1 - The Cursed One

Splintered wood of the bucket handle dug into Winter’s palms, the raw, angry skin threatening to split with every sloshing step.

Cold water slopped over the rim, soaking the hem of her worn out woolen dress and chilling her to the bone. It was a pre dawn cold, the kind that felt sharper than a blade, seeping into her marrow and making her teeth ache.

The well was a cruel fifty yards from the back door of the cottage, a journey she made four times every morning, rain or shine, snow or suffocating summer heat.

Her aunt, Griselda, liked the water to be fresh. “Untainted” she would often say, her eyes, small and hard like river pebbles, always finding Winter’s.

The implication was clear, Winter was the taint.

“Faster girl!!” Griselda’s voice cut through the dim morning air from the open doorway. “The fire won’t light itself, and the porridge is waiting. Do you want me to come out there?”

“No Aunt” Winter whispered, her voice a fragile puff of white in the air. The threat was enough. She hitched the heavy bucket higher, her slender arms screaming in protest, and quickened her pace.

Her hair, a stark, unnatural white, was the first thing to catch the day's hesitant light, a silver spill against the drab brown of her dress.

In a village of dark haired, robust werewolves, her hair was not seen as beautiful or unique. It was an omen. A mark of wrongness.

Inside, the cottage was no warmer than the yard. Griselda stood by the cold hearth, her arms crossed over her broad chest, her face a mask of sour impatience.

She was a stout woman, thick with the muscle of a werewolf who could, if she chose, break Winter in half. Winter’s father had been her brother, but no trace of familial warmth existed in her aunt’s heart.

“Look at you.” Griselda sneered, her gaze sweeping over Winter’s shivering form. “Drenched. Clumsy. You can’t even carry a bucket of water without making a mess of it. What good are you?”

Winter didn’t answer. She knew better. She moved to the hearth, her movements practiced and submissive, carefully pouring a portion of the water into the heavy iron kettle and hooking it over the fire pit. She knelt, her knees protesting on the cold stone, and began arranging the kindling.

“They’re talking in the village again,” Griselda said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial, venomous tone that Winter hated more than the shouting. “About you.”

Winter’s hands stilled for a fraction of a second. She kept her eyes down, focused on the small pile of wood shavings.

“Margery’s boy, Thomas, saw you by the woods yesterday,” Griselda continued, circling her like a predator. “He said the birds went quiet when you passed. Said the air grew cold. Just like it did with David. Just like it did with Samuel.”

The names hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. David and Samuel. The two young men from their pack who had shown an interest in her, both dead within a month of their courtship.

David had been found at the bottom of the old quarry, his body broken.

A tragic accident, the elders had said, he must have slipped. Samuel was felled by a sudden, violent sickness that turned his skin black and took him in a single night. Bad water, the healer had guessed, though no one else had fallen ill.

But the whispers said otherwise..

The whispers pointed to the white haired girl who seemed to walk with a cloud of misfortune around her. The Cursed One.

“they were good boys,” Griselda said, her voice laced with false sympathy that was sharper than any knife. “Strong. Both could almost manage a full shift. Not like....well. Not like some.”

Winter flinched. It was the other reason for her shame. At eighteen, she was long past the age where most werewolves could at least manage the change in their eyes, the lengthening of their teeth and claws.

Most her age could manage a partial shift, their forms blurring, growing larger, more powerful. Winter could do none of it.

When the moon was full and the change-lust sang in the blood of her kin, she would merely get a crippling headache and a fever that left her weak and trembling.

She was a werewolf who could not wolf. Another mark of her wrongness.