Chapter 7: growing up gifted

Spirit of the Wild by BrunuhVille

Weeks later, allies from near and far had come to help the wolves of Benjmin-Nephtal. A red-bearded Alpha stood next to the young silver-blonde Alpha, dwarfing him by several inches in height and width. They watched several wolves in kilts working side by side with wolves in pants. The new pack house would be finished before the week was finished.

“Fear nah, young Isaac. Tha Moon ‘as a way of bringin’ tha faithless ta heel,” Alpha Ruadi of New Wemyss insisted.

“I hope you are correct, but my father worried the ambitions of the royals would not stop until they seized control of the Oracles and established themselves as Monarchs of this land. The Oracle Tamaza had many visions about this, but my father and brother did not share most of them with me.” Young Alpha Isaac sounded worried.

“Aye, our oracle ’as also seen much, but tha ambitions of wolves can nah win against tha Moon’s faithful.” The giant stroked his flaming red beard as he spoke, “Tha brown furs shall pay fur their arrogance.”

“I pray that you are correct, Alpha Raudi. But I must beg a favor. If the Benjmin fall, please protect the Naphtal Oracles for us. Their mother saw the twins threatened and if one dies, the Moon will pour blood upon the sacred waters and everything around them will burn.” Isaac sound so young and scared as he plead for help. He knew the Benjmin were now too few to protect the last three Naphtal oracles.

“Weh shall serve tha Moon, as weh always ’ave.” The New Wemyss Alpha nodded and gave the young Alpha’s shoulder a squeeze before he went to put his strength into helping raise the hardened cedar framing walls for the new pack house. The wood was a gift from one ancient pack to another, from one group of servants to another. For as different as they were in history and tradition, they were all still Servants of the Moon and brothers in the honorable ways of warriors.

Benjmin-Naphtal had lost more than half of their numbers in the attack, but still only a third as many as Des Rues. When word spread about the murder of the pups in the pack house nursery, many reconsidered their alliances with the royals. Killing was not an unusual occurrence in the werewolf world, but to kill almost two dozen pups younger than 5, to burn them death was a crime against the teachings of the Moon. Children were a gift, and not to be squandered, even if they were your enemies’ children. It was considered the Moon’s blessing if a mated pair had more than two children.

As Charles recovered, his elder brother and grieving mother tried to control the damage done by the failed attack to their reputation. However, stories of their own she-wolves losing dozens of pups spread like the fire had. And because they were home to the disgraced oracle who had been removed the position of Delphi by the eldest Naphtal Oracle, many refused to believe that the deaths of the innocent had been an accident.

All packs had a basement nursery and daycare that could become a locked safe room. It was a common pack house design. The rumors that the Benjmin-Naphtal pack house had been firebombed by their former ally as retribution sent shock waves through the werewolf community. Several packs even demanded that those who mated into Des Rues return home. Many she-wolves who survived losing their pups in the aftermath had simply left the now cursed pack and their mates.

“They look just like their mother.”

Jude choked on the words that came out of Eliazar’s mouth. Tamaza, his mate had gone to the Moon without him. She died saving Isaac and Jacob’s pups from the fire, now if only the healers could save them from their burns and the smoke they breathed. Both pups were terribly scarred and still wheezed. Tamaza had made him so proud in life and now, in death, he was even prouder of her. She was an oracle and had been the Delphi, he had never once doubted her courage. Four young she-pups had been in the garden with Tamaza when the attack came, she had hidden them in a shed before running into the pack house. She had saved the Alpha pups and carried her own daughters to safety with her last strength. Her last thought had told him to stay with their daughters and he would. He would remain here and raise them to be more than oracles, they would be warriors too.

The females who lost mates and pups in the betrayal and attack, held on if they had other pups, but most had lost everything they loved. They banded together to feed Tamaza’s twins and care for the Alpha’s nephew, but they struggled to stay on this side of the Moon. As another mate-lost, pup-lost she-wolf came into fed his daughters, Jude went out to see how the work on the new pack house was progressing.

His old friend, the New Wemyss Master-of-Arms was training for him. Lyall hailed him to come over. Jude’s father had sent him to training with the New Wemyss wolves when he was young. He had made lifelong friends during the hardest 18 months of his life, but Jude believed it was easier than the last three weeks. They did not speak, just shifted and ran the border together.

Every Des Rues wolf they saw, bowed their head and bared their necks. Even if the new Alpha of the brown furs wasn’t ashamed of the atrocity committed by he, his brothers, and his father, his warriors were. Killing pregnant females and pups was not the way of honorable warriors. But many others had lost pups to the curse of the Benjmin-Naphtal Luna and they had begun to follow the charismatic rhetoric of Charles Des Rues, believing it was their right to do whatever they must to establish their pack as the ruler of all the wolves of this land.

