Chapter Six:
Gone By Fifty
Part Two
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
As Harriet Uley drove down the street, peering out the passenger window, passed the Leach Lake Nation Welcomes You sign, scuttling by the Cedar Lakes Casino and Hotel, a squat building of blue stone and white prose, darting across the Che-We office supply store parking lot with its shiny posters in its windows for printers, pens and paper, and around a sprawling convenience store, near a gift shop, she had the strangest notion.
She felt-
She felt as if she had walked these very streets before. Walked them her whole life. As if somewhere deep in her brain, in the squidgy, grey matter of it, someone had etched them into her with a sharp knife, scored in deep so they would scar, so they could never be forgotten. There they sit, these streets, inside, like a spider's web only she could see.
Paul must have sensed something, for he rolled the car up on the curb, hit the brakes, and killed the engine.
"You feeling alright? You haven't moaned about leg space in the last twenty minutes, and it's making me nervous."
The dig was meant well, something to provoke her into reacting, to speaking, to-
To do something other than staring doll-eyed out the car window.
Harriet turned from the glass, blinking away the momentary fog in her mind.
"Fine-… I'm fine. It's just…"
Paul waited for the thought to finish. Waited some more. Waited again-
Harriet shook her head.
"I just feel as if I've been here before, you know? Like I… I know this place somehow."
Paul hummed long and low, fingers tapping on the wheel, but he didn't laugh at her. Neither did he tell her that it was ridiculous, absurd, something right out of a goosebumps novel.
How could a British-born girl know a place half way around the world?
How could men shift into wolves? He would ask right back. Harriet knew that, maybe, as strangely as she knew this reservation. Deeply, inherently. Paul would have, and he'd have that glint in his dark gaze, and a dimple by his mouth, and-
Perhaps, then, Paul was kinder to Harriet than she was to herself.
"Maybe you have. Who knows how all this works? A year ago I didn't believe in Werewolves or Witches or Wendigo's, and yet…"
Harriet smiled, feeling her shoulder's relax at Paul's disquieting ability to stay unperturbed by what was happening around him, to take the strange in stride. She wasn't insane. She was just… She was just, like Paul, living in a world far larger than most Muggles knew. A world where anything could happen. Where Girls-who-lived, and Shifters protected, and dark things slumbered away waiting for the frost to sweep above ground.
"Yet here we both sit-… And we have Wendigo's on our arses. Let's get a move on."
Harriet reached for the handle, swung the car door open, and her boots slapped on the pavement as she dipped out the car, slamming the door behind her as Paul locked up from the other side.
"Where to first, magic girl?"
He asked as he came around the hood to stand at her side, like Harriet, eyeing the buildings around them speculatively.
The wind was cold here, frosty, biting into the apples of Harriet's cheeks.
Unnaturally cold.
"If you had secret Wendigo knowledge, where would you squirrel it away from the prying muggle eye?"
Paul let the question hang before he dropped in with a heavy, suffering sigh.
"Tribal record office would be my bet. They might not have anything on Wendigo's per say, but if Wendigo's are, or have been, around this place, they will have-"
Harriet cut in swiftly, on the same page, pulling the same thread, thinking the same thought.
"A fair share of unexplainable deaths. Animal attacks, wood-chipper accidents, maybe even a nasty blender attack."
Paul cocked a sweeping brow at her.
"What? It's a good excuse. Blenders are lethal. The worst Muggle invention since the atom bomb."
Paul kicked off from the curb, and the pair began to make their way down the street.
"Do I even want to know the history of that assertion?"
Harriet, despite the circumstances, laughed.
"Not really. Let's just say without magic I wouldn't have my left hand."
"Praise Morgoth, then."
Another laugh, light and somehow impossibly heavy.
"Merlin. You meant Merlin. Morgoth is from Lord of the Rings you geek."
A mischievous wink aimed her way.
"Yeah, but you knew who that was so, really, who is the true geek here?"
Harriet's mouth opened, her eye, for just the barest of seconds, dipped over Paul's shoulder, and-
And she says nothing, just stood there, mouth open, cheeks rinsing pale.
