Skin of the Wolf

by Sam Cabot

  In classes, he learned that the conquerors write history, though that wasn’t the intended lesson. And then on the day he turned sixteen, as he sat in a course labeled “Diversity”—an earnest, condescending survey of ethnic traditions around the world, “ethnic” meaning any civilization not their own—he was hit by a figurative bolt of lightning. He understood he had been shown his meaning and his purpose. He understood who he was.

  He’d been born among the colonizers, yes, but he wasn’t of them. He was of the people. The Native people, who had lived on these hills and by these rivers for millennia in ways so inextricably woven into the life of the earth that their souls and the souls of the other living creatures were able to touch. The Native people, who had been so downtrodden, so dominated, exploited, and abused, that it was only right that one such as he should devote his life—and his power, and his wealth—to raising them up again. The Creator had sent him, born Peter van Vliet, to learn and to serve.

  To become Abornazine. Keeper of the Flame.

  40

  As Livia steered the car around a wide curve Michael watched the great house rise into view in the distance. He’d fought the idea that he couldn’t drive up here alone, objecting to both the company and the helplessness. But the three of them—Spencer, Thomas, and Livia—had ganged up on him and they’d been right. He couldn’t have managed the car. Even now, just sitting for an hour as they rode beside the ice-pocked river, his shoulder was stiffening, pain stabbing down to his fingers and up his neck with every jolt in the road.

  Livia Pietro had been appointed chauffeur. She’d rented a car and she’d been good company on the drive up. By which Michael meant, good Indian company: she hardly spoke. She left him to his own thoughts, which were few. He cleared his mind and concentrated on seeing. The silver river, the changing grays of the sky, the black lace branches on bare trees.

  Livia had been chosen because Spencer, as it turned out, didn’t drive. Michael had been both amused and relieved by that. He wouldn’t have let Spencer come; this way there was no anger and no arguing. Well, little arguing. Spencer had protested, but turnabout is fair play and a gang-up can work in more than one direction. Grudgingly, Spencer had accepted the plan, especially once Thomas suggested a useful line of research that he and Spencer, as historians, could follow.

  Michael’s argument, that his first choice would’ve been to go alone, and since that wasn’t possible he’d accept a driver but not an entourage, was true but incomplete. It angered Michael when Spencer asked if Edward had ever killed anyone besides Brittany Williams but the truth was, he didn’t know. He did know this: in his own Shifted state he’d hunted, many times. The compulsion to finish a kill, to chase down and devour escaped quarry whose blood he’d already tasted, was formidable. In this, his needs and Edward’s were the same. While he understood that there was no harm Edward could do to Spencer that couldn’t eventually be undone, “eventually,” from what he’d learned over the past twelve hours, could be a long, long time.

  They’d only been together a few months, he and Spencer. If each had been a normal man, their differences of background, of age, of culture, might have doomed the relationship in any case. Under the circumstances, that they’d found each other was almost laughable; but then, that either of them existed at all was beyond most people’s ability to take seriously. Whether they had a future together, especially since their definitions of “future” were so different, was unknowable. If they did, though, Michael—the one of them whose time was limited—would rather not spend years of it waiting for Spencer to regenerate himself. Or whatever the process was called.

  Watching the sliding clouds, he wondered what the process was called. The Noantri had their own vocabulary. Their Community had organization, it had laws and traditions. Had Shifters once been the same? Had they been a separate, hidden band within the tribe and clan structures of the continent’s First Peoples, known only to one another, recognizing and welcoming each other when they met?

  He wanted to know. He wanted, badly, had always wanted, not to be alone. To know there were others like him beyond his twin, people who understood and shared his singular way of being in the world. That was where his work was; that was what his research had always been about. Though even if he succeeded, his achievement would be now and its outcome would stretch forward from the present. He’d never understand what it had been like before. But knowing that the future would be different—maybe that would be enough.

  Michael roused himself, sharpening his focus as something moved through the woods beside the road. Something pale and quick, running toward them. It broke from the trees and onto the roadway. Livia slammed on the brakes and pain shot through Michael’s shoulder as the car jolted, fishtailed, and stopped. The figure froze, then turned and sped away back into the woods.

  “I’m sorry,” said Livia. “I didn’t see it in time. But . . . What was that?”

  “It must have been a deer.”

  “It looked . . . upright. And pale.”

  Livia eased the car forward again, driving slowly until they emerged from the canopy of trees. Before them, winter-frosted grass sloped up to a tall portico. White columns fronted a lodge whose roof levels kept changing. The house looked accrued, amassed, the way wealth would be. Piled up, collected because it was possible, not because it was needed.

  The lawn, that broad sweep, though, was surprising. Even now, in winter, sheep dotted it, foraging for what they could find. In spring their dung no doubt would turn this slope into a glorious expanse of green; but as Michael took in the sheep pen, the rail fence surrounding stubbled corn rows and tripod beanpoles waving last year’s leaves, as he heard a cock crowing from inside what had clearly been built as a three-car garage, he wondered if the van Vliet ancestors were happy with the rustic turn their stately home had taken.

