“Yes, I suppose,” I said, quiet.

“I'll fix us something,” he beamed, smile wide across his wide face.  I smiled in return as he rose and walked towards the old stove.

“Megan.”  It was a whisper I had almost not heard, but I did, and I was looking back at my grandmother now.  There was fear in her eyes; they were wide as the fire flickered.  I swallowed, tongue suddenly thick.

“What's wrong?” I whispered back.  “Is it the wolves?”

“No, sweetheart.”  And then there were tears, big drops that cascaded down her eyes and along her nose.  She twirled the wedding band on her finger, looking down at her hands.

“What is it?  We're okay!”  And I hugged her, feeling her shaking beneath my embrace.  I backed away, sat down again on the ground.  The boards pressed against my legs and my ankle throbbed.

“Your boss...”  She looked down at me again, even through the tears.  I felt my heart quicken.  “Is she all right?”

“No.”  The word was small.

My grandmother covered her face with her hands and turned back to the fire.  A log beneath the grate snapped, dark and red.

“How...” I breathed in and out.  “Gramma, how did you know?”

“Megan!” Clyde's voice was large in the hush.  “Do you like baked beans?”

I nodded without looking in his direction.  I heard the sound of pans and a can opener.  I breathed in and out.

“You need to listen to me, and you need to listen quickly.”  My grandmother leaned down to me, lips hardly moving, voice low.  “Clyde...he's a very bad man, Megan.”

“I don't understand.”  I looked over her shoulder at his bulk moving in the kitchen.  He stirred the pan of beans with a small fork, dwarfed by his hands.  “He saved you--he saved me.”

She shook her head emphatically.  “No... listen...”

My grandmother stiffened when Clyde's boots made a distinctive thump, then leaned even closer.  Her eyes were huge in the flickering light.

“Clyde killed Sally,” she whispered.  “He was going to kill me--he wants you, Megan.”

I sat there and listened to those words, staring into the fire.  I felt my heart hammer in my chest, and I remembered the dreams and the visions, the waking nightmares, and the memories.

“That can't possibly be true...” I whispered weakly.  “It can't possibly...”

“It is,” her voice was harsh, pitched.  “He's going to keep us here.  He wants you...”

“Wants me?”  I didn't understand.

“Supper's ready!” Clyde bellowed into the stillness.  My grandmother and I stared at one another.  I shook.

“Here.”  He was handing me a plate of beans, having taken three big steps across the room to us.  He had to have heard us--he had to.  He would tell us now not to be so silly--he would explain everything.  He would.  I took the plate and smiled weakly up at him.  He didn’t smile back.

We ate in silence, the sounds of our chewing and swallowing echoing strangely in the vast cabin.  I was done first and stood, albeit gingerly.  My ankle hurt too much for me to put full weight on it, so I leaned on my grandmother's chair and took her plate from her.

“We've got to get going, Clyde.”  I smiled at him again. His hand was poised halfway between plate and mouth--the beans slipped off his fork.  “I really want to thank you for your hospitality, though, and for saving us.  It was wonderful of you.”

“It's blizzarding out there!” he waved his spoon to the window where the snow and darkness still swirled.  “You gals can't possibly go anywhere!  You'll have to stay.”

“Really, I don't think we can,” I said, voice high.

“I insist.”

There was no harm in this.  He was only being sensible.  I sank back down to the floor and glanced at my grandmother--my grandmother who had tea with wolves.  She must be wrong.  She must.  She was silently weeping.

Clyde was harmless.  Of course he was harmless.

Yet…one thing nagged in the back of my mind, as the minutes wore down, it had nagged louder and louder until it was all I could hear.

“Clyde,” I murmured, breathless--then breathed in and out and said a bit louder:  “Do you remember when you came down to visit me at the library?”

“Yes.”  His face was expressionless.

“Do you remember my boss--Sally?”  Beside me, my grandmother stiffened, but I continued.  “Clyde, she died tonight.”

