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Chapter Text

The Sinclair residence looked like the sort of place that could be used in an advertisement for expensive coffins. The architecture was tall, pale, and disturbingly well kept, as if the house wanted everyone to know that dust itself had been banished. 

Wednesday disliked it immediately. 

She was ushered in by a servant who smelled faintly of ironed linen. He did not speak, which Wednesday found almost tolerable since silence was a rare luxury in the presence of the Sinclair family.

The parlor stretched wide before her, decorated with glass cabinets full of curated trophies like wolf pelts, silver goblets, and framed photographs of smiling children with sharp teeth. Wednesday allowed her gaze to linger on one family portrait. In it, a younger Enid stood at the edge of the frame, her smile brittle, her hands clasped behind her back as if she had been instructed not to touch anything.

Mrs. Esther Sinclair appeared at the top of the staircase like an unwanted apparition. Her heels struck the polished wood with the confidence of someone who had spent her life believing she was never wrong. She was dressed in navy silk, her hair pulled into a rigid twist, her mouth painted in a shade of red that suggested she had eaten something recently that had begged for mercy.

“Ms. Addams,” she said, her tone already disapproving. “Thank you for coming. Though I must admit, I am surprised. You and Enid always seemed different.”

Wednesday met her gaze without blinking. “Opposites attract. In chemistry, that usually ends with combustion. In our case, it simply ended with me standing in your hallway.”

Mr. Murray Sinclair hovered behind his wife, his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped like a man waiting to apologize for being alive. He gave Wednesday an uncertain nod, the kind of gesture one made when acknowledging an executioner.

They led her into the sitting room, where a fire crackled obediently in the grate. The flames felt ornamental, not practical. Wednesday lowered herself into a chair that had clearly been chosen for discomfort, while Mrs. Sinclair sat opposite, spine stiff, eyes narrowing in judgment.

“You know why you’re here,” Esther began. “Enid has lost her way. After the gala, she disappeared, so we have sent special people to track her. They will find her, and they will bring her home.”

Wednesday allowed herself the faintest of smiles. “Hounds chasing a wolf. Poetic. Though I doubt Enid appreciates your choice of metaphor.”

Murray cleared his throat. “They are experts. Hunters of a kind. Not hunters in the unpleasant sense, of course. More like trackers. Skilled in finding those who have taken unfortunate turns.”

“Ah,” Wednesday said. “Professional abductors with a polite cover name. How reassuring.”

Esther ignored the barb. “Enid is vulnerable. This alpha state is unstable. She is dangerous to herself and to others. The longer she remains away from our supervision, the more chaos she will cause, and the more shame she will bring to our family.”

Wednesday blinked. “Shame. Always the most important member of any werewolf pack.”

The woman’s eye twitched. Wednesday thought she looked like a painting that had been stretched too far across the frame.

“I heard you once considered sending Enid to a camp designed to cure her of not being monstrous enough,” Wednesday continued. “How refreshing that you now wish to cure her of being too monstrous. Consistency must be such a burden for you.”

Murray shifted uncomfortably. Esther’s eyes flared, but she said nothing.

Wednesday tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, as if marking the beat of some invisible metronome. “Tell me,” she said at last, “has there ever been another alpha in your family?”

Esther blinked. “Another?”

“Yes. Enid’s condition is unusual, but unusual things rarely emerge without precedent. There must have been someone before her.”

For a moment, silence stretched. Murray looked at his wife, as if waiting for permission to breathe. Esther’s lips pursed.

“There are stories,” she admitted, reluctantly. “My great-great-grandmother, Celestine Sinclair. She was said to have been stronger than most, but that was long ago. Tales become exaggerated.”

Wednesday’s eyes glinted. “Exaggeration is merely truth with ambition. What happened to her?”

Esther hesitated. “She died young. In childbirth. Or so we were told.”

“Convenient,” Wednesday replied. “Alphas often die young in stories. It saves everyone else the trouble of explaining why they were outshone.”

Esther bristled. “I do not appreciate your tone.”

“And I do not appreciate your parenting style,” Wednesday said, her voice still even. “Enid deserved support, not correction. You treated her hesitation as weakness. Now you are shocked that her strength arrived without your permission.”

Murray made a sound that sounded like a choking cough, but fell silent again when his wife’s gaze cut across him.

The fire hissed as if agreeing with Wednesday.

“You mentioned special people,” she went on. “Who are they? What methods do they use?”

Esther straightened. “They are discreet. That is all you need to know.”

“I disagree. If they bring Enid back in chains, I will be forced to unchain her. If they bring her back in pieces, I will be forced to collect those pieces. Either way, your plan is inefficient. So tell me, or I will assume the worst.”

For the first time, Murray spoke without his wife’s guidance. “They are called the Fangs of Mercy. An old guild. They believe that werewolves who lose themselves can be re-centered. With the right discipline.”

“Discipline. A word that always disguises cruelty. How charming.”

Esther’s voice hardened. “They will not harm her.”

“Define harm,” Wednesday said. “Your definition and mine are unlikely to match.”

The door opened, and two strangers entered. Both wore dark coats, their collars lined with fur. Their boots tracked faint mud across the immaculate carpet, and Esther winced but did not scold them. 

That alone told Wednesday everything she needed to know.

One of the strangers, a tall woman with hair the color of ash, gave a curt nod. “We’ve traced her to the northern woods. The alpha scent is strong. She’s moving fast, but she’s not hiding. She wants to be found, even if she doesn’t know it.”

The second, a man with a scar running from his jaw to his temple, spoke with a gravelly edge. “We’ll bring her back. Whole enough.”

Wednesday stood. “Tell me where she is.”

Esther rose immediately. “Absolutely not. This is family business.”

“Then it should concern me more than anyone,” Wednesday replied. “Enid is my family. Perhaps not by blood, but certainly by choice. And unlike you, I do not abandon the choices I make.”

Esther opened her mouth, but Wednesday’s glare silenced her. Murray rubbed his temple, as if battling a headache that had lasted decades.

The two trackers exchanged a glance, measuring the small, pale girl before them. They clearly underestimated her, and that would be their first mistake.

Wednesday turned back to Esther. “You mentioned Celestine Sinclair. Do you still have anything that belonged to her?”

Esther stiffened. “Why do you ask?”

“Because blood leaves echoes, and echoes can call back what is lost. If Enid’s transformation cannot be reversed by brute force, then perhaps it can be balanced by remembrance. You want your daughter home, but I want her whole. That requires more than hunters. It requires history.”

“There is something. An heirloom. But...” Murray started.

Esther shot him a warning look. “No.”

Wednesday’s lips curved into the faintest smile. “Ah. Then I am correct. You do have something. How tiresome, when mothers lie to protect pride rather than children.”

Esther’s jaw clenched, but the girl did not give her time to protest.

“I will see it,” she said simply. “Or I will find it without you. Choose whichever option allows you to feel more in control.”

The silence that followed was so sharp it could have cut through the family portraits.

At last, Murray rose. His steps were reluctant, but his decision was clear. “Come with me,” he murmured.

Esther hissed his name like a curse, but he ignored her.

Wednesday followed him down a narrow corridor lined with faded tapestries. The air grew cooler, as though the house itself disapproved of their trespass. They reached a locked cabinet, hidden behind an unremarkable panel. Murray produced a key from his pocket with a hand that trembled faintly.

Inside the cabinet lay a small wooden box, carved with lunar phases. The wood was dark, aged, and smelled faintly of ash. He lifted the lid.

A silver heart pendant rested within, tarnished but intact. Its shape was that of a crescent moon, but the curve was jagged, as though the moon itself had been bitten.

“This belonged to Celestine,” Murray whispered. “They say it sang when she howled.”

Wednesday studied the heart pendant. She did not believe in sentimental legends, but she did believe in symbols. Symbols had power, especially over those desperate enough to cling to them.

“Perfect,” she turned, the heart pendant glinting faintly in her hand.

Behind them, Esther’s voice rang out from the hall, “You cannot take it.”

Wednesday closed the box with a decisive snap. “I already have.”

She turned on her heel and walked out of the room without waiting for Esther Sinclair’s protests. Murray hesitantly called her name once, but she did not glance back. 

Weak men had nothing to offer her except apologies, and she had no use for those.

She stepped into the night air, and the Sinclair house loomed behind her, all manicured windows and choking pride, but she refused to waste another second of attention on it. The family within had already failed Enid once; their failure no longer concerned her.

She pulled Enid’s phone from the depths of her bag. The glass was cracked, the casing scuffed, but it still held power. A single press of her finger lit the screen, and the familiar glow reflected against her pale face. She scrolled through contacts until she found the one she wanted. 

Agnes.

The call connected after only one ring.

“Wednesday?”

“I require information,” she said. “Celestine Sinclair. Enid’s great-great-great-grandmother. Find everything you can. Records, rumors, forgotten obituaries. I want details others considered irrelevant. Especially the ones they buried.”

“That’s a deep cut of family history. Why?”

“Because the living fail us,” Wednesday replied. “And the dead never lie.”

She ended the call before Agnes could answer. 

Lingering goodbyes were parasites of wasted time.

The crunch of gravel drew her attention. Someone stepped from the shadows near the drive, the pale glow of a cigarette ember flaring in the dark. It was the male hunter.

He watched her approach not with respect but with mockery. He flicked the cigarette to the ground and ground it under his boot, as though extinguishing the last spark of civility.

“Well,” he drawled, “look at this. The little girl detective.”

Wednesday halted before him, gaze steady, unblinking. “If you consider me little, then your eyesight is more impaired than I realized. Perhaps old age has dulled more than your hair.”

The man chuckled. “Sharp tongue for someone so fragile. Do you honestly believe you’ll do better than professionals? That you can handle a creature that doesn’t even know friend from foe anymore? When we find that wolf, girl, she’ll tear through you like paper. You’ll be her dinner before you can lift that sarcastic eyebrow of yours.”

He stepped closer, his breath tinged with smoke and condescension. His hand landed on her shoulder in a false gesture of familiarity, the kind reserved for dismissing someone unworthy. The pat was gentle, but the insult behind it pressed heavier than stone.

In that moment, Wednesday’s world tilted.

The touch triggered her gift, and her vision flooded.

Damp stone walls. Chains rattling against bolts sunk deep into concrete. Guttural growls echoing down corridors that smelled of despair. The “help center” was no sanctuary. It was a prison dressed in the language of rehabilitation. Werewolves dragged by collars, their claws broken, their eyes wild with pain. Children locked behind bars, forced to kneel until their spirits fractured. The sound of whips, of forced obedience, of laughter too cold to be human.

The vision burned, but it clung to her skin like rot, embedding itself in her mind until she could almost taste the copper of spilled blood.

