The Wild Harmonic

by Beth W. Patterson

  “Well, there you go. You marked it as your own territory,” he snorts at last. “Did it have anything to say as it bit you?”

  Teddy grins. “It said, ‘Be prepared, bitch!’ “

  All eyes look to me, and I know my own story is going to be a wet blanket after Teddy’s epic. I am reluctant to tell my pack about the shame I felt from my rite of passage, but as soon as I open my mouth, I can’t stem the flow of my story. I regale them with the bullying, the salvation through music that distracted me from my primal urge to tear apart everyone who had hurt me. The burning rage I had felt once I knew that everything I had thought I had known about life had turned out to be a lie. I even go into every gory detail about how struggled with my killer instinct, running through the woods and trying to create a path of destruction in a natural asylum where there would be no voices to report my monstrosity.

  I tell them somewhat of Cal’s gaslighting and threats to blow my cover. I voice my suspicions that he might have been something other than just an ordinary human being, with his uncanny ability to sense my weaknesses and fears, harnessing them to make me bend to his will. How I wish I could have just killed him, knowing that if I had failed in my attempt, I’d have been better off dead. I hadn’t even cared whether or not I would have gotten away with it. Teddy and Raúl are barely able to suppress a few growls, so I decide that it is finally time to pass the talking stick to someone else.

  Sylvia’s story sounds almost like the Annunciation. It hits me that that since our adult reunion, I’d never gotten the full scoop on her mysterious disappearance past her “witness protection program” story. Now it goes beyond that: her parents had predicted what fate might befall her and somehow managed to find a way for her father to get transferred every few years in his job—before anyone could become suspicious of their daughter. Unlike my own parents, who had wanted me to choose the straight and narrow, Sylvia’s folks had wanted her to trust her heart. All that had mattered to them was her happiness. And her coming of age was like a Rapture.

  I know her well enough to know that she’s certainly no Virgin Mary archetype, which makes her seem even more saintly to have walked away from so many earthly delights. It is a story very similar to my own in that we were both visited by some entity in the night on the cusps of our adulthoods. But whereas I regarded it as a deal offering knowledge and power like the snake in Eden, she chose to see it as a sacrifice in exchange for enlightenment. She harnessed her wolf to bring out the best in her music. And then one day she decided that she’d had enough of the outside world and gigs in dingy bars, for all of the occasional perks. It is one thing to try to preserve one’s purity, and quite another to give up what you’ve already known. She traded earthly delights for solace—a gigging musician no longer, but still unable to quell the wolf within. When Rowan approached her with the prospect of joining the pack, she finally found a balance.

  Raúl is as still as a statue. No one dares to breathe as all eyes fall upon him. We reach out in wordless support, but it is Sylvia who finally breaks the silence. “Who are we to judge? We will never pry, but it concerns us how much of a burden you are carrying with you.”

  I am surprised to be just as in the dark as the rest of the pack. I knew that Raúl was reticent about his background, but I didn’t know that he had been holding it inside for so long from everyone.

  His eyes unfocus, and he allows himself to receive emotion like a huge satellite dish. We all tune in. His face remains stolid, but his eyes become stricken.

  “My family and I lived near Gurúè in the Zambezia Province. It is diverse enough that we could disappear into the forests when we needed to change into our lupine selves, but we could still pick up work in the nearby tea estates. It was hard labor, but the tea estates of Mozambique are so beautiful, it would make the heart cry. I occasionally picked up gigs in Quelimane, or even as far down as the capital city of Maputo, but I preferred staying in the little homesteads when all was said and done.

  “The painted wolf people of Mozambique tend to have large families, and laughter is an important value, both for the beasts and lycans. Our Teddy would have fit in well,” he pauses with a grin, still keeping his eyes on the floor. Dropping his smile again, his eyes harden.

