by Maria Vale
“It’s ‘crotch,’” corrects Gran Moira.
“Oh,” Rainy says, turning back to Ti. “I am sorry I smelled your crotch? I didn’t mean to be offensive. I am just in the Year of First Shoes?”
The Year of First Shoes is the first twelve moons in the juvenile wing, when you’re too old to scamper around and be fed tidbits from the table, and you’re too young to see even the remotest advantage to being human. It’s when we first wear shoes and clothes. It is a terrible, terrible time.
“Good girl, Rainy,” says Gran Moira, with a gentle pat on the girl’s cheek. “Now go get yourself something to eat.”
John carefully picks up a pup and uses his napkin to clean the little muzzle and its row of tiny needle-sharp teeth. He gives the pup’s ear a big, openmouthed kiss.
“Oh,” Ti says. “I see.”
“That’s right. ‘Oh.’”
Tristan appears at John’s shoulder, whispering something to him. Our Alpha’s hand slips to his chest, his forefinger rubbing the narrow leather braid around his neck. It is the only ornament we ever wear, the symbol of a mated wolf.
John’s mate, Evie, is not here. She hates Shifters and makes no secret of it. There is no doubt that her absence is a none-too-subtle slap at Ti.
John stands quickly, grabs an apple from the huge, old wooden bowl, and heads out, rubbing the apple’s skin against his shirt. He takes a big bite and another, and by the time he reaches the foyer, the apple is gone.
He slides one foot into his boot and then hesitates. He slides his foot out again and lifts the boot. Picking up the other, he opens the door.
“Adrian!” he barks out into the night. “What did I say about marking my boots? You know what that does to the leather.”
Chapter 12
We will be working with Sten, the monosyllabic wolf who oversees Carpentry. Few in the Pack like to work with him, because he has a reputation for being surly. I don’t mind him. He just really wants his wolves to pay attention the first time, so he doesn’t have to talk to them again and can listen to the things going on inside his head.
Getting to Carpentry involves picking our way through the little groupings of pups and juveniles and the adult wolves who teach them.
One group of juveniles squirms in a semicircle around the bench John uses. A chalkboard propped against it reads:
Thy body permanent,
The body lurking there within thy body,
The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
An image, an eidolón.
The quote is one of John’s favorites from Leaves of Grass, and he teaches it every year, so that even when we are wearing clothes and standing upright, we will always remember the importance of that other self inside us.
We are a well-read Pack. Of course, we pay attention to the other wolves who teach us history and math and politics and law and science. But we really have to know our Shakespeare, because John is our Alpha and he bites.
Right now, he is talking to Leonora, the wolf who teaches us why humans do the things they do and how to blend into this world they now own. Her wardrobe is one long, painful teaching opportunity. Today it consists of a pale-beige bouclé skirt that binds tightly around her thighs all the way to her knees. The matching jacket has black piping and large gold buttons and bunches uncomfortably over her broad shoulders. She’s constantly pulling at the hem. When she glances at Ti, I grab his sleeve, trying to drag him into the safety of the woods, but it’s too late.
“Silll-ver.” Leonora terrifies me, and my spine tightens at the drawn-out first syllable and the barked second. She starts toward us with an uncomfortable staccato stride in a pair of stiff brown brogues. Draped awkwardly over her wrist is a matching handbag with a gnawed corner.
“Shifter, I am Leonora Jeansdottir, and I am the Great North’s HumBe instructor.”
“Human behaviors. And his name,” I growl, “is Tiberius.”
She flicks her eyes to me. “There is no growling in skin, Quicksilver. You know better.” She turns back to Tiberius, shaking her head. “You see what I have to deal with? As I was saying, since you are for all intents and purposes human, I thought—and John agreed—that you might be able to help me with today’s lesson.”
“I’m not sure what I could—”
“My classes are generally held inside the Meeting House”—charging on as she always does—“but I’ve found that for the First Shoes, it’s best to stay outside until they have mastered certain basics.”
Like chair sitting. When we come to the spot Leonora has staked out for her class, we find eight chairs and eight children, studiously ignoring each other. These First Shoes are in clothes, but they are awkward and lumpy: bulky sweatshirts under backward T-shirts, pockets bulging with puzzling garments, mostly underpants.
“Perhaps we could start by having the class scent you.”
“Absolutely not!” I snap. “He’s Mala’s son, not one of those stupid poisonous bushes Gran Ferenc always made us scent and mark.”
“And thanks to Ferenc’s efforts, many hazardous plants have succumbed to nitrogen burn.”
Leonora looks through her handbag and pulls out a stick of fake blood. She pats her lips with it, then sucks on them before loosening them with a pop. It smells like wax and makes her mouth look like she ate weasel. She told me once why humans do this, but I forgot.
“Good morning, children.”
“Good morning, Mr. Jeansdottir.”
“Ms. Jeansdottir. Remember, females are Ms.” She pulls again at her jacket. “We have a special guest today. I’m hoping most of you have scented him already?”
I cough loudly.
“In any case. This is a Shifter. Can anyone tell me what a Shifter is?”
