Madness

Madness
Oakley

I’ve seen plenty of people shift into wolves. It’s such a common occurrence that it’s not something I dwell on. Some people are very dramatic about it, shifting in an instant and letting their clothing fray to ribbons. Others take their time, stretching and loosening up before stripping naked and neatly folding their clothes. It’s not violent or painful. It’s a simple, little pop, and all of a sudden, they have four legs instead of two. 

This is different. This is bloody and grotesque. This is painful, and it’s happening right above me. 

My scream is swallowed by a sucking sound that shatters the air around us. Ian’s pain radiates through me, forcing my heart to beat like a quick, frantic drum. His skin turns an inky, swallow green before melting away and revealing his new form. Perhaps his true form. 

“Don’t move!” Wren shouts, holding his hands out in surrender as Ian, now fully seated in his beast form, his wings expanded as far as possible in the snug, low-ceiling room, lifts his massive head to look directly at Wren. “Oakley, do not move. His talons–”

My arms are still around Ian’s neck, but instead of his human neck and muscled shoulders, his sharp, armor-like fur now bites into my skin. Heat pours from him in waves of energy that make me dizzy. 

Ian snarls viciously at Wren. 

I tighten my grip. “No!” I snarl, kneeing Ian in the belly. His grunt of pain edges on shock. 

Wren takes a single step toward one of the curtains, and Ian tries to lunge, but I shout at him again, driving my knee in as hard as I can. If he was in his human form, perhaps it would be uncomfortable for him for a moment. Now, it’s like kicking a wall of iron. 

“He is our friend! Do not growl at him!” I squeeze his neck. He tries to shake me off, but I hold firm. “You’re being bad! Stop it, right now!”

Wren backs up a step, but Ian is out of his mind. It’s too late. Ian lurches, dragging me across the floor, and Wren shifts into a fox and disappears into his clothing. What emerges is not what I expected. He’s small, that’s expected enough, but he’s a very dark brown with a silver belly. I always imagined foxes were red or orange, but I know nothing about the world, apparently. 

“IAN! STOP!” I shout, but Ian leaps after Wren when he scurries through a curtain. 

I have no choice but to let go and let chaos choose their fates. I slam into the ground. Ian’s body moves over mine in slow motion while my vision fades in and out. I’m sure I hit my head. The dull pain radiating through my skull is obviously the remnants of that impact. I lift my hands to my face to cover my eyes, but the sound of the den has changed, and Ian’s roars and snarls, along with terrified shouts and screams, tell me he’s causing an utter calamity nearby. 

Someone touches me, ripping my hands away from my face and hauling me upward before I can get a good look at them. At first, my body reacts to the theory that this person is Alpin, and my fate is sealed. 

But the young woman with bright red hair and a foxy face doesn’t give me a second to collect myself before she says, “We must go. Now.” She yanks me through a curtain, then down a hallway and into the thick of the den. 

It’s madness. Ian has carved new hallways with his massive form. His talon marks scar the walls and floors. Smoke spices the air, but this section of the den is quieter than I expected. A loud boom ricochets from further down the spider's web of hallways to our left, and a burst of light follows. 

Amalie, because that’s the only person she can be, tugs me to the right, and we run. 

“Go! Go! Go!” she shouts, leaping over bundles and baggage left behind in the wake of Ian’s transformation. I have no idea how to find an exit to this maze, but she does, only dragging us to a stop when rushed voices echo from corridors around us and footsteps sound out. 

Before long, just as the smoke is getting thick enough that it burns the back of my throat every time I take a breath, she shoves me through a narrow tunnel that goes nearly straight up and screams, “Climb!”

I barely fit. I’m sure it’s meant for someone in their fox forms. The earth is filled with roots, creating a web that at least helps me find my grip, but the roots are oddly hot. My hands burn with every move I make upward, but the air clears, and the smoke falls away, revealing a vibrant, magenta sunset that paints a wide, forested valley in shades of gold. My gasp at our new surroundings is swallowed by Amalie grabbing me by the arm and tossing us–yes, I do mean tossing us–off a cliff. 

My scream chokes me before I hit the tree canopy at least a hundred yards below. Above, the massive, magical tree–because something that large can only be made of magic–swirls until the forest swallows us. The leaves and small branches break our fall, but I’m whipped soundly all the way down to the forest floor, where my back hits the ground, and the air is forced from my lungs in a sharp, desperate cry. 

Amalie is in a similar shape beside me, her arms splayed wide, and her fingers curled into tight fists as she pants and gulps for breath that won’t come easily. 

I manage to roll onto my side, ignoring sharp aches all over my body. A loud crack sounds out above us, high above the trees. The forest goes shockingly still. 

“What was that?” I pant, but Amalie’s eyes are barely open as she stares blankly up at the treetops. “Amalie? Where are you hurt?”