And then, with a gasp that felt more like a hiss, she returned to herself.

The hunter’s hand was still on her shoulder, and he had no idea what she had seen.

Wednesday stared up at him, her eyes black pools of certainty.

“You,” she said, “are the real monster.”

His grin faltered just for a flicker of a second, and something behind his bravado cracked. He withdrew his hand as though burned, cursing under his breath, and retreating toward the shadows.

Wednesday adjusted her bag on her shoulder, the box heavy within it. She did not waste time watching him vanish because he was irrelevant. His guild was irrelevant. The prison they called mercy would be irrelevant once she burned it out of existence.

The only thing that mattered was Enid.

She walked down the path to the waiting road where Uncle Fester leaned against a car he just stole, grinning like a corpse with secrets. His eyes widened at the expression on her face, but he did not comment. 

Wise men knew when to fear silence.

“Ready for a little trip, kiddo?” He asked instead.

Wednesday shifted her gaze to Thing, who perched expectantly on the arm of her chair, fingers drumming a question. “You will go with the hunters,” she instructed. “Be discreet. Try not to be caught.”

She reached into her coat pocket and drew out an old black phone, its surface scarred as though it had survived crimes rather than calls.

Thing tapped rapidly, Where did you get it?

Wednesday turned her eyes to the old hunter still loitering at the Sinclair doorway.

Fester burst into laughter, clapping his hands together. “She’s following in my footsteps already. Proud moment for an uncle.”

Wednesday ignored his theatrics, her attention fixed on the two devices in her lap. She opened Enid’s cracked phone, pulled up the GPS location, and transferred the signal to the black one. The old phone blinked to life, the same glowing dot pulsing on its screen. Now the hunters could be tracked as easily as the prey they believed they controlled.

She snapped the phones shut and looked back at Thing. “Give it back to him without him noticing. Report to me whenever you can. If you are captured, gnaw your way free. If you are destroyed, I will be mildly inconvenienced.”

Thing raised a finger in the rudest possible farewell, then scuttled off across the gravel. His shape slipped into the shadows behind the hunters as they marched from the Sinclair estate. Esther’s mouth twisted into something like triumph at the sight of Wednesday remaining behind, but the girl did not so much as blink in her direction.

A familiar voice broke the tension.

“Kiddo,” Uncle Fester said, his grin wide enough to seem criminal, “you’re not gonna let them have all the fun, are you?”

Wednesday turned to him and went straight to the car, pulling the door open and closing it without a word.

They stopped at the first roadside motel just before dawn. The neon sign blinked the word Vacancy as if it were apologizing for still being alive. The walls of the room were painted beige, the universal color of despair. A floral bedspread did its best to disguise stains.

Fester flopped onto one of the beds with a delighted groan. “Ah, nothing like a place where the sheets are definitely haunted. You gonna get some shut-eye, kiddo?”

Wednesday sat in the chair by the window, her back rigid, her eyes fixed on the pulsing dot on her phone screen. “Sleep is a performance for the weak. I will wait.”

Fester snored within minutes. His laughter carried even into unconsciousness.

Wednesday listened to the hum of the vending machine outside, the distant roar of passing trucks, the faint scratching of mice in the walls. She tried to imagine Enid, somewhere out there in the dark woods, her body reshaped into something feral, her thoughts fractured by instincts that had no patience for pastel nail polish or playlists of bubblegum pop.

It was infuriating, not because Enid had changed, but because the change had been forced by circumstance rather than choice. 

She stared at the phone until her eyes burned. 

The dot had moved again.

The next night, another motel. This one reeked of disinfectant, and the wallpaper peeled like old scabs. Fester attempted to make conversation over takeout fried chicken, but Wednesday’s silence killed every attempt before it had the chance to crawl across the table.

Still, he tried. “You care about her, huh?”

Wednesday did not look up. “Care is a vulgar word. It implies affection. What I feel is responsibility. Enid has the unfortunate quality of being my friend. That makes her mine to protect. When others threaten what is mine, I respond.”

Fester chuckled. “That’s love, kiddo.”

She finally raised her eyes. “Love is a marketing term. Responsibility is accurate. Accuracy matters.”

He grinned wider. “Whatever you say. Still smells like love to me.”

Wednesday returned to silence, but her mind replayed his words like a haunting melody she could not excise.

By the third day, exhaustion had begun to gnaw at her edges. She had not closed her eyes for more than a handful of minutes. Dreams threatened whenever she blinked, so she refused to blink for long.

The dot on the GPS slowed. Enid was not fleeing anymore. She was circling, lingering near the border, like a wolf deciding where to make its den.

Thing sent updates in the form of blurry photos, mostly were claw marks in trees, torn fabric snagged on branches, or the faint glow of eyes between shadows. Enid was alive, but what else she was remained uncertain.

Wednesday’s chest ached with something unfamiliar. It was not fear; she had befriended fear long ago and made it her pet. This was different. A gnawing that demanded movement, demanded action, demanded proof that Enid still remembered her own name.

She traced the outline of the silver heart pendant hidden in her pocket. Celestine Sinclair’s legacy was an artifact of blood and moonlight, and if symbols had power, then perhaps this one could remind Enid of the human half she still carried.

The fourth motel was worse than the others. The shower dripped ceaselessly, each drop a reminder of time slipping past her. Wednesday sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the phone screen, waiting for the dot to move.

She thought of Enid’s laugh, of her hugs, of the way she had painted their dorm room walls with posters of Korean boy bands and pastel sunflowers. All those things were buried inside the creature wandering the woods, but they weren’t destroyed. 

Wednesday intended to dig them out, claw by claw, word by word, until Enid returned.

Sleep did not come, and she knew it would not come until Enid did.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and it was Agnes.

She answered without hesitation. “Report.”

“You don’t waste time, do you?” Agnes’s voice carried the rough edge of someone who had been digging too long into places she wasn’t welcome. “I went to the Sinclair house as you told me to, and I waited until they were gone, slipped inside. You wouldn’t believe what they keep locked away.”

“On the contrary,” Wednesday said. “I would. Tell me what you found.”

“Old books. Handwritten ledgers. Dusty journals that look like no one’s touched them for decades. I took what I could without being noticed. Some of it is useless, like numbers, family debts, hunting logs. But one thing stood out. A notebook. It belonged to Celestine Sinclair.”

“Describe it.”

“Leather-bound. Faded. Pages stiff, ink bleeding at the edges,” Agnes said. “Most of it’s fragmented. And honestly, I couldn’t understand all of it because half the pages are in French. But even with my limited grasp, one thing was clear: Celestine suffered. A lot.”

“Suffered how?”

Agnes hesitated. “She wrote about rage, about isolation. The words I could piece together painted her as someone unstable, unpredictable. She tried to lead, maybe even form her own circle, but it made others afraid of her strength.” The other girl continued, “The official story makes her look weak, but the pages I could follow, they don’t sound weak at all. They sound like someone clawing at the world with no one to hold her hand.”

Wednesday’s face remained calm, but her mind was already arranging the pieces with brutal precision. “History repeats itself. Enid is their shame when she is not wolf enough. She becomes their shame again when she is too much wolf. The Sinclairs value image over blood.”

Agnes cleared her throat. “She also mentioned the crescent moon piece you told me about. Sometimes she wrote like it was her anchor, sometimes like it haunted her. Either way, she called it the only thing that kept her human when her anger tried to split her apart.”

Wednesday pressed her thumb against the edge of the motel nightstand, dragging it across the chipped veneer. “I have the heart pendant.”

“Then you have what she called her tether,” Agnes replied. “The notebook makes it sound like a reminder of her humanity, even when she didn’t want to be reminded. If Enid is following her path...”

“She will not die abandoned,” Wednesday cut in.

Agnes hesitated. “There are entire passages about loneliness. About how being too different makes you prey. It’s eerie reading her words now, knowing what Enid’s going through. The family destroyed her memory so thoroughly that no one questions it. That notebook is the only piece of her voice left.”

“I want it,” Wednesday said.

“I can’t send the whole thing. Too risky.”

“Then take photographs,” She instructed. “Every page. Good quality. If I see blur, I will assume incompetence and find another informant.”

Agnes gave a short laugh. “You’re welcome, by the way. But fine. I’ll get the photos to you tonight. Just be careful, because if the Sinclairs find out...”

“They already know, they just don’t know how much I know. That is the difference between prey and predator.”

She ended the call without another word.

A few minutes later, her phone buzzed again. The first photographs appeared, grainy at first, then better as Agnes adjusted her angle. Page after page, the leather-bound notebook unfolded in fragments across her screen. Wednesday saved each image with clinical efficiency.

The motel printer was an antique, wedged against the far wall of the lobby behind a desk covered in chipped brochures and a bell that no one rang. The receptionist, a young woman not much older than her, leaned on the counter with her chin in one hand, the glow of her own phone bathing her in indifferent light.

Wednesday placed the device on the counter. “I require your printer.”

The girl barely glanced up. “If it’s working, sure. Just do it before my boss comes back.”

Permission secured, Wednesday connected the phone. The machine groaned to life, rattling as if insulted by the request, and one by one, pages began to spill out.

The receptionist scrolled her feed, oblivious, only shifting once to say, “Damn, that’s a lot of paper.”

“Sixty two pages,” she replied, her tone flat.

The girl hummed noncommittally and returned to her screen.

Wednesday gathered the thick stack of paper, its weight satisfying, and returned to her room. She locked the door, set the pile on the desk, and sat down.

When she began to sift through the stack, something unexpected caught her eye. Among the first sheets, pressed between diary pages, was a printed photograph. 

A little girl sat stiffly on a carved chair, her white dress immaculate, her dark hair tied with ribbon. Beside her was a woman whose features were elegant, dressed in a dress that spoke of wealth and social standing. Behind them stood a man, his hand resting heavily on the chair, his posture stiff with authority. Written at the bottom, in elegant French cursive: “Anniversaire de Celestine, 6 ans, 1877.”

The girl’s face was solemn, her gaze direct, as though she already understood she was being raised not as a child but as an heir.

Wednesday studied the photograph for a long moment. “A child born into a house that already looked like a mausoleum,” she whispered, then she slid the image aside, placed her hand over the first page of the diary, and began to read.

“Je sens ma peau me trahir. Mes os se déplacent sous ma chair. J’ai attendu, j’ai attendu quatorze années de patience forcée, et maintenant tout se déchire. Mes parents soupirent de soulagement, ils pensaient que j’étais stérile de nature, une honte. Mais moi, je le hais. Je hais cette démangeaison qui gratte mes os, je hais cette faim qui ne m’appartient pas. Je hais mon sang.”