A woman stood across the way, over the street, underneath an unlit lamp, stood staring right at her-
A woman with blood on her hands and a torn-out throat so deep Harriet could see the vertebrae of her neck-
She spoke, Harriet saw, though no voice came she heard it all the same, in her head, one hoarse, rattling word.
Run.
"Harriet? What's wrong-"
Paul turned around, to face what she had seen, and his own voice caught Harriet's gaze, yanked it away for a moment, and when she looked back-
The woman was gone.
Harriet swallowed, blinking at the empty, vacant spot. She tasted bile on her tongue as she reached out and snatched up Paul's limp arm, dragging the confused shifter up the road who stumbled along at her urgency.
"Keep your eyes and ears open. Something… Something's here. Let's just get to the records office and get out."
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
The book was large, so large, Harriet could not hold it, not without alerting the Muggles in the office of her Shifter strength, and so she left it open on the table, fingering through the old papers, turning pages, and with each new list came another quickening to her heart.
Another page, another death. One more page, more death. A new page, a further death-
"Found something?"
Harriet glanced up from the book, nearing the end of the leather clad tome, and waved Paul over from the other side of the desk. He came around the bend, propping his hip on the table, leaning over to get a good look at the split open book.
Harriet pointed to the page.
"1955. Five Fiddler's dead in the span of a month, one sole survivor. A two-year-old boy. The mortician recorded it as a bear attack during a camping trip."
Paul scanned the page and, of course, with that keen, clever gaze of his, picked up what Harriet had.
"Their deaths are three days apart. Long time to linger for the last after a bear attack."
Harriet scooted closer to the desk, dragging her chair with her, voice low in the library, and she flipped backwards, pages ruffling.
"1905. Eight Fiddler's dead in the span of a month. This time they said it was a cougar mauling. Again, one sole survivor. A girl, three years old."
The muscle in Paul's jaw jumped as his teeth clamped.
"Cougar attacks are rare…"
Harriet, again, tossed the pages, back in time, through the ages.
"1855, ten Fiddler's dead in the same month. Two survivors. Twins. Nine years old. House robbery gone wrong. 1805, eleven Fiddler's dead in a month. One survivor. They don't even have a cause of death here. 1755, the first official recording translated from the old records. Twenty-seven Fiddler's dead in the span of a month. All it says here is accident."
Harriet pulled away from the book, looking up to meet Paul's eye, and she knows, knows, he sees it too.
"Every fifty years, the Fiddler's, my ancestors, are wiped out. We barely hang on each time."
Paul straightened up.
"The number's are getting smaller the longer we go on. Whatever's causing this seems to be working hard. How many Fiddler's are left now? You, Sam, Embry and Joshua. Four."
Harriet stood from her seat, chair screeching, earning a glare from the bespeckled librarian that had ushered them into this very room, but she was too busy running a hand down her face tiredly to notice the heat of it much.
"And that's if Joshua is still alive. And don't you see? 1755. 1805. 1855. 1905. 1955…"
Paul's eyes slid shut as the realisation hit.
"2005. This year. It's due again this year."
Harriet shook her head.
"It's a cycle. Every fifty bloody years. What do we know that is currently working in cycles? Sleep cycles?"
Paul crossed his arms over his broad chest, the book laying heavy between them.
"The Wendigos."
"The fuckin' Wendigos."
Harriet hissed, pressing in close, voice still small but rushing, pouring out, unable to be contained in her suddenly tight chest.
"It's their hibernation cycle. Every fifty years they wake up, and for whatever reason, the first thing they decide to hunt-"
"Is the Fiddlers."
Paul added, he too pulling in close, voice barely a whisper but thick and deep.
"Maybe they recognize a threat? Maybe your family has… History with them. Maybe… Maybe you're the only ones who can kill them. That Wendigo back in the parking lot seemed pretty intent on getting rid of you, and you were the one to kill it with the dagger made by your family. Nothing I did looked to do much more than distract it momentarily. Maybe-… I don't know, but I don't like this."
Harriet finally turned back to the book, flipping pages frantically.
"And the Fiddler's are just the start. 1955 saw a further two hundred and ninety deaths after the Fiddlers, and those are just the ones recorded in this book. All in the same four months. The winter months. 1905 saw a one hundred and twelve. Again, from November to bloody February. They start with the Fiddler's, but once they're out the way-"
"It's an open buffet."
