by Carol Wolf
His eyes flicked over them uncomfortably. “Uh. Yeah.”
I leaned over the table, and he flinched back again. “Did you make them for me?”
“No! I swear! Look, I really didn’t know what they were going to be used for.”
There were hollows in his words, covering his lies. I wondered if Kat had left, taking her singing bowl with her, just so that I couldn’t be certain. “Did you do the magic in them that makes them work?”
“Uh, kinda. Well, yeah. Look, will you let me explain?”
“I thought that was what I was doing.” After all, he was still completely intact. He wasn’t bleeding one little bit. And I did not have his throat in my jaws. How much more reasonable could I possibly be?
“Would you back up a little then?”
I tried to straighten up and realized that I had grown very large indeed, as my anger rose. I stepped back and pulled myself together enough that I could stand upright. “Go on,” I invited him. “Explain. If you can.”
He gathered himself, his eyes moving, avoiding looking at me, and avoiding looking at the instruments on the table. He kept his eyes on his hands. “I take it you’ve met my Aunt Sarah.”
I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. My ankle hurt. “Sarah. Yes. I have met Sarah. And she's your aunt?”
“Sarah's had some hard times. My brother and my cousins and I used to stay with her at the ranch, when we were kids. We were fascinated by the fact that she could—I mean, you know she has some skill as a changer?”
“Yes, I do,” I said sincerely.
“Ah, well. When we used to stay with her, what she could do was change people, and animals, into other forms.” His eyes lit, and suddenly he was staring into another world. “We’d be dogs one time, and once we were horses. But the best was when she turned us into Cooper's hawks. It lasted for an hour or two, shortest for the last one she did, longest for the first. And she couldn’t do it again for awhile after that. Once, it was just me and my brother, and we spent a whole morning circling the valley, riding the updrafts high into the sky, and diving down again. Oh, my god, it was heaven.” He met my eyes, his brilliant with remembered joy. “It was like Merlin and Arthur, being turned into different animals, and birds. Except, we got to choose. But it never lasted very long.”
He pulled the bandana towards himself absently, and then realized what he was doing and pushed it away again. He gestured toward the hooks. “I was taking metal shop in high school. My brother Pete, too. We kept talking about how it would be if we could change for longer, for days even. Pete thought we should be able to make some kind of battery, some kind of holding or sustaining spell. You can put spells into metal and have them stay for awhile. So, that's what we worked on, me and Pete, some way to keep what Sarah did to us going for longer.”
“Turn over your hands,” I said. When he hesitated I reached over, grabbed his hands and turned them over myself. He was strong, being a metal worker and all. I stand five feet nothing, and I don’t look like I should be that strong. Ha. He tried to pull away and was surprised when my grip held. I examined his wrists. There were no scars of puncture wounds. “So, either you didn’t do it, or there's another way to do it than sticking a silver hook right into someone's tendon.” My voice rose. Well, why not? My wrist hurt from grabbing him. I let him go and he sat back again, away from me.
“A bracelet will work too,” he said, almost apologetically. “The hooks are, well, they’re to keep the spell in place even if the… uh, subject doesn’t want it.”
“I see.” I glared at him until he wilted. “How long does it last?”
“These?” He pushed the bandana and its contents further away. “They’ll last indefinitely. As long as the silver is kept in contact with the flesh, the spell will hold. “
“So she could have kept me like that until she took the hooks out? She had me stuck two forms at once, part wolf, part human.”
“Uh, is that your demon form?”
“What?”
“The demon, in the form of a wolf? See, Aunt Sarah was just making sure that the demon couldn’t hurt anyone, including you.”
“I don’t have a demon! Weren’t you listening?”
He dropped his voice, opened his hands. “People don’t always know, when they’re possessed. They can think they’re perfectly normal, and all the time, they have a monster inside.”
I didn’t know where to start. I’m not people. I’m not normal, and what I carry inside, whether in human or wolf form, is not a monster. Some people just can’t be told. “What did Madam Tamara tell you about me?”