5 Years later...

Alpha Isaac and Beta Jude watched a pair of identical 5 year-olds sleeping. The two dark-haired girls held each other as they slept with tear stained faces. Their great-grandmother Naomi sat beside their bed with a sad frown on her face. Dawn was glowing blood-red on the horizon, clawed stripes of fire burning against the crimson and slate of the eastern sky.

“Oracle, how are they?” Alpha Isaac asked, bowing his head in respect.

Beta Jude added,“Was it a nightmare, Nonna (grandmother) or something more?”

“They are well, and no, Jude, it was not a nightmare. I have never heard of Oracles who could share visions with each other. They both ‘saw’ the same thing. Wolves attacking females and pups on a beach. There was a young red-headed she-pup wearing a crown, and protected by a blonde male with the Moon’s mark on his side,” the ancient Oracle announced.

The Alpha and Beta shared a look. They knew to whom those pups belonged.

The old she-wolf watched the twins for a moment more before speaking. “The brown furs are after the future queen born to New Wemyss, and the Moon has already set her protector in place, but sadly the pup lost his mother today.”

“Today? Are you sure it has already happened? Can’t we warn them?” Jude demanded, thinking of his friend Lyall being left mateless as he was. It was not a fate he would wish on any enemy and especially not on a friend, to live as he and his Alpha now lived.

She shook her head, “It happened as they saw it, the day is hours older on the coast.”

The males shifted nervously, to have their wolves this young was not unusual for old-lineage wolves, but for the daughters of the Naphtal to start having visions before reaching their tenth year was unheard of.

Giggling, Essie ran through the forest ahead of her twin. Del was laughing as hard as she was running. They were supposed to be in the lessons with the Elder Oracle from the Moon’s Gate. The over-a-century old she-wolf had fallen asleep after less than an hour of listening to the young oracle acolytes singing the prayers to the Moon. They had recorded themselves chanting the worships and meditations in the days before, and today, as soon as they were sure the ancient she-wolf was dreaming, they pushed play on the tape recorder.

They had managed to sneak away from the two warriors assigned to follow them today. Every moment of every day, there was a warrior for each of them. The girls called them their shadows. But the warriors were not allowed into their lessons, so today they had given the warriors and their instructor the slip as 8 year olds are want to do. Freedom tasted almost as sweet as the sugar cookies they has stolen from the kitchen after breakfast. It is the first day of summer, and the twins wanted to be anywhere but the stuffy, incense-filled, stone cottage that had been used by oracles for generations.

Del reached the small reflecting pool surrounded by smooth stones first. Their father had planted bulbs in the small meadow encircling the sacred place. This was their mother’s special place, the place Tamaza once came to listen to the Moon. The place where their father, Jude, now came to speak to her. Del fell on her back in the lush carpet, Essie collapsed beside her, panting. They laid in the sunlight dapple grass surrounded by the tulips, lilies, and daffodils. These flowers were planted by their father’s hands and watered with his tears for their mother. This was the only place they could fell their Mother’s presence.

Essie rolled over onto her stomach, and Del began braiding flowers into her sister’s ebony hair.

“Essie, do you think mother would be proud of us?” Del was the quieter, more thoughtful of the two, always wondering about the feelings of those living and passed.

“Father and Nonna and the Alpha are, so I guess so,” the elder twin answered.

She was more vivacious, actively seeking adventures while her sister buried herself in the boxes of books brought home by their grandfather. Del chose to have her adventures through written words rather than in the world, but Esther looked forward to the day when she could travel and experience places and people beyond the borders of their pack. Humans, vampires, witches, and so many other kinds of were-folk waited in the world beyond.

A world she would never see because as an Oracle of the Moon, Esther was to be protected and kept safe. Safety that seemed more like a prison to her than to Delilah. A prison made of white silk robes and marble walls, and moonlight-painted tendrils of incense floating in the air, chaining her to a destiny she wasn’t sure she wanted.

“You’re thinking about traveling again,” her younger sister’s knowing voice interrupted her thoughts. She was finished plaiting Essie’s hair.

“No, I’m not.” Essie sighed.

“Liar,” Del giggled, “You had that look.”

Essie smirked, then sighed, laying her cheek on the back of her arm, “I just want to travel, the world is so much bigger than we see in our bowls and grandfather’s books.”

