A middle aged woman, her brown hair streaked with grey, hurried down empty London streets, her shoes softly clacking on the stones of the walkways. Regretfully she thought that she shouldn’t have left her home unescorted so late. The sun had long set and the normally lively and loud city was hushed with a blanket of sleep. Every tiny noise, caused perhaps by a loose piece of garbage tumbling with the strong winds, made her jump. She was clearly uneasy but her friend Katherine had sent her a note saying that she needed to speak to her urgently. Katherine’s messy, obviously hurried scrawl had convinced Rose Rupert to arrive at the meeting place Katherine specified. As Rose stood, trying to calm her furiously beating heart, chilled to the bone even through her wool cloak, she recalled a night so like this very one…
***
She remembered him as a baby, crying and waking her several times every night. The brat! She was in need of sleep if she was to take her singing lessons the following day. Though, in her opinion, she didn’t really need them, after all she was bound to be famous one day, even if by looks alone. Yet her little brother, younger by seven years, refused to stop his high-pitched wailing.
Seven years passed, Rose grew to be a beautiful fourteen year old girl. Her hatred towards her brother would not let up. Then one day, she heard him sing to their parents, and she was no longer their little singer. Jacques’ voice, they said, was like that of an angel. That was the day she swore to make his life miserable.
Day after day she tormented him; an ugly face behind their parents’ backs, insults that sent him to tears. However, one week she decided to take it to a new level. Behind their handsome manor the beautiful rolling planes turned to a dense, green forest, frightening in its greatness upon nightfall. With a plan ready, she constantly taunted her brother of being too much of a scaredy-cat to go out into the forest with her at night. Finally bullied into it, Jacques caved in. And so, it was set. Rose would meet him at the edge of the forest and together they would wander in. Whoever was able to go in the furthest would win. What Jacques didn’t know was that she wouldn’t come alone, but would arrive with her parents in tow. That would get him in trouble! Children were forbidden to leave the house after dark, and she would tell mommy and daddy:
“He snuck out here all on his own! I saw him from my bedroom window!”
That would serve him right!
Upon arriving at the forest, Jacques could not see his sister anywhere. Convinced that she had already gone ahead without him, he dashed in amongst the thick pines and tall oaks.
When Rose dragged her parents outside to the forest, it was only a few feet before the light from her father’s lantern fell upon a torn knit hat and a trail of blood. Mother had made that hat for Jacques last winter.
There was a much screaming and crying that night. Large search parties with skilled hunting hounds were sent through the forest. But nothing was found, the blood trail ending abruptly, the dogs losing their lead. The very winds seemed to rage at Rose, roaring and tearing at hair and garments. Eventually everyone gave up and went home to warm cold hands and fill empty stomachs.
But Rose felt no sorrow; she would be mother and father’s little singer again. Her lips curled into a cruel smile, and only a faint, hollow hint of an oddly familiar sweet voice teased at her ear.
***
It was only years later when Rose began to regret her actions. Her mother took her own life shortly after Jacques’ disappearance, and father forbade all music in the house. Forced to drop singing by her father’s grieving severity, she took up ballet instead, dancing in the silence of their grand ballroom.
Shaking her head as if to dispel such unpleasant memories, Rose tried to warm her gloved hands with her breath, and soon continued on her way.
She didn’t notice the man that followed her, stealthily creeping through the shadows with a pack of shadows at his feet, their claws softly scratching on the cobble stones. His face, when it caught in the light of a streetlamp, was a grotesque parody of what once must have been human. But wolves did not care for beauty. They cared for who was most powerful, and his voice held power indeed. It soothed them just as greatly as it had ignited jealousy in his elder sister. Revenge would be his.