Chapter 4: Give Me Something To Hope For

The inside of the tent is dark, but not as dark as I thought it would be. There's a pool of light that comes not from a candle or an oil lamp, but from the lady sitting at the little writing desk, her long silver hair trailing down her back and giving off a glow of its own. She looks at me like she expected me to come barging in without a knock or a ‘please and thank you’ and my face burns so bright I think I must be giving off a glow of my own.

Do I bow? Curtsey? Drop to the ground and bare my neck? I've never seen another no-soul in my life and especially never seen one in a situation like this and the silence is stretching longer and longer until I'm sure something is going to have to break and I"m really worried that it's going to be me.

"I'm not here to hurt you!" I blurt, and immediately hunch my shoulders in embarrassment. Like there's anything a giftless no-soul like me could do to hurt a goddess! Like she was even worried about that in the first place!

She stands and I realize with a shock that she's shorter than me, this beautiful and strange looking woman. She's so short that she's barely taller than a 12 year old girl herself and I wonder if it's true that she changes age with her counterpart in the sky. It's a new moon at the moment, young and vibrant and she's young and perfect before me, her face alien with it's strange and glorious beauty and her large mirror-like eyes.

"Ella," she says and my knees give way and I begin to cry again, the ache just overflowing in my heart with everything that I want to say and everything that I need. She catches me before I can fall, her silvery fingers strong but gentle as she guides me to sit on her chair and then moves about, giving me space to cry messily into my sleeve.

By the time I've got control of myself and my hitching wet sobs are dying down she is there with a delicate little cup of steaming golden liquid and she gives it to me, to me! to drink. It tastes like apples and honey and also a little bit like love. My throat is so tight with grief that I can barely swallow.

"Ella," she says again. "What happened to your face, my child?"

I stare at her, wondering if she knows that dark and nasty secret as well as she knows my name and how deeply I've wanted her to acknowledge me as one of hers. "I fell."

"You fall often, I see." She places a hand to my face and my skin burns cool and hot at once. When she pulls away my jaw and cheek no longer feel stiff and painful and the slow swelling around my right eye is gone. "Tell me everything."

I do. I can't help it. It's like I've exploded in a stream of words that have been dammed up for so long that they've become a waterfall. I burst out sharp and harsh to start with, my words full of rage and fury, begging her to tell me why she deserted me of all her children, why I wasn't good enough to be blessed by her love.

I can't stop once I've started. I tell her about my father's eye, about how Violet would huddle in my bed as we waited for wolves to come tear our throats out should father fail, and I always thought deep down that she hid behind me not because she trusted me to protect her but because she knew they'd fall on me first and it would give her time to get away.

I told her about how Frank hasn't said a word to me since my gift ceremony, how the triplets barely know I'm their sister, about the day I got up and found my mother was gone and her warmth was already dying in our house. I told her about how I was beginning to love Elliot and he was never mine.

By the time I run out of words the tea in the cup is cold and she takes it away and brings me another, steam rising to soothe my aching eyes.

"Child, I do not have a say in who is blessed with a gift and who is not," she says, this little slip of a girl with all the power of the moon in her. I feel like screaming at her. She has to be able to fix me. She has to be able to reach inside me and find the broken part that won't work right and make me worthy again. "No, I cannot do anything for you. I am sorry. It is fate, not the moon, who picks and chooses. Otherwise every child of wolf and fang would be given a full gift at the moment of their birth and we would save ourselves much heartache."

The words sound like platitudes, the sort of hollow nonsense that teachers say but don't mean when they tell children that no-souls are no worse or better than everyone else. But the look in her eyes convinces me and breaks my heart. She looks so sad, her big silver-moon eyes full of tears as she takes my scraped hands and makes them whole.

She really does love me. She really wouldn't have left me in the cold if she could. I really am cursed.

The silence that drops on me then feels like a rock attaching itself to my heart. There's nothing left to hope for. I've been waiting half my life for when the goddess would finally come to our pack and now all that waiting was in vain.

"I can feel you despairing," she says softly, and she takes my hand in her own as though we are friends and fellows, instead of a Goddess smiling on one so much lesser than her. "I cannot give you a gift like your blood, but I can give you a chance. I have a school in the mountains. I am going there now. It is a place where the bravest and most daring giftless of the communities can train and learn and try for something better. If you are willing to leave those of your own and follow in my caravan then I will take you there with me."

I stare at her, the rush from loss to sudden breathless opportunity knocking the wind out of me. I feel myself nodding, numb and confused and delighted all at once and she kisses my cheek in a gesture that I know I will take with me to the end of my days.

I don't know what last mumbled words of thanks I manage to get through as I take my leave. My head is swimming with everything I have learned and I am so tired that I can feel it deep in my bones. I duck out of the tent in a daze and walk straight into the chest of a very tall and very solid vampire guard.

Oh sh*t.