A Little Waif Justice: Merlin’s Waif Book 1

The question of right and wrong looks different depending on your side. In this case, she looks like a villain, however she is the hero

Manniref had no regrets.

Snowflakes settled on her hands and hair as she stood in the clearing. Pine and spruce trees surrounded her, dusting the cold air with their fresh aroma. A bird flittered between their branches, wings whirring as it strove to escape, and unnatural silence settled over the woods.

Until the chief’s son screamed.

He lay at the center of the chaos. Feet from his body, the earth looked like a giant plow had done its work on this untouched corner of Mistwood North. Manniref knew what a plow was; she’d seen one in her previous home. The young elf’s blood soaked into the snow, a shocking red stain against the neutral hues of the wintry forest, seeping between his pale fingers as he clutched his right leg. Manniref glimpsed bone protruding through his fur-lined boot.

She’d almost started to hope this would work out.

The morning had begun normally. Manniref left the village at dawn, as she always did. The elves weren’t interested in her help with chores, so she went to the only place where she felt welcome: the woods.

Everything there called to her. She moved soundlessly beneath the trees, relishing every sight and sensation: the kiss of snow on her cheeks, the song of a red-breasted robin, and the careful movements of a deer family moving through a thicket without stirring a single twig.

She leaned against a mighty dryad. Though rarer here than in Fernwood Deep, Manniref’s last placement—the one where she’d learned what a plow was—the dryads were giants among ordinary trees. They moved too slowly for ordinary paranormals like her to communicate with them, but she felt the throb of age and wisdom in the dryad’s sap. It calmed her.

A bird’s alarm call tore through the quiet woods. Manniref’s head snapped up. The high-pitched chirp faded into the distance as the bird fled, but tension rippled through the quiet woods.

She wrapped her woven cloak tightly around her shoulders and hurried in the direction the cry had come from. Morning sunlight flickered through the tight tangle of branches overhead as she darted across the snow, almost weightless on the crust. A stag raced past her, leaping and tossing his antlers to show off his strength before disappearing into the woods with a flash of white tail.

Something dangerous moved through this forest.

A playful yip caught Manniref’s attention. She slowed and approached a thicket where the branches of several trees tangled with those of a fallen log, forming a tight-knit shelter. When she crouched and peered inside, she spotted a squirming, furry mass of little bodies. The wolf pups tumbled over each other in their cozy den, play-growling and snapping with milk teeth. Their rambunctious play was practice for the day when they’d pull down full-grown moose.

Manniref grinned. She reached through the tangled branches and stretched her fingers toward the nearest pup. It paused in playing to sniff her fingers, then splashed them with a bright pink tongue. She giggled, making the pup’s tail swing.

A low whistle sounded deeper in the woods: the alarm call of a Mistwood nightjar.

Manniref left the puppies and spotted fresh tracks heading in that direction. The wolf pack was hunting.

She followed the tracks at a cautious jog, her deerskin boots almost silent on the snow. When she caught the musky scent of wolf, she slowed and glanced around to find a safe vantage point. A nearby oak’s gnarled branches were bare. Manniref climbed it in seconds, bouncing from branch to branch until she reached the top.

The view made her gut twist.

The wolf pack sought suitable prey. They trotted in a disorganized group between the trees, noses low, tails waving high as they looked for a scent. She picked out the alpha female, a pure white wolf whose nipples hung low from feeding pups. She led the way, her nose twitching half an inch from the ground, too absorbed in looking for something to hunt to realize the woods were alarmed about something more dangerous than she was.

Manniref clutched the trunk, her heart slamming against her ribs.

A Mavka Elf crept behind a briar bush, his well-worn boots almost soundless. He was a few yards away from the wolves. A necklace of fox teeth stirred against his deerskin jerkin, and he wore his white hair in a mass of intricate braids behind his pointed ears. He hadn’t yet drawn his supple longbow, but an arrow lay ready on the string, and Manniref had never seen him miss.

No, she thought. Surely not. He knows the rules. He wouldn’t.

Her mouth went dry when the elf’s eyes locked on the only white wolf in the pack…the nursing alpha.

Those cubs would starve if he killed her.

If he’d been any other elf, Manniref might have been able to distract him without getting into much trouble, but this was Neven, the son of the village chief. Manniref couldn’t afford to piss off the chief…or let the white wolf die.

She scrambled from the tree and hurried toward the wolves, staying behind a large spruce and praying to Luna that Neven couldn’t see her.

“Hey!” she hissed. “Hey, get out of here!”

The wolves raised their heads but didn’t flee. The nearest one cocked his head and pricked his triangular ears. His tail twitched.

