I recognize the haunt by her milk-shot eyes. She is wolfen this time. Dishonest in death, my sister’s ghost masquerades through the bramble on borrowed claws. She seeks the key to Mother’s garden gate—and the starfall secrets locked inside.
Once upon a time, Mother laced the key about my neck, hid me safe in the wildling canes, but quietly, my darling, oh so still! while I lure the monster afar.
My sister-in-wolf’s-clothing circles ‘round. The blackberry sheen of our mother’s throat stains her muzzle.
Come out, come out, the wolf growls, her rot-sweet curse tainting the nightbreeze.
I twine with the thicket, hold my breath close. She screams a howl that shivers my spine, thumps my rabbit-pulse heart.
Wolfen ears twitch. She sniffs.
My legs ache to run, but she has caught my scent. She sees me now. It is too late.
She is coming.
Trembling, I clutch tight the key.
Give it to me, she always snarls.
But Mother said it’s for me, I always whisper.
Jealous canines glint as my sister lunges, and in that hot gnash of teeth, I again taste death, as sweet as a berry, as tart as the stars. Their twinkling lights sing to me, and I long to trade this changeling bramble for their shine, to let go this phantom game—but my covetous sister has snatched the key. Its magic throbs, a living heart stolen. I see myself in its squeeze. My heart. My magic.
I turn away from the stars.
Hear my own voice in the snarl—Mine.
My sister pauses. Her shape ripples dread as my soft form roughens, thickens. Shedding the cower of rabbit, I blossom, a lupine flowering of wrath, briar thorns sprouting from my fingertips. I tuck a bitter shard of fallen starlight into the gape of my chest, bind it with sinew and vine.
And now I am rising, I am the clawed shadow a-prowl in the bramble, I am the wolf in the night. My murderess flees, weaving a cony path through leaf and root.
My turn, I whisper, and the hunt begins anew.
*Originally published in Moon City Review*