Lightness
Would they be able to beat the odds? Vince knew that at any moment the forest would wake up from Skarg’s lullaby and then they would be doomed. Exerting every muscle and sinew in his body – his new body, that of a wolf – he reached the higher branches. From there, he didn’t need to climb the vertical surface of the bark. With agile moves, he jumped from one branch to another, checking from time-to-time on Jack’s dangling feet.
“Vee, are you close?”
“What gave me away?” Vince stopped and evaluated the distance between him and Jack. The tree must have had some bad intentions for the seer, because it was holding poor Jack away from the trunk, the branch stretched out over the empty space below. Getting strangled wasn’t even the only danger now. If Vince made one wrong move and the tree dropped Jack, he doubted that even the rules of time traveling would save him.
“Oops,” Jack said. “I think I lost a boot.”
Indeed, his left foot only had the sock on. But how had that happened? Vince shivered as a breeze, insidious as a spring chill, rustled his fur.
“I’m coming for you, Jack. Hold on.”
Jack must have sensed something in his tone, because his foot dangling stopped. “Vee,” he whispered, “what’s going on?”
“I have no idea.”
Slowly, he started climbing out on the branch holding Jack. Would it hold under his weight?
“It’s getting even chillier, I think. I should keep moving my toes,” Jack said.
Keep talking, Jack. And don’t look down. Vince didn’t say the words out loud. Panic could cause a negative outcome under the circumstances.
He was now right above Jack. The seer tipped his head back to look at him.
“Boy, am I glad to see you. The trouble is that I can’t get this off my neck. Hey, how come you’re a wolf, and I’m still me?”
“I’m glad to see you, too, Jack. Wrap your arms here.” He indicated a point behind Jack. If he managed to cut through the part strangling Jack, there was a chance that the tree’s prisoner might slip through, and that was definitely the opposite of what they wanted.
“You overestimate my body’s abilities. I have never practiced yoga.”
“Try anyway.”
Jack mumbled something but he managed to wrap his arms around the thicker part of the branch and grab one wrist with his other hand.
“Steady now,” Vince advised and leaned back as far as he could. His fangs were strong, but at first he felt as if he couldn’t make the tiniest dent in the blackened branch.
“Ouch,” Jack complained.
“Did I graze you?”
“Don’t mind me. Do what you must, but promise me that you’ll never turn into a vampire just because you discovered how tasty my throat is.”
“Promise.”
Jack could keep joking. It provided a nice distraction from the tension gnawing at his determination as he chewed the branch through.
What added to the difficulty of the task was the horrible taste of the thing. Vince felt tempted to blame it on his sensitive taste buds – a wolf’s taste buds – but that would help no one, and he was much more capable of accomplishing the task at hand in a stronger, faster body.
“What was that?” Jack asked, interrupting his own babbling.
“What?” Vince stopped. A little more, and he’d manage to get through.
Jack didn’t get the chance to reply. An ominous crack reached their ears, leaving no room for guessing.
“Vee,” Jack gasped.
“I know.” He resumed his chewing with a vengeance, moving only his muzzle, while he struggled to keep the rest of his body completely still. Any wrong move now, and they’d both plunge to their deaths.
“Vee, if anything happens, you’ll take care of Theo, right?”
Vince could feel the ash gathering at the back of his throat, bile rising up as he chewed furiously.
“Now Jack, grab me.”
But Jack was already slipping, as the slight crack from before turned into a long, whining noise, and the branch dipped under them.
Vince snapped his fangs on the back of Jack’s jacket, in a ludicrous attempt that only instinct could explain.
They were already falling. Worse, Jack’s thin body was finding a way out of his jacket, too. Vince sensed the difference in weight, but there was nothing he could do.
“Turn into your wolf, Jack,” he shouted.
A trick of fate or of the magical world in which they were trapped made Jack fall faster. Vince watched in disbelief as Jack fell, flailing his arms, the jacket he’d abandoned hovering like a kite around him.
“I… can’t…” Jack’s voice reached him as if from far away.
“Yes, you damn can,” Vince shouted again.
He tensed his body, aiming his muzzle downward as if he could use it to cut through the air.
Jack was growing smaller.
How could they fall like this, like there was no end—
A white cloud was now where he’d last seen Jack. No, not a white cloud.
“You’re doing it,” he shouted. “And I can do it, too.”
His body seemed to become heavier. If the gravity laws here didn’t matter; at least his body mass conquered air resistance, gaining speed.
“Hey,” Jack complained next to his ear, as Vince fell faster.
Hey, hey, hey, like an echo. Vince twisted in mid-air and landed on something incredibly soft. His relief was short-lived because Jack barreled into his stomach, hitting him like a sack of potatoes.
“You are both wolves,” Skarg exclaimed in an excited voice, as he rushed to their side.
Vince grunted as he tried to move. Jack, however, seemed completely immobile.
“Jack,” Vince began, his hackles rising.
“It’s fine,” Skarg said. “Jack, you should’ve told me you were a wolf. And I can see your eye moving.”
Jack rose with a gasp. “What? Am I in one piece?”
