Holiday Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  I am the wolf now.

  I inhale deeply, drawing the freezing air deep into my lungs. Adrenaline rushes through me, and when Carol, a few steps ahead of me, throws back her head to howl, something deep and vital inside of me has to respond to her. It must. A howl erupts from my own mouth, torn from my throat as if by force. It's a song, a song I know by heart, and as I howl, all of the other wolves howl together, and the mournful tones don't reflect how jubilant we feel, the notes rising over our heads, lost to the sky.

  There's freedom in that song. Freedom and exhilaration. It feels good—for half a heartbeat, but then the discomfort starts to settle in. I feel, too much, like I'm unraveling, like all that I am, all that makes me Georgia, is lost, running through my hands like sand. That sense of freedom—too strong for my liking, too powerful—roars through my body, ripping parts of my human self away.

  No. I shove down the intensity of that liberating feeling. I lower my head, blinking as snowflakes drift across my vision, and I stumble as I take my first step. Everyone around me is always so graceful, so sure-footed, when they transform into wolves. Carol herself is the very embodiment of grace as she strides forward, her muscles gliding beneath her fur. She glances back at me, her wolf face soft, her eyes wide and liquid, urging me forward.

  I shiver a little. The wind's kicking up. The animal in me knows a blizzard is on its way, but I try to ignore it, try to push down all of the knowledge that's so readily accessible to me in this form. My whiskers twitch; my ears swivel: overhead, there's a hawk gliding on thermals. Off to my right by about a hundred feet, there's a wild rabbit nibbling on a bit of bark. That rabbit calls to me—I can feel its heart beating, even though, by human standards, it's far away.

  The wildness roars through me, spilling out of me. It can't be contained. You can't scoop water back up into a bucket if it's been upended, and that's what the wildness feels like to me. The longer I'm the wolf, with each second that ticks past, these compulsions, these needs, grow stronger: I must howl, I must run, must experience the sheer, blossoming joy of the snow between the pads of my paws, the chill in the air, the forest around me with all of her secrets—

  I shake my head and sniff, take a deep breath, and clamp down on the instincts running rampant inside of me.

  It's not so easy to shove down such a big part of yourself, shutting the door, turning the key in the lock. But I've certainly had practice. This wildness unnerves me, and I could never tell you exactly why. Oh, there's that feeling of being out of control. I certainly don't like it, don't like feeling animalistic, so out of touch with my humanity. But there's more to it than that. I've never known what to think about all of these bad feelings, about always wanting to squash the wildness down. All I know is that it makes me feel wrong, and I want to avoid it.

  Right now, all of the pups are racing around me, howling, yipping, dancing up on their back paws before they pounce onto things only they can see beneath the snow, snapping at each other playfully... But I stand on the outskirts, discomfort flickering under my skin. I push my nose low to the ground, scratch at the side of my face with my dewclaw, whimper a little.

  The storm starts to build overhead, and here I am on the sidelines, watching my cousins chase each other, jubilant, joyful. Free.

  My own paws are glued to the forest floor. I can't move. Anxiety lances through me, waging war with the wolf's need to run and the human's sense of wrongness.

  Carol runs up to me at that moment, brushing her soft shoulder against mine and breaking me from my reverie. She dances around me, her paws barely touching the ground; she moves with such ease, such surety. She places her front paws flat on the snow before her, diving the front half of her body forward into a little bow, her tail wagging as she grins, her rear stuck up in the air in the universal sign for, “Seriously, come and play with me right now.”

  I don't move for half a heartbeat, and she grows impatient, yipping at me, her voice purposefully high-pitched. Her tail wags furiously, back and forth, and if I was in my human form, I would be laughing, she looks so ridiculous.

  But I wag my tail once, listlessly, and that seems to be enough for her, because she turns again, moving so fast that her back paws kick up an arc of snow, and then she's running around me in a big circle.

