Snow: The White Crow (5 page)

I wiped the tears from my cheek as I finally sat beside Rachel again, with most of the room cleaned up now.  I sat and looked at her with my palms up, showing that was all I had to offer.  I had rarely shared my story with anyone, but it felt right with her.  She reached one of her graceful, muscled arms over to pull my head to her shoulder and she just held me for a minute, kissing the top of my head.

She suddenly held me at arm's length with her eyes wide and she said incredulously, “Holy shit!  You're Snow White!  So it was Perchta's kiss, not a prince's that saved you?”

I found her reaction to being overly cute to me for some reason.  I just smiled at her and pulled away to wipe my cheeks on my leather jacket.  I muttered, “Fucking Grimm Brothers.”

I cringed, knowing the next question, she asked, “No seven dwarfs?”

I shook my head wearily.  “No, no dwarfs.  Though I did share a huge hollow tree in the woods with seven raccoons for a month.  Always getting into mischief that lot, and very opinionated.”  If the Brothers Grimm hadn't died in the eighteen hundreds, I'd kill them myself.  They thought they had to embellish all the truths.

I laid back on the couch and a moment later she joined me and pulled me to her shoulder without a word.  We sat there for quite some time in a very comfortable silence as I regained my wits about me.  It was as if she knew exactly what I needed.

I pulled away from her comfort after a while and said, “Well, I kept my word and shared.  I should get to my camp.”

I stood and she looked up at me, her brow furrowing.  “It was a long night and we both need some sleep.  Stay here and catch a nap then I can drive you out?”  I studied her face.  She seemed apprehensive about something then she verified it with her next statement, “It is a full moon tonight.”

I smiled internally that this woman was enticing me to stay because she was worried about me being out when monsters like her were on the prowl.  I assured her, “I can take care of myself.”

She exhaled in frustration. “I know you can.  But...”  I could see an idea come to her as she got a self-assured look on her face as she continued, “It wouldn't do for a person of interest and witness, in this case, to get herself eaten before everything gets sorted out.”

Then she stood and motioned toward one of the little doors.  “I have a spare panic cage I can pull out for guests.  My containment cage for myself is double reinforced.  Just stay with me during the full moon.  Go back to your camp after the danger is passed.”

I shook my head.  “All of my gear is at camp, I'd have to get it anyway.  Thanks for the offer though, it was sweet.  I have to hang around a few days until your lot says I can go, so I may change my mind.  But I would love to take you up on the offer for a nap.”

She nodded and tilted her head toward the door again, “Okay.  Let's get you a blanket for the couch.”  I followed her, she seemed pleased I was at least accepting her hospitality and I found it inordinately cute.  I found myself applying that word to a hardened police badass a lot.  But it was true even if nobody else saw it.  But I'm pretty sure it had a lot to do with those unique eyes and what they did to me.

We stepped through the little doorway and I stopped dead and snorted.  It looked like a bomb had gone off in the bedroom.  The living room had been clean compared to this.

Drawers were half open and clothes hanging out on the dresser.  Papers and boxes were stacked haphazardly on top of it with more clothes draped on them.  I almost chuckled at the bra hanging from the still ceiling fan.  I mean, just how does something like that get up there?  The floor was covered in clothing and wrappers and papers with a little trail cleaned to the bed.

The bed was the only thing that didn't have stuff stacked on and around it. Though the covers were a mess, almost like she had made a den or nest on it.

I glanced at the half-open closet door.  It was half open because of the pile of clothes and boxes halfway stuffed into it.  I could see one of the old bed style panic cages that Clean Bloods here on the outside used when staying with the cursed.  They reminded me of silver laced coffins, with just enough room in them to lay down and close the metal door and peer out the small plexiglass slits.  They could only be opened from the inside or by emergency personnel that had the master keys.

That got me to look around for... ahh there it is.  The nightstand wasn't a nightstand but possibly the most fortified wolf containment cage I had ever seen.  From the thickness of the door panel, it had to be a half inch of steel.

