Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

  I crawled into the cage. Dad locked it behind me. I sat on the thin mattress we’d put in to make it more comfortable. At three feet high there was no standing up. There was a bucket in the corner for my toilet and a roll of toilet paper. In the opposite corner sat a jug of water and a plastic cup.

  “You okay?” Dad said.

  I nodded. I wasn’t.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, wishing he would stay. I’d never minded being alone. I liked it. Not that time.

  He closed the door behind him. I wished he hadn’t. I instantly started worrying that he wouldn’t come back, that the door wouldn’t open again until I was a wolf. Or not even then.

  The room was so dark. I wished I’d asked Dad to open the blind. Though it would be getting dark soon anyway. I tried stretching out. The cage was big enough that I could do sitting-down stretches. Problem was I didn’t know that many.

  I’d only been in the cage a few minutes but already I wanted to stand up. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take.

  The door opened. Thank God.

  “Your mom will be home soon,” Dad said. “I called her.” He put his laptop on the bed and sat down next to it. Fridays Mom stays at work late to teach an advanced French class. Jordan is in chess club.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “About Mom I mean.”

  “Yes,” Dad said. He put his hand on his laptop but didn’t open it. “How do you feel now?”

  We stared at each other. He looked away first.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is weird.”

  “Yeah, it would be a lot easier if you were up at the farm.”

  “Dad,” I said, “you promised.”

  “I know. It’s just—”

  “Dad! I’d kill myself. This won’t be so bad, right? It’s not as if I can get out of this cage. We’ll figure something out.”

  “I hope so,” Dad said. He didn’t sound convinced. I couldn’t believe he was willing to sacrifice me to the Greats. Did he want me to be uneducated? To grow up without a computer?

  I crossed my legs and leaned back against the bars. It wasn’t comfortable. “Can I have a pillow?”

  “Sure.” Dad grabbed one from the bed. “You feel hot yet? How’re your teeth?”

  “Not hot. Teeth are fine.”

  Dad opened the cage, handed me the pillow, squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be alright, Micah,” he said. He let go of my hand and locked the cage again. “I promise.”

  I fought the urge to cry. I believed every word Dad and the Greats had told me, but sitting there in that cage waiting to turn into a wolf, it seemed so stupid. What if it was bullshit? They were all so full of lies. What if this was their biggest?

  When Mom got home they traded places. Dad went to finish his stupid article for whatever stupid magazine, but not before I made him promise that Jordan would not be allowed in. My idiot brother was not going to see me like this.

  Mom came in with two cheese, ham, and tomato sandwiches, handing the plate through the horizontal gap in the bars and patting my hand.

  I wolfed them down. Hungrier than I realized. Mom chatted about her day, acting as if watching her daughter sitting in a locked cage eating sandwiches was perfectly normal. “Jordan is staying at Karl’s place for the weekend,” she said, finally saying something that had to do with the bizarre situation we were in.

  I was glad. Not because it’s always wonderful when the brat’s away but because they hadn’t told him yet. I hoped he’d never find out.

  I handed back the plate. “Thanks.”

  “You are most welcome, chérie.” She reached her hand through to pat my knee. “How does it feel?”

  “Fine. My arms are still itching but, look”—I held them out for her to see—“no hair yet. I don’t feel hot either. My teeth don’t hurt and my heart’s not beating fast anymore.”

  “Did your grandmother say how long it would take?”

  “She said it varies. Sometimes it’s very fast after the first sign. Sometimes it can take a couple of days.”

  “Days!” Mom gasped. “We must keep you locked in for those days? I hope it happens soon.”

  “You and me both,” I said.

  BEFORE

  It didn’t.

  Sunday morning I was still not a wolf. My arms had stopped itching and the bumps had cleared. When I used the bucket there was no further sign of blood.

  “I think it was a false alarm,” I told my dad. “Does that happen?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He held his hands out in front of him. He couldn’t call the Greats—they had no phone. “I’ll have to drive up. Ask them. I can’t leave you in the cage if it’s a false alarm.”

  He did two hours up (breaking speed limits) and two hours back (breaking them all over again) to learn that, yes, false alarms happen and that if the change hasn’t happened in that first twenty-four hours and the signs go away, then the change is not coming.

  I could have screamed.

  If the Greats had been there I’d’ve killed them.

  Dad came home as fast as he could and opened the cage and let me out before he explained a thing.

  I staggered. I had never gone so long without running, let alone standing. I was not sure I could do it again. Go back into that cage?

  Mom and Dad held me tight despite the way I smelled. Despite the smell from the bucket.

  I kept my back to the cage. When they let me go I went and showered.

  It was only then that I wept.

  I would not go back in that cage. I would not live with the Greats.

  There had to be another way.

  TOOTH & CLAW

  “You may feed the wolf as much as you like; it will always glance toward the forest.”

  Grandmother says it’s an old Polish saying. (Great-Aunt Dorothy says Russian.) What it means is that wolves are wild. Their other oft-quoted saying is Latin: lupus non mordet lupum. “A wolf does not bite a wolf.” Which leaves the rest of the animal kingdom free for the biting.

