by Maria Vale
Unzipping my jeans, I wriggle my hips until my bottom half is bare.
“Not now. Just try to hold on for me.”
But it’s too late. My face starts to push forward before I’ve even stripped off my shirt. Ti floors it, taking the curves at a squeal. At a dirt road, he peels off down what will probably be a snowmobile track soon.
He hits the brakes and then comes around to my side and opens the door. He lifts my grotesque half-changed body from the seat. My eyes can’t focus and my ears can’t distinguish, but as I lean against his chest, I feel the rumble of his voice.
As soon as he lays me on the moldering pine needles beside the path, I start to stumble off, ricocheting against a willow.
I’m already far away when I can finally hear him, his usually soft voice raised in a yell.
“Run, Wildfire. Don’t let anyone see you.”
* * *
I’m careful to keep low and to the trees as I race for our territory. Once I cross the marked and posted boundary, though, I don’t head straight back to the Home Pond. Instead, I run wild, reveling in the crunch of frost-covered leaves under my paws. At the peaks, I breathe deeply the ice-cold air and watch the subtle shifts of soft gray over the lower peaks and valleys all around me, each damp caress washing away the heat and death.
John howls, telling me that’s enough already and it’s time to come home.
The sun is almost gone by the time I stumble awkwardly up to the Boathouse dock. Both big wooden chairs are occupied. John nods to Ti and puts his hand in my ruff.
“Tomorrow,” John says. “Early,” he says. He doesn’t say that I’m in deep trouble, that there will be hell to pay, but as I lay myself down and roll my shoulders back, starting the change, I know there will be.
No law is more strictly enforced than the law against changing Offland. It is the only way to protect our sacred wild. The humans already slaughter the æcewulfs. Hunt them with rifles and bolts from the ground and from the air. If they found out about us…
Shit.
As soon as I’m in skin, Ti opens the big red-and-gray-striped blanket wide. I curl naked into his lap, and he props his head on mine.
I lay my hand on his chest. “Why were you so angry about that man in the gas station? Not the man with the gun. The other one. The man with the dying lungs?”
“I wasn’t. You were getting upset. I was worried about you.”
I frown, my finger beating with the speeding rhythm of his heart. I know there’s something going on inside here. A man as much as threatened him with a gun. But Ti stayed stone-faced and quiet voiced. That changed, though—I know it, I smelled it—when he saw the man with the yellow-stained fingers and breath like coal and rot.
“Ti?” I shift up so I can whisper in his ear. “You know we’re not allowed to kill without eating. But if you need me to, I will eat him for you.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his thick arms pull tight around me. We listen for a while to the coyote shrieks in the distance.
“You know,” he finally says, “you’re the only person who has ever wanted to protect me.”
When the sun is gone and the clouds cover the waxing gibbous moon, he says, “I don’t think he would taste very good.”
“No. I didn’t think he would.”
* * *
“Kyle,” I call softly to the young man coming from the kitchen with an enormous hunk of corn bread. “Kyle!”
Kyle is the 12th’s very sweet, slightly anxious Theta. We didn’t know each other well, what with him being in the 12th, but then his bedfellow left for an internship at some office in Albany last year, and we started running together from time to time.
“Do me a favor, please?” I look back into the office where John and Victor are still hunched in conversation. “If you see Ti coming this way, can you stop him?”
Kyle stoops suddenly and loses several inches.
“M’ou wan me to thtop Tibewius?” he asks, crumbs spewing.
“Just stall him. You know, talk to him. Engage him in conversation? Pleeease.”
“Silver?” John calls out. “A decision has been made.”
At the sound of John’s voice, Kyle disappears.
“Kyle!” I hiss into the hall. “Pleeease.”
I duck quickly back into John’s office. I knew there would be a punishment, and I was pretty certain I knew what it would be. John and Victor have offered me a choice that is no kind of choice at all.
“Right,” I say. “So let’s get this over with.”
