Chapter 5

Serena’s POV

“Eat first,” said Auntie Salmah. “Draw later.”

“I’m not hungry, Auntie.”

“Then you’ll be hungry after the first bite. Eat.”

I ate. The kaya toast was warm and buttery, with a thick sweet layer of coconut jam that melted into the bread, and the soft-boiled eggs came in a saucer with a splash of dark soy and a shake of white pepper. It was just how my grandmother used to make it, in a kitchen I hadn’t seen in ten years.

The flat was on the twelfth floor of a block in Woodlands. Three rooms and a tiny balcony. A framed photograph of Mecca above the television. A shrine of plants at the window, ferns and chilli and one stubborn orchid. Below us, the void deck buzzed with old men playing chess and aunties bargaining for fish.

I’d been there four days.

“You’re too thin,” said Auntie Salmah, refilling my cup of teh tarik. She is sixty and small and round and wears a floral headscarf and terrifying reading glasses. “You’ve got a face like a pencil. Aisyah says you don’t sleep.”

“I sleep.”

“You sit at the window and draw. Every night. I hear the pen.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be quieter.”

“I didn’t say be quiet.” She sat down opposite me, put a hand over mine, and looked at me over the glasses. “I said you’re welcome to keep drawing. This is your home for as long as you like. Don’t thank me. I’m not finished.”

She reached into the pocket of her housedress and put a small silver key on a bright blue lanyard on the table between us.

“That’s yours,” she said. “A person needs a key.”

My eyes filled so fast that I had to look at the plate.

I’d lived in my parents’ house for twenty-two years, and no one had ever given me a key.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I said don’t thank me.” She patted my hand. “Eat your egg.”

~

Aisyah came home at noon in her pharmacy tunic with a paper bag and a grin as wide as the causeway.

“Guess what,” she said.

“What?”

“My cousin Farah. Works at Little Lantern Books in Tiong Bahru. Children’s picture books. She’s in a panic. Their illustrator quit on Monday. They’ve got a book due in two weeks, twelve full-page paintings, and nobody to do them.” She flung down the bag. “I showed her your sketchbook. On my phone. The wolf drawings and the hawker centre one.”

I froze.

“Aisyah.”

“She said, and I’m quoting, I need this girl yesterday.”

“I’ve never drawn for money.”

“You draw for free every day like it’s breathing. Now someone will pay you. They want you to come in tomorrow and meet the editor.”

I stared at her.

I sat there with my mouth open, and a huge, bright, terrifying feeling rose in me like a balloon.

“What’s the book about?” I managed.

“It’s called The Little Fox Who Couldn’t Howl.”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t stop. I laughed until my ribs hurt.

“It’s perfect,” I gasped. “Yes. It means yes.”

She screamed. Auntie Salmah dropped a spoon in the kitchen and shouted, “Who died?” and Aisyah shouted back, “Nobody, Mak, she got a job!” and the next thing I knew, two women were hugging me at once.

~

Priya came at five.

Priya Nair is a nurse at the pack clinic and the closest thing the Mandai Ridge has to a healer. She is thirty, slim and calm, with sharp eyes and a bag of herbs, and she was the only person in my family’s circle who had ever looked at me without pity. She sat on the sofa with my wrist between her fingers and her eyes half closed.

“You’re wolfless,” she said. “Everyone says so.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so.”

I sat up.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a knot.” She turned my wrist over, frowning, pressing gently at the pulse. “Right here. In the meridian. Under the skin. I’ve been feeling it for years, and I couldn’t work out what it was.” She opened her eyes. “It’s not empty, Serena. It’s tied.”

“Tied?”

“Like someone braided it shut.”

The room went very quiet.

“That’s not possible,” I said. “I was born like this.”

“Maybe.”

“Nobody would do that.”

“I didn’t say they did.” Priya released my hand. “I said the wolf is there. I said it’s sleeping. Someone put it to sleep.” She met my eyes, level and kind. “I’m not saying it to frighten you. I’m saying it because you deserve to know.”