Wednesday read aloud in English, “I feel my skin betraying me. My bones shift beneath my flesh. I have waited, I have waited fourteen years of forced patience, and now everything is tearing apart. My parents sigh with relief since they thought me barren of nature, a shame. But I hate it. I hate this itch that scratches at my bones, I hate this hunger that does not belong to me. I hate my blood.”

She turned the page, and the next lines sprawled angrily across the paper, the letters gouged deep into the fibers.

“Ils me regardent comme si j’étais sauvée. Moi, je sais que je suis perdue. Chaque heure me gratte, chaque souffle me mord. Je ne veux pas courir sous la lune. Je veux arracher cette lune du ciel et l’éteindre.”

“They look at me as if I have been saved, but I know I am lost. Every hour scratches at me, every breath bites. I do not want to run beneath the moon. I want to tear the moon out of the sky and extinguish it.”

She tapped the page with one finger, considering. By her counts, Celestine had been fourteen. Enid had been late too, mocked for her failure to transform. 

History was repeating in patterns too cruel to ignore.

Wednesday lifted the next sheet, her eyes narrowing as the voice of a girl long dead bled into the room.

The next page carried a new date, written larger, as though Celestine had wanted to pin the day to eternity: 1886. The handwriting shifted, still elegant but shaking with intensity.

“J’ai senti ma peau se déchirer hier soir. Les os, les griffes, la rage. J’ai pensé qu’ils allaient célébrer. Mais ils m’ont regardée comme si j’étais une bête étrangère, un monstre tombé de la forêt. Ma mère s’est couverte la bouche. Mon père a baissé les yeux. Aucun sourire. Aucun applaudissement. Juste peur.”

“I felt my skin tear last night. Bones, claws, rage. I thought they would celebrate, but they looked at me as though I were a beast from the woods, a monster fallen at their door. My mother covered her mouth. My father lowered his eyes. No smile. No applause. Only fear.”

The ink trailed where Celestine had pressed the quill too hard, blotches spreading like bruises across the page.

“Mon père a dit que je devais être envoyée loin, là-bas, dans les terres de l’autre côté de l’océan. Que j’avais de la famille aux États-Unis. Qu’ils m’avaient trouvé un mariage politique, un homme qui pourrait ‘me contenir.’ Comme si j’étais une arme qu’ils voulaient exporter.”

“My father said I must be sent away, across the ocean. That I had family in the United States. That they had arranged a political marriage, a man who could ‘contain me’, as if I were a weapon they wanted to export.”

Wednesday lowered the page, and said to herself. “A familiar solution. When you cannot kill the problem, you exile it. When you cannot cage the weapon, you sell it.”

She reached for the next sheet.

This one was stained. Dark droplets marked the paper in irregular splatters, dried into brown rust. The handwriting slanted violently, as though Celestine’s hand had been shaking. The date was scrawled halfway across the top margin: 1887.

“Le sang coule sur mes doigts même maintenant. Ils m’ont dit que je serais envoyée loin, qu’on me vendrait à un homme que je ne connais pas. Ma mère a dit que c’était pour ma survie. Mon père a dit que c’était pour leur honneur. Ils m’ont appelée malédiction. J’ai senti mes griffes sortir. Je n’ai pas réfléchi.”

“The blood runs on my fingers even now. They told me I would be sent away, sold to a man I do not know. My mother said it was for my survival. My father said it was for their honor. They called me a curse. My claws came out. I did not think.”

Her eyes scanned the next jagged lines.

“Ils sont morts avant d’avoir fini leur phrase. Leurs yeux restaient ouverts, fixés sur moi comme s’ils m’avaient connue pour la première fois. Mais il était trop tard. J’ai tué ma famille. Je n’ai plus de maison. Alors je pars. Les États-Unis m’attendent. Même seule, je préfère la solitude à leurs regards.”

“They died before finishing their sentence. Their eyes stayed open, staring at me as if they had seen me for the first time. But it was too late. I killed my family. I have no home. So I leave. The United States awaits me. Even alone, I prefer solitude to their eyes.”

The paper crinkled in her hands. The dripping shower seemed louder now, like drops of blood echoing across a century.

Wednesday set the page aside carefully, aligning it with surgical precision on the growing stack. She did not blink. “Celestine understood exile before they gave it to her.”

The next entry bore no neat date, just a scrawl pressed hard into the paper: À bord du navire. The ink was smudged as though written in haste, the salt air of the sea staining the corners of the page.

“J’ai enterré mes parents derrière la maison. Personne n’a demandé pourquoi. J’ai dit que la rage les avait pris. Personne n’a douté, personne n’a voulu toucher leurs corps. Je les ai laissés là, sous les pierres, et j’ai fermé la porte pour la dernière fois. J’ai pris l’argent, l’argenterie, l’héritage qu’ils auraient gaspillé pour m’effacer. Maintenant il est à moi.”

“I buried my parents behind the house. No one asked why. I told them rabies had taken them. No one doubted, no one wanted to touch their bodies. I left them there, beneath the stones, and I closed the door for the last time. I took the money, the silver, the inheritance they would have wasted to erase me. Now it is mine.”

The next lines slanted downward, seasick on the page.

“Le voyage est long. La mer hurle plus fort que moi. La lune se lève et je me cache sous les planches, je mords mes bras pour ne pas hurler. Personne ne sait. Personne ne doit savoir. Je n’ai plus de maison, mais j’aurai un pays.”

“The voyage is long. The sea howls louder than I do. The moon rises and I hide beneath the boards, I bite my arms to keep from howling. No one knows. No one must know. I have no home, but I will have a country.”

The ink trailed off, smeared as if Celestine’s hand had faltered. After that, the pages skipped. Whole years vanished into silence.

Then, suddenly, the handwriting shifted. The next entry was in English. The letters were practiced but stilted, as though she had forced her hand to learn a new rhythm. The date at the top: 1895.

“I write again after years of silence. The words come slower in this tongue, but I am determined. I did not think I would live long enough to change, but I have. America is not what I imagined. It is louder, dirtier, and hungrier than France ever was, but it holds me. I do not feel hunted here.”

Wednesday turned the page, the paper whispering under her fingers.

“I was not expecting to find others. A community. Wolves who came from France, from Germany, from Ireland and Scotland. All of them fled here, looking for better lives, some running from persecution, others chasing dreams. They accepted me. They saw the alpha in me, but they did not turn their eyes in fear. They cared. They listened. They did not treat me like a curse.”

The handwriting grew smoother, freer, as though years of bitterness were softening.

“For the first time, I am happy. The weight I carried is not as heavy when it is shared. They call this little place a den, but to me it is the only home I have known. They ask for my guidance. They do not fear my voice. They do not flinch at my claws. I do not feel alone.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed as she caught the next line.

“And I have found family here. The Sinclairs are not only in France. They are here too. They do not hide. They do not slink in the shadows. They show their power, their fortune, their name. It was not hard to find them.”

She placed the sheet carefully atop the stack, her fingers pale against it. The dripping shower ticked on, counting the seconds like a heart that refused to rest.

The paper had yellowed unevenly, the ink softer, as though written with calmer hands. The date at the top was 1897.

“I have found comfort where I least expected it. Not among wolves, but in a human home. They know of us. Their mother is one of ours, though her children did not inherit her curse. They live with the knowledge but without the weight. It makes them gentler, perhaps. Less hungry. Less cruel.

Her daughter is named Eleanor, though I call her Nellie. She is sweet, and she laughs easily, as if the world has not yet broken her bones. She shows me kindness without demand. She brings me tea in the afternoons, sits with me while I mend clothes, teaches me how to braid hair the way she does. I am clumsy at it, but she never laughs. She tells me stories of her neighbors, of small town scandals, of dances I never attend. She makes me feel as though the hours are not always teeth and blood.”

Wednesday turned the page slowly.

“She is funny, too. She says things with a poisoned tongue but always with warmth. She makes the days softer. I did not think softness could belong to me. I thought it would burn in my hands, but Nellie gives it to me freely.

We walk together in the fields. She talks of dresses and books, of plays she wants to see, of songs she hums without realizing. I do not tell her, but I memorize the sound.

Yet she is not free. She is married to a man I cannot stand. Denis O’Sullivan, it's his name. He is a wolf, though she is human. Her mother wanted the bloodline to continue, so she forced it. He is harsh with her, impatient with me. He sees our friendship as an insult. He does not like that she laughs more with me than with him. He calls her frivolous when she is radiant. He calls me dangerous when I have been nothing but still.

She deserves better. I would give her better, if the world allowed it.”

The page ended abruptly, the final letters pressed harder into the paper, as if Celestine had stopped herself before admitting more.

Wednesday lowered the page, her face expressionless, though the words echoed in the stale motel air.

The date at the top of the next entry was neat, written with an almost tender hand: 1899. The ink was darker, fresher, and the very shape of the words seemed lighter than the rage and grief of the earlier pages.

“I understand now. I have tried to deny it, tried to call it something else, but it is not friendship. It is love. Nellie is the first joy that has not bitten me. She is the first warmth I have not feared.

Her husband was gone for two weeks. A business trip, he said, though I know he simply wanted distance. In his absence, Nellie bloomed. We spent our days reading together, her voice carrying words sweeter than any sermon. She laughed until her cheeks turned red, and she pressed a hand over her mouth as if laughter were too precious to be given away freely. I told her she should never hide it.

We baked bread in her kitchen, covering our hands in flour until we looked like ghosts. She sang while she worked, and I pretended not to notice so she would not stop. At night we carried quilts to the fields, laying them down in the middle of her father’s sunflowers. He planted them for her when she was a girl, and she told me that Eleanor means sunflower as we lay side by side beneath the sky. Her hair was gold in the sunlight, her eyes catching every flicker of warmth.

I wanted to devour the sun for her. To keep it close so it would never leave her face.

I have never written like this before. I do not recognize my own words, but it is truth. I am happy, and I do not know how to carry it. Happiness feels heavier than rage.”

The handwriting on the next page curved slower, as though each word had been caressed.

“She gave me a gift. She said she found it at a fair, among trinkets and charms. A silver pendant, shaped as a heart. She laughed when she handed it to me, saying it was foolish, but her cheeks were red. Inside there was no photograph, no lock of hair, only a single pressed yellow petal.

She did not need to say the words. The pendant said them for her. It was her way of telling me she feels it too.

I have worn it every day since. I feel it against my skin when I change, as if it tethers me. As if her hand holds me even when the wolf claws to the surface. When I touch it, I am not only Celestine the Alpha. I am Celestine who is loved.”

The lines trailed at the bottom of the page, the ink smeared as though she had closed the notebook in haste, or in fear of being discovered.

