Wilding

by Melanie Tem

  Deborah crouched and called more urgently, “Cat! Get the fuck out of the street, you stupid cat!”

  Having her own daughter (after a son, a little boy dead in his cradle and then consumed, forever part of her, she’d known what she had to do without having anyone to tell her), having Ruth, Mary had at last understood: Her mother had not had the power. Her mother had been only one thing, only human.

  Fear, then: always alert for indications that the power would skip another generation, as it had skipped her mother. Ruth was all right, not as strong as she should have been but all right; Mary saw the other nature often enough. But Lydia. And Deborah. Mary worried.

  Her own grandmother: a cave, a den. Her grandmother’s deep, sturdy power. The heady feral odor of her grandmother that nobody had ever tried to scrub away; Mary’s elbows, knees, underarms, groin, had often bled from her mother’s frantic, angry hands.

  Her grandmother’s growl, wordless and intensely comforting: “You belong to me,” and the echo from the woods, from beyond the woods, its other nature, the Spirit of its transformation: “You’re mine.”

  “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  Mary’s mother. Powerless and only one thing. Alone in the house that had been on the edge of the woods and was now in a cleared, readied field dotted with other houses, too open, too planned. Alone and angry. Angry all her life, but never enough anger, never more than human anger that left her exactly the way she was.

  Mary and her grandmother together crossing the opened field. Mary wearing the wolfskin, still needing the wolfskin; after this one great, excruciating, exhilarating kill, she would never need it again, and she would never die. Power rushing. Power taking form.

  Moon full in the unleafed, cloudy sky. Mary could not see the disc of it, but its light suffused and pulled.

  Stalking, low to the ground. Thigh muscles cramping. Unmown grass smelling green. Mice, raccoons, a few birds distracting, tempting, thinking they were hiding from her, nearby. Power racing.

  Mary still awkward on all fours, but muscled enough to lift herself up onto the narrow window ledge of her house, her mother’s house. Elongated face pressed against the glass. Her mother alone and angry, needle in and out of cloth. Red cloth, silver needle, and a shotgun wooden brown and metal gray across her lap. Ready for them. Expecting them.

  Grandmother Ursule. Huge and fully lupine, on the other side of the window on the other side of the house. Yellow eyes much brighter than the moon, long mouth ridged with teeth.

  Mother looked up and saw them both. Did not scream in fear at first but shouted in furious challenge. Dropped the glittering needle and the flat red cloth with no blood in the red, raised the shotgun, fired. Shot Mary first. A mistake.

  Pain. For the rest of her life, which was to be forever, pain in her right shoulder, reminding her that her own mother, whom she’d intended to kill, had intended to kill her. Had wanted her dead.

  Mary did not die, though then she could have. Saw the blast toward the other window and, not yet believing what she’d been taught, thought her grandmother murdered. Thought she could not live without her grandmother. Thought she would kill herself, somehow.

  Shards of glass barely noticed. Her grandmother’s fangs so close to Mary that they gored her, slashed her cheek, went into her own mouth, became her own fangs, her own appetite. Her mother’s shrieks of rage, then of terror. Her mother’s blood, the intimate taste of her mother’s blood, Mary for the first and last time in her life close to her mother.

  Deborah was on her hands and knees. A pickup screeched around the corner and swerved, barely missing them. The driver yelled and flipped them off. “Asshole!” Deborah yelled back. Languidly, as if there were nothing in the world but its own wonderful sensations, the cat sat up and curled its tail around itself.

  They came for Mary then, and for her grandmother. Townspeople, farmers, people from the shacks and fancy houses down along the banks of the creek. They knew. Mary guessed some of them had always known.

  Long searches through the woods, woods green-black, red-orange, white on white. Long chases, days and nights long, and her grandmother allowed them glimpses: stood atop a treeless hill, silhouetted against the fur of moonlight, and made herself enormous. Nothing to hide now, nothing to lose.

  Marauding cattle pens and chicken yards, doghouses and nurseries. Nurseries, sweetest and saddest of all. Three male infants three nights in a row, blood so sweet, fat melting sweetly over an open fire.