“There have to be witnesses,” Victor says. “And you are not wearing that”—he points to my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt (Geek Mountain State: Geeking Out in the Green Mountains)—“are you?”
“John? Tiberius wasn’t raised Pack, and I’m not sure he’s going to understand—”
“I agree. Get Tristan and gather your witnesses, Deemer. We will not be standing on ceremony.” Victor starts to object, but before he can get a word out, John says that his Alpha wants him to make it snappy. Victor slinks out, huffing and chuffing about respect for the Old Ways. I know that Taking the Stone like this is not in keeping with the dignity of the Old Ways, but if Ti tracks me down, I think we will discover that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Old Ways.
Luckily, the fire is already going in the Great Hall. Victor starts to object to the ritual being performed inside, away from the view of the moon, in front of an unhappy batch of witnesses who keep looking at their watches, but drops it as soon as John catches his eye.
“Is it ready yet?” I ask.
“No, it’s not ready yet,” Victor snaps. “Right hand or left?”
“Right,” I say immediately, and Victor nods. That, at least, is as it should be.
Kyle’s screeching yelp in the distance makes us all turn.
“Shit,” I observe.
“Quite,” John agrees and signals for Tara to lock the door.
Something breaks through the undergrowth. “Silver!”
“Deemer?” says John, as the sound gets closer. “Any time now.”
“We need to bind her hand to keep it open,” Victor says.
“No time,” I say. “Just do it. I’ll manage.”
When the searing-hot stone settles onto my hand, every breath I have ever taken explodes from my lungs. My hand stays open, though.
Ti crashes through the storm doors into the foyer and starts throwing himself at the main doors of the Great Hall, screaming my name. Built to withstand the carelessness of the Pack and the aggression of the Adirondack winter, the doors are solid oak, but even they start to groan.
“Ach,” says Sten disgustedly. In that one sound, he compacts a world of complaint about replacing the storm doors and possibly the frames and even the main doors and how no wolf who values his pelt had better grouse about their dinner getting cold. Ach.
“Are we almost done, Deemer?” John asks. “I’d like to open the door before the hinges give.”
Victor nods. I hiss a little as he pulls the branding stone off my hand with a pair of fireplace tongs, then skitters away, leaving Tristan to treat my hand with cool water and bear grease.
On John’s signal, Tara turns the lock and steps back.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ti looks around at John and the witnesses, his eyes unflinching and his nose flared. “And why does it smell like barbecue?”
“Hey, Ti. I think there’s some corn bread in the kitchen, if you’re hungry.”
“Do not change the subject.”
“I think perhaps we should leave Silver to explain,” says John, and with a nod, Victor, Tristan, Tara, and all of the other witnesses stream out after him.
Ti bends over me, honing in immediately on my throbbing hand, slathered in bear grease. His jaw twitches as he looks at the swollen, red skin of my palm and the cle
ar arrow there.
“Just what the hell is that?” he asks furiously.
“Ti, please, you’ve got to stop fracking out.”
“It’s freaking out. I’m freaking out!”
“Listen to me. The most sacred thing we have is our wild. By changing Offland, I endangered that. It is felasynnig, most wicked. I had to be punished.”
“So they branded you?” He jumps up and turns quickly toward the back. Victor’s head pops back into the safety of John’s office, and the door locks.
“This was my decision,” I snap. “It’s just a flesh wound. Besides, I am proud to wear Tiw’s mark.”
“Do not say that’s my mark,” he says. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Not Ti’s mark, Tiw’s mark.” He looks bewildered. “Tell me you don’t know the story of Fenrir and Tiw?” But of course, he doesn’t. How could he? His mother dead, his father hostile to his wild, it’s up to me to make sure he knows our stories. Not the version humans tell themselves, but the one that wolves tell. The real one.
“So.” And I start to tell him about Loki’s son, the huge and terrifying wolf, Fenrir. I tell him how even the gods were afraid of his ferocious wildness and wanted him bound.