“Someone who can phase, but doesn’t has to?”
“Have to, but yes, Toby. And this means that they are almost exactly like humans except they know what you are, whether you are wild or in skin, so”—Leonora suddenly starts talking very fast—“if you scent one Offland, you must lead them as far from the Pack as—”
I start coughing again, hacking and hacking until Toby looks at me in alarm and asks, “What’s wrong with her?”
“Turkey feather.” Pounding at my chest, I look meaningfully at Leonora.
“So, if you have any questions about life Offland that you’d like to ask the Shifter—”
“And his name is Tiberius,” I say again.
The class goes quiet. Catha has dug a hole, and several of the children gather around with their noses tight to the ground.
“Children?”
“There’s a mole,” Catha explains.
“You can get the mole later. Now is the time to ask questions of our guest. You could ask him about games he plays, school, jobs, food, anything. Just phrase it as a proper question.”
“What jobs do you have, Mr. Shif—”
A quick glower, and Harald corrects himself.
“What jobs do you have, Mr. Tiberius?”
“Before coming here, my job—it’s generally singular, by the way—was in human resources management,” Ti says.
Catha looks up from digging for moles, her nose and right cheek covered with dirt. “What’s that?”
Ti hesitates a moment, then says, “It’s basically figuring out how to get people to do what you want them to.”
There’s a long silence. Jillian scratches her ear. “Why don’t you just bite them?”
“Jillian has brought up an important point. Remember, even small humans are punished for biting without appropriate cause.” I remember Leonora drilling this into our heads every time I took Basics of Human Behavior, but I don’t think she ever clarified what “appropriate cause” was. Maybe that was covered in Intermediate Human Behaviors.
“It just occurs to me… Tiberius, perhaps you could help u
s review this week’s dialogue?”
He shrugs. “I’ll do my best.”
“Aaand…Xander. Xander, you will initiate communication with our guest, and he will respond. Xander?”
Xander scrabbles forward.
“What happened to your shoe?”
He lifts a shod foot up high for her to see.
“The other one?” she asks.
Xander looks shocked at the single filthy bare foot and shakes his head sadly. If the missing shoe hasn’t been chewed beyond recognition, someone will put it in the box on the stairs leading up to the juvenile wing. We go through a lot of footwear.
“Good morning, Mr. Tiberius,” pipes Xander’s childish voice. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Xander. And you?” Tiberius replies with exaggerated courtesy.
“Better, because I had a tick right here?” He lifts his leg and points to a spot between his legs. “Next to my left ball? But when I turned yesterday? It fell off. It was like this big.” He holds his hands to indicate a monster tick the size of a hockey puck. “I pinned it on the wall next to my desk.” He hesitates, looking at Leonora, and adds a quick “Thank you for asking” before sitting back on the ground.
Leonora turns to the rest of the juveniles. “That was a good first try, but what would have made it better?”
Long silence.
“Anyone?”
Toby ventures a guess. “Xander said he turned, and we must never mention turning?”
“Yes, absolutely. We never mention turning or fur or muzzles or claws or hunting. The wild must always be protected. But there was something even bigger than that.”
“He talked about his balls? Humans don’t like genitals?”
“I wouldn’t say they don’t like genitals; they are just very squeamish. Fair point, but I’m looking for something else.”
“Parasites? They don’t like talking about parasites?”
“These are all good suggestions, but there is one critical point missing. Anyone?”
No one says anything. There’s a lot of scratching and broad jaw-popping yawns, and Catha lies flat, her nose to the ground, scenting for moles. Leonora gently reminds Harald that there is no changing until after lunch.
“Tiberius? Can you tell us what Xander did wrong?”
“He made the mistake of assuming that I actually wanted to know how he was.”
“Exactly! When humans ask how you are doing, it is meaningless. Tiberius, would you care to help me show the class how it’s done?”
“My pleasure,” he says and stands facing Leonora in front of the class. Leonora clears her throat.
“Good morning, Tiberius. How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. And you?”
“Just fine.”
“Now,” says Leonora, looking over her class. “See how simple it is?”
And Jillian bites Harald.
Chapter 13
The day of the first waxing crescent of fall is when all of the wolves who live on the Homelands traditionally run the perimeter and make sure that our land is properly marked before the ground freezes and damaged posts become hard to replace.
The entire Pack is wild. Barking and wagging tails, they lick each other and jump around each other, their ferocious jaws open and gentle. They chase mice through windrows, their hind legs scratching leaves into a brightly colored explosion high in the air, so that the pups can twist and turn and catch them in snapping teeth as they spiral down.
Not me. I have to pull on heavy muck boots over thick socks with jeans shoved inside. And I won’t mark our territory the way wolves are supposed to. I will mark it on an iPhone 6 Plus, crammed into the big pocket of a thick orange vest. All because Ti refuses to phase and John doesn’t like it.
“He tells himself he’s human,” John says. “But if he lies to himself, what makes you think he’s not going to lie to us?”
So because I am Ti’s schildere, I have to stay in skin too. Keep an eye on him.