“You sure are.” Vince felt his ribs with one hand and winced.
Wait, how could he do that? Ah, he was back to being his usual self. Unlike Jack, who was now his fluffy white wolf self.
“Wow, that was kind of high,” Jack said, looking up.
“Can you move?” Vince grunted.
“Perfectly,” Jack lifted one front paw, then the other.
“Can you stop crushing me then?”
“Oops.” Jack quickly jumped to one side. “I landed on you. I was the wolf and I still used you for a cushion. But how come we’re not in pieces?”
Vince felt the cushion on which they’d landed. He felt dead leaves and something cold and soft, vaguely disgusting to the touch.
“I had to do something while you two were falling,” Skarg argued. “So, I grabbed everything I could.”
“Did we fall… for how long?” Vince asked.
“It took you a while,” Skarg replied, sounding not one bit fazed by the possibility of such a thing. “But then, you were very high. I brought all the dead squirrels and rabbits I could find. And leaves.”
Vince felt his stomach lurching and straightened up. Jack, however, had no filter. He started retching noisily.
“What’s wrong with you?” Skarg wondered out loud. “They’ve been dead for a while. Like everything in this forest.”
Seriously, in his human form, it looked like he couldn’t resist little dead animals as they had the gift of making him turn green around the gills. Vince moved as far from the bed of carrion that had made their fall non-lethal in the end.
“What kind of wolves are you? We eat them when food is scarce,” Skarg continued his argument.
“True,” Jack said, taking a break from his heaving and retching. “By eating dead animals, wolves keep the forest healthy and balance the ecosystem. I learned that from a documentary. Though I might become vegetarian if this is the only meat option on the menu.”
“If we are both in one piece, I’d say we should hurry,” Vince suggested. He patted Skarg on his bony shoulder. “Thank you, buddy. That was quick thinking, no matter how long it took us to get down.”
Skarg seemed to perk up at the praise.
“Let’s go, Vee. I saw smoke in the distance, and while I’m no good when it comes to geography and maps and stuff like that, I believe it’s coming from where Theo’s pack used to live.”
Vince sank one hand in the fluffy fur behind Jack’s neck. “It feels like I got myself a dog.”
“Hey, watch it. You really scared me into turning into my wolf, with all that shouting and falling… Though the falling wasn’t your fault. It might take me a while to get back to the skinny short guy you adore.”
“Adore doesn’t begin to cover it,” Vince confirmed joyously. He turned to look at Skarg, who remained in place, watching them go. “Aren’t you coming?”
“With you?”
“I doubt you want to stick around to see how the guardians are going to react once they understand what you did. Wherever we go, it’s better than here.”
Skarg hurried to join them. “I thought you wouldn’t want me.”
“Why?” Jack asked. “For a dead guy, you’re pretty awesome.”
“I’m not dead,” Skarg protested.
“All right, all right,” Jack agreed. “Just a little bony, then.”
***
“Argh, what is that foul thing?” The blackened tree kept clawing at its face, struggling to get away from the mist of glitter. It seemed absurd for an evil creature to be so affected by something as innocuous as Jack’s equally absurd gift.
What had Jack called it? Theodore racked his brain for the answer. The accusatory voices were silent now. His mother was no longer there, either. And his mind was blank. And he felt tired.
“Hope,” he mumbled. The field mouse had the wackiest ideas, but in this case, Theodore had to admit that one of them had worked well enough to cut through the fog surrounding him. Not just physical fog, but the mental haze that had led him there, making him believe—
But he had murdered his pack. The idea was there, inside his brain, only that it felt foreign and strange.
“What have you done to them?” he asked in a hoarse voice. The noose around his neck was still cutting into his throat, making it difficult to breathe or talk.
“You, it was you,” the tree squealed, choking on Jack’s glitter of hope.
“No, it wasn’t.” Theodore’s mind was clearing. “It wasn’t me. It was you. You destroyed them.” He struggled but couldn’t break free. “You stole the flint of Embercasting. You killed my pack. Why did you do it?”
“Why? So I and mine could live.” The voice turned cunning, now that the glitter had dispersed. “Why would you want to live when they are no more?”
Theodore frowned as he tried to understand what else was controlling him besides the noose strangling him. There were no manacles he could sense, and no rope was cutting into his arms and legs.
“To avenge them,” he said.
“Avenge them? Who? You, the alpha without a pack? You’ve never been an alpha.”
Theodore looked around slowly. He was in the middle of the ruins of his pack’s settlement. He could still recognize the places, the stout houses, even as they lay in darkened pieces, the main road and, of course, the pyre of Embercasting.
“If I’m not important, why am I here?” he asked. His years spent in negotiations, dominating the competition, finding weaknesses he could exploit, would have to come in handy now. Otherwise, he had no other training, but at heart, he was and would always be his father’s and mother’s son. A wolf. Even if one without a pack.
“To die,” the tree replied in a serene voice.
Theodore smirked. No, not exactly without a pack. Even if Vince and Jack weren’t there with him, he remembered them, and it was enough to make him feel like an alpha. He moved his wrists slowly, enjoying the ease with which he could bend and turn them.
