Page 21 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
“What?”
Agnes nodded slowly, her purple eyes focused on me in the dim light of the room. “Long,longhistory. Very deep connection. Almost a link, you might say.”
I tried not to scoff, because Agnes clearly believed deeply what she was saying, and I was resolved to be polite.
“Did she not tell you about it?”
I shook my head. “No. She never spoke of it, outside of general appreciation for having it right outside the window. Why?”
Charlene was quiet, letting us talk, though her gaze was focused mostly on me.
“Well, according to Helen, her mother had told her. And she got it from her mother. And so on. I’m surprised she never talked to you about how the forest meant so much to her.”
“Why?”
Agnes hesitated. “I’m not sure. She just said it was important.”
“Important how? It’s just a forest. Trees, bushes, animals, insects. There’re forests everywhere.”
Charlene and Agnes glanced at one another.
“Sorry. I know your, um, society, probably thinks it’s more than that. I don’t mean to offend,” I said, scrambling to change the subject. “What about this guardian, though? Have you ever heard her mention that?”
“Guardian,” Agnes repeated, looking down at the table and tapping on it with the fingers of her right hand. “Guardian, guardian, guardian …”
Without warning, she shot up from her chair, startling both Charlene and me. Without saying a word, she went to one wall, where shelves of thick books were stacked in long rows, the cloth, or leather-bound spines showing no discernable titles that I could see.
“Guardian of the forest,” Agnes repeated, pulling out two of the books at random and putting them on the table. She flipped open one of them, shuffling half an inch of pages at a time to find where she wanted to start. “I’ve heard many things over the years. Many disturbances from the forest and those who live next to it. I document them all, you understand. All the reports. Ghosts and haunted houses, eerie noises. The feeling of being watched, inside and out. All of it. Something is different about this forest. That’s for sure.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept quiet. After all, didn’t most small towns think “their” forest was different? Everywhere old was haunted somehow.
“Aha!” Agnes pulled out a very old newspaper clipping from the book, much of it faded. “Here we are. This article talks about someone who got lost in the forest for days on end. Not something I recommend without proper training. Not in this forest. A week later, they wandered out. According to authorities—pfah!—they had gone insane during their stay. They kept muttering about the heart, the darkness, and here we are, the guardian. The heart, the darkness, and the guardian. Those three words, over and over again is all they would say.”
I frowned. “What the heck does that mean? It sounds like what my grandmother was saying, but she wasn’t insane. Was she? Did she lose her mind in the last few days?”
“I don’t know,” Charlene said. “But it doesn’t sound good. Does it? A darkness?”
An image of a red-eyed rabid bear foaming at the mouth appeared in my mind. A second later, a blue-and-gold-eyed wolf burst through, shattering the bear into imaginary pieces. Protecting me. Again.
Could it be that simple?
“This is silly,” I said, suddenly not caring it if offended them. “My grandmother wrote like it was real. Now you’re telling me there’s an actual guardian and some sort of darkness in there that makes people go crazy? It sounds like magic.”
My biting laugh was met with silence.
“People have always felt that the forest was different,” Agnes said softly while Charlene nodded in support. “Have you never felt that?”
I opened my mouth to say of course not. It was just trees.
That same childhood memory, of walking under the mighty boughs and feeling the warm, cozy embrace of the forest came to me. I had no reply to the other women. How could I call them crazy when I had firsthand experience to back up their theory.
Then there was the wolf to consider. Could it really be the guardian? Why would it reveal itself to me, if so? I was a nobody.
And magic? That was impossible. It was all too much.
Why couldn’t you just tell me, Grandma? Why this wild goose chase? What was bothering you?
Wolf eyes in coffee filled my mind.