  We can’t be tamed. We shouldn’t live in cities.

  Grandmother quotes those to me a lot. Said them even more back then, when she was trying to persuade me and Dad that it would be best for me to live on the farm. To stay there for the rest of my life.

  I cannot explain to her why I love the city so. I have tried. But how can I describe it to someone who has never been there? To someone who fears it?

  She hates the city because she says it destroys nature. She thinks there’s no nature here.

  She’s wrong.

  Nature is everywhere. I don’t even have to go into the parks to find it. There are weeds and grass poking up between cracks in the sidewalk, out of the sides of buildings and walls. In the city there are no streets without plants. There are gardens in abandoned lots, on balconies, even on the roofs of buildings.

  Plants mean insects, microbes in the soil.

  Nature’s the same in the city as in the country. It’s just tougher. There are not many varieties of woodpeckers in the city, no deer, precious few raccoons. But rats, pigeons, mosquitoes, flies? They all do fine.

  Nature’s everywhere. Under my feet, rats and insects. Over my head, pigeons, sparrows, even the occasional red-tailed hawk. There’s nowhere in the city—in the world—that a spider isn’t within reach. There are bigger animals, too, not just the people, the cats, the dogs, but the occasional pig or llama, the horses, and the squirrels, the foxes and woodchucks and snakes and lizards.

  The Greats cannot see how strong nature is. How it survives even in the least hospitable circumstances. Just like them.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  The Greats are divided on werewolf origins.

  Grandmother says it goes back to the beginnings of humans. We evolved from wolves; they evolved from monkeys.

  So why don’t humans turn into monkeys once a month?

  Grandmother has no answer to that.

  Great-Aunt Dorothy tells about a
deal made between a man and a wolf way back in the early days. They were escaping a predator bigger than either of them. They both ran for a narrow cave opening. There wasn’t enough room for both of them so they fought. The predator came closer. The wolf proposed they share the space. He cut his belly open and told the man to crawl inside. Then the wolf wedged his way into the cave.

  But when it came time to separate they couldn’t. They were bound to each other. A mannish wolf, a wolfish man.

  Dad said his grandfather told him that there was no cutting involved and that it was a woman, not a man. The wolf and the woman had squeezed so tight together trying to get into the cave that they melded into each other so that you couldn’t see where the wolf began and the woman ended.

  Great-Aunt laughed at that one. She said that’s not how she heard her daddy tell it. The woman and the wolf fell in love, lay together, and werewolves were their babies.

  The other story Grandmother told was that the Wilkins had made a deal with a pack of wolves way, way, way back before countries had names, when people lived in tribes, eking out an existence, moving from spot to spot. The pact was to keep from moving, to stay in the one spot, safe and sound even in the winter. The Wilkins would share food with the wolves; the wolves would fight their enemies.

  The Wilkins were able to shift from hunting and gathering to planting and harvesting, raising goats and pigs and grains and vegetables. They fed the wolves; the wolves defended them.

  They lived so close together that it wasn’t many seasons before the human tribe and the wolf pack were indistinguishable. Not too many years before they were all part wolf and part human.

  They’re interesting tales though I doubt they’re true.

  Here’s what I think:

  Horizontal gene transfer.

  You have brown eyes and the ability to curl your tongue, and your kids have brown eyes and can curl their tongues. That’s because you passed on those genes, which is the regular way genes get passed on: vertical gene transfer.

  But genes can also be transferred horizontally from one organism to another. It’s called HGT. I know there’s no documented case of HGT happening between big organisms. Humans and wolves are big. Each with at least twenty-three thousand different genes, way bigger than bacteria and viruses, who can have as few as eight. But if it can happen between bacteria why can’t it happen between bigger organisms? If a tomato can have fruit fly genes in it or, more relevant (since humans put the fruit fly in the fruit), if cows can acquire a gene from a plant to help their digestion, then why can’t wolves and humans do the same?

  Though I’m not talking the one gene, I’m talking many. There’d be the gene (or genes) that makes the change possible. A gene no one’s ever heard of, let alone mapped. Then there’s all the wolf genes that express when I’m wolf and human genes for when I’m human.

  Not to mention why. Could it be a means to preserve genes—wolf genes—that were approaching extinction? That would explain the Canis dirus werewolves. Increasingly the Canis lupus ones, too. Though when the first werewolves emerged gray wolves were everywhere. There are other animals of roughly human size that have gone extinct. Are there were-saber-toothed tigers?

  I would love to map my own DNA. What would it show? Humans have 85 percent the same DNA as wolves. What do I have? Ninety-five percent? Ninety-nine? Or do I have the same 85 percent as everyone else? Along with hidden werewolf DNA.

  When I’m a scientist—a biologist who specializes in wolves—I’ll find out. I’ll map my own DNA. Secretly. I’ll prove that it is HGT. That we were made by a horizontal transfer of genes a few million years ago.

  Unless it was a virus. Something that attacked an ancestor’s DNA and caused massive mutations resulting in unstable genes that express both as wolf and as human.

  There’s so much I don’t know and that I can’t ask Yayeko without making her eyebrows go sky-high.

