by Maria Vale
The smell of steel and carrion wafts down the hall followed by the loud tread of the Shifters who stink of it.
“Lorcan,” I say to the bright-pink line of his scalp at the part of his hair. “Wolves do not have the luxury of regret. Cum, agna in rihtum.”
Come, claim your right.
And Lorcan, broad and powerful, bolts for me like a pup, his eyes wide with the fear of loss and the need for belonging that only the Alpha, the symbol of Pack unity, can give. Slowly, slowly, I pull the strands of hair away from his face so nothing will come between his skin and mine. I rub one cheek against his, then repeat it on the other side.
The Shifters stand watching at the door, but I will not hurry Lorcan as he takes my scent. He has spent the whole moon angry that he allowed Victor to mislead him, fearful of losing his connection to the Pack. I give him the time he needs to breathe in that belonging again, and when he is done, his head is higher. As soon as I am done with the Shifters, I will mark again all the wolves of the echelons misled by the traitorous dog.
I have decided to divide the Shifters among the Alphas I trust the most, so Julia will go to Lorcan; Elijah will have to handle Cassius, who after all his loud complaining stands oddly silent, glaring into the distance. Julia, who had said almost nothing, now pleads incoherently, holding out her red and ridiculous shoes to Cassius’s retreating back as though they are explanation of something. Lorcan takes her wrist and pulls her toward the door, still endlessly babbling sorry, sorry, sorry.
“I’m sorry. I don’t belong here. I’m sorry, Cass. I don’t know why. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be in New York. I’m so sorry.”
As her “sorries” retreat down the hall, I look at the two remaining Shifters. Eudemos, Alpha of the 14th, will take Magnus while I—
In the distance, the gray wolf calls.
As soon as her voice has had time to reach all the way from Westdæl to Endeberg, whatever wolves are wild respond. Even a few of the pups add to the chorus with their little Orrroos.
Magnus slides down against the wall, his hand to his mouth, his breath coming in hitched groans. His brother squats next to him, his hands tucked under his arms.
“What’s wrong with him?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Constantine says. It’s curious. He sounds angry, but he doesn’t smell like it. Anger has a bright burn to it, but he smells like carrion and steel and soot, like anger has burned through him so often that only ash remains. It’s overwhelming, which explains why I didn’t understand earlier what had bothered Leonora, what itched at the back of my brain in the Meeting House. I collapse to my knees, my hands on the floor on either side of the young man, getting close enough so that the weak senses of this form can sort through all the human smells to the bitterness of black walnut and juniper, a wild stronger than any Shifter has a right to be.
“What is your name?” I whisper, trying to keep the frantic edge from my voice.
“His name is Magnus.”
“I’m talking to him.” I raise my hand stiff in the air, commanding quiet. “What is your real name?”
“His name is Magnus,” Constantine says again. “And he is my brother.”
There is a dark, sharp edge to his voice like chipped obsidian, but his eyes are green like Clear Pond in the summer when the light streams through at an angle, making the water glow pale green, streaked with the shadows of trees.
“He can’t be,” I say, turning back to Magnus. “He’s not even a Shifter.”
Something chases across Constantine’s face but then it tightens. His hand searches the back of his waistband like he’s looking for something that he doesn’t find. “He’s not human.”
I wave my hand dismissively. “Of course not,” I say. “He’s one of us. He’s Pack.”
The Shifter takes a step back, his brow furrowing a moment in disbelief before he laughs. “How? He’s never changed. In twelve years. Not once. Tell her, Magnus,” he says, reaching out for the young man. “Tell her who you are.”
He pulls his hand away when Magnus whimpers.
“Gea, wulf,” I say in the Old Tongue. “Ge mé secgon. Hwa eart þu?”
Yes, wolf. Tell me. Who you are?
The young man begins to rock, his breath a torment.
“I don’t know,” he says quietly.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“What is your Pack?”
“I don’t know anything,” he whimpers, but he doesn’t deny the possibility of a Pack. Now he looks toward Constantine, pleading with him. “Con? I can’t. I…”
I move my hand toward his face.
“You saw,” the Shifter snaps. “He doesn’t like to be touched. Not when he’s like this. His skin hurts. Everything…hurts…”
His voice fades as I tilt Magnus’s chin up, doing for this wolf what I did for Lorcan, what I have done for every member of the Great North Pack over and over again. I set my face next to his and leave a little bit of myself on his skin. His dark hair moves with my breath, but he doesn’t stiffen or move away. He relaxes into my touch.
I have you, wolf. I have you back.
I whimper a little because the wild, while easily lost, is so rarely found. When I pull away, I take not only the faint trace of his mark. Blood oozes from my palm and down my wrist. I wipe it away from the corner of his mouth, but more bubbles out.
“Eudemos,” I whisper without turning. “Get Tristan.”
Eudemos runs for the door, the sturdy floorboard creaking beneath him.
“What hurts, wolf?”
Magnus pinches his eyes closed.
