Chapter 3 3

“The witch?” Maisie stands tall on her tiptoes as though it will somehow help her see further through the dense woods at whatever cave entrance we can’t see. Endearingly cute with her small frame and childlike mannerisms.

“Leyanne Cruden. You know who she is…That Scottish one that shows up from time to time to see my parents and my grandmother. I recognize the shitty scrawl.” Eve spits with accusation, cursing as she sometimes does, and I sigh at her.

“Oh yeah…. the one with the crows. She’s pretty.” Toya finally catches up to us and moves to climb the tree to get up beside Eve, although they sit a little apart, given that they have never really gotten on. At times, I think none of these three would be friends with Eve if I weren't here as the go-between. They’re my friends. I know it, and I feel it in their care for me, but Eve has always been apart from us.

She doesn’t care about them, and they don’t care much about her. She has done something to each and every one of them in the past to leave them with mild PTSD when it comes to her. So now they slightly fear her.

Like an outsider who tolerates their presence, she never really keeps friends of her own, as just about everyone irritates her. No one is good enough for the great and powerful Eve. Claiming she needs friends like she needs another hole in her head.

Sometimes I think she only tolerates me because I am her twin.

“It's been a long time since she was here…I wonder where she goes?... Why do you think they sealed it?” I let Maisie go so I can wander a little further to peek through the undergrowth at the looming rock formations near the base of the incline. There is an air of cold and oppressive about the mountain that makes me shudder right to my core. The air feels flat and dead around it here.

“Same reason they forbid talk of the past, of Juan Santo…. of anything that might pop their little delusional bubble of peace and light.” Eve scorns, kicking at the bark with the one leg she has up and hitched on top. “Anything dark or dreadful gets locked away out of sight and out of mind…how very wolf of them.”

“Don’t say his name…you’ll anger the fates and bring a curse to we four.” Maisie gasps in shock, covering her ears as though to avoid any fallout from uttering his cursed name. Strongly believing in all that befalls anyone who should anger the fates.

“Pfft…what curse? He was an old man who wanted power and went about it the wrong way. He should have been smarter….. I would have been smarter.” Eve gets up, straightening towards the mountain, standing tall and foreboding, and pulls back her hands with dramatic flair to tear the trees aside, offering us an unbroken view of what once was a dark place. As easy as breathing.

The trees crack and bend as she uses her telekinetic power, just as my mother does, to clear and bend them to her will. Straining, groaning hunks of nature are being pulled aside by the gentle hands of a little girl who thinks nothing of being able to do this. Hundred-year-old trees as thick as barrels and more, moving so gracefully and defying logic as they bend without snapping.

It's an unnerving display of power, opening us to the bright sun overhead as the canopy above us suddenly clears. Making us blink as our eyesight adjusts, but it's not awe I feel when watching this display; it’s a gurgling-up sense of unease. Eve worries me.

Seeing her so easily use this gift and thinking nothing of clearing a massive forest out of the way is as unsettling as watching a huge storm gather overhead.

“Mom said you weren’t allowed to use your gifts unless you were with them or Rema.” I scold her, the internal ripple of fear driving up whenever Eve uses her powers. Nothing good ever happens when she flexes them. She has no sense of boundaries.

“Oh shut up…I’m only enjoying the view. I’m not breaking them, just moving them a little.” She scoffs at me, a flick of a glance back my way to show her defiance as her eyes glow a little red with the peeking of her inner wolf. Her mood grows more arrogant and hostile as she is chided.

“If you turn, we don’t have extra clothes to get you back home unseen.” I remind her, knowing fine well Eve wouldn’t care. It’s not even a good reason to deter her.

“If I were going to turn, I would have done it already. I’m not in the mood. Besides. I like this outfit. I would take it off first.” She smirks at me, shrugs with zero care over my concern, and turns back to release the forest of her grip. Clenching her hands as though to break the spell, the entire surroundings about her snap back to their rightful place in a terrifying groan and violent rustle.

It’s not as gentle as moving them was, but more of a snap back in anger. The air and greenery shift as though struck by a turbulent wind, then right themselves in a terrifying collision overhead, causing branches to snap and a torrent of leaves and insects to rain down upon us. Making us all flinch in instinctual fright, and we move back into a little huddle as though we’re safer together.

Birds scatter, animals run, and what was a gentle bending out of our way becomes a sudden release like she popped a balloon. Her temper simmered in that action, and my questioning her about using her gift.

