Once upon a time, it was always Danicka that woke first. Lukas was nearly nocturnal, while she still lived off the early clock set by watching over her ward. Even these days, school often has her rising before he does. Not always, though. Especially with the proto-cub growing inside her; especially with how tired she's been. Especially with what happened yesterday, a thousand miles away: the completion of a circle that opened the very first time her brother gripped her arms a little too hard and asked her if she believed him, does she believe him, does she trust him when he says one day he'll be bigger and stronger than their mother, and then no one will scare them ever again.
Lukas thinks about that circle when he rises. He's the first to wake: a little after nine in the morning, still long before their flight. He thinks about this secret Danicka carried inside her for a month, nearly two -- like a second, bitter gestation. A kinslaying. A murder. A death sentence. An execution called down on her brother; not vengeance, quite, but hard justice. And protection of the ones she loves. Lukas aches as he takes their suitcases out and starts to pack; he aches to think of her carrying this burden alone, too, a stone in the back of her mind, knowing that one day -- soon -- her brother would be dead and the wolf that killed him at her behest would be gone from her life forever.
It couldn't have been easy. Her brother's death and what it meant couldn't have been easy to bear, either, but
perhaps it was a relief, in more ways than one. A burden finally set down.
Sometime after eleven, Danicka awakens to find two suitcases on the bedroom floor. Lukas's is already packed and zipped. Hers is still open, but he's set her laptop and charger, her travel toiletries bag, and a few changes of socks and undergarments inside for her. Also her favorite pajamas, which he knows by now because of how many times he's seen her wear them, wash them, wear them again.
Lukas is on the phone when she comes out, washed, teeth brushed, bag fully packed. He's talking to his parents, speaking Czech, looking out the window at the lake. He turns when he hears Danicka. Waves at her with a waggle of the three fingers not hanging on to his phone. Goes back to his conversation. A little later, when he hangs up, she's heating some food and he comes into the kitchen to tell her that their flight is at four. They'll take a cab to O'Hare in a couple hours, and another one on the other end to her father's house. He's already called Sarka and let her know they were coming. She'll meet them there with Irca. She wanted to know if Danicka wanted to tell her father herself that she was coming, or if she should do it.
Whatever Danicka decides, at half-past-one in the afternoon she and Lukas roll their luggage into the elevator, ride it down to ground floor. Cabs are plentiful in Chicago, and Lukas hails one off the streets, loading the back with their two smallish suitcases. As they're piling into the back seat, Lukas is reminded of Prague, the Dancing House, the fountain, the streets.
They sit close to each other. The driver senses their preoccupation, their quiet, and doesn't attempt chatter. At the airport Lukas thanks the man and pays on his credit card. They get their things out of the back and Lukas takes Danicka's hand as they go into the terminal, where they drop off their luggage, go through security, grab some coffee and snacks at a pre-gate Starbucks.
They have a row to themselves on the flight over. Lukas's rage seems to make this a frequent occurrence -- pushing the third passenger to switch seats as soon as possible. They put up the armrests; he puts his arm around her. They doze a little on the way over. He thinks of having a daughter named Eliska; wonders how and when to break the news.
It's evening when they land in New York. It's dinnertime -- late dinnertime -- when they arrive at Miloslav's house. Stepping out of the cab, Lukas realizes he hadn't expected to see it again. Hasn't seen it since he left this place with Danicka. It seems right that she reclaims it now. That he's here with her.
They go to the door, and they knock.
DanickaDanicka sleeps lightly at first, deeper as the hours roll on. She holds Lukas's arms until deep sleep makes her arms grow relaxed. By the time he wakes and slips out of her bed, she barely even stirs at the motion. The morning crests over Chicago's skyline and sears in through her unshaded window; Danicka merely rolls over as her room fills with light, breathing as steadily as before.
Hours later, she sees late morning light and suitcases. Hers is damask, light blue patterns across a chocolate brown field. It's still open, holding her most basic of electronic needs, the most essential items. She thinks of how much she and Lukas have traveled together; he has seen her do little more than throw a toothbrush in a bag with a pair of underwear and go. But he's seen her in Prague, too, or one of their hotel stays, and she knows how attentive he is. There's even a small zippered bag in there with her bottles of prenatals. She smiles. Her The Cake Is a Lie t-shirt. Her orange sleep shorts.
Dragging herself out of bed, she adds a few things. Lukas can probably hear her shuffling around a bit. She only half-completes the packing job before she drifts out of her bedroom, finding Lukas and coming up behind him. Her arms go around his waist from behind, her cheek to his back. She drowses there while he talks to his mother for a minute or two, then yawns and goes to the kitchen. Oatmeal. Oatmeal has been pretty safe. She is slicing a banana into the bowl when Lukas comes into the kitchen to tell her when their flight is. She thanks him for helping her pack and asks if he's eaten yet. They talk like they've been together a long time. They talk like a married couple dealing with A Family Thing. It is all so normal that if you look at it sideways, you can almost forget that
he is a werewolf
and her brother is dead because she willed it.
They talk about Sarka, about Irca, about her father. She says no one should tell him. She will see him when she gets there. The truth is, she's not even sure that most days he remembers she doesn't live in New York anymore; he has called her, once or twice, asking her where she is. He forgets that he is dialing a cell phone. He forgets that she does not live under his roof anymore until she gently, softly reminds him that she's in Chicago. Yes, yes, he says, as though he has forgotten something minor. How to spell a difficult word. I before E. She tells him she loves him before she hangs up. He says yes, yes, though there is a smile in it then.
The cab ride, the airport, the flight, another cab ride: these are all further markers of their normalcy. They have always been liars, no matter how honest he thought he was, no matter how honest she has learned to be. He pretends to be civil, refined, tame. He pretends to be human. She pretends to be a sweet, demure kinswoman. She pretends she doesn't still get a dark thrill from doing what she shouldn't, being where it isn't strictly safe for her to be. That on some level, part of her satisfaction in calling death down on her own brother
is the sheer wrongness of doing so.
Danicka has a headache after the flight, throbbing and awful. She covers her eyes and leans against Lukas, her breathing a touch heavier just from pain. Being driven to Queens like that doesn't help. She whimpers. He rubs her neck, as before, warm and steady, until her muscles start to relax and she starts to breath softer, more evenly. It helps, but there's a shadow under her eyes when they step out in front of the house neither of them have been to since he took her away from here. Since she was banished.
They stand on the curb where he held her arms and asked her where is your brother right now because her hair had been re-done, why had she combed it before coming out, that didn't make sense, what happened in there... and he is not so innocent as to have been unable to figure it out. Vladik hurt her again. One last time.
And it was the last time. The very last.
Danicka reaches for his hand, exhaling slowly. She's dressed simply, in a pair of dark grey slacks that are a step away from jeans only in that they have a little more give for her belly than jeans. Her blouse is short-sleeved, cream-colored, overlaid with lace. She wore a pink cardigan on the plane, took it off in the cab, and is now holding it over her arm as they look up at her house. It feels like it's been longer since she was last here.
They go up to the front door and knock.
As last time, it's a small blonde girl who throws open the door. She's taller now, turning long-waisted and lean-limbed as is the birthright of her entire family. Her hair is not split into tails or braids but hangs behind her loose, too long, needing a trim. She does not look fearful. Instead she lunges out and hugs Danicka, faceplanting her stomach, because all morning since she found out that Danicka and Lukas were coming she's been thinking that her uncle was lousy and she doesn't miss him at all, but then
she thought of Milos and Eman and Tadeas and it wouldn't matter, somehow, she thinks, if they were not just annoying but really bad, because they're her brothers, and her uncle was her mother's brother and her aunt's brother and her half-aunt's brother, and now he's dead, so,
she hugs her youngest aunt very tightly.
Danicka puts one hand on Irena's back, smoothing her other palm over her crown and down her hair. She murmurs to her in Czech. She tells her: it's okay. it's okay, Irca; greet your uncle. Which Irena does, sucking in a big breath and stepping back, letting her arms drop to her sides for a moment before she gives Lukas a hug, too. Not as tight. Not as earnest or attempting-to-be-comforting. She squeezes him harder, though, because he's not as fragile as Danicka is. If he could read her thoughts, he would recognize them; she is already looking at her kin and realizing: they are not as strong as I.
He might also be proud, because she is also thinking: I must protect them.
Stepping back again, Irena hears her name being called. It's not her mother, but her grandfather, wanting to know who it is.
Danicka walks in. She calls back to him. She calls him papa.
This is the difficult part. It would be awkward, if Danicka were not, put simply, very skilled at smoothing situations over. Miloslav, if he is worried that Vladik will be angry that Danicka and Lukas are here, does not mention it. He wants to sit his daughter and his son-in-law down and talk to them, make them coffee, find a snack to give them. He wants to ask about the cabinetry in their den and who is taking care of their little cat, and when he asks why they've come all this way, Danicka tells him that Lukas is going to take Irena to visit Stark Falls, and she decided to come along.
