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my hand, deeply dark.
I wanted to taste it.
More of it.
I wanted to tear him apart.
I whirled around and headed for the woods.
He shouted after me.
I ignored him.
The trees swayed as I walked through the forest.
Black birds (ravens? Why were there so many ravens?) swirled overhead. My mother told me once that a group of ravens was called an unkindness. “I don’t know why,” she said as we lay in the back of the car, waiting for daylight. “It’s odd, isn’t it? There’s another name for a massing of ravens too, though it’s strange. When they come together, they’re also called—”
“I know what they’re called,” I said to the trees, to the birds, to the earth beneath my feet.
The ravens laughed at me. They screamed, Little wolf, little wolf, what do you see? We take to wing above you, flying in a conspiracy.
An unkindness of ravens.
A conspiracy of ravens.
I turned my face toward the sky.
The birds were gone.
I looked ahead.
The path through the trees was empty.
I looked to the right.
A white wolf, black on its chest and back.
I looked to the left.
A pure white wolf stood side by side with a black wolf.
Their eyes burned red, and I swore the black one had violet mixed in.
It wasn’t possible.
I ran.
Tree limbs slashed against my face, cutting into my skin. Blood began to fall even as the scrapes healed almost immediately. My glasses were knocked askew, and someone snarled in my ear, “Take those fucking things off. You don’t need them.”
I gasped as I stumbled, sure that a man, a gruff man, an angry man was standing next to me.
He wasn’t.
I was alone.
I sucked in a breath, trying to clear my head from a maelstrom of voices that spun furiously like a tornado. They were shouting at me, dozens of them, telling me to listen, that I needed to listen and it would all make sense, it would all become clear.
My chest burned as I took off again.
