Chapter 133: The Unfolding Truth XIII

Third Person point of view

The house sat at the edge of the clearing like it had always been there. Not large. Stone walls, dark wood framing, a chimney pushing a thin line of smoke up into the pale sky.

The garden out front had seen better days, the plants growing sideways, the soil cracked in places, the kind of overgrown that came from a family too busy fighting each other to tend to anything else.

Helen had been standing behind the same thick tree for long enough that her legs had started to ache.

She had not moved. And she would not move yet.

She was far enough that anyone glancing out the window would not catch her. Not close enough to be noticed. But close enough to see the door, the windows, the faint shapes of movement behind the curtains. She had been watching for a while now, piecing together what she knew.

Sonita’s mother was a sorceress. There were sorceresses in that house. She did not want them to find out she was nearby.

Helen stayed behind the tree and breathed slowly.

She just needed to know if Sonita was inside.

That was all.

The door opened. And Helen went still.

A girl stepped out onto the path. Young, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with brown hair cut short at the shoulders, not quite reaching her jaw.

She was holding something in her right hand, a small wooden doll, its painted face worn away in patches, the kind of thing a child carries long past the age of needing it, simply out of habit.

Her eyes were on the ground. She was kicking at something, or thinking about kicking at something, or just watching her feet the way people did when they were somewhere between bored and sad and did not know which one to pick.

Helen did not call out.

She could not call out. Too close to the house. Too much risk. If she raised her voice, anything inside would hear her before the girl did, and then everything she was trying to do carefully would fall apart in an instant.

She stayed quiet. She pressed her shoulder against the bark of the tree and thought.

Then she reached for something she had not reached for in a long time.

It sat deep in her chest, underneath everything else, underneath the careful and the quiet and the years of keeping it pressed down flat.

The part of her that was not a wolf. Not human. The part most people did not have a name for and the ones who did used it like something was wrong with it. Like having it meant something was broken.

Her grey eyes shifted. The color bled out from the centre, fading from grey into something deeper, something that had no real name, not blue, not silver, the particular color of ocean water where the light stopped reaching.

The shift happened slowly, the way early morning replaced night without any single moment you could point to and say there, that was when it changed.

She barely moved her fingers.

And she whispered.

"Look my way."

The sound barely left her mouth. Just breath and intention, more feeling than actual words.

The girl’s head turned.

Not gradually, not the way someone turned after hearing a sound. Like a tap on the shoulder. Like something gentle and insistent had simply redirected her.

Her blue eyes swept the tree line until they found Helen, and they stopped there.

Helen raised one hand. Small waves. Careful and slow.

The girl did not scream. Did not spin around and run for the house. She stood there for a second with her head tilted, frowning the frown of someone trying to work something out, and then she started walking.

Toward the trees. Toward Helen.

She stopped a few feet away.

Up close, she was all sharp angles and watchful eyes. The same way Sonita carried herself when she thought someone might be testing her.

Arms crossed, chin lifted just enough, blue eyes moving over Helen’s face like she was reading something written there.

"Who are you?"

Her voice was even. Not frightened. Just direct.

Helen kept her own voice quiet, her hands visible, nothing about her posture reaching forward or threatening.

"I know this looks weird," she said. "Me being out here, hiding behind a tree, watching your house. I know that. But I’m not dangerous. I just came to check on my friend."

The girl’s arms tightened across her chest.

"Your friend?"

"Sonita."

Something moved across the girl’s face then. Not suspicion. Something more complicated than that, recognition, relief, and then underneath both of those, something older and heavier that had been sitting there for a while before Helen arrived.

She let her arms drop slightly.

"Wait." She looked at Helen properly this time. Face, then clothes, then face again. "You are Sonita’s friend. The one she got in trouble for."

Helen nodded.

The girl let out a breath. Not quite a sigh. Something between a sigh and a decision.

"Oh." She looked down at the wooden doll in her hand. She moved her foot against the path, kicking at a small stone like she was still thinking about it. "She just left. She did not even check if I would be okay." She looked at the ground. Her voice went smaller at the edges. "She did not ask if I needed someone to talk to."

Her foot kept moving against the path. Back and forth. One small stone going nowhere.

"She is a bad sister," she said. And the way she said it, with her face set and her jaw tight, sounded exactly like someone who had been trying not to say it out loud for days and had just run out of the energy to keep it in.

Helen looked at her.

At the doll in her hand with its worn face. At the way, she held her shoulders up like she was trying to look older and more okay than she was. At the stone, she kept kicking.

Helen crouched down. Not all the way, just enough to bring herself closer to eye level. She kept her white hair tucked inside the cloth she had wrapped around it before she left the cottage. The girl could not see it yet. Did not need to yet.

"Your sister is not a bad person," Helen said.

The girl did not look up. "She left."

"She left for a reason." Helen kept her voice gentle. No pressure in it. No rush. "And I believe she will explain it to you one day. When she can."

A small pause stretched between them.

"But do not let yourself see her as a bad person because of it," Helen said. "She is not."

The girl looked up.

Her blue eyes were wet at the corners. Not crying. Not yet. Just the very edge of it, the place before crying where a person was still deciding whether to bother.

"You are actually good," she said.

Helen blinked. "What?"

"Based on what my mother said about you." She wiped her eyes quickly, like she could pretend it had not been there. "She made you sound kind of evil. Like you were something to be afraid of. But you do not look evil at all."

Helen smiled.

It came without warning, the way the real ones always did. Small and genuine and slightly crooked.