“That you wanted to talk to me.”
I sighed. Maybe I would just have to kill him later. I pushed the bandana his way again. “If you didn’t make these for me, why did your aunt have them ready?”
“Oh,” he said. “I keep her supplied. She's got a few favorites she uses them on.”
“Her dog?”
He grinned. “Yeah, for one. Baz was useless as a sheep dog. He never got hooked on. Never noticed the sheep at all. But he was so friendly and willing, she thought she’d give it a try, and see what he could do around the house. I hear he's really working out for her. Makes the old place shine.”
“That's not all he does,” I said. I wondered if Curt knew.
“Can I make it up to you?” he asked with a smile. I did not like his smile. It suggested that he was off scot free, and I had forgiven him. My wounds had not yet healed, and I was still pissed.
“How?”
He opened his hands. “I’m a metal worker. I made that singing bowl of Kat's. I make gongs and bells, knives and swords. Maybe we could work something out.”
“So that I don’t bite you?”
His smile froze. I liked that. He looked at me very carefully, like I was going to grow another head or something. How little he knew. He said, “Tamara told me you weren’t going to hurt me.”
“She told me that too,” I said. I let him relax for a moment and then added, “While you’re under her roof.”
He wanted me to come to his shop, up in Arcadia, and thought I’d be so enchanted by his instruments that I’d let him give me something and be appeased. This wasn’t going to happen, but he didn’t seem to understand that. He talked himself right out of the kitchen, and headed back to Tamara's shop. Half an hour later he came out and got into a big old blue hatchback parked down the street and drove away. I’d limped into the living room, where two comfortable chairs were set in a bay window. From there you could see the front of the shop, the patio, and up and down the street in both directions.
It was a very good lookout. Tamara's chair was the one that faced the store. Her mother used the one that looked down the street, but she often sat in Tamara's chair as well. I sat there now, and tried to figure out why Curt Sondstrom had suddenly stopped being afraid of me. Why, instead, he had quickly left the house tamping down on waves of excitement. What was he planning? I had an idea it wasn’t something I was going to like.
I fell asleep in the chair. I was dancing in a sunlit glade in the dark forest, leaping about in my wolf form, chasing butterflies like a puppy to music that I knew was there, that my dream-form could hear, but I, though I was the one dreaming, could not. When I turned I saw Tamara's mother watching me.
She was young, in my dream, and strong, and danced barefoot in the grass. She turned away, walking off the grass and and onto what became a rocky wasteland where the sunlight turned hard and beat down on the sand. She began to dance, and the hard shadow she cast seemed to do a dance of its own across the rocky ground. It was a few moments before I heard the beat, and saw the drummer, hunkered over his drum on the desert floor, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed leather hat. He looked up and met my eyes. His were yellow. He bared his yellow teeth in a grin, and his face changed to one I knew. I started awake just as he began to speak. I hadn’t seen him in more than two years, since he’d gone with my mother and brother to the Gathering, and not come home. It was
my father.
Tamara sat opposite me in her mother's chair, sipping coffee from a big round mug painted with zebras. I sat clinging to the dream in my mind. I’d heard his voice, my father's voice, but the echo was fading, and I couldn’t make out what he’d said.
“He's gone,” Tamara said.
“I know.” I realized a moment later she wasn’t talking about my father. “Huh? Oh, Curt. Yeah. I saw.”
She smiled at me, a spare and ascetic expression. “You did not bite him.” I shook my head, and she nodded approvingly. “He told me about his aunt Sarah. Her husband used to beat her. And there were other crimes. Other tortures.” Her eyes were deep and dark as she recounted them to herself. “If she called the police, the sheriff's deputy would arrive, and her husband would stand on the porch and tell him about the trouble he was having with his wife, while she lay on the kitchen floor, bruised, or broken, or scalded… Her husband was a former deputy himself, you see. That is why Curt helped her. That is how it began.”