Which, of course, makes Miloslav call Irena into the kitchen to stand her up in front of him and tell her very sternly that the wolves of Stark Falls are different than the wolves of Manhattan, and it is a very special thing that she is being allowed to visit even though she has not changed, and she must not embarrass her brother, her family name, or her uncles.
Danicka, always the greater liar, does not even cheat a glance at Lukas or Sarka when her father uses the plural. Irena just looks wide-eyed and serious, nodding, promising that she will be on her absolute best behavior and she will not lose her temper and and and she will make sure all the other cubs are super jealous that their sisters aren't as cool.
Miloslav pats her cheek with his large, work-calloused hand. She smiles at him, the sort of child whose pleasure in approval is liable to be one of her greatest weaknesses as she grows up.
"Tatinek," Danicka tells him quietly, as Irena runs off to get her shoes because now that Lukas here she is ready to go, "let's go outside for a bit. I want to see the oak tree."
There is a breaking, there. Danicka squeezes Lukas's hand, asking quietly if he'll wait a bit before he and Irena are off. Sarka goes with their father outside, leaving the soon-to-be cub with her soon-to-be mentor. Irena is bored and impatient... for her mother and aunt to leave, so she can get her uncle to herself so they can talk.
"He wasn't good," Irena says seriously, and it doesn't take much to know who she's talking about. "He made my skin feel prickly when he was around, and he wouldn't let you two come to d de ek's house, and he made it so everyone says bad stuff about my mama here because Milos went to a different sept, and I know it's mean and that it will make people sad but I'm glad he's dead." She's glaring at the carpet, one long leg swinging down from the touch to scuff a sneakered foot against it in a mindless rhythm. She turns sharp eyes on Lukas then, half wary and half vengeful. "I had dreams sometimes that I fought him and won and then stood on his chest growling at him." Her brows knit. "But I was holding my wolfstone when I dreamed that and then in the dream I peed on him." She looks worried. "Do I have to pee on people if I beat them?"
Outside, sitting on the porch, Miloslav knows it is bad news. And he knows what is coming. He has two children who grew to become wolves. He has two children who grew to be like himself. They have both been through so much. He has nearly outlived both of them. They sit on either side of him, slender women with large eyes and sharp chins and shocking strength hiding behind soft hands and voices.
"Vládík je mrtvý," he says, his hands laying on top of his thighs. He is staring at the roots of that tree that dominates their yard. He is seeing Laura sitting with her back to it, nursing their firstborn. Nursing his only son.
"Ano, tatínek," Danicka tells him, slipping her hand beneath his to hold it.
And he sees her standing on a chair in the kitchen, wearing one of his old t-shirts as an apron, her thick and uncut hair pulled loosely back from her small, pointed face. She is learning to make kolache, her whole body bent to trying to perfect the folds. She doesn't get frustrated when the filling squeezes out. She pinches her lips together, she starts over. Even then he could not fathom her patience.
Sarka slides her arm around him as he begins to weep. He covers his face with his hand as silent, cold tears start to roll from his eyes. His daughters fold around him when he leans forward, broken down by
what he always knew was coming.
It is not Lukas's mate but her sister who comes back in first. She wants to hug her youngest daughter and second cub before she goes off. There are hot tears in Sarka's eyes when she squeezes the girl to her chest. Irena seems startled, stiffened by the pain she senses. She awkwardly hugs her mother back, wanting to tell her that it will be okay, but telling her own mother that something will be okay is not something she's ever felt like doing before, and it feels weird, because that is what grown-ups are supposed to do.
Sarka gives Lukas a box to take to Milos. Just some items from home. It's mostly snacks. It's some handwritten notes. A picture from Emanek, a print of the portraits they had done at Christmas. "Give it to him where it won't shame him," is her only request. She kisses Irena's brow and sends her off. The girl already has her backpack on her shoulders, ready to go on a trip much shorter but far cooler than the one to Chicago.
Only after she's outside with Miloslav again does Danicka slip inside. Irena is waiting on the front steps now, positively itching to leave. Danicka has wet eyes, but they have not shed. She comes to him, putting her hand on the back of his neck, but not to kiss him. She just holds him there, her head going to rest on his chest, her hand reaching for his hand to bring it to her side. The heel of his hand rests against that faint, barely-perceptible curve in her lower abdomen.
"You should tell Milos while you're up there," she whispers, as though nothing else is happening, as though nothing else matters. "But we should wait til you're back to get everyone else together and tell them at once. Oukej?" she says, looking up at him then, her thumb stroking him under his ear.
LukasAt her age, Irena seems to shoot up by inches with every successive blink. The girl that visited Chicago in the winter was still enough of a girl that Lukas picked her up a time or two when she seemed to be eyeing Emanek and his piggyback rides with envy. The near-adolescent that flings the door open now and hugs Danicka,
comfortingly,
isn't someone Lukas would dream of treating like a child now. When Irena comes to hug him, he puts his arms tightly around the girl, squeezing her, and is shocked to discover she doesn't fall too short of Danicka's stature against his body.
Inside there are greetings, there are muted smiles. There are no empty pleasantries. They are family now; they became a family over Christmas. Lukas hugs Sarka for a long moment, tightly, because it was her brother too. And he ruffles Emanek's hair, because Emanek, at least, is still young enough to be treated like the child he is.
While Danicka greets her father, Lukas mentions to Sarka that they met her adult children in Prague. And her twin sister, and her twin's only son. They're all doing well, Lukas says. And then, something he hopes Sarka will take as a compliment:
I could see a little of you in your sister, and your sister in you. I was glad to meet her.
Then Miloslav is there. And there's something sad in Lukas's eyes as they shake hands. He calls him Mr. Musil, like he always does. Then he hugs him, too, briefly and a little awkwardly.
Later, Lukas can see his mate and her sister speaking to their father. He watches through the kitchen window until Miloslav bends on himself, and then he looks away. The moment is too private. He turns to find Irca there, regarding him with a startlingly astute eye. She's been waiting to speak to him alone; comes a little closer to say what she says.
It's in his throat, almost on his tongue, to tell this young almost-wolf the truth of it. That she should be glad he's dead. She should be glad because he deserved to die, because no one should take his own blood to the brink of death over and over without it being done back to him. That she should be proud of her aunt for doing what she did and protecting them all.
He doesn't say it, though. She is still so young. And besides; it is Danicka's story to tell or not. Her secret to keep or release.
The corner of his mouth curls a little when Irena goes on. Something in his heart warms to hear what she calls that stone he gave her over Christmas, the toy-that-was-not-a-toy. Wolfstone. It's a good name. He hopes that spirit will stay with her even after she changes, and its obligation is done. It is good, he thinks, for an Ahroun to have spirit friends. It keeps them -- those most physical, raw, and practical of wolves -- from detaching entirely from the sacredness of their duty. The sanctity in all their souls.
"You don't have to pee on your defeated enemies," he assures Irena. "You can if you want to. But it's considered very insulting, a primitive expression of total dominance and total disdain. You only do it if you have no respect at all for that foe."
A pause. He grows more serious:
"I'm glad he's dead too."
Lukas takes the box that is entrusted to him carefully. He tucks it under his arm, holds it there while Irena, who has already received instructions from her grandfather, receives instructions from her mother as well. He's looking on with a half-smile on his face, aching a little because he can't even remember his grandparents, but he must have known them once.
A little later, Irena is waiting outside with her little bag packed and ready to go. Lukas is shifting things around in his suitcase, making room for the box. He looks up as his mate slips inside, slender in the frame of that hallway. Standing as she comes to him, he bends his head to her as she lays hers against his chest. They come together like that, quietly and privately and tenderly, his hand at her side, just barely at the edge of her growing belly.
"Oukej," he promises. His hand comes to the back of her head, cups her against his heartbeat for a moment. "Take care," he says, "and take care of your family."
A moment later they draw apart. His hand trails from her hair to her cheek. Then he changes his mind, comes closer, bends to kiss her quickly, but on the mouth. Intimate; familiar.
"Brzy nashledanou," he says, and picks up his suitcase.
Irena positively jumps up when she sees him finally emerge on the porch. They go down to the sidewalk, and Lukas explains they'll take the train from Queens to the Bronx, where they'll have a quick dinner with Lukas's parents. They haven't seen us in a while, Lukas explains as they roll their luggage down the sidewalk to the subway station, and they miss us. They know about your uncle, too. But you don't have to pretend to be sad in front of them, if you're not. And then after dinner my dad will take us to the rental car place and we'll pick up our car to go see your brother. Sound good?