A boom like a mountain coming apart at the seams splits the forest into pieces. I screech, covering my ears, and somehow, some way, manage to instinctively bend my body over Amalie’s, shielding us both from the rush of energy that strips many of the trees of their leaves and branches in an instant. 

I’m pelted at all angles. Something sharp slices me from mouth to temple. Blood pools along my lips, and I taste it in droves when I open my mouth to take a desperate breath. 

The air tastes like smoke. Too thick. It’s hot. 

I can’t speak. My vision ebbs. I grip Amalie’s shirt and try to pull her closer, but something hits me square in the face, thankfully softer than whatever just tore my face in half, but I digress. 

A torrent of small forest-dwelling creatures rush by all around us, running away from the den, which I now have a full, startling view of from our vantage point. The trees used to be too thick. Now, the canopy is wide open, charred. And above us….

“Oh, my Goddess,” I cry out as the tree, burnt to a crisp and oozing with red fire, begins to crumble and fall into itself. “Amalie! We need to go!”

She takes a sharp breath and opens her eyes wide, coming back to lucidity in an instant. She grabs me and rolls us both to the side, where we bump and collide multiple times down a hill. More booms follow. Sharp crashes and the sound of trees shattering explode all around us, signaling the den, and its massive tree, are raining down on the forest in balls of pure fire. 

We don’t roll to a stop, however. 

We lose our grip on each other at some point. Amalie is rolling head over feet now a few yards behind me while I bump and spiral on my sides, trying desperately to find a grip on slick, ash-covered grass and moss. 

I hit a bump, or a rock, or a fallen log, and launch skyward, shouting what I think is either Amalie’s name, or a terrible curse word, either one. It doesn’t matter because when I hit the ground, I hit water. 

And it’s moving. 

Too fast. 

I swallow a gallon of it. I’m tossed back and forth, my back slamming into boulders and submerged logs, but the impacts slow me down enough that I can finally get my bearings. My head breaches the surface. I open my eyes wide in a desperate attempt to find Amalie. “Amalie!”

“I’m here!” she shouts back, but I can’t see her. The once gorgeous sky is now an inky kind of grayish yellow from the smoke, and the sun is fading fast. Our surroundings are painted in shades of blues and blacks, and the river rushes, eating every sound. “Grab my hand!”

“Where are you!?” I spin and catch sight of her a few yards down the river from me, braced against a boulder, only halfway submerged. I stretch out my arm. She stretches hers. Our fingertips brush.

“Wolf girl!” she screams. 

We miss. 

The current pulls me back under again and again. It's so violent now, like I’m being thrown through one of those commercial laundry machines the housewives of Silverhide have been begging Alpha Ryan to purchase for years now. I’m not bobbing on the surface of the water long enough to catch my breath. I’m drowning. I think I’m going to die like this. 

I’m not ready. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die!

“HERE!” 

My head breaches the surface long enough to suck in a desperate breath and catch a glimpse of Amalie running along the opposite bank, but then I’m pulled under again. 

It feels like an eternity passes. My bruised, exhausted body doesn’t register the change in the current right away. Everything slows. I float toward a strange light. Death, I’m sure. It’s over. I’ve died. So be it. 

My face breaches the surface, my tongue tasting acidic, smokey air. 

“SWIM! NOW!” 

I open my eyes. Amalie’s voice is distorted by a great, endless roar. Ian. He came for me. Didn’t I know he would? 

“OAKLEY!!! NO!”

The current suddenly shifts, and my body tilts, sucked down. 

I fall head first over the side of a waterfall. 

To add to the story of Oakley, the cautionary tale for naughty children, dying by waterfall will probably come as a shock to most listeners. I suppose there’s lamer ways to go, but still. I truly didn’t ever believe this was in the cards for me. 

I don’t remember the impact. I likely passed out immediately after my mind made sense of what had just happened and let me slip into a panic-induced coma, which I am grateful for, but alas, I open one eye to smooth, moonlit water and plumes of smoke rising in the distant mountains. I lift my head out of the mud of the riverbank, and the forest is quiet. 

Am I alive? 

I suppose I am because the Goddess is surely toying with me now, enjoying my suffering. I let my head fall back to the riverbank. I lie there for what could be hours just staring at the sky, watching the smoke drift into the heavens, and watching the night begin to fade from black to a deep purple that only comes in the early hours of morning. 

“No one is going to believe this,” I murmur to myself, my scorched throat turning the words into a cracked whisper. “All of this for nothing. They’ll think I’m a lunatic.”

A twig cracks on the other side of the river. My tired eyes lock on the looming, huffing, grunting shadow stumbling through the woods and coming to a stop at the opposite bank. 

But it’s not Ian on the other side of the river. 

Alpin, torn to shreds and terribly burned in his human form, looks right at me with a sick kind of smile.