“That's horrible,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yes,” I stared at him as he took another mouthful of beans.

Outside, the wind howled.  Or was it wolves?

He was still wearing his boots--they leaked wetly onto the floor.  There were stains on his pants, stains on his boots.  Dark, deep red stains.  The water that leaked onto the floor was pinkish.

“If it's just the same with you,” I whispered with a dry mouth.  “I would like to leave tonight.”

“You can't,” he said simply.

“We will.”

He stood up--he towered over me--had always towered over me.  He shook his head as he walked past.  “It's too cold out in that storm.”

I stood up and walked purposefully toward the door.  My ankle smarted each time I put the smallest amount of weight on it.  When I got there, I tried it…it was locked.  There was a keyhole I could see, but no key--it was locked from the inside.

A large hand fell onto my shoulder, and I turned, wincing.  The firelight flickered, and all I could see was the grim line of his mouth, the eyes that didn’t blink, as he stared down at me.  “You can't go out tonight, Megan--this is for your own good,” I smelled whiskey on his breath, and shrank back.

“Clyde, you're being ridiculous.”  That was my grandmother, and though her voice shook, it sounded nonchalant and clear.  “We need to go.”

“No one,” he growled, “is leaving.  Do you understand?”

I nodded, biting my lip, wondering if this was a dream.  But how could it be?  My ankle ached, I smelled whiskey, my skin crawled.  I could hear my grandmother breathing.  This--this couldn’t possibly be a dream.

“I've waited such a very long time for this,” he was saying.

If this was a dream, then this would not matter.  If this wasn't...then I would know.  I looked up into his face, watching his eyes in the firelight.

I said:  “You killed Sally.”

He didn’t move, only continued breathing.  I watched his face closely, watched it for any change.  Eventually, he turned away, moving toward the fireplace.  He sat down quietly on the chair.  My grandmother was standing, I was standing.  We looked at one another--she was still crying.

“Clyde?” I whispered, voice small.

“I've waited for this for a very long time,” he said finally, staring into the fire, hands clasped.  “For years and years and years, Megan.  Do you know how long that is?”

My heart was in my throat and I found that I couldn’t respond.

“Now, now it's all over.  Because you're here,” he looked at me then, and I saw that his eyes were shining, and I needed to be sick.  But all I could do was stare.  I was frozen.

“Clyde, you're frightening her...” my grandmother muttered, looking at him in disgust.

“I'm not frightening anyone,” he smiled.  His face darkened like the woods.  “Don't you even realize how much I've done for you?” he was standing and striding for me then, and I shrank back against the door, quaking.  He towered over me, blocking out the light.

“Clyde, please don't hurt her...” that was my grandmother, and though her voice sounded small, it was strong.  “Please, Clyde...”

There was a howl again.  This time, Clyde looked up, anger in his eyes.  “It's those damnable wolves again,” he muttered: “they just won't stop.”

“Wolves?”  I whispered.  This was a dream.  It had to be a dream.

“Nothing will ever get done with distractions,” he said then, delicately.  “Molly, you get to go and see if that storm is as bad as I said.”  He took my grandmother's arm, and he had a key in his hand.  Before I understand, fully, what he was doing, he had her through the door and was locking it again behind her, after he’d shoved her out of it, out into the snowstorm.  He squirreled the key away, and I was beating on the door with my fists, then, screaming for my grandmother.  There was howling on the other side--and if it was wind or wolves or her voice, I couldn’t tell, for suddenly I was being pulled backwards by my arms.  Clyde was dragging me away.

“She's just a distraction,” he said with soothing noises, drawing me close to him.  He squeezed me against his bulk in a hug, even as I struggled--I couldn't breathe when he held me like that, and after a moment, I went limp.

“They'll kill her,” I repeated, over and over.  He took me by the hand and dragged me to the bedroom.  I couldn’t see as the tears washed my eyes, as the sobs took hold of my lungs.  He pressed me into the room and followed, locking the door behind him.  I was trapped.