It does. And so that is what they do: they clank down the New York subway systems next to each other, Lukas with a medium-sized wheeled suitcase between his knees, Irena with a small one. Anyone looking on would assume some sort of familial connection there; a father and his daughter, maybe. It's not that they resemble each other. It's something about the way they sit together, comfortable, a small unit of two. It's something about the way both of them feel different, savage, threatening in a way that nothing about their appearance or mannerisms or behavior can possibly explain.
Their subway car remains emptier than all the others. Sometimes people walk through the doors between the cars just to get away from them. Lukas doesn't seem to mind; if Irena does, he murmurs to her quietly that she'll get used to it. And that there are, and always will be, people out there who will be able to withstand their presence. Mostly their kin. Not always, though.
At Jaroslav and Marjeta's house, Lukas and Irena are both greeted with hugs. Dinner is a simple affair -- just the four of them sitting around the dinner table, which can slide open to become a much larger table and did over Thanksgiving, but remains small tonight. There's a big pot of stew. There's fresh bread and butter. There's red wine and fruit juice, and no one pressures Irena one way or the other. They talk about the garden Jaroslav is planning in the tiny backyard. They talk about the fountain Lukas put in the front of the den. Marjeta asks how Irena is doing in school, if she's still in school. Jaroslav advises that it is important to keep up on one's education, even if one is growing up in a werewolf Sept. They talk about the recipe for the stew, too, which turns out to be Jaroslav's contribution. Marjeta admits she is still, after all these years, a middling cook at best. Lukas decides they'll bring a tupperware container of leftover stew to Milos.
No one really talks much about Vladik. At one point Marjeta does mention that they've heard, and they hope Miloslav is doing all right. Lukas's father's eyebrows twitch together and upward for a moment, just a second. His wife puts her hand over his. Lukas drops his eyes to his wine, awkward; replies that Danicka is with Miloslav, and so is Sarka. Good, his father says, good.
After dinner, they have a bit of pie for dessert. And then it is time for Lukas and his young niece to go. He promises to call when they're heading back, and if Miloslav is feeling up to it perhaps they could all congregate at his house in a few days. Lukas hugs his mother while his father waits on the sidewalk with Irena. Then Irena gets a hug too. And later, at the rental car agency, there are hugs all around, albeit gruffer ones. Jaroslav helps Irena take her bag out of the back of one car and put it in the trunk of the other. She doesn't need the help anymore, truth be told. But perhaps she allows it because she's beginning to realize
she is stronger than her kin
and sometimes it helps them more than it helps her to let them do something for her.
Then they're heading north. It's well past dark already; ten thirty at night. Traffic has finally abated. Emanek is never allowed to stay up this late, and even a year ago Irena may not have been. Things are changing for her, though. Lukas doesn't urge her to nap; he tells her she can nap if she wants to, which is a different thing altogether. She has a couple of CDs she wants to play. Lukas suffers through half of it -- it's Nicki Minaj -- and then vetoes the rest. He lets her play Super Bass again before they turn it off, though.
They pass Poughkeepsie. They pass Kingston. They veer off the main thoroughfares, into the mountains, and as the night grows darker and the stars grow brighter Lukas gives Irena what might be her very first official cub lesson:
"We're going straight to the Caern tonight. Stark Falls doesn't forbid its kin from entering the Caern, but most of them don't go in unless they need to. So most of the people you meet tonight will be Garou. Hierarchy is in our instinct, and right now, your rank is very small.
"The Litany teaches us to respect and defer to those above us. It also teaches us to respect and protect those below us. Remember your place, and remember what it allows you and doesn't allow you to do. Remember what it doesn't allow those above you to do, too. Remember that while you're a cub from a good family, none of that makes you intrinsically better or worse than anyone else. Okay?"
In the dark cabin, Lukas's eyes search out Irena's for a moment. When he sees the girl understands, he nods; turns back to the road.
"Now, specifics. When you meet a new Garou, be respectful, but don't be bashful and don't cower. Call everyone Rhya; it's a term we use for those of higher rank. Be as nice as they are to you. Meet their eyes levelly. If you feel them starting to stare back at you, like really stare, don't get in a staring match. Just avert your gaze to the side -- not down -- and show them you're not here to challenge them. Let their stare roll off you.
"And don't be scared. One day you'll be a Cliath and have to fend for yourself, but I'll make sure you're strong enough to do just that when that day comes. For now, you're my niece and my ward. If you need protecting, I will protect you."
He smiles at Irca then. It breaks the weight of the moment.
"We're almost there. Are you ready?"
DanickaThe hardest part, with Irena, seems to be knowing how much to tell her, and how much to hold back, and both depend on how rapidly she changes, how long it will take her to forgive a well-meant lie. Lukas does not tell her just how much Vladislav deserved to die: that he beat Danicka within an inch of her life time and time again, that he beat her when she was pregnant at Renata's age, that he stared at her with obsessive, possessive eyes. He is right to keep these things from Irena, and not only because they are not his to tell. She is, after all, only a ten year old girl. They talk about the wolfstone instead. Primal acts of dominance and humiliation.
Irena just makes a face. She looks as though she can't imagine ever being willing to pee on someone just because she disrespects them. But at the same time, she doesn't know if it was her own spirit or the wolf's spirit that dreamt that. It might have been the part of her she can't willingly call on yet. She thinks of asking Lukas if he's ever peed on someone, but the question seems rude and gross and she doesn't really want to know.
He says he's glad, too. Irena cheats a glance at him, sharp-eyed, seeing more than she says, which is one more thing she has in common with so many others of her clan. They understand much. They do not always share it quite so readily.
After they leave, Irena seems a bit overexcited as he starts explaining the legs of their trip. She's been on the train tons of times, but always with some member of her family. She's not gone on many road trips that weren't in a twelve-seater van in Chicago. She's never been around his parents except at Christmas, and by the time they get their subway tokens she is positively vibrating without quite knowing why. She talks a little too loud, laughs a little too sharply, can't stop moving. She has the energy of a child and the beginning flickers of rage that could erupt at any moment -- it is not unheard of, though extraordinarily rare, to change so young -- and every time her teeth are bared in a laugh or as she talks, someone nearby shivers.
It helps, though she doesn't know it, that Lukas tells her she doesn't have to pretend to be sad. She doesn't feel sad. She feels eager to see Stark Falls, and her brother, and be around wolves. She is nervous about his parents and nervous about a road trip with just-Lukas, and someone stares at them on the subway because they don't look alike and they have suitcases and you hear such things on the news and he seems like such a dangerous guy. The look Irena gives him could peel paint, and Lukas has to touch her shoulder to draw her back, because she's leaning forward like she's going to lunch.
He tells her, quietly, that she'll get used to this. She can't imagine how he could be right about that. She feels like she's crawling out of her skin.
Then she remembers: one day she will.
Her hugs at the Kvasnicka household are awkward. She asks where Anezka and Daniel are, then is hotly embarrassed because she already knows they live in LA, she just forgot. She feels weird at dinner, surrounded by three adults who are family to each other by blood and only family to her by marriage, and they do things differently and they don't have a moment of prayerful silence before they eat and she feels really stupid when she starts to and she knows they wouldn't have juice on the table if it was just the three of them so she doesn't ask for a sip of wine because she's not entirely sure that's okay with Jaroslav and Marjeta, she can't remember if they saw her drink wine around Christmas or not.
The food settles her, though. The fact that the adults don't ask her stupid questions or patronize her helps. She eats ravenously, trying to be very polite about asking for more even though she will be devastated if she's told she can't have more, because she's so hungry. It delights her when Lukas compliments his father's stew and says he'd like to take some to Milos.
What startles her is that Marjeta asks if she's still in school. Yes, Irena says, the way someone older but more confused might say of course! Jaroslav says she could keep up with her education even in a sept and her eyes go to Lukas, wondering without asking about how he got educated, if he did, if he's going to make sure she keeps up her education, if it's going to be like school, but there's a frown on her face. She decides to ask later, when it's just the two of them. After all, Jaroslav might be wrong. He's kin. And she doesn't want him to be embarrassed if she asks Lukas and Lukas says he's wrong out loud and in front of everybody.
She likes Jaroslav, but oddly, she finds more comfort in Marjeta's careful manners. There are rules to manners. You follow the rules and you say certain words and that navigates you through situations even when you're not sure what to do. She doesn't find Marjeta stiff or cool at all. She is soothed by the woman's mannerisms, and copies them until she's sitting still at the table again, not kicking her legs or leaning on her elbow or interrupting people when they talk. Between her second and third serving she asks for a little bit of wine, and Marjeta is the one she asks.
Irena sees all the little frowns and glances when Vladik is mentioned. She just digs into her stew again until they change the subject.
These hugs, upon leaving, are less awkward, at least for the little girl. She thanks them both for their hospitality and says, very politely, that she hopes she will see them again soon and in good health. She tells Jaroslav that when he builds his garden she would love to be able to come visit.
