Page 6 of Up from the Earth

Speak When You Are Spoken To.

Nothingness,pureandundiluted.It was everything around me, perhaps within me, and I could not see my own body beneath me. And yet, the presence of the wolf was still there. I could feel it looming just over my shoulder, but I dared not look back this time.

Plink, plink-plink.

Water. It was water dripping or something liquid, and it was somewhere in this…roomwith me. My eyes struggled against the dark, searching out for anything they might grasp onto, anything that might tell me where I was. There are few more terrifying things than being trapped in the darkness with no notion of left or right, up or down.

And this darkness, this wolf stalking in the black expanse, was watching me.

“Where…” My voice was so small, this insignificant thing in the face of this massive other place. “Where am I?”

That familiar growl rumbled somehow all around me all at once. “Nowhere. Everywhere. Why does it matter?”

A hard swallow worked its way down my throat. The residual heat within me was dying, as well. For every moment that I wasn’t running, cold crept deep into my bones. I could feel the thin fabric of my nightgown—the dress I’d been compelled to wear—clinging to my skin, my thighs, my nipples.

“I…I am no longer on the path.” I turned this way and that, peering uselessly into the shadows for any sign of the wolf. “I was not to wander, and…and I must be getting home.”

Another growl, or was it a chuckle? The difference was impossible to tell, and then warm breath was on my neck, making me reel as my skin prickled with goosebumps. From the corner of my eyes, I could just make out the edges of fur, a change in the texture of the omnipresent black. A glint of fang twinkled miles away or right next to me. It was impossible to tell.

“Who says you’re not home?” The rumbling voice wasn’t human, but it was not purely animal either, capable of speech as it was. “Who says that you must obey?”

I shivered, the sensation snaking up my spine quickly as a fox. “My mother. My sisters. I have left them at the coven house. They’ll be looking for me. They’ll be worried sick.”

It laughed. I could tell now. The wolf in the darkness laughed around me, circling me, sniffing at me. And beneath it all was this odd melody. It wavered in and out of the space, a haunting drone of deep notes that echoed off into the nothingness. My heartbeat set the rhythm behind it, and each breath I took sighed out, pulling on the spiderweb-thin strings that made the eerie notes persist.

“There is no going back there now, little bloom. There is work for you here.”

“But I—”

The words were silenced in a blink as the wolf brushed against my back. It felt smaller now but still towered, its head still standing over my own. Compared to the frigid air around me, the wolf felt warm and soft. Temptation filled me as the silk of its fur dragged over my skin. I wanted to touch it, to tangle my fingers through the inky strands.

No, it was more than want. It was…meant.

I was meant to be here with the wolf, led astray off the path by both the fear and excitement of its presence. I couldn’t have stopped myself from reaching out for the wolf then, even if I’d wanted to.

And I wasn’t at all sure if I wanted to.

The sensation was like touching an electrified wire but with less pain and more…just so much more. Velvety fur as black and blacker than a moonless night slipped between my fingers, my hand petting over the massive side like it was sluicing through waves. Rippling muscles and purpose formed this enormous creature’s body, and a tiny moan tumbled from my lips, pulled forward by the sheer sensual pleasure of touching something so soft, so comforting.

Still, as quickly as the pleasure was there, it snapped back, replaced by the ever-present fear as the wolf shifted, and I got a glimpse of those fangs once more. It could tear me limb from limb with hardly any effort. Of that, I was abundantly certain.

“My little bloom…” It sniffed at me again, the tip of its cold nose finding the fragile skin of my neck behind my ear. “You are the curious one, aren’t you?”

“I…” The words vanished as the wolf nuzzled at me, making heat swell in my veins like a fever. “Why…why do you keep calling me that?”

That laugh again—and the accompanying goosebumps that had yet to go away truly. “Because that is what you are. You are my little bloom, the first petals of spring pushing up through the snow. The height of spring as the chorus of colors and scents burst forth.”

In his words, I could not detect a lie, and even my mother had taken to calling me her flower. But that was not the part of the wolf’s proclamation that still hung in the air around me like some tangible chord that wound around my waist, clutched in its massive paw.

The wolf had said, “My.”

“Y-You…why do you say I am yours, Wolf?”

This ancient being was everywhere, inside my mind and surrounding me all the same. It was all I could breathe. It was all I could feel. In a huff, I was knocked to the ground, one that somehow existed in the expanse of black, and behind me, over top of me, I could feel it. The great maw of the wolf was poised just above my head.

“Because,” the whispering growl was right at my ear, “Cerridwen Adaire Locke…”

Oh, gods. It knows my name—my entire name.

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