Page 16 of Alpha's Fate

“We’ll approach with the greatest respect, I assure you.” Cora said softly, flipping her pen through her fingers as she spoke. “There is no judgment here, only care. We only want to help and the more information we have the better equipped we will be to help you all. That’s all we can offer,” she finished, and finally there was a movement of crouching down into their wolves.

I stood to follow them, as did my mate. Cora followed first and I from behind, making our way deeper into the graveyard. It seemed vast and endless, tombstones scattered among the trees. Most of them were so far dilapidated that I couldn’t read the inscriptions. It just added to the melancholy of the atmosphere- all these forgotten people left without names. We would all be that someday, but this was different somehow, sadder somehow.

In the depths of the graveyard we found a gated tomb, a flat thing like the lid of a casket embedded in the earth. There we saw them, wolves laying collapsed on their sides. More any of the others we’d seen of the Unseen they were simply outlines of shadow drifting in the wind. Their bodies seemed somehow empty and barely there, just drifting mists of darkness. It broke my heart to see them there like that.

I approached slowly as if they’d vanish if I moved too quickly. One figure, lying down like a weary dog, drew me in and I went to her, crouching in front of her and moving as if I could cradle her large, canine head. I sat cross legged in front of her and simply cradled the fog of her head as best I could, wishing Icould comfort her with gentle strokes to her fur. They were right. There was no comfort for them.

“Tell me your story,” I asked, and I fell into her.

There was no change in her posture, no movement of those moonlit eyes, but I felt as if she stirred. As if she saw me and recognized that I was different. I saw an image in my mind, one of a young girl. Blonde and small, smiling brightly up at me. She laughed and danced, and I could tell that I loved her.

She was my daughter, and I was afraid. There were dark clouds on the horizon and I could see the lightning coming. In my heart I knew it was coming for me.

My heart beat faster and I wanted to run, but my daughter was too far from me. I had to get to her first, to take her with me, but it was coming too fast. I was so close, within arm’s reach, nearly touching her when it struck, blowing us apart. Everything went dark- the world was black and nothingness, and when I woke up the sky was dark. I called out and couldn’t find anyone. I was lost, separated from my Pack. Alone and afraid. My daughter was gone and I was alone.

I stumbled as I walked, trying to find her everywhere I went. My voice wouldn’t come out when I tried to cry out her name- Prudence. Over and over I cried but she never came. I never found her. With every step an odyssey I fought my way to the center of the storm, screaming at the figure at the center of the storm, arms held wide, the wind a roaring scream until suddenly it was over. Everything was silent, the quiet roaring in my ears as loudly as the shriek of the storm that had been blowing just moments before. I collapsed from the Herculean effort I’d put forth to get here, to try to find my baby. There was no telling how long it took for me to get to my hands and knees, and that’s when I saw it. My hands were deep, dark shadow and I seemed to be blowing away in the wind. On shaking legsI stood, looking down from my hands all the way down to my trembling, wispy feet beneath my pitch black skirt.

I was a ghost, I thought. I’d died and now I was a ghost, doomed to haunt this place until I found my Prudence. That must be why I was still here. But as I looked around I saw that we all were. Those who weren’t laid out dead were all ghosts. Why only some of us? Why not all? Why were we chosen? I didn’t know. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason. Someone was crying out for help, but I couldn’t see who. There was a moan in the air, the whispers of those of us left piling up on top of one another until the din drowned out everything, even my thoughts. My mind was spinning wildly and I couldn’t figure out where or why, what had happened, who was left?

My family- did any of them survive? How could we recognize one another when we could barely speak, my screams coming out as a whisper. I don’t know how long I stood there and screeched to no avail.

Then days passed and we learned to communicate with our new bodies. Months passed and we began to grow desperate. I still hadn’t found Prudence, dead or alive, and my pain only grew. I wandered as far as I could only to find myself drawn back. Then years passed and I grew cold and quiet, the inner turmoil quieting from a wild squall to a quiet thing in the depths of my soul. A hundred years. Two hundred. I lost count. We all did. We fell as the time passed, but I still searched in hopes of finding my daughter. My Prudence. The heartbeat at the center of my soul.