“Go!” Manniref waved her arms and threw a pebble in his direction.

The wolf’s tail wagged. He turned to her and gave a yip of greeting.

“No!” Manniref hissed.

The other wolves took notice. The first sniffed her hands and butted his nose against her fingers as if asking to be petted.

“Run!” Manniref shooed him, but he dropped into a play bow.

The alpha female turned toward Manniref, tail twitching, and a bow creaked in the briars. Neven had found his shot.

The playful wolf pups flashed through Manniref’s mind. “No!”

The wolves jumped at her changed tone, and Neven’s arrow clipped the alpha female’s shoulder and drew a line of blood across her white coat. She whipped around, snarling, and hackles rose as the pack rallied. Neven straightened behind the briars, taking aim with another arrow.

“NO!” Manniref roared.

The earth cracked under her boots. She stumbled back as the oak tree’s roots erupted from the ground at her feet, spraying dirt across the snow. The wolves yelped and scattered as the mighty roots surged like tentacles through the clearing, ripping grooves as they sped toward Neven.

“Leave that wolf alone!” Manniref shouted.

Neven squealed and stumbled back, but it was too late. The roots ripped through the briars and gripped Neven’s ankles. He shrieked as they yanked him into the air, cloak flying, and flung him across the clearing.

He hit the ground awkwardly, right leg first, and bone cracked. Manniref blinked, the sound startling her. He crumpled, curling around his leg as blood seeped between his fingers. The roots withdrew into the earth as quickly as they’d come.

A few moments passed in breathless silence. Manniref spun and watched the white wolf sprint back to her puppies.

Then Neven screamed, and the reality of what she’d done crashed down on her head.

I blew it. Manniref sighed. Again.

Hooves thundered. Manniref didn’t move as three elk burst into the clearing, saddled and bridled. Two Mavka Elves leaped from their backs.

“Neven!” one cried, running to his side.

The other held the elk and stared at the carnage, open-mouthed.

Manniref didn’t run. There was no point. Where would she go?

“Neven, what happened?” The first elf crouched beside him.

Neven raised his head, sweat dripping down his ashen cheeks, and raised a trembling finger to point at Manniref.

“It was her,” he hissed.

The other elves stared at her. Their expressions registered surprise before their eyes narrowed.

“I knew she would be trouble,” the first elf snarled. He left Neven and marched across the churned earth to Manniref. She didn’t resist as he seized her arm and yanked her closer. “You’ll answer to Myleksa for this.”

Manniref allowed the elf to drag her across the clearing and force her into an elk’s saddle. The beast rolled its eyes, sensing her fear.

It wasn’t Myleksa who scared her. It was Merlin.

***

The ride back to Wolf Glen was short, but Neven groaned through every step of it. He sat on the elk in front of Yevgen, dramatically leaning his head on his companion’s shoulder. He whimpered every time the ground changed or the elk started at a bird in the bushes. Manniref wanted to think he was milking it, but his blood smeared the elk’s coat, stark and undeniable.

It was a far smaller degree of suffering, she thought as he squealed and whined, than he would have inflicted on the alpha wolf and her litter of pups. She couldn’t summon any regret for what she’d done, though there would be consequences.

She sat silently on the elk’s back, hands loosely resting on her thighs as the large animal moved through the woods. Neven’s other goon Petro held the elk’s reins and thought that gave him total control. Manniref let him believe it.

“Nearly there, Neven,” Yevgen comforted.

Neven moaned as the elk stepped over a fallen log onto a trampled path. They followed its smooth curves through the forest to Wolf Glen.

The woods embraced the village, which lay in a half-moon clearing filled with morning sunshine. Snow sparkled between the elves’ log homes, and gray wood smoke rose from the stone chimneys. The houses clustered around the most significant building in Wolf Glen: a squat longhouse adorned with the skull of a mighty elk, its antlers bone-white above the door. Paddocks made of woven branches formed a wall around the village, each containing a few curious elk who called to their companions. The elk Manniref rode called back.

A log bridge spanned the stream that defined one side of the village. The elk’s hooves thudded over it as curious children came running, their white hair streaming over their shoulders. Their questions beat against Manniref’s eardrums.

“Who’s that?”

“Is it Neven?”

“Did he kill the wolf?”

“Where’s its pelt?”

“Ooh, there’s blood!”

“What happened?”

“She did it,” Petro snarled, casting a ferocious look at Manniref.

The children gasped and backed away, their eyes wide with fear. They bolted into the camp, shouting, “Neven’s hurt! Manniref did it!”

When the elk reached the longhouse, a mute crowd had gathered outside the longhouse’s door. They glared up at Manniref, silent but hostile, as Petro and Yevgen halted their elk.