Like all contaminant cages, the inner walls had strands of silver forming a mesh.  The floor was a sandwich of steel with silver mesh in between.  That way their wolves could stand or lay down on the floor without silver burning themselves.

The electronic lock automatically locked before sundown on full moons and unlocked after sunrise.  There was a panic lock, a heavy metal button that would engage the locks if the timer failed.  If the locks failed closed, which was the default, then only emergency services could open the door.

The door on hers was nicer than some.  Instead of the simple holes with silver impregnated titanium mesh for air circulation, hers had the new plexiglass slats that had long slits with the same silver titanium mesh in them.  It at least let the wolf look out.

I saw the fringes of the huge concrete anchor blocks the cage was bolted to and stopped myself from shaking my head sadly.  A simple cage works fine, but I found that the more frightened and ashamed that an infected is of the monster inside of them, the bigger, stronger, and over-engineered their cages are.  Rachel's told me volumes about how frightened she was of her own wolf.

Her moving to one of the stacks of stuff by her dresser turned my attention back to the task at hand.  She pulled a folded blanket from the stack and held it out.  “You can grab my pillow if you want, I don't use it.  I'm really not sure why I even own it.  Maybe I'm just trying to pretend to be normal.  My wolf owns too much of me now.”

I understood.  The longer a person lived with the curse, the more wolf-like they acted.  I personally am torn between believing that and believing that it is more a psychological thing.  The longer they live, the longer they stop believing they are human and start thinking of themselves only as a wolf.  I mean sure, there are some wolf-like behaviors that slip in because of the enhanced senses and reflexes.  But what did I know?  I had stopped believing I was human centuries ago.

I looked around again and she said with a tinge of humor, “You can clean this room too if you want.  You are better than a maid service, I haven't seen my living room floor in ages.”

  I snorted and grinned at her with a dare on my face, “Watch it, lady, I just might.  It's messier in here than in the forest.”  I took the blanket then stepped to the window when I felt something.

I looked out into the beautiful forest and the soaring mountain peaks above, it reminded me so much of home, in the Alps.  I hadn't been there for so very long.

I reached out with my senses, my magic seeking, and I found what had caught my attention.  Rachel was suddenly by my side, I almost jumped because she had moved so soundlessly.  She was scanning the treeline. “What is it?”

I smiled at her, she was ready to take on the world.  I motioned my chin toward the wild blackberry patch at the base of the trees.  “Just a friend.”  Then I added, “Here, let me show you.”  I slid her old wooden double hung window up.  The way it bound told me she didn't open it much.  “Motion outside caught my attention.”

I turned my attention to the berry bush and asked the troublemaker if he would care to join me.  A moment later a familiar grey squirrel darted out from under the bush onto the mowed lawn.  He stopped and looked over at me, his tail twitching, then looked around the yard and made a beeline for me.  Squirrels don't like open spaces like that with no cover, it left them open to attack from birds of prey.

He hopped up onto the window ledge and then noticed Rachel, and I could feel the fear roll off him as he almost fell off the ledge.

I put my hand out.  “No silly, she's not a wolf yet.  It isn't the full moon.  She's a friend.  Come say hello.”  He looked at me and made a chirping, warning sound at my companion and then scurried up my arm, twisting around.  He dove down the collar of my coat and I felt him squirm around and he popped back up, placing his little squirrel hands on my cheeks and looked at me almost nose to nose.

The flaming redhead beside me chuckled and both of us turned to look at her.  I grinned and said, “Rachel Paige, I'd like you to meet a little friend of mine.”  Then I looked down at the squirrel. “And this is my new friend Rachel.”

She tilted her head to look at him and said, “He's cute.  Did you train him?  What's his name?”

I shook my head. “No he's not trained, he just helps me out from time to time.  I think he is following me.  He was at my camp the other day then he helped scout the chateau last night.  He must have caught my scent on the wind when I came here.”

Then I thought a second.  “I guess he needs a name huh?  How about Conrad?”

She snorted at that and he was startled by the noise and scolded her, ducked into my collar, then re-emerged.  She asked, “What kind of name is Conrad for a squirrel?  And are you talking to him somehow?”

