Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

  I have a crowbar. I bought it from the hardware store.

  In the dark I cross to his car and I smash the crowbar into his windscreen. Over and over. Then I smash his windows, one by one, and the rear windscreen too. He is coming outside now. Shouting at me. While he calls me all manner of filthy names I swing at his leg and feel his knee crunch. Colm screams, I scream. I almost fall, the pain erupting like light before my eyes. But I breathe, and lean on my crowbar, and when the sensation of shattered bones passes I feel something else. The knowledge of what I have inflicted, and it’s a rush, heady, disturbing. I could keep going but instead I walk past him to the backyard. I use the crowbar to open the poorly locked shed but inside I don’t find the remains of Fourteen’s body. I find only his radio collar, discarded in a bucket along with other waste.

  I phone Duncan.

  “I have an address for you. And a name.”

  “Inti, tell me you didn’t—”

  I give him the information and hang up, and then I wipe the crowbar clean of my prints—what little good this will do I don’t know—throw it to the ground with a clang, and leave. “You bitch!” Colm shrieks. In my rearview I see him sprawled in his front yard, getting smaller and smaller.

  * * *

  At home I take a bottle of wine from the cupboard and I walk with it out to our paddock. I swallow a few swigs and lie on my back in the cold grass to watch the enormous full moon above. The sky is so clear, so boundless, I fall into it.

  Tears trickle into my hair.

  Footsteps in the grass, and a body next to mine. My sister takes the wine bottle from my hand and drinks from it, before placing it out of my reach and then lying beside me in the dark.

  Our fingers twine. From somewhere nearby there is the soft snort of a horse edging closer.

  “Do you think we have any control,” I ask, “over what we are?”

  She doesn’t retrieve her hand to reply, she leaves it in mine.

  “I think most of me got left behind in Dad’s forest. And now I’m all the things I hate.”

  I close my eyes and my hair is wet with salt, I am made of it.

  Her hand moves now, and fast. No, she signs. Then signs it again, No.

  I roll toward her, curling into a ball. Poison pours from me and I have not cried like this since it happened, because I had no right to cry like this when my sister was the one harmed and even she couldn’t cry.

  Aggie holds me, she holds me so tight, her lips to my temple, kissing me over and over, and when her fingertips drum a pattern on my spine I am returned to our tiny bodies in Dad’s shed, when she brought me back that very first time, as she does now.

  She gasps, tilting my chin, and we both look up to see what the sky does, how it dances green and purple and blue, the colors too brilliant to be in Werner’s, and I am crying still but now it is for the beauty of the world, and for its gentle pull, for the mystery of it and its timing, for its deep, deep knowing, when I was so close to the edge and now I am returned, and I wonder if this is what Aggie sees each time she comes back to me.

  23

  I am charged with assault and malicious damage to property. Colm is charged with the killing of Fourteen. Neither of us spends a night in jail, but we land heavy fines.

  Over the next weeks a trail of livestock is left dead. Most mornings I wake to calls from Bonnie telling me to get out to the next farm to inspect the next sheep or cow carcass half-devoured, and calls from Anne Barrie.

  “Fix it, Inti,” Anne says. “Do it now, or all our jobs are on the line.”

  I could follow the ravens to the kills, if I wanted; they travel in great flocks to crowd the skies above the carcasses. And with each new kill my dread grows. The wolf, whichever one it is, has learned that it can feed on livestock. Wolves don’t like the taste of penned animals, they like game meat, and they like to hunt it. It’s called their prey image. Sheep and cattle, as vulnerable as they are, are not part of that prey image. They’re a last resort to a starving wolf. So I must discover which one has a hunger so urgent that it would ignore its own instincts, and why.

  I think I already know which one it was. I think I must. And as soon as we prove it, we’re going to have to kill her.

