Forever Wolf

by Maria Vale

  The UP was unpopulated enough for his wild, but as he was wandering, he came across a bar advertising for help, if you call a hastily scrawled memo on a piece of paper ripped from a spiral notebook advertising. The bar was called The Last Place on Earth, which sounded about right to him, so he applied, and because he could carry two half-barrel kegs up from the basement at the same time, he was hired. The boss set him up with a man who would “process” his ID for fifty dollars. Eyulf gave the name of a guy he’d met at the Greyhound station in Iron River.

  Then the summer came around and Lorianne, the boss’s daughter, came with it. She started working at The Last Place on Earth. Mostly at the register. She was, he said, a tease. Not mean—she liked his hair loose and would pull off the hat he wore to keep his hair back, that kind of thing. This teasing bothered her boyfriend, a young man who was built like a boulder, so everyone called him Bob the Boulder, though his name was Jonah. He did not like Eyulf because Lorianne did, and because Eyulf refused to buy the meat pasties his mother made. They made him ill, Eyulf said.

  “I have a sensitive stomach,” he explained.

  “You don’t have a sensitive stomach. We can survive eating almost anything, but carrion—and especially carrion pastries—cause bloat.”

  “It’s pasties, by the way. Carrion pasties.” He looks skeptically at the rough brown log pinched between his fingers. “And what is this?”

  “Date bar.”

  “That’s shockingly normal.” He pops it into his mouth. “Anyway, one Thursday—they had pasties and karaoke every Thursday, that’s how I know it was Thursday—Lorianne had a fight with Bob. She got up onstage and started singing some song about touching herself, and she looked at me. I wasn’t doing anything. I was standing near the wait station, like I was supposed to until each set was done. So’s not to distract people from the singing when I cleared plates.

  “But she’s singing and leaning toward me and staring right at me and kind of rubbing her hands around her hips and everything.”

  “She was flagging you,” I add helpfully. “Showing you she was receptive.”

  He sucks in his lips for a moment, then releases them. They look fuller at that moment and a little redder, and I think to myself that I would bite his mouth. Which is not an impulse I’ve ever had before.

  “Yeah, well, the Boulder snuck up behind me, and because I was, I guess you’d say distracted, I wasn’t ready. I’d learned that humans are very fragile, so when I got into fights, I needed to be careful. But,” he says again, “I wasn’t ready, so when he wrapped his arm around my neck, I pulled it out.”

  “Did he exsanguinate?”

  “Exsanguinate?”

  “Bleed out? Was there carpeting?” Humans use carpeting, but wolves know it collects fur and bloodstains.

  “No. I didn’t tear it off. I just pulled it out of the socket. Jesus, Varya. Some guy popped it back in, though Bob went to the hospital for… I don’t know why. I didn’t get blamed or anything,” he says, licking cashew butter from his finger. “Everyone saw. But suddenly Lorianne was teasing me more and smelled different. That night, she came back after everyone had gone. I always stayed late to clean up. Restock. She turns on the music and starts touching me and moving against me, and then she rubs against me and…and did I say nobody was there?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s no one here either. No one anywhere near Westdæl. No wolves can hear him, but his voice becomes hushed and he leans closer. His breath smells like the sweetness of dates and the earthiness of almonds. “She unbuttons my shirt. Then she unbuttons my jeans, and her lips go further down. And then…” He circles his hand through the air. I think he means “and so on” or something, but the “so on” makes no sense.

  “Then?”

  “You know. With her mouth?” He looks at me expectantly.

  Thoughts ping around in my head like a swarm of mayflies.

  “She puts her mouth on your cock?”

  He chuffs in exasperation. “Have you never done…anything?”

  “If you’re talking about sex, I sex all the time. It is our responsibility to grow the Pack. But you can’t grow the Pack with your mouth.”

  Even as I say it, I imagine the human’s mouth on Eyulf’s body, the body that I’ve held hot and naked and dying between my legs. It makes me angry. I have forgotten the point of the story.