Paul leant heavy on the desk; shoulders squared.
"They're getting stronger too."
He said as he glanced at her again.
"The numbers of deaths are going up each cycle. They're… They're…"
Harriet sagged.
"They're growing in number. More mouths to feed means more food needs to be hunted. That means… This cycle…"
Harriet doesn't finish the thought, but she really didn't have to. They both know what it meant.
Between one cycle and the next, the deaths had nearly doubled. In some case, tripled, and if that happened again, if-
How many would die this time after the Wendigo had gotten through Sa-
Harriet pulled away from the desk, heading for the door, dread sinking her gut down to her feet.
"I need to ring Sam."
Paul, too, moved away from the desk, reaching for her through the stacks.
"Wait-"
Harriet whirled around.
"Sam and Embry are in danger. We're the first targets. If the Wendigo are waking up, we're the starter on the menu. Fuck, they could be-… I need to ring Sam. I need-… I need to know they're okay."
All over again, she turned, and this time Paul didn't try to stop her, but he did shout to her retreating back, much to the dismay of the librarian.
"I'll pack up here and catch up, just stay by the front door where I can see you through the glass!"
The door jingled as Harriet left.
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
The time it took for the ringing from her phone to connect to a voice was the most long, torturous moments of Harriet's life in the last year, and she had been through a lot that year. Yet, when it did, when Sam, finally, said hello from the other side with that particular drawl of his, Harriet nearly slumped into a puddle of goop into her own boots.
"Sam? Are you okay? Is Embry there?"
The other end crackled.
"Embry? What's up? Has something-"
"Is Embry there, Sam? Is he okay?"
A beat-
"Yes, he's right beside me. Jesus, Harry. Calm down and breathe… Has something happened?"
Harriet let the phone fall from her ear, and she laughed, bright and high, as she let her gaze float up to the sky above.
Thank, Morgana.
They were safe-
They were alive.
Both her brother's were alive.
For now.
The laughter, nevertheless, didn't last long, especially as Harriet pulled the phone back up and her mind came plummeting back down to the ground with that gut churning, sobering thought, back to the gritty reality she was trying valiantly to swim in.
"Listen to me Sam, keep Embry in sight, and both of you stay together in the house. Get Emily to stay in too. I don't know if these things hunt by blood or marriage, or if they would let Emily live because she hasn't had a kid with you yet or not because she's your imprint and-"
"Harry, slow down! What the fuck is going on?"
Harriet wearily scrubbed at her eyes; phone pressed tight against her face.
"The Wendigo's, Sam! It's the bloody Wendigo's! They hunt us first. Every fifty years they wake up, and every Fiddler in the vicinity is buried in a month-… What's left of them anyway. Then they go buck fuckin' wild on the rest of the tribe. But… Us. They come for us first. They're slowly wiping us out generation by generation. They might have already gotten to Joshua, and if so, with only us left and so many of them-… Just stay together. You and Embry are in grave danger."
For a moment, there was silence.
Silence Sam shattered.
"You are too. You need to get back to Quileute land. Now."
"But there might be something I can find here that will help us-"
"No. Get back, or I'll come and drag you back here myself."
Sam left no room for argument, and maybe that was best. Maybe he knew what he was talking about.
Harriet knew, intimately by the still twinging side of her ribs, how hard it was to take down that last Wendigo with Paul's help, and this time she didn't have a dagger, and if they really were waking up in droves, if more were lurking around, five, ten, fifteen-
The hundreds Harriet had seen in her dream…
She wouldn't be able to fight them alone.
She couldn't put Paul, Paul with his marvellous dimple, in a situation like that, in danger, she couldn't get him or anyone else hurt and-
"Okay… Yeah, you're right. We're heading back now. Maybe… We'll gather up and come up with… Something. The three of us putting our heads together should be able to think up a war plan."
She thought she heard Sam's smile from the line. Could almost feel it too.
"Together. So get your self back here in one piece, yeah? Not a scratch."
Harriet hummed, even as Sam spoke on.
"Maybe they only hunt on Ojibwe soil? Possibly we'll be safe on Quileute land. That might be why dad and grandma moved away from the Leach Lake Reservation to begin with."
