With me.
The preacher said placating things about God, and the mysteries of his plan. We might not understand why these things happen. All we can do is hope to know that things happen for a reason.
The sun was shining when she was lowered into the ground.
The pack never left my side.
Joe held my hand through it all, but we never spoke.
Tanner, Chris, and Rico were there. They pushed everyone out of their way and didn’t even bother trying to shake my hand. The three of them wrapped themselves around me and held on for dear life. There was a little flare of something from them that I felt crawl along my skin, but it was lost under the weight of what I faced.
Jessie was there too. She waited until she could stand in front of me. She whispered something I didn’t remember. Her lips pressed against my cheek, lingering and sweet.
Joe watched as Jessie squeezed my hand.
He looked away as she left.
Later, after I’d stood in line and let people cry on me and shake my hand and tell me how sorry they were, I stood above the hole in the ground where my mother lay. It wouldn’t be filled in until everyone left.
The pack stood away, amongst the trees. Waiting.
It wasn’t fair. None of this was.
I said, “I’m so sorry,” and thought about the day we’d lain on our backs, her in her pretty dress with the blue bows, and watched the clouds go by.
THOMAS WAS burned on a Tuesday night.
There was nothing special about Tuesdays, but we’d already buried my mother that afternoon, and it was better to have it all said and done.
Those same people that had filled the house in the days that followed Richard’s attack now filled the forest. Some were in human form, but most had shifted into wolves. My pack had all shifted, aside from Gordo and myself. But we walked with them, Elizabeth and me on either side of Joe. The others brought up the rear. I curled my hand on Joe’s back and held on for all that I was worth.
No one spoke about God and his infinite plans. In fact, it was near silent as we watched Thomas’s body atop the pyre constructed in the clearing in the woods. The wolves gathered around me. My wolves. Everyone else kept their distance.
It was Gordo that started the fire.
As he approached the pyre, I wondered if Thomas had felt him as part of the pack before he’d taken his last breath. If he’d felt the witch come back at last. We hadn’t spoken about it. About what it meant. About what would happen now. I hadn’t even tried. There was a small resentment that they’d kept me out of that office, those secret meetings, but I pushed it away.
He placed both hands on the pyre.
His tattoos came to life.
He bowed his head.
There was a lick of fire underneath his fingers.
It caught the wood and the fire spread.
I stood there and watched him burn.
Joe led them, after.
It’s called a chorus howl, Thomas whispered to me. The harmonies allow any tricksters to think the group is bigger than it is.
And they did. They sounded like they were in the hundreds, rather than dozens.
Gordo had muffled the territory so no one in Green Creek would know. His magic was useful when he wasn’t trying to deny his place.
Still, I wondered if people in town could hear it. Or, at the very least, feel the passing of one king to another. They lived in the territory, after all.