  Twenty, thirty of them. Countless. Hordes of them, people Mary’d known all her life and strangers. Guns, knives, nets, and a glinting ax with a blade like a sharpened moon. Afraid to look at it and afraid to take her gaze away. Two stakes.

  Ursule roared, snarled, struck out with great paws and teeth as sharp as the stake, killed and wounded, drew blood, drew cries and prayers. Then her grandmother screamed, a human sound.

  Hiding, a terrified little girl, Mary heard her grandmother call her name, felt the earth move and the moon spasm with her grandmother’s struggling. Saw the ax raised high in many hands and arced down hard. Saw the long moon-blade slice through her grandmother’s wattled, old-woman neck; saw her grandmother’s wolf-head roll free. Heard bone splinter and flesh tear and brain split. Saw her grandmother’s blood spurt upward and outward to change the very seasons, to turn the trees from green to red. Tasted her grandmother’s dripping blood.

  They’d have killed Mary, too, if they’d found her. They’d have cut off her head. Animal or human, wolf or woman, all her eternal life she dreamed of that moon-sharp ax.

  Mary moved closer to the girl Deborah who was her great-granddaughter but who might truly be no kin at all. With some effort she said to her: “Kill.”

  The cat, with no indication of haste, rose to its feet, stretched, and walked straight to Deborah. It was purring vigorously. When it rubbed against her knee, it made faint sparks. She made a little cooing sound. Two cars went by, noisy and too fast. Down the block, someone yelled to someone else. Deborah petted the cat with both hands, drawing her fingers through its long, soft fur, then rested her cheek against the top of its head.

  “Kill.”

  “Oh, Nana, I can’t.”

  “Kill!”

  Rage, hot and welcome. Mary gathered herself and leapt. Claws grazed Deborah’s flank and she cried out. The cat yowled and tried to twist out of the way, but Deborah’s petting distracted it, slowed it just enough. Mary sank the claws of one hand into its belly and carried it, contorting and shrieking, behind the 7-Eleven Dumpster. Its eyes were fixed on her, green and very wide. Its mouth was pink, ridged with foolish little teeth. She sank her fangs into its throat. The throat gave nicely.

  “I was going to keep it for a pet!” Deborah was squatting beside her. Claws and teeth still busy with the cat, mouth full, Mary looked at her and felt sudden love. The girl was sobbing—tearlessly, soundlessly—but Mary saw also the fascination, saw her touch with her fingertips the pool of blood on the trash-strewn pavement and then lift the hand to her lips.

  Love for this child, need for family, drive to be understood and not to be alone were stronger for the moment than hunger. Mary pushed the remains of the cat into Deborah’s lap and growled, “Eat.”

  Deborah stared down at the carcass. The belly was wide open, guts spilling across her thighs and hands. The throat was a jagged wet pit. But the cat’s head was intact: shiny green eyes, long gray whiskers white at the very tips, pink nose.

  “I hate you!” Deborah whispered. “I hate you! I hate you!”

  She turned and ran.

  Mary ran after her, caught up with her easily, and matched her strides to the girl’s.

  They ran together, old woman and young woman and infant in the womb. Mary dreamed of this. She knew Deborah dreamed of it, too, woke up sweating and trembling with muscles afire, senses raging, dreamed of it more and more often and did not know what she was dreaming. If the baby was a girl, she would dream of running, too, would flex her just-grown limbs
and kick against the sac that held her. If it was a boy, he would be dreaming of death.

  Ran. Utter joy, utter abandon, utter transformation in the running. Muscles stretching. Hearts swelling.

  They ran along the Platte River at the base of the city. Mary had run here countless times, countless nights of full moon and cradle moon and no moon at all. Once the shallow river had cut through prairie, tall dry grass and red earth. It was different now: gray and black buildings on its banks, streets and sidewalks and mown grass, gigantic city rats raising up in the half shadows, beavers gnawing down trees the Park People planted and interfering with the planned reconstruction of nature. But it was not so different, either. The river still meandered, still flowed easy and shallow here, still edged both mountain and plain. Mary followed it to its confluence with Cherry Creek, a flat little park now with no one in it, and then, without breaking stride, with the girl matching her pace for pace, turned and raced back along the river again into town.

