SAFE . . . reyna ramirez-arellano

8 - who is she, really?

BRIAR DREAMED OF wolves.

She stood in a clearing in the middle of a redwood forest. In front of her rose the ruins of a stone mansion. Low gray clouds blended with the ground fog, and cold rain hung in the air. A pack of large gray beasts milled around her, brushing against her legs. They gently nudged her toward the ruins.

Briar decided to do what they wanted. Even if she had a death wish and would pet any dog around her, her instincts told her to walk forward.

The ground squelched under her heels as she walked. Stone spires of chimneys, no longer attached to anything, rose up like totem poles. The house must've been enormous once, multi-storied with massive log walls and a soaring gabled roof, but now nothing remained but its stone skeleton. Briar passed under a crumbling doorway and found herself in a kind of courtyard.

Before her was a drained reflecting pool, long and rectangular. Briar couldn't tell how deep it was, because the bottom was filled with mist. A dirt path led all the way around, and the house's uneven walls rose on either side. Wolves paced under the archways of rough red volcanic stone.

At the far end of the pool sat a giant she-wolf, several feet taller than Briar. Her eyes glowed silver in the fog, and her coat was the same color as the rocks — warm chocolaty red.

"I know this place," Briar said.

The wolf regarded her. She didn't exactly speak, but Briar could understand her. The movements of her ears and whiskers, the flash of her eyes, the way she curled her lips — all of these were part of her language.

Of course, the she-wolf said. You came to me as a pup. Now you must find your way back again. A new quest, a new start.

"That isn't fair," Briar said. But as soon as she spoke, she knew there was no point complaining to the she-wolf.

Wolves didn't feel sympathy. They never expected fairness. The wolf said: Conquer or die. This is always our way.

Briar wanted to protest that she couldn't conquer if she didn't know who she was, or where she was supposed to go. But she knew this wolf. Her name was simply Lupa, the Mother Wolf, the greatest of her kind. Long ago Briar had been sent here to find her. She'd found the wolf and became her pupil. Now the she-wolf found her.

"Can you guide me?" Briar asked.

Lupa made a rumbling noise deep in her throat, and the mist in the pool dissolved.

At first Briar wasn't sure what she was seeing. At opposite ends of the pool, two dark spires had erupted from the cement floor like the drill bits of some massive tunneling machines boring through the surface. Briar couldn't tell if the spires were made of rock or petrified vines, but they were formed of thick tendrils that came together in a point at the top. Each spire was about five feet tall, but they weren't identical. The one closest to Briar was darker and seemed like a solid mass, its tendrils fused together. As she watched, it pushed a little farther out of the earth and expanded a little wider.

On Lupa's end of the pool, the second spire's tendrils were more open, like the bars of a cage. Inside, Briar could vaguely see a misty figure struggling, shifting within its confines.

"Juno," Briar said.

The she-wolf growled in agreement. The other wolves circled the pool, their fur standing up on their backs as they snarled at the spires.

The enemy has chosen this place to awaken her most powerful son, the giant king, Lupa said. Our sacred place, where demigods are claimed — the place of death or life. The burned house. The house of the wolf. It is an abomination. You must stop her.