“Here, now,” he said again, trying to soothe me.  “We're together.  I've waited... well, you know how long I've waited,” he was beaming from ear to ear, his grin huge.  “Megan, I've loved you for so long.”

“I don't understand,” I whimpered, sinking to the floor.  He stepped toward me, and I cowered away.  He was on the floor in an instant, hands out to me, smile never wavering.

“Please, please don't be sad,” he said.  “I've loved you since you were a tiny girl.  I knew we were always supposed to be together.”

I pressed against the edge of his bed--it was as far back as I could go.  I was shaking.

“I'm going to go now,” he smiled--he never stopped smiling.  “In a moment, I'm going to come back in, and we'll be ready to begin.”

I didn’t need to have it explained.  He left the room, and I beat against the door, anger moving through m as fast as the fear.  I couldn’t breathe.

I ran to the window--it was made of small plate glass, built around metal.  Even if I could break multiple panes before he returned, he would hear me, and I could never get through them.  I pressed my fingers to the cold glass and my forehead, too, willing my Gramma to be there, to show herself to me.  I peered out into the swirling snow, and thought I saw a moving shadow.  It was too low to the ground, too dark, to be my grandmother.

It stopped, as I stared at it--stopped and turned, looking at me with glowing eyes.

A wolf.

I moved away from the window just as Clyde reopened the door.  He strode into the room and gazed at me, standing by the window.  He was moving forward again, and he had me by the shoulders.  “I've done so much for you, and you'll never know or understand--how could you?”

“Please let me go,” I whimpered.  He towered over me, his bulk pushing me back and on the bed.  “Please, Clyde...please let me go.”

“If you're good, I'll go out and get your grandmother,” he murmured as he forced me down onto the bed.  I stopped struggling as the harsh reality filled my heart.  Would he keep his word?  Was my grandmother already dead?  How could she be?  How long had it been?

He worked his hand up under my shirt, and his fingers were so cold.  I struggled, then--I couldn’t let him touch me... couldn’t.  “This should have happened a long time ago,” he was saying, as he pressed me down with his monstrous bulk.  “Remember the blizzard, when you were lost in it?  Remember the truck that passed you?  That was me.  You were supposed to be mine that night, but I lost you in the snow.”

My head spun as he pinned my hands down, and I couldn’t struggle against him.  I couldn’t make a sound as his other hand pressed against my mouth.  I thought I would suffocate and die…I couldn't breathe as he brought his lips to the skin of my neck.

There was the sound of breaking glass, of thousands of small pieces hitting the floor, and the screech of twisting metal, and suddenly the room was so cold I gasped.  Clyde rolled off me, and there were shadows, and I didn't understand what was happening, until I sat up in the bed and saw Clyde on the floor, and a gigantic wolf gripping his shoulder in white teeth.

I stared at the thing stupidly, stared at it and realized I must be dreaming again.  Clyde yelled mightily and yanked his shoulder away from the beast.  There were many heads of animals in his living room and a large shotgun placed strikingly across the mantle.  I realized as he got heavily to his feet, as he crossed the room toward the door, that this was what he was going for.  The wolf made as if to spring at him again, but stopped, turning.

This was a dream.  It was a gigantic wolf.  The big, black thing that had haunted my nightmares for as long as I could remember.  I stared at it as if not seeing as Clyde's hand struggled with the key and lock and door.  The wolf looked to him, then back at me...and changed.

One moment, it was a great black beast, the next it seemed to grow smaller, smaller...my eyes flickered with the power as the light above me flickered, and then Kara was there, crouching naked in the middle of the floor, lips up and over her teeth in a snarl.  She looked at me wildly.

“Kara,” I said--my lips and tongue formed the word, but I couldn’t believe it, not really.  After all, none of this was real.  This was only some horrible, half formed dream.  A nightmare.