I collapsed the day I lost all hope. My heart no longer beat and the quiet thing at the center of my soul was nothing but a tiny speck of dust occasionally disturbed deep down. Nothing mattered anymore. Nobody could help me. There was no hope. I would never find her and I simply couldn’t go on. I felt myself crumple there and all I could do was lie and stare, even despairfading away to nothing after a while. I was like the rest of them, then; the ones who had fallen before me to lay silently to wait out an eternity in unending torment. Everything was gone. I was alone again.

I flew back into myself and when I got back I realized I was crying, tears falling down my face like rain. My eyes immediately sought out Cora who dropped her notebook and ran to me, wrapping me up in her arms. I sobbed on her shoulder uncontrollably, just letting her comfort me.

“There was a shaman. A lightning storm just like we saw. She doesn’t know who he was or why he attacked,” I croaked out between tears. “We have to help them, Cora. We have to fix this.”

Chapter seventeen

Cora

We’d hiked back to camp after that. I had never expected that Weston would be able to connect in that way with the ancient wolf in the cemetery, let alone that it would be such an intense emotional experience. He’d calmed down as we were led out of their encampment and we set off back into the woods, hands interlocked gently. This was a whole new experience for both of us.

“Are you okay?” I asked softly, settling in by the fire pit we had been using. He was poking at the center of the fire pit where we’d lit our evening fire. It hadn’t grown beyond a candle yet, but with our careful poking and prodding we should be able to get a proper fire from it eventually.

“I don’t know,” he answered softly and I moved to wrap my arms around him from the side, laying my head on his shoulder. He’d told me the whole story of the woman who he’d connected with while we searched for wood to bring in for a fire. I’d spent the time listening to him in silence, wanting to take in everything he’d said. I’d need to record it for later. Even if it only ever came to just notes, it should go into the library. We would want a record of everything.

I cooked again once we settled in and Weston seemed to be returning to himself, and once we were ready we sat down and I pulled out the box. I sat for a while, looking at the ancient wood of the box, smoothed with age and the touch of hands. I creaked it open carefully to look inside, just to see again what it was. I knew the artifact was meaningful, important- it had something to do with this curse. We needed to translate it together.

The whole outer layer of the stone cube was faintly inscribed in shimmering blue runes. The shimmer came and went like waves crashing over the edge of the impossibly smooth stone. I gently ran my fingers over where ridges should be, the runes carved deeply into the stone, but there was nothing. It was as polished as a mirror, it’s dark stone eternally cool in my hands. At times it felt uncomfortably cold and I wondered if it was even the right decision to hold it without gloves.

“I printed off photos of that book we used already to translate the prophecy and put it in my bag,” I turned to Weston. “Maybe we can use that?”

“How are you always so prepared?” Weston laughed softly, moving to dig in my bag for the small binder I’d brought with us.

“It seemed important if we were going to solve the rest of this problem,” I explained. “It just seemed prudent to bring. I kind of regret not bringing more just in case we need it.”

“Well, I have some of the runes and symbols we found translated,” Weston said, pulling out a second notebook, smaller and leather bound in brown. “I guess I brought it for the same reason. It just seemed like maybe we should have it just in case we found more clues?” He sounded like he was seeking approval and I smiled, nodding.

“This is perfect. We can log our translations right into the field journal.” I nodded, sitting down and propping myself up against a tree, knees bent so I’d have a platform to write on.

“They’re moving, though, which is annoying,” Weston pointed out, and I glanced at the artifact sitting next to me, watching as the runes slowly shifted and moved, some blinking out of existence only to be replaced by another. Others just slowly wandered around as if looking for a home.

“That’ll make things complicated,” I murmured softly, clicking my pen a few times. “But some of them are steady. Let’s work on those first before we move on to the ones that are ambling around. I think we’ll find that the ones moving about are fluid, maybe, or they’ll show us where they go as we work. I’m not sure. We’ll figure it out, though. We figured out the prophecy after all and that was a huge task.”

“I wasn’t sure it would even work, to be honest. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever manage to do it.” He smiled a little and settled next to me, holding his hand out for a pen. I unzipped my pen pouch and pulled out a purple pen for him. “So, we can easily distinguish between the translated runes and what we’re working on now.” I titled the first page and we began, slowly inscribing the paper with the static runes we could find.

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