  “That’s when I kind of clenched up.” There it is. There’s the point of the story. “My feet started to change, and I…collapsed. Took two cases of beer with me as I went. I think that’s what got to Lorianne. I heard her scream that her father would kill her. The door slammed, and then I didn’t hear anything.”

  I watch him spread cashew butter on a soy chip, which will keep him quiet for a while. Stop him from distracting me with the biting of his lips and the tonguing of his cock and let me think about where his trigger must be.

  If he was lucky, it would be in his lower back or his hips, but this wolf has no luck at all so it’s probably in his pelvic girdle. That would explain why he thinks he didn’t do anything. Those are tricky to control and a yawn, a stretch, or a suppressed sneeze can trigger the change, until he learns how to really control it.

  “Lift your shirt.”

  His mouth is glued shut with cashew butter and soy chips, so he only manages to raise his eyebrows and one questioning hand.

  “If I’m going to help you learn how to control your change, I need to find what causes it. So, I’m going to touch you, and you are going to tell me what feels right.”

  He takes a big swig of water. “What do you mean, ‘right’?”

  “I can’t explain it exactly, but you will know. It will feel…it will feel like I’ve touched more than your body. It will feel like I’ve touched your soul.”

  His lips open slightly, but after a few moments of silence, he takes another drink and props the bottle on the ground. Standing, he crosses his arms in front of him and starts to pull off his shirt. His hair catches on the collar and spills down across his back and across his wide shoulders.

  He stretches his arms to either side.

  “So touch me.”

  Chapter 17

  What does the cold taste like? Does it taste like ice? Like stone? Like lichen? What does it feel like? Smooth, suede skin stretched tight across his muscle-banded belly interrupted by a line of dark hair. Is that soft like an undercoat or rough like guard hairs?

  I have forgotten the point of this story.

  “Varya?” he asks, looking at me over his shoulder.

  Right, there’s the point of the story.

  “Pull your waistband down a little.”

  He doesn’t hesitate, just lowers his arms and pulls the waistband low on his pelvis. The muscles flow and coil, begging to be touched, but I am careful to keep my palms pressed tightly into my thighs.

  Then with just two fingers held stiffly out, I press against one of the notches on either side of his spine. Slowly I work my way down and to the side, pressing again and again until I’ve traced a belt across his lower back. He sucks in a deep breath, his back suddenly stiff.

  “Do you feel something?”

  “Yes,” he says with a hiss. “Has nothing to do with my soul, but yes, I feel something.”

  I keep going, tracing the top of his hip, my head down, grateful for the black veil of my hair covering my face.

  I dig in slightly under the pelvic ridge, and he shivers. “Do it again?” he says. “Yes,” he exhales sharply. “I think…that’s it.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “It feels like…it feels like if I had a cliff to jump from, I could fly.”

  Which is about right. It’s too hard to explain exactly. The way it feels when your senses spread out on fragrant updrafts of juniper and deer and moss. Held aloft by the rustlings of aspen and the chattering of sq
uirrels and the nattering of chickadees. Caught by the sun reflected from spiderwebs and the shadows cast by leaves.

  Turns out to be hard to explain inexactly too.

  Pushing my hair back, I wrap my arms in front of me, my hands imprisoned between elbows and ribs.

  “Your trigger is in your pelvic girdle. It’s a tricky place, but not impossible. Once you’ve healed enough, I’ll help you learn how to change.”

  “When my soul needs it?”

  “Yes. When your soul needs it.”

  * * *

  I finally caught a weasel.

  I take it to the little promontory so that I can enjoy my weasel while keeping an eye on this corner of the territory that has been given to me to guard.

  The moon breaks briefly from between the clouds. My mind automatically calculates the number of days until the Iron Moon. The Pack doesn’t know what it’s like to wander Offland, but I do. In the year when I searched for the Great North, I had a calendar. It was red and said Scotiabank. Days were marked with tiny circles in the corners that filled up and emptied out as the month went on. As soon as the new moon passed, I consulted it with the compulsion of a grooming rat, terrified that somehow my calculations were wrong or I’d been thrown off by the inevitable cloud cover.

