Free Snow: The White Crow by Erik Schubach Page A

saying, I looked at the canvas.  It appeared to resemble a large Ouija board with letters, familiar phrases like 'yes', 'no', 'please', 'thank you', then comically 'fuck you' and 'shut up'.  There was also a compass with cardinal points.
    Maireni looked expectantly at the wolf and she reached a huge paw out and placed it on east on the compass but then moved it to north east.  The Red Hood hissed, “They've split up?  Damn.  You're sure?”
    The wolf narrowed her eyes and growled menacingly.  Maireni's eyes twinkled with mirth as she said, “Of course you're sure, sorry for doubting you love.”  Then she tilted her head back slightly exposing her neck and the wolf leaned in and carefully nipped at her with those deadly looking fangs.  This seemed to appease the wolf and she sat and leaned her body against the woman's cloak.
    As Maireni leaned back into the wolf, she looked up at me and asked, “Can you and the others track the group heading east, we'll head after the ones to the northeast.”  She looked at Fluffy. “Numbers?  Your nose is better than mine in that form.”  The wolf touched the number nine then east again.  Then touched one twice and northeast.  She nodded. “That was my count, but I wasn't sure.”
    I blinked and must have mumbled, “An intelligent werewolf?”  Because they both whipped their heads toward me and I couldn't tell if the subsonic growl I could feel building was coming from the woman or the wolf.  Maybe both?
    The Red Hood snapped, “She's not a werewolf!”  Then she calmed herself and looked lovingly at the beast. “She’s... something different.”  I swear the wolf smiled at her.
    The wolf was whining and shimmying a bit and Maireni chuckled. “Then go do something about it, I'm not your mother.”  The wolf squinted at her and slowly reached her paw out and tapped the “fuck you” on the canvas that made the woman in the cloak burst out laughing.  The wolf stood and trotted off.  I cocked my eyebrow in question.  She shrugged. “She has to go relieve herself.  She didn't want to miss any of the conversation.”
    I watched the wolf disappear behind some bushes. “Then why doesn't she just do it here?”
    She replied with a little shrug like it were obvious, “She's embarrassed for anyone to see her peeing when she is like this.”  She chuckled at the growl she got in return.
    I turned my attention back to her.  “You keep mentioning these 'others.'  Who are they?  It is just me here.”
    Her face fell at that, and the wolf trotted back over to us and laid down in front of the canvas.   Maireni absently laid back on the monster like it were a fluffy pillow and said, “We had heard whispered rumors of sightings of the Trilogy.”
    I was really confused now.  “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?”
    She chuckled.  “No, the three powers.  The Woman of Snow, the Lady of Cinders, and the Slumbering Princess.”  She clarified with a sour look on her face. “For lack of better description, Snow White, Cinderella, and the Little Brier Rose...   Sleeping Beauty.”  Then she added under her breath, “Fucking Brothers Grimm.”
    I snorted at that. “I said the same thing just today.”  Then I blinked. “The others are real?  I thought I was alone until you stepped into the light.  Supernatural beings and magic users have been coming out of the woodwork after you freed all those people from the lupus curse.”
    The look of a kindred spirit and the sadness of understanding creased her face.  I could see that she had been alone too.  But somehow, this wolf she traveled with, this hellhound, seemed to complete her in some way.
    She nodded. “Apparently they are as real as you or I.  I haven't heard a lot about the Brier Rose, but a woman named Ella has been burning a swath through the Americas in the direction of Seattle.  She seems drawn to black magics and imbalances of nature, she leaves nothing but the destruction of evil in