Wilding

by Melanie Tem

  She turned another corner. Fluorescent lights reflecting off white-tiled and highly polished floors skewed her depth perception, so that the end of the aisle looked an impossible distance away, then yawned right at her feet so that with one misstep she would fall off.

  Nearly running now, she turned another corner, knocked a box off a pyramidal display, bumped into a woman pushing a very full cart. Neither she nor the woman acknowledged that they’d made contact, except to sidle out of each other’s way.

  Ruth smelled fresh air, which would mean escape. She longed to race headlong toward it, but she forced herself to stop and to sniff carefully.

  The stream of fresh air was coming from her left and ahead of her. She lightened her step, stalked. She made her way past the bakery, her nostrils flaring automatically at the heady fragrances of flour and yeast. Next was the produce department. Among the wet green smell of lettuce and the odor of oranges that made her nose twitch, there was a warmer, sweeter stream of air diluting the chill.

  She followed the trail through the heavy swinging doors in the back corner. Now she was in a storage room very different from the public areas of the supermarket. The doors swung shut and then open and then shut again behind her. Light was very different here—dimmer, gentler, from just a few unshaded bulbs suspended from the high ceiling, and shadows were wild. She tasted dust. She could smell people and rats. Her stomach growled.

  Another odor reached her, and she identified it at the same time that she saw its source. A young man sat on a stack of boxes on the other side of the storage room, his back to her, earphones on his ears, smoking marijuana. He had no idea she was there.

  Ruth considered him. He was not very big. He was probably not very strong. He was certainly off-guard—his shoulders bounced and his fingers snapped to the music whose beat she could just hear through the earphones, and the cloud of blue smoke softened his outline. Ruth’s mouth watered.

  But even as she lowered herself to the floor and began to creep toward him, she knew she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t strong enough or fast enough anymore, and she certainly wasn’t thinking straight. The thought of killing and eating this foolish kid made her feel slightly sick, slightly guilty. After all this time, she needed the moon, and sometimes still the unguent and the chanting and the force of her family’s will. Her own inadequacy disgusted her. Her mother would have taken him without thought, and they would have had fresh food for days.

  Movement at the edge of her sight and hearing, a piercing musky odor, and Ruth was after the rat before she fully knew what it was, out the back door of the supermarket into the dark and litter-strewn alley. She heard the stockboy’s surprised “Yo!” behind her and wasted a few seconds savoring the image of him seeing an old woman bent almost to all fours chasing a rat past him. That lapse of attention nearly cost her her kill.

  Marguerite was at the mouth of the alley, cornering the rat for her. Squeaking shrilly, it ran up her leg. She brushed it off but left it for Ruth. Ruth caught it in both hands as it leapt for the Dumpster and broke its neck with one gratifyingly swift and competent motion.

  Resisting the urge to eat the rat herself while it was still quivering, Ruth sighed and looked around for something she could use to carry it home. An empty plastic Safeway bag had adhered to the side of the dumpster. Ruth smiled, pulled the bag loose, and put the rat inside. Marguerite joined her, laughing.

  “See?” Pulling themselves as erect as they could and with the bag hanging heavy from Ruth’s hand, they emerged together from the alley and into the supermarket parking lot. “See what we can do together?”

  Chapter 5

  Crescent moon.

  Cradle moon.

  Moon with just a sliver of power in it, just a paring: the claw of an infant or of someone not wholly turned, trimmed to keep her from hurting herself.

  No need. No use anymore for the power of the moon, though of course Mary noted it.

  Hunger.

  She noted the scent of the city summer heat, the patterns of traffic, the patterns of lights, the layers of noises and tastes. She noted the small moon. But Mary was by now the source of her own power.

  The girl was in danger.

  Mary was hungry.

  The girl. Deborah, but nameless when the hunt began in earnest, when the transformation fully took hold. The girl: hers, loved and claimed. The girl was threatened.

  Had fled the family.

  Must be found.

  Must be protected. Must be punished.

  Must be brought home or killed.

