“You do that, now?”
Gran nodded. “As does your mother, when she can get away from the bakery without suspicion.” And, like the rest of the village, I’d had no idea. “She and I are the reason Oakvale hasn’t lost a citizen in the dark wood in years. Though she’s been able to do less of that, with two girls to care for.”
“One, now.” I chewed into a bite of venison. “Since I passed the trial.” I was old enough to marry, and I’d been working alongside my mother in the bakery for years. Now, evidently, I would be working alongside her in the dark wood as well.
To my surprise, the jolt that thought sent through me was part terror, and part . . . anticipation. Curiosity.
Gran huffed. “Your ascension was only the start, child. But you will grow stronger and faster with time. With experience. With training.” She stood again, holding my dress up. The front was wet, from her scrubbing, but the splattered drops of blood were gone. “Change again and come eat in front of the fire. Your dress will dry faster that way.”
As I changed out of the nightgown, Gran set my chair next to hers and scooped out a bowl of stew for herself. “You have more questions?”
“Was it a whitewulf that attacked my father?” I asked as I sat next to her.
“Yes, though most people don’t know that term. Or that there’s more than one kind of werewolf. And there are much greater dangers, deeper in the wood.”
“Then why do you live out here? Why don’t you come stay in the village with us?”
She blotted the corner of her mouth with a clean cloth. “Because I refuse to give up any more ground.”
“What do you mean?”
She leaned forward, slowly stirring her stew with a wooden spoon. “When my father built this cottage for my mother, it was not in the dark wood. Back then, the wood was a more distant menace, slowly creeping across the land. Over the course of several years, my mother saw that it was headed this direction, so she came here to keep up with the threat. To protect the handful of cottages that would become Oakvale. By the time I was born, the dark wood had overtaken much of the landscape, save for this clearing my parents kept safe. But after her ascension, my Celeste didn’t want to raise her family in such isolation, so she and your father settled in the village.”
“Papa.” Suddenly everything I’d thought I’d known about him—about his death and his life—felt like a half-finished story. “Did he know about the guardians? About . . . us?”
“Yes.” Gran held up one finger, cutting off my next question before I could ask it. “Your father wasn’t a watchman, Adele. He was never the danger to your mother that Grainger Colbert is to you. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was a very special man, particularly suited to your mother, and to her calling as a guardian.”
“And yet, she let them kill him.” I bit my lip, but it was too late to take the words back. It wasn’t fair of me to blame my mother for my father’s death, so I’d always kept that thought locked tightly within my own heart. But knowing what I knew now?
I wasn’t supposed to see it. My grandmother was watching Sofia and me that day, but the bakery is right on the edge of the village square, and while she was busy with my baby sister, I snuck outside and—
“She just watched, while they tied him to the stake and set him on fire, because they thought he was a monster. But she was the monster. We all are.”
“She had no other choice, child. He was infected. It broke her heart to watch him suffer and die, but if he’d lived, he would no longer have been your father. Her husband. He would have become a whitewulf. He would have terrorized the village, and it would have been up to your mother to protect Oakvale, even against her own husband. And your maman . . . she would never have let me spare her that burden. She would have done her duty herself, but she never got that chance, because he was pulled from the woods by the watch before she even knew he’d gone into the forest.”
“But surely she could have tried to save him.” I knew I was wrong, even as I said the words. I understood that now better than ever before, having seen a whitewulf for myself. But my heart could not admit what my head knew to be true. I could not think of my father as a danger to anyone, much less to an entire village.
“Suspicion would have been cast upon her, if she’d tried to defend him. People would have believed her to be infected too, because who would defend a werewolf but another werewolf? And that was too close to the truth to risk. She had to protect you girls. And your father understood that. He never fought his sentence.”
My hand clenched around my stew bowl, while I tried to accept what I was hearing.
My father believed he had to die. And my mother let it happen.
“Now that you know who you really are, you should have a long talk with your mother. Find out who she really is. And who your father was. But make sure Sofia is not listening. Your sister cannot know about any of this until she’s older.”
“Can’t you tell me about them?”
“I could, but your mother deserves to tell her own story. I can tell you about my own life, however.” Gran spread her arms wide, her bowl gracefully balanced on one knee. “Over the years, I’ve watched this unnatural forest swallow Oakvale like it swallowed this clearing, isolating our little village, except where the river borders it. I have fought against the dark wood my entire life.” Firelight flickered in her eyes. “And I will continue to do that until the day I die.”
Four
When I’d been fed and washed clean of blood, I donned my red cloak while Gran packed a venison roast into my basket, next to the remains of my broken lantern. “Stay on the path,” she warned. “Go straight home.”
I had no plans to stray from either the path or her instructions, but . . . “I can see in the dark wood now. I can see the monsters. Right?”
“Yes. But the monsters can see you too, Adele. And one kill to your credit does not make you a threat to most of the things that go bump in the dark. You have a lot to learn before you’re ready to veer from the path on your own. Swear to me you will go straight home.”
“I swear,” I said as she slid the handle of my basket over my left arm.
“And that you will not listen to anything you hear from the forest on your way to the village.”
“I know about the mimics, Gran.” There were creatures out there that could sound like other things. That could pull voices from one’s memory and call out in the guise of a trusted loved one. “I often hear Papa’s voice.” But like all children of the village, I knew not to trust the voices.
She gave me a grim nod. “But I’m not just talking about mimics. The dark wood has been waiting for you, Adele. It has sensed your ascension coming, and it knows you cannot be snared as easily as other prey, so it will try harder with you. It will speak to you directly, in a voice of its own. You cannot believe what you see or hear when you’re alone in the dark wood. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“I have one more thing for you, before you go. Do not let Sofia play with this. It is not a toy.” Gran turned from the trunk against one wall, and I saw that she was holding a leather belt similar to her own. Hanging from a loop on the right side was a hatchet with a polished wooden handle, wrapped with a leather grip.