Chapter Seventeen
I spent the next twenty minutes scurrying through Rowena’s kitchen, pulling dried herbs, powders, and other remedies from the array of glass jars on the counter.
Rowena walked me through each step, instructing me on which ingredients to grab, which ones needed to be soaked, and which ones needed to be ground.
She did all this while still slumped in her chair, back in her human form, clutching her injured arm.
The bleeding had slowed, and the dried blood coating her arms and face had darkened from a bright, shiny crimson into a sickly brownish-black. It was brittle and dull, crusting her skin like paint.
At least her nightgown was a heavy shade of maroon. It hid the blood well, and it would be easier to get the stains out.
I needed to get her cleaned up. To fetch her new clothes and wipe the bloodstains off her body. But my top priority was finishing the poultice. Rowena swore she’d be fine, and with her herbalism skills, the smashed mixture of herbs would heal her arm within a few days.
She swore we wouldn’t need to get anyone else involved.
And I prayed she was right.
Finally, it was time to apply the poultice. I pulled another chair up next to the one Rowena was in, and set the jar of crushed and soaked herbs, plus a long skein of muslin cloth, on the end table.
According to Rowena, the process was simple: smear the strange paste over the teeth marks gouged into her skin and wrap the whole thing with the muslin cloth. She said it would need to be changed again the next day, but she’d be healed enough by then to remix the herbs herself.
As I worked, gently dabbing the strange-smelling blend that looked and felt like damp tea leaves into her skin, I decided it was finally time for questions.
“So… you’re a werewolf?”
Rowena flinched, and I couldn’t tell if it was from my question or if the poultice was stinging her sensitive wounds. She took a deep breath – in through her nose, out through her mouth – and I knew she was preparing to tell a very long story.
“ Half -werewolf,” she clarified. “As you already know, my mother, Hazel, was a witch. She ran the café for most of her adult life, until she passed and I took over. But my father, Duncan, the man you met earlier–”
I scoffed. Met was an understatement.
“–he and my mother had a secret relationship many years ago, which resulted in my birth. Of course, there was no way for them to remain together permanently, so my mother cut off contact with my father, determined to raise me as a witch away from the local werewolf pack.”
“So growing up… you were only raised by her?”
“Yes. But she struggled to keep my true nature a secret. I started shifting as soon as I could walk, and I remembered how upset and frustrated my mother would be when I did it. Once I got older, I learned to hide my werewolf half from her, sneaking off in the woods for midnight runs when she was sleeping. But she eventually found out about those too, and from when I was about ten until she passed away when I was nineteen, I never shifted except during the full moon.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine how painful that was for you.”
Rowena shrugged, though I could see the melancholy in her eyes.
“I learned to live with it. I’m sure you understand how it feels, having your inner wolf clawing away at you, desperate to get out.
To be honest, my mother and I weren’t on good terms for most of my teenage years.
We finally made amends when she got cancer, especially in the months before she passed. But once–”
Rowena winced, and a sharp hissing sound screeched out through her clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I know it stings. To be honest, you’re handling this a hell of a lot better than I would.”
“I mean… I’ve had to do it my whole life.
Hide things. Hide pain. Hide frustration.
Hide my identity. Anyway, once my mother passed, my father started showing up at my cottage.
He would knock for hours, saying he just wanted to talk.
At first, I ignored him, but after a while I couldn’t take it anymore. ”
“So you’ve been meeting with him in secret all this time?”
“Yes. We sometimes go for runs in the woods, which really helps me let out my werewolf energy. But most of the time, we just talk. I learned I have a whole other family with the Mount Desert Island pack. Cousins, aunts, uncles… even two half-siblings and a stepmother. But I can’t meet them.
I’m not welcome there since I’m half-witch. ”
“But earlier tonight… why did he grab you? You were screaming!”
Rowena cringed at the thought of the incident that led us to where we were now – me bandaging her wounds while she poured out her life story.
“He’s been more… persistent in trying to get me to leave lately.
He found out the whole village knows I’m a werewolf, and that I’m treated as an outcast because of it.
He’s adamant he can get his pack to accept me, and that I’m safer with him than in Wisteria Grove.