“Someone has to, indeed,” he said, with false amiability. “But it isn’t me.”
The noose tried to hold him back, but it was too late. Theodore growled as his body stretched and twisted, as if it was breaking through the skin holding it together.
The tree… no, the dead wolf took a step back. “That can’t be! You shouldn’t be able to move!”
Theodore loomed over the flimsy creature. “You can’t contain an alpha!”
With one paw, he threw his enemy to the ground. The dead wolf struggled, reaching for the dirt underneath him, trying to crawl away.
The power of his pack, the old one and the new one, surged through him. Another attack, and he cut through the tattered clothes covering the dead wolf, revealing twisted ribs, a bent spine and other bones, crisscrossed by dead twigs and branches, gnarled and deformed.
To a different person, the creature might inspire pity. But Theodore hadn’t known pity in a long, long time. His claws tore through the misshapen body, breaking it into pieces.
“Alpha,” the dead wolf began to plead, “Alpha, spare me!”
“You didn’t spare my pack. What did you need me for? Wasn’t my endless pain enough for you? Why did you bring me here?”
“I didn’t!”
“You’re lying!”
“You should have come alone!”
So that was why the dead wolf’s dirty plan had failed. Theodore hadn’t arrived here by himself.
“But I didn’t. Like you couldn’t kill me when I was only a cub, you couldn’t kill me now. Your plan failed.” Theodore didn’t stop tearing his enemy to shreds. It wasn’t even a carcass that he was destroying.
“You can’t beat us. We’re many. Destroy me if you want, but you will never find the truth. Your pack can still be revived!”
Theodore froze, his paw in mid-air. “What do you know of that? Where is the wisdom tree?” He remembered the prophecy in the stone now. He remembered everything. “And don’t try to trick me by saying you are it. I’m not a young cub anymore.”
“You should have died,” the dead wolf wailed, barely moving now. “You would have joined your pack, and then the curse would have been complete. Whiteflame buried, buried!”
“Speak if you don’t want me to break your skull and be done with you,” Theodore growled. “You didn’t manage to kill everyone. I saw my mother.”
“No, she’s dead, too,” the dead wolf barked. “You saw nothing. It’s only because that stupid wisdom tree intervened. When it should have been far away, not caring a bit about the fate of your pack.”
“Speak,” Theodore ordered again. “Why couldn’t you kill me along with my pack?”
“Because of traitors. Traitors in our midst.”
Of course. The guide who’d told him how to prevent his pack from being dragged underground.
“That isn’t everything.” Theodore stepped on the dead wolf’s skull and started pressing.
“No, no, stop! I’ll tell you everything!”
“Speak then. Make sure not to miss a detail. I didn’t steal the flint of Embercasting, did I?”
“No, no, you didn’t.”
Theodore eased his hold. “What truly happened? The truth. Nothing else.”
“We have always fought for our right to return to our lands. We only needed to poison a few of you, not everyone.”
“Did you poison me?”
“We tried. We entered your dreams; made you fear and respect us. Cubs are easier. Always.”
Theodore clenched his fangs hard.
“The Moon protects you, but there are times when she’s farther from you than usual,” the dead wolf continued. “And because Whiteflame had the veil in their care, that made it even harder for her to watch over you. We waited and observed. And we seeped into the earth, contaminating it, making fumes rise from it like a fog. It took us hundreds of years, but we succeeded in making the Moon fail you for one night. It was all we needed.”
“Not all,” Theodore reminded his enemy. “You couldn’t destroy me. Why?”
“Because of your mother. And your father.” The dead wolf stopped. A moment of silence followed. Theodore could hear the wind starting to blow, sneaking around the old ruins. “Your mother was marked by the Moon herself as a child. And your father had always had the gift of sealing evil.”
The seal on the longhouse to which his mother and the cubs had retreated.
“My mother is not truly dead, is she?”
“None of them are truly dead. You stopped them. With your gift. They’re ghosts now. If only I knew who betrayed us. You weren’t supposed to learn about your abilities until you were older. Not because your mother wouldn’t have taught you earlier about them. But she would be visited by the Moon in her dreams at the right time. We had it all planned out. You weren’t of age. The memory of the wisdom tree was only a legend in your pack’s old tales. And we could keep the Moon away for the hours we needed to destroy you and claim these lands as ours once again. Ours! They are ours!”
“You abandoned them when you succumbed to evil. How do I revive my pack?”
“Will you spare me if I tell you?”
“No.” Theodore didn’t believe in lying, even if the circumstances seemed to demand it. The prophecy, of course. That told him what he needed to know.
“Then I won’t tell you.”
“Good. I never leave a debt unpaid.” Theodore didn’t hesitate as he crushed the skull underneath his paw, scattering it in pieces and fine dust.
He needed to find the wisdom tree.
TBC
@Derek - there are things Theo will do on his own, but he will be reunited with his beloved two :) I have plans for Skarg!
@DavidB - Jack and Vince will take their time :D Theo still need to do a few things by himself.
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