I stared at my wrist. At the small black flowers I’d drawn there that morning. At the blue veins beneath.

Someone had tied me shut.

Who?

I thought of my mother’s face, and a chill went through me.

~

At ten o’clock that night, someone knocked at the door.

Three slow raps. Aisyah was asleep. Auntie Salmah had gone to bed. I padded across the tiles in my socks and looked through the peephole.

Tall. Dark hair. A black jacket. A rumpled white shirt, and a scar of tiredness under each eye.

I didn’t breathe.

I opened the door, leaving the chain on.

“Serena,” said Alpha Marcus Goh.

He looked wrecked. He looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. He held a small black book in both hands. I knew it from twenty feet away by the tape on the spine.

“That’s mine,” I said.

“I know.” His voice was rough. “You left it in the Moon Room.”

“You read it.”

“Yes.”

Heat flooded my face. Every drawing. Every scrap. Every foolish, tender thing I’d never meant anyone to see. “You had no right.”

“I know that too.” He didn’t move. He stood on the doormat in the fluorescent light of the corridor, with the whole world of Woodlands sleeping behind him. “I came to say I’m sorry. I’m not good at it. I’ll do it badly.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I do. I asked whether you’d known it was me, and you said yes, and I said you’d deceived me. You hadn’t.” He took a breath. “You wrote I’m here. It was the truest thing anyone has said to me in years. And I told you it wasn’t a name.”

I couldn’t speak.

“I was wrong,” said Marcus. “And I was cruel. And I’m sorry.”

My chest loosened. I hated it. I didn’t want to feel it. I wanted to shut the door and go back to my desk and my new job and my orchid.

I took off the chain.

“Come in,” I said. “Quietly. Auntie’s asleep.”

He sat on the sofa, hands between his knees, while I made tea in the dark and tried not to think about how much space he took up in a small room. When I gave him the cup, he said, “Thank you,” and held it as if it were made of glass.

“I need to ask about the east gate,” he said. “The drawing.”

“I meant to tell you.”

“When?”

“I saw her three weeks ago. With a man. I didn’t know who he was. I drew it because I didn’t know what else to do.” I twisted my fingers. “And then, on Sunday, after the hall, I heard her on the phone. In the garden. She was talking to him. She said she’d be chosen at the second rite. She said she’d open the east gate.”

Marcus set down the cup.

“Say that again.”

“She said, Once I’m Luna, I’ll open the gate. And he said good girl. He said his men would do the rest.” I swallowed. “Marcus. I should have told you. I didn’t know if you’d believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you better than anyone in that pack.” His eyes lifted, dark and steady. “I’ve seen eleven years of your drawings.”

My heart stopped.

“Come back and say it to the council,” he said. “Say it in front of Elder Wee. Tell them what you heard. I’ll stand next to you.”

“They’ll call me a liar.”

“Then they’ll call me one too.”

“You already had a chance to defend me,” I said quietly.

“I did. And I failed.” He leaned forward. “Let me have another.”

I looked at him for a long time. At the man who’d sat in the dark and told me his fear. At the man who’d sat in a hall of strangers and called me nameless.

“I need to think,” I said.

“Take all the time you need.” He stood. “But not much. The rite is in two days.”

He turned to go. At the door he paused, hand on the frame.

“Serena,” he said, very low, “I’m glad you were the one.”

The door closed behind him.

I stood there in the dark with my heart pounding. My phone buzzed on the table. I picked it up.

A message. From Natalie.

Serena. I’m so sorry. I’m scared. Jason knows I’ve been talking to you. Please, meet me tonight at Kranji Reservoir car park, half past eleven. Alone. I want to make it right. I’ll tell the council everything. I’ll tell them it was me.

I read it three times.

She was my sister. She’d made me a paper crane when I was ten. She had held my hand at every funeral. Somewhere, under all that cold, there had to be a small girl who was afraid.

I looked at the clock. Ten forty-five.

I didn’t wake Aisyah. I put on my shoes, and took my key, and went out into the night.