Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  I can't stand to see folks upset on any normal day...but, to reiterate: this is really not a normal day.

  This woman saved my life.

  She's beating herself up for...for what, exactly?

  It's instinctual. I reach toward her. Her right hand—having fallen from the wheel, into her lap where she spirals it into a tight fist—is suddenly cupped gently between my palms.

  “Hey,” I murmur, and she glances at me, surprised, eyes wide.

  Yeah, I'm surprised, too.

  But I try not to act it.

  Her pain called out to me. I wanted to soothe it. I needed to soothe it.

  I felt that pain welling up in my heart.

  And, my God.

  It hurt.

  “Please...it's okay. I'm alive.” I murmur to her.

  But she takes a deep breath, shakes her head. “No. You almost died because I made the wrong choice.”

  I shrug a little, chuckle—but it sounds pretty humorless. “I'm not your responsibility.”

  “You kind of are.”

  I flick my gaze to her, eyes narrowing. “Why...why should this matter so much to you?”

  Her jaw tightens. She doesn't say anything, but, by the flicker of light in her eyes, I feel, finally, like I'm getting somewhere.

  I don't want to upset her, so I do my best to tread carefully.

  “You're...” I clear my throat. “I guess...I mean, I don't know anything about werewolves, but you're part of the pack, yeah? So...like...my grandmother...what did you say her name was?”

  “Marie.”

  “Marie asked you to come here and watch out for me?”

  She nods, taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Her nostrils flare, just a little.

  She has a very lovely nose. Not a pretty one, necessarily...but it's really distinct. Memorable. It's got this straight almost statue-like proportion that makes you think of...well...

  A wolf.

  It's striking.

  “Well. Not...exactly,” she murmurs, voice quiet.

  I frown, blink.

  Wait.

  And then she says:

  “I volunteered.”

  Chapter 10: One Good Deed

  I volunteered.

  There's strength to those two simple words. Yes, the tears still stand in her eyes, but she blinks them away now, lifting her chin.

  There's strength here.

  In her.

  But I don't understand.

  “Just...wait. Wait a second.” I stare. “You volunteered to...come help me?”

  A nod.

  There's a lot of questions to follow that up with. But I stick to the simplest.

  “...Why?” I ask.

  Silver narrows her eyes, gazing very, very hard out the front windshield. The density of the snow falling hasn't changed, but the air between us...it becomes heavy with words unsaid. Unspoken.

  I'm still holding her hand, I realize.

  All of me concentrates, and suddenly, on those few small inches of skin where we connect.

  The back of her hand is soft, but where I curl my fingers into her palm, there's hardness here. My fingertips press against callouses at the base of her thumb, callouses on the heel of her hand. Her hands are worn in these places, like she lifts heavy, uneven objects, and often. Maybe for a living.

  My eyes flick to her shoulders. She's wearing a red plaid shirt, buttoned tightly up the front, and it's loose fitting, but the lay of it over her shoulders is obvious. There's smooth, sloped musculature along her upper arms, upper back. It's not pronounced—she's no body builder. But I'm pretty certain about the physical job now.

  The slope of her shoulders...

  My eyes follow it, mesmerized.

  I clear my throat, and I can feel a blush rising in my cheeks...which just means there's another flash of fever going through me, obviously.

  I concentrate on where we connect, our hands, clasped together.

  “Why did you volunteer, Silver?” I ask her quietly.

  “Because.” There's a long pause as she sorts out the words. She finally settles on: “it's because of your mother.”

  I stiffen, hesitate.

  And then I simply wait.

  Sometimes these things take a minute.

  A minute passes.

  Two.

  A handful more.

  And then she says:

  “I didn't always know. What I was. A wolf.” She murmurs the word softly, with reverence. “My mother abandoned me when I was a baby, so I grew up in the system, you know? But I managed to get out of it when I was thirteen. I just...left, and then I evaded their search. They didn't find me. I lived on the streets, but not for long.” Her jaw tightens. “It wasn't really safe there for a girl of thirteen, you know? I didn't like it much anyway. So I headed toward the outskirts of the city, and then past the towns...I tried to stick to the woods, or as close as we can get in these parts, you know? It wasn't easy.” She breathes out, shakes her head. “I never felt sorry for myself, but figuring out that I was a wolf...it. Um. Well, it sucked.”

  Silver laughs ruefully at this, a forced chuckle.

  There is pain in every line and inch of her.

  I feel it.

  The pain radiates out of her. Soft, nebulous...entering me.

  I press my fingers into her palm and she gazes sidelong at me in surprise, brows up.

  “I'm sorry,” I murmur to her.

  Those two words seem so inadequate.

  I breathe out, try again: “I...can't imagine. I'm so sorry. That must have been impossibly hard.”

  Her brows furrow now, and she shakes her head slowly. “I mean...it was. But. Not like you.”

  “Me?”

  “I could transform into myself. I could become the real me anytime I wanted to. And you...you never could.”

  I look down at our hands, clasped together.

  My jaw tightens.

  I think back on all the times in my life where I felt obtuse, just a step sideways of everything and everyone else. I was always a puzzle piece that had been jammed into an ill-fitting spot.

  I grind my teeth together. Yes, I never felt like I belonged much, but isn't that most everyone's experience, growing up?

  Especially a lesbian in a small town.

  It wasn't easy.

  I open my mouth, about to question her on this line, but Silver shakes her head again.

  “Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. I want your grandmother to explain that to you. Your sympathy...it was just...surprising.” Her eyes are soft as she gazes out at the road. “It was...nice.”

  We've known each other for such a short period of time, but as far as who Silver is as a person: it's written on her sleeve. There's something about her that's so...open. Vulnerable. She says what she's thinking, what's on her mind and heart, and she does it so...easily.

  It's not like I'm the most closed-off person in the world, but I've always been kind of private. I've never really had close friends, always been the quiet one in any group.

  My mom understood me, really understood me, and as for everyone else: well, it didn't make sense to open myself up.

  I didn't trust anyone enough to.

  I...realize that this makes it sound like I want sympathy, especially when I say that no one ever really cared about me enough to dig deeply...

  But I promise, I don't want that.

  No one's ever really cared that much about me, but that was fine, because I didn't care about them, either. The indifferent feelings were mutual.

  It was no real hardship to close myself off from the world when Ma passed.

  There wasn't that much of the world I'd let in anyway.

  But...Silver. I've never met anyone quite like her. I find it shockingly easy to talk to her.

  There's this sort of...kinship between us, if that makes sense.

  She feels...familiar.

  “Did I...did I ever meet you?” I ask her. It comes out quickly, before I can really consider the quest
ion, but now I've said it.

  She glances at me in surprise, then turns her gaze back to the road. She rolls a shrug through her shoulders.

  “No. But I've been...around.”

  “You said you wanted to watch over me because of my mother...why?”

  Silver shakes her head, even before I'm done asking the question. “It's...it's complicated. Which I realize you don't want to hear. I'll tell you someday. But there's not enough time right now.”

  “Not enough time?”

  “We're almost there.”

  The rural streets have seamlessly changed around us. I can't see much, through the snow, but I can make out streetlights and stop lights now.

  We're driving up a pretty steep hill, the car slanted against gravity.

  “Where are we?”

  “Polish Hill.”

  I blink.

  I'm familiar with most of the boroughs of Pittsburgh, but I've never had much cause to visit Polish Hill. I know there are some nice old buildings and churches around here. The place is mentioned a lot in the “history of Pittsburgh” pieces...but that's about it.

  “The Bridge Pack compound is right near the Immaculate Heart of Mary church...if you've ever been there,” Silver offers. An enormous ghost of a building passes by on our left, and she nods toward it. I assume the big shadow is the church, but the snow is coming down thick and fast: I can't quite make it out.

  Silver parks on the road, and while she shoulders the bags from the back seat, I'm left sitting in the dark, staring ahead at the swirl of white through the windshield.

  My heart is suddenly pounding very, very hard.

  This is all happening so fast. She said “the Bridge Pack compound.”

  The Bridge Pack.

  I guess...my pack.

  I don't know much about wolves, but any elementary school kid knows they run in packs. That packs are integral to the makeup of what a wolf is.

  My grandmother is the leader of the pack.

  My grandmother...who I've never met.

  It's so overwhelming that I feel unsteady, even sitting down. My head is still spinning from earlier, running in the woods, becoming the wolf...

  I'm not ready for any of this.

  But that's how life is...isn't it?

  Oftentimes, the moments that change your life...

  They just come up, out of the blue.

  They simply happen. And you've had no time to brace for them.

  Silver opens the passenger side door.

  The storm is loud and cold and sharp. All things that my mind and body are just not prepared for. I shrink from that sudden explosion of sound and chill, shrink away from the open door and what it represents.

  Massive change.

  Profound change.

  Change I'm just not ready for.

  But Silver's there, and she crouches down, using her shoulders, her torso, to block a lot of the storm from entering the car. She leans over me, one forearm pressed against the back of my seat as she gazes down at me. She gives me a little smile.

  “Are you ready?” she asks me.

  There's a small chuckle at the end of it. She knows that this is, all of it, too much. There's sympathy in her gaze as she glances at me, as she offers me that small, kind smile.

  Just as she offers me her hand now.

  “Not really,” I answer, but I find myself returning her smile with a wry one of my own. “But that never stopped progress, now did it?”

  “Not usually, no.”

  Her hand is held out to me, palm up and open.

  An offering.

  I take it. I slide my fingers over her palm and grasp her wrist gently, and then she pulls me up, slow and measured.

  And then I'm standing beside her, on the sidewalk, in the storm.

  We remain this way for a long moment. She stands close to me, shielding me from the fury of the wind and weather.

  Silver bends her head to me. She breathes out a long sigh, turning her gaze to my face. She studies it for a long moment, searching for something.

  “I wish I'd had more time with you. I wish...” She drifts off.

  But there's a lot left unspoken there.

  A lot.