“I mean, what were you thinking?” I ask as Ti fits the Outlast cap over his clipped skull. “When you came to a bunch of wolves asking for protection. That you’d just keep on being a human? Was that your grand plan?”
“I didn’t have a grand plan. What I had was a hole in my stomach, a vague set of directions to my mother’s pack, and a need to survive. I changed long enough to fight; I never thought you’d be asking me to give up my humanity.”
“No one’s asking you to give up your humanity, but if you refuse to admit what you are, it is going to rise up and bite you in the ass.”
“Well, how about you?”
“Me? I love changing. I—”
“I know you love changing. You do it all the time. The second Sten doesn’t need your thumbs, you evaporate, and there’s nothing left but clothes hanging from a branch. I may be a crappy wolf. But you… You’re a crappy human.”
I cringe, because he’s right. I’ve never been happy in skin, but then those stupid fire fairies burrowed into my body all those days ago, and that spark has caught fire and burns so fierce that now when I walk beside him and hear his quiet, low voice or look into those gold-flecked black eyes, my tendons strain and my muscles coil and my lungs open up and my blood beats hot and fast. The only way I know how to deal with need is to run hard and far until I collapse, unable to feel anything at all.
A brindle pup barks worriedly at my feet. All of the other wolves have disappeared, fading like a whisper in the woods.
“I know, Leelee. We’re coming.”
“She’s going with us?” Ti asks.
“We’re supposed to take her along. Help her learn the farther reaches of the Homelands.” Leelee scampers on ahead, leaping awkwardly over a huge downed log and sliding down the other side, her fur covered in the sooty brown decay.
Ti clears it in one stride and stands close, not helping me exactly, but I know if I falter, his big shoulder is there for me to grab on to. I make it by myself, but I appreciate his silent gesture.
Leelee watches, her head cocked to the side, as I take a running jump over one of the numerous small, mucky streams that crisscross our land. I slip down the other side, my foot sinking into a soft bruise in the moss. She yips and worries, waiting for me to pull my boot out with a dull sucking sound.
I lift her up and give her an open-jawed kiss on her ear, but she sees a squirrel and won’t stop squirming until I set her down.
“No farther than the Stones, Leelee.”
When we finally catch up, she’s clambering over the variously sized rocks that form rough circles around the ancient central stones. Over the years, the circle has encroached farther and farther into the forest, surrounding the trees.
Leelee marks one of the stones.
“What is this?” Ti asks.
“It’s, um…the Gemyndstow? The memory place? But we just call it the Stones.”
“Like a graveyard?”
“Graveyards are for bodies, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“So, no. Coyotes eat our dead. That’s why we call them wulfbyrgenna. Wolf tombs. The stones are only for wolf names and the date of their last hunt so that we can remember.”
When Ti crouches down and looks at one near the front, Leelee runs up to him and looks too, trying to figure out why it is so interesting.
As soon as he stands, she marks that one too.
An ill-advised squirrel runs across the outer rim of the Stones, and Leelee turns quickly to run after it, the wind tickling her fur and the scent in her nose. I know that feeling of taking it all in—moldering pine needles, owl pellets, borer beetle, tree sap, two-year-old porcupine den, sassafras bush—until the scent of prey hits you right in the back of the throat and everything tenses and you chase, even if your tummy’s little and full and all you really want is for the thing, whatever it is, to e
scape so you don’t have to eat it, but still you can’t help but hunt.
She peels off after her squirrel, looking behind to make sure we’re watching.
The squirrel chitters at her from the safety of a maple. Ti stares, his hands fisted by his sides, as Leelee scampers and bounds and falls on her back and twists her little legs in the air, her belly dotted with leaf litter. A tiny furrow cuts through his usually impassive brow, and his mouth, while still tightly closed, turns down a little at the corners. His wild—that seductive scent of crushed bone and evergreen—radiates thicker now, and when I touch his arm, he jolts as if from a waking dream and blinks down at me, looking in this moment like a lost boy.
But then he turns and walks on.
At the perimeter, we check the barbed wire that serves as our boundary fence, making sure that it’s secure and continuous. We check that the posts are firm in their foundations and don’t smell of termites or dry rot. Leelee races around, chasing another fat autumn squirrel.
We check that the signs are 660 feet apart, that we mark those that have been defaced by shot or spray paint. In short, we do all the things our lawyers say that we need to do to protect what the law calls “unimproved” land.
“Leelee?” I realize that I can no longer hear her claws skittering across the forest floor. “Leelee?” There is no response.
“Leelee!”
I veer off the path, racing to where I saw her last, but Ti signals for me to stop. “Call her again,” he whispers.
As soon as I do, he turns abruptly, back the way we came. My hearing as a human is not what it is as a wolf, but I hear migrating geese passing over the high pines. I hear a mouse shuffling through the matted leaves. I hear the water tumble in the stream a hundred yards away, I hear a hickory nut drop to the ground, I hear a bird searching for a worm in the bark. I do not hear a pup.
I follow Ti’s silent tread, keeping as quiet as I can. We’ve gone nearly fifty yards when I finally hear scrabbling and whimpering, and I run toward the sound, shouting to Leelee that we’re coming.