  The pups catch her excitement and stop what they're doing to watch her—before going after her. They're playing an advanced game of tag, something we made up when we were kids and never grew out of. The wolves run in tightening circles, and if you look at the ground, there are spirals in the snow filled with paw prints, just as the air is full of yips, yelps, and happy panting.

  Carol doesn't glance over her shoulder as she makes a loop around me. Tongue lolling out of her mouth, teeth showing, she jubilantly aims for the treeline and the slope. I watch her disappear in the underbrush, the other pups following her excitedly, their padded paws crunching on the snow as they race over the bottom of the mountain.

  I'm left alone in the clearing.

  Bored, I sniff the air, huff out through my nose, and then I trot toward the treeline, too. Soon the cars and trucks disappear behind me, and the slope of the ground begins to grow steeper. I'm far behind, taking each step with care because I don't want to lose control.

  The more you act like a wolf? The more wolfish you become.

  I follow the paw prints in the snow, my head angled down, my steps moving me ever upward, as the pups head toward the top of the mountain.

  But Carol picks up on my sedate pace. She's turning around: I can hear the yips coming closer because she's circled back to pick me up in the pack, to have us all run together.

  Carol leaps out from between two trees, Susan hot on her heels, both of them blurs. Carol pulls up a little when she gets nearer to me, and she begins to circle me again, her paws skidding over the slush. Her eyes—so joyous a short time ago—are starting to reflect her concern.

  She's worried.

  I take a deep breath, and I follow along behind her as she aims her nose up, up, toward the summit of the mountain.

  And, because the only way for me to keep up with the pups is to go at a much faster pace, I begin to run.

  My muscles scream in protest—it's been awhile since I did anything more than trot in my wolf form. I've been wondering if Carol has noticed how often I back out of transforming. The other pups becomes wolves at the drop of a hat. Any excuse, really, to let their wildness out. But I've used every excuse to keep my wildness in. Has Carol realized how often I choose to stay in my human form? How I never seem to be happy as a wolf?

  Yeah. Yeah, I could tell her. But if I told her, that would bring the issue out into the open. That would be acknowledging it. And it's just so bizarre... I've never heard of any other werewolf who doesn't enjoy their wolf shape.

  I'm a freak.

  Thinking this, I run faster.

  I run, my legs moving like pistons, my lungs working like bellows, pumping the air in and out of me, my body on autopilot as the other pups outrun me, their paws moving so fast that their legs blur over the ground. They look like they're flying, joy apparent in every line of their muscles.

  I race behind them, the cold air searing my lungs. I've shoved the joy of being the wolf so far down inside of me that I hardly feel anything at all as I fly over the frozen earth with my pack.

  We're running together, a single unit, chasing after Carol—until, up ahead, the white wolf pauses, her nose pointed to the sky. Now she stands, her right front paw poised in the air, her nostrils flaring as she scents something interesting.

  When she lowers her nose, stares ahead into the dense trees of the forest, her hackles rise on the back of her neck. The rest of the pack slows down, come to a stop right behind her. I sniff the air, but I haven't caught the scent yet.

  Carol's on the trail, and this isn't something so simple as a deer.

  It's not unusual for one of the pack to follow a scent. We are wolves, after all, and interesting smells are bound to distract us, especial
ly when that scent comes through in vibrant technicolor, taking over all of the other senses, luring us on. But the rest of the wolves are noticing Carol's odd body language, and we try to inhale as much air as possible, sifting through the scents of the mountain...

  Susan gets it first, and then it rolls over the rest of us, the scent like a cloak over our shoulders, it's so strong. But what we're smelling is, of course, impossible: an all-consuming rush of shock freezes me in place.

  It's not possible. It's not.

  Because I smell wolves.

  Like, real wolves, not werewolves. Real, honest-to-goodness wolves.

  Here. In the woods. In Maine.

  In the wild.

  Last I checked, we haven't had a wolf sighting in quite a long while. Oh, sure, there were rumors of wolves migrating down from Canada, and some hunter or other always swears they nearly shot one in the woods, but those are just stories. There aren't any wolves in Maine, haven't been any wolves in Maine for as long as I've been alive.