By the time they are in the car and on their way, Lukas does not even have to tell her that it's okay if she naps. They are scarcely on the freeway before she's curled up, head down, sleeping off the three servings of beef and the glass of wine and the ample slice of pie. Her stomach growls as it digests while she sleeps. She yawns without waking, for nearly an hour.
Upon waking, blinking her eyes blearily and sniffing, she looks at whatever radio station he's been listening to quietly and asks if they can listen to some of her music. Like Taylor Swift. Which doesn't go over even as well as Nicki Minaj with her uncle. They go back to something else; she leans back in her seat, knees drawn up, looking at him while he drives and while he talks.
He looks at her to see if she understands, and she's frowning, and she doesn't, not entirely: "But I don't know what I'm allowed and not allowed or what they're allowed and not allowed," she says, her words riding the edge between ashamed that she doesn't know and defensive that he thought he did. She can't seem to help it; she barely seems aware of it, only that she's always on edge and it makes her so tired.
Lukas explains a little more, then. She relaxes. She isn't stupid. Eventually she nods: she understands. He tells her specifics and she nods again, noting in particular the part about being as nice as they are. No more. No less. She wrinkles her nose and frowns at the idea that they might start staring her down when she's just a kid, geez but she promises she'll try not to make them angry. Or be stupid. And then there is this slow, sinking realization:
she hadn't even thought to be scared until Lukas said not to be.
She exhales. Her nerves, jangling and raw since leaving her grandfather's house, are only slightly less rattled now. She looks out the window, says: "Yeah? I guess." He can see her reflection, though not her face: her wide eyes, her lower lip between her teeth being steadily gnawed on, rolled back and forth thoughtfully.
Miles and miles behind them, Danicka and Sarka clean up the dishes from dinner together. They are quiet. Renata has called once; Sarka has told her she'll be coming home soon. She worries for Danicka; Miloslav wept so heavily, so inconsolably, and Danicka has not been back here for years. But Emanek is sick, and Renata is about to tear her hair out from dealing with him all day. Danicka tells her to go. Go home and take care of her children. Danicka, youngest of four children -- now three -- will take care of their father.
When Sarka gets in her small compact to drive home, Danicka watches her leave, and then she locks the door. Miloslav is upstairs where he went shortly after he finished eating numbly. The house is quiet but for the ticking of the clock at the foot of the stairs. She closes her eyes for a moment and remembers the hidden things of this place: that the wall over there is newer than the others, because it was rebuilt after her mother threw her father through it. The bloodstains on the floorboards hidden by the large rug in the living room. Her blood. Her hair was sticky with it, though there were no wounds when she woke.
Danicka opens her eyes and the house is quiet. Laura is long dead, long buried. She is a memory here, and a legend in other places. Vladislav is dead, and she wonders if he will ever be anything but a curse on her lips. Monster.
Walking to the kitchen, she makes sure the back door is also locked, and the windows. The fridge is all the way closed. The dishwasher is running. She wipes a few more stray crumbs from the table. She reaches into the fridge and pulls the plate she made for her father toward the front, in case he gets up in the middle of the night and he's hungry. She washes her hands in the kitchen sink and she pulls the shades closed and
when she cannot put it off any longer,
she picks up her suitcase and starts walking upstairs. As soon as she passes the squeaky step without pressing her foot down on it, she pauses. She feels something, a twitch or a pang, that she remembered this. Then she keeps going, and her spine tenses as she passes by one of the doors. She pauses at the next, thinking that if she's quiet enough, she will be able to hear her father breathing. She can. She keeps walking, all the way back to her room.
It is as she left it. The closet doors are closed, but she knows there's nothing in them. The bed is made, but the linens are new: Sarka made sure to set it up for her, while her father was taking a nap earlier today. Those are her linens, though. That quilt is the one she used for years and years before leaving this place. There is her lamp with its rubbed-bronze pedestal. There is her nightstand, her dresser, her desk. There is the window, the curtains open and the oak tree moving slightly in the wind beyond the dark glass.
Danicka does not know how long she stands there, staring at the room. It feels like another life was lived here. Someone else went through all those things. She closes her eyes until the feeling passes.
It was her. Those are not stories. They are memories.
Across the hall there is a bathroom, not really used anymore. She has to go hunting in the hall closet for a roll of toilet paper, a towel for her hands and one for tomorrow's shower. She brushes her teeth in there and uses the bathroom, setting her toiletries out for tomorrow. She combs her hair and washes her face. Back in the bedroom of her youth, she changes into her favorite pajamas, the ones Lukas packed for her. But she doesn't get into bed. In her shorts and t-shirt, which is a tiny bit tight over her middle but not obviously yet, she walks down the hall to the door closest to the hall.
The one she always shivered to walk past, even when she knew he wasn't there. Danicka walks to it, puts her fingertips lightly on the knob, and then, with a burst of ferocity,
twists it and shoves it open. She lets the door go as it swings, staying out of the room as though she expects it all to be a lie, as though she expects to find him in there, waiting for her, coming out of the dark. To punish her for wanting him dead, for trying to have him killed, for leaving him, for never loving him enough.
The room is black. He didn't live here. Not for a very long time. The bed is stripped. The closet is empty. It's not storage, though; Vladislav would have been enraged if their father had stepped into that territory without his permission, much less turned it into a place for boxes and holiday decorations.
Danicka stands at the threshhold, staring into that cold, empty darkness. Then she steps into it. And after another moment, as her eyes adjust, she reaches back and closes the door behind her. She stands alone, her feet cold on the bare floorboards, looking at her brother's old furniture.
"I hate you," she whispers. "And I'm glad you're dead, you worthless, miserable fuck."
It seems there should be more. A litany of his sins against her and their father. A promise that he won't hurt anyone ever again. A boast that he underestimated her and it got him killed. It seems she would have more to say to him, after everything.
But there isn't.
Danicka gathers saliva in her mouth and spits it on the floor of his first territory, and now the last one his spirit could linger in. When she turns around, she doesn't feel a chill up her back warning her that he's behind her. She walks out the door, and out of respect to her father, closes it behind her. Down the hall a few paces she pauses again to listen, making sure her father is still resting. And continues on to her own room. She reclaims that, too, and finds that climbing into bed and laying down as she pulls the covers over herself is familiar, too.
LukasThe last time Lukas was at Stark Falls, Danicka was with him. He came a Fostern, left an Adren. That role still felt new to him then. Strange and ill-suited, like shoes just a little too large. He's grown into it now, he realizes. It feels natural to him, as though it has always been so. This rank, these responsibilities, those duties, that burden of leadership. All of it. Even this: bringing an almost-cub here, taking her on her very first visit to a Sept. Giving her her very first introduction into a world she was quite literally born to join.
Even so, seeing her uncertain reflection in the curved glass, Lukas realizes suddenly and starkly that this is as new to him as it is to Irena. He doesn't really know how to foster a cub. It's new to him, trial and error; there are no books to read, and only one lead to follow. And even that is a faded thing: his own fostering, after all, was so long ago. Stretched over so long a time that the details of the beginning were blurry by the end.
The weight of responsibility feels more real now, a scant few years or even months before she comes fully into his warding. He wonders if he's told her enough; if he's told her too much. If he should pull over and explain more thoroughly all the laws and rituals and rules and customs. If there's some guideline somewhere to follow, some prescribed sequence of events.
There isn't, of course. And Lukas knows that. He knows, too, that no amount of lecturing or teaching will replace the lessons of simple exposure. Of keeping her with him more and more often; setting an example, letting her see. And then ask. And then, more and more, begin to stand on her own. Do.
"I know this is all very new and confusing," he says quietly, a little later. "It was the same for me, when I was just a little older than you. But try to be patient and watchful. Try to learn not just from what I tell you but what I do. Watch and listen. This is only your first time in a Caern, amongst werewolves who aren't your family, and it's bound to be overwhelming. But you'll be all right."
The car stops. They're at a gate; the sort that closes off recreation areas in national parks after dark. The booth is still manned, though, nevermind that it's well past midnight now. And there are no signs, no indications of what lies beyond the gate. A beardless young man in a park ranger uniform
who smells faintly but unmistakably of Shadow Lord blood
looks out at them as they pull up. Lukas rolls down the window, and there's a brief conversation, and then they're waved on. A kinsman, he explains to Irena as they leave the gate and its tollbooth behind. A preliminary guardian of sorts, warding off everything beyond his gate to the general human population. He works for the national park service, but then -- around these parts, the national park service works for the Sept.
Another mile or two, and then it's time to leave the car behind. They park in a dirt lot. Trails lead away from it. There are no signs anywhere. Lukas pops the trunk and opens his suitcase, picking out some bare necessities: toothbrush, washcloth, toothpaste, change of clothes. He puts it into a backpack, adds a similar set of necessities from Irena's bag, and then zips both and closes the trunk.