  Mary was alone. She had no use for the others tonight. She scorned them, when she thought of them at all. They were her daughter and granddaughter, acknowledged but always alien. Her sister’s daughter, the enemy within the family, the enemy within. Left behind.

  Because the moon was not full tonight, they would believe they had no power, there was nothing they could do. Lydia would be made helpless by her own fear and rage, the very source of the power. Ruth was simply incomplete, ill-formed, never quite enough. Marguerite had been ruined by living all her life in the mountains, by never being stretched beyond her natural limits.

  No need. Mary had no need for family anymore, drew no strength or focus from community. They had failed her, these women, or she had failed them, and so she spurned them. There was in that a glorious sense of release. She was alone, as really she had always been. No need for any of them.

  Except Deborah.

  Mary growled softly at the thought of her. Then, unsparing, stopped the sound so that her throat pulsed and ached. The girl called her. Had not disappointed her, betrayed her yet, but was on the verge. Had not yet claimed her own enormous power, had not yet sought or even welcomed it, but was, tonight, close.

  The girl could have been initiated. Mary could have allowed it. The girl was already good enough for that, could have done the basics. But she could be so much more. She could be the best there had ever been. She and the baby she carried. So Mary had gambled.

  Soon, Mary thought, and the thought was in words, distinct and human and unnerving; soon Deborah will be more than I have ever been. And: Soon she will turn away from me and lose her claim forever.

  Both thoughts brought fear and fury. Both brought pleasure. Mary did not understand. Both brought a sense of urgency Mary could still name: Find Deborah.

  No need, either, for ointments or chants or candles with blue flames. No need for henbane, nightshade, belladonna, though she loved the mere sound of their names, missed the thrill they gave, the rush when the best unguent penetrated her skin, the words her thoughts, the herbs her very brain and heart. She reveled in having gone beyond.

  No need, even, for someone else’s heart and brain. Her own were sufficient.

  Her passion and intent did not require a summons now. They were always ready to be entered, like the sacred wolfskin she no longer needed, either. No more need for the trappings, for the metaphor. Nearly direct access now, nearly immediate transformation, and never far to go.

  The night was not late, maybe not late enough. There were still people on the sidewalks, traffic in the streets. Mary was careful, wary. She was an old woman making her way down the steep front steps of her house on Ingram Street, careful not to fall in the half-light and without a railing. An old woman hesitating at the intersection of 32nd and Ingram. Again at the intersection of 32nd and Jay, where there were no traffic lights. Traffic lights irritated her. Taillights and headlights told her little. She waited to know which direction to go.

  Hunger.

  Up the gray steps into the fenced schoolyard. Sand gave under her feet, filled her loose shoes. She shook the shoes off and left them, was gratified by the gritty sand against her soles and under it the spongy asphalt. She bent a little to press the sand with her palms, brush across it with the hair on the backs of her hands. She did not straighten then. Her gums ached as her teeth widened, lengthened, sharpened; her incisors pressed knowingly against her lower lip.

  Creaking. M
etallic, rhythmic creaking. Mary stood still, quivering, waiting to know what it was.

  Swings. Someone—two people—playing on swings.

  Laughing. A boy and a girl. Deborah’s age. Maybe Deborah.

  Mary eased into the heavier shadows along the base of the school building and slunk around the edge of the playground toward the swings.

  Not Deborah. Not her girl. This girl had very dark skin, very white teeth. Laughing. Leaping off the swing at the highest point of its arc, landing on hands and plump knees in the buoying sand, the blond boy following, both of them on hands and knees, stoned, laughing, loving, in each other’s arms, laughter pausing as they kissed, bodies rolling into each other on the soft schoolyard sand. Loving.

  Suddenly Mary remembered. A long time ago, no words for how long. Another blond boy. Thin like this one, thinner, wrists so slender. His kisses. His promises, his pleas, but she hadn’t promised him anything, she hadn’t. Her grandmother’s flashing teeth, her own teeth, at his singing throat. Her claws around his heart, pulling it out still beating and into her mouth, making it forever hers. She had loved him.

