An Extract from This Month's Release: Wolf Mother
Wolf Mother
Written on June 26, 2016, for the March 28 entry of 366 Days of Flash Fiction, this piece is about a mother’s love, and a wife’s loyalty.
The fight left me wringing wet and shuddering, but I won. I bent forward, leaning a hand on each knee, and watched as the body faded into mist.
“No!” As though shouting would prevent it.
I dropped to my knees, my sword resting on the crushed grass, where I’d dropped my foe.
“No, no, no, no, no… No!” As if I could forbid it. As if I could ever bring it back. Where in all the gods-forsaken hells had the body gone?
I was still staring at the empty ground, when the first wolf arrived.
“Well, you didn’t run,” she said, watching with amusement, as I gasped, and pushed myself to my feet.
My hands trembled, the sword almost too heavy to lift.
“You can’t take them,” I said, but my eyes couldn’t focus, and the trees bent and swayed. My legs threatened to give way, and my sword tip wavered.
“We don’t need your permission,” the she-wolf said, and more forms materialized out of the trees, moving behind me, as she advanced. “Honestly, little mother. What do you think you can do against the pack?”
“My husband…” My breath caught, and I forced back tears. “My mate promised they would be safe, promised I would not lose them. He promised…”
I felt the sword slip, brought my other hand up to steady it. The pack surged forward, and stopped, held in abeyance by their leader’s upraised hand.
“Your mate?” she asked, her voice strangely close to a snarl.
“My mate,” I affirmed. “I chose him, and he chose…ch…chose me.”
Gods, that fight had been hard, but I remembered Cleref telling me not to show fear, that I should never show fear. I remembered…the next wave of fatigue took me by surprise and I teetered sideways, shuffling my feet only just in time to regain my balance.
The woman’s face took on a strangely compassionate cast.
“You are tired, little one,” she said, “and understandably so.”
“You can’t have them,” I repeated, and my voice, also, had the quality of a growl.
She laughed, and I raised the sword toward her, as though to ward off the sound. The movement took the smile from her face.
“Never raise a weapon to me,” she said. “Not in defense of your pups, your mate, or yourself. Never! Do you understand me?”
I shook my head to clear it of the drumming fatigue, the fogginess that made thinking like wading through cloud. I would not give my children away.
“You cannot have them,” I said. “I forbid it. In the absence…of their…sire…”
My words slurred, and I shook my head, blinking myself back to wakefulness.
“… the dam’s word is law.”
She stood, watching as my knees gave way, not moving as arms wound around my waist from behind, and hands took the sword from my grip. I faded without ever hitting the ground.
* * *
I woke with a start, sitting bolt upright and flinging the cover from my body, reaching for the sword that should have lain at my side. My feet were over the side of the bed and firmly planted on the floor, as I registered it was not there, and the door hissed open.
The she-wolf stood there, framed by sterile white walls, before being suddenly bracketed by four anxious faces. I had no time for understanding, as my children surged forward, the first four followed by the two who had hung back.
“Mother!”
“Mother, you came!”
“She really did go and fetch you!”
“Mother, are you all right?”
I wrapped my arms around them, gathering them close, before sweeping them behind me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why are you afraid, mother?”
I glared at the she-wolf.
“I said you could not have them,” I said, and, this time, the growl was unmistakable.
“And I said we did not need your permission,” she retorted, her voice mocking.
I could not help it, I growled, and her look of superiority vanished.
“Do I need to explain just how precarious your position is…human?”
“Precarious?” I retorted. “You have no idea what precarious is. When my husband returns…”
I pushed back the thought that he was long overdue.
“When my husband returns, and discovers what you have done, then you will understand what precarious means…”
“Mother!” My eldest child’s shock stopped me cold, and I glanced down at her. “Mother, you can’t speak to the pack mistress like that! It’s… It’s… It’s rude!”
“She was going to take you away,” I said, and then snapped my attention back to the woman at the door, “and I don’t care who she is. She cannot have you. Your dadda promised.”
“But, mother…”
“No buts,” I said. “You are my cubs. Your dadda entrusted you to my care, and this woman cannot take you away!”
The ‘woman’ leant one arm on the doorway, and gave me a lazy smile.
“Little mother,” she said. “How in all the worlds do you think you can stop me? You took down one of my guards, just one, and would have fallen to the next. If I wanted to take them, I could.”
There was a surge of movement from behind me, my little ones, pushing their way to stand between me and the pack leader, my little ones dropping to all fours with speed and grace, and laying their ears flat against their little skulls, baring tiny fangs, and growling their loudest, most defiant growls.
The woman lost all veneer of mockery, and straightened.
“Well, then,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder. “It’s a good thing your ordinary blade only cut my pack master’s pride, and a very good thing, we were able to find your mate’s escape pod.”
A wave of dizziness passed over me, but I refused to let it pull me under.
“You what?” I said.
“Yes,” she continued, “a very good thing, because it is clear you, and your cubs, need to be taught the ways of the pack.”
Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0
Comments
Post a Comment