It is one thing to make a resolution – carrying through with it is quite a different story, as Rahne discovered over the course of the next week. Although she spent as much time as Betsy would allow trying to work through the blocks on her powers, after six days of constant effort the walls in her mind loomed as solid and imposing as ever. Nevertheless she persevered, doggedly battering at the barriers with a stubbornness that alarmed even Moira, for whom absolute dedication to a task was the norm.
On the seventh day after their encounter with Jono, her foster mother put her foot down. "Enough is enough," she declared, intercepting Rahne and Betsy on their way to their session. "I'm not letting you keep on with this, knocking yourself out every ten minutes trying to break these blocks. You need to take a rest from this; it's not doing you any good."
"But I've got to keep going!" Rahne protested. In some way that she couldn't actually express she felt that the quest to regain her powers was the only thing that was keeping her from slipping away completely.
"It's okay, Moira," Betsy assured the frowning scientist. "We need to try another approach on this anyway. I was going to take Rahne on a little excursion today...."
Moira narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Where?"
……
"Ullapool?" Rahne asked with some trepidation as she glanced out the window of the helicopter. "What are we doing here, Betsy? I don't…."
"Relax luv. I know what I'm doing," Betsy replied cheerily, although Rahne thought she heard the suggestion of an additional 'I hope' pass the older girls lips. "Working things out inside your head isn't going anywhere, so I thought you should go directly to the source."
"I swore they'd pay for what they did," Rahne told Betsy as they stepped out of the helicopter. "What they let happen." Oddly, she felt calm. Dangerously calm in fact.
"I know you did, luv, but that doesn't mean you've got to be the one to do it. Like your friend said – they're already being punished by the memory and… well, you'll see."
"It's not enough," Rahne said through gritted teeth, surveying the cluster of houses that marked the beginning of the village. "Not for what happened."
"Maybe not," the telepath agreed, casting a glance in the direction of Rahne's stare. "But try not to go feral on these people yet, okay? I've got to go and do a couple of things, but remember – I'm only a thought away.…" She headed off in the direction of the church, leaving Rahne to her contemplation of the place that had been her home. I'm keeping an 'eye' on you though - so no rampages, please.
Rahne kept up her watch on the village. There was something in the scene before her that was both utterly familiar and eerily strange, and before she knew what she wanted to do, she found her feet moving, tracing a path that was imprinted at a level beyond instinct. Passing through the central square without realising, she was barely aware of the stares she was attracting from the few people who she passed by. Instead she focused inward, trying to pinpoint the subtle unfamiliarity in the feel of the place while her feet continued on their automatic journey without any conscious guidance.
And then her feet stopped, bringing reality rushing back with all the momentum of a runaway truck on a motorway as she took in her destination. The neat row of stone houses before her stared blankly back, but her attention was fixed elsewhere, on the glaring odd man out in this picture of quaint domesticity. Her house – or rather, the building that had been her house, because there was no way that the charred ruin that stood in front of her now could be described as a place where people could live.
The two stories thick grey granite had endured, remaining impervious to the insatiable appetite of the flames, but the inside of the house had been gutted entirely, leaving nothing but a stone husk of the place where she had grown up. But as she moved closer, drawn by an involuntary desire to inspect the devastation she saw that even the unyielding blocks which she had thought to be so permanent and unchanging had not escaped the fire. Although today the sun had managed to break free from the ever-present clouds and cast its light on the stonework, there was no answering sparkle from the granite. A coat of charcoal had adhered to the surface of the stone, obscuring the natural glitter in a dull grey blanket, apparently impervious even to the incessant Highland rains. In some unaccountable way, that shocked her the most.
"Rahne?" asked a hesitant voice behind her. "Is that ye?"
She spun around, recognising the speaker with a surge of anger. "What are you doing here Jess?" she demanded, the question coming out as a snarl.
"They said ye'd come back," replied the dark-haired girl, jerking her head back towards the centre of the village. "And I wanted ta… I wanted ta apologise."
"Ye wanted ta apologise," Rahne repeated, staring evenly at her one-time friend. She could smell the guilt and nervousness streaming from her in waves, but it wasn't enough to assuage her resentment. "And it's supposed to be all better then, is it? Because you've said sorry?"
"Nay, of course it isna better," Jess replied, her voice on the edge of breaking. "I ken it canna ever be alright again, but I just wanted ta say that… well, that I'm sorry for what happened. I never wanted ta be a part of it, it's just… well, I couldna do anything about it – I'm nae brave like ye."
"I'm not brave," Rahne protested. She thought about all the times that fear had frozen her, left her unable to function – before the Reverend, outside the collapsing pub in Liverpool, listening to Edward Carson's speeches…. Fear seemed to rule her life these days.
"Nay, ye are – ye stood up fer me when Murray Crawford was tryin' ta tell everyone I was a demon, and ye saved Claire even when ye knew it would end up… like it did…. Ye're the bravest person I ken."
"Claire…," Rahne said, the sound of her best friend's name bringing back a rush of memories. "Where…."
"She's staying with us at the moment," Jess answered quickly. "But… well, she didna want ta come with me today…."
"She didn't want ta see me?" Rahne asked. Guilt spiked higher in Jess' scent, and the way the other girl failed to meet her eyes answered her question. "Well, thank you for coming, I suppose."