  But I went to the zoo when I was younger. I smelled the wolves on the wind, the wolves shut up behind bars. I know what they smell like—by memory or instinct—and so does everyone surrounding me, because they went on the same zoo trip. And we're all stunned, because this shouldn't be happening. We know there are no wild wolves in Maine.

  But then...there they are.

  Three wolves weave between the trees like magic. They're gray wolves, mottled...old. They look like gods as their paws hit the snowy ground. Their heads are held regal and high, their muscles moving beneath their fur coats like music as they prowl toward us. Their eyes are amber-colored, wild. There is nothing sudden about their movements. They look at us, long and hard, as they move among our pack.

  I don't know what to do. I don't think any of us knows what to do.

  We stand as still as statues. Carol's in front of me, and I can see her pretty, pointed ears swiveling; her posture, the way she's sitting back a little on her haunches, shows me that she's nervous. She's bending away from the visitors, easing back almost as if she's going to sit down, and the rest of the weres begin to do the same, lifting one front paw to show their uncertainty. There are more of us than there are of them, but if these wolves get aggressive, I have no idea how we should react.

  They make no aggressive moves, though. They move slowly but purposefully. It's almost, I realize, as if they're inspecting us. They gaze at us with curious eyes that hold no malice, and I feel so strange as I watch them.

  And I realize now that the wolves I saw in that zoo when I was small—they were the saddest creatures I've ever known. Sure, to cage a wild thing will always make that thing sad; that's not what I mean.

  I know now that the wolves I saw in the zoo were pale imitations of what a wild wolf could be. They were faded, dulled...

  And right before me is the brightest wildness I've ever witnessed.

  The wolf closest to me...stops. It's a gradual slowing, and when she stands fully before me, she's about ten feet away, but still close enough to strike me with awe. She's old, the matriarch of the three. How I know that, I'm not sure. Call it a wolf instinct. I can just sense it.

  She gazes at me, her eyes sharp and wise, and something turns in my heart. Something that hurts like a vice.

  No. She's making me feel too much. She's making the wildness rise in my heart, and it can't. It can't. I can't lose control of myself, of who I really am. There's something about her that's calling out to me, to the primal me that I've locked far, far away.

  It's actually painful as she holds my gaze, as her own eyes narrow, almost as if—in that moment—she understands the confusion that's moving through me. My limbs begin to shake, and my heart feels shattered.

  Suddenly, the wolf farthest from me turns, her nose pointed toward the top of the mountain. The other two wolves turn, too. They pause, their heads cocked, almost as if they're listening to something far off, something that I can't quite hear myself. Their nostrils flare as they huff warm breath out into the cold, their breath curling away from them, beckoning up, up toward the top of the mountain.

  And the first wolf, the farthest one, begins to walk.

  The other wolf follows, and then only the matriarch remains. She shifts position, turns slightly, and she looks at me for what feels like forever. My nerves tremble.

  Finally, she turns to follow her sisters.

  The wolves lope in faster and faster strides, angling upward.

  Susan glances back over her shoulder at the rest of us, her eyes wide.

  Electricity is crackling among us; the air seems full of anticipation. All of the weres stand at attention, their chests huffing as they breathe in the scent of the wolves.

  Susan takes one step forward, and he doesn't need to howl or yelp; she just starts to run, her paws hitting the packed snow, her gray body a single streak of motion.

  And then, as one, the rest of the pups—including Carol—take off after her.

  But I don't move. My whole body is shaking with the effort it takes to suppress my instincts. My claws dig into the snow. My shoulders rise as I force myself to stay here, to maintain control.

  Instinct is one of a werewolf's strongest attributes. For humanity, I'd guess it's boundless optimism.

  But werewolves feel things; we know things. And I know that I'm supposed to follow the pups, supposed to run with the wolves. They all bound and leap ahead of me, race among the trio, lengthening their strides, running for the sheer joy of it, for the sensation of the wind in their fur, the frozen air racing into their lungs. They're feeling this moment deeper than any they've felt before; I'm sure of it.