“Megan, did he hurt you?”  Her eyes were wild, and she looked manic.  She leapt towards me, taking my hands in hers as I shrank back.  “Megan, did he?  Did he?” she shook my shoulders, and it was gentle, and her breath was hot on my face.

“Get away from her, wolf.”  Clyde was in the door, and the shotgun was aimed at Kara.  She stood slowly, staring at him across the space.  Even though she was naked, she radiated pure power as she stared at him, leaning forward.  Again, her lips were curled up and over her teeth.  As I watched, her nose appeared to lengthen, until he shook his head.

“Don't,” was all he said.  “She already knows what a monster you are.  Let's not make it worse.”

“Kara,” I whimpered.

Her eyes flicked to me, then back at Clyde.  “If you get rid of me,” she said levelly, softly, “there are many, many outside to take my place.  It’s over.”

The wind and snow blew through the window, and with it, I could hear high pitched barking, and then a howl that was joined by many voices.  I felt the hair on the back of my neck crawl, found myself staring at Kara.  She looked at me, and her eyes were sad.

They were also slitted.

“Wolf,” I breathed.

Clyde pulled the trigger.

It was all too quick, too slow.  One moment, the shotgun was in his hand, the trigger was pulled, and Kara was shot--she must be, for the scent of blood filled the room, and a red puddle grew from where she'd been, but she was there no longer. Instead, she was leaping through the air at Clyde.  The shotgun spun out of his hands as a gigantic black wolf plunged her jaw into his neck.

There was a strange moment of grappling.  Again, the lights overhead flickered from the storm.  The shotgun came to rest beside me.  I slid out of the bed and took it into my shaking hands, flipping back the catch, placing my hand on the trigger.  It was ready to fire again when Clyde put his meaty fingers about the wolf's neck--when he began to choke her.  She held on for a long moment, and then her jaws loosened.  He banged her shoulder against the wall.  The sound was loud in the silence.

“Let her go,” I whispered, as he made to do it again.  He dropped her, and she lay on the floor, bleeding from a gaping hole in her chest.  She panted for a long moment before she began to change shape again.  This time I watched as the hair retreated, as her snout grew smaller, thinner... she was Kara again, kneeling in her own blood on the floor, naked and white in the darkness.  She placed a hand over her heart where the blood seeped from.  I swallowed, and swallowed again, keeping the gun trained on Clyde.

“What are you doing, Megan?” he asked, genuinely perplexed.  “Don't you see who’s the monster here?”

“I'm not sure,” I whispered, realizing that tears were blurring my vision--that I wanted to breathe, but couldn't... that the sound of howling had grown stronger and fiercer outside the window.

“Megan...”  This was Kara, and she had a hand stretched toward me--it was covered in blood.  She was crying now, too, tears falling down her skin silently.  I watched her cry, I thought of what she had said.  I was trying now to put everything into context and failing utterly.

“Megan, I love you,” said Clyde into the stillness.  “All that I've done, I've done for you.  I don't know why you can't see that.”

Kara stared at me, long and hard, not taking her gaze from my body, from my eyes.  All of my greatest fears, all of my nightmares...they had all been her?  I didn't understand, though I wanted desperately, too.  The gun was wavering in my hands, and I knew at that moment that I would not be able to shoot anything or anyone.

Clyde knew this, too, and stepped forward.

“No,” I screamed, as he grabbed Kara.

One moment, she was standing on the ground; the next, he had his thick hands about her neck and had pressed her back against the logs of the wall.  She changed into a wolf, and back to a human again as he began to choke her. She writhed beneath it, making wet sounds as I heard bones snap, as I saw his great bulk press down against her small one, as I saw him killing her.  I stared at that for a long moment and raised the gun up to my shoulder.

I pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.  I stared at it for a long heartbeat, then threw it down and went at Clyde, beating against him with my fists and nails, kicking him, screaming.  He didn’t even seem to notice, but tightened his hold on Kara.  He was too large and too powerful and completely unstoppable.  I sobbed, found that I couldn’t breathe, and let out a great wail.

