Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) (96 page)

• GRACE •

I remember lying in the snow, a small spot of red going cold, surrounded by wolves.

“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked Sam. It was October, so the cold night air had pulled the green from the leaves and turned the underbrush red and brown. We stood in a small clearing. It was so small that I could stand in the middle and stretch my arms out to either side and touch a birch tree with one palm and brush the branches of a pine with the other, and I did.

Sam’s voice was certain. “Yes, this is it.”

“I remember it being larger.”

I’d been smaller then, of course, and it had been snowy — everything seemed more vast in the snow. The wolves had dragged me from the tire swing to here, pinned me down, made me one of them. I’d been so close to dying.

I turned slowly, waiting for recognition, for a flashback, for something to indicate that this really was the place. But the woods remained ordinary woods around me, and the clearing remained an ordinary clearing. If I’d been out walking by myself, I probably would have crossed it in a stride or two and not even considered it a clearing.

Sam scuffed his feet through the leaves and ferns. “So your parents think you’re going to … Switzerland?”

“Norway,” I corrected. “Rachel really is going, and I’m supposed to be going with her.”

“Do you think they believed you?”

“They don’t really have a reason not to. Rachel turned out to be very good at deception.”

“Troubling,” Sam said, though he didn’t sound troubled.

“Yes,” I agreed.

What I didn’t say, but we both knew, was that it wasn’t crucial that they believed me, anyway. I had turned eighteen and gotten my high school degree over the summer, as I’d promised, and they’d been decent to Sam and let me spend my days and evenings with him, as they’d promised, and now I was free to go to college or move out as I pleased. My bag was packed, actually, sitting in the trunk of Sam’s car in my parents’ driveway. Everything I needed to leave.

The only problem was this: winter. I could feel it stirring in my limbs, turning knots in my stomach, coaxing me to shift into a wolf. There could be no college, no moving out, no Norway even, until I was sure I could stay human.

I watched Sam crouch and sort through leaves on the forest floor. Something had caught his eye as he scuffled. “Do you remember that mosaic, at Isabel’s place?” I asked.

Sam found what he was looking for, a bright yellow leaf shaped like a heart. He straightened and twirled it by the long stem. “I wonder what will happen to it now that the house is empty.”

For a moment we were both quiet, standing close to each other in the small clearing, the familiar sensations of Boundary Wood around us. The trees here smelled like no other, mixed with wood smoke and the breeze over the lake. The leaves whispered against each other in a way that was subtly different from the leaves up on the peninsula. These branches had memories caught in them, red and dying in the cold nights, in a way that the other trees didn’t.

One day, I supposed, those woods would be home and these woods would be the stranger.

“Are you sure that you want to do this?” Sam asked softly.

He meant the syringe of meningitis-tainted blood, of course, that was waiting for me back at the lodge. The same almost-cure that had helped Sam and killed Jack. If Cole’s theories were correct and I fought the meningitis as a wolf, it would slowly fight the werewolf inside me and make me human for good. If Cole was wrong and Sam’s survival had been random, I faced overwhelming odds.

“I trust Cole,” I said. These days, he was a powerful force, a bigger person than when I first met him. Sam had said he was glad Cole was using his powers for good instead of evil. I was glad to see him turning the lodge into his castle. “Everything else he’s figured out has been right.”

Part of me felt a prickle of loss, because some days, I loved being a wolf. I loved this feeling of
knowing
the woods, of being a part of them. The utter freedom of it. But more of me hated the oblivion, the confusion, the ache of wanting to know more but being unable to. For all that I loved being a wolf, I loved being Grace more.

“What will you do while I’m gone?” I asked.

Without answering, Sam reached for my left hand, and I let him have it. He twisted the stem of the leaf around my ring finger so that it made a bright yellow band. We both admired it.

“I will miss you,” he said. Sam let go of the leaf and it drifted to the ground between us. He didn’t say that he was afraid that Cole was wrong, though I knew he was.

I turned so that I was facing my parents’ house. I couldn’t see it through the trees; maybe once it was winter, it would be visible, but for now, it was hidden behind the fall leaves. I closed my eyes and let myself breathe in the scent of these trees once more. This was good-bye.

“Grace?” Sam said, and I opened my eyes.

He reached out his hand to me.

It’s a little odd to be saying good-bye to a world I’ve lived in for almost four years, a series that changed my life pretty completely, but here I am. Now that I’ve come to the end of it, I figured it’s a good time to say something about the parts of my story that really exist outside the pages of the books.

First of all, the wolves.

I’ve tried to stay true to actual wolf behavior throughout the series (although I wouldn’t recommend kissing one anytime soon). For readers who’d like to find out more about wolf behavior, I recommend the documentary
Living with Wolves
as a good starting point. The roles of Ulrik and Paul and Salem are all standard ones in a real wolf pack: the peacemaker, the alpha, and the omega. The reality of pack dynamics is fascinating stuff.

It’s also real that a wolf’s place in our world is highly debated. The hunt Tom Culpeper helped instigate is based on real wolf hunts staged in the western United States and Canada as ranchers and wolves struggle to find equilibrium. The facts remain — wolves are lovely but powerful predators and humans are jealous keepers of their territory and their livelihoods — so more wolves will meet their death at the end of a hunter’s gun or in the shadow of a helicopter before this is all done.

Second of all, Mercy Falls, Minnesota.