  * * *

  Today the Tanar Pack are on the move, drawing east toward the edge of Red’s property line, which is just about the worst place they could be heading. If the people of this town are determined to make this a war, then I need to make sure they aren’t given any extra ammunition, and the wolves aren’t helping themselves, circling so close to Red’s land. After dark I leave my sister watching TV and drive to Red’s property. I don’t turn down the driveway but park beside the fence of his front paddock. I’ve brought the rifle from the weapons safe and remove it from the trunk, then I head onto McRae land. I don’t pass where Nine was killed, but I think of him. I go through fences, reaching down to unhook gates and then re-hooking them behind me. One thing I learned from spending time on Dad’s land: never close a gate you find open, never leave open one you find closed. I don’t know where Red has the sheep tonight, but eventually I find them in an eastern paddock, heavily fenced and as far from the tree line as his property will allow. I appreciate that he’s being careful with them, unlike a lot of farmers who still refuse to fence their livestock. A kind of defiance, I guess. Cutting off noses to spite faces.

  I walk to the edge of the sleeping flock, their wooly bodies hunkered down to protect their lambs against the cold, and I sit on the grass. Eyes trained on the edge of the forest, rifle ready over my lap. If wolves come for these sheep it will be from among those trees, and I will be waiting for them.

  * * *

  Breeding male Number Two, leader of the Tanar Pack and now the strongest alpha male of all the wolves we set free, is Werner’s velvet black. The color of obsidian. The only black wolf in Scotland. A swallowing black; the blackest black of deep night. He is an enormous creature, so big, at two hundred pounds, that he could belong to his cousins’ species, the larger Alaskan timber wolves. He moves with a stunning fluidity that comes from such strength. His power is utterly animal.

  I have been coming here night after night, and this night, the fifth of my shepherd’s watch, I see only his golden, unblinking eyes, and I know it’s him.

  He stands in the cover of forest and watches us.

  He watches me.

  Awaiting his moment.

  His pack will be gathered behind him, ready to move when he tells them to. Three hungry, adult wolves who can smell these creatures and their pulsing warm blood, and don’t yet know them from any other. They will spread out and flank us, moving quickly and silently to take down a sheep at the edge of the flock. They could take one each, if they chose, and then kill the rest with ease. These slow, unprepared herd animals stand no chance against the nature of such predators.

  I have always worried more about the plight of the predator than its prey. Predators spend their lives starving slowly. Every hunt could be their last. So if it was just me here, I would let the wolves feast. But this is a world carved by humans. Feasting on the wrong animals will see the wolves dead. So I draw my rifle, loaded with bullets, not darts, and I aim at Number Two.

  The shot cracks out into the night, echoing off the hills. His moonlit eyes are gone now. Fled with his family to hunt somewhere safer, I hope, scared off by the shot I sent above him. I stay where I am anyway, just in case.

  The sheep are awake and running. They head in a ramshackle group for the fence line and bundle together, bleating their outrage, wondering what the hell is going on.

  Five minutes later a quad bike zooms across the paddock. “What the fuck are you doing?” Red kills the engine and swings off the bike. “What’d you shoot?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “You better speak plain, girl.”

  “I shot at a fox.”

  He stares at me in the dark, trying to make sense of me, of my gun. We are barely outlines. “You were watching over them?”
<
br />   I nod.

  His shoulders sag. He mutters something under his breath I haven’t the faintest chance of catching. Then, “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to see dead sheep any more than you do,” I say.

  Red rubs his eyes. “Leave it to me, now. You shouldn’t be out here this late, missy, not in your shape.”

  I turn away, wishing he hadn’t guessed at my pregnancy. I feel exposed.

  “Did you get it, then?” Red asks.

  “What?”

  “The fox.”

  “No, sir. But it knows to stay clear, now.”

  “How do you know it knows?”

  I glance at Red. “Animals learn their lessons. They’re smarter than people that way.”

  * * *

  In the morning I head out to the Glenshee Pack. I know where the Tanar Pack is, after they graced the border of Red’s farm last night. And I’ve been searching for the Abernethy Pack, too, finally catching sight of it yesterday. Ash’s pups have grown enormously at about six months old. They almost look like adults, a bit scrawnier, their paws still a little big for their bodies. The runt of the group—Number Twenty—is still the smallest, but her siblings defer to her. She is becoming more purely white as she ages, even whiter than her mother. As I watched her dominate her larger brother with a quick nip to his mouth, a quick nip to mine, I marveled anew at the complexity of the power dynamics between wolves. They are capable of recognizing personality traits, of knowing that inner strength is as powerful as physical. Dominance often has nothing to do with size or aggression.

