Gracie - Sherry Foster Page 0,19
The girl was incredibly talented with numbers and seeing things outside the box. But weighing in on the wording of the curse was not something a nine year old should be tasked with. Other things such as the data the child provided could ultimately be checked by someone. But the curse, or rather the wording to break the curse, couldn’t be doubled checked. It would work or it wouldn’t and if the witches were telling the truth, they only had one chance to make it right.
Leah and Charles had discussed it in private, after all, Alice was their child and it was their job to protect her. They hadn’t agreed on a course of action and being out of agreement with her mate burned at her soul. She knew the other packs were weighing in on the wording. She didn’t know how many people would be consulted”, and she didn’t care. What she cared about was Alice and what it might mean in the long run. What if Alice saw something the others didn’t see? What if, based on the abilities the child had shown when given data meant her interpretation of the curse breaker was given more weight. Breaking a curse couldn’t be something the child had dealt with before and Leah was afraid.
She wanted the curse broken as much anyone but not at the expense of her daughter. If some word of Alice’s meant a change to the wording, and years down the road they found the curse hadn’t been broken, she didn’t want Alice to live with the guilt. She wasn’t sure if Alice would feel guilt like others, but all her reading told her autistic children were frequently more sensitive than non-autistic children. She didn’t want to take the chance. At the same time her pride in Alice was such that she almost wanted her to find some subtle wording that needed changing. Some slight change that would mean the difference between extinction and prosperity for their race, if found by Alice, would elevate her status far beyond any other children. With the difficulties faced by human autistic children being similar to what they were seeing with Alice anything that would gain her acceptance was desired.
Discrete questioning had offered up the information that Alice was most probably the only autistic shifter to make it so far in life. Shifters, being what they were, didn’t do disabilities well. They accepted disabled and different poorly if at all and most shifters never made it past toddler age if deficiencies were found. It was easier, perhaps, to accept someone like Jules, injured late in life, because he had so much to offer the pack. But to accept a child who was different wasn’t done. How Santiago had let the child go, with only two people to guard her, as precious as she was baffled Leah. The child had such a bright future and so much to offer Leah couldn’t see ending her life because she wasn’t understood or she was different. Why Santiago’s pack hated the child was slightly understandable. Alice was different and sometimes different was hard to understand. People fear that which they don’t understand, shifters were no different, deep down, when it came to differences.
“I need more information.” Alice didn’t lift her head until the silence had stretched out long enough for an answer. Lifting the paper she looked at Trey. “This isn’t enough. A nursery rhyme, a poem, nothing concrete. I need more information.”
Trey shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t have any information to draw on.”
“Of course you do. You have the one who spoke the curse. You have the one who would speak the words to unmake the curse and you have the one from another world who knew the way of the curse. Get me these three people. This paper,” she shook the paper containing the curse and the words they would use to undo the curse in Trey’s direction. “This isn’t enough. A curse isn’t science, it isn’t concrete and I hardly know why you would have me look at something I can’t prove. But there it is, the witches have abilities that can’t be proven. Our people have abilities that make a mockery of science. But this, ask something so far beyond science I am not certain how you believe I can help.”
“You see things we don’t see little one. I’m not asking you to do anything but look for something we can’t see.”
Alice shrugged. “Everyone could see what other’s can’t if