  A weasel leg cracks between my back teeth.

  I could give Eyulf one moon. What’s the harm in one moon when he doesn’t have to be afraid? One moon when no one is going to shoot at him? Make sure he is controlling his change? Besides, the Great North doesn’t much like Westdæl anyway, and if I mark it, the threat of my own grim self should be enough to convince any interlopers to stay away.

  One moon.

  A crow flies to the tree above me, careful to keep a respectful distance. Still, I put my paw protectively over my weasel while I chew on the particularly flavorful skin behind the jaw, but the crow doesn’t seem to be interested. With a flurry of wings, he heads up to a higher branch. Crows cache things around Homelands. Not shiny baubles like humans think, just food.

  I’d almost forgotten about him when something drops to the ground. My weasel done, I sniff around to see what it is.

  Pizza.

  Pay attention to crows, the grans say. They bring news from Offland. If you know how to read it.

  Pizza?

  Hikers bring all sorts of things into the parks that surround Homelands: sandwiches, trail mix, pretzels, little plastic packs with tuna fish.

  Under the crow’s watchful eye, I nose the remnants of a pepperoni slice, sorting through the mixed scents that signal close encounters with the world of commercial ovens and deliverymen.

  When the clouds part, the moon picks out what looks like an oily gray pillar far to the north. Jumping down, I run toward the Gin, scrabbling awkwardly up the loose hillside, trying to see into the dark distance. The wind shifts, bringing with it the tang of smoke. It is nowhere near our territory, but when fire starts on sodden ground and crows eat pizza, wolves must be watchful.

  Instead of going back to Westdæl, I run through the High Pines all the way up to the peaks until I find a spot with a clear view toward the plume of smoke. Then I settle in: alert, my legs straight, my eyes forward, my ears swiveling, my nose searching.

  Only when the smoke dissipates in the early morning do I knead at the soft floor and curl into a loose ball in the slightly musty, balsam-scented bed.

  * * *

  The next morning when I head back for Westdæl, Eyulf is gone.

  As soon as I look into the eye-shaped cave, I can tell it’s empty, or not empty, because everything that belongs to the Pack is there: food, clothes, sleeping bag. Only Eyulf and his canvas backpack are gone.

  I should feel relieved. Now I don’t have to think about letting him stay for a little longer. I’d done what I’d set out to do. I helped him until he was well enough to leave Homelands, and he did. Now, no one will know about my Arctic wolf, and when the time comes for me to return, I can just stuff everything back into the backpack and cart it to Home Pond. The wolves of whatever echelon is on laundry duty will clean the clothes and the sleeping bag. They will recognize the scent of Ronan, who is one of theirs. But not of Eyulf, who is one of mine.

  Then because wolves are not sentimental or wasteful, they will wash everything and hang it out to dry, and in the end, the items will be put clean into dry storage, and there will be no trace left of either Ronan or Eyulf.

  I should feel relieved but I don’t. This is another loss. Smaller, maybe, but every one chips away at my edges and makes me feel like an increasingly outlandish puzzle piece that fits exactly nowhere.

  Eyulf’s mineral smell leads me to the border of our land, where the dark chaos of the Outer Woods overlooks the cleared paths and rusticated signs, giving the destinations and the distances, including “Wolf Hill—2.8 miles.”

  It’s called Wolf Hill because, a century ago or more, one of our wolves wandered Offland and got shot there. It is a reminder of why it is not only stupid to be wild in the land of humans, but also felasynnig—immoral and illegal—because it endangers both the individual wolf and the whole Pack.

  While I would still be punished for disobeying the Alpha, going Offland in skin presents negligible dangers to the Pack, so with a quick twist, I turn back to the cave and clothes that will permit me to walk unnoticed into the land of humans.

