Ravenwood(62)
The only thing that settled her was when, at bedtime, Mrs. Davenport again came to her room with a pot of tea. She took the time to brush out Elinore’s hair with the same languid, easy strokes she’d used before and a heavy, sleepy feeling overtook her. She was falling asleep just as Mrs. Davenport leaned over her and, as she had the night before, told Elinore to sleep well and not to hear the call of the wolf.
The next morning, the rest of the hunting party returned, tired, dirty and unsuccessful. Just outside the dining room, as she was about to enter for breakfast, Jonah came to Elinore, and detailed their findings, or lack thereof. She repeated her notion that it would likely be best to wait for Caleb to return, noting how the young man seemed to sag in relief upon her words.
“He trusts you,” said Mrs. Thistlewaite as she served Elinore her breakfast. Hayter was still absent, preferring to take his meals later, usually after a walk with Elinore. “We all trust you.”
The weight of their trust was a heavy, yet, comfortable weight on Elinore’s shoulders.
The days passed, bleeding into one another and Caleb still did not return. There were no further animal attacks that she knew of and all of Ravenwood was on edge. For Elinore, time was measured in intervals - breakfast alone, a walk with Hayter, time with Alice, time in the library, writing, knitting, reading. Elinore felt she was some kind of mindless golem, going through the motions of life admirably, but waiting for something. Or someone.
She became churlish with Hayter, and though she thought it might dissuade him, he only seemed amused by it. She gave short answers to his questions or chose not to answer at all. She drank wine with dinner and cared not for propriety, ordering a second glass or another plate of food as she liked. She hoped Hayter would grow disgusted with her lack of manners and unladylike behavior, but instead he laughed. Once he clapped his hands together and praised her appetite, noting it was so pleasurable to see a lady with such hungers. Elinore drank an entire glass of wine in three gulps after that, out of spite. She played the piano each night, crashing and banging on the ivory keys as though they personally offended her, hoping Hayter would declare her hopeless and call an end to her playing. He found it amusing and marveled at her passion. Elinore went to bed each night feeling like a caged animal. She opened her window, breathed in the night air and watched the moon. She wanted to leap from the second story, to the ground, and run.
She had nowhere to go.
Mrs. Davenport came every night to check her wounds and to offer tea. Though it was the same beverage, it began to taste bitter and sour to Elinore, but she had not the heart to decline it. Mrs. Davenport’s face was tighter and sterner each night as she examined Elinore’s wounds. The bite marks were closed shut, but kept their dark, blackish tone. Black lines snaked up Elinore’s arm across her chest, toward her heart, but Elinore no longer feared sickness. She should have been horrified by the spindly lines working across her skin, but when she looked at them, she felt strong. Powerful. She still feared Hayter coming to her room at night, but at the same time, she was almost… pleased by it? She relished the idea. Not that she would be happy to see him, but that she would be angry. Angry and vicious. She would curl her lips back like that of the white wolf and make the same low, growing sound in her throat and he would fear her. She would make him fear her.
Her dreams each night were of the white wolf, the raven, and the forest. She heard the call of the feral wolf - muted and filmy, as though it was behind a thick veil. Some nights there was another call, another howl - one that belonged neither to the feral nor the black wolf. The white wolf’s ears would go upright and narrow against her canine head and she would make a low, displeased noise and Elinore’s heart beat with the uncertainty of it all. The raven would whisper in Elinore’s ear and she began to understand the whispered tones as words. Caution, careful, patience, prudence - these were the words she heard from the raven, but she did not know what they meant.
Elinore continued to have breakfast and then walk with Hayter. She managed to only stiffen and glare when he touched her, but kept herself from brandishing her fork like a weapon or her lips from curling in a snarl. She continued to write in the library with Alice during the day, stealing away for a casual lunch with the Thistlewaites or joining members of the staff in the kitchen. She visited the stables, speaking with the stable hands, checking in on the horses. She continued having dinner with Hayter and playing the piano in the evening, striking out wrong notes and badly tempo’d pieces that he falsely praised. But all the time, she felt as though she were waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. For something, for someone, for some occurrence to break the brittle quiet at Ravenwood.
At night, she went to bed feeling lonely and bereft. Although she knew it couldn’t possibly be true, she felt as though the manor didn’t even carry Caleb’s scent any longer. In her dreams, the white wolf moped around the forest even as the raven whispered in Elinore’s ear, speaking of the moon, and cycles, and patience. Each night, Elinore would ask the white wolf where the black wolf was, and each night, the white wolf would howl and they would both patiently wait, hearing nothing but silence on the night air.
Then, finally, after a full week of breakfasts, walks, dinners and horrid piano playing, in her dream the white wolf’s ears pricked up and Elinore heard it. An answering howl - not the feral wolf’s tuneless and jarring howl, not that of the unknown wolf from the forest. No, this was the black wolf’s howl - a response to the call of the white she-wolf. It was further away than Elinore hoped, but it was there - coming along on the night air. The black wolf had heard her and responded. He was coming. Something in Elinore eased and relaxed. She fell into a deeper sleep and dreamed no more that night.