  Mary leapt.

  The girl’s cheek ripped open at the merest touch of her teeth, assuaging the ache with the spurt of sweet hallucinogenic blood. Screams, snarls, like singing. The boy’s throat still thrumming from his laughter and then his screams, Mary’s jaws thrumming, fitting together, tearing apart. The girl’s neck easily snapping.

  City silence then. Never total, but absorbent in a way that woods and open spaces had never been. Silence engorged.

  Mary fed. Ravenous, she dared not take much time to savor. Eyes colorless in the city night. Stippled tongues, gouged with the tip of a nail and severed with the edge, then bursting against the roof of her mouth. Warm hearts, rushing through her own heart, making her whine and tremble. Blood enriched by sex and drugs, sparkling in her throat and belly, sparkling through her own veins now, almost unbearable arousal. Brains tingling with impulses that went only to her brain now, hallucinogenic messages for her. Bellies giving up to her their variegated contents. Genitals still swollen with desire, the boy’s erect penis not really very hard, the girl’s clitoris and labia slick.

  Finished, full for the moment but not nearly satisfied, Mary jumped the schoolyard fence and loped eastward toward downtown. Instinct heightened, she sensed where the girl would be. No cars. Voices. From a porch down the block. No need now to get closer to see, an old woman and a younger one. Mary stayed in shadow, slitted her eyes.

  She streaked across Federal, where there were many cars and the odor of many more. A park, teeming with hushed voices and the odors of beer and pot. Streets narrower, more littered. She ran through alleys, across cluttered yards. Lights on a corner, car engines, loud voices, blows and broken glass: a liquor store, a fight in the parking lot. Tempted, tempted, but she circled wide, behind a long dilapidated apartment building to the next alley, which was graveled and sloping.

  Odor of the river. She trotted downward toward the river. The cradle moon stayed with her. Scents crisscrossed her path, beckoning: dog, squirrel, boy-child. Her nostrils itched and her shoulders leaned into the trails, but she was able to stop herself. She dared not be distracted. She was close now, close to the den under the bridge that she and the girl had found together.

  The girl.

  Not the name, not even the face, but the vivid image of the girl, coming here.

  Loping along the bike path. Staying clear of the water. Under one bridge, a young man talking to himself. Drunken truculent voice turning shrill when he saw her, a night terror, a creature from his always wakeful dreams. Regretfully, she kept going.

  Under another bridge, no one there. An animal very still in the weeds. Of no interest.

  Two men walking. Stumbling. One singing, one sobbing. Silently she raced up behind them, succumbed to an unwise impulse, and hurtled between them. One shouted, the other kept sobbing. They would talk about her, dream about her for the rest of their lives. Fleetingly, she liked that.

  There.

  Mary stopped.

  The girl. Crouched in the open, close to the river. Too close. In the shallow river, water around her feet, the white foam of the water splashing up on her shins. Mary stayed where she was and called to her.

  The girl started, looked up, cried out. Then said, “Nana.”

  Mary thought to say, “Come on,” but had no words. The girl understood, though, and did come, scrambled up the bank on all fours in a way that made Mary’s heart leap.

  Anger. Wildness. Anger in the streets. Anger in the veins. Anger slicking the outsides of buildings, turning coppery the panels of reflective glass, streaking brown and red the concrete and steel. Anger pooling in the bedrooms, kitchens, hallways, stairways, cellars, attics, closets where people lived and loved and where they died.

  Mary knew: Never enough anger. Never enough blood. Even though the world reeked of it. The woods, the small towns, the city, teemed with it, but never enough.

  Little girls choked with chocolate cake they’d tasted without permission, throats packed airless by mothers who did love them.

  Little boys held in scalding bathwater for messing their pants again.

  Wilding, the ravening for transformation. Any excuse to be alien: gay man among straights, black teenager among whites, Asian woman among blacks, blue shoelaces instead of red. Or no excuse at all.

  Babies delivered under bushes, in outhouses, under bridges. Sometimes hidden, meant to die, meant never to have lived. Sometimes with arrows of placental blood, meant to be discovered.