  Chapter 18

  Not entirely unnoticed. A hiker decked out in layers of fleece and waterproof nylon and thick boots with layers of socks poking up over the top looks askance at the running pants and tank top before his eyes stop at my feet. I wiggle my toes in the icy mud, daring him to say something, but even this westend understands an Alpha stare, and lowering his eyes, he closes his mouth and shuffles off.

  There’s a reason I don’t go Offland much. I broke a human’s cheek for what I now realize was a relatively small insult to a female of my echelon. The Pack paid him compensation, but from then on, I stayed in the car. Armed with a good fake ID, I sat there with my foot itching to hit the gas and take my wolves back.

  “Were you looking for me?” Eyulf asks. I shield my eyes from the midday sun and the strong, slim silhouette on the granite seat above me, pencil in hand.

  I gesture him to move to the side and start my run across the empty trail. My bare feet hit a stump, propelling me up toward the rock. I hold the edge and, with a twist of my hips, throw my legs across to the top.

  My hand shoots out before the pencil has a chance to roll down the sloping back.

  “You could have just come up the other way,” he says, not bothering to look at me.

  I know I could have. I knew it as soon as I saw him there, his injured leg hanging over the insurmountable ledge. But I also knew as soon as I breathed the sigh of relief that I wouldn’t.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You’ll see when I’m finished.” He angles his back to me and looks at his phone, precariously balanced on his thigh. “Pass me the periwinkle?”

  Periwinkle?

  “What’s a periwinkle?”

  “It’s a color. It’s a kind of blue.” There are many kinds of blue in his metal case. Here’s Phthalo. Prussian. Turquoise. “Just hand me the box…”

  I pass it to him, and he picks out a color partway between blue and purple. “Periwinkle,” he says, holding it up. “So now you know.”

  Well, that’s certainly useless. Periwinkle. There is no periwinkle here, just dingy snow, churned up by boots, beige winter-dead plants and gray rock and the darker forests of Homelands looming beyond the big bright-yellow signs.

  Another hiker comes by and looks at me. Again, he opens his mouth. Again, he looks into my eyes. Again, he sees something he doesn’t want to deal with and shuts his mouth.

  “If you wanted to blend in,” Eyulf says, “you should’ve at least worn shoes.” He passes me his spiral-bound dra
wing pad opened to one page. “Here.”

  The page is divided into six panels, each one with a single flower. Or single cluster of flowers. The detail makes them impossible to mistake. In my heart, I recognize them all, and if I didn’t know their names, I do now.

  A delicate yellow cup on a fine bent stem emerging from a bed of ragged leaves. Arctic Poppy, it says.

  A low clutch, pale blue and purple with a magenta throat above jade-colored compound leaves. Boreal Jacob’s Ladder, it says.

  A mouse-eye view of white balls of fur up close and rolling down hill after hill. Arctic Cottongrass, it says.

  A small gathering of vivid blue trumpets hugging the ground. Gentian, it says.

  A hillock of bright-yellow flowers surrounded by tiny green leaves. Saxifrage, it says.

  The last is the most beautiful of them all: a cluster of minute flowers, each with a yellow center surrounded by perfect overlapping petals of sky blue.

  And periwinkle.

  Forget-Me-Not.

  It says.

  “I know you could have found these yourself, but I didn’t think you would.”

  Staring at the page in my hands, I can almost feel the icy winds of Vrangelya that forced everything there to hug the rocks that passed for the soil of home.

  “How did you…?”

  He picks up his phone and turns it off. “You said you came from an island in the Arctic. From your name and your accent, I figured it was in Russia.” He snaps his pencil case closed. “Then it was just a question of walking until I got reception.” The case slides into his bag.

  I just keep staring, unfocused, at the notebook.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “What?”

  “Your home.”

  “This is my home. That is—” That is what? My birthplace. The forge that tempered me, mind and body. My reminder of how quickly things can fall apart and how quickly a heart can dry to the consistency of beef jerky. “Gone. It’s gone. But I’m glad to have this. I mean, I would be glad to have this. Can I?”