Long, sleek shapes came through the window. If I didn’t stare at them, I couldn’t see them, as fast as they moved: gray shadows.  They came across the room and swarmed Clyde.  Kara fell to the ground as they began to attack him.  Wolves--an entire pack of them--filled the room and piled there.  He began to scream.

“Take him out of here,” Kara choked, and--as if they understood her--the great, gray wolves dragged away his body with their jaws, as he kicked and screamed.  They dragged him up and out the hole in the window, as if he were born on wave crests, out into the snow-filled night.  His screams were swallowed by the storm.

He was gone.

I sat down on the floor as Kara's blood pooled there.  I raised up my hand, and then it was pressed against the side of her face as she coughed.  There was a bone sticking out of her ribs, and a bone sticking out of her chest.  A clavicle, I realized numbly.  He had broken her bones and she was dying in front of me.  It was over.

“Megan...” she whispered, reaching up to my face.  “I'm so sorry for everything.  I thought I could...I mean, I tried to protect you...I promised you…”

“I…I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“He won't hurt you again,” she spat out, “for so long, he's tried.  Not again, Megan.  I promise you that.”

“Are you dying?”  It was a small question with a small voice, for as I was watching her, the bone seemed to dive back beneath her flesh.  The covering of her body morphed and churned beneath my eyes, and as I stared at her, she seemed made new again.  Kara struggled into a seated position and massaged the back of her neck with long fingers, blinking owlishly.

She was naked.  And whole.

There were no wounds.

“That?  That won't kill me,” she sounded disgusted--and tired.  She leaned back against the log wall, sprawling comfortably in her nakedness, looking at me.  She carefully did not touch me.  “Are you all right?”

“I...I don't know,” I replied quietly.  I was shaking from the cold.

“We should get you warm--by the fire...” said Kara, putting out her hands to me, but I shrank from them.  There was sadness in her eyes as she stood, as she indicated the door to the living room.  “Please, Megan--just come in here.  I can explain everything.”

“My grandmother,” I said.

“She's safe.  They’re bringing her in.”

It's strange, but I believed her.

We made our way into the living room, and I shook as I burrowed back into the blanket.  I kept my face to Kara, watching her carefully.  She seemed to notice this, and moved slowly, sinking onto the floor before the fire, keeping her hands where I could see them.

There was a knocking at the front door, then.  I shrank back, but Kara rose.  “It's all right,” she murmured to me.  “It's okay.”  She picked up a blanket, threw it easily around her shoulders like a cloak and strode to the door.  With a quick twist of her wrist, it seemed to unlock.  My grandmother came into the room, then--she wore a thick coat, and she was smiling.  She gave the biggest hug to Kara before she came to me and hugged me.  I sobbed into her shoulder for a long moment, feeling the snow that was caked on her shoulders melt beneath my skin.

“It's all right, Megan.  Everything's okay now,” she murmured.

“The others?” asked Kara.

“They're taking care of him,” she murmured quietly into my hair, stroking my back.

“Good.”  The way Kara said it made my skin crawl--there was a growl in it.

“Now...”  Before I could say anything more, Gramma was kissing the top of my head.  “I think you need to give her some explanations, Kara.”

“I was just going to.”  Kara offered the rocking chair to my grandmother, and she took it, smiling easily.  They seemed to know each other much better than I'd thought.  I stared at them both, from one to the other,  until Kara cleared her throat.

“We’ve...protected you,” she said simply.  “Your grandmother made a deal with my kind.  She paid us a kindness,” Kara shrugged.  “So we promised to always keep her and her daughters safe.  We keep our promises.”

I looked at Kara--really looked at her.  She made no movement, but let me study her.  For so long, I had been so afraid of something I didn't understand.  For so long, I had let demons control my heart...demons without faces.  Monsters.

“Who the real monster is...”  I muttered.  Kara frowned.