“The humans say Tiw volunteered to put his right hand in Fenrir’s mouth as surety that the fine ribbon the gods meant to wrap around him would do Fenrir no harm, but as usual, the gods could not be trusted. The ribbon being made of bird spit or something was actually magic so powerful that it was able to chain Fenrir. Furious at this betrayal, Fenrir bit off Tiw’s hand.
“We wolves have a different story. We say that Tiw did bind Fenrir, but he bound the wolf inside himself, having fed Fenrir his right hand, the hand that gods and humans use as warranty for their lies, so he would never make a false promise again. We say that once the wolf was bound within him, Tiw stopped being the god of war, as he had been, and instead became the god of law, because he understood in a way no one else could that law is the balance of freedom and restraint.
“It’s the mark of a real wolf,” I say urgently, my good hand against his cheek. “Someone who was more human would have taken the other option and stayed in skin for two moons.”
He cradles my swollen, greased palm.
“And you, of course, couldn’t do that, could you, Wildfire?”
“Never.”
Later in the medic station, while waiting for Tristan to bandage my hand, I ask Ti what happened with Kyle.
“Mmmph,” he says, taking a bite of apple. “When a Yankee says, ‘Wow, so you’re from Canada. How interesting,’ you know you’re being swindled.”
Chapter 19
The first sunny day after two weeks of unrelenting gray, and Sten rushes us to put in the last storm windows and doors for the tempest just around the corner. I look at trees that are almost neon yellow and orange and red under the searingly blue sky, I sniff the air, listen to the unperturbed sounds of the animals, and ask him what makes him think it’s going to rain.
Sten looks at me from under one bushy, reddish eyebrow and makes a little cough-rumble deep in his chest and hands me a rubber mallet.
Two hours later, as we are pounding the last of the tight-fitting second windows into their casings, black clouds skirt the mountains to the northwest and rain tumbles down in torrents.
A wolf runs through a puddle, heading fast toward the woods to the north. Then another heads to the woods to the west. More wolves come, their noses close to the damp ground.
Something’s not right.
Ti stops hammering, his eyes unfocused, listening. “Who is Golan?” he asks.
Another wolf runs past.
“A pup. He’s in Leelee’s echelon. He was the one who caught the mouse that—”
“He’s disappeared.”
Rains are coming even thicker now and the cracks of thunder faster, but outside, I can hear the voices calling Golan’s name and the howls across the Homelands telling him to come home.
At the Great Hall, Pack in fur and skin wait for directions from John. Golan was last seen in the basement, hunting mice.
Wolves have circled the woods nearby and found no hint of Golan, but no hint of coyote either. Usually coyotes won’t come near Home Pond because it’s too well marked, but sick coyotes are unpredictable, and a pup is an easy meal.
“He’s afraid of thunder,” his father retorts when someone suggested again that he was probably outside.
We head to the empty basement, even though I tried to tell Ti that it was pointless. Every member of the Pack has already been here, and I can scent them all, but Ti just stands in the narrow hallway and opens his lungs long and slow, drawing the air through his nose.
“Ti, it’s—”
But he holds up his hand and inhales again, moving slowly toward the door to dry storage. He leans down to a spot on the doorframe and looks at me. I sniff at it once, smelling first the traces of a dozen wolves. Then newly administered Skunk-Off. And finally, the oh-so-slight but unmistakable scent of Baileys and kibble.
I yell for John.
His heavy tread is already racing downstairs. I point to the spot Ti found without saying anything, hoping that we’re both wrong.
“Did anyone see Ronan?”
“Ronan? He’s probably dead or with the Nunavut Pack by now,” Tara says.
“He’s not. He’s here,” John snaps before raising his voice and asking why the hell no one stopped Ronan from coming into the Great Hall, doesn’t exile mean anything to—
“John?” I say, looking only briefly into his eyes before settling on his chin. “Maybe he used the tunnel?”