  Someone was in their place. In the cave at the bend of the river up under the railroad trestle. Someone was there. Mary and the girl hadn’t come here for a long time, and someone was living here now.

  Mary tensed. Finally coming up beside her, the girl tensed, too. Ready or fearful, Mary couldn’t tell.

  A family. A woman nursing an infant, humming, bare breast catching the light. A man hunkered down with his back to them. The baby was male.

  “Nana, no,” the girl said aloud, and the woman looked up. Mary growled very softly and swiped in warning at the girl’s bare leg. The girl caught her breath but said nothing, did not cry out or even gasp.

  Mary crouched and began to slink toward the woman and child. The girl held back, then came with her. Mary caught her arousal and desperation, felt the change gathering, and her own power intensified until she could barely contain it. In a few more seconds, a few more strides, there would be no need to contain it; the boy-baby would be hers and the power would be fully hers and the girl’s.

  The girl shouted, “No!”

  The mother shrieked. The father was on his feet. The boy-baby wailed, a thin, sickly sound. Roaring, Mary turned and raced after her great-granddaughter, who had run up steps out of the greenway into the city above.

  Deborah was going home. Mary knew her name, knew where she was going, would overtake her and punish her as she deserved, would kill her if she had to. Deborah was a traitor. Deborah denied her own nature and would bring the family to ruin. Deborah carried inside her the next generation and did not know what she had, did not care.

  Deborah raced across a diagonal, multilane street. A truck honked, rumbled between them. Mary snarled, danced in agonized impatience in the empty lane. When the truck passed she saw Deborah, stumbling among the numerous identical buildings on the college campus, and she sped after her.

  At the west edge of the campus began a residential neighborhood, nearly the home neighborhood. Deborah cut between two low-slung duplexes, Mary settling into a steady pace not far behind her. Deborah would tire soon. Mary would not.

  Deborah ducked into a yard. Mary gained on her as she fumbled with a gate, closed it behind her, and turned to run again.

  Mary leapt.

  Hit something.

  Something sharp at her groin, piercing the skin, the flesh. Intense arousal, intense pain.

  Could not move. Dangling. All four feet off the ground.

  Yipped. Howled. Vision blurred red-black. Scent of her own blood and feces.

  Scent of the girl, lost.

  Chapter 6

  Rain clouds were bunching up at the western edge of the hot afternoon sky.

  Thunder rumbled over the mountains, still far enough away that, more than hearing it, Deborah felt it in her lower belly. She hoped she wasn’t making the noise herself; Becky didn’t look up, so she must not be. She hoped the baby inside her wasn’t making the noise. Lightning flashed over the mountains, and you could actually see the edge of the front move closer. Less of the sky was bright blue now, more of it intense gray-black.

  Running with Nana in a storm. Thunder. Lightning. Yellow light. The air become wind, full of electricity, full of their power. Running with Nana. Understanding Nana without really understanding her at all.

  Imagining that, wanting it so much, scared her. But she still wanted it.

  She made herself think instead about the street lady dying. Life going out of her and not into Deborah, either. Guilt like lightning, hot and bright, and then like distant hurting thunder.

  “Armando’s been telling everybody you’re a slut.”

  Deborah wrapped her arms around herself. That protected the baby, too. She wasn’t sure she wanted to protect the baby. Probably she was the one who needed protection, from this thing growing inside her, this thing that wasn’t really human any more than she was, this creature that she’d thought about aborting but didn’t dare. She wondered if her mother had felt the same way carrying her, and if her father had noticed.

  She was dizzy. She hadn’t eaten or slept much for days—afraid she’d dream about running or killing, afraid everything would taste like that bum lady’s heart.

  It seemed like a long time ago that that lady had died. Been killed. Since she’d killed her. Since then, Deborah hadn’t killed anything, though she could have. That didn’t make her feel any better. She’d thought it would, but it didn’t.

  Becky was doing homework. Algebra, it looked like. Deborah couldn’t imagine ever doing homework again, and to her amazement she actually missed it a little. Becky was telling her this as a friend, so the anger pressing against Deborah’s brain wasn’t fair, wasn’t her anger, wasn’t the baby’s. Without bothering to look up at her, Becky said, “Yeah, well, he says you don’t even know who knocked you up but it sure wasn’t him and he fucks you anytime he feels like it.”

  Deborah protested, “But we haven’t done anything.”

  His fingers inside her, hurting. Could he hurt the baby? Pleasing—could he please the baby? Her mouth around his cock, and she didn’t bite down very hard. “God, what a tight little cunt you are, what a baby, somebody oughta show you what it’s all about, what you’re playing around with, you know that?” he’d said. But he’d also said to her, both before and after the other stuff, “I love you. You’re beautiful. I can’t live without you. Let’s get married. Let’s run away together.” She didn’t know how to know which to believe, the disgust or the love. Both sounded sincere to her, and both sounded like lines.

  “He says you’ll do anything he wants. He says you said you would. He says you’re like his little slave.”

  Deborah had thought it was part of the love-making. “Would you do anything for me?” he’d whispered. She’d nodded because she couldn’t talk, his mouth was on hers and she was too full of love to talk. “Would you die for me? Say it,” and she’d turned her head and gasped, “I’d die for you,” not knowing whether she meant it but thinking it was part of the lovemaking, it was what she was supposed to say.

  “Would you kill for me?”

  “Yes, yes, I’d kill for you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. I’ll always love you.”

  “My mom says you can’t stay here anymore.”

  Still thinking about Armando, Deborah struggled to figure out what Becky was talking about. “What?” Then, “Why?”

  Becky shrugged. “I don’t know. She says she can’t afford another mouth to feed.”

  “I’ll get a job. I could get a job.”

  “She says you should go home. Your mother’s probably worried.”

  Knowing there was more, Deborah waited. She couldn’t stop watching the movement of Becky’s blue pen across the lined white paper. She was getting sort of hypnotized, and that was okay with her. Finally, though, she roused herself enough to demand, “What else did she say?”

  Becky put her pen down, finally, and looked at her, but Deborah couldn’t tell what she was thinking, whether she was her friend or not. “She says you’re weird. She s
ays your whole entire family is weird. She says it’s not good for my brother or me to have somebody like you hanging around here.”

  Deborah nestled her teeth into the scarred hollow of her cheek. It took only a little pressure for the blood to start. That helped some. She hugged herself harder, as hard as she dared, and she wasn’t so much cold now as itchy. The roots of her hair itched, the undersides of her eyelids, deep under her eardrums, around the base of her clit. “But where will I go?” she asked, almost dreamily. “I don’t have any place to go.”

  “Debby, go home.” Becky leaned forward earnestly, and although Deborah did see something she might have called friendship in the other girl’s eyes, she stepped back as if she’d seen contempt. “Mom’s right. Go home and try to work things out. Running just makes everything worse.”

  “My mother hates me.”

  “Oh, come on. Everybody feels like that sometimes. But she’s your mother, she doesn’t hate you.”

  Her mother: naked, fist raised, teeth bared. Her mother: naked, holding her close and loving, Deborah naked, too. Her mother didn’t hate her, didn’t love her, she didn’t know what she felt about anything. Had no idea who she was. Deborah could hardly stand to think about her mother.

  “Anyway, you’ve got your grandmother and your great-grandmother, too, right? I always thought you were really lucky to have such a close family. I wish my grandma lived close by. She lives in Michigan. I only see her—”

  “My mother and my grandmother and my great-grandmother all hate me. I’m not what they want me to be. They all wish I was dead. Sometimes they try to kill me. They’ll kill my baby if it’s a boy. If it’s a girl—”

  Becky swore, sat back, shook her head. Deborah was too much for her. Deborah was too much for most people. Feebly, Becky said again, “Oh, come on.”

  “Look.” Deborah rolled down the collar of her sweater.

  Becky peered. “What’s that?”

  “Bite marks.”

  “Bite marks?”

  Deborah nodded and smoothed the collar back up over her chest and throat. “I’m not going home.”