  I gaze up at her face, trying to read the pain that settles in her expression. She searches my eyes, opens and shuts her mouth.

  She wants to tell me something.

  So, even though I'm weak, exhausted, standing here in the battering storm hurts...I still stand.

  I stand beside her.

  And I wait.

  “Your mother...” says Silver, voice low, urgent then, “she saved my life. A long time ago. And I promised her...I promised her I'd make it up to her someday.”

  This doesn't surprise me. My mother was the kind of person who, if she saw something, she wouldn't wait for someone else to fix it.

  She'd do it herself.

  There's a lot of hesitation in Silver's gaze. She wants to tell me the whole story, but she doesn't want to do it right now...

  “Well...you saved my life,” I tell her, giving her an out...and a watery smile. “So you're even.”

  Silver's brow is furrowed as she holds my gaze.

  There is pain evident in every line of her.

  “It doesn't work like that,” she murmurs.

  She opens her mouth, about to say something else.

  About to tell me something else.

  But, above the cacophony of the wind, above the roaring of the storm...

  I hear it.

  Thin.

  Eerie.

  Cold...

  But calling.

  The howl of a wolf.

  Silver straightens as if a bucket of ice water has been poured between her shoulder blades. She gazes down at me with regret now as she closes the car door behind us.

  “We've got to go,” she tells me softly, her head bent. “You have to meet your grandmother.”

  There's pain along the edges of her words.

  But she says nothing more.

  Mystified, I follow after Silver down the sidewalk.

  We make our way toward a massive shadow of a house, a hulking figure impossible to see in all this snow.

  Silver has not let go of my hand.

  It's the only part of me that's warm.

  Chapter 11: A Surprise

  I didn't expect it to be so dark.

  Silver closes the door behind us, as I stare ahead into the shadows. The yawning maw of a hallway opens up before us.

  It doesn't give me a very “home-y” feeling.

  The house is old, obviously so. The build of it reminds me of a Victorian movie, so it's probably from that era. Long tapestries of flowers and bored-looking people line the walls, with thick carpeting and a banister staircase at the end of it that wouldn't be out of place in Gone with the Wind. So maybe older than Victorian. Not sure.

  All I can say for certain is that the place is large. And empty.

  And cold.

  And dark.

  And that nothing about it is comforting.

  Not that I needed comfort, per se.

  I mean, I'm an adult, right?

  I can do adult things.

  I can meet the grandmother I didn't even know I had.

  Sure.

  I can do this.

  But there's something about all of this that's just...off-putting.

  Uncomfortable.

  Hell. Maybe even a little foreboding.

  Silver steps forward, and her hand falls to the small of my back. Her long fingers spread, and the warmth from her palm sinks into my body.

  I shiver a little. The touch is unaccustomed.

  But it's certainly not unwelcome.

  Her warmth floods into me, fingertips radiating heat through my sweater, into my skin. I can feel her against me, even though there's a few layers of clothes between our us.

  I feel her warmth, her touch.

  I feel them with my whole self.

  Silver is the first wolf I've ever known. And w
ith me being a wolf myself, it makes sense that I'd be drawn to her.

  But even with that logical explanation backing it up, the very idea that she pulls me to her, that I'm capable of being pulled...it unnerves me.

  I'm used to being alone, by myself, not needing anything or anyone to exist.

  Save for Ma.

  Well.

  I guess no one is an island.

  And, I'm going to be perfectly clear: it's sure as hell not a motherly feeling I'm getting from Silver.

  We step together down the hallway, our shoes sinking into the soft, plush depths of the carpeting.

  I am aware of every sound she makes, her skin sliding against the fabric of her jeans, her hair softly shushing against the shiny material of her jacket.

  The scent of her, too, in this space...it's something I'm aware of, wholly so.

  There's a wildness to it, a wildness that can't be confined by this old house, these old doors, the tapestries and carpeting and a hundred years of people within these walls.

  The heady scent of pine, of wind and water and the wild earth...

  I concentrate on her, but, as we approach a large, wooden door that stands, shut, in the wall before us, my heart starts to beat just a little faster.

  I'm glad Silver's here. More than just glad, I think.

  Grateful.

  I don't think I could do this alone.

  As I approach the door, Silver pauses, and I pause, too. I glance at her, but she's not looking at me. She's looking further down the hallway, her jaw tight, her nose raised like she smells something...unpleasant.

  “I've got to go,” she murmurs to me, then, and she takes a step back, removes her hand from me.

  The sudden disappearance of the warmth...

  It almost hurts.

  “Wait, what?” I ask her, and I take a step after her. She's starting to walk down the hallway, back the way we came.

  “Your grandmother probably has a lot to say to you,” she murmurs, voice low. “She won't want me there for this.”

  I blink, then shake my head. “No.”

  And then: “please.”

  I'm surprised by the word...and so is she. She gazes at me, eyes wide, and I take another step toward her, closing the gap between us. I lean forward, take up her hand in mine.

  I'm not the kind of person who would normally do this. I don't touch people, I don't reach for comfort. I don't need or want anything outside of myself.

  Not usually, anyway.