Wednesday turned another page. The handwriting was distorted here, ink spread and warped as if the quill had trembled, or as if water had bled through. Except this was not water. The blurring was too irregular, too human. Tears.

She adjusted the page under the lamp, her expression still composed, but her hand tightened ever so slightly against the paper.

The words crawled across the page:

“He came home early. I did not hear his steps until it was too late. He saw us in the sunflowers, Nellie with her hand over mine, her hair undone, her face free. He did not shout, he only moved. He put his hands around her throat while I screamed.

I tried to stop him. I tore at him, but he struck me until the world went black. I woke hours later, blood in my mouth, my ribs broken. She was gone. The sunflowers were bent as though they bowed in mourning.

Nellie is gone. He stole the air from her. I see her face every time I close my eyes. Her father wept when he found me. He washed my wounds, fed me broth, spoke softly. Her mother would not even look at me. She said it was my fault, that I brought ruin to their house. I wanted to tell her that love is not ruin, but my voice was too broken to rise.”

Wednesday’s lips pressed into a thin line. She turned the page.

“It has been months. My body heals, but too slowly. Every scar is her name, but worse than scars, there is another weight. I carry a child. Denis' child. I never asked for this. I never wanted this. It grows inside me like a curse.

I cannot bear it. I cannot raise his heir. I cannot let my body be chained to him even in death.

I confronted him beneath the full moon, the only hour when I knew my strength would surpass his. He laughed when I told him. He said the child was not his, that he had never touched me like that, that now I carried another man’s shame.

I saw red. I thought he lied. I thought he taunted me. I felt claws split my hands before I knew I had moved. He shifted too, teeth gleaming, body bending, but one wolf is nothing against an alpha.

I killed him.

I did not wait for his bones to cool. I tore him until the soil was black, until his breath was no longer. He laughed until the end, and I do not know why. Perhaps because he won.”

The handwriting at the bottom broke apart, letters incomplete, ink dragged as if she had pressed until the quill split.

Wednesday lowered the page slowly. Her eyes fell on the silver heart pendant resting on the desk. A tether of love, turned now into a witness of grief.

She turned to the next sheet. The handwriting had grown uneven again, jagged strokes across the paper, as if the quill had been forced into motion by trembling hands.

“They know. The wolves know what I have done. Word has spread through the community. They whisper that I murdered my own, that I turned blood against blood. They call me a monster, and they are not wrong. They say when the next full moon rises, they will come for me. They will tear me down in the fields and leave my body for the crows.

I am carrying a child. Six months, perhaps. I do not know the time. My body grows heavier, slower, and I feel it gnawing at me from within. I am still in Nellie’s home, though it no longer feels like hers. Her absence chokes the walls. I sleep where she once slept, and every night I dream of her breath, stolen by hands that should have been mine to break.”

The next lines were smeared, written as though she had scrawled them in haste.

“Tonight I heard them speaking. Her parents. I lay awake and listened through the floor. Her mother’s voice was bitter, saying it was the price to pay for their bloodline, that it was necessary. She said it was what needed to be done.

Her father did not deny it.

I understand now. The child inside me is not his son’s. It is his. Nellie’s father.

The sickness has hollowed me out. My hands shake as I write. Betrayal cuts deeper than claws ever could. I cannot breathe in this house another night. I cannot look at him and know what he has done. I cannot hear her mother’s voice without wanting to tear her throat. I will take what little I have and I will run.”

The following page was written in heavier strokes, as if Celestine had pressed her entire weight into each word.

“I went to the Sinclairs. They wanted nothing to do with me. I begged. I fell to my knees in their hall and asked for nothing but a roof until this child leaves me. They looked at me as if I were rot brought in from the street, but they agreed, not out of care, but because the child is theirs. A Sinclair. That name means more to them than blood ever did.

They let me stay. Not in comfort. Not in kindness. Only because I carry what they cannot lose.”

Wednesday’s eyes moved down the page.

“The wolves did not come for me. Not once they learned I was under Sinclair walls. They may hate me, but they will not risk the wrath of this family.

So I live. I breathe. I carry. And I rot.

Pregnancy is hell. I cannot sleep. My body tears itself apart day by day. I am sick, and I grieve, and I am utterly alone. Nellie is gone, and her face follows me in every reflection, in every shadow. I speak her name to the night and no one answers.

I am not mother. I am prison.”

The next page was different. The ink was shaky, as though written by a hand drained of everything but desperation.

“It has come. The night of her arrival.

Nothing in my life has hurt like this. Not claws, not teeth, not betrayal, not grief. The pain split me apart, body and soul. I thought I would die with every breath. I thought the moon would tear me open and leave me empty.

And then she came.

I swore I would not love what grew inside me, but the moment I saw her, I broke. She is small, perfect, her eyes the blue of morning sky, the same shade Nellie’s laughter once held. I thought of her and I called her name. Eleanor. For the sunflowers. For the only joy I ever had.

I was alone. The Sinclairs left me to my pain, but I gathered strength enough to call for a maid when I could no longer stand. I begged her: lock me away before the moon takes me. Care for the baby while I am gone. Keep her safe from me.

I kissed her forehead. Her skin was soft as breath, warm as the fields in summer. I told her she was not curse, not shame. She was all that was left of what I loved.

I placed the pendant around her neck. The silver heart with its sunflower petal, Nellie’s gift. It belongs to Eleanor now. It will tether her when I cannot. It will keep her human when the blood calls too strong.

If she remembers nothing else, she will remember love.”

The handwriting faltered, trailing into silence. The rest of the page was empty.

Wednesday did not move at first, only stared at the final lines of the notebook, her pale fingers pressed against the paper, unwilling to release it even though the words had already said all they could. 

Celestine’s voice had broken off mid-breath, her story closing not with peace but with exhaustion, a life torn open and then bound together in grief, leaving behind only a child named for the woman she had loved more than her own survival.

The room felt smaller now, pressed in on all sides, as if the weight of what she had read filled the walls until there was no air left to breathe. The pendant lay heavy in her hand, colder than before, no longer an heirloom stolen from a house that hated its own blood but something else entirely, the last confession of a woman who had been forced to carve her life into secrets. 

It was not just silver shaped into a heart, it was a vow that someone had tried to preserve in metal when ink and voice had both failed, it was a promise carried through years of exile and love and death, it was a love letter pressed into her palm across more than a century.

Wednesday did not sigh, but the pendant gleamed faintly against her skin, and in the hollow space of the room, its weight spoke louder than she ever would.

Another morning rose seeping through the grimy curtains of the motel room. The stack of pages lay on the desk, Celestine’s final words pressed into silence. 

Wednesday had not slept.

Her phone buzzed once, and it was Thing.

She opened the message, and only two words flashed on the screen in Thing’s uneven typing: found her. Beneath it, a location beyond the reach of roads she knew, beyond the forests and the towns. Past the edges of Ontario, past even the last whispers of Quebec. A single dot blinked in the land of Nunavut, pressed against the frozen sea.

Enid had run far, or perhaps the wolf had carried her there, chasing something only it could hear.

Wednesday stared at the map without blinking, then she did what she had refused to do since the first day: she called her grandmother.

The phone rang longer than it should have, until finally a familiar dry voice answered. “You must be desperate.”

“I am not desperate,” Wednesday said. “I am practical. There is a difference.”

Her grandmother chuckled, a sound like brittle paper crumbling. “If you called me, child, you have abandoned pride for necessity. What do you require?”

“Transportation,” she replied. “To Nunavut. Now.”

There was no hesitation on the other end. “It will be arranged. Do not embarrass me by dying there.”

The line went dead.

Wednesday lowered the phone, her expression unchanged. She gathered the pendant, the notebook pages, and slid them into her bag. Then she went to find Fester.

He was in the diner next to the motel, eating something that looked like it had already been digested once before. When she told him, his eyes lit up with joy.

“The Arctic? That’s insane. I love it.”

“It is not insanity. It is geography.”

He slapped the counter, nearly spilling his coffee. “Come on, kiddo. I’ll take you to the airport.”

They drove in silence, the stolen car rattling across the frozen roads. Fester hummed tunelessly, his fingers twitching on the steering wheel. Wednesday kept her gaze on the window, watching the landscape flatten into pale fields and skeletal trees.

The airport in Ottawa was sprawling, all polished glass and echoing voices, the sort of place designed to make travelers feel smaller than the machines that carried them. A private hangar stood apart from the bustle, and inside it waited a plane with its nose pointed north, its body patched in places. The pilot leaned against the ladder, checking his watch, squinting at the horizon as if expecting the sky to change its mind.

Fester hauled her bag, then shoved a heavy bundle into her arms. It was enormous, thick, and covered in dark fur.

“A coat,” he announced proudly. “Synthetic fur, don’t worry.”

Wednesday looked down at the weight in her arms, then back at him.

“You’ll thank me when the cold tries to chew through your bones.”

She adjusted the coat over her arm, and after a pause, she turned to him. “You have been moderately useful.”

Fester’s grin widened. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Don’t die, kiddo.”

She gave him a single nod, then climbed the ladder into the waiting plane.

The plane lifted into the air with a shudder, its engines roaring like old beasts. Wednesday sat by the window, her bag clutched against her lap, the pendant cold against her palm. The land below spread in endless sheets of white and gray, forests thinning, rivers freezing into ribbons of glass.

Hours blurred, and she watched as the world turned to nothing but snow. White above, white below, sky and earth indistinguishable except for the faint line of horizon.

When the plane finally descended, it was toward a clearing so small it hardly deserved the name of airport. A shack, a fuel tank, a strip of cleared snow. 

Whale Cove.

The wheels touched down with a jolt, and Wednesday looked out at the emptiness, the snow blowing sideways across the ground like a warning.

The pilot opened the hatch, and cold knifed into the cabin. Wednesday pulled the coat around her shoulders and stepped down into the snow. The world was white in every direction, an ocean of frost with no end. 

Somewhere out there, Enid was waiting. 

Or the wolf was.

Either way, Wednesday would find her.

Chapter Text

Whale Cove stretched out in a blur of white and gray, the horizon so drowned in snow that the sky and earth seemed to have swallowed each other whole, leaving only the faint outline of squat buildings and the jagged edge of the frozen coast. The pilot gave her a perfunctory nod, as though she were merely another cargo to be dropped, then climbed back into the plane, and within minutes the machine was nothing more than a shadow vanishing into the endless sky.

She remained where she was for a moment, the strap of her bag cutting into her shoulder, letting the cold press against her until she felt its weight settle into her bones, and then she started forward. 

The town was less a city and more a scattering of structures clinging to the land, their roofs bent under snowdrifts, their windows dark except for the occasional square of yellow light that seemed far too fragile to hold back the wilderness.