Harriet pictured the woman across the road, the one with the torn neck, the one who told her to run.
Was she a Fiddler too?
One in a long, long line of too young casualties?
Harriet, however, didn't respond to Sam. Sam must have known how much that was wishful thinking himself, by the way he let it hang woefully, because they had been attacked outside Ojibwe land, at the storage locker on Quileute soil, and that was far, far away from the Leach Lake reservation.
Which meant the Wendigo's could travel, and if they could travel, they could eat.
Perhaps she could take Embry and Sam to England? Maybe the Wendigo couldn't cross countries?
Of course, she would have to stay behind, maybe the Wendigo would just move on to the main course if no Fiddler's were around, and she couldn't let innocents pay for her cowardice-
Sam and Embry wouldn't leave her behind…
Hermione was a no go, not with her rigid honesty, but Ron might help Harriet kidnap her brothers and cart them off to English shores while she stayed behind-
Ron wouldn't leave Harriet behind either, and she couldn't drag him into this mess too.
What if she-
The door behind her opened, Paul bashfully smirking her way when she jumped at the noise of a latch catching.
Thankfully, however, Paul's disruption had also interrupted her rather pathetic spiralling.
"Maybe. Look, me and Paul are heading for the car now. I'll see you soon. Keep yourself, Emily, and Embry inside. Bolt the doors shut. Barricade them if you have to. I don't care, just keep yourself safe."
Sam grunted from the other side of the phone.
"Ring me in an hour. I want hourly check ins until you're standing right in front of me."
Harriet acquiesced , if only because that meant she got hourly updates on Embry, Sam and Emily too, bid her brother goodbye, and hung up.
"I guess Sam wants us back?"
Harry nodded, head cocking, gaze sweeping, thinking-
Across the road, the woman stood with her arm out, trembling frostbitten-black finger pointing, neck torn, pouring blood, black, dead mouth gaping open-
Screaming.
RUN!
Harriet, for once in her life, did what she was told.
She stumbled, knocked into Paul, scrambled for his hand, and bolted.
Paul staggered behind her, but managed to keep his footing, even as she took them on a sharp left, around the bend of the records' office, into the thicket of trees behind, the opposite way of the screaming woman, where one, dead-grey hand had been pointing.
"What-"
"Just run!"
And run they did.
Over the copse, through the undergrowth, around the grove that was slowly closing in on them in thick, bare branches that whipped at their face. For how long, for how far, Harriet couldn't say. Only that she and Paul ran, ran until their feet hurt and their breathes were sharp pine needles in their lungs, until-
Until they stumbled across an abandoned house.
It was square and dumpy, and cowered by bare branched trees. The windows were long gone, nothing but shards of moss-coated glass in their frames. The once brightly painted door, still turquoise in fixes, was half off its hinges, its shiny knocker dangling with gravity. The roof was a sore sight, half caved in from the left, and whatever front garden it had once held so close was overrun with weeds and a broken post bent awkwardly over.
A bent post Paul, not so breathless, wondered off to after taking his hand from Harriet's, peeling moss from the top panel.
He jerked his chin down at it.
"Look at this."
Still slightly dazed from the screaming, bleeding woman, Harriet trudged over.
"What-"
And saw the post.
A name post.
Fiddler, stared back from the plank of wood, curved and hand carved.
Harriet looked back to the house-
The house her family had once slept in, played in, argued and laughed in-
A house where they had been murdered and massacred every fifty years.
She took a step backwards, to get a better look, maybe to even get away from it, from this abrupt, strong feeling in her chest that squirmed like lit magots, to-
She took one step too many.
The ground below gave in, and suddenly, Harriet was falling.
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
Harriet groaned, cheek smushed up against frozen soil, blinking back to awareness as Paul shouted frantically for her from somewhere above.
"Harriet? Stay there! I'm coming down-"
She was plastered in dirt and dust, grass roots ripped off in her hair, and, despairingly peering around herself, dragging herself up to a sit, she saw the underground tunnel she had fallen into when the loose earth above had given in under her weight.
Immediately, her nose wrinkled, face screwing up tight. It smelled of rotten flesh and something fetid like gone off egg-
Sulphur.
The stale air drifting in from the deep, dark tunnel smelled like rotten flesh and sulphur.