“What tunnel?”
I head toward the root cellar, sensing John’s fury behind me. The trapdoor is camouflaged with the same packed earth as the rest of the floor, so it blends in, but it isn’t hidden exactly. I assumed that if I knew about it, John did as well.
But when he traces the scuff marks and finds the spot near the wall wide enough for fingers or claws, I know he’s never seen it before.
John opens it and breathes in.
“Where does this go?”
“Pretty deep into the woods.” I start up the stairs. “It was supposed to be for emergencies. To escape. That’s what Gran Sigeburg said.”
“And Ronan knew about this?”
I nod. “I honestly didn’t know it was a secret.”
At the top of the steps, John bellows for Golan’s parents. “And Charlie too.”
My stomach tightens. I like Ronan’s father. Charlie’s always been very sweet to me. He pretended to be pleased when it was announced that I would be Ronan’s schildere, even though it had to be a disappointment.
Charlie lost his mate and Ronan’s two littermates during childbirth and poured all his sad dreams and affections into the sole survivor. Now, if we’re right and Ronan is on the Homelands and did something, anything, with Golan, then the Pack will hunt the last member of Charlie’s family. And they will kill him.
Water collects in the forest canopy, weighing down the weakening leaves until they tumble down in thick clots.
The rain made it impossible for Ronan to disguise the mouth of the tunnel. Oscar and Livia, Golan’s parents, scratch at the door with their claws at the damp pile of mulch over the hatch. When John pulls it open, they drop their heads in, smelling with their keener wild senses. It doesn’t take long for them to confirm that Golan had been there and Ronan, but the downpour wreaks havoc on the scent above ground.
“Your Alpha,” John says, using the commanding voice and the formulation that brooks no dissent, “will have you find Golan Liviasson and Ronan Eardwrecca.”
Ronan has no rights anymore. Not to Pack land, or Pack law, or even a Pack name. He is Ronan Eardwrecca. Ronan Banished.
Whenever John speaks, the Pack listens, but when he speaks as Alpha, the Pa
ck obeys. Those of us who are still in skin shrug out of our clothing and fall to the ground, changing.
What started with the shivering of my naked human body under cold autumn rain becomes a ripple and then an undulation and then a violent thrashing as tendons twang, muscles slide, bones shift, spine lengthens into tail, lungs expand, and my heart strengthens. My nose itches, but I’m helpless to scratch it. Ti yanks on my leg, and the pain makes me forget the itch in my nose.
The bigger the wolf, the longer the change, so they are still roiling and gurgling and stretching when I am done.
Ti has put on some wolf’s discarded parka and stands utterly still as the rain pours over his face. He moves his head a little, angling it to the side, his chest expanding on long, slow breaths.
As a wolf, I can see the silvered movement of water on the black bark of a distant cherry. I hear the scrabble of salamanders and the creak of branches. I smell woody fungus on the roots of a downed tree that I can’t see. But aside from that tiny hit of Baileys and kibble at the entrance to the tunnel, I can’t smell Ronan. This explains how we’ve been running through so much Skunk-Off.
“This way,” Ti says and starts to jog through the woods.
Ronan never cared much about the Homelands, preferring the promises of the world beyond. So my guess is if he’s anywhere, it’s in one of my hiding places. As Ti picks up speed through the High Pines, I know where Ronan has gone.
The Pack doesn’t like the Krummholz, “the Crooked Woods,” that tormented nowhere land between the High Pines and the wind-scoured peaks. Here, nature is stretched thin to breaking: there are no forests, just scattered treelike deformities clinging to the mountaintops. Some creep near the ground like penitents. Some stand like flags, scrubbed bare on the windward side.
It haunts our tales as the place between places:
Winter-blasted, wind-twisted,
The world’s last sentinel.
Forsworn, forsaken
By all but the forever
Wolf.
Sounded better in the Old Tongue, but I’ve forgotten the original.
