by Carol Davis
There.
Up ahead, not very far, he saw a splash of color on the ground at the foot of a cluster of pines. He slowed his breathing and went a few steps farther, making almost no sound at all, nothing that could be heard over the wind and the sound of the waves crashing in the distance. Then he stood still, half-hidden behind the broad trunk of a tree, and waited to see if the female would move. She was lying on the ground, curled up like a sleeping child, one fist pressed to her cheek. Her eyes were closed.
She might or might not have been hurt; he couldn’t tell. She was rank with sweat, though, smelled of exertion and fear.
What in the skies…?
Humans came to the island once in a while. Young ones, out to explore. Older ones hoping to find new land they could exploit. But Aaron had never seen or heard of one like this: a lone female in a thin, bright-colored dress, her long pale hair tangled by the wind. There was a wide scrape on her bare shin, red but not bleeding, and by her side lay a huge, bright yellow bag spilling its contents onto the brown of the fallen pine needles. She was asleep, Aaron decided. Worn out. She’d been dropped here somehow, like Dorothy in Oz, but without the little dog.
He ought to summon the elders. That was what he was supposed to do under ordinary circumstances. One of them would make sure she got back off the island without incident, and without finding out the truth of their nature—that they were wolves, not men. That this island belonged to a pack of shifters.
But he wasn’t supposed to leave the area around the clearing. Wasn’t supposed to approach the settlement until his time of reflection was over.
Undecided, he crouched down to watch her sleep. She was restless, twitching and squirming and making small sounds he couldn’t interpret. She wasn’t tiny, like so many of the women on the mainland, the ones who were thought of as ideal yet were no bigger than adolescents, with stick-thin arms and legs and either small, flat breasts or huge artificial ones. She was curvy, healthy, normal. Very appealing.
And that scent…
He wanted to inch closer. Lower his nose to her skin and sniff, rejoicing in that wonderful female aroma.
Do more than that.
How would it feel, he wondered, to be pressed up against that warm, soft body? To caress her and taste her? To slide his cock inside the hot core of her and thrust until his seed was spilled?
Dear gods, this was a torment the likes of which he’d never experienced.
He needed to walk away, and quickly, before she woke. Before his wolf could take control of the situation and compel him to do exactly what he was imagining. No, he told the animal firmly. Even with a member of the pack he wouldn’t take that kind of liberty, mate with someone who was sleeping, someone who hadn’t agreed to a coupling. And with a human? They had laws against such things. When she returned to the mainland, she could well decide to send the authorities out here to investigate.
Aaron turned his head and pressed his nose against his shoulder so that the only scent he could smell was his own.
That didn’t help. He was far too aroused.
Then he wondered, was this a test? He’d never heard it mentioned, but it could well be that the elders set up such a thing to further test the resolve of the separated ones, to see how much they could endure without breaking.
Silence and solitude, denial of permission to shift, limited food… that was one thing.
This? This went beyond the pale.
A few yards away, the female squirmed in her sleep and rolled over, and the skirt of that bright-colored dress hiked up to reveal more of her smooth, creamy thigh. The breeze swept her scent toward him, and he couldn’t hold back a low groan. His balls had begun to ache in earnest, and the wolf within him was clawing at the walls that held it at bay.
Tears were welling in his eyes.
If this was a test, he decided, when he finally returned to the settlement and was called in front of the elders to describe his time of Separation, he would tell them exactly what he thought of all this. That this went beyond being a time of contemplation and growth, if it had ever really been that in the first place.
This was torture.
It was agony, and torment, and if it had been done deliberately, with this strange human female…
Aaron did the only thing he could do.
He ran away.
Three
Abby had never been so hungry in her whole life—not even during her sophomore year in college, when she and her roommate had gone on that all-grapefruit diet. She supposed she was thirsty, too, because she hadn’t had anything to drink all day, but it was hard to tell over the constant rumbling of her stomach.
She sat on the ground for a while after she woke up, arms wrapped around her knees, glad that the trees provided some shade and that it wasn’t raining. She’d walked what felt like a hundred miles through the woods before her legs had given out. When she’d tried to keep going, she’d tripped over a root and fallen, and had ended up with a big scrape on her shin, which was now stinging and raw. She’d intended just to sit and rest for a few minutes, but she’d been so exhausted she had fallen asleep on a bed of pine needles, most of which now seemed to be stuck to her dress and skin and hair.
She didn’t think she could stand up.
“Not fair,” she mumbled. All she was trying to do was go home.
It seemed like the universe was saying she should have stayed with Lane. If she had, she’d have eaten a good breakfast and lunch. She couldn’t remember what else he’d had planned for the day, but he wasn’t one to skip meals. And, well… his choices almost always tasted good.
Her stomach rumbled and gurgled.
She looked around carefully, thinking there might be something growing nearby that she could eat. Berries, maybe. Or mushrooms? Some of those might be poisonous, but at this point being poisoned seemed like a better choice than starving. At least if she was poisoned, she’d die quickly.