  “There was a wealthy man from the United States who had heard of wild dogs and of a rumor that some new species had developed. My extended family is rather unique-looking in our lycan shape, since we carry mixed wolf blood. My grandmother was an Ethiopian wolf shifter, which is a rare and beautiful species: red and white like the foxes of Europe. Mixed with our African wild dog heritage, we were a distinctly unusual looking pack, and so tried to remain as hidden as possible. But someone had spotted one of us, and this American entrepreneur had ambitions for money and fame in his discovery of what he thought was a new subspecies. We had always been cautious enough to never change whenever we could smell any outsiders nearby, but someone eventually caught up with us.

  “One day my little brother and I were hunting in our lycan forms near a wildlife preserve, and my brother wandered too close to an illegal trap. I saw it before he could get ensnared and ran at him, knocking him out of the way, but getting caught myself. If I had changed to human form to free myself, I was afraid that I would be seen in mid-change and our secret lives as lycans would be discovered. So I remained a wolf and let the man take me away, trying to close my ears to the cries of my family, even though they knew I had to do this for their protection.

  “I was thrown into a crate with some raw meat and very little fresh water. What this man was doing was illegal, and he had to jeopardize my health in order to keep me hidden. I was given a sedative gas, so I do not recall if I was being transported by air or by sea. Hours, days, or weeks may have gone by, and I will never know. By the time I reached the States, I was little more than skin and bones.

  “I did not want to encourage my kidnapper’s belief in a new subspecies, so I focused on visualizing myself as a pure painted wolf and cast the illusion that I was no more than this. When we got to America, the poacher was disappointed that he had not discovered a rare and unique animal after all, so he drove me to some rural area and sold me to a collector of exotic animals. But this new captor did little more than keep me alive in an outdoor pen, throw me the occasional scraps of meat, and charge admission for tourists to gawk. I was the only shifter in his menagerie. All of the other inhabitants were pure animals: a caracal, a couple of douc langur monkeys, a hornbill, and an elderly mandrill baboon. There was nothing for any of us to do but turn around and around in the tiny little pens that he had constructed for us, standing up to our ankles in shit. The other animals screeched and cried all day. I knew that I must do something or else I would go mad, and then what? I begged my ancestors to either send me some hope of salvation or to call me home to be with them.

  “The collector’s daughter began to do more of the chores after that, including feeding us. She was a gentle soul of about eighteen. She was afraid of her father, and I often smelled him on her when she came to the pens to feed us. One day I reached out for the sake of us both. I spoke very softly to her in wolf form, and she did not find this to be unusual. ‘You are beautiful,’ I managed to say. It was not as clear as human speech, but she listened. Night after night I told her my story little by little. One full moon, I fully transformed in front of her, and she was not afraid—in fact she was enchanted.

  “I continued to reveal myself as a man while trying to cover my nakedness so that she might not be offended. She appreciated my discretion and one night slipped something into my crate that she had told my father were rags for bedding. It was really a large hoodie and some sweat pants that she had gotten from the Salvation Army … enough covering that I could take human form in broad daylight if I ever escaped.

  “One day she lifted the door to my cage and let me out. She said that her father was passed out drunk and would not notice. I had been cramped for so many months and my muscles so atrophied, I could not even stand u
p. But day by day she helped me to regain my strength.

  “By the time I was able to run away, I was in love with her. She agreed to come with me. She had packed a bag for us with money, clothing, food, plus a forged ID for me. It was waiting for us under a tree at the edge of her father’s property. On the morning we were supposed to leave I changed back into a man. I slipped out of my pen with the key she had slid into the crate, dressed, and waited for her. And then I heard the gunshot.”

  No one makes a sound. Raúl buries his face in his hands, curling up in his grief. He sobs, “Her own father had figured out what I was and shot her. I changed back into a wolf in a heartbeat and forced my way into the house, but I was too late; the bullet had gone right through her skull. He turned, aimed, and meant to kill me next, but I was quicker. I tore out her father’s throat and left his body a shredded mess. The right thing to do would have been to run away, but the months of imprisonment combined with losing my redemption and the only woman I had ever truly loved was too much for me to bear.