  It hadn’t been hard to locate Abornazine. Donna had been right: even in this enclave of Gilded Age mansions—most in new-money hands now, though a few original families still clung to moldering brick and flaking plaster—all he’d had to say was “long hair” and “turquoise” and the affable kid behind the butcher shop counter was pointing to a road leading east off the town’s main street.

  “You mean Mr. van Vliet. His place is up that way. It’s called, I don’t know, Air House or something. What’s going on up there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—” He flushed, as though he suddenly realized he might have gotten it wrong. “You’re an Indian, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s what I thought.” The kid grinned again. “Lots of Indians up there. Maybe a hundred since fall, living in tents and stuff, and now a bunch more in the last couple of weeks. It’s like a powwow or something?”

  Michael wanted to say, In winter? but the kid’s ignorance wasn’t his fault. “When I find out, I’ll let you know. Thanks for the help.”

  Now, at the wrought iron gate that stood just beyond a bend in the drive, they stopped and Michael spoke to a short, round man who came out of a stone booth.

  “Michael Bonnard. Abenaki.”

  “Lee Stearns. Choctaw.” Stearns glanced briefly into the car. Michael made no move to introduce Livia, but said, “I want to speak to Abornazine.”

  “He’s expecting you?”

  “No.”

  Stearns went back inside the booth and made a call. Through the window, he waved them in. The gate slid open.

  “What would we have done if that hadn’t worked?” Livia asked, driving on.

  “It was bound to work. The butcher’s kid said Indians are still arriving.”

  “Those might be people van Vliet’s invited. People he knows.”

  “Then his curiosity would be killing him. You haven’t met these wannabes. Any Indian who shows interest in them, they’ll follow him like a baby duck.”

  Livia pulled up to the porti
co and stopped the car. Michael got out and leaned in the window. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Are you sure—”

  “Yes. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  “You really think you can just walk in and out? He tried to kill you.”

  “He’d Shifted.”

  “How do you know he hasn’t Shifted now?”

  Michael didn’t answer her. He straightened, turned, and headed for the wide green door.

  41

  Beyond the house the long drive curved to head back to the road. Three pickup trucks and a half dozen cars, none of them new, stood in a frozen field down the slope. Livia pulled the rented Malibu in beside them and left it, stretching her legs in strides through the bracing air. She took out her cell phone and called Spencer.

  “Livia. I trust you arrived safely?”

  “No problem. This man Abornazine, he’s Peter van Vliet and he’s from one of the old families up here. In fact I’ve heard his name before. Katherine’s mentioned him to me. A big collector. He comes down to see her at the Met sometimes. She says he’s full of good stories.”

  “And have you talked with him? Is Michael’s brother there?”

  “Michael just went into the house but he asked me not to come. If his brother’s here he wants to see him alone.”

  “But you haven’t wandered afield?”

  Livia smiled at Spencer’s tone. “I’m nearby, Spencer, don’t worry. If he needs help, I’ll be there. How are you and Thomas doing?”

  “Thank you for your reassurance. As for myself and Father Kelly, our research has just begun but I’m afraid neither of us is upbeat.”

  “The material’s not there? Father Maxwell was right?”

  “On the contrary. I fear the good Father was less than forthcoming. Just when I had begun to re-examine my long-standing position on the untrustworthiness of the clergy, too.”

  “A re-examination based entirely on knowing Thomas, I’m sure.”

  “Indeed. Which proves the absurdity of using a sample of one.”

  “What do you mean, though? About Maxwell not being forthcoming?”

  “Despite his claim that he’d been able to discover only very little by, or about, Père Ravenelle, it’s become clear that rather more documentary evidence exists than he acknowledged—and that he’s seen it. Father Kelly, I must say, appears to have a gift for research, and I, of course, have many years’ experience of filling in gaps. Ravenelle might, or might not, be relevant to the story of this Ohtahyohnee mask in the present day. But the fact that Father Maxwell, the most recent researcher to investigate Ravenelle, won’t admit to his findings, gives one pause.”

  “It certainly does. What is it that you’ve found, that he denies?”

  “Ah. There’s the rub. Though we can see there is more to be had, it seems to be under lock and key at the Jesuit mother church.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “La Chiesa del Gesù. Back home in Rome.”

  “Oh.” Livia stopped at a rail fence and looked out over the frost-rimed garden rows at rest for the winter. “Can you tell anything about it?”

  “No. Father Kelly, as one of his order’s bright lights, is allowed access at a fairly high level to the Jesuits’ private archives. Still, no matter the angle from which we approach, we are able to discover no more than that contemporaneous documentation both by and about Ravenelle does exist, and that the last researcher to access it was Father Gerald Maxwell. Father Kelly informs me that the abstruse abbreviations in the various online catalogs are indications that such a one as he, were he at Il Gesù itself, would be permitted at least to review the description of the material, and possibly the material itself, though he can’t be certain of that from here.”

  “Spencer, that sounds beyond ‘private.’”

  “I agree, and the question that brings up is, what are they hiding? It seems the only way to find out, however, would be to dispatch Father Kelly to Rome.”