  But I stay in place, trembling, my entire body a single, potent ache. I can't control it anymore, so I do the only thing I can think of... I crumple to the ground, my side hitting the snow hard, my body curling up into a tight ball. And then I can feel my nose on my face contorting...flattening. And I bend forward, emitting a growl that turns into a moan as my fur sinks down into my skin, as my bones shift, as my spine clicks out of place and into place once more...

  And I'm naked, in human form, kneeling on the ground, hunched forward in a pain that wracks my body like a sickness.

  I can't see the pups through the trees anymore. I'm far away from every road, and there are no sounds from the forest, so I hear the wolves, even though they've run a mile already. I can hear their joyous howls, the song filtering through the trees. I sit, heart pounding, nausea filling my stomach, and I have no idea what to do, no idea what's wrong with me. I just know that I can't follow. They're all too wild, too free, and that's not what I want. That's not who I am. I don't want to be like them...

  Even in all of their beauty, in all of their grace, those real wolves made me feel something that hurt me, hurt me deeply. They were just...too much. They were everything I can't be, everything that makes me feel wrong inside.

  I sit now on the snow, my body shaking not from the cold but from a sort of shock as I wrap my arms around myself, shivering.

  It's okay.

  No one saw my freak-out.

  It's okay.

  But as the wolves move farther away, as their howls become silenced, I stagger to my feet without a plan. I suppose I'm going to head back down to the cars, blast the heat, sit in Susan's cab and try to stop shaking. And then maybe I'll make my way up to the camp.

  But I'm yanked from my thoughts by a closer sound, a twig breaking, branches on a bush crackling. I glance up, reaching out to steady myself on the nearest tree, feeling the surety of the bark beneath my palm.

  There in front of me, padding out between the trees, is the white wolf.

  Carol's here.

  She paces slowly toward me, her face strange, as if she's asking a question that I can't hear. She folds forward, her face bending toward the ground, and I watch as the fur retreats along her skin like waves of wheat rippling across a field, her body contorting, melting, reshaping itself.

  In a moment, Carol's human form kneels on the ground bes
ide me, and she breathes out into the cold air, pressing her hands, not her paws, to the snow. She spreads her fingers, gazes down at the ground, as if she's collecting her thoughts.

  And when Carol lifts her head, her blue eyes are narrowed.

  “Georgia,” she says simply, breathlessly, her palms still flat on the ground. She stares at me with confusion burning in her gaze. “Tell me the truth this time. Are you okay?”

  I shake my head, grit my teeth, wrap my arms tighter around my body, as if I can hold everything in by force.

  “I...” I grit my teeth again, swallow, croak out, “I'm fine.”

  It's an obvious lie.

  Carol stares at me for a long, silent moment. She rises to her feet unsteadily—we're always a bit shaky on our human feet after we transform. She's about to reach out to steady herself by gripping my hip, by pressing her hand onto my shoulder, perhaps. But she stops just short of touching me, drawing her hand back, pressing it to her heart. “Something is wrong,” Carol insists quietly, and she takes a step backward, pausing a few feet away from me now, as if she can't come any closer. As if there's a wall between us.

  A new expression flits across her face, and I blanch at it, another shiver rippling over my bare skin.

  Fear.

  Carol looks afraid.

  “Something's been wrong for a while,” she tells me, her voice soft, controlled. “I've known something was wrong...but you won't tell me. You won't tell me anything. You're...you're not acting like yourself,” she whispers. Her eyes are wide and pained. “Baby, are you okay?”

  Carol always uses my name, calls me Georgia. She only calls me “baby” when we make love. When I kiss her hard enough to make her gasp, when I make her feel especially good. When we're in the dark, in the nest of one another's arms, and all we have is each other and a million stars overhead. She only calls me “baby” in the quiet, when we're all alone.

  We're alone now, in the stillness of the gradually darkening forest. The wolves have gone far up the mountain, and my cousins have followed them, chasing after the wild as if they're a part of it.