Her eyes swept slowly over it all, memorizing every line, every angle, as if the stillness itself were hostile. “A ghost town,” she murmured, and the words fogged the air before her mouth. “Fitting.”

The snow crunched beneath her boots as she moved down the narrow road, her bag dragging heavier with every step, though she refused to let her pace falter. The first thought that slid unbidden across her mind was not strategy but memory: Enid hates the cold, she cannot stand the way it forces her to bundle herself in scarves until only her eyes show. The thought struck like wind across the sea, and she shoved it aside before it could root itself.

Her gaze found the one building that seemed alive, windows fogged by the heat within, a wooden sign swinging above the door on rusty chains that squealed in protest at the wind. She crossed the threshold and the warmth hit her at once, thick with the smell of smoke and wool.

Behind the counter stood a woman close to sixty, her black hair drawn back beneath a knitted cap, her hands still red from scrubbing dishes. The moment her eyes landed on Wednesday, her whole face shifted into alarm, as though seeing a crow walk into her parlor.

“What’s a girl doing up here all alone?” She asked, her voice a blend of concern and reprimand, as though she were already rehearsing the lecture.

Wednesday ignored her worry. “Do you have a room available, something for a few days, possibly longer, weeks if necessary.”

The woman’s mouth pulled into a doubtful line, and she leaned forward over the counter, eyes narrowing as if she could peel Wednesday apart and see what she was hiding. “Usually I don’t rent rooms to someone your age, sweetheart. This isn’t a place for school trips, it’s cold, it’s dangerous, and no one sends children here unless they’re trying to lose them.” She hesitated then, the severity in her face softening into a kind of reluctant surrender born of knowing the north always made exceptions. “But I do have one room left. Just one. It’s been strangely busy here these days, busier than it should be. A lot of folks have shown up in Whale Cove, all asking for rooms for a week, sometimes two.”

“What do you mean by a lot of folks?”

The woman lowered her voice, leaning in as if what she carried were a secret. “They all came together, or close enough that it’s the same thing. Dressed funny, like bikers out of place in the snow. Heavy jackets, boots worn down from roads, not this land. Outsiders with hard eyes. Haven’t seen that many strangers up here in years.”

Wednesday filed the information away in the vault of her mind, tucking it neatly beside every other blade she kept ready. The Hunters were staying there, too.

“Would you like to take the room or not,” the woman asked, her tone quieter now, as though she already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Wednesday replied, with no hesitation at all.

The woman came out from behind the counter, her expression easing into something warmer. “You must be freezing. Have you eaten anything yet today?”

Wednesday did not answer, and the woman gave a small shake of her head and gestured for her to follow. “Come on then, I’ll get you settled first and bring you a bowl of stew. You can’t go wandering around here without something warm in you, not unless you want to be found stiff in the snow.”

The hallway creaked under their steps, the narrow boards worn smooth by years of use. The room at the end of the corridor was small but tidy, a single bed made enough to seem military, a narrow desk beneath the window, a heavy blanket folded with precision at the foot. Wednesday set her bag down and let her gaze pass over every detail, memorizing the contours of the space with the same attention she gave to a crime scene.

“I’ll bring the stew in a minute,” the woman said at the door, pausing long enough to give one last instruction. “Lock your door at night, just in case. Folks here are good, but strangers are strangers.”

Wednesday inclined her head once, not wasting words, and the door closed.

She went to the window, drawing the curtain back with a slow hand. The snow was still falling, thick enough to erase the road she had walked only minutes before, and in the distance the town was already half-buried in white silence. 

Somewhere out there, beyond the drifts and the ridges, Enid’s trail bled across the land.

Wednesday pressed her hand into her pocket and drew out the phone, the screen cold in her palm.

The signal sputtered like a candle in the wind, freezing for long seconds before jumping forward again. The dot that marked Thing moved, but always behind, always with delay, as though she were watching not the girl herself but her fading echo.

Hunters were almost certainly out there, carving through the wilderness on their machines, following whatever scent or signal they had conjured, but the storm was against them. The wind tore apart tracks, the snow erased trails, and the cold made everything slower, weaker. For once, Wednesday found herself grateful for the storm, an ally she did not have to command.

She had no plan yet. 

None that ended cleanly, none that ended with both of them alive, and though she loathed to admit it even in the quiet of her own mind, she knew she could not simply march into the tundra with nothing but her coat and her will. 

Impulse had always served her before, but the north was not like the rest of the world. 

It would not forgive arrogance.

When she finally went downstairs again, the common room was close and warm, lit by the crackle of a single wood stove that hissed and popped as though mocking the storm outside. The air smelled of smoke and stew, the kind of smell that clung to skin and cloth alike. Behind the counter, the innkeeper was rolling silverware into napkins, her face calm in the glow of the firelight, as if the weight of the white world outside had never touched her.

“I need someone who knows the land,” Wednesday said, stepping up to the counter.

The woman looked up, as though weighing the request. “You mean a guide?”

“Yes. Someone who can show me around. Or drive me as far as the trails go.”

The woman’s brows drew together, her dark eyes studying Wednesday’s face like she was trying to decipher a code. Then she shook her head, “We don’t usually have guiders around here. Not a lot of tourists asking to go wandering this far north in the middle of winter.”

Wednesday didn’t blink. “But you know someone.”

“I do. A man who’s lived here all his life. Knows every inch of land within fifty kilometers. Not exactly cheap, but if anyone can keep you from vanishing out there, it’s him.”

“Talk to him,” Wednesday said simply. “See what he can do.”

The woman nodded, still looking thoughtful. “Eat first,” she said. “I’ll send a word. He usually stops by once a week to trade. If he agrees, I’ll tell you when to meet him.”

Wednesday allowed herself to be led to a table near the stove, and she ate mechanically, her eyes fixed on the snow blurring the windows.

She returned to her room after eating, then, she sat at the narrow desk, pulling the printed pages toward her in a neat stack.

She reread them all from the beginning, as though saying them again might anchor her mind. Celestine’s fury bled into her own. Her grief felt fresh in the stale motel air, her love for Nellie caught between the lines like a trapped insect.

Wednesday set the last page down with clinical precision, then reached for the heart pendant resting on the desk. She closed her hand around it, felt the cold metal sting through her skin, and let her eyes fall shut.

She willed the images forward, the way she had so many times before, pushing herself into that thin place between her mind and the weight of the object. The chain pressed into her palm, and she waited for the rush, for the collapse of time that would let her see what others could not.

Something came, but not enough.

Shards of light, blurred shapes. A woman’s laughter caught in static. Gold hair whipping in the wind. Blood blooming across snow. A sunflower field collapsing into shadow. Too much, too fast, then nothing at all.

Her hand clenched tighter around the pendant, but the vision dissolved before it could sharpen. All that remained was the echo of voices she could not decipher, a flicker of warmth against her palm that faded as soon as she opened her eyes.

The pendant gleamed dully in her hand, as though mocking her for trying.

Wednesday slipped it back onto the desk. “Useless,” she whispered, though the faint sting in her chest told her it wasn’t.

Celestine’s story had not finished speaking. She just hadn’t learned how to listen yet.

She wanted to leave, to go now, into the white night, to find Enid even if she froze where she fell. Her fingers twitched toward her coat, but the snow had thickened, tapping against the window in frantic bursts. The storm howled across the town, drowning out the creak of the inn’s wood.

She stayed.

Hours stretched thin, marked only by the tired drip of the radiator and the wind dragging its claws against the eaves. Wednesday sat rigid on the bed, her legs crossed and her posture straight as a blade, the phone screen dimming and brightening in her hand as she checked the delayed signal over and over. 

She did not sleep. 

She would not until Enid was found.

Then the sound came, loud against the storm. Wednesday rose at once, slipping her boots on with mechanical precision, her hair falling into place without disturbance. She opened the door and stepped into the hallway, the stairwell’s bulb flickering like a dying lantern. She moved without sound, descending the steps until the lobby opened beneath her, and they were there.

The hunters.

Their coats were dusted white with snow that melted into dark stains on the wooden floor. Their boots left wet prints across the boards, the smell of damp leather and cold metal filling the air, an odor of travel and violence. Four of them tonight; the tall one marked by the scar curling down his jaw, the ash-haired woman whose presence pressed against the room like a blade half-drawn, and two others whose faces were carved in the same unforgiving lines of stone.

A pair of eyes caught her on the stairs and the expression of the man shifted, smugness cracking for just a heartbeat into surprise.

“What the hell are you doing here, child?”

Wednesday descended the final steps and stood on the landing, every line of her body composed into the shape of certainty she did not entirely feel. “For hunters, your troupe is not discrete,” she said. “It was easy to follow you.”

She lifted her hand and snapped her fingers twice.

One of the backpacks twitched. Thing spilled from its half-open zipper, scuttling fast across the floorboards in a blur of fingers and nails before leaping up onto her shoulder. He perched there like a banner raised in triumph, flexing his digits as though mocking the men he had just robbed.

The hunters froze, their eyes narrowing, one of them cursing viciously, his hand darting for the bag before he realized he was too late.

The older man’s smirk returned, thinner than before, as though hiding something brittle beneath it. “Cute trick,” he said. “But this isn’t a place for little girls. Go back upstairs before you end up as bones under the snow.”

Wednesday did not flinch. “You are already failing,” she answered, her tone flat, though her hand pressed a little tighter against the fabric of her coat where the pendant lay cold. “If you were capable of finding her, you would not still be here, trapped inside four walls, pretending the storm is an obstacle and not a mercy.”

The woman with ash-colored hair stepped forward, and she said, “We’re not hiding. The storm makes tracking impossible. Even you should understand that.”

“You admit weakness,” she said at last. “That is refreshing.”

They shifted uneasily, exchanging glances that betrayed what their mouths would not.

The scarred man gave a rasping laugh, though it carried more warning than amusement. “You think this is a game. You think words and a straight back are enough. Out there, she isn’t your friend anymore. She’s an alpha running wild. You stand in front of her at the wrong moment, and she’ll tear you apart before you finish a sentence.”

Wednesday’s face remained impassive, though her stomach tightened with the memory of Enid’s laugh, Enid’s ridiculous hats stacked high on her head, Enid’s warmth pressed too close in every hallway. “If that happens, then at least I will have been useful. She deserves a better death than the one you would give her.”

Even the fire in the hearth seemed to pause, its crackle swallowed by the weight of what she had just spoken.

The hunters stared at her, their annoyance sharpened into something more cautious. They would not admit it, not to themselves and certainly not to her, but she saw it, the sliver of unease that came when a girl half their size refused to bend beneath their words.