  It’s cold today. I’m glad to be in the hide. Wind shrieks along the bare mountains around me, batters at the small hidden structure. If I didn’t have this shelter there’s no way I could be out here in weather this fierce: I’d be swept off my feet.

  I draw my binoculars to watch the Glenshee Pack.

  Do I imagine the sorrow in their bodies or am I humanizing them? It is true, certainly, that wolves mourn their own. I don’t think I am imagining their grief over lost Number Fourteen. There is something subdued to them; they don’t play. Even the pups seem muted. And it’s not just Fourteen who is missing. I can’t spot Number Ten either. Her data tells me she’s here, or was very recently. But as I adjust my binoculars I spot an unusual object in the grass, and recognize Ten’s radio collar. She has chewed free of it. She could be anywhere.

  “No,” I sigh, on a breath. Here is the proof I was dreading.

  Of course it was you.

  The wolf who fears nothing, not even humans.

  * * *

  I dream of the buck deer rutting in the forest; of the sound they make when I walk through early mornings, that mighty clash that echoes for miles through the fog.

  Clash, go their antlers as they throw their bodies at each other. Clash.

  I wake with a start.

  Clash.

  Not antlers, but there is something smacking against the window. Something wet. It is being swung like a sack into the glass and the clash is more of a thunk.

  What the fuck?

  There’s someone out there. I dart into my sister’s room and pull her out of bed. Flatten her to the floor so we can’t be seen through the windows.

  There are voices now, several of them, howling like wolves.

  “Shit shit shit shit shit. Stay here, don’t move.”

  I crawl back into my room and grab my phone. The figures are all around the house now, I can hear them banging on the doors and the windows, trying to get in. One of them walks with a bad limp, I can see his silhouette and no, no no no there’s no way it’s him, please don’t let it be him. But as I watch, his face catches the moonlight and it’s not Duncan, it’s Colm McClellan, whose limp I created myself.

  There’s no damn reception on my phone and I could throw it at the glass in frustration. After collecting my sister from her room we both run, hunched double, to the bathroom and into the tub. There’s a bar of service in the very corner here, and I hold the phone in place until it’s found. My finger goes to dial 999 but stops, and presses the button for Duncan instead. He’s closer.

  “Inti?” he answers, sounding groggy.

  “He’s here,” I whisper. “Colm. He’s with men and he’s trying to get in.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Aggie is crawling into the kitchen. “Wait!” I scramble after her. She goes for a knife in the drawer and I realize this is a good idea, and get myself one too. We huddle on the kitchen floor and it hits me that this is just how I found her the other night when she thought she’d heard someone outside and I told her she was being crazy but Jesus, maybe she was right.

  Or maybe we’re both crazy.

  A window smashes above us, showering us in glass. I press a hand over my mouth. Aggie’s eyes are too wide. I think mine are the same.

  The sound of a car engine revs. Some of the figures bolt but a couple remain. I get to my feet so I can see through the cracked window. Duncan is here. He is unarmed.

  “You’re under arrest, Colm,” he says. “The lot of you. Get in the truck.”

  “Fuck you, ya greenie fuckin’ traitor,” Colm shouts, and runs at him, despite his walking stick and broken knee, and I think he must be in some sort of psychosis because that is just insane behavior. I sink back to the floor so I won’t see what happens, and my sister and I hold each other and I have had enough, I have truly had enough violence for a thousand lifetimes.

  Someone opens the front door and walks inside, and it’s Duncan, but I can’t work out how he did it until I see that the glass of the door has also been broken and he’s reached in to unlock it. Even this spikes my pulse because now anyone can get in.

  Duncan sees us and comes toward us. I don’t know what happened outside but he has overcome the men somehow. My body reacts; it fears him. “Don’t!” I say, and he stops. I don’t understand the fear, couldn’t explain it, even to myself, but it is here, and it is loud, and I don’t want him in here.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just go, Duncan, please.”

  “I need to get you to hospital, get you checked out, love.”

  “We’re fine, nothing happened. Just please.”

  I can’t stop imagining him and Stuart, how his fist beat Stuart near to death under the orb of a streetlight. I can’t stop seeing him in the woods that night and I want it out of my head, I want him gone from my space, from my life.

  His eyes go to what I can no longer hide, even huddled as I am on the floor. My swollen belly. He sees it, he recognizes it, