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September had arrived, bringing with it a general feeling of depression and despair. It could have been because summer was over, temperatures were dropping, and people were already beginning to catch colds. The most likely reason, though, was that school was once again in session.
Some students were glad to go back and see their friends again. These people were in the minority, as most people who wanted to see their friends went out and did things with them during the summer. Other students didn't have a lot to do during the summer anyway, and felt that going back to school was better than nothing. Something like half of the school's population, including many of the teachers, would disagree with that.
Olivia Miller, who went by Olive, was worried about the start of school. This wasn't entirely unusual. What was unusual was the reason.
One night in the middle of summer vacation, she had been taken from her house to a clearing somewhere (she suspected in the hills behind her house). A girl had appeared from the surrounding woods, and after a bit of trouble, dropped the bombshell. Olive's mother, whom she had never known, was a werewolf. And because lycanthropy was hereditary, Olive was too.
So, for the past two months, she had been spending her nights wandering around forests and learning about werewolves.
Until recently, she was exempt from the monthly transformations. Werewolves didn't start to change until age fifteen. Every full moon after that birthday would leave her canid for several hours.
There was a ritual that every werewolf had to take before their fifteenth birthday to prevent them from becoming feral wolves during the following full moons. While the wolf form of a normal werewolf was fairly tame and the werewolf generally kept their own mind, feral wolves were mindless killing machines. People who became feral wolves could technically have a ritual performed on them after their fifteenth birthday, but the ritual involved a werewolf biting their neck during the full moon, and, as Red had explained, it was hard to bite the neck of something that was actively trying to rip open your own neck at the same time.
Fortunately for Olive, her ritual had gone off without a hitch, and she wouldn't have to deal with anything else besides daily lessons until the first time she would change, at the next full moon.
Unfortunately for Olive, the next full moon was in the same week that school started. In this case, she felt being anxious about the start of school was completely justified.
The night before her first day, she told herself to forget about the werewolf thing, if only for the first few days. She hadn't counted on the fact that waking up much earlier than usual made her so tired that she could barely concentrate on anything, let alone school and the coming full moon.
She dressed and forced down breakfast in a daze, trying to figure out if she'd forgotten anything. She stopped pondering this when her father met her at the door. It seemed that he was intent on trying to remember everything for her.
"Got your backpack?"
"Of course." She yawned.
"You know what bus you're riding? You have money for lunch? Your house keys? An umbrella?"
"Yes, yes, yes, and—it's not supposed to rain anytime soon, Dad."
"Well, just in case."
"I'm going to break my back this way," she said, hoisting her backpack onto her shoulder.
"At least you'll be prepared."
Olive rolled her eyes, though she was smiling. "See you tonight."
"Have a good day."
She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. The cool air felt wonderful on her bare arms and face as she walked down her driveway to the street. She could see hills behind the houses that she passed. The trees on the hills were still green for the most part, though a few had turned a rust-red color.
A light breeze blew past, making her copper hair billow out behind her. She could tell from the shadow she cast on the pavement that her hair was getting fairly long, about halfway down her back. She should get it trimmed soon—she had forgotten to in the weeks before school started. There had been other things on her mind.
Olive broke into a trot; the bus was pulling up at the end of the street. She reached it just as the doors were opening, and climbed aboard. Scanning the seats, she saw that, like the year before, she was one of the first stops. Most of the seats were empty. She ended up sitting in a seat in the middle of the bus. It was far enough back to stop her from being annoyed by the younger kids, but not far enough to put her in the middle of the stoners that usually took up the back.
The bus got back onto the road, heading for the next stop. Setting her backpack next to her, Olive made herself comfortable, and took to gazing out the window.
After a while, they turned onto the road leading to the high school. They parked in the front, with the other buses. Static-filled transmissions were sent back and forth between the buses.
Olive heard a burst of static louder than the rest. This was followed by a clear voice saying, "The bell has rung." The bus doors opened, and kids already in the aisle rushed to get off the bus. Two seventh graders in one of the front seats were nearly crushed as a hulking junior carelessly pushed his friend into them. Laughing, his friend straightened and shoved him back, causing him to stumble down the steps and off the bus. The bus driver rolled her eyes.
Olive took her backpack and headed into the aisle, which had cleared out by then. As she stepped off the bus, she looked up at the school that loomed before her, and sighed.
And so begins another year, she thought, trudging through the front doors.
She walked past the buses and through the parking lot until she spotted a familiar black car. Her father, though unable to bring her to school in the morning, had arranged things with his work so that he could pick her up that afternoon.
Opening the front door, she slung her backpack over the passenger seat. It landed in the back floorboard. She climbed into the car, shutting the door behind her, and buckled her seatbelt as her father pulled out of the parking space, into the line of cars clogging the narrow street.
"So, how was your day?"
She shrugged. "It was okay. I think history's going to be fun. Math's going to suck."
"Same as last year, then."
"Pretty much." She stared out the window, watching parked cars drift past.
"You ought to go to bed early tonight so you aren't so tired tomorrow."
"I know," she said. "I was thinking of going to bed at nine instead. When I go to bed at ten, it still makes me tired."
Her father nodded. What he didn't know was that her nightly lessons had been changed to take place at nine, since they couldn't exactly be up nearly until dawn on school nights. She would have to make her father think she was sleeping soundly by then.
As soon as they arrived home, Olive dropped her backpack on the couch, and turned on the T.V. She had chores to do, but those could wait until later.
The night went by fast, and she found herself rushing to finish all of her chores within a half-hour of her "bedtime". Her father was already in bed, although she thought she heard movement from his room when her parakeet went into a fit of loud chirping. Coco never liked having his newspaper changed.
Olive rinsed the last cup and set it on a towel next to the sink. Her chores finished, she headed for her room.
She locked the door, then lay on the floor next to her bed. It was a tight fit, but she could just barely wriggle underneath it. It was the perfect hiding place.
Shoes and various books were pushed aside as she reached for a small box that sat against the wall. She took the lid off, and touched the flat, circular stone contained within.
Suddenly, she wasn't under her bed any longer. She drifted in blue-green waves, pressure causing a keening tone in her ears.
The waves disappeared as quickly as they'd come. Knowing what would happen next, she twisted her body around. An instant later she fell from the air and landed, kneeling, on a grassy patch. Her knees stung slightly, but it was better than it had been before she learned to twist before she fell—then, she'd often land on her back.
Olive climbed to her feet. She was in a clearing. The sun had already disappeared beneath the trees, but the sky was still light. It was the first time that Olive had seen this place in even semi-light, but it didn't look much different. She had excellent night vision as it was—the only thing that set the clearing at dusk apart from the clearing at midnight was the fact that now, she could see a broader range of colors; specifically, a lot of different shades of green, instead of just grey-green.
"Hey!" someone called, interrupting her thoughts.
It was Red, the one who had introduced her to the whole werewolf thing. Although Red was brunette, in her wolf form her hair turned to a brilliant, blazing red-gold. She was only a year older than Olive, but she knew a lot about werewolves, and taught them some of it every night.
"Hi," Olive responded, walking to her. "Where are the others?"
"Not here yet. You know that you're here about ten minutes earlier than when I told you to show up?"
"Heh, um," she said succinctly. "Sorry. I was worried that I was going to be late, so I was trying to hurry... and I guess I hurried too much."
Red shrugged. "No problem. It's better than being late. As long as you're here, though, can you help me out with something? I kind of forgot to prepare a few materials..."
"What do I do?"
"I need some oak leaves. There should be some oak trees around the lines of the clearing."
"Oak leaves?" Olive asked. "Are those like the one on the Canadian flag? Or—" She paused to consider it. "No, that was maple. Oh, were they the kind of—"
"Never mind," Red interrupted. "I'll get the leaves. You get some twigs—try to get fairly long ones, and none thicker than a pencil."
She wandered off toward the forest, leaving Olive bemused. Still, she knew that Red had a reason for even the oddest orders she gave. She stooped, and picked up a twig from the ground. It fit Red's specifications. There was another nearby. Still crouching, she leaned forward and grabbed it. A twig just beyond it caught her eye. She took that one, too.
One twig led her to another, and soon her gathering took her to the edge of the forest. The weeds were thick there, long blades of grass suddenly taking the place of the dirt and moss that covered the rest of the clearing. She parted the weeds, looking for twigs. After a minute or so, the only thing she had found was a flimsy, mud-encrusted stick.
Olive dropped the stick back into the weeds, frowning. She had just stood to go back and gather twigs in the clearing, when she heard crunching nearby. Looking up, she saw that the shifting shadows in the forest were gaining a shape. When a boy stepped out from the trees, she sighed in relief.
"Hi, Theo."
"Hello," he said, glancing at the twigs that Olive clutched. "What are those for?"
"Red told me to find some twigs. I can't find any over here, though. I was going to go back into the clearing to see if there were any more good ones..."
Theo gave her an odd look from under his fringe of white hair. Wordlessly, he reached up and took hold of a moderately thin branch, bending it down to his eye level. He examined the branch, snapped off a stick roughly the same size as the twigs that Olive held, and offered it to her.
"Oh." She took the stick. "Thanks."
He nodded slightly, then turned and started into the clearing. Olive grabbed a branch and began stripping it of twigs.
When she decided that she likely had enough twigs for whatever Red was doing, she went to Red and Theo. They were seated on either side of a flat rock, where Red was laying out leaves. Theo watched absently, his pale blue eyes not quite looking at the leaves.
Olive knelt next to the rock, and dumped the twigs in a clear space. Red grouped the last few sets of leaves together, then glanced up at Olive.
"Good job. You actually gathered more than I need, so I can give some to Christoph. He uses them in potions." Red rolled her eyes. "It'd be easy to just grab some twigs from his own clearing, but no, he has to send apprentices out to do it for him. Well, anyway..." She raised her arm and tilted her wrist to check her watch by the moonlight. "It's about five minutes after when we were supposed to start. We're ready here, so whenever Rhys decides to show—"
She was cut off by a muffled thump. Olive looked over her shoulder to see a boy climbing to his feet. Unlike Olive, Rhys had never quite figured out how to land more-or-less painlessly.
"You're late," Red informed him coolly.
"Only by a few minutes," he said as he walked over. "I didn't know that today was the day we were changing to the new schedule."
She sighed. "I started telling you about this two weeks in advance, and you still couldn't remember the date?"
"No, I knew the date. I just didn't know it was today."
"I told you right before you left last night that we switched on the next day!"
"Yeah." He ran a hand through his hair unconcernedly. It was so messy that there was hardly any difference. "I wasn't really paying attention."
Red glared at him.
When Olive had first met her, Red was easy-going, and constantly optimistic. With the approach of Olive's ritual, Red's temper had gotten shorter and shorter. Olive had assumed she would get back to normal after the ritual was over. After all, the ritual placed a lot of responsibility squarely on Red's shoulders. She was the one performing it, and the one teaching them about it. The ritual was easy to get wrong, and took place in front of half the werewolf population. That Red would be under stress was understandable.
While Red did seem more at ease after the ritual was over, she was still prone to becoming agitated when anything went wrong. As long as the situation was diffused early enough, she'd usually go back to normal.
"So what are the leaves and twigs for?" Olive asked hastily.
Red looked away from Rhys, and down at the make-shift table. "Oh, right. Gather 'round, guys. Tonight's lesson is going to be a bit different than usual."
When they had all settled around the rock, she picked up one pile of leaves and a twig, backed up several paces from the rest of them, and set the leaves on the ground. As Olive stared, Red took a bottle from one jacket pocket, then took off the jacket itself.
She uncorked the bottle, stuck a twig in the narrow opening, then removed it. The twig glistened with some dark fluid. Carefully, Red put the cork back in the bottle, and set it on the ground next to her. She took a deep breath, then in one fluid motion threw the twig onto the leaves, and her jacket over the whole thing. Then, she quickly backed away.
There was a roaring sound, and the jacket rose off the ground slightly. Orange sparks shot out from underneath it, fading after they went a few feet. Olive leaned back, her eyes wide.
All at once the noise stopped, and the jacket fell.
"The potion's extremely reactive, though it's more show than anything." Red lifted her jacket, revealing a smoking pile of ashes on the ground. The jacket had some soot on it, but was otherwise fine. "If nothing gets in the way, the whole pile, leaves, twig and all, will go shooting into the sky, kind of like fireworks. It's only to be used in case of extreme emergencies. We don't want people out here investigating "mysterious lights", after all."
She shook out her jacket, then draped it over one arm and picked up the bottle. "They keep these bottles in most of the clearings around here. We have some under that rock," she said, waving vaguely behind her.
"That rock" was the clearing's own storage space, a normal rock put under a spell so that only werewolves would be able to lift it. Under it was a niche containing various items. The only items that Olive had, until now, known anything about were the two student stones that she and Rhys used to teleport back home when their lessons ended for the night. Theo shared a stone with his parents, so his was kept in Central with the stone of anyone else who was no longer a student.
"They react best with dead plants, and if there's anything you can find easily in a forest, it's dead plants. You have to be able to identify different plants, because they give off different signals when exposed to this stuff..."
Olive thought later that it was easily one of the most fun lessons they'd had. Any lesson that involved things exploding had to be good, especially if the explosions were different colors. She especially liked the brilliant purple that the dried pine needles gave off. She went to bed almost an hour after the lesson, but when she shut her eyes in her dark room she could almost swear there were still yellow spots flickering over the backs of her eyelids.