Her black eyes fixed on the man who had mocked her first, and she waited until his smirk wavered, the corners of his mouth faltering for just a heartbeat. Then she turned without another word, Thing still balanced on her shoulder, and climbed the stairs, leaving them to their noise and their beer.

Her heart thudded once, hard, against her ribs as she closed her door behind her, but her face never betrayed it.

They were closer than she thought. And so was she.

The next morning brought no relief. 

The storm had grown worse overnight, screaming through the town like an uninvited guest. Snow piled high against the door, the windows frosted over until the world outside looked like a blank page. 

No one was leaving Whale Cove today.

Wednesday stood at her window, watching the wind tear across the streets, and considered opening the door anyway. She wanted to move, to search, to walk until her fingers froze black if only to escape the sound of the hunters downstairs. They were loud even through the floorboards, their boots thudding, their voices rising in bursts of coarse laughter.

Thing tapped a single finger against the desk in warning, but Wednesday ignored him. She put on her coat and boots and opened the door, only to find the hallway colder than her room. By the time she reached the lobby, the innkeeper had intercepted her with a look sharp enough to cut.

“No one’s going out there,” she said firmly, arms crossed over her chest. “Not in this weather. You’d vanish before you reached the road.”

Wednesday didn’t argue, but she turned on her heel and went back upstairs. Her bag thudded onto the bed as she sat down, straight-backed, pulling Celestine’s notebook copy toward her as if words written more than a century ago could mute the noise outside. 

She tried to read, tried to let her eyes settle on the lines she already knew by heart, but the voices below rose through the floorboards like smoke. The letters blurred, her focus slipped, and for the first time in hours she admitted to herself that she would not find silence here, not tonight.

By the time she relented and came down for dinner, the common room was already full, the smell of stew and melted snow in the air. The hunters had claimed the largest table by the hearth, their brash laughter carrying across the room.

It was then she saw the woman from the Sinclair mansion properly, now named in a snatch of conversation that drifted over the clinking bowls and spoons; Branwen. The others spoke the name with a kind of respect that reminded her the way soldiers spoke of their commander when they had learned to fear her more than the war itself. 

Branwen sat straight with her pale hair tied back, her coat falling open just enough to reveal the ragged scars that crossed her throat and shoulder before vanishing beneath the fabric. They were long and deep, claw marks carved into her flesh by something that had wanted her dead and almost succeeded.

Wednesday stared without blinking, memorizing every detail of the scars, every break in the skin’s surface, every reminder that the woman who hunted Enid had already faced wolves and lived. At the far end of the table sat Reyes, the older man who had once dared to call her little girl, his presence subdued but heavy, his position clear: Branwen’s right hand, her shadow.

She ate in silence, thinking that she had known from the start that they were dangerous, but now she could see that they were organized as well, their hierarchy plain in the way they glanced at Branwen before speaking, their words clipped when she entered the conversation.

Dinner ended without incident, but when the dishes were cleared and the fire burned lower, their noise grew louder. Later, the rest of the inn settled into silence, footsteps vanishing into upstairs rooms, but the hunters remained, drinking beer, their laughter rising until the floorboards above her bed vibrated with the sound.

Wednesday slipped from her room once again and descended halfway down the stairs, keeping to the shadows where the flicker of the fire did not reach. She sat on the step with her back straight, and listened.

Their words came in bursts, fragments of a plan spilling between the clinking of bottles and the shifting of chairs.

“No sign near the coast,” one of the men said, his voice rough with fatigue. “We checked the bluffs east of the inlet. Nothing.”

“Caves,” Branwen answered. “She’s running wild, but instincts don’t change. They always go to ground. Caves are safe, and every instinct will push her there.”

Reyes grunted his agreement. “If the storm clears tomorrow, we check the ridge past the bay. Hollows there, narrow enough we can corner her. If she’s inside, she won’t get out.”

Another hunter groaned, half-drunk, “If we don’t freeze to death first.”

Branwen’s reply was cold enough to slice through the haze of alcohol. “You can freeze when she’s caught. Not before.”

The table laughed, but the sound was forced, as if her words had unsettled them more than they wanted to admit.

Each word she caught settled into place, another piece of the map she was building in her mind, a guide written in their arrogance. Caves, they had said. That was their plan, to search every hollow, every ridge, every dark shelter in this white wasteland until they cornered her.

And if they found Enid before she did, there would be no kindness waiting in the snow, no chance of mercy, only iron and blood.

When their talk shifted, when laughter replaced strategy and the conversation slouched into old hunts and half-remembered stories, she rose and slipped back up the stairs without sound. The storm battered the windows harder now, the wind pressing against the glass like a hand, but she no longer cared for the noise.

In her room, she sat at the desk again, pulling paper toward her and sketching crude maps from memory, marking each cave and ridge she had found mentioned in Thing’s earlier reports. Her pen scratched until the page filled, until she could see the path of the hunters against her own, a race she could not allow herself to lose.

When she finished, she set the pen down carefully and let her gaze fall to the silver pendant lying beside the papers. The fire downstairs still carried their voices, the storm outside still screamed against the walls, but none of it mattered. 

She was no longer waiting, she was planning.

And when the snow cleared, the hunt would no longer belong to them. It would belong to her.

By morning the storm had spent itself, leaving Whale Cove buried beneath drifts so high they pressed against the doors and windows, the whole town caught in a silence that felt less like peace and more like the aftermath of a warning. 

The wind had gone still, as if the land itself had paused to watch who would dare move next.

When Wednesday descended the stairs, the innkeeper was already waiting at the counter, wrapped in a thick wool sweater, her black hair damp where melting snow had caught it. She looked relieved to see the girl upright, though worry softened her eyes as she spoke. “You’re in luck,” she said, “the man I sent word to has arrived. If you’re serious about going out there, he’s the best chance you have of coming back.”

“I am serious,” she answered, because there was no other state in which she existed.

The innkeeper nodded, stepping aside and gesturing toward the doorway. 

Beyond it, a tall figure waited on the packed path of snow, his parka trimmed in fur, boots worn but sturdy from years of use. His face was broad, weather-creased and sun-burnt, his black hair tied neatly at the nape of his neck, and his dark eyes carried the weight of someone who had lived long enough to understand how little mercy the land ever offered.

“This is Iqaluk,” the innkeeper said with quiet assurance. “He’s from Rankin Inlet. There isn’t a ridge, hollow, or frozen bay he doesn’t know. If he agrees to guide you, then you’ll return.”

Iqaluk gave her a small nod, as though he had already measured her and found her wanting yet was willing to let her prove otherwise. “You’re the girl who wants to go out there?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Wednesday’s answer came without hesitation, “Because something of mine is out there, and I intend to bring it back.”

He studied her for a long moment, eyes narrowing in the way of a man testing how much truth had been spoken in a single sentence. At last he nodded once more, “I don’t take just anyone. This is not a sightseeing trip. It’s dangerous.”

“I am not interested in sightseeing,” Wednesday replied. “Only in efficiency.”

The corner of his mouth shifted, not quite a smile, but something close enough to suggest he recognized the steel in her words. “Then we understand each other,” he said. “I’ll have my sled ready. Pack light. We leave at dawn, before the snow hardens again.”

“She’ll have breakfast here first,” the innkeeper interjected, her tone carrying the authority of someone who had already decided the matter.

Wednesday did not argue, though her silence was edged, like a blade returned to its sheath only because the strike was unnecessary. “Fine.”

As Iqaluk turned to leave, Wednesday lingered by the counter, and she asked, “You said he knows this land better than anyone. Does that include the caves?”

The innkeeper’s answer was immediate. “Every single one of them.”

“Good.”

She returned to her room, and Thing crawled onto the desk, his fingers tapping insistently as if demanding his place in the plan.

“You are not coming with me,” Wednesday said. “If I do not return within one week, you will call my parents and tell them where I went. If there is a body to retrieve, you will bring it back. I will not be abandoned to an unmarked grave.”

Thing paused, then tapped once, reluctantly.

The rest of the day she spent preparing. She emptied her small bag onto the bed, the black clothes and brittle papers spreading across the blanket, and she saw immediately it would not be enough. She would need more. A bigger pack. Food. Tools to keep her alive when the white horizon stretched on and on with no end in sight.

She left the inn and walked into the town. The storm had left everything hushed, but a few shops stood open, their windows glowing weakly against the snow. She bought food first: hard bread, dried meat, packets of tea. Things that would not spoil even when the cold bit through the seams.

At the next store she found a small tent rolled tight into canvas, a thick wool blanket folded like stone, and a first aid kit with bandages, gauze, antiseptic, and the smell of rubbing alcohol. She held it longer than necessary, weighing the possibility of using it on herself, on Enid, or on no one at all. She added medicine too, a few bottles lined neatly in a brown paper bag.

By the time she returned to the inn, the light was fading and her arms ached from the weight. She spread everything on the bed again, this time folding each piece with precision into a larger bag she had bought at the outfitter’s shop. She tested the straps, adjusted the weight, then repacked until it sat balanced across her shoulders.

Wednesday stood over the bag, studying it with appraising eyes, as though she were staring at a body she had just finished dissecting. Nothing wasted. Nothing soft. Only what could keep her alive in the endless white.

She laid the pendant on top last of all, letting it rest a moment before tucking it safely into the inner pocket, close to her chest.

She did not know how long she would be out there. Days. Weeks. Perhaps longer. But she would be prepared.

That night she forced herself to sleep early, determined to rise before dawn. Thing was restless on the desk, tapping and pacing around, anxious at the thought of her going alone. Wednesday sat up once more and gave her final orders: “Talk to the innkeeper. See if she has a phone. Add Enid’s number. If necessary, steal a phone from someone else.”

By morning she stepped outside, the cold immediately searing her lungs, and there he was.

“You pack light,” Iqaluk said approvingly, glancing at her bag.

“There is nothing else I need,” Wednesday replied.

“Good,” he said. “Makes walking easier.”

They started down the road together with the sled sliding behind them, the dogs trotting with a rhythm that matched the crunch of their boots against the packed snow. The sky was pale and the clouds seemed to press down on the horizon until the world became nothing but a flat, endless sheet of white stretching into eternity, no trees, no ridges, nothing to break the sameness of it. 

For a long time they said nothing, the silence broken only by the huff of the dogs’ breath, until Iqaluk glanced sideways, his breath fogging before his face as though the cold itself wanted to swallow his words before they reached her.

“So,” he said at last, “are you going to tell me what you’re looking for, or am I supposed to guess?”

Wednesday did not turn her head, her eyes fixed straight ahead on the horizon as though it were a challenge. “You already agreed to take me.”

“Yes,” he replied easily, “but when I’m out here with someone, I like to know what we’re chasing. Not because I’m afraid, but because it helps me keep them alive.”