Del laid back, having finished braiding a crown of jonquils and daffodils now upon her brow, she squeezed her sister’s hand.

“Someday Essie, someday things will change, you will travel and I will wear the incense chains you dread like jewelry and we will both wish we were back here laying in the grass around Mother’s pool.”

“An oracle is not allowed to seek for herself,” Essie scolded.

“I didn’t need to scry, it is what will be, Mother told me so,” Del answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Tell me about her again, I don’t see her as you do.” Essie’s voice has a longing quality, missing the female she has ever met, not even in her dreams.

Del laughs lightly, “Mother has long hair as dark as yours, and eyes like blue-gray sapphires that glow with the Moon’s light.”

“Like yours?”

“Like mine, with a little mole on her cheek and dimples. And every time I dream about her, she asks about father. I think she already knows, but still she asks. And she looks up at me from the pool and out at the sunshine and the blue sky and the flowers father planted. Behind her, the stars turn in their clock around Northern star just above her head. She looks happy and sad at the same time because she is there and father is here. She always wears a...”

Jude leaned against a large oak, listening to his youngest describe his lost mate in perfect detail. His heart contracted painfully and he took several deep breaths trying to fill his emptiness with air. A breeze carried toward him, bringing his mate’s scent of summer bulb flowers mixed with his daughters’ scents of autumn’s first frost and winter’s purest snow.

His soul whispered to his mate, ‘I love you, my moon flower.’

The still pool rippled in response.

7 Years later...

A dark haired she-wolf sat by her Beta father, watching the Alpha discussing the incursions into their pack’s territory. It was their old enemy, the brown furs. Esther scowled at the map. She and her sister, Delilah, had seen a map like this map in their dreams and told their father and Noona, who told the Alpha Isaac. They had seen blood dripping on the map before a brown furred wolf had gobbled it up. Esther and her sister were born with the Moon’s blessing, well not born exactly, cut from their dead mother’s womb by the late Luna when the brown furs had attacked the last time.

Both girls were oracles, like their mother and their grandmother before her, and great-grandmother. The twins’ existence was a carefully guarded secret by the pack. Benjmin-Naphtal was a small pack of less than 70 wolves but they were wealthy and influential beyond some of the largest packs in this land. The doe-eyed Oracles of the Nephtal never asked for payment, but it was customary to give a fair tribute if their visions brought good fortune or prevented misfortune.

They lived under the protection of the fierce warrior wolves of Benjmin warrior wolves in an alliance that had last for a thousand years. But times were difficult, and their ally turned enemy was once again seeking to seize the power and wealth of the Oracles for themselves. Many believed only the ancient eldest Oracle was left to the Naphtal, but their enemy had discovered the truth. They were coming for the young twin Oracles, they were coming soon, them Moon had warned them, and then they would try to conquer the wolves of this land or burn it to ashes.

Alpha Isaac’s voice drew her out of her thoughts, “Young Esther, do you or your sister know when the attack may come?”

She shook her head, “No Alpha, but soon. Delilah says we will not be the only ones the brown furs harm in the future. They seek to go against the Moon’s will. Our Nonna believes that the map does not just represent our pack but many packs. They are a predator seeking prey, seeking prestige, exactly who they deem as prey is unclear, but it is many. They want to rule over all wolves.” At 12 years old, she and her sister are the youngest practicing Oracles in the world.

“Very good Esther, please return to your sister, thank you both for your visions,” Alpha Isaac tells her, she bows and starts to leave, but lingers for a moment at the door.

“Alpha Isaac, please listen. Del says we all need to leave,” Esther plead. “We need to leave soon.”

He nodded, “We will follow the Moon’s will, young Esther. Go to your rooms now.”

Del looked up from her book as Essie came into their room, and flopped on her bed with a disgusted sigh.

“Didn’t they believe us?” The youngest oracle asked.

Her elder sister shrugged, sitting up.“I don’t know... I just don’t know. Pack up mother’s bowls, the Tide stone, and a few changes of clothes. If they come, I want to be ready."

Essie rose and placed the already packed bag on her dresser. "We can’t let them catch us.”

After the door closed, the Elder Oracle spoke, “Alpha, the Wanderer Eliazar will be here by morning to take the oracles to the temple. The Servants need to protected them, and they are afraid that they can’t be protected this close to those who defy the Moon, if they have chosen to come for them. ”

Isaac bowed his head, the Benjmin Warrior wolves had protected the Naphtal Oracles for a thousand years but that time was at an end. They had neither numbers nor hope to stand against the Des Rues and their allies. He looked over at his best friend and Beta, Jude. They needed a plan.