Her ability always unnerved me. Perhaps because when we were too young to understand what she could do, she hurt many small animals and other children while learning to harness it. She broke my arm when I was four because she wanted my glass of milk. She didn’t mean it; she just couldn’t harness it.

I guess it makes me nervous because I know how unintentionally she can cause harm.

“I hate when she gets like this.” Maisie moves closer to me again, her own sense of insecurity for our safety peeking, as she re-latches to my arm and whispers in a hushed tone. Obvious nerves at the change in my sister's mood and the appearance of her gifts. Eve knows how to instill fear by just being herself, and I smooth a hand over Maisie’s to soothe her.

“It’s fine…. we’re going back. There’s no point being here anymore.”

No will to be if my sister is turning sour.

“I can hear you, you know…I have wolf hearing….” Eve’s sarcastic, droll, and huffy manner as she leaps down from her high perch sets my teeth on edge. I can feel her getting moodier at this turn of events. Disappointment biting at her that our little adventure didn’t give her the thrill she had been seeking. Annoyed, we are so willing to give up and retreat, and she has that atmosphere of restlessness growing around her again.

I genuinely think she wanted to find bones or weapons, or some buried dark secret, because she was forbidden from coming here. Nothing but the forest and blocked caves has killed her mood. Eve can ruin everyone's mood when she gets into a sulk. She becomes unbearable.

“We should go back. This place may not be open to explore, but it still feels weird in the air…. eerie.” Simon, who had been ambling around our perimeter and moseying, comes back, a little more sheepish than before, and I can tell my sister's change in atmosphere has gotten to him, too. “Maybe there's a good reason it’s out of bounds.”

We are all moving into ‘walking on eggshells’ mode because Eve is in a bad mood.

“You’re all boring…. I don’t know why any of you came if you were going to become butt-hurt little girls wanting to run home again because of one little detail. I should have known, you yellow-bellied turncoats, would go crying back to the manor to hide under your beds…. Sure, we can’t get in…. who gives a fuck…. but we can go up.” Eve points up towards the upper peaks of the mountain, some of which are fogged out into oblivion due to its sheer height and the cloud cover today. Rain is moving in; there's mist in the air, and it only makes the mountain seem so much more forbidding. Its tip is hidden from view as if it reaches into the heavens.

“I’m not climbing a mountain. Why would we do that?” Toya is bored with this. She has ‘done’ written all over her. “Do I look like a crazy person? I’m a wolf…we don’t climb… I’m not a mountain goat.”

“Because if the history books are accurate, that Witch created a huge hole up there and brought down the ceiling on so many feral vamps. If we climb, we can get in.” Eve hasn’t lost all her sparkle yet, and I guess when she pushed the trees out of the way, it was so she could scan the mountain and see if that hole still exists. With her wolf sight, her senses allow her to see what we cannot.

“No. Eve…. we’re just kids. We don’t have powers; we could get hurt. None of us knows how to climb a steep incline like that, and we have no ropes to help us. We’re not doing it.” I butt in, knowing this is going nowhere good, and another great idea my sister has is always a stupid one for us.

“Except you do… You have a power. You heal… like a good little nursemaid. All the good girls get the good girl gifts to help weaklings like them. If they get hurt, you can patch them up.” Eve mocks me like she always does. Shrugging like it’s no big deal, and I'm being a monumental drama queen. Anything to gaslight me into agreeing to her stupid endeavors.

Eve's greatest skill is bullying my friends and me to do her bidding, but not this time, when it risks their safety. And Eve loves pointing out my weaknesses compared to hers.

Ironically, because of the one gift she never inherited from our parents, but I did in droves. I can heal almost anyone and anything around me, to an amazing extent, more so than my Father or Rema, except myself.

I can’t heal my own wounds, and I don’t know why. A gift so strong that I can bring someone back from near death, but I can't even heal a scratch on my own hand.

So even if we did follow her…if I got hurt, I would be screwed.

I was born with glowy blue eyes, and hers were red, but unlike hers, mine didn’t change. Mine still have an ethereal, almost unnatural blue glow in human form, whereas my sister's eyes darkened to brown and only burn red when she's a wolf.

Because of my noticeable eyes, most kids avoided me growing up, as if I were some kind of freak in the wolf pack. They avoided Eve because she was crazy and used her powers to scare them.