  “I left the animal cages closed as I transformed again, dressed, picked up the pack, and slipped away. It seems that it would have been kind to free them, but I knew that they would not know how to survive in this harsh and unfamiliar environment. Their cries would alert the authorities and that the animals would be transported to sanctuaries or zoos, where they would be given proper care. I wandered the land in search of respite. Even though

  I found occasional jobs and places to live, I could never outrun the guilt. Because of me, this young girl I loved had been killed by her father.”

  “Why, Raúl?” asks Sylvia in a barely audible tone. “Because he found out that she was helping a werewolf?”

  He is stone-faced again. “No. He shot his daughter because he found out that she loved a black man.”

  Back in my apartment late that night, I decide that I can no longer keep my other side bottled up. I turn on my A/C window unit, which chugs and whirs a loud drone. While no substitute for central air conditioning, it’s noisy enough to cover up any odd sounds that may escape. After double-checking to make certain that the blinds are drawn and the few lights are dim. I put on Sheila Chandra’s Roots and Wings, and allow the music to help me wind down the day.

  I disrobe without thinking and begin a mild meditation with a mantra befitting a wolf: Om Chandraya Namah (“Om Light of the Moon, the glittering or shining”). I begin in a child’s pose, going within. In only a matter of seconds I feel the transformation as I rise to all fours. Spine stretching, chest expanding, my tailbone reaches for the ceiling in my down-dog yoga pose. The metamorphosis does not hurt; it only makes me feel extremely disoriented. I let forth an involuntary whistle-whine, feeling it vibrate down my elongated sinus passages. The connection from spine to the base of my skull shifts to allow me full range of head motion from a bipedal to quadrapedal stance. Humerus and radius adjust, femurs and tibias shorten, metatarsals grow, and heels become hocks. What were once fingertips and toes are now firm paws, distributing my weight, giving me stronger sense of balance and structure. Instead of being at the mercy of two barely mobile primate ears on the sides of my head, I can now cup and swivel them from the top of my cranium, picking up frequencies like two separately working satellite dishes.

  I have lost my human concept of beauty in my shift, but I glance at myself in the mirror anyway. My fur is a whiter shade of pale, a fluke among the Southern Reds of Louisiana. Sometimes I wish I could remain in this form all the time. Other times like tonight I ask myself, why do I have to be so damned canine? It’s so unglamorous. Out of all the shifters, why is my form the most common?

  Human ego versus animal acceptance battle for a moment, then I simply surrender to what is. Curling up on my futon, I tuck my nose into the brush of my tail and sleep.

  Journal entry, April 15th: Dear beloved,

  If only you would come a little closer and stay a little longer, I could knock you down from that pedestal on which I placed you. Then we would both be free.

  The April morning is warm, with a hint of even fiercer heat yet to come, but I couldn’t care less about that. I can’t believe my good fortune in my assignment today. I am to spend the day hanging out with Rowan at the French Quarter Festival. The five-day free event gets too crowded for my taste, but it is one of the few remaining events that hires only local bands. I have a set to play with the Latin band Descendientes on the very last day, but today is one of those rare occasions in which I am completely free. I decide to leave my car by my uptown apartment on Tchoupitoulas, take a brisk stroll through Audubon Park to get to Saint Charles Avenue while the morning is still cool, and catch the streetcar across from Loyola University. I roll farther uptown where Saint Charles becomes Carrollton, and meet Rowan for coffee at Z’otz near his studio before we head to the Quarter.

  “Normally French Quarter Festival needs every pair of hands that can set up a mic or work a fader, but let’s just say that we got a hall pass today.” He flashes a grin over the rim of his iced coffee glass, and I will myself to remain in control of my perpetual heat in his presence. “This will be the perfect way to practice everything you’ve learned so far.”

  It appears that this mission will inadvertently serve another purpose, which is getting to hear my cronies. I’m always so busy on my own gigs, I normally never have a chance to appreciate the jazz, funk, and blues that this city is famous for, not to mention a good many other groups that don’t fit under those categories. And I get to do it all in the company of the man I crave. Climbing buoyantly into the passenger side of his Tahoe, I take note of the CDs in his console. Lots of guitar virtuosos, of course: Alan Holdsworth, Eric Johnson, Jeff Beck, Adrian Belew, and Steve Morse. And bands that feature collective killer musicianship: Mothers of Invention, Dixie Dregs, and local prog lords Twangorama.