I turned away from the window to look her in the eyes. That's not what he’d told me. That wasn’t how it began. What happened to Merlin, and the Cooper's hawks? Or maybe Tamara wasn’t to know about that part.
“Every power wielder will at some time arrive at a moment where she must deal justice. Since we can, there will be a time when we must. You have dealt wisely today. I hope you do so always.” She nodded to me. Warily, I nodded back. I thought she was talking about my not having chewed off Curt Sondstrom's face. What Tamara didn’t seem to understand is, I’d heard him out, but I hadn’t passed judgment yet.
“I must run. I’ve a delivery coming.”
I stayed where I was. I tried to think myself back into the dream that Tamara had interrupted, but it was gone. I stared out the window, taking little note of what I was seeing outside. The street where the music shop was located had unusually mixed zoning, left over from the early days of Costa Mesa. The music store stood in the middle of the block, where most of the residences had been turned into professional office buildings. The handsome two-story house next door was a law firm. Down at the corner a beauty shop advertised itself as a spa, and next door a bakery that served coffee and sandwiches had a few tables and chairs on the sidewalk out front. On the far side of the music store, a row of shops sold jewelry, antique furniture, and bicycles. I sat thinking about my dream, watching the occasional foot traffic along the sidewalks. The late afternoon sunlight shone golden on the little flower gardens of the houses across the street. In front of one of them, gazing across at the shop, stood a slender, fair-haired young man in a dark leather jacket. It was Richard.
I limped back through the kitchen and out the back door. I was barefoot, because I’d kicked Elaine's shoes under the bed and hoped I never saw them again. By the time I reached the street, he was gone. Of course he was gone. I’d been imagining it, or it had been an extension of the dream I’d had, because not only was he not there, but he’d never been there. I stood downwind of where I’d seen the guy, and while it was possible to find minute traces of Richard around Tamara's store, because we’d been there together a couple of times, if he’d been standing just there his scent should be fresh and new, and it wasn’t. So probably all that had happened was that I was missing Richard so badly, I’d begun to imagine I’d seen him.
I walked haltingly into Tamara's store, half-blinded by the evening light blazing in the windows, meaning to ask if anyone else had seen someone who looked like Richard, when I stopped at the sight of a big back-lit young woman in tight jangling braids, her dark skin set off by a blue, purple, and white African-style shirt over her jeans. I began to smile as I recognized her scent, until I realized she was very much not smiling at me. Her arms were crossed, and her face was hard, an expression I hadn’t seen since I first met her. Not too far away, just happening to be idly looming by the counter, was the second biggest bear, Jason, not quite paying any attention at all to the two of us.
“Hey, Yvette,” I said.
She was like iron, unyielding. “Tamara said you wanted to talk to me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Come sit outside?” I glanced past her at Jason, who was looking a long ways down at me.
“No,” said Yvette. “You got something to say to me, say it here.”
“I’m going to go say it sitting out there,” I said, “because my ankle hurts like sin and I don’t want to stand anymore. So, come and talk to me out there, okay? Bring the bear if you want to. He's welcome to hear it.”
A little wall ran around the patio outside the shop to the right of the door. People used it as a seat to drink coffee, or drum, or just hang out and talk or jam. Where the wall ended, Tamara had recently added an iron bench to increase the seating area out there. I chose an angle where the sun wouldn’t be in my eyes, and sat down. It was also where I could see the spot where I thought I’d seen Richard standing only minutes ago. A little while later stony Yvette came out of the shop and stood in front of me, her arms still crossed.
I nodded. “Right over there, on Wednesday, after that meeting that turned into a jam—”
“Yeah?”
“You leaned out of your car window and called to me, ‘Are you coming to the party on Friday? The one in Malibu?’ And I thought you were going, so I went.”
“What party in Malibu?” Yvette asked, her voice mocking.
“The one where I was shot.”
“You got shot?” Yvette my friend was suddenly back, the iron gone in an instant. “You all right?”