Jess looked at her, and it seemed to Rahne as though she was trying to come to some kind of decision. Finally in a rush, she blurted out "Look, it's great ta see ye, Rahne – I'm really glad ye came and ye're alright and all, but ye shouldn't stay in Ullapool."
"Why not?" Bitterness flared again for Rahne. "Do I bring back too many unpleasant memories? Tug a few too many guilty consciences?"
"Nay! Och, well, I mean, ye do, but that's nae more than we deserve for what he… for what we did. Ye shouldn't stay because… because it isna safe for ye here."
"What do you mean?" Rahne asked suspiciously. "Why isn't it safe?" Turning her back on the ruin of her house, she began to walk back toward the village square. Jess scrambled after her, bobbing anxiously while she attempted to explain.
"It's just… most of the village are like me – we feel terrible about what happened, ta ye and yer parents, and we blame ourselves… and the Reverend, but nae one can find him, even Claire doesna ken where he's gone…. But there's another group, and they… well, they dinna want ta admit that we did anythin' wrong. They say the Reverend was right, and that ye.…"
But Jess never got to complete her sentence. As they entered the square, Rahne saw that a large number of people had gathered, and out of the shadows of one of the shops to her left a single word rang out from a voice dripping with hatred. "Demon!"
She spun around to her left, and met the eyes of Mr Francis Crawford – eyes which held nothing but contempt for her. "Get away from here, demon," he snarled, advancing toward her menacingly. "We've rid this place of ye and your taint and we willna have ye returning ta haunt us, ta curse us further." She heard a number of shouts of agreement and inwardly cringed.
But she stood her ground, and as Crawford approached, looming over her imposingly, she felt a hand slip into hers and squeeze tightly. Glancing briefly to her right, she saw Jess smiling encouragingly. "This time, I'm with ye, nae matter what."
"Cut it out Crawford," another voice called from the crowd. "Go back ta skulking around that farm of yours. Have we nae hurt this lass enough already?" Terry McGinnis asked as he stepped forward, folding his arms across his chest. There was a louder murmur of approval at this.
"Aye, take yer trouble-making away somewhere else, Crawford," said another man, who Rahne recognised with some surprise to be poor old Mr Fraser. Apparently he'd finally managed to grow a backbone, although there was still a tremor in his voice.
Mr Crawford glared at the crowd, disgust etched across his features and staining his scent. Then with a toss of his shoulders, he began to walk away, brushing roughly past Rahne. "I'll see ye burn in hell one day, demon," he hissed.
"You'll be there a long time before me, bastard," she rejoined angrily. Crawford said nothing in reply, but walked on, spitting on the ground. Rahne snapped – dropping Jess' hand, she sprinted after the retreating back, intent on doing something, anything to make him hurt for what he had done. A few paces into her run she felt her ears tingle and lengthen, and by the time she had reached Crawford the transformation was complete.
Wolfsbane faced the man in her transitional form, the extra height which it gave her allowing her to look him in the eye. She could smell his fear even more strongly now, and it pleased her. But there was more to the man's scent than fear – she could smell hatred too, and after a moment's struggle it was that emotion which won out. "Go ahead, demon," the man taunted her. "Prove me right. I kent ye were naught but Satan's spawn…."
She raised her arm, ready to rip him apart with her claws. He deserved it. But at the last moment, something held her back. "No…," she said slowly, staring at him. "I don't need to do that. I'm better than you." Wolfsbane turned her back on him and began to walk out of the village, pushing herself into her full wolf state. Without looking back she started to run. She was free again, free from thoughts and consequences and pain, free to be….
Where do you think you're going now Rahne? The purple-haired member of her pack had appeared before her, blocking her path. Wolfsbane growled a warning – she wasn't going to be caged behind walls again. Do you want to be stuck as a wolf forever? You've broken the blocks, but now you've got to take back the control over your power luv. And that means letting it go. Perhaps she had a point – reluctantly, Wolfsbane let mind shift back into the patterns which characterised human thought, her body following behind.
"That's better, Sparky. Nice to have you back in action," said Betsy.
"Those people back there, they…." She didn't know how to explain about Crawford and his supporters.
"Sometimes people just can't deal with things that happen to them, luv," Betsy told her. "Too big, too disturbing, doesn't fit with their world view… so they invent a new explanation for what happens, one that doesn't challenge their nasty little perceptions and prejudices. It's called cognitive dissonance, not that that really matters to you. That little posse can't handle the fact that they killed your parents and tried to kill you – so they don't let themselves see it. They choose to believe they cleansed their community of a demon instead, so that they can continue to sleep at night."
"I…," Rahne began, not quite sure about what she meant to say.
"I know luv. You wanted to make them hurt for what they did to you. But you didn't – which is a good thing…. Leave the vengeance part to me."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I told you I had things to do here luv, didn't I?"
Rahne followed the older girl to the church, now standing abandoned and empty. It was the same place which had haunted her memories, but in the churchyard, something was new. A large stone monument stood between the gate and the entrance to the church, demanding attention. Inscribed upon it were her parents' names, and underneath, in large letters were the words 'THEY DIED FOR YOUR SINS'.
"There's a new minister coming next week," Betsy told her. "Handpicked by Sean and yours truly. Has a far more modern approach to religion – love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek, all the rest of that rot. And he's got his orders – they can try, luv, but no one in this town's going to be allowed to forget what happened."