"Tomorrow we'll go to the kin village, maybe stay at my old mentor's house there if he has room for us. If he doesn't, we'll get a couple rooms at the motel. But tonight, we'll stay in the Caern. There's a cabin in there for the cubs and the guardians, and anyone else who doesn't have a place of their own."
He shoulders the bag. And then -- because she really is still just a little girl, just a pup -- he holds his hand out to Irena, if she wants to take it. They walk into the forest.
DanickaHe tells her he knows it's new. It's confusing. It's a lot. And she looks around at him again, her eyes plaintive, because everyone keeps asking her to be patient. She's certain that sooner or later she's going to run out, and then she'll never be patient again. Ever. Evereverever. Then where will she be? But she likes that he thinks she'll be okay. She exhales and she nods, and
her eyes are glittering when she sees the ranger. She can almost smell him, but not really. He's just... compelling, in a way. Not with attraction or anything like that. Irena simply stares at him, because he is not just kin but also a stranger, and even as they drive past the gate she thinks that now she's never, ever going to forget his face. It's a strange feeling. She doesn't mention it.
Irena's bag is just a backpack itself. Lukas throws a few items into his own pack, but a few items is all Irena brought. She slings it onto her shoulder, then, after a moment of thought, puts her other arm through the other strap as well. She moves from foot to foot, anxious but also just working blood back into her legs, and holds onto the straps of her backpack instead of her uncle's hand.
"What about Milos?" she asks. "Does that mean he stays at that cabin? Are we going to see him now?"
LukasQuietly, Lukas swells a little with pride when the girl-pup shoulders her own bag; holds onto the straps instead of his hand. He says nothing of it. He smiles at her, though, turning to lead the way down those unmarked trails.
"Unless they've changed things since I was here last," Lukas doesn't sound like he expects such a thing, "all the cubs stay in the cabin, including Milos. But I don't know if we'll see him right now, or maybe a little later. It depends on what his mentor has him doing tonight. He might be learning to guard the Caern with the guardian pack. He might be learning to bargain with spirits that only come out at night.
"Or," he glances over his shoulder with a smile, "he might be there, and you can say hi to him before you sleep tonight."
The trail has diminished to nothing. Or perhaps they've turned off the trail. They're walking through increasingly dense forest now, wading through undergrowth, ducking under branches, clambering over the rocks, fallen tree-trunks. Soon enough the terrain begins to slope gradually, and then relentlessly, upward. Lukas would never push Irena's sister this way, let alone her younger brother -- but he climbs, and he glances over his shoulder now and then to see that Irena is following. He does not carry her.
At the top, even Lukas is breathing harder. He swings the pack down from his back and sets it down for a moment. "We can rest a little here," he says. "We're almost at the edge of the bawn, and the Guardians will likely meet us there."
-- which is when he realizes Irena might not know what a bawn is. Or what a Caern is, even. So he explains, standing there in the darkness, surrounded by the rustling of trees and the quiet hush of nocturnal wildlife: explains how a Caern is like a nerve center of the world they, the Garou, were born to protect. A precious wellspring where the spirit world is still close to the physical; where impure things can be made pure again; where damaged and broken things can be made strong. Explains how a Caern is, at its core, a mighty spirit in its seat of power, around which the Garou have built their society and Septs.
He explains the structure of a typical Caern, too. The heart of the caern. The assembly area, where wolves gather under the full moon for moots -- one of which she'll witness in a few days' time. The shrines to the totems, in most Caerns. Living areas, in some Caerns. The challenge ring. The graves of the fallen. And the territory, the physical sprawl of the Caern, patrolled by the Garou that guard it: the bawn, which they are approaching.
They've caught their breaths. And so he lifts his backpack, shoulders it, and starts to walk again. Not thirty paces later, Irena's uncle stops in mid-stride, his head turning to a sound she can't hear.
Then she does hear something. A chuffing to the right, and very close. The beast that steps out of the shadows might just be the largest wolf she has ever, ever seen, twice as big, three times as big as the wolves in the zoo. It's not a wolf at all. It's a Garou in its near-wolf form, yellow-eyed, bristling as it growls at them.
Irena"I hope I see him," is all Irena says, and
though she doesn't mean for it to happen, it's a reminder of why they're here. What Danicka lost. How different it is from what Irena has. She's hiking along, and though the trail even winds Lukas near the end, she is...well. A ten year old. She wears out her little brother, her big sister, her mother. Irena clambers along beside Lukas, sometimes darting ahead of him, staying just barely within eyesight, then hanging around on a rock or log to wait a few moments for him before hopping up again. She finds a stick that she swishes along the path with her, a bit too noisily, but it's a very good stick. When she lags behind it's more for curiosity's sake than weariness.
If she were a four-legged pup and not a two-legged one, she would be sniffing everything. As it is, she only sniffs some of the things she finds. And she talks. Wehn she should be out of breath -- and even when she is -- she talks. She asks Lukas if he smells that, and if he does, what it is, and does it always smell like that or only this time of year? What's his favorite time of year? Why isn't it winter when that's when his birthday is? Her favorite time of year is summer and that's when her birthday is. She thinks she's getting a bike for her birthday because she's been wanting one but her mom worries all the time. Did Lukas have a bike when he was a kid? What's his favorite book? Why?
No. He does not carry her.
But when they stop at the top and he lowers his pack, Irena flops to sit on the ground. Her shoulders and chest are moving with her breath, but she looks more exhilirated than exhausted. She's young enough that she could work herself dizzy without quite noticing it happening, and she coughs a couple of times while she rests. She looks at the sky. She knows what a Guardian is, at least. Milos told her. She tells Lukas that. Milos told her what a Guardian is and a caern and there was one in Prague but she never went there.
She pauses for breath then, and then scoots over nearer to him. "But you should tell me about this one cuz he said they're all different."
He does. And it is different. Irena smiles a few times. They pick up their backpacks again and are greeted by the Guardians. Irena hangs back. She's quiet now, since their rest. She is also standing up very straight. When the beast comes out of the dark, Irena manages not to let out a yelp that would sound very much like a puppy running for cover, but she does flinch away, then scrambles a step or two back. There is no sense that the burgeoning rage in her is enough to even consider snarling back at the threat. Without even thinking her hand is grabbing at Lukas's, clenching hard, palms sweating.
Lukas"You will," Lukas reassures her. "We came here to see him."
And then they climb. And she chatters. Good god, she chatters. She asks about everything -- he answers only half her questions, not because he doesn't want to but because he can't keep up. He smells that. He doesn't know what it is. He likes spring. He likes spring because that's when everything comes alive, and plus it reminds him of her youngest aunt. He's quite honest about that. He doesn't get to answer the bike question, but he does answer the book question: he had a lot of favorites. He loved [u]the Hatchet[/u]; it made him want to get a hatchet from Home Depot and live in the wild. He didn't like [u]A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver[/u] when he was little, but now he loves it. He really liked the Prydain Chronicles.
At the top he rests a while and she sits. He tells her about this Caern. They walk into the darkness, past some invisible and amorphous boundary, and
they are challenged by a Guardian.
Irena's hand finds Lukas's. His grip is warm and strong, palms dry. He glances down at her, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. "He's only asking who we are," he murmurs. Then he takes a step forward, putting himself notquitebutalmost in front of Irena. "I'm Wyrmbreaker, Cold-Victory, Adren and Ahroun of Thunder, Alpha under Perun. Ask your Warder. Ask your fellow Guardians, Jagged Sky and Morning's Ruin. Ask Promised-Rain-rhya, who gave me my first name, or Iceriver-rhya, who gave me my second. They'll confirm I am who I say."
His tone is level. His gaze is steady; unchallenging and unflagging all at once. His hand is firm on Irena's, but he doesn't clench her hand back. The direwolf steps closer, circles, sniffs, and then whuffs in Irena's direction.
Lukas answer: "This is Irena, my niece. Her brother is known to you: Milos [CUBNAMEHERE], a cub Theurge. She's here to see him."
And another pace closer. The wolf is near enough now that Irena could touch it with no effort at all. It pushes its face close to hers, wet nose moving as it sniffs her, yellow eyes gleaming. Then it lowers its head. Growling roughly, it bumps the top of its skull against the girl's midsection, a solid, playful shove that likely nearly knocks her over. Then it passes her by,
shrinks to the size of the wolfspirit her dreams share a life with,
disappears into the darkness.
Lukas smiles down at her. "He said his name is One Broken Claw. He only finished his Fostering last month. Most of the fresh Cliaths strike out with a new pack right after their Rite of Passage, but some of them stay with the Caern to get a little more experience. Most of them become apprentices to the Caern officers. Becoming a Guardian is a popular choice, especially amongst the young Ahrouns.