It’s led to a lot of arguments, and, well… you saw how it escalated tonight.”
“Wait…” I froze, my wet herb-covered finger still pressed against Rowena’s skin. “The whole village knows you’re a werewolf?”
“They didn’t always know,” Rowena sighed.
“I grew up hiding my werewolf half, and everyone thought I was just an ordinary witch. But after Aster’s death, tensions were at an all-time high, and Wisteria Grove figured out the truth about what I was.
They didn’t make me leave… but I’m not exactly a respected member of this village anymore. ”
“Gods, that’s awful.”
It all made sense. Everything was falling into place.
The witches of Wisteria Grove weren’t ignoring Rowena because they hated her – they were afraid.
One of the most beloved members of their community was viciously killed by a werewolf, and then they found out a werewolf had been living among them for years.
It must have been a shock to the entire village.
But Rowena didn’t ask to be born a werewolf. The whole situation was just as cruel for her as it was for the rest of the village. She was ostracized, outcast, tossed aside because of something she couldn’t control.
My heart ached for her.
It ached for everyone in Wisteria Grove.
“Speaking of Aster…”
Rowena tensed as soon as I said the witch’s name. But I needed to know the truth of what happened.
“...you were close to her, weren’t you? She gave you that necklace.” I pointed to the black beads around Rowena’s neck.
She reached up with her uninjured arm, twisting the black tourmaline beads in her fingers.
“Aster was my mother’s best friend. She and Rune were the only ones that knew about my mother’s secret love, and that I was a half-werewolf.
Aster gave me this necklace when I was a child.
It’s enchanted to hide my scent from other werewolves, so my father wouldn’t be able to find me. ”
My eyes widened. That was why I couldn’t smell Rowena’s scent when I first arrived in Wisteria Grove. It was why I’d thought she was an ordinary witch.
“Since Aster and my mother were best friends, the same applied to Juniper and I. We did everything together. Neither of us had siblings, so we bonded like sisters. I loved and trusted her more than anyone else.”
“But once Juniper discovered you were a werewolf…”
“Can you blame her? Aster knew what I really was, and yet she still loved me. I even referred to her as my aunt. She always saw the good in everyone, even the werewolves… and they killed her. They left Juniper traumatized, with a permanent, disfiguring scar. They–”
Rowena choked down a sob. Once she collected herself, she let out another long, deep sigh, one laced with pain from her injuries. I’d nearly finished wrapping the muslin around her wound, and it was already damp and sticky from the poultice.
“I know what it’s like to lose a mother,” Rowena continued. “As mine passed from cancer only a few months later. I try to respect Juniper’s need to grieve, to have space, even six years later. But I still ache for us to heal what we used to have. I miss her so much.”
Images of Juniper flashed in my mind, making my heart hang heavy in my chest. The way the ragged pink flesh of her scar glinted under bright light.
The discomfort on her face the first day she walked into the café and tried my blueberry scones.
The glances in Rowena’s direction that ranged from neutral to oblivious to outright contempt.
But I knew Juniper was afraid. Even more so than the other witches of Wisteria Grove.
I couldn’t begin to imagine the horror and betrayal she must’ve felt upon learning her best friend wasn’t a full-blooded witch.
Worse, that her best friend was the same type of magical being that viciously killed her mother.
How could a bond broken so severely ever be mended?
“I lost my mother, too,” I said. I paused bandaging Rowena’s arm and clenched my palms, which were shaking from both the cold and my anxiety.
“I was six years old. I don’t know what’s worse; losing a parent at a young age and barely remembering them, or losing them as an adult and feeling the pain of decades of memories. ”
“I think they’re both hard in their own way,” Rowena replied, flexing her fingers as I resumed wrapping the bandage. As if she was checking to see they still worked. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did she pass?”
My fingers started shaking again. “She drowned. It was at night, during a storm. Since I was so young, my memories of it are fuzzy, but I remember my parents having an argument and my mother running out the door into the pouring rain. My father and my aunts chased after her, and I trailed behind. My twin sisters were infants, left behind in their cribs.”
I finished wrapping the muslin, squeezing it tight around Rowena’s arm. We sat there, alone in the dim light of the midnight moon, as I continued telling the story of my mother’s death.