“What?” she asked, softly.

“Clyde said that I must know who the real monster is,” I sighed, feeling small and cold and lost.  “I guess I know.”

“You're safe, now, Megan,” said Kara stiffly.  “We can go if you wish.”

Gramma looked at me, and then back at Kara.  “She's in shock, dear,” she murmured to her.  “Why don't you come back in the morning?  We'll get this all sorted out.”

“There will be no morning,” she said.  “The wind has changed--if we're no longer needed, we must go.”

The wind no longer blew outside--the storm had died down, as if by magic.  Perhaps it had been.  We all stood as Kara moved toward the door, as she took the knob in her hand.  “It has been nothing but a pleasure, Megan,” she murmured back at me, eyes on the wood before her.  “Good night.”

“Wait,” I said, standing.  Everything and nothing weighed on my heart, and I needed to speak it, must speak it, or I would lose her.  But what came out of my mouth was not what I intended:  “You’re…the wolves…are real.”  Relief flooded through me, and I needed to sit down again.  But I didn’t.  I stood and watched her.

And, then, I couldn’t help it.  I asked:  “...what are you?”

She paused, her back stiff.  She didn’t look at us as she said:  “I suppose you could call us werewolves, though that word doesn’t fit.  Not exactly.  We’re just…wolves, Megan.”

I said nothing as she slipped through the open door, as she was gone from our sight.  As the door clicked, sealing her away into winter.  Gramma and I looked at one another.

“Clyde is gone,” she said simply.  “We can go home if you want.”

“I want to,” I replied.  So we did.

We gathered up our shoes and our coats--I left my heels there, slipping my feet into Clyde's gigantic boots, instead.  I stuffed the toes with socks and moved about them as if in cement, but they would do for the long walk home.  We put on our coats and slipped out into the night.

It was so cold here--so bright and so cold.  The clouds were gone, replaced instead with a full moon and a bright sprinkling of stars.  They shone down on us as we moved through the deep snow towards my grandmother's cabin.  We huffed and puffed in the stillness, moving through it all.  We said nothing.

Until:

“Megan,” said my grandmother.  She put an arm about my shoulders as I looked, for the hundredth time, into the deep woods.  “Are you still afraid of the wolves?”

“No.”  I replied after a long moment.

I was surprised to find it was true.

I stared for a long moment at the shimmering snow and the wine-dark trees.  The moon was bright enough to see by, and I could make out paw prints in the distance.

“I... I have to find Kara,” I stepped away from my grandmother.  “And...and thank her.  And...”

“And?”  My grandmother smiled.

“Something more,” was all I could manage before I stepped out of the boots, and in only my socks and my pants and my overlarge jacket, ran away into the woods.  For the first time in as long as I could remember--I was not afraid.

Someone I loved with all my heart was there.  Perhaps had always been there.  Loving me.  Protecting me.  With me, always.

I had never been alone.

And I would never be alone.

Love filled my heart as, somewhere, far away, I heard singing and the long, lonely strains of a violin.  I raced between the trees, breath coming out in huge puffs, to join them.

To join her.

There were no more big, bad wolves.

The End

If you enjoyed Big, Bad Wolf, you’ll love Bridget’s Sullivan Vampires.

The following is an excerpt from “Eternal Hotel,” the first novella in the Sullivan Vampires series, a beautiful, romantic epic that follows the clan of Sullivan vampires and the women who love them.  Advance praise has hailed this hallmark series as “Twilight for women who love women” and “a lesbian romance that takes vampires seriously!  Two thumbs up!”

…So this was the staircase from last night, next to the front desk.  The Widowmaker.  It must be.  I’d never seen a steeper set of stairs.  From up above, they looked simply like the rungs of a ladder in a barn—so steep and so tall and almost impossible to even think of taking.