When she smiled, the cloth wrapped around her hair shifted. Just a fraction. Just enough. A single strand slipped loose and caught what little light the sky had to offer, pure white, bright against the dark fabric.

The girl’s eyes went wide.

"You have white hair?"

Helen’s hand moved up automatically. She found the strand and pinched it between her fingers.

She was about to tuck it back.

"Can I see it?" the girl said.

"I do not know."

"Please." She stepped half a step closer. "Please, please, please."

Helen looked at her face.

The suspicion was completely gone now. So was most of the sadness. What was left was something brighter and more alive, pure curiosity, the kind that sat in children before the world convinced them to be careful about showing it.

Helen let go of the strand.

She reached up and pulled the cloth away.

Her hair fell loose around her shoulders all at once. White from root to end, every strand of it. The black streak at the front stayed where it always had, a single dark line cutting through all that white. She did not tuck it back. She did not look away. She just let the girl see it.

The girl stared.

Not the way strangers usually stared. Not with the faint discomfort people got when they saw something they did not know how to categorize.

Her eyes moved over Helen’s hair slowly, the way eyes moved over something genuinely beautiful, taking their time because they did not want to rush the experience of looking at it.

"You look like an angel," she whispered.

Helen shook her head.

"I am not an angel. I am just a normal girl."

"I like you," the girl said. Simple. Decided. Like she had been going back and forth on something for a while and had just landed.

"Thank you," Helen said.

She paused. "What is your name, little one?"

The girl’s face shifted immediately, and her shoulders straightened with great offense.

"I am not little. I am sixteen." She held up the wooden doll and then seemed to remember she was holding it and lowered it slightly. "Forget the doll or my height. I am just used to it."

"Of course," Helen said. She kept her face very serious. "You are absolutely not little. My mistake."

The girl seemed satisfied with that. She lifted her chin back to where it had been before.

"I am Genevieve."

Helen reached out and touched the edge of the girl’s hair. Just lightly. Just the tips of it.

"You are a sweet child, Genevieve."

She pulled her hand back.

"Do not let your mother’s words get into your head. If you believe something is good, believe it all the way. Do not let what other people say change what your own eyes are telling you."

Genevieve shrugged, the particular kind of shrug that meant she had already decided not to.

"I never really listen to my mother when she starts talking like that." She looked at Helen. "Besides. You do not look dangerous. You look more like an angel."

Helen smiled again.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"What is your name?"

"Helen."

Genevieve nodded. Pressed her lips together slightly. The way someone did when they were committing something to memory and wanted to make sure it stuck.

"Nice to meet you, Helen."

Genevieve looked down for a moment. Then back up, her expression shifting into something more complicated.

"If you see my sister." She paused. "Tell her I am angry with her."

"Absolutely," Helen said. Then hesitated.

"And when you see her... tell her I am sorry."

Genevieve’s frown pulled in. "Why are you sorry?"

Helen’s face softened. The smile that came this time was quieter than the others.

"It is a long story," she said. "Just pass my message."

Genevieve studied her for another moment. The way she looked, head slightly tilted, eyes moving carefully, she could have been Sonita’s twin.

"Will I see you again?" she asked.

Helen reached up and tucked her white hair back under the cloth. Slowly. Taking her time.

"Yeah," she said. "Maybe."

She straightened up.

"Bye, Genevieve."

She turned and walked back toward the tree line.

"Bye, Helen."

Helen kept walking.

Behind her came an adult voice. Sharp. Coming from the direction of the house.

"Genevieve! What are you doing over there?"

A pause. And then Genevieve’s voice, stumbling over itself, pitched just slightly too high.

"I am coming, Mother. I... I saw a pig. A chicken. A... I am coming."

Helen smiled. She kept walking. She did not look back.

She walked until the house was fully behind her, until the only sounds left were the birds and the wind and her own feet on the ground. Until the last trace of woodsmoke had faded and there was nothing around her but the forest and the grey-white sky pressing down through the leaves.

Then she stopped.

She leaned her back against the nearest tree and looked up.

The leaves moved. Light moved between them, the kind of light that could not decide if it wanted to be there or not. She stood under it and breathed.

She thought about Genevieve.

Fourteen years old. Already holding her own thoughts separate from her mother’s. Already looking at a stranger with white hair and deciding, on her own, that it was beautiful instead of wrong. Already carrying the weight of being left by someone she loved, standing in her front garden with a worn doll in her hand and her foot kicking at a stone, trying to look like she was fine.

Sonita had done the same thing.

Stood in doorways and crossed her arms and said things plainly so the feelings behind them would not show. Asked questions that were not really questions. Advised with the same directness she used when she was scared.

The thought moved through Helen’s chest and settled somewhere it did not fully lift from.

Sonita was gone.

Not dead. Not gone forever. But gone, as in left her.

Gone.

And the fact that it had been Sonita’s choice, her own decision, made with her own two hands, made it somehow harder instead of easier.

Helen had not driven her away. She had not asked her to go. She just wanted her to understand, to view her life from her own point of view.

She pressed her palm flat against the tree behind her. Felt the bark, rough and cool and solid.

She thought about what it would feel like.

To have someone who was simply there. Not because they had chosen her, not because they had stumbled into her life and decided to stay.

Someone who was just there. Who had no choice but to be, and neither did she.

Someone who looked at her hair the way Genevieve had looked at it.

Like it was not something to cover up. Like it was something worth seeing.

Helen pushed off from the tree.

She straightened her clothes, smoothed the front of her clothes, and started walking.

The forest closed around her slowly, tree by tree, until the clearing was fully behind her and there was nothing ahead of her but the path and whatever came next.

She did not look back.