Harriet at once pulled her legs in tight, kept the light trickling from the hole to the above world on top of her, and shouted back-
"Don't! I think-"
Paul thudded down beside her, crouching as he landed, mercifully, in the pale light. Harriet pitifully trailed off.
"I smell Wendigo."
Paul's nose, too, instantly twisted up when he caught a waft of it, that putrid smell that clung. He reached behind him, to the closest wall in the light, patting-
Dirt came crumbling away with barely a stroke.
"The walls are too flimsy. We can't climb back out."
Harriet tried to stand up, but the ground beneath her swam, spinning beneath her feet, and Paul had to catch her shoulder before she fell. Reaching up, she prodded at her thumping temple, fingers coming away speckled in blood.
"I think I hit my head on the way down. I don't trust myself Apparating us out of here when I can't see straight. I think-"
Paul glared at her-
Both of the two Pauls she was currently seeing phasing in and out of each other glared at her.
"Don't say it. Don't fucking say it. Do not tell me I think we need to go wondering off into the dark tunnel that reeks of Wendigo. Don't do this to me, Uley."
Harriet scowled right back just as fiercely. Forget anything she had ever thought about Paul and his dimple, or his smile, or the way his damn hair fell.
He was an insufferable bastard.
"I do not sound like that… And I told you not to jump down. You didn't bother to wait for me to finish-"
"You're the one who booted it from the road and our car in some mad dash-"
"The woman told us to run-"
"What woman? I saw no woman-"
"The dead one! She was clearly trying to help us-"
"Oh, wow. Okay. We're taking advice from dead people now? Positively brilliant, Uley-"
"Oh, bog off you overgrown prick. Why don't you share your bright ideas then-"
Crunch.
Both the shifters halted, rising voices plummeting at the noise of something moving in the dark down opposite way. With bated breath they waited, and waited…
Harriet shook her head.
"We either go down that tunnel, try to risk climbing out, or something will find us waiting here like sitting ducks."
Paul strained briefly, the tendon in his neck tightening, but then, reluctantly, he nodded.
"I choose tunnel."
Harriet nodded along, if she was going to get eaten, it would be while she was doing something to avoid it not sitting around with her neck in the noose.
Soon, the two edged into the darkness.
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
The dirt tunnel twisted on, breaking at points, rising at others, falling at some, joining with other tunnels, too many to count, dirt waning to heavy, murky, frosted stone that made it hard to walk straight without slipping. Their way was only illuminated by a softly glowing ball of light, a small spell Harriet had conjured in the thick-deep shadows, the only one she dared with the way her head pounded.
At least she had stopped seeing double about four tunnel turns back.
From three steps ahead, Paul whistled between his lips.
"Look here."
Edging closer, bringing the light with her, Harriet sidled up, and followed Paul's gaze.
His hand was pressed against a jaggedly carved wall of their current tunnel, fingers splayed next to a painting. It was a rough thing, old looking, made with terracotta-stained dye. A ground up stone of some-kind.
Men stood with arching spears, against a giant of vibrant red, a dark stain before the small group-
A twisted, blood red shadow with antlers on its head.
Harriet's hand lifted of its own accord, fingers tracing the image, curving over the sharp point of a stained antler.
"Wendigo… How old do you think this is?"
Paul hesitated.
"Too hard to tell. It's been here a while, at the very least."
A draft of breeze drifted down the high rising tunnel, and it brought both comfort and hair-raising dread. If there was a breeze, there was a way out. The breeze, also, carried that horrendous smell.
Harriet's hand fell from the painting, fingers numb and dull. She wondered, idly, who was the last person to have touched that wall.
A Fiddler, maybe?
Maybe.
"We need to move."
Paul, silently, agreed.
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
"Holy shit."
Paul was the first to speak after the two had stumbled through a bend of the tunnel, and into a pot-bellied cavern surrounded with the yawning jaws of dozens of tunnels.
A very, very full cavern.
In the heart of it was a pile of boxes, some smashed, others broken in age, wood rotten through by time and ice, and in there, from the glow of her illuminated ball of light, Harriet saw the glimmer of stone heads and chiselled daggers and feathers dangling near spearheads.
Weapons.