It’s not that I don’t like heights—I’m pretty okay with them.  But these stairs were something else.  I wasn’t taking these steps—I’d have to circle back somehow and find the other spiral staircase down to the first floor

As I turned, I caught the first floor out of the corner of my eye.  Because of the cathedral ceilings of that first floor, it seemed much farther away then I’d thought it was.

It was then that something strange happened.

The ground seemed to spin under me for a moment, bucking and heaving like I was trying to walk on waves of carpeting, not good firm floor.  Or did it really?  Was it just a trick of the eye?  Either way, I took a step backward as a shadow fell in front of me, but there was no floor beneath that foot stepping backward, then, and I was tumbling backwards, shock cold enough to burn me flooding through my body as, impossibly, I began to fall down the stairs.

A hand caught my arm.  I hung suspended over the abyss of the air, my back to the emptiness, and in one smooth motion, I was pulled back.

Saved.

The hand was cold, and the body I brushed against as I was hauled out of the air felt as if the person had stepped out of a prolonged trip through a walk-in freezer.  I looked up at the face of the woman who had saved me, and when I breathed out, I will never forget it:  my breath hung suspended in the air between us like a ghost.

She was taller than me by about a head, and I had to lean back to gaze into her eyes.  They were violently blue, a blue that opened me up like a key and lock as she looked down at me, her eyes sharp and dark as her jaw worked, her full lips in a downward curve that my own eyes couldn’t help but follow.  She wore a ponytail, the cascades of her silken white-blonde hair gathered tightly at the back of her head and flowing over her right shoulder like frozen water falling.  She wore a man’s suit, I realized, complete with a navy blue tie smartly pulled snug against her creamy neck.  She looked pale and felt so cold as her strong hand gripped my wrist, but it was gentle, too.  As if she knew her own strength.

I saw all of this in an instant, my eyes following the lines and curves of her like I’d trace my gaze over an extremely fine painting.  And, like an extremely fine painting, she began to make my heart beat faster.  That was odd.  I was never much attracted to random women, even before I dated Anna, even before Anna…well.

But this wasn’t just my heart beating faster, my blood moving quicker through me.  This was something else.  A weightlessness, like being suspended in the air over the staircase again, the coolness of her palm against my skin a gravity that I seemed to suddenly spin around.  When she gazed down into my eyes, she held me there as firmly as if her hands were snug against the small of my back, pressing me to her cool, lean body that wore the suit with such dignity and grace that I couldn’t imagine her in anything else.

I was spellbound.

She said not a word, but her fingers left my wrist, grazing a little of the skin of my bare forearm for a heartbeat before her hand fell to her side.  I shivered, holding my hand to my heart, then, as if I’d been bitten.  We stood like that for a heartbeat, two, the woman’s eyes never leaving mine as her chin lifted, as her jaw worked again, her full lips parting…

“Are you all right?”  I shivered again.  Her voice was dark, deep and throaty, as cool as her skin, as gentle as the touch of her fingertips along my arm.  But as I gazed up at her, as I tried to calm my breathing, my heart, we blinked, she and I, together.

I knew, then.

I’d heard that voice before.

I’d seen this face before.

“Have we…met?” I stammered, eyes narrowed as I gazed up at her in wonder.  We couldn’t have.  She shook her head and put it to the side as she looked down at me, as if I was a particularly difficult puzzle that needed solving.  I would have remembered her, the curve of her jaw and lips, the dazzling blue of her eyes.  I could never have forgotten her if I’d only seen her once.  It would have been impossible.

I took a gulp of air and took a step back again, unthinking, and her hand was there, then, at my wrist again as she smoothly pulled me forward, toward her.

“The stairs,” she said softly, apologetically.  I’d taken a step closer to her this time, and there was hardly any space between us, even as I realized that my hand was at her waist, steadying myself against her.  I took a step to the side, quickly, then, my cheeks burning.

“I’m sorry,” I managed, swallowing.  “And…thank you…”  Her head was still to the side, but this time, her lips twitched as if she was trying to repress a smile.