I’ve been told by many readers that it’s impossible to find on a map, and I’m sorry.
Shiver
originally took place in Ely, MN, which is
a real place, then Bishop, MN, which is not, and finally Mercy Falls. In my head Mercy Falls is quite near Ely and the Boundary Waters. Outside of my head, it’s quite near nothing at all, as it doesn’t exist. That part of Minnesota, however, does host a very real population of gray wolves.

Other real places in the books include the candy shop (based on Wythe Candy in Williamsburg, VA), the Crooked Shelf (based on Riverby Books in Fredericksburg, VA), and Ben’s Fish and Tackle (although I won’t reveal where the store it was based on is located, to protect the identity of the sweaty man who owns it).

Third of all, the people.

Some of the characters are loosely based on real people. Dmitra the sound engineer is a real person, although in real life she doesn’t have a big nose, nor is she female. Grace’s parents are real, though they’re not mine. And Ulrik is an actual person, although he’s not a werewolf.

Fourth of all, the poetry.

As Sam’s favorite, Rilke is most prominent, but there’s also Mandelstam, Roethke, Yeats, and other assorted German poets. Even if you are a die-hard poetry un-fan like myself, I still recommend Stephen Mitchell’s beautiful translations of Rilke and
German Poetry in Transition, 1945–1990
, edited by Charlotte Melin.

And finally, the love.

Many, many readers have written me asking wistfully about the nature of Sam and Grace’s relationship, and I can assure you, that sort is absolutely real. Mutual, respectful, enduring love is completely attainable as long as you swear you won’t settle for less.

So this is good-bye to Mercy Falls. It’s time to find other uncharted worlds.

It’s going to be impossible to thank everyone involved in bringing this series into being, so rest assured that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I need to thank Scholastic for being incredibly supportive of the series and very tolerant of my quirks. In particular: my editor, David Levithan, for not sending villagers with pitchforks after me after I threw it all away; the ever-smiling Rachel Coun and the rest of marketing, for their animal cunning; Tracy van Straaten, Becky Amsel, and Samantha Grefe for cookies, sanity, and bathroom breaks; Stephanie Anderson and the production team, who make me look more clever than I am; Christopher Stengel, for continued impeccable design; the incredible foreign rights team of Rachel Horowitz, Janelle DeLuise, Lisa Mattingly, and Maren Monitello — it’s not easy to make me feel at home 3,000 miles away, but they pull it off absolutely every time.

And in non-Scholastic thanking, a few folks.

Laura Rennert, my agent, whose voice on the phone always sounds like sanity coming home to roost.

Brenna Yovanoff, for standing next to the wounded gazelle when all signs recommended to the contrary.

The folks at Loewe — Jeannette Hammerschmidt, Judith Schwemmlein, and Marion Perko — for saving my bacon at the
absolute last moment. I owe you guys more cookies than I can carry in the overhead compartment of a passenger plane.

Carrie Ryan and Natalie Parker, for reading in short order and alternatively patting my hand and smacking my wrist when I needed it.

My parents and siblings, for knowing when “Go away, I’m working!” means “Please help babysit!” and when it means “Rescue me and take me out for chimichangas!” Kate, in particular — you know you’re the reader I write for.

Tessa, you were as married to this thing as I was, and it never sent us presents on our anniversaries. I’ll never forget that.

Ed, who made me tea and let me sleep after all-nighters and suffered and sweated alongside me. This is all your fault, you know, because why else would I write a love story but you?

And finally, Ian. You won’t ever read this, but I have to say it anyway: Thank you for reminding me.

AN EXCERPT FROM MAGGIE STIEFVATER’S NEXT THRILLING, ROMANTIC NOVEL

THE SCORPIO RACES

• SEAN •

There’s a girl on the beach.

The wind’s torn the mist to shreds here by the ocean, so unlike on the rest of the island, the horses and their riders appear in sharp relief down on the sand. I can see the buckle on every bridle, the tassel on every rein, the tremor in every hand. It is the second day of training, and it’s the first day that it isn’t a game. This first week of training is an elaborate, bloody dance where the dance partners determine how strong the other ones are. It’s when riders learn if charms will work on their mounts, how close to the sea is too close, how they can begin to convince their water horses to gallop in a straight line. How long they have between falling from their horses and being attacked. This tense courtship looks nothing like racing.

At first I see nothing out of the ordinary. There is the surviving Privett brother beating his gray
capall
with a switch and Hale selling charms that will not save you, and there is Tommy Falk flapping at the end of the lead as his black mare strains for the salt water.

And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact
that she is a girl, but by the fact that she’s in the ocean. It’s the dreaded second day, the day when people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.

I make my slow way down the cliff road to the sand. Any wicked thoughts Corr might have had this morning have been jolted out by his earlier trot. But the two mares are neither as tired nor as tame as Corr. Their hooves jangle every time they dance sideways; I’ve tied bells around their pasterns, reminding me every moment that I cannot let down my guard. The worse of the two mares wears a black netted cloth over her haunches. The cloth, passed down from my father, is made of thread and hundreds of narrow iron eyelets: part mourning cloth, part chain mail. I hope it weighs her to the ground. It’s the sort of thing I’d never use on Corr — it would only make him irritable and uncertain, and in any case, we know each other better than that.

Now, closer to the surf, I see why the girl’s so brave. Her horse is just an island pony, with a coat the color of the sand, legs black as soaked kelp.

I want to know why she’s on my beach.