A shit ton of weapons.
A shit ton of weapons that appeared just like the ones from the storage locker, magic heavy in the air around them, warm and quietly aching to the senses.
There were weapons-
There were weapons buried underneath the old Fiddler house, and that… That meant something. What, exactly, Harriet wasn't sure yet, but-
This was the jackpot, the motherload, the Merlin damned-
Screech.
Harriet whirled, wide-eyed, to stare back into the dark tunnel behind. Something impossibly deeper flickered in the shadows of it, something-
Moving fast.
Very fast.
Too fast to be human.
The hair on the back of her neck, the hair on the back of her arms and hands and everywhere, raised on end.
"Shadows moving."
It was Paul who spoke, however, and as Harriet turned… She saw him staring at one of the many other tunnel entrances from the cavern.
Another flicker from another tunnel.
Another.
How many?
Too many to take at once.
Paul reached out and seized her arm, drawing her deeper into the cavern, to the weapons. Almost on instinct, the two slipped around, back-to-back, faces to the tunnels. Paul whispered from behind.
"I told you I would watch your six if you watch mine."
Despite the situation, or maybe because of it, maybe because Paul was the type of person to make a girl smile even when they were feet deep in shit, Harriet grinned in the dark.
"By the looks of it we're going to be doing a lot more than watching in a minute. How many on your side?"
Harriet heard Paul's feet bracing on the stone, a muted slip and lock.
"At least five."
Harriet's hand quivered at her side, and she clenched it to fight back the shivers.
It was so bloody cold down here-
Unnaturally cold.
Almost like… Almost like winter.
"Six over here. Not… Not so great numbers, then."
She squinted over to her side, to the floating ball.
"Worse yet, I think the light is drawing them in. It might attract more."
Paul stiffened at her back.
"If you douse it, we'll be stuck in the dark. Our eyesight is good, but this darkness and cold are-"
"Unnatural. Yeah… Yeah, but if we don't-"
As if to prove a point, Harriet saw yet another gloomy figure skitter in the shadows.
Paul must have seen one too as he, blindly, reached for his side, crouching, fumbling-
He came back with a studded club, and instinctively handed her two stone-etched daggers.
"Looks like its going to be a firefight. You ready for this, Uley?"
Harriet stretched her hold on the daggers, thumb hooking in wooden handle, feet slipping shoulder width apart, bracing on the flat floor, centring herself.
"I'm ready if you keep swinging that bat and don't stop."
Harriet heard a whoosh, the sound of a club being tested in a side swing, getting its weight fixed in a grip.
"If you promise to keep stabbing."
It was a promise, really, to not go sweetly, to keep fighting, to, against the current odds, to meet the other at the end. It was a sweet and tender moment, and short lived, as a terrible, chattering voice echoed against the cold, cold walls. It made Harriet's skin crawl.
"What a beautiful place to be with friends. Dobby is happy to be with his friend. Come be with Friends…"
Dobby.
The fuckin' thing was using Dobby's voice. The last words he had ever said to her.
Harriet didn't explode. She didn't cry. She was… Oddly calm.
Calm and contrarily furious.
"We kill them. Every last one. We need these weapons. We can't run. We can't climb. These are only the ones who come out of sleep early to kill off any grown Fiddler. If we don't get these weapons, when the big ones wake up-… We're fucked. I can't apparate us both and the weapons out. It would take multiple trips, and I still don't trust my magic not to splinch us yet. I don't fancy being biologically melded to a spear. So… So we either ditch these weapons, take a chance of a nasty splinch, or-"
A rattling, unnerving voice joined the other.
"Did you touch my TV again, you little shit? Huh? Hand me my belt-"
Paul's growl overlapped the sound of antlers scraping the tunnel roof.
"I've never been one to turn down a fight, and I don't suspect you are either… So let's do it. Let's put these things back in the ground, where they belong, find out where the others are sleeping, and then burn their entire nest to the fucking ground, yeah? Me and you… We can do this."
He sounded so confident in her, so sure, and Harriet couldn't remember a time when someone had done that. Even Hermione and Ron, on the hunt for Horcruxes, had been… Weary of her plan. Exhausted by her strategy, and unsure of her ideas. Even to the very end, when she had said goodbye to walk a lonely path to her death, they had still silently questioned whether she could do it or not, whether what she was doing was right at all-
To have someone simply believe in you… It was… It was-
Beautiful.
