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They all walked along as quiet as though someone had just died. Virginia and Tony walked ahead, Tony dragging Prince along. Wolf walked far behind them, being ordered to keep away by Virginia, and had his hands shoved as far down in his jacket pockets as he could.
Rhoswen walked a little ways behind him, looking from her left to her right. She looked behind her a moment and then turned to face forward, biting her bottom lip. Every snap of a twig and crunch of a leaf made her jump.
"Little rose has lost her way."
She jumped at the voice that had been following her, repeating the same rhyme over and over again. She looked behind her again and then above her as a bird flew from one branch to another.
"In the forest she doth play."
"Shut up..." She commanded the voice and clamped her hands over her ears, "Go away..."
"Believes that she can end the curse."
"Stop." Rhoswen commanded a little louder and stopped walking. She spun in a slowly circle and looked down the path they had just walked. She stood still and closed her eyes tightly, pushing her hands as hard as she could against her ears.
"Little does she know she is making it worse."
Suddenly a hand clamps down on her shoulder, making her shriek and turn around to face the owner. Wolf retracts his hand and narrows his eyes at her behavior.
"What's wrong?" Wolf asked and stared down at her. Rhoswen shook her head and continued to look left and right, expecting to see something.
"I don't know." She replied, her eyebrows knitting together as she felt fear creep into her blood. She shook her head and looked behind her again. Her skin was crawling and her hands were tingling and shaking, "It's nothing."
She shook her head again and walked past Wolf.
"Whoa, wait." Wolf grabbed her at her elbow and held her in her spot before him. He stared down at her and noticed the look of fear in her eyes. His other hand came and rested on her cheek, his thumb brushing gently over her cheekbone, "What's going on?"
"Give her fears."
"Rhoswen?" Wolf asked again and forced her to look at him.
"It's nothing." She argued and tore herself from him.
"Force her screams."
"It's not nothing. You're afraid of something. Tell me what it is." Wolf grabbed her again and forced her to stop walking away, "I can't help if you don't tell me what's going on."
"You can't help everyone, Wolf." Rhoswen replied, looking down the path at Tony and Virginia. Wolf followed her gaze, jaw hard and eyes full of mixed emotions. Rhoswen looked back up at him and smiled softly, "And I'm not gonna ask you to."
"Make her fall into the darkest of dreams."
Rhoswen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Suddenly she became very cold as though she had walked outside in the middle of winter in the Eighth Kingdom in nothing more then her own skin.
"You're shaking." Wolf's voice caused her to open her eyes again and look up at him. He quickly took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. He held it closed with one hand while he pressed the other to her cheek, "You're cold...like ice."
"Wolf, I'm not that cold." Rhoswen replied, her eyes narrowed. She freed one hand from inside the jacket and placed it to his forehead, "Wolf, you're burning up."
"I'm fine." He replied quickly and took her hand away from his forehead.
"No, you're not." Rhoswen argued and placed her hand against his cheek, switching between her palm and the back to try and cool his flaming skin, "Are you sick?"
"No. I'm fine." Wolf snapped. Rhoswen took her hand away and stared up at him for a long moment. Something was definitely off with him. He was snapping at everyone today and now a fever? Rhoswen went to argue with him, but stopped. The eerie and dark feeling had suddenly disappeared. It was as though it had never really been there.
"What is it now?" Wolf asked softer and stared down at her. He took notice that she didn't look afraid anymore, but slightly relieved.
"Nothing." Rhoswen answered honestly with a hint of surprise in her voice. She looked back up at him and shook her head, "Really. I'm fine now. Here. You can have your jacket back."
"Keep the jacket on." Wolf ordered as she had begun to remove it. She looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. Wolf took a deep breath and sighed, agitation ringing within it, "For my sanity will you keep it on?"
"You're sane?" Rhoswen asked, trying to keep a straight face. Wolf gave a small huff and shook his head at her. He looked back down at her and took a deep breath. They stood there for a long moment, just staring at each other. Wolf knew something was wrong with her, but she was right. He couldn't help her and Virginia at the same time. Especially since he had other things he needed to take care of. He also didn't want to have to choose between them at the moment. He was fighting it as hard as he could, but he was being forced to at every turn.
"What is it, Wolf?" Rhoswen asked with a small smile, "Have I rendered you speechless?"
"Yeah," Wolf knitted his eyebrows together and looked at Virginia for a brief moment before he looked back down at her. It was like he was standing at a fork in the road. Virginia was going down one path while Rhoswen was heading down the other. He gave her a small smile with a fake, breathy laugh, "You do that a lot."
"Hm, that's nice to hear. Usually it's the opposite and people want to rip me a new one." Rhoswen laughed and pushed her hands into the pockets of Wolf's jacket, which she had pulled on fully. She looked down at her feet, feeling slightly nervous with the way Wolf was staring down at her. She looked back up at him, seeing his gaze had never faltered.
It was the same look that first night they sat under the stars in the forest and then last night when he tried to comfort her. It was the same look; caring and warm.
"Wolf?" She asked softly, her heart beginning to pick up speed. She swallowed hard and stared up at him, waiting for him to speak, but he kept silent. He was so confusing to her. One moment he was pronouncing his undying love for Virginia and then the next he was staring at her like...like he loved her.
"Rhoswen, I need to tell you something." Wolf started and then fell silent again. What he needed to tell her...what his heart was telling him to say, what path to follow...it scared him into silence. He had been so sure at the start that Virginia was his one love. Now he wasn't sure of anything. His mind screamed Virginia every chance it got. While, very softly every now and then, his heart whispered Rhoswen and drowned out everything else.
"Look! Rhoswen, Wolf, look! It's Acorn!" Virginia shouted from down the path. Rhoswen's head snapped to look at her. She saw her pointing to a wagon that had a small horse pulling it and then at the dwarf. Virginia waved them to come on, smiling brightly, "Come on!"
"Well...that was easy." Rhoswen gave a small half hearted laugh and looked back up at Wolf. She swallowed hard and gave another small breathy laugh, "What is it that you need to tell me?"
"I...nothing. It's nothing." Wolf replied and shook off his thoughts. Rhoswen watched him for a moment. Her heart stopped thudding against her rib cage and the butterflies ceased in her belly. Her hope of him realizing that he was better off with her grew dimmer.
"We should go." She looked back at Virginia and Tony, who were running to stop the wagon, and then looked down at her feet. She took a deep breath and then began walking. Wolf followed behind her into the small clearing where a small fire was burning. The supposed Acorn sat on the ground before the fire, smoking a pipe.
"Acorn, remember me?" Tony asked, huffing from running. Wolf walked up on the other side of Virginia as Rhoswen went to the horse. She smiled at it and tentatively reached a hand out. She pet it and cooed at it sweetly, trying to take her mind off of what had happened.
"Of course I do! Tony!" Acorn exclaimed and pulled the pipe out from his mouth, smiling, "How are you doin' lately?"
"Where's our mirror?" Tony wasted no time in asking.
"What mirror?"
"It belongs to us! Give it back!" Virginia spoke up. Acorn looked to her and smirked, taking a drag from the pipe.
"Was it valuable?" He asked, looking between Tony and Virginia.
"No."
"Worthless." Tony and Virginia spoke in unison.
"You've come an awful long way for a worthless mirror." Acorn commented and then threw a cup of water on the small fire.
"It's a magic mirror. We came here through it." Virginia spilled as she and Tony followed Acorn to his wagon where Rhoswen still stood by the horse, "All we want to do is go home. Please. Let us go home. I just want to go home."
Rhoswen looked back at Virginia, hearing her voice crack. Her eyes were teared up and she sniffled, wiping her nose. Rhoswen's gaze became softer. She understood how Virginia felt. She too was homesick.
"He doesn't have it." Rhoswen spoke up and looked back at the horse.
"How do you know!" Virginia snapped.
"I checked the wagon." Rhoswen answered and let her hand fall from the horse. Virginia gave a small hiccup of a cry and covered her mouth.
"The blonde's right. I swapped it with someone in the village. I'm terribly sorry. Very movin' story though." Acorn commented as he climbed onto the wagon and took the reigns to the horse.
"Swapped it! For what!" Tony snapped and wrapped an arm around Virginia's shoulders. Rhoswen looked behind the two at Wolf. He stared at the ground, hands deep in his pants pockets with Prince beside him. She knew what village Acorn had come from and if they were to go there...there were going to be problems with Wolf being, well, a wolf.
"A lamb. He swapped it for a lamb." Rhoswen spoke up and looked over at Tony, "A really nice lamb too."
"A lamb!" Tony snapped again and let go of Virginia. Rhoswen watched as Wolf retreated from the small clearing. She looked back at Tony, Acorn, and Virginia and declared they were preoccupied. She followed carefully behind Wolf and tried to keep quiet. She just wanted to make sure he was alright. She owed him at the very least that much for everything he had been doing for her.
He walked into the forest and walked down a path, head hung low. He kicked the leaves beneath his feet and then suddenly stopped. Rhoswen could hear him sigh heavily and watched as he ran a hand through his raven hair with his other hand in his pants pocket. Rhoswen stopped as well and watched him, not trying to even hide.