"He said he was happy to meet a new cub. He said you should come back to serve as Guardian when you've passed your Rite."
Lukas lets go Irena's hand, then, and gives her a gentle nudge forward. "Come on. I'll take you to the cub cabin. And we'll see if Milos is there."
IrenaSo: they are permitted into the bawn. There isn't much to say about their entrance. Irena did not take any of that very well, and when Lukas smiled at her and began telling her about the Guardian, his name, she was sliding her hand out of his and stepping away. She simply kept walking, hands on her backpack straps and eyes on the path. This time closer to Lukas than before. This time without chattering. He tells her what One Broken Claw said. Her little jaw clenches a bit, and she says nothing.
They are in luck, and her brother is at the cabin. He's heard that they're coming and is outside the door to greet them. Not too eagerly, and Milos is quiet in all things, but he can't help but smile when Irena breaks into a run and throws her arms around him. They hug; he swings her slightly side to side before easing out of her arms and stepping back again. By then Lukas has caught up. The cabin is briefly empty, the Guardians patrolling. There aren't many cubs right now, Milos explains, and no others that are Theurges.
He gets his Tupperware of stew and his box and his eyes light up. He almost stumbles over his thanks to Lukas for bringing it, for thinking of him at dinner. Irena is chattering again, but she skims over the things that make her the most angry, the most uncomfortable: their uncle's death, her weird feeling about being so far from home, the whole thing with the Guardian. Irena is sitting very close to him on his cot, as though she physically needs to be nearer to her blood-kin at the moment. There is a chair for Lukas; the cabin's bunks are close enough together that sitting on one would have his head and shoulders both thumping against the understide of the one above.
They only talk for a while. Irena scoots away without being told when there are footsteps nearing outside. It is late now, very late, but Milos is in the middle of his waking hours. Irena is still relegated to a very human schedule, and she is exhausted. There are others who share this cabin, though some are patrolling and will be well past dawn. Some of them slip inside. Milos gives his bunk to Lukas, he insists, but he shares a neighboring one with Irena. There honestly just isn't enough room otherwise.
In the middle of the night, in the wee hours, there is Milos in his wolf-form, curled up on the floor in front of the bed his sister is sprawled on. He lifts his head at a stray noise, and laps at his jaws, and then lays his head back down, tail thumping once. Irena, at least, does not snore.
Morning comes, and with it: returning Guardians, returning cubs. A couple of them are bloodstained and jovial, having to remember how to quiet down when they realize there are people sleeping. More than a couple sniff in the direction of Irena. She still smells like kinfolk, she smells like a stranger, she doesn't have Lukas's rage or rank to make them cower. Milos, growing sleepy, watches them carefully but does not snarl or bark or get to his feet. He greets them, the two cubs fresh from sparring, as they start to get ready for bed. Irena wakes briefly and stares at everyone, then some of them start to take clothes off and her eyes open wide in horror and she clenches them shut again, burying her face in the pillow. She thinks she is very sneaky.
The other cubs have to bite their lips to keep from laughing.
One Broken Claw comes back, too. He's no longer hispo-formed. Irena's head is buried and she would not recognize him even he were, but he recognizes her. Gives an upward nod to Lukas, if the Adren is awake then. He chugs water from an earthen jug and sets it down, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, faceplants into a bunk, and does not move again.
Real morning comes later. Irena is, surprisingly, coming back inside from a trip out with a female cub who has close-shorn dark hair and vivid amber-colored eyes. They are whispering. Irena is telling her thank you,
and maybe later she will admit to her uncle that she didn't even want to ask her brother where she could go to the bathroom out here. The cub's name is Nightbloom. And yeah, she definitely hates sharing the cabin with mostly boys sometimes. Not always. She shrugs: sometimes they hate sharing with her and with Walks Like Moonlight, another of the young Guardians.
LukasLukas senses, after that encounter with the guardian, that Irena is not happy. She's angry. She walks ahead, and he follows her quietly, giving her the space she seems to need.
And so they walk the rest of the way. Through the forest, into the hills. The sound of running water is always with them. Stark Falls doesn't have the obvious concentric layout of so many other Caerns. There's no apparent center of population at all. Sometimes they pass a hut, a building, a cabin. Sometimes they cross a stream, see a lake. All at once they seem to simply happen upon the cub cabin -- which is large, log-sided, simple.
Milos is there to greet them. He hugs his sister. Lukas doesn't hug the cub, though something in his eyes says he wants to. He clasps his forearm instead, grips his shoulder. You look good, Lukas says. Grown up.
The cub cabin has little privacy, and no matter the hour, someone's sleeping, someone's awake, someone's getting ready to be one or the other. People come in and out, observing whatever cycle they happen to be on. Sometimes someone cooks. There's a simple grill outside -- one of those standalone steel boxes that one finds at public beaches and picnic grounds, where you dump charcoal in the bottom and grill hot dogs up top. There are also shared shelves, cupboards, where people have stored crackers and fruit and snacks and ramen. There's no fridge, though. Almost all the meat devoured here is caught fresh. Sometimes it's not cooked at all.
Morning comes. Irena comes back in as Lukas is opening his eyes. She seems to have made a friend, he notes. There's a quirky grin on his face as he sits up,
too large, too big, too old for this cabin where the average age appears to hover around sixteen. It takes him back, though. He scrubs his hands over his face, rubbing himself awake, and then with no effort at all remembers that one of the lower cabinets carries washbasins, and there's a hand-pumped water spigot outside. He gets a basin of ice-cold water, washes his face and brushes his teeth, and then carries another basin in for Irena.
While she washes, Lukas raids the cupboards. The sun is coming in one of the cabin's few windows. It hits his back where he sits on one of the cabin's simple chairs; cascades over his shoulders and casts his shadow to the floor. He's eating a bowl of cereal. There's no milk, so he eats it dry by the handful, crunching, his feet bare, his jeans unbelted and his t-shirt plain and white -- the sort of thing he'd wear as an undershirt in the city.
He talks to Milos as he breaks his fast. He mentions -- plainly, simply, with little frills -- that he's proud of the way Milos handled his uncle's death. He mentions that they have a cub on the way, too, he and Danicka. It's said just like that, just as plainly and simply: Danicka and I have a cub on the way. You're the first to know because Danicka wanted to tell everyone else at the same time. You can tell your sister if you want, though. A wry smile, If you think she can keep a secret.
Irena is coming over by then, hungry. And Lukas pours the last of the cereal straight from the bowl to his mouth, crunching, swallowing, going to riffle around the communal shelves for more food.
They spend the day in the Sept. By day it's a little easier to see the lay of the land -- to see the dirt paths that wind through the trees, connecting the disparate pieces of the Caern. Lukas takes Irena to see the empty assembly area where the Sept gathers to discuss matters of peace and war. He takes her to see the challenge circle -- a patch of empty, dark earth that has been plowed under again and again, fed by the blood of countless showdowns. He takes her to see the graves of the heroes, where they stand quietly a while. Lukas scans the monuments. He sees a few names he recognizes from boyhood or from the last time he was here, and
he's a little quieter, a little more introspective, as he takes her to see the shrines to the totems and the heart of the Caern. She can't cross yet. But she doesn't need to, he thinks, to feel the sanctity of the place. They say nothing there. Lukas sits on the ground a while, cross-legged, feeling the subtle rhythms of the spirits.
Then they go to the lake and the falls that this place was named for. It's past noon by then. They're getting hungry again, so they come back to the cub cabin. All through the day they've seen others, but never large crowds, never more than one or two or three wolves. For the most part, they were observed curiously and sometimes greeted; sometimes ignored by Garou intent on their own tasks, their own duties, their own damn problems, nobody got time for that.
Coming back to the cabin, though, they're surprised by a gathering of nearly a dozen wolves. Cubs and Cliaths, but older wolves too, Fosterns and Adrens, one Athro. Someone's brought back a deer. They've skinned it and gutted it, and now someone else, talented with a butcher's blade, is carving it into thick steaks. They'll dry some of it into jerky. Stew some of it over the next few days. Right now, though, the best of the meat is going straight on the grill, seasoned with nothing but a handful of salt and pepper. Or, sometimes, straight into the maws of the wolves, bloody and raw.
The atmosphere is almost festive. The Garou eat sitting in the dirt or the grass. Sometimes someone slips into wolfskin, goes to all fours to gnaw on a particularly marrowful bone. Sometimes there are growls, ears pinning back, warning glares, but a fight never actually breaks out today. When everyone's stuffed someone suddenly remembers the kin, and the two hindlegs are found and wrapped in hide, bound in twine to be taken out to the kin village.
"We can take it," Lukas says. "We're going that way anyway. I wanted to pay Iceriver-rhya and Promised-Rain-rhya a visit before we head back to New York."