“A healer!” Petro shouted. “We need a healer!”

The door banged open, and Manniref flinched almost as hard as her elk. Chief Myleksa marched out of the longhouse, her hair a tumult of tangled white braids that reached her heels. She wore a night-black wolf-skin cloak over a tunic bisected by a broad leather belt. Manniref had never seen her without the stone knife at her hip, its jagged blade laced with quartz the same ice-blue as the chief’s eyes.

Her frigid gaze swept over the group and landed on Manniref like an icicle plunging into her chest.

“The healer comes,” Myleksa calmly announced. “Compose yourself, son.”

Neven stopped whining.

“Did you bring the wolf?” Myleksa asked.

Everyone in the crowd leaned closer, a total hush falling on the village.

“No!” Neven burst out. “But I would have. I grazed it! I—”

“Then your blood is not wolf blood. It is not chief blood.” Myleksa’s eyes flashed.

“Give me another chance, Mother,” Neven pleaded. “It wasn’t my fault. It was her!” He jabbed a finger at Manniref.

“A true hunter makes no excuses,” Myleksa coldly stated.

Neven’s Adam’s Apple bobbed as he stared into her eyes. “Mother,” he whispered.

Myleksa looked away as a willowy male elf, his hair falling around him like a curtain, rushed to Neven’s side. Two assistants carried a litter. The crowd silently watched as Yevgen helped Neven onto it. This time, the chief’s son gave no cries of pain but lay quiet and pale on the litter as they bore him away.

“Chief, this isn’t fair,” Petro spoke up.

“Get down from that elk,” Myleksa snapped.

Petro dismounted in a rage. Manniref alighted gently as two boys came to take the elk away. She glimpsed a familiar face in the crowd, and a flush of shame crept up her neck to her cheeks. Yulietta stood among the crowd with her arms folded, a worried pinch at the corners of her eyes.

Manniref grimaced. She felt bad for the woman. She’d had worse foster parents.

“Now.” Myleksa folded her arms, her stone knife catching the light. “Tell me what happened, Petro.”

“I told you, chief. Neven was about to kill a wolf when she arrived and broke his leg!” Petro yelled. “He said he had the perfect shot at a huge she-wolf. When he drew his arrow back, Manniref shouted and tried to frighten the wolves away, but they weren’t afraid of a little slip of a thing like her.”

“Then she attacked,” Yevgen supplied. “She threw him to the ground and broke his leg!”

Gasps and cries of shock ran through the crowd. They nudged one another and pointed at Manniref, whispering behind their hands.

“Silence!” Myleksa snapped.

The crowd hushed.

“Neither of you saw this happen?” Myleksa asked.

Petro hesitated. “I didn’t, but Neven did. He’ll tell you!”

“I think Manniref saw it, too.” Myleksa calmly turned to face her. “Tell me. Did you hurt my son?”

Manniref paused, then raised her chin. “I did what I had to do.”

Several elves skittered back, widening the circle around Manniref.

“You should never have brought her here, chief,” someone shouted. “She’s been nothing but trouble.”

“The summer fruit looked weird this year!” someone else chipped in. “It was funny colors.”

“Prey animals hear us when we’re miles away. Nobody’s slain a moose or a bear in months,” another elf complained. “It’s all because of her.”

“There’s something wrong with her magic!” the first elf added. “It’s poison to the woods. It’s poison to the Mavka Elves!”

A roar of assent affirmed his cry.

“Silence!” Myleksa barked.

The elves quieted more slowly than before.

“The wolf had pups,” Manniref murmured.

Myleksa raised a pale eyebrow. “What?”

“The wolf. The one Neven aimed at. She had pups. I couldn’t let them die.” Manniref spread her hands. “It’s not right. I did what I had to do.”

“Pups.” Myleksa’s eyes darkened. “Is this true?”

Yevgen and Petro exchanged glances.

“Dishonesty would be unwise,” Myleksa snarled.

Petro cleared his throat. “We didn’t see which wolf Neven aimed at, Chief.”

“But there was a suckling mother in the pack,” Yevgen reluctantly added.

Myleksa sighed. “Neven knows the hunter’s code. Fool.” She shook her head. “Fool! Now he will never be chief.”

The assembled crowd yelled in outrage.

“Quiet!” Myleksa snapped. “I will deal with Manniref alone.” She turned and strode into the longhouse.

Did Manniref attack in cold blood? I’m sure the village sees it that way. Is her magic really poison? Find out on February 20th when A Little Waif Justice: Merlin’s Waif Book 1 is released. Until then head over to Amazon and download it today.