"Wolf..." A voice called out from the trees to his left. Rhoswen's eyes traveled to where his gaze landed. It was a chuck from a tree truck that dipped in the middle of it to form a kind of bowl. Within it was a pool of water that rippled, "Wolf..."
Rhoswen recognized the voice. It wasn't the one she had been hearing in her head, but the same voice from the boat. The one Wolf had been yelling at when she had hit her head on the stairs.
"Wolf..." The voice called again and Wolf moved closer to the trees. Rhoswen watched him and then slowly moved closer. This time she made sure she was hidden from sight, "Wolf, do you think you can simply ignore me?"
Wolf moved closer to the water and peered inside. Rhoswen moved closer too and hid behind a tree, peeking around it after a moment. She could tell it was a female that was speaking to him and she sounded older then herself, angrier.
"...I've changed..." Wolf whispered, looking around to make sure no one was listening. Rhoswen hid herself behind the tree and leaned back against it, "I am no longer under your influence... You cannot touch me...!"
"Oh, really?" The woman asked with a hint of mockery in her voice, "It's a full moon tonight. You're blood is already hot. You are a wolf."
Rhoswen closed her eyes tightly and cursed at herself. She should have known. She should have been watching the moon to know when it would be full.
"What will you do when the wild moon calls you?" The woman asked as Wolf ran a hand over his mouth. He looked up and stared out into the forest, thinking about her words, "What will you do then...with your new friends?"
Wolf growled and splashed the water viciously, ending the conversation. He stood there, huffing, and pacing back and forth. He spoke quietly to himself and tugged at his hair. He cursed and kicked his feet at nothing.
Rhoswen kept her back flush with the tree as she listened to him. She didn't know what to do. She had been spying and what she had heard, the voice, how Wolf was 'no longer under her influence'...something was going on. She didn't want to just to conclusions, but assumptions crawled into her mind one after the other.
Wolf growled again and then stormed past her, never seeing her. Once he was gone she peeled herself from the tree slowly. She felt like she was in a daze. She walked onto the path and just stood there. She stared in the direction Wolf had gone, heading back to Virginia and Tony, and struggled with what to do.
It could just be nothing, but what if it wasn't? He had said he had been in prison for sheep worrying, but what if it was more then that? What if the dark feeling she had was because of him? Because of something he had brought with him, on accident or not?
"Like a sorceress maybe?"
Rhoswen didn't bother to look around for the source of the voice. Nothing would be there. She was alone. She stared at the ground, eyes glazed, and mind lost to her thoughts. One part of her screamed that something was terribly wrong with the whole situation. That she should have known from the very start of things. She should have known that she had everything backwards.
"You were the one under the illusion, not him. He knew exactly what he was doing. He played you. He played all of you like puppets. Especially you. He played off of everything that has happened to you; Fawkes, your parents, your home, your feelings for him. You walked right into his trap and never even thought twice about everything."
Rhoswen swallowed hard and blinked, looking off to her right. She shook her head slowly.
"He told the voice that she had no control over him. He said he's changed." She argued back, "He saved me in the Third Kingdom. He saved me from her crow."
"It's an illusion."
"No. Through everything he hasn't left me. He's stayed right there, listening to what I have to say, comforting me and telling me everything will be alright."
"It's an illusion."
Rhoswen shook her head again and closed her eyes tightly. She didn't know what to think. She wanted to believe that Wolf was good, but the voice had a point. Everything bad had started when she met him; her magic, her pain, the crow, the voice. Rhoswen weaved her fingers into her hair and clenched handfuls of her golden strands.
"Rose?" Rhoswen's head snapped up to stare at Tony as he walked down the path towards her with Prince, "Are you alright? You disappeared."
Rhoswen nodded her head quickly and looked behind him where Wolf and Virginia were following in his footsteps.
"You sure? You looked like you were gonna pull your hair out." Tony stopped in front of her and stared down at her. Rhoswen didn't reply and just stared at Wolf, who kept quiet as he stared at the ground beneath his feet, "Rose?"
Tony followed her gaze and stared at Wolf a moment. He looked back down at her and nodded his head. He wrapped an arm around her and made her walk along side him.
"You know. I saw the way he was looking at you today. When you though Virginia and I weren't looking. Before we found Acorn." Tony started and leaned closer to her, "He likes you. More then Virginia, I think. Thank God. I mean, it's great for you because you really like him. I can't see him and Virginia together. He's not her type at all."
Tony continued to ramble on, but Rhoswen wasn't listening. She looked back at Wolf and stared at him as he walked quietly along. She quickly looked forward again and watched the ground as it drifted by beneath her feet.