Page 6

Faoiltiarn

Sadie

“There you are, Sadie Schaduw. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Thank goodness that odd smell of yours makes you easy to track.”

Just a few weeks after our autumn arrival in Faoiltiarn, I looked up from my latest whittling project to find Amanda Smucker standing above me.

I was sitting on a rock outside the cave I’d found the night before, putting the finishing touches on a figurine of a small finch-like bird nestled in a patch of nearby heather.

Its belly and small beak reminded me of the pine siskin, a finch I loved to carve back home, though it lacked the bright yellow that made siskins easier to spot in the wild.

It also had a smaller, cuter beak.

I’d been so engrossed in trying to capture that distinguishing detail that I didn’t hear or smell Amanda approaching until the bird suddenly flew away, and I looked up to find the blonde Wolfennite staring down at me, her yogurt-and-muesli scent filling my nose.

I jumped to my feet, feeling a little caught out.

.. and invaded. “Amanda, what are you doing here?”

“A cave, really?” She cast a disapproving frown at the stone structure behind the rock where I’d been sitting, whittling in the afternoon sun.

“Is this truly where you decided to run off to last night when you insisted on abandoning us in that fit of hysterics?”

I fidgeted under her judgmental cornflower-blue gaze…

and the memory of what had happened the night before, when I attempted to accompany her and the other Wolfennites to the dungeons below the Scottish kingdom’s castle for our monthly full moon shift.

I’d shoved down every compliant instinct I had in order to leave Canada for this Bridal Exchange.

But last eve before the sunset, I’d learned the hard way that there was no escaping my mother’s voice inside my head.

“You are not to ever make the moon change in front of anyone, Sadie girl. Not even me.”

The she-wolf starved kingdom of Faoiltiarn had generously repurposed two of its fields to provide us Wolfennites with a large plot of land we’d named New St. Ailbe.

It came with a three-story, 25-room dorm, wooden planter boxes for growing food, a cow barn, an icehouse, and even a chalk diamond to play our beloved baseball during free time.

They’d gone out of their way to make our lives in New St. Ailbe match the original one.

But over fifty changing cages to satisfy the modesty-based shifting rules of our new Ordnung had been too much of an ask.

The compromise of using the castle dungeons for a group shift had been fine by everyone, including me—until we arrived at the castle for an early dinner with the king and future queen a couple of hours before sunset.

My mother’s voice had only been a whisper in my head while I finished sewing a dull blue shifting robe to Amanda’s specifications, so that at no point would we have to stand in front of each other naked—even in wolf form.

But the moment we crossed the castle’s threshold, her voice started shouting, clogging my throat and making my steps stutter.

“Sadie? Are you okay?” Naomi, who had been walking beside me, turned and doubled back when she realized I hadn’t made it past the door.

I couldn’t answer. I could only clutch at my chest as my mother’s voice screamed in my head.

You cannot, girl. Cannot!

“Have… have to go change somewhere else,” I barely managed to choke out before dashing toward the forest. Luckily, I found a cave that not only kept me hidden but also shielded me from the icy rainstorm I’d woken up to this morning.

The one I’d use as my first excuse not to return to the dorm house at New St. Ailbe right away.

I’d meant to go back after the storm passed.

Explain myself. But then I saw the bird in the heather, and I guess I’d lost track of time because now Amanda was standing here looking up at me quizzically underneath the warm glow of the late-afternoon sun.

“It’s well past lunch,” she said.

“I thought you’d at least show up to eat and relieve yourself.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“Have you been using the outside as your toilet? If so, that’s against the Ordnung. Thou shalt practice humanity in all things outside of a full moon .”

Was she kidding?

I knew Amanda had taken it upon herself to be what Naomi called The Ordnung Police—making sure all of us she-wolves kept to the strict rules with which we’d been raised, even if we were in a foreign land.

But… “It’s only been twenty-four hours. Why would you think I’d have to resort to going outside?”

“Because of nature’s design.” Amanda shook her head, as if I was the one with strange notions about how long one could hold their bladder, not her.

“Everyone must relieve themselves a few times a day.”

I tilted my head.

“Only if they want to. It’s like eating. You can always turn your hunger off for as long as you need if you don’t have access to a meal.”

Or have been locked in your room for weeks upon weeks.

I thought back darkly to my last punishment.

Amanda screwed up her face.

“What are you talking about? You sound like a rooster crowing in the middle of the night.”

I frowned at the Wolfennite saying that basically meant you sound crazy because her thinking I sounded crazy sounded crazy to me.

I knew we grew up cloistered, but did she truly not get how basic wolf anatomy worked?

Before I could defend myself, though, she waved her hands in the air like she was wiping the conversation clean.

“Oh, let’s stop with all of this toilet talk. That’s not why I tracked you out here anyway.”

Which made me scrunch my brow to inquire, “Why did you come find me?”

“So glad you asked. Guess what, Sadie Schaduw.” Her face lit up, and she clasped her hands.

“We’ve been invited on a courting walk!”