Probably.
Maybe?
She did feel a little better, now that she’d slept for a while. If she went slowly, she could keep going.
Her first few steps were wobbly. Then, somehow, she found a little strength and her head cleared enough for her to forge ahead, holding her bulging overnight bag close to her side. It felt like a comfort, something from home, even if it didn’t contain much that was of any actual use out here in the woods.
Note to self, she thought. In the future, pack for any possibility. Sudden blizzard. Zombie attack. Meteor strike.
…That’s a house.
She blinked to make sure, thinking she might be hallucinating from hunger. But no—not very far ahead, just barely visible through a gap in the trees, was a small cabin. There was no light inside, no smoke coming out of the chimney, no sign that anyone was there, but she didn’t feel like being picky. It was a house.
Encouraged, she pushed herself to walk faster, putting one foot quickly in front of the other. Her injured shin burned and stung, her little toes were crushed, and the blister that had formed on her left heel had started to scream with every step, but she kept going, and after a minute or two she stepped into the clearing in front of the cabin.
There was still no one in sight, and she could hear nothing but the wind.
“Hello?” she called out. “Hey! Is anybody home?”
No one answered.
Well, she thought, there were times to respect people’s property rights, and then there were times when you could be excused for taking some liberties. Like now, for instance, when she’d had about all she could take. There might be food inside. At the very least, maybe she could get a drink of water.
“I’m coming in!” she called.
Limping now, she crossed the clearing and reached for the door handle. She’d thought the place might be locked, but the handle clicked and the door opened easily.
A little voice in her head suggested, A crazy person might live here.
Maybe so. But even crazy people had to eat.
She dropp
ed her big purse just inside the door and looked around. The inside of the cabin was a single, simple room: a bed in one corner, a fireplace on the opposite wall. A tiny table with one chair alongside it. A low cupboard with two doors on the front and a collection of dishes and utensils scattered across the top. All of it looked very old, but clean. That seemed to indicate that someone had been here recently.
The floor was made of rough-hewn planks, but most of it was covered with a rug. That too was worn and old, but reasonably clean, so Abby pushed her shoes off and let her aching, burning feet breathe a little.
Food…?
She took a step toward the cupboard—then something made her stop, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She’d left the door open behind her, and something told her very firmly that she was being watched. She spun around, fists clenched and raised—though the idea that she could punch her way out of a confrontation was kind of ridiculous—but she saw no one.
“I’m just hungry!” she said loudly. “Okay? I just need something to eat.”
No one objected.
“Okay, then.”
She took a step backward toward the cupboard, then another. Still, no one appeared outside. She could close the door and lock it, she supposed, but that was… well, if not rude, then…
Okay, it’d be rude. This was someone else’s house, and she was thinking about locking them out of it.
Shaking her head, she went the rest of the way to the cupboard and looked through the collection of stuff on top of it. She found a half-empty jar of jam, a bowl of blueberries, and part of a loaf of bread wrapped in a dishtowel. The berries seemed like the best option, so she took them over to the table and sat down, then began to shovel them into her mouth by the handful.
There was no sink in here, she realized. No source of water. It didn’t look like there was a bathroom.
Fruit had a high water content, she remembered. The berries might not fix dehydration, but they’d help.
She ate the whole bowl in less than a minute.
Her hands were trembling when she finished, and stained with juice. She was a whole new kind of home invader, she decided: one who broke in and stole fruit. Not that there was anything actually worth stealing, if she’d been the usual kind of breaker-and-enterer—no electronics, more than likely no money or jewelry. This was just a shack in the woods, more off the grid than anything she’d ever imagined. Yet someone actually lived here. Ate and slept here.
Some crazy survivalist, said the little voice in her head.
So… were there guns here? In the cupboard? Under the bed?
No, she thought. Come on. It was probably the temporary home of someone who hunted or fished here on the island. Maybe someone like the old man who owned the boat she’d taken, some old codger who didn’t like people particularly much.
Or maybe…
Maybe, Abby thought with a snort, it was one of those other places, the ones her co-worker Sera kept talking about—the ones on those crazy websites. They Live Among Us! ShiftersRReal. Eye of the Wolf. To Abby, that stuff made about as much sense as alien abductions or that supposed network of secret underground tunnels in Texas, but to Sera the idea of people who could shapeshift into some animal form was as real as the ground under her feet.
Except for that, Sera seemed sensible.
You need to leave, said the voice in Abby’s head, in a tone that was hard to ignore. You feel better, so you need to keep going. Put your shoes on and get out of here before somebody shows up and takes you prisoner or something. Makes you part of their crazy survival cult.
Before they pull out their guns and shoot you.
She felt like part of a bad TV movie as she got up from the chair and stepped away from the table. Her feet were hot and her face was ice-cold as she retrieved her little pink flats and put them on, then picked up her bag from the floor.
But what was better? Locking herself in here, or roaming around in the woods?