  Why am I Canis lupus while most werewolves are Canis dirus? Is that even true? How do I find other people like me? Does that mean there are two kinds of werewolves? Or are there more? Are there African werewolves who are Canis simensis? The sole African wolf? Or Canis rufus werewolves? Or are they both too small? There are many recognized wolf subspecies. Are there werewolves for every one? Or only the ones that are roughly human-sized?

  I don’t know where I come from. Or what I am. I don’t know how I am. I don’t know anything.

  BEFORE

  The real change came on me four weeks after the false alarm. The warning signs were the same but this time I ignored them. I did not want to sit in that cage waiting, getting filthier and more wound up and miserable by the hour.

  The first sign was a tightening of my skin as I walked to school. It felt itchy in the exact same way it had with the false alarm. I kept walking. It didn’t feel so bad. At recess there was a tiny bit of blood. Spotting, same as last time. I figured that even if the change was real I still had plenty of time to get through the school day and then walk home.

  Like before, I didn’t feel hot. My teeth didn’t hurt.

  It was in math class. Second-to-last class of the day. We were learning number puzzles. We had to draw three shapes but make sure they were all touching, then four, then five. Five was impossible. I was trying to make it work when the first wave of heat hit me. Then more itching. Then sharp pains in my belly, dots in front of my eyes. My head began to throb. My teeth hurt.

  Inside me things were moving. I knew what it was. I had to get home.

  I stood up.

  “Micah, sit down,” the teacher said, without looking at me.

  I fell down.

  I didn’t mean to but the muscles turned to liquid in my legs. At least it felt that way. But when I looked down they looked like human legs.

  “Are you alright, Micah?” The teacher was staring at me.

  “No,” I said, amazed that my tongue and mouth were cooperating. I tried to stand up, clutching the desk for support. My bones were turning into knives. “It’s my illness.”

  I had a file. The note about my illness was in the file. All the teachers knew about it.

  “I have to call my dad.”

  I think that’s what I said but the next thing I knew my body was buckling. It felt as if the spine was coming out of my back. “I have to go. Call my dad. He knows.”

  I have no idea if the words came out or not.

  I reached for my bag while crawling to the door, groped inside for the cell phone. The pain was spreading all over my body.

  I was sure I would die.

  Somehow I got out of the classroom. Somehow I got the phone into my hands. Pressed for Dad. Screamed for him to come get me. Told him I would be getting home as fast as I could. The school was only five blocks from home: one avenue, four streets. Running was fastest. Ordinarily I would be home in minutes.

  But liquid muscles, moving bones, pain in every fiber, every cell.

  I kept moving: toward the exit, down the few steps, out onto the street.

  I didn’t know if I was going to make it, if I was going to turn into a wolf on First Avenue in the daylight of a busy Thursday afternoon.

  The teacher was still hovering, I think. Had she followed me? Maybe it was someone else. More than one. My eyes weren’t processing right. There were less colors. I saw red. I saw yellow. But mostly red. But I knew which way to go. Down. South. West.

  I kept moving.

  They were calling my name. I concentrated on breathing, willing the change to slow, for the one foot after the other to turn into a run. I think I progressed to a shuffle. I don’t know how many blocks I got before Dad grabbed me, pulling me along.

  I heard shouting and questions. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  By the time Dad pushed me into the elevator there was fur all over my arms and I was bent double. I could smell the fear and sweat of my father. Or was that me?

  I’d never been in so much pain. I was going back into the cage. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  As
Dad dragged me into the apartment, into my room, into the cage, the bones were trying to push their way out of my face. I could no longer see. Or hear. My eyeballs and eardrums had exploded.

  Then I was a wolf.

  In a three-by-six cage and hungrier than I have ever been in my life.

  Dad told me afterward that I howled for twenty minutes straight. He’d lied to the neighbors to keep them from calling the police. I don’t know what lies he told, but after that they all looked at me funny.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  My biology obsession ignited after my first change. I’d always been interested but now it was a passion, no, it was a necessity. I had to know what I was, how I was. I had to learn more.

  How was it possible? How did mass reshape itself like that? I was a 105-pound twelve-year-old. I became a 105-pound wolf. It made sense when I thought of the conservation of matter. Equal weight. Both mammals. Both warm-blooded. It would be much weirder if I were to turn into a snake, go from warm-blooded to cold. From human to python. Or what if I changed into a slug? No blood, no bones. No slug has ever weighed even close to 100 pounds.

  Human to wolf: matter is conserved. But how do I change?

  How does the hair come and go, bones shift and grow and shrink? How can I be a wolf and a human?

  When I change back, am I the same human I was? Is it the same skin, the same cells? Or am I re-created each time? A new wolf, a new human. If so, why do my memories not change? Or do they and I just don’t know it?

  Who am I? What am I?

  To understand, I was sure—I am sure—I had to learn how humans function. How we absorb and expend energy. What happens when we breathe. What we are made of. Genes, DNA. I had to learn the same about wolves.

  I have to understand how I am in order to understand what I am.

  I know so little. I don’t know if I’ll ever know enough.

  I can say “werewolf.” But I don’t know what that means. Not below the surface of my skin, of my hide.