  And so begins my tuition put into action. Rowan shows me the ways of my lupine life, and like the Van Halen song, I am hot for teacher. I keep it to myself as best as I can, as he has taught me. We wander from stage to stage to identify power struggles between band members based on vibrations and scents. I detect an irregular spiky energy emitting from a fiddle player on one of the stages. Rowan is pleased with my observation, informing me that the guy has a reputation for trying to take over other people’s bands and deliberately causing as much damage as possible if he doesn’t succeed. It seems that God created egos to prevent musicians from taking over the world.

  He then tests my ability to sense other shifters or to sense warding. Sure enough, there are a few horn players out there who are definitely something, based on my inability to tap into any sort of energy pattern around them, like a glove obscuring a fingerprint. Ha, I knew it! I gloat to myself, recognizing some of them from The Round Pegs. Some of these fellows who play regularly together have a slight energy pattern between them. And there are some people who have no energy patterns because they are simply burned-out. They are easy to tell apart from the warded ones, for they just go through the motions. I try not to wonder if I could ever reach that state.

  Traipsing down Decatur, so proud of being seen side by side with Rowan, I almost miss the slight hissing noise. Three gutter punks are ogling me, unwashed and arrogant. In spite of their cardboard panhandling box, it’s obvious to anyone who knows anything about tattoos that the ink covering their bodies couldn’t have been cheap. A dog on a rope leash raises despondent eyes at me—not a shifter, but something is definitely mutable with these three young men. The tallest one waggles his tongue between two fingers at me. Their mocking laughter squeaks like a rusty hinge, and a flash of long front teeth reveals their glirine natures.

  “How about giving us something to eat? You don’t wanna refuse … we know where you live!”

  The rumble I feel at the base of my skull sounds like a cargo ship unloading a massive crate, but my brain decodes it a second later as Rowan growling. I have never witnessed him hostile before. Then again, I have never before seen someone pose a threat to him or a pac
k member. Out of the corner of my eye, his face seems more angular, and his energy becomes harsh like a heavily distorted guitar.

  The rat men slam to a halt in their tauntings. One mutters, “Dude, it’s him!” They fidget and shuffle down the street at an uneasy pace, dragging the languid animal behind them. Rowan picks up the panhandling box and gets a scent. I try to make a mental note of the same, but the stench of unwashed bodies obscures their olfactory identities—perhaps deliberately. The box is just a discarded carton with ANGEL MINISTRIES printed on the side, but reveals no scent clues.

  My Alpha slips his harmless veneer back on like a cloak, and we continue our route. His many facets have me enthralled, and I want to bottle them all: gentle Rowan, ferocious Rowan, and wise Rowan.

  “I will now tell you about the Wild Harmonic,” he says. “This is just one word for a special frequency to reach others, namely shifters, although humans and animals can sense it as well. It is based on the same law of physics that makes sympathetic strings ring out, with a touch of the esoteric. No one is really certain how it works, but it does two things: it gives strength to the singer, and it connects the singer with the audience. Sadly, this technique is almost always wasted on stage presence and marketing charisma. But it could actually save your life someday.” He croons a note that I can barely hear, but I feel it resonate at the base of my skull.

  We briefly encounter Teddy, who has a few hours to kill before playing his own set with Trombone Rusty and the Sackbuts, so we all wander down to The Mint to catch Raúl’s set with Government Funk Soul. We stand together at the back of the crowd by the gate enclosing the grounds and watch Raúl set up his kit. He’s too engrossed in his activity to glance at the gathering crowd. We ward ourselves from outside attention and Rowan instructs me to howl a greeting. “Go on, try it,” he warmly encourages me. “Once warded, no one can hear The Wild Harmonic except other lupines, and there aren’t any others in the crowd except our pack.”