And contagious.
She could do this-
They could do this.
What else were soulmates for if not lifting you up?Egging you on to fist fight Wendigos, in their case?
It was mad, insane-
Perfect.
Soulmate.
This was her soulmate.
"Paul? After this… Do you want to go get a beer or something? Maybe watch Lord of the Rings? I mean, for first dates this is one for the records, but I think maybe having something quieter and more ordinary to tell the civilians might be nice."
It was such a silly question, given at such a serious time, but, Harriet thought, it gave her something nice to work for, to fight for, something that wasn't more Wendigo's hiding in the shadows, or missing fathers.
And if Harriet didn't ask Paul out, she would have regretted it if this was the end-
No. They could do this. This wasn't the end. There was a date to make it to.
She couldn't see Paul grin, but, truly, she felt it.
"Gotta definitely win then, don't we? You can't chicken out from me now, Uley. I refuse to accept death by Wendigos as an excuse."
Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape.
"Ready?"
Harriet asked. She felt at her back a shuffle, a dip of Paul's own back, a nod.
Harriet took a deep breath, flicked her hand, and the light went out.
The Wendigos leapt.
A.N: I would just like to say a big thank you all for the response to last chapter, and having thought over it, and listening to all the points made, I will just say the pairing is staying the same. That means this fic will be a Paul/Fem!Harry. There will be Harriet and Jasper friendship, but nothing more.
Having given it deep consideration, I realized adding Jasper into the pairing would have destroyed the plot/feel/intent of this fic. The main focus needs to stay on the Quileute/Ojibwe I realized. It's fundamental to the whole theme/narrative of this story. The Wendigo's themselves, while I won't give away why they exist or how or what their end game is, are representations of generational trauma. That is how I decided to create them. That was the first spark of inspiration I had for this story. I wanted to know, if trauma could be looked upon physically, what would it appear like? I wanted something that represented the sheer monstrosities indigenous peoples face because of other's greed. And greed, like rot, spreads. It's why I made these Wendigo so ravenous. They are expressions of that selfishness. The Wendigo are physical manifestations of the horrors/slayings/sufferings that the First Nations peoples have experienced, and I have worked really hard on crafting subtext into that alone. I did this, made this whole fic, made my own versions of Wendigo, because, not only in Twilight but in most media, indigenous peoples are treated as side characters, their culture as plot devices for the main, often white, protagonist, and made a mockery of, and I got pretty sick of it and decided to create something of my own that was different, that put those people first rather than as background dressing. The whole point of this fic, if there was one message I was trying to get across, is that trauma does not simply go away because time passes. It's an open, weeping scar that gets passed down the generations, and this fic will ask deeper questions as we go on. How generational trauma can heal, how one exists in spaces where hostility, for something like skin colour, exists, and, most importantly, just how strong indigenous peoples are despite the horrific brutality they do/did face. Adding Jasper, a previous confederate soldier, into the romance for some more kinky smut might be fun, but now I feel it might completely ruin that whole load of work I've done, and that's a price I don't want to pay for a bit more excitement in the fic.
And, as always, please, please, please, if you are of First Nations decent, and you read/spot something, anything, in this fic that doesn't add up, doesn't even feel right, please let me know and I will change it/remove it. Most of what I know is research I have undertaken in the last couple of years, and as such, I do not wish, nor do I intend to, to speak above or over indigenous voices. If more people simply listened to one another, I really do think the world would be a kinder, better place.
In short, I messed up. I jumped the gun and didn't think it through, thinking it would be fun to add Jasper into the pairing, and have come to the realisation that I made a mistake. For that, to those who wanted Jasper added, I am very sorry. I messed up and maybe got your hopes up, and if you want to dip from this fic, I completely understand. Nevertheless, I sort of have to keep to the inspiration that first started this fic. I really do want to see this to its end.
THANK YOU ALL for the engagement/input. You've all given me smiles, and plenty to think about. I'll try not to mess up again, and I really, really hope you guys liked this chapter. Now that I am back on track with this fic, I am hoping to get another chapter out soon!