I turned my nose up at her and said, “I think it sounds distinguished, what would you have me call him? Nutsy?”  Then I squinted. “I'm more sending and receiving impressions from him.  Squirrels don't have a real language.  But he can show me things he has seen or sounds that he has heard.  He doesn't understand them all, but as long as he gets close I can get good information from him.  The larger an animal's brain is, the better I can communicate with them.”

She got an evil grin. “If you start singing like the cartoon and birds flock to you, I'm going to die laughing.”

I glared at her, trying not to smile in amusement. “It isn't like that.  Well, mostly... I mean, I don't sing.  I just ask favors of nature, and if the plants and animals feel like helping me when I ask, then they do.  It isn't like I tell them or command them.  They are my friends, my family, and that's how I treat the relationship.  Nature feeds and sustains me and my power.  The vestiges of the power of my long dead Perchta.”

She caught the hitch in my voice and nodded, then she looked at Conrad as I scratched his chin.  “Pleased to meet you, Conrad.”  He looked at her, scolded, then grabbed her offered finger.  I chuckled as they shook.  He was a clever boy.

Then I opened my pocket on my jacket and in an instant he flowed out of my coat and spiraled down my arm and helped himself to dried fruit and nuts.  I scolded, “Not so much.  You're going to get fat.  Then how are you going to fit into your nest?”  He scolded me and stuffed one last peanut into his cheek then jumped to the window and bounded off into the cover of the trees.

Rachel was having a giggle fit at that and I smiled in response.  “What?”

She shrugged. “You talk to him like he's human.”

I thought about that. “Well the animals to me are.  Sure some of them are like the odd cousin you don't want to invite to dinner, but, for the most part, they are my siblings.”

She scrunched up her brow in thought then comically blew a loose lock of red hair from her eyes and asked, “So you commune with animals.  You said plants too?  I saw what you did last night and it was nothing short of miraculous.”

I nodded.  “It is more that I am connected to it all, plants and animals, and being part of it, I can influence it, share with it, and have it do favors for me.  I in turn, give back as I can.”  I thought about the best way to explain.  I reached out with my magic and found what I needed right on the window sill.  I looked closely at what I had felt and grabbed the tiny seed between two fingers.

I looked at Rachel and smiled.  “Nature is energy, whether plant or animal.  Animals eat plants or other animals for energy.  It takes energy for plants to grow.  When an animal dies, it releases energy the plants can use.  It is a cycle, but it cannot sustain itself.  Not all the energy can be recycled, by digestion or by decomposition.  To compensate, plants have the unique ability to harness sunlight and convert it into energy.  Photosynthesis replaces lost energies so that nature can sustain itself and thrive.”

She nodded understanding.  So far, she was tracking with me.  I continued,  “Being part of nature myself, I get my power from any excess energy generated by the process.  It is all converted into magical potential inside me.”

She nodded once smugly and said with an air of authority, “So, Snow White is solar powered.”

I blinked at her then thumped her shoulder, causing her to trip over one of her stacks of junk and fall back on her bed laughing.  I smiled at her. “Yes, I guess that means I am solar powered, smartass.”  She laughed again and I couldn't help myself, I laughed too.

She propped herself up on her elbows behind her and just smiled. “I'm sorry Gretta, it just seemed funny to me.”

I really, really, liked her saying my name.  I caught myself running my eyes over her and she adjusted herself in my gaze, tilted her head and said, “What?”

I shrugged and looked at the seed between my fingers. “Nothing, you're just cute again.  I like it.”

She said firmly, “I already told you, I'm not cute.”

I gave her a huge smile. “Whatever.  Here, look at this.  When I give back to nature, I can speed up and sustain the processes of life that would generally take much longer.  Like this...”  I let part of me seep into the seed I was holding, then right before our eyes, a green tendril broke out of the seed.  It writhed on my fingertips and leaves burst out of the growing stem, then a little bulb formed at the end of it and it burst out into a brilliant yellow buttercup.