The door opens again, readmitting Eudemos accompanied by Tristan, whose teeth are buried in an apple. He is wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt with a blue police box that says My other car is a TARDIS. It is a joke, our doctor explained to me once, but it was too complicated. Leonora has reassured me that I can still interact with most humans without understanding it.
“Tristan. This is Magnus.” His name comes out like it’s in quotes, but that can’t be helped. “Heal him.”
Tristan pops the last of the apple into his mouth and wipes at the juice that runs down his chin. He dries his fingers on his thighs.
He kneels down. “Hello, Magnus. My name is Tristan. I’m what passes for a doctor in these parts.”
“What do you mean ‘passes for’?” Constantine surges forward, instantly protective.
“He did his residency at Massachusetts General,” I say, “where he specialized in internal medicine and sarcasm.”
“It’s really more facetiousness than sarcasm, Alpha.”
“That doesn’t matter: it’s a human habit and it confuses the Pack.”
“Well, wolf,” Tristan says, taking a few quick diagnostic sniffs. “What seems to be the problem?”
Magnus looks warily at Constantine.
“Let him see, Magnus. If he hurts you, I will kill him.”
“Ahhh, hyperbole.” Tristan peers into the narrow opening of Magnus’s mouth, then pulls a pen light from his shirt pocket. “That’s another thing we don’t get nearly enough of at Home…lands…” His voice falters and he purses his lips, looking at the crooked teeth stained with blood. At the drop falling from a canine.
“I need him in Medical,” says Tristan, standing once more, all sarcasm and facetiousness gone.
“Eudemos, help him.”
The Shifter starts after them before I manage to raise myself from the floor. I shoot out my hand, grabbing his ankle, and he freezes as I feel the ridged skin under my fingers, then look for the brown and burgundy scars around his ankle that I know will be there.
“I fell,” he says, pulling away from my hand.
“Hunters have set enough snares on Homelands for me to know a ligature mark when I feel one.”
With his toe, he nudges the hem of his jeans down, and at that moment, Magnus groans, the sound carrying both through the open window and from the connecting wall between my office and Medical.
“You have to believe we are trying to help,” I say. “There aren’t enough wolves in the world for me to be careless of even one.”
“Really? How about the ‘wolf’ you ripped open and left to die? Or was that too deliberate to be careless?”
“Arthur,” I say coldly, “is paying the price for your interference in the Pack.” Our former Deemer, the dog who betrayed us to August, would have been found guilty under the law, but the Iron Moon was almost here—hunters were almost here—and we didn’t have time for for-speakers and against-speakers and the casting of stones into the Thing, the way of our law. So Arthur took it upon himself to kill the Deemer, knowing the penalty was death.
I pick up my cup, holding it tight as though I’m trying to warm my hands, even though it is, as always, cold.
“Humans say even a wolf’s kindness is cruel. We say even a wolf’s cruelty is kind. Silver had just been made Deemer. Killing Arthur would have been the easy way out; it would have followed the letter of the law. But…” I take a sip of frigid coffee to disguise the break in my voice before I start again. “But the law required he be punished, so Silver found a way that satisfied the law and allowed him to live.”
When I set down the mug, he looks at the cartoon deer and the words The buck stops here. Maybe he will find it funny. Erika had written me a note explaining the joke—dollar = buck, male deer = buck—but I have never quite understood it. Wolves are not known for their sense of humor.
“How old is he?”
“Magnus? I don’t know. Not exactly. He hasn’t grown much since I found him in the youth center.”
“What is a youth center?”
“A detention facility,” he says. “In western Canada.”
Leonora has a whole pamphlet translating the words humans use to protect themselves from uncomfortable ideas: Passed away. Downsized. Enhanced interrogation. Detention facility. “So he was in a prison for children?”
“He’d been living on the streets. Stealing. They had to put him somewhere.”
The pups have found a spool of garden twine and are chasing it around the grass, unwinding as they go. This close to Home Pond, there is no need for supervision but they are never truly alone. No wolf would allow one of their own to end up in a prison for children, so it can only mean that his pack is dead.
“Has he always been sick?”
“Yes,” Constantine starts, then hesitates. “No, not like this. At first, it was his teeth. It would come for a few days but then subside. Now it’s spread to his stomach and his joints. His skin sometimes. It’s hard for him to eat.”
He looks at something on my desk.
I can see the muscles along his jaw working. “August called him a pet. A child grows up, he said. Leaves. Not a pet.”
There’s a dull silver disk next to the juveniles’ practice SATs. He stares at it, turning it slowly.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“This? It’s a… It’s a compass,” he says, picking the thing up. “It tells directions. So…” He holds it on the flat of his hand. “So, that’s north.”
I look down at his hand. “What’s north?”
“Where the arrow is pointing.”
There is a circle with the letters and an attenuated diamond. Half of the attenuated diamond is painted red. We can smell north. Hear north. Feel north. Taste north. “Why would someone need an arrow to tell them north?”
“In case you need to go north. Or south or any other direction.”
I need to go toward prey, away from hunters. To water, away from fire. To my wolves. I don’t need to go north.
“Hmmph.”