Which is a quiet signal to Irena that -- entirely too soon -- they're going to be leaving Stark Falls.
IrenaChildren adapt as quickly as werewolves heal. Maybe even faster.
When Lukas first met Milos, namesake of his grandfather, he was taut with the energy that comes before a wolf's first change. He was terrified of what it would mean when he did: going to his uncle. He was frightened of becoming like him. He was frightened of what he might be forced to do. Lukas was not there with Milos did change, but he's heard through Irena's journal that it was painful for him; little more than that. It seems that it also burnt that anxiety out of him, and the final death of Vladislav has been the final char. There is a smoky gray underlying Milos's lively blue eyes, and he is growing into his cubhood well.
Lukas feels it when they clasp arms in the middle of the night; there's a corded strength growing there. And he sees it in the morning, when after a few scant hours of sleep Milos gets up without complaint and goes out into the dawn's first light to set out water for sanctification. It's there at the way Nightbloom, a Galliard, crouches next to him while he pours dawn's water down the blade of the athame Danicka gave him at Christmas, listening intently as Milos explains. At that moment Lukas is washing his face and arms, and can't hear, but he can see the respect in the Galliard's face.
He comes over to eat some cold stew, offering some to Lukas, though he has cereal. The time of day matters not at all to him; if he doesn't eat the stew it will go bad soon. It was a gift, and he intends to enjoy it in the presence of those who brought it. Lukas tells him that he's proud, and Milos gives a small, tight smile of darkened appreciation; it feels odd, though he doesn't say it, to be praised for turning his back on his uncle, even if this subtle, political way. But he understands, and though Lukas isn't the first to have said it, he's glad to hear it from family.
But his eyes pop and his brows lift when Lukas offhanded tells him that Danicka is going to have a child. He doesn't stammer or go red or anything. He just laughs, dry and pleased, but it becomes the sort of rare, full laugh that people at Stark Falls rarely hear from the young Theurge: Have you met her? he wants to know, of Irena, when Lukas asks if he thinks she can keep a secret.
Milos can, though. And he does. Irena is frowning when she comes up, convinced she's being laughed about, and Milos simply and easily tells her that of course she was: Lukas thought that if Milos shared his stew, Irena surely wouldn't hog all of it. Oh, she's annoyed then. She munches glaringly on dry cereal. Milos waits until Lukas gets up to get more food and smirks at her, sharing some of the stew anyway.
As the sun climbs, the temperature does as well. Irena wears a pair of denim shorts that used to be a pair of jeans until you could see two inches of ankle at the hem and her mother cut them off just above the knee. She wears a plain green t-shirt and her hair is long and uncombed. She looks like an extraordinarily young cub, around here, but she smells like a pup. She stays close to the wolves she knows: Lukas, mainly, because Milos has to go report to his mentor. He is taking said mentor a jar of the dawn-drenched water, and says he doesn't know when he'll be back.
"She wants to meet you," he tells them, "both of you, but she's on a vision right now." He holds up the jar, as though this somehow has something to do with that, and then he's off, to hike up to some godforsaken summit where he will pour purified water into the cracked, dried lips of an older Theurge and listen to what she says then. She keeps telling him that to bind a spirit lawfully, you must understand the spirit. In order to understand a spirit, you must live with the spirit.
Even if that spirit lives in sunlight, and wind, and exposure, and hunger.
Irena is more like she was on the way up to the bawn's edge. She wanders around, always within eyesight, within earshot, and often within arm's reach. She talks less but she looks at more. It seems she hardly even blinks. Her footsteps skirt the edge of the challenge circle but she never crosses its outer line. She looks from monuments to Lukas's face and back again, and frowns, and backs away from them. He takes her to the shrines and she looks at all of them, every one, and since he hasn't said anything since the graves, she purses her lips tight and instead eagerly points and pantomimes to get his attention when she recognizes one.
That's for CROW, she mouths, but he's very quiet, and she gives up on showing him how much she knows, then crouches down at the edges. She has the uncanny balance of so many young, lean ones: her feet flat on the ground, her knees to her chest, her arms resting atop those knees, chin on arms, small mouth droll and contemplative.
But not for long.
It took Lukas years to be as attuned to the spirits as he is. Maybe he remembers being younger, being her age, or even just after his first Change. Milos picked up talking to spirits almost instantly; it is not hard to imagine Irena chasing down some of them later, yelling COME BACK I'M NOT GONNA HURT YOU.
At least at first.
She gets restless, and she bounces a little, and she stands up and she fidgets until Lukas takes her out of that place again. She is still caught off guard when they get back to the cabin. There's a lot of them, suddenly, and more rage in one spot than she's ever felt. Her eyes are wide. She doesn't look disgusted or distressed at the deer carcass or the blood on the ground, just... stunned and overwhelmed, at first. She watches the butcher for a while, as though entranced, or maybe just because it's something that almost makes sense to her. Her nose itches from the coppery tang in the air.
When she sneezes, and several people laugh, she's embarrassed, but she laughs, too, wiping the back of her wrist over her face. Not far from where she stands, a human-skinned wolf drops suddenly to another form, gnawing eagerly on a bone. She stares at that, too, right up to the point of rudeness, and then looks away at a snarl across the way, her hair swinging outward from her turn.
A little bit of time goes by. She ventures out only a couple of times, but then returns to Lukas's side, as though soaking up a sense of comfort and stability before exploring again. She sees Nightbloom and bounds over, nearly slipping and skidding in a patch of blood-wet grass, but she catches herself nimbly. Nightbloom's hands are covered in red from rubbing salt into thin strips of meat. They talk a bit about how to make jerky. Irena asks if it's better when it's not from the grocery store. Nightbloom shrugs: Tastes better. Still makes your breath nasty.
Irena wants her own steak but shares Lukas's instead, since it is about the size of her face to begin with. It is juicy, and it is the freshest meat she has ever had, and as she tears into it with blunt teeth gripping and incisors ripping, he can see the voracious gleam of a hunter in her eye. Someone comments nearby: pup's got a good appetite and though her mouth is full, she grins, chewing as she nods.
Many of the younger wolves are careful around Irena. She's not a cub yet, and they are only just learning their own strength, their own limitations, their own control. The older ones, experienced Cliaths and elder Garou alike, have an easier time. They see her for what she is: not a version of their own little sibling, not a kinswoman, not younger form of themselves, but a puppy. On one of her forays into the group, away from clinging to Lukas's side, she ends up mere inches from a glaring contest between two Cliaths and she inches back, eyes wide. An Adren, hulking and scarred, grunts loudly, to get their attention. They glower once last time at each other. Irena smiles at the Adren, who mutters stupid kids and lumbers away. Her crest falls, and then her brow furrows, and she heads back to Lukas to see if he has water.
Everyone is stuffed and the sun is still up, still warming the ground. Irena is lazing in a patch of grass, dozing, not feeling 'safe' so much as 'safe enough', plucking at a couple of weeds. She perks faintly when she hears Lukas's voice say 'we', glancing her eyes over. She looks disappointed, a little, but relieved, too. She exhales and stretches, clambering to her feet without brushing herself off. Nightbloom is gone now anyway, but Milos has come back and is sitting quietly with the two male cubs that came in last night, eating their -- compared to Lukas's -- small portion of the deer. He has a clump of something grisly beside him: sinew and a few slivers of bone, some offal that no one else claimed. Nothing much. Obviously the highest in station of the wolves who brought it down got the heart. Milos just asks for what most wolves see as trash.
Hearing that they're leaving he comes over, and he decides to walk with them some of the way. While Irena is inside getting her backpack, Milos takes him aside:
"She gave me a message for you," he says. "It was hard to understand her -- some of it was Polish, I think. But she said to tell you: you have two sisters. one argent, one crimson. they were not always your sisters. they will not always be. cherish them equally, or lose them both, for they are as bound to each other as you are to --"
Milos shakes his head. "I think she was saying sunlight? Or that they're bound to each other like you are to them? I'm really sorry, I need to learn more Polish." He looks sincerely distressed that he can't even relay an Adren Theurge's fortune-cookie correctly or in whole. Irena hops down the steps of the cub cabin toward them, giving Milos a hug to his side. He pats her shoulder, and -- since there's no one around right now -- he and Lukas hug briefly, too.
"You ready?" brother asks sister.
"Yeah," she says, tiredly.
"Iceriver-rhya and Promise Rain-rhya are very important," Milos tells her. "You should clean the meat out from between your teeth and comb your hair before you meet them."
Irena claps a hand over her mouth and vanishes inside again. Whether Lukas takes advantage of it or not, Milos and he have another few moments of privacy. In the end, though, it's simply time to go. Irena hugs her brother again. Milos waves them off, and returns to the lingering festivities. There's a fire now. Someone is starting to tell a story.