“One of those darts they use on big animals. I was taken prisoner, kept in a cage.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, and sat down next to me, ducking from the blinding sunset. “What happened?”
“Well, I went to this party because I thought you asked me to.”
“Uh huh. Because I know all kinds of people up there in Malibu.” Yvette could do sarcasm so thick that it dripped. “So, tell me about my car?” I stared at her. She nodded when she saw I understood. “That's right,” she said. “You ever seen me drive a car?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“No,” she agreed. “That's because I don’t even have a license. In fact, I don’t even know how to drive.”
“It wasn’t you.”
“I’m glad we got that out of the way.”
“But it looked just like you.”
“From that far away?” She pointed across the street, where the figure in the car, whom I had been sure was Yvette, had leaned out to call to me.
“That's right. With your voice and everything, and that hat you wore all night.” I’d seen her, but I hadn’t smelled her. “Huh. Someone made me think they were you.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just so we’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “But what the fuck is going on?”
Jason came out then, and walked over to stand behind Yvette where she sat on the bench. “So,” he said, staring down at me, “everything all right out here?”
“Oh, yeah,” Yvette leaned back to grin up at him. “She mistook me for someone who drives a car.”
“A car?” He bent his head, so the two of them were face to face, Yvette grinning up, and Jason smiling down. He slid a look at me to make sure I saw this. I pretended I didn’t.
“Yeah—” Yvette broke off on a gasp, because the bench was rising in the air. I kept my balance, and continued pretending nothing was happening as Jason lifted the bench up over his head, and Yvette laughed and shrieked at him, until he put it down. And then there was kissing. Fortunately, a couple of drummers arrived and settled on the corner of the wall on the other side of the patio. Yvette broke away from Jason to duck inside the store and return with her djembe. The drummers greeted her as she took her place near them, hooking a leg over the wall and adjusting her drum on its strap over her shoulder.
Jason came and sat down on the bench beside me. Iron shouldn’t creak, but I’m pretty sure the bench did. I asked him, “What do you do when someone tries to take s
omething from you?”
“I stop them.”
Well, it was a stupid question. No one takes anything from a bear. Except maybe another, bigger bear. Or two bears. Or a lady bear.
“What if a number of people are trying to take something from you, and assault you in the process?”
He broke his gaze away from the drummers and turned a long look on me. “What's going on?”
“My demon is gone, you know.”
“So I heard.”
Huh. He didn’t sound like he believed it. And that made it just about unanimous. “Even though he is gone,” I emphasized, “people still want my demon. They think they can make me give him to them.”
“Can you?”
I raised my lip at him, in the human version of a snarl. “You, too?”
“Hells, no, I don’t want your demon. Too much trouble. But folks have been asking how they would get it from you.”
“Have they? They ask you?”
“Oh, no. But we’ve all heard them. Folks are worried.”
“I know,” I said, with an edge in my voice.
Jason's mild look took on a hint of amusement. “They think your demon can help.”
“He did!”
“So you say.”
“No one is getting him from me. Even if he was mine to give.”
“So what are you asking me?”
“I think I’m asking what to do to get everyone to stop.”
He shook his big head. A smile grew on his face, but that was because Yvette across the way was laughing and talking with her hands, her voice, and her drum, and then the three of them got down to it. The drums sounded out in exhilaration. The bright notes of Yvette's djembe rang out beneath her fast-moving hands. He caught her eye and grinned. Yup, I was looking at one infatuated bear.
The sunset left pink stripes reflected across the sky that intensified as the sun went down. “They’re not going to stop,” I said. I pulled my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around them, looking up at the changing colors in the sky. I thought when I left home, and got myself away from my abusive stepfather and his horrible sons, that my problems would be over. All I had to do was keep out of sight until I turned eighteen. Now, I had a whole new set of enemies after me, and Gray Fox still lurked in the mountains, waiting for me to show myself. I had to convince people that trying to take me was really not a good idea. I had to seek out everyone who was after me, and set them straight. Hunting was something I was good at, after all. This could actually be fun.
