Three Alphas, Three Mates

Chapter 9 - Today

"It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts. Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life...

The good child does as her mother bids – five miles' trudge through the forest; do not leave the path because of the bears, the wild boar, the starving wolves. Here, take your father's hunting knife; you know how to use it.

The child had a scabbby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold, she knew the forest too well to fear it... When she heard that freezing howl of a wolf, she dropped her gifts, seized her knife, and turned on the beast.

It was a huge one, with red eyes and running, grizzled chops; any but a mountaineer's child would have died of fright at the sight of it. It went for her throat, as wolves do, but she made a great swipe at it with her father's knife and slashed off its right forepaw.

The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem. It went lolloping off disconsolately between the trees as well as it could on three legs, leaving a trail of blood behind it. The child... went on towards her grandmother's house.

She found her grandmother was so sick she had taken to her bed and fallen into a fretful sleep, moaning and shaking so that the child guessed she had a fever. She felt the forehead, it burned. She shook out the cloth from her basket, to use it to make the old woman a cold compress, and the wolf's paw fell to the floor.

But it was no longer a wolf's paw. It was a hand, chopped off at the wrist, a hand toughened with work and freckled with old age... she knew it for her grandmother's hand.

She pulled back the sheet...

There was a bloody stump where her grandmother's right hand should have been, festering already.

The child crossed herself and cried out so loud the neighbours heard her and come rushing in...

They drove the old woman, in her shift as she was, out into the snow with sticks, beating her old carcass as far as the edge of the forest, and pelted her with stones until she fell dead.

Now the child lived in her grandmother's house; she prospered."

[A/N: Excerpt from Angela Carter's "The Werewolf"]

That's what we talk about in English, our teacher teary eyed at the story, but it doesn't stop there.

After we talk about calculating district boundaries in Math, and the start of the Swiss werewolf witch trials in History, I decide to consult my sources. Alvin and the Chipmunks is basically a primary source, so I start there.

Alvin knew what he was talking about when he cried wolf. His brothers and family members held him back, but if they had just believed him when he said it, little Theodore wouldn't have been infected in the first place.

My heart stops when I think of Charlie and the way those brothers were looking at Megan. They probably want to force them into their pack!

"Are you alright?" Carson asks at my side in Art, the final class of the day. It's more like the art of political strategy.

Carson looks worried. I bet he is. I've caught you red handed.

"Is something wrong?" he asks.

I shake my head, eyebrows drawn. I narrow my eyes. "I'm fine." I look up at him, even though we're both sitting. I stare.

He looks taken aback, but I don't stop. I have to see this for myself. I wouldn't say they're an unnatural color, his eyes. They're just really golden as far as amber go. Him and his brothers are tall, but not so tall that it couldn't naturally occur in society. And this town is in the middle of some pretty historical lands, so a bit of folklore every now and then isn't so outlandish.