“I’ve been meaning to remodel these steps.  Not everyone knows how steep they truly are,” she said, and her lips did turn up into a smile, then, making my heart beat a little faster.  I took a great gulp of air as she held out her cool fingers to me, palm up.

“I am Kane Sullivan,” she said easily, her tongue smoothing over the syllables as the smile vanished from her face.  “You must be Rose Clyde,” she said gently, the thrill of her voice, the deepness of it, the darkness of it, saying my name, the way her lips formed the words…I nodded my head up and down like a puppet, and I placed my hand in hers.  Her fingers were so cold, as she shook my hand like a delicate thing, letting her palm slide regretfully over mine as she dropped my hand with a fluid grace I had to watch but still couldn’t fully understand.

I was acting like an idiot.  I’d seen beautiful women before.  But Kane wasn’t beautiful.  Not in that sense.  She was…compelling.  Her face, her gaze, her eyes, an impossibility of attraction.  I felt, as I watched her, that buildings, trees, people would turn as she walked past them, unseeing things still, somehow, gazing at her.

I knew her, then.

The painting.  The woman in the painting from last night, with the big, black cat, lounging and regal and triumphant and unspeakably bewitching.  The naked woman, I realized, as my face began to redden, warming beneath her cool, silent gaze.  She was the woman from the painting.  But as I realized that, as we silently watched one another, I realized, too, that that would have been impossible.  It had been a while since college, it was true, but I could still tell when a painting was a few hundred years old.

The woman in the painting could not possibly have been Kane Sullivan.  And yet, it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I spluttered, realizing—again—how much of an idiot I must look to this incredibly attractive creature.  Her lips twitched upward again, and her mouth stretched into a true smile this time, the warmth of it making the air around her seem less frozen.

“You’re fine.  It’s not everyday that someone completely uproots their life and charts a course for places unknown,” she said, turning on her heel and inclining her heard toward me.  As she turned, I caught the scent of her.  Jasmine, vanilla…spice.  An intoxicating, cool scent that was warm at the same time.  Unmistakable and deeply remarkable.  Just like her.  I stared up at her with wide eyes as she gestured gracefully with her arm for us to walk together, like she was a gentleman from the past century.  True, she was wearing a sharp man’s suit (that I was trying desperately not to stare at or trace the curves of it with my eyes—and failing), but there was something incredibly old fashioned about her.  I kept thinking about that at that first meeting.  Like she was from a different era, not the one of smart phones and the Internet and fast food french fries.  No.  The kind of era that had horse-drawn carriages, corsets and bustles and houses that contained parlors.  We began to walk down the corridor together, in the opposite direction I had come, me sneaking surreptitious glances at her, her staring straight ahead.

The spell of the moment was broken, but a new spell was beginning to create itself, weaving around the two of us as we walked along the corridor.  As she spoke, I stared half up at her, half down the hall stretching out in front of us.  All of my actual attention, though, was on this woman.

Every bit of it.  She was just like that.  So…compelling.  She was a gravity that pulled me in, hook, line and sinker.  I didn’t know then how much of a gravity she had yet to become to me.

You can get Eternal Hotel, the first in the Sullivan Vampires series, available now!

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About Author Bridget Essex

Bridget Essex has been writing about her beloved vampires for almost two decades.  She has a vast collection of crochet hooks and teacups, and likes to listen to classical music when she writes.  Her first date with her girlfriend was strolling in a garden, so it’s safe to say she’s a bit old fashioned.

Bridget has a black cat she loves very much, and a brown dog who actually convinces her to go outside.  Her little house is often much messier than she’d prefer, but she has the perfect excuse:  she’s a writer.  This excuse doesn’t work nearly as well on her girlfriend as she’d like.

You can find out more about her work at http://BridgetEssex.wordpress.com

Learn more about Rose and Star Press, publishers of lesbian romance and fiction of distinction, at http:///www.LesbianRomance.org

Table of Contents

Synopsis:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About Author Bridget Essex