The Nobodies

P R E F A C E

© Amber Kalkes 2015

Song: "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" By Blind Willie Johnson

Preface~

My grandmother taught me a lot of things growing up but there is one thing she said that had always stuck with me. She said that there were two kinds of people in this world. There were people who saw things as they were and people who could see the magic hidden underneath.

To the former the wind simply blew, fire burned, water dampened and from the earth things would grow. The people who could see the magic didn't see things that way, though. People like that could hear music in the wind. They could see the warmth and the destruction of a fire. They can see the forbidden world in every drop of water. And they could see the earth as the ultimate mother who should be revered and loved like any creator of life.

I had always thought of myself as a part of the latter group.

It was one of the reasons that most people thought I was strange. One of many reasons, actually. The other reason were the rumors that have been circling my family says we first moved to this town almost two centuries ago. The whispers only getting more frantic once the wolves came. They said we were witches, devil's mistresses who had summoned the hellhounds this far south.

The truth, as always, was a lot muddier than all that. Gran said that we never called the wolves. They just showed up when her own mama was just a girl and her grandma, Mabel Marcum, simply allowed them to stay. She even started taking care of them. It's a tradition that we kept up with. If a wolf came onto our property we were to treat them with respect, like any of god's creatures.

I grew up with them always being around. They became a common landscape in my life and I grew up along with them. Of course there was a bit of a truce between us that we knew not to break. We didn't step foot on their part of the land and in return they protected us. In the forties it was even said that they killed an escape convict who had spotted the house. Gran even showed me the press clipping.

That's just how life was here and that was how I assumed it would always be.

And then a wolf crossed the invisible boundary and everything changed.

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So there's the preface for the rewrite of this story! So excited to get this going! The updates will probably be sporadic at first but will pick up once I start finishing up some stories.

Until next time....

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