Ravenwood(45)
“I will be in the dining room early, yes, and then the library for some matters of finance and paperwork.”
Elinore’s lips split wide in a smile, and she was certain she was showing nearly all her teeth. “I look forward to the morning, then.”
“As do I. Elinore.”
“Caleb.”
She closed the door after he left and leaned against it, her heart racing as though she’d run a mile. She wandered over to the window. The moon was just rising. It wasn’t too late. Dinner had felt like an eternity, but had only been a couple of hours followed by another session in the sitting room afterward. Hayter had smoked a cigar, Caleb had a drink and Elinore worked on her knitting. Hardly high society. She longed for a game of cards or perhaps checkers, but didn’t know how to ask Caleb without also inviting Hayter.
Now, the waning moon was low in the sky, looking too large and slightly yellow. She felt a deep pull in her chest as she stared at it, though she could not put words to the feeling she had. Longing? Sadness? Yearning? Elinore wasn’t sure. She knew only that as she stared, she wished it were already full. She sighed long and deep, filling her lungs and exhaling against the glass of the window, pressing her fingertips to the cold pane.
That night, Elinore dreamed of ravens, wolves and the forest. In her dreams, she felt stronger, faster. The woods were sharper and more alive to her eyes and she felt like she could see eternity and hear it as well. She walked through the woods feeling none of her usual trepidation or fear of being alone and in the near dark.
But she wasn’t alone. She could see out of the corner of her eye, movement pacing her in the trees. Shockingly bright fur. The white wolf, following her. The raven, her raven, as she’d come to think of it, swooped down out of the trees and perched on her shoulder again, nibbling slightly at her ear. She didn’t flinch. She felt touched by the gesture of familiarity and recognition and raised two fingertips to the raven’s breast. Elinore stroked the feathers, carefully following the grain, finding them smooth and silky under her skin.
A wolf howled and she felt the sound in her chest and she swayed with the sense of knowing and longing it produced. It was the white wolf’s howl that made her feel this way. Instead of trying not to engage it, of trying to appear still and silent like a creature avoiding a predator, Elinore turned from her current path and headed straight into the dense foliage where she thought the white wolf would be. She’d thought the creature would be just past the first set of trees and bushes, but she was disappointed when she broke through them and found nothing. A flash of silver had her turning to the left, then to the right, then left again. It was teasing her! She wasn’t sure if it was just a game or if the wolf was avoiding her.
Elinore wanted to catch that wolf. Unlike before, she had no fear of it now.
A second howl broke through the night, the ululating call discordant and off key. Elinore shivered. That was not her white wolf. That was another wolf in the forest, in her forest. She grit her teeth, a strange grumbling sound coming from her throat and chest. Was she growling?
The wolf that had bit her that first night crashed through the trees and Elinore stumbled back, more startled than scared. She fell backward, landing hard on her spine and it slunk forward, baring its jaws, its eyes glowing. At first, Elinore curled back further, flinching from the wolf, but then something in her changed, something shifted. She felt her lips pull back from her all too blunt and human teeth and she bared them at the wolf, making the same growling sound she had before. The strange wolf paused, confused. She snapped her teeth at it and prepared to lunge toward it, thinking to sink her fingernails, short as they were, into its fur and maybe even its flesh. Elinore would be strong. She would make it hurt.
The white wolf launched itself out of the foliage, landing on the feral wolf, closing sharp teeth around the feral wolf’s neck. The feral wolf gave a wounded sound - not a cry, not a whimper, more like an outraged bark. It shimmied and shook, trying to dislodge the white wolf, but it, no, she, Elinore realized, held firm, holding onto the feral wolf within her strong jaw. The white wolf shook her head, like a cat trying to shake a mouse, and the feral wolf let out another bark of surprise before striking out with its large paws, swiping at the white wolf. The white wolf stumbled back, red blooming across her chest and front paws, but she held her ground, standing in front of Elinore, snarling. The feral wolf’s hind-quarters twitched and Elinore realized it was going to launch itself at them. She reached out and touched the back paw of the white wolf, willing it to stay still. They would fight, they would fight together.
The feral wolf leapt toward them, yellow eyes glowing in the dark.
Chapter Ten
Elinore didn’t wake with a start, like she would have expected after such a nightmare. Instead she was one moment asleep, and then another moment alert. But she wasn’t frightened or afraid. A sense of waiting or of anticipation flooded her veins instead. In her mind’s eye, she could see the feral wolf - both the vision from her dream and the memory from the night she was bitten. She should have been scared.
She was not.
The early morning light was breaking across the horizon, casting sharp grays and blues in her room. Elinore tossed back the bed-clothes and paced to the window. On a whim, she struggled with the latch for a moment, finding it sticky from lack of use. Once she’d loosened it, she hefted the old window open, a horrible creak coming from the wood. She inhaled deeply, smelling the remaining spice of the night before and the early dew of morning on the air. She hastily changed into her day dress and then attempted to tame her hair. She struggled, still finding the bandage on her arm hindered her, although the bites did not hurt anymore. Perhaps Mrs. Davenport’s poultice had finally done the trick. She carefully peeled away the bandage, revealing her skin underneath.