Irena looks up at Lukas and smiles toothily. "Clean?" she asks. And she is. At least mostly.
Lukas[PLEASE BE KIND KAHSEENO]
Dice: 3 d10 TN9 (6, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )
LukasIt doesn't escape Lukas's notice that Milos already has friends amongst the cubs. Other cubs that sit with him, that eat beside him, that listen when he speaks. It doesn't escape his notice, either, that Milos takes the least of the kill.
That the young Theurge is bright and talented goes without saying. But more than that, he's intelligent. He's sharp. He's mature and he sees very far ahead. He's canny and keen, very nearly cunning. Lukas -- surely one of the more calculated and controlled of Ahrouns -- didn't have nearly that level of insight or foresight when he was a cub. He didn't have a pack when he left Stark Falls. He followed Edward Bellamonte around for years before he opened his eyes to that Fang's shortcomings, and how he would never, ever be the leader Lukas wanted him to be.
Lukas is proud of Milos. He is happy for him. He is also, if he's honest with himself, glad that Milos is growing up here, in Stark Falls. He's glad Milos was never twisted by Vladik, and never will be now.
The message from Milos's mentor is puzzling, to say the least. It doesn't make a lot of sense to Lukas. His immediate thought, flaring surprise into his eyes, is of Red Vengeance. Silver Truth. A moment later he thinks of Katherine Bellamonte and Sinclair. It troubles him, those words. They sound like a warning.
"Thank your mentor for me," he says to Milos. "I'll reflect on what she's said."
Not much left, after that. The sun is starting to go into the west. The afternoon is getting late. Irena goes to brush her teeth, and Lukas checks his backpack again. They bid Milos goodbye, and the young Theurge goes back to his Sept,
his Sept, Lukas thinks with a pang, because once upon a time this was Lukas's Sept too, but no more. Now he's a stranger here; a guest. Milos, though: he looks right here. Like he belongs. Like he might stay, even after his Fostering is complete. Lukas is glad of that. He hopes Milos stays. Stark Falls is old, but it has dwindled in recent years. It could use the sort of wolf Milos is fast becoming.
"Clean," Lukas assures Irena. And they leave, the Adren and the pup. At the edge of the bawn they feel eyes on them -- some unseen Guardian somewhere marking their departure.
It's almost odd, getting back into the rental car. The mundane, bland smells in there; the smoothness of plastic and metal. There's a different kinsman guarding the gate. He waves at them as they pass. Leaving, Lukas takes a turn they hadn't taken on the way here; it leads them to a tiny village hidden in the mountains.
There's a visitor's center here full of maps and guides. There's a gift shop attached. There are small businesses, and gas stations, and a post office. The kin village, it turns out, is not entirely kin at all. Driving down its single main street, Lukas points out the rusting phone booth -- a relic of a bygone age -- where once upon a time he used to call home, because he had no cell phone.
They don't stay long in the village. They make two quick stops. Iceriver isn't home, it turns out. Her mate is, though, and it's through him that they discover she's not even in the state. She's away with her pack, called to assist the New England Shadow Lords. Lukas asks her mate to give his regards to Iceriver, and to divvy up the two bundles of venison amongst the kin families.
Promised-Rain is home. He takes one look at Irena and smiles -- almost smirks -- at Lukas. Your first pupil, yes? His mate is home also, though not their adult children who have long since left the nest. Lukas brings a gift for them, something simple and plain, more a token of remembrance than anything else. They visit a little longer, sitting in the living room for a while, where Lukas tells Irena how, when he was a cub and learning from Istok, he came here once every week or two to have a proper meal and a hot bath. It reminds Promised-Rain's mate of something; she disappears into the kitchen and reappears with a mug, a heavy navy-blue thing with the Yankees logo stamped on it, that Lukas's face lights up to see.
"This was my favorite mug," he says. "I can't believe you still have it."
He hands it to Irena before they leave. At the door Promised-Rain and Lukas have a brief Adult Conversation. It's about Vladik. His heart was poisoned, Istok says, and he was poison to all he touched. I'm not surprised someone put him out of his misery.
Lukas can feel his former mentor's stare, direct and dark. He suspects Promised-Rain has his own theories about Heals-by-Pain's death. Neither of them speak much of it, though. The goodbye is wry and fond. The wolves shake hands. Istok's wife kisses Lukas on both cheeks; gives Irena a hug that likely startles the girl a little. Istok shakes Irena's hand too, then, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a smile that doesn't quite make it to his mouth. Pup, the look says, acknowledgment and fondness both.
The sun is westering, the light turning golden, as Lukas and Irena leave Stark Falls. There's a two and a half hour drive ahead of them. Lukas lets Irena put in Taylor Swift this time.
IrenaWell, her teeth are clean at least. There's still some dirt smudged into her knees and in her socks and under her fingernails. She... mostly combed her hair. In the car she starts asking questions about what Istok is like and what he was like as a teacher and so on. But she's slowing her questions down. She gives Lukas space to actually answer them all. She waves back at the kinsman at the gate, and asks Lukas if there's going to be food at Istok's as though she didn't just chow down on a quarter of a venison steak.
She's quiet in front of Iceriver's mate, and stands up very straight upon walking up to Istok's door. She is a 'pupil', which is a word she almost wrinkles her nose at but holds back. She is, even more than at Stark Falls, on her very very best behavior. She thinks about Marjeta's manners and thanks Istok's mate for everything, especially the cup of milk she brings for the girl. It takes a lot of effort for Irena to not gulp it, to not end up with a mustache, but she manages.
Leaving, she shakes Istok's hand and nervously laughs when his mate hugs her. Carrying the mug with both hands, she walks back out to the car, climbing in while Lukas says his last goodbyes. While Istok says what he does about the girl's uncle-by-blood. The pup watches from the side of the rental car, hands wrapped around the Yankees mug. First pupil. She wonders if Lukas is going to have lots of them. Wouldn't that be weird.
It's far too early for Irena to fall asleep again. So she sings along. She skips all the slow songs. She doesn't even care that almost all of them are about breakups and boys. She sings enthusiastically about never ever ever getting back together... like, ever.
Which at least is better than a baby come back please my life is empty without you ballad. So she almost has taste.
Her only other CD is an audiobook of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. So they put that in, and Irena curls up and listens. She is more silent and still now than she was even at the shrines. Her eyes stare forward, envisioning what she hears, seeing almost nothing that passes them by as Lukas drives. When they stop for some gas and the book is paused, she asks if he'll be the one who teaches her to drive. Or maybe Danicka.
She doesn't nap. They switch to some radio station Lukas likes as they get nearer to the city, and she recognizes it coming up out of the dark, gleaming. Irena has no idea she lives in one of the mightiest cities not just in the nation but in the world. She just recognizes it as her territory, even if her actual territory is quite small, even if she doesn't know the half of what Manhattan alone has to offer. And she is smiling all the rest of the way, all but leaping from the car when he drops her off at her mother's little yellow house.
Sarka, of course, asks how she was when Lukas and she take a moment. Irena mostly just cares about what she can eat. She wants to know where Eman is, but he's asleep early because of his cold, and there is roast beef and potato salad in the fridge and she can have some if she says a proper thank you and goodbye to her uncle.
Irena is beaming when she hugs Lukas around the neck, wirey and wired and smelling, still, of the wind and dirt out at Stark Falls. She gives him a fat kiss on the cheek and tells him thank you for taking her and she'll see him tomorrow and thank you again. But met and carbohydrates await her, and they are not the same as freshly killed, freshly grilled venison but her mother and sister made them, and they taste of home and her own kin. And since Renata is upstairs and her mom is talking to Lukas, no one is going to scold her for kneeling on the kitchen chair and eating with her hands.
Sarka and Lukas talk briefly, quietly at the door about Danicka. Sarka went over there today. She's okay. Miloslav is... good and bad. He sits outside a lot. It will just take time, says the woman who held her sister through multiple miscarriages, who lost her mate, though this is nothing like either of those. She can't even imagine what it feels like. She asks how Milos is doing. She smiles, firm and restraining deeper emotion, when Lukas tells her just what he saw of the cub who is swiftly becoming a man in Stark Falls. She thanks him, and gives him a gentle hug, and tells him to get back to Danicka.
She needs you more than she says, Sarka tells him.
The house in Queens looks much the same as it did yesterday when he and Irena left it. Most of the lights are off but one burning on the porch, calling him back. The curtain moves when his rental drives up. Danicka. The door opens before he gets in the little gate, but she doesn't come out. She's in pajama pants and a t-shirt, only this t-shirt is white, and it's his, and even though it was clean when she packed it, it smells more like him than her. Her hair is bound up in a messy bun when she greets him, hugging him right on the threshold, head to his chest and arms around his waist, palms to his back.
She doesn't say a word. All she does, for a while, is breathe him in.