She considered him for a moment, the line of her mouth tightening as if to remind him that his life’s work meant little in comparison to her own determination. Yet his tone was not mocking and not prying; it was patient, as though he already knew more than he let on. 

If he was coming with her, perhaps he deserved at least the outline of the truth.

“There is someone out there,” she said at last. “A girl. She is my friend. She is not entirely human right now. She has been changed, taken by instincts that refuse to release her. There are people hunting her, and I intend to reach her before they do.”

Iqaluk’s eyes narrow with the weight of recognition. He nodded once, as if confirming something long suspected, “The wolf.”

Her brow arched, her gaze flicking toward him for the first time. “You knew.”

“Hard not to know. People talk. Dogs smell things. The land listens. Something’s been running through the tundra for weeks now, and the hunters came up here asking questions. We knew they were looking for something wild.”

“You are not afraid?” 

He smiled. “I have lived here my whole life. Fear doesn’t keep you warm, and it doesn’t keep you alive. You respect what’s out there, you give it space when it needs space, but you don’t run from it.”

The wind shifted then, carrying with it the faint smell of salt buried under ice.

“She is important to me,” she said finally, in a small voice. “She's my family.”

Iqaluk looked at her again, his dark eyes reflecting the pale light that lay across the land. “Then we will find her.”

After that they walked for hours, the horizon receding no matter how far they went, a white road stretched so endlessly it seemed almost cruel. The dogs moved in unison, their bodies uncomplaining, while the cold air cut into Wednesday’s lungs like glass. She ignored it, as she ignored every discomfort, refusing to let it show on her face or slow her stride.

Only once did they stop, when Iqaluk crouched by the sled to unhook the traces and let the dogs rest. Their breaths steamed heavily in the freezing air as he pulled dried fish from a pouch, tossing each animal its share. The dogs devoured the pieces quickly, their tails thumping weakly against the snow, content in their simple feast.

The silence of the tundra pressed in so fully it became its own kind of noise, an oppressive silence broken only by the dogs licking their muzzles clean and the faint crackle of ice shifting beneath their weight. 

For the first time in days she could hear the pace of her own heart, and it irritated her to realize how unsteady it was, how much it betrayed the impatience burning beneath her composure.

Enid hated the cold, she thought again, hated how it stung her ears and reddened her nose, hated how it made her hair frizz beneath her hat. And yet somewhere in this void of white she was running. 

Wednesday’s grip on her own gloves tightened, as she reminded herself that she was not here to be sentimental.

Iqaluk fed the last of the dogs and then he stood, brushing his gloves against his thighs. “We’ll move again in ten minutes.”

Wednesday inclined her head once, then turned her gaze back to the horizon. Ten minutes felt like ten years, and all the while the image of a pulsing dot on her phone burned behind her eyes, delayed but never gone, a heartbeat that refused to stop.

She reached into her bag and drew out the folded sheets she had been marking each night, maps that were more impressions than cartographer’s work, but good enough to trace patterns and deductions. She spread them out on the flat stone beside her knee, smoothing the edges with her cold hands, and the shadows of the flames making the lines seem to shift and breathe.

“I am not wandering blind,” she said. “I have been recording every scrap of information, every report, every mistake the hunters make. Their failures leave trails, and I follow them.” She pointed to the clusters of markings she had drawn, circles where caves might be, black crosses where the hunters had already searched and found nothing. “They waste time chasing their own noise. They believe wolves are predictable, but they are not. She is not.”

The fire popped, sending sparks upward, and the dogs stirred briefly before settling back into their warm knot against the stone. 

Wednesday leaned closer to the map, her pale face catching the orange light. “Each cave I mark is one less hiding place. Each delay is one more chance for them to close in. I cannot afford delay.” Her fingers moved over the paper, tapping a spot where her deductions converged. “Here, near the ridge they dismissed because the snow was too deep. They think she would not go there. That is why she will.”

Her voice had taken on the edge of prepotence, that certainty that dared anyone to contradict her, though under it lay the taut string of worry she refused to show, “Every hour she is out there, she is hunted. And every hour I am in here, listening to their noise, I am wasting what could be the difference between saving her or burying her.”

She finally raised her eyes to him, holding them as though daring him to contradict her, yet no judgment came.

Iqaluk studied the pages without touching them, his eyes moving over the marks with attention. He did not laugh at their roughness, did not dismiss her work as a child’s attempt. Instead he nodded once, and said, “You are right about the ridge, the snow makes it difficult, but not impossible. If I were running with nothing but instinct, I might go there. Harder for hunters to follow. Quieter.”

“I want you to take me there,” she said.

His gaze lifted to meet hers, the firelight glinting faintly in his eyes. He let a beat pass before answering, as though testing whether she truly meant it, but her expression did not waver.

“That will take four days and three nights,” he said at last.

“That is acceptable.”

So it was decided.

They left once the sky darkened, the dogs moving first with their paws pressed firm tracks into the snow. Iqaluk walked at an even pace, while Wednesday kept close, her bag across her back, the pendant cool against her skin.

The land opened in every direction, no trees, no marks of villages or fences, only long swells of ground rising and dropping, shapes smoothed by centuries of wind.

“I was thinking,” the man said after they had walked a long time, his breath fogging the air, “that the way you speak of your friend reminds me of stories I was told as a boy.”

Wednesday glanced at him, her steps never slowing. “What kind of stories?”

“Not of werewolves,” he said. “Not the way you understand them. Here, we have no such word. What we speak of are wolf spirits. Not curses. Not monsters. Guardians. Companions that walk between worlds.”

“Guardians of what?”

“Of travelers. Some also believe they protect villages when the wind grows too strong. Long ago, when my people wandered without homes, they say the wolves walked beside us. They were not animals, not prey. They had human eyes, and they showed us where water could be found, where the ice would not break. They kept away the hungry things that circled in the dark. We learned from them how to hunt, how to keep warm, how to move with the land instead of against it. When we finally settled, they stayed near. That is why we are told never to kill one, because they remind us we are never alone.”

“You make them sound like saints,” Wednesday said.

“No,” he corrected gently, “saints are untouchable. Wolves were not. They could be dangerous and merciless, but they were also teachers. Both things can be true at once. When one crosses your path, you stop. You acknowledge it. You give something if you can. A scrap of food, a sip of water, even a thought. If they look at you, it means they carry a message. If you turn away, you miss it.”

“And if they harm you?”

“Then you fight,” he said with a shrug. “But only then. If you strike first, you mark yourself. The land remembers that. You turn the hunt against yourself. Misfortune follows.”

Wednesday’s eyes stayed on the horizon. “Hunters from the south do not see it that way.”

“They do not live here,” Iqaluk said. “They come for the thrill, for stories to tell in bars far away. They do not understand what it means to live where the land can take you at any moment. To kill a wolf here is to kill a guide you might need tomorrow. We call it disrespect, and they call it their job.”

The dogs slowed as the ground dipped, their paws leaving faint clouds of snow. Wednesday adjusted her bag. “And if someone like her was seen here, a girl who is also wolf. What then?”

“No one would harm her unless she harmed first,” Iqaluk answered without hesitation. “They might keep their children inside, yes, and they might whisper that she carries a power too big for her body, but kill her? No. Not unless she left blood in her tracks. Not if she was only running.”

Wednesday’s gaze flicked to him for a moment. “That is not what the hunters believe.”

He gave a small smile, though it carried no joy. “Hunters do not listen to stories. They listen to fear.”

The sun dipped lower, turning the snow to glass beneath its fading light.

“My grandmother,” Iqaluk said suddenly, “told me another story. She said sometimes in the middle of a storm, a wolf spirit will sit at the edge of a village. Its fur will glow as if starlight had caught in it. It does not enter, it does not snarl, it only waits. That is how you know danger is coming. Maybe in days. Maybe in years. But always it comes. The wolf warns you. Protects you. Reminds you that nothing passes without consequence.”

Wednesday let a long silence follow before she asked, “Do you believe it?”

“I believe the land has memory,” he said. “And I believe wolves know more than we ever will.”

The horizon stretched on, and the dogs pulled them northward.

“We will reach the ridge tomorrow,” Iqaluk said, lifting his chin toward the faint shadow in the distance. “If she is running on instinct, she may have gone to the caves there. If not, we will keep looking.”

“She will be there,” Wednesday said flatly.

He studied her face for a moment, her pale skin against the black fur of the coat, her expression unreadable. “You speak with certainty,” he said.

“I do not speak with certainty. I speak with necessity.”

He chuckled softly, the sound swallowed quickly by the snow. “You remind me of myself when I was younger.”

“You are not old.”

“I am thirty-six,” he said, smiling faintly. “But the land adds years where the calendar does not. My hands have carried too much wood, too much ice, too many hunts. The years weigh differently here.”

“You are not treating me like a child,” Wednesday observed, her eyes fixed on the long sweep of white ahead of them.

He laughed, a low sound that seemed to sit comfortably in his chest, and glanced sideways at her. “By your age I had already hunted more bears than most men in my community. Age does not matter as much as people pretend. Spirit matters, strength matters, the way you walk through the world, that is what stays with people. Some men grow gray and never carry more than their own name. Others, even young, leave stories that are told long after the snow covers them. You walk as if you have already chosen which one you will be.”

“That is correct.”

“I thought so.” He grinned, his teeth catching the faint glow of the late sun. “That is why I do not treat you as a child. You do not carry yourself as one.”

They walked on a little farther, and after a while he spoke again, “Do you know what my name means?”

“No.”

“Iqaluk means fish,” he said. “My grandfather gave it to me. He said I was born when the nets came back heavy, and he wanted me to remember that the land and the water would always feed us if we respected them. It is a common name among us, but still, it has weight. My grandfather believed names should tie you to the land, not just to family. He said if I remembered the meaning, I would never go hungry, no matter how the years treated me.”

“Have you?”

“Not yet,” he said, smiling again. “Though there were times when the snow pressed harder than the nets. We ate what we could, and sometimes that meant little, but we lived. That is what matters. Life here is not about plenty, but it is about survival and memory.”

The horizon shimmered faintly as the sun sank lower, scattering pale light across the snow. He lifted his hand as if to measure the distance. “This ridge will take us four days and three nights. You must be ready for that. The snow will not make it easy, but I believe it is the place where your friend could have gone. Instinct drives you to shelter, and the caves there offer it.”

“I am prepared.”

“I know you are,” he said, his tone firm. “But you must still eat when I tell you. Rest when I tell you. Even the strongest spirit can be broken by this land if it forgets the body needs care. I have seen men greater than me brought down because they thought they could outwalk the cold. None of them are remembered kindly.”