  Women’s faces bloodied. Bones broken. Flesh bruised, yellow and green. Again and again. Helpless to free themselves, helpless to fight back, because they knew what love meant.

  Mary remembered trees, yearned to tell her great-granddaughter about them. Rage growing roots and spreading branches, taking its nourishment from the very ground, the very air. She remembered running into the trees. Deep damp forests, hardwood and evergreen, green in spring, almost black in summer, red orange brown in fall, white etched into white in winter. Fragrance of maple, oak, pine; fragrance of blood. Leaves and needles mulched underfoot. Rain falling hard or drizzling from low gray sky; in this dry place now, Mary remembered rain always falling there, like fur.

  The woods had started at the back door of her house. The woods had stretched for miles and gone miles and miles, so far she could never imagine. So far she’d thought the whole world was woods. It should have been. The woods should have eaten the town, taken its power. It would turn out that, for her and generations of her descendants, the built town would become the world, would overpower the trees.

  Mary had run to the trees. Run again. Run again. Trees grew thicker and taller as her anger grew. Hidden there. Been lost there. Come to know the ways of predator and prey, vowed she’d never be prey. Not true, of course; everyone is prey, everyone predator. Tasted the power when, desperate, she’d chased, killed, eaten.

  “Nana, I’m tired. Where are we going, anyway?”

  Whining, like a much younger child, knowing nothing she should know. At her age, Mary had already given herself to the Spirit and to numerous men and women. Had long since made her first kill. Had been hiding in the woods for a long time where her mother never came to find her and her father just stood among the trees looking forlorn. “Nowhere,” she growled. Deborah sighed and sulked.

  Trees and streetlights and signposts along the city streets were too spindly and too far apart, branches and crosspieces starting too high, trimmed too narrow, making another hard edge. Too many hard edges. Sidewalks too open and straight. Pools thrown by the streetlights the color of fat melted, separated, congealed, suggested moonlight but were not, and they held no power.

  She missed mountains, missed woods. Cursed her human nature that made her mourn what was not now, even know about places she was not now and lives she had hoped to live.

  She disdained mountains and woods, too. Too easy. Too natural. Too many natural
places to hide and to transform.

  There were places to hide in the city; Ruth said there were plenty, and good ones. Bridges, alleys, abandoned apartment buildings. But not hidden enough. Not lost.

  Never enough anger. Never enough blood. Never enough trees. Never enough rain in this place; Mary’s eyes burned constantly and her flesh itched, no less when furred than when bare. Too much open sky, too much sun. On cloudy days she could sometimes venture outside even in daylight. Here there weren’t many cloudy days.

  People lived in these houses. Yellow of lamps, blue-white of televisions and computer screens. Odors of cooked food and living flesh crisscrossing odors of automobile exhaust, dormant clipped grass, plastic, rubber, metal. Sky grayed by the city; hardly any moon, even when the moon was full, so Mary was always tired.

  Ahead in the wide, dry street was a cat, walking.

  “Kitty!” Deborah called. “Silly cat, get out of the street!”

  Mary remembered her mother’s blue eyes. Blue eyes. Hands with short, curved nails, all pink. Hands that held her, caressed and bruised.

  Her mother saying in words for all the world to hear: “You’re not mine.” Saying: “I would never have carried a thing like you. My body would have closed itself up rather than let you out into the world.” Saying: “Sometimes I think you’re not even really human.”

  Saying that about all of them—Theodora, Emma, Hannah—but Mary was the baby. The last chance. Saying it with particular venomous intent about Mary.

  Remembered her father, too, and the anger pulsed. Anger not hurting so much, but empowering. Her father never trying to find her, in the woods or anywhere else. One day, just gone. What she missed, what she hated him for taking away, was what he had never been to her.

  Not far ahead, the gray cat stretched out on the still-warm pavement and rolled luxuriously. The pulse was clearly visible in the white throat.

  Mary knew the girl longed to pet it, fingertips on the pulse. Mary’s breath came short. The white belly was full, puffed.