“So why do you have it?” he asks.
“A hiker dropped it last moon.”
He turns it around, examining a dark smudge on the back.
“We didn’t eat him if that’s what you’re thinking. We watched him until the Iron Moon was over and then when we had thumbs and Wi-Fi, we filed for injunctive relief.”
“Alpha?” Ove sticks his head in to remind me about the divestiture meeting but as soon as the door is open, wolves start to crowd in with questions about discipline and firewood and insurance premiums. Some I can answer immediately, others I need to think about, but wolves need decisiveness, so I simply tell them they will have to wait while I take one of the awkwardly cut pieces of scrap paper the Year of First Shoes make as they practice using fingers.
I pull out the pencil from behind my ear.
The Shifter stands, his hand stretched in front of him, staring at me.
Chapter 6
Constantine
Many years ago when I was a boy living on a cul-de-sac, I got a toy compass in a cereal box. This was back in the day when children could be trusted not to eat toy compasses in cereal boxes. There was something wrong with it. The needle didn’t have the magnetic paint that would have made the end point feebly north so my mother threw it away, saying she would not have broken toys cluttering up the house. I retrieved it, though, because it pointed in whatever direction I tilted my hand. It pointed me the way I wanted to go.
This one—this tool of an outdoorsman who is probably even now wondering why six lawyers are harassing him for simple trespass—points toward a woman. Tall and ramrod straight with eyes the color of amber and honey.
I know it doesn’t really, not any more than the arrow points to her desk or to the window or to the mountains that August thought he could breech like Hannibal. Except standing in his way was this woman.
The door opens and a man sticks his head in. “Alpha?” he says and tells her about some meeting but as soon as werewolves see that the door is open, they flood in asking for her to decide, to tend to, to care about, to be responsible for.
She pulls a pencil from behind her ear. A spiral of black hair catches on the metal cuff holding the eraser, and when she yanks it loose, the hair bounces back, framing her eye and her cheekbone. She lifts her eyes to mine, and for one moment, I see the woman beneath and I wonder when was the last time someone tended to her.
“Alpha?”
The woman disappears and the Alpha is back. I return the compass to her desk because it is not going to tell me where I need to go.
Across the hall from the Alpha’s office is a wide doorway that opens onto a kitchen with slate floors, an enormous stone trench sink, an industrial stove, and a refrigerator. Three werewolves sit frozen at a big sanded table before mountains of chopped carrots and onions and celery. Another stops, a huge pot of water in midair.
As soon as I turn away, the cleavers thump against wood, the pot hits the stove with a clang and a splash.
The hall ends in a back door leading to a cleared area filled with vegetable gardens and cold frames and puppies playing with a dead squirrel. One tosses it into the air with a quick flick of his neck while another grabs it and springs away. Others wait, their little legs shaking and shivering for a chance to pounce and squeal and bite and tussle.
It’s like watching children at a game of keep-away, except in the end, someone eats the ball.
When I put my hand on the lever, an enormous wolf comes out of nowhere and leans heavily against the door, fur squashed against the metal mesh. He licks his paws, but the meaning is clear.
In the other direction, past the kitchen and the Alpha’s office, is a big room that I had noticed before. Lined with half-empty bookshelves, the room is occupied by a group of small children nestled together watching a man with colored and numbered tongue depressors as he tries to extract a blue stick from a boy’s teeth. “Soft mouth, Edmund,” he says. “Soft mouth.” Seeing me, he kicks the door closed with his foot.
The hall opens onto an enormous s
pace with raw beams above broad floorboards dappled by the jade light leaking in through the trees outside. A breeze blows through the open windows, bringing the whisper of rustling leaves and tussling birds. It’s huge but not in the way of August’s cavernous cathedral ceilings and double-height windows that had nothing to do with need and everything to do with signaling that he had the money to build and heat more space than he needed.
This is huge in the way of a place that is meant to accommodate very many very large people.
The far end of the room is occupied by long, heavy tables that smell of beeswax. When we first arrived, they had been surrounded by flimsy metal chairs, but now those are all folded against one wall.
At the near end, a huge fieldstone fireplace is surrounded by a mismatched trio of worn and clawed sofas and secondhand lamps. A well-chewed shoe drops to the floor, narrowly missing my head. Above me at the top of a set of stairs, a little furry head pops out from a birch-branch balustrade. The puppy looks at me and then at the shoe and barks. I pick up the shoe. The puppy barks again. I draw back my arm and throw. With a quick flick, the head disappears, followed by a thump and the scratching of claws on wood up above.
Then Magnus screams.
Doors that had been closed now open as werewolves turn alarmed toward the room with the closed door just past the Alpha’s office.
When I crash through the door, Tristan turns toward me, his latex gloves coated in blood. Magnus’s eyes are huge above his gore-smeared face. I hear his garbled voice behind me as the doctor’s body slams into the floor, his head between my hands, until someone enters the room and gathers me up in arms like iron.
What are they doing to Magnus?
“I am trying to help him,” the doctor says, feeling the back of his head.