Wednesday kept her eyes fixed on the footprints she left behind, following their pattern with precision, measuring distance and rhythm, and when Iqaluk’s voice rose again, she was already expecting for more words.

“When I was a boy, maybe thirteen, I went with my father on a hunt. We followed caribou far across the land, days and nights without seeing the smoke of our own houses. The snow was deep and the sky never lifted. My legs burned, and my father told me to keep walking, to remember that the land always asks more from you than you think you have. On the fifth day, when we were too tired to even speak, a wolf came. It did not threaten us. It walked a few paces ahead, always looking back, as if to say, ‘This way.’ We followed. The next morning we found the herd. That was the day I believed the old stories were not just stories.”

She walked without looking at him, but her eyes narrowed faintly, considering. “You did not try to kill it?”

“I told you,” he said, “It was not meant for killing. It was meant for remembering. If we had shot it, we would have lost more than a wolf. We would have lost a guide. We would have turned luck against us. My father taught me that you do not kill the hand that leads you home.”

The horizon began to bruise with darker shades, the last of the light melting into gray. The dogs slowed as the ground tilted upward. Iqaluk adjusted their pace with a whistle and said, “Your friend, she is not cursed. She is not broken. She is running, yes, but sometimes running is how we survive. Sometimes running is how we find where we belong.”

She did not answer. Her silence was not refusal, not disagreement, only a careful space to keep his words alive in her head where they would not be wasted. 

They walked until the sky gave up the last of its color and turned dark enough for stars to break through. The snow reflected them faintly, the ground shimmering as if another sky had been hidden underfoot. The air grew colder against her cheeks, though she did not allow herself to shiver. When the ridge came into view, Iqaluk veered toward a shadow near its base, and there the black mouth of a cave opened against the whiteness.

It was shallow but shielded from the wind, and the dogs padded in first, circling before lowering themselves into the snow as though they had always belonged to it. 

Iqaluk set the sled down and began to work, pulling out a small bundle of wood wrapped in hide, striking it until a thin line of flame appeared and grew into the center of the cave.

He showed her how to keep the fire alive, how to build a wall of snow near the entrance so the wind would curl away instead of creeping in. He laid down hides and blankets for them to rest on and explained how the cold would creep up from the ground if they did not build layers. She followed, her hands moving without pause, her mind taking in every detail. When he placed a pot near the flame to melt snow into water, she studied how much he used, how long it took before steam rose.

They ate early, and the food was simple again, dried fish softened in the hot water, bread that broke uneven in her hands. 

The fire warmed her face, but the rest of her body still felt the cold wrapping close. 

She did not show it.

It was not even eight when the dogs began to curl against one another, and one of them broke from the group, padding across the packed snow until it reached her side. Its fur was damp from melted flakes, its eyes almost luminous in the fire’s reflection. It pressed against her knee and then folded itself down, resting there as though she had been its place all along. She did not push it away, and her hand settled briefly on its back, fingers brushing fur roughened by wind and ice. The animal gave a small sound that might have been contentment and let its head fall against its paws.

Iqaluk noticed but said nothing, only smiled to himself as he adjusted the fire. 

He stretched out on his side of the cave, one arm folded under his head, eyes half-closed yet still watchful. The lines of his face caught the glow, and she thought again of what he had said about age and the land.

When her body was finally still enough to consider sleep, she turned her head toward him. His eyes opened at once, as though he had not truly been resting.

“You never asked,” she said.

He looked at her, waiting.

“Why my name is Wednesday.”

He blinked slowly, then gave a small nod. “I thought it was not my place.”

“You gave me your stories freely. You told me about your name, about wolves, about your people. It is only fair I return something.”

He did not interrupt.

“My mother named me for a poem. For the line that said Wednesday’s child is full of woe. She thought it fitting. I have never argued with her.”

Iqaluk’s expression did not change quickly, but he let her words settle before he spoke. “A name does not chain you. It gives you something to grow against. You carry it, yes, but you make it heavier or lighter depending on how you walk. Perhaps your mother saw sorrow, but perhaps she gave you the strength to carry it without bending.”

“I do not bend.”

“I can see that,” he said with amusement. His eyes softened for a moment, and then he closed them again, one hand resting loosely over his chest. “Names are gifts, even when they come wrapped in thorns.”

Iqaluk seemed at ease, stretched out across his blankets with his arm folded under his head, his eyes half closed though it was clear he had not yet surrendered to rest. When he spoke, his words were tired, “What is your friend’s name?”

The question did not surprise her, though she allowed it to hang in the air before answering, as if the pause itself were part of the truth. Her fingers brushed the fur of the dog pressed insistently against her leg, its body warm in a way that was unfamiliar yet grounding. 

After a long pause, she said, “Enid.”

A quiet sound escaped him, not quite approval, not quite sorrow, more the hum of recognition that comes when an old word is spoken aloud. “It means soul, or life. That is what I was told once, though the language was not mine. A Welsh trader came through when I was young and left behind stories in exchange for fishhooks. My grandfather liked to repeat them, and this name stayed. Names like that carry more than sound. They carry light, sometimes more than the one who bears them can hold.”

“She does not carry it,” Wednesday replied. “She forces it on others.”

His eyes opened to the glow of the fire, and he let her words sit for a moment before answering. “That is the kind I meant. Some people cannot contain joy, so they let it spill. They press it into places where it does not belong, and even the unwilling end up touched by it. Such people can be exhausting, yes, but they are also the reason others keep walking when the land feels endless.”

Her hand lingered on the animal beside her, and her eyes remained fixed on the flames.

“Enid,” he said again, rolling the syllables as though testing them against memory. “Life. Soul. A name like that does not let go easily. If the name is true, she is still alive. Trust that.”

“I do not doubt,” she said, her lashes lowered, the fire catching faintly in her dark eyes. “She wouldn't dare to die.”

A low laugh broke from the older man, a sound full of warmth that seemed to settle against the stone walls as much as the firelight did. He shifted once on his blankets and let his head fall back, his gaze tracing the uneven ceiling of the cave. “Good,” he said, still amused. “Keep that thought with you when the cold tries to take it away. You’ll need it.”

The laughter faded, but not the kindness in his eyes. He pulled the furs higher over his shoulder and murmured something that carried the weight of habit, a phrase spoken many times before. “Ullaakkut.” Then, after a pause, he translated, “May the morning come well for you. Sleep now, Wednesday. The land will still be here tomorrow.”

The cave dimmed as the fire shrank to a bed of red and gray. 

Wednesday let her body grow still, her hand still resting on the dog that had claimed her side.

Sleep did not take her as it took most people. It did not drown her in silence or wrap her in shadows. It rearranged itself, piece by piece, until she was standing again on a field of snow that stretched so far it seemed to bend with the curve of the earth. The air was clear, almost ringing, and every breath felt sharper than the one before. Out of that whiteness, a figure began to take shape, at first no more than a shimmer, then a glow, and finally a girl she knew too well.

Hair spilled over her shoulders in a golden cascade, strands catching the invisible light as if the sun had chosen her and no one else. Her skin was pale but alive with color, warmed in ways that winter could never touch, and her eyes were bluer than the horizon after a storm. Enid smiled as though the world had never given her reason not to, and when she lifted her hand, Wednesday followed without question.

They walked together across the endless white, Enid always half a step ahead, her laughter ringing behind her as if the snow itself wanted to echo it back. 

She did not stumble, she did not falter, she simply moved with a certainty that was both foreign and familiar. The ground that had felt cruel beneath Wednesday’s boots now softened underfoot, shaped by Enid’s presence into something almost bearable.

When Wednesday glanced down, she found trails of sunflowers breaking through the snow, their golden heads turned to follow Enid’s steps. Each time the girl brushed her fingers against the frozen air, something living grew where her hand had been, small bursts of warmth against the ice. She should have questioned it, should have torn it apart with suspicion, but in the dream her mind allowed her body to follow.

Enid looked back over her shoulder once, her hair catching against the wind that did not bite her, only lifted strands as if to carry her onward. The smile was simply an offering, and it was the same smile that had colored the walls of their dorm room with posters of pastel and gold, the same smile that had pressed into her on mornings too loud for peace. 

Here, though, it belonged only to them.

They came to a ridge that had not been there moments before, a rise of stone and shadow cut against the sky. Enid climbed with grace, her boots sinking into the snow without struggle. Wednesday followed, each step pulling at her, as though the ground had been made heavier only to test how badly she wanted to reach the top. When she finally stood beside Enid, the untouched land opened beneath them.

Enid lifted her arm and pointed. In the far distance, Wednesday saw a dark mouth carved into the whiteness, the promise of shelter where none should exist. It was too far to reach, but it was there.

When Wednesday turned, Enid was watching her with those impossible eyes, and Wednesday understood.

The snow shifted again, rising around them in waves, but Enid walked forward, guiding her down the other side. Every step pressed into the earth became another trail of sunflowers, a line of color burning through the pale. Wednesday followed until her hand reached out in reflex and brushed the back of Enid’s coat. The girl’s warmth bled through the fabric, impossible in a land so cold, but Wednesday did not let go.

The world blurred at the edges, the ridge dissolving into mist, the trail of flowers burning brighter before fading back into snow. Enid stopped then, her figure framed against the white horizon, golden hair spilling across her shoulders as if it had caught the last light left in the world. 

Her face turned, her eyes locked on Wednesday’s, and for the first time in the dream she spoke.

“Find me.”

The words rang with a clarity that cut through the silence of the tundra, softer than a command, calmer than a plea. They carried across the snow and into her, striking bone, sinking deeper than memory. 

Wednesday’s hand tightened against the coat, but the warmth was already dissolving, slipping away as the dream thinned to smoke.

“Find me,” the voice came again, fainter this time, scattering like petals caught in the wind.

She drew breath, and the cold of the cave returned to her lungs, but it was not smoke or ash that greeted her. The fire had burned low, the dogs were still curled in their knot of fur, and yet the air carried something impossible. 

For a single, unguarded heartbeat she let herself believe that blossoms had forced themselves up through the stone, that petals had opened against the weight of snow and shadow, answering her dream with roots and stems. Her eyes searched the cave, chasing color that was not there, chasing what she already knew would vanish the moment she looked too hard.

She lay still, and her mind turned inward where the dream had left its mark. Enid’s voice had filled the whiteness and carved itself into her, a sound that could not be undone. It circled in her chest with the inevitability of her own heartbeat, the two indistinguishable now, pulsing as one.

Find me.

She let her eyes close again, not to return to sleep, but to let the echo fold deeper into her, until the scent of sunflowers became the only proof she required that the dream had not been only a dream.

Enid was guiding her.

Like she always did.