  A breeze rattled the dry husks of cornstalks. “That might be a fool’s errand, though,” Livia said. “He might not get access even there. And if he does, we still don’t know that what’s there will matter to what we’re doing.”

  “Now you mention it, I hate to say this, but I, for one, don’t actually have a firm grasp on what it is we are doing. If Michael’s found his brother, or at least has learned how to accomplish that task, perhaps our continued search for the mask—or indeed, our continued involvement in the situation at all—is no longer helpful.”

  “I don’t know, Spencer. There’s something odd going on up here.” Livia described the scene to Spencer: the gardens and barns, the livestock. “We’ve been told there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of Indians here, living in tents, in RVs, in tipis. And more still coming. It’s as if they’re getting ready for something.”

  “Have you any idea what?”

  “No. I’m hoping Michael will be able to shed light on it after he talks to his brother. Though what happens then . . . Do you have any idea what he’s planning to do?”

  “None. If indeed his brother is responsible for the death of this young woman, Michael is in a difficult position. I suggest we take our lead from him.”

  Slipping the phone into her bag, Livia headed back toward the house. She wanted to stay close to Michael, in case she was needed, though since he’d gone inside she hadn’t sensed any disturbances. No voices raised in anger, not the sudden smell of fear or the heat of fury. All these were physical responses to emotion. They were detectable by the Unchanged at various levels depending upon an individual’s sensitivity to others, an attribute that, when brought to the fore, was referred to as empathy. One of the alterations in Noantri bodies produced by the microbe was an amplification of the senses, no different in kind from the enhancement of Noantri muscles, the strengthening of Noantri bone. A body with no need to shore itself up, to compensate for deterioration, or to spend effort counteracting natural decline, could focus on optimizing the potential of each cell. That, at least, was the current thinking among Noantri scientists studying the microbe itself. Add to that the years, the decades and centuries of learning from experience of the world, and the Noantri ability to read people’s emotional states lost all its mystery.

  It was this ability that made Livia pause on her way up the slope. She was passing a field where horses stood, grazing as they could on the frozen grass, though from their glistening coats and solid flanks she could see that they had the benefit of a plentiful winter diet. Livia had grown up with horses, still rode at a friend’s farm outside Rome as often as she could arrange it, and the sight of them always both calmed and charmed her. As she stopped to watch these, though, she became aware that something was not right. Not here, among the horses, but in an outbuilding beyond the horses’ enclosure. Animals had no structure of rational thinking as a barrier between the world and their senses. They were therefore more responsive to the emotions of others than most Unchanged, more than some Noantri. The rapid heartbeat of anger, fear’s acrid smell, and the bone-shaking tension of frustration radiated palpably from the outbuilding and accounted, she was sure, for the way the horses avoided that end of the field, leaving a semicircle of unmunched grass as though a line had been drawn.

  Livia followed the fence around the field. It was probable that this was nothing important, and certainly it was none of her business. A sick animal, most likely, one needing to be isolated for its own sake or that of the others. Though she was unsure—an animal? If so, what kind? The sweat in the air smelled like a man’s, but the heartbeat was so rapid that a man surely couldn’t sustain it for long. Yet it didn’t slow.

  No one was near when she approached the building, a new-looking metal shed. A heavy lock secured the door and the windows had been soaped up inside. Through the film Livia could see thick black bars. One whole side of the sloping roof consisted of a large skylight in a metal frame.
Livia studied the steel sheets of the roof’s other slope. They looked capable of bearing her weight.

  The agitation of whatever was inside the shed increased as Livia drew near. It heard her coming, maybe smelled her as she smelled it. From close up she re-examined the roof, but it offered no surprises, as the ground around it offered no stepping-stones or springboards. If she wanted to be up there she’d have to jump.

  So she jumped. Even her Noantri strength couldn’t get her up onto the slope from a standing start but it got her to where she could clutch two of those raised square seams in her leather-gloved hands. Some contracting of the biceps and triceps, a swing of a leg and the thump of a boot, and Livia was on the roof.

  Whatever was inside the building went completely silent when she landed. She could still sense the quick breathing and the heartbeat, but it stopped all movement and sound.

  Staying low to keep her balance in the wind, Livia crab-walked to the roof ridge and lay flat. She pulled herself up until she could peer over the ridge and down through the skylight.

  Looking back up at her, unblinking, was a man.

  He was naked. His upturned face was not far from hers because he sat, not on the floor of the shed but on a beam six feet above it. Not sat; he perched. Feet and butt on the beam, knees up, arms at his sides balancing lightly.

  For a moment their eyes locked, he and she both frozen. There was a strangeness to his eyes: rounder than most, irises yellow and completely surrounded with white. His hair was white, also, and appeared both shaggy and fine. His scent, now that she was closer, was peculiarly layered, something in it she couldn’t define. Livia stared, fascinated.

  Then he opened his mouth and screeched. He lifted his arms and, still balancing on the beam, raised and lowered them. As if he were flapping wings. As if he were trying to fly.