“I just want to go home,” she whispered.
The thing was, there might not be anyone out there at all. She might have imagined that someone was there watching; it might have been the result of watching too many of those bad TV movies, and being tired and hungry and upset and lost. The bread wasn’t fresh; she’d probed it, and it was as hard as a brick. The jam might have been here for years.
She was fine, she told the voice in her head. She was in no danger.
Feeling angry and stubborn, she looped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and strode out the door.
She stopped when she saw a man standing at the other side of the clearing.
Her heart made a couple of leaps in her chest. She’d stopped as suddenly as if she’d collided with an invisible wall, and now she couldn’t make herself remember how to walk. For a long moment her mind was completely blank, as if the sight of someone standing there at the edge of the woods was so utterly foreign that she had no idea how to parse it.
He looked steadily at her for a couple of seconds, then looked away.
“I–” she wheezed.
He didn’t look crazy. Or violent. His hair was neatly trimmed, he had only the barest of stubble on his face, and his clothes—jeans and a t-shirt—seemed clean and neat, if a little old and faded. He wasn’t holding a gun, or any other kind of weapon. He seemed more embarrassed than anything else.
He closed his eyes and shook his head a little.
“Look,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was just—I was very hungry.”
He shook his head again.
“I’ll pay you for the blueberries. Or—I guess you picked them in the woods or something? If you tell me where they grow, I’ll go pick some more. Or–”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“Yeah. I kind of—I’d really rather not be here. I agree.”
For some reason, that made him open his eyes, but he still didn’t seem to want to look at her. Was he, like, Amish or something? she wondered. Some very prim religious sect that didn’t allow men to look at women they weren’t married to, or related to, or whatever?
“Will you tell me how to get to the road?” she asked.
He frowned. “Road?”
“The road. I need to get to the harbor. Or… anywhere, really. Somewhere with cell service.”
“There’s no cell service here.”
“I know that,” she groaned. “Just point me to the road. I mean—a ride would be, like, the best thing ever, but if you can’t–”
“There’s no road,” he said.
“How can there not be a road?”
“Because there isn’t one.”
She was getting awfully tired of him not looking at her. Piled on top of everything else that had happened this weekend, it felt insulting. Yes, she’d barged into his house and eaten his fruit, but come on.
“How can there not be a road?” she demanded. “We’re not on the moon. There’s got to be a road.”
He lifted a hand and shoved it through his hair. “You’re on an island,” he said, still without looking at her. “We are. This is an island. There are no roads.”
Island…?
“This isn’t the mainland?”
“No,” he said. “It’s… no. This isn’t the mainland.”
Abby’s legs went out from under her again, and she sat down hard on the dirt of the clearing, hard enough to make her tailbone sing. All that? she thought. All that time in the boat, and she’d done just what she was afraid of—she’d gone the wrong way. She hadn’t even been aware that there were other islands out here; she’d thought there was just the one.
Her chin quivered, and she couldn’t bring herself to make it stop. This was all too much, all just too much.
She started to cry, face buried in her hands.
She could hear birds trilling off in the distance, and it seemed like they were mocking her for every single mistake she’d made: not asking the old man for directions, not packing snacks and water, coming out to that s
tupid resort with Lane in the first place. There was nothing romantic about any of this, nothing even remotely good or helpful or promising. And the stupid boat was almost out of gas.
She couldn’t bring herself to care whether she looked dumb or crazy, or whether she was putting herself in more danger by sitting there on the ground with her eyes shut. She went on crying until, after a couple of minutes, a hand touched her shoulder.
“Come inside and sit down,” he said.
She shook her head in violent jerks from side to side. She could feel him close by, crouching alongside her. Heat seemed to come off of him in waves, like his body temperature was a lot higher than a normal person’s.
“Go away,” she muttered.
“My name is Aaron,” he said quietly. “You should come inside.”
Four
It was dark when she woke, enough so that she let any thought of getting up slip away and instead snuggled deeper under the covers. The bed was cozy and comfortable, and her drowsy mind felt protected and safe.
Then she remembered where she was.
She’d cried for quite a while after Aaron had brought her inside, out of pure frustration and exhaustion. He’d settled her on the chair next to the little table and then left her alone, though she’d been able to see through the window alongside the cabin’s only door that he was hovering nearby, fussing with things as if he was unsure what he ought to do next. After her crying had finally wound down, he’d come back inside and poured her a cup of water. She’d drunk it quickly and he’d filled the cup again, then a third time. Once her thirst had been slaked, he’d given her a stack of something he called “honey cakes”—small squares that tasted something like granola bars. Like the bread, they were dry and stale, but she was past the point of caring. He’d gathered more blueberries to go with them, which had made them go down a little easier.
During none of that had he made eye contact with her.
By the time she had finished her meal, the sun was starting to go down. The day seemed to have evaporated, which was just as well. She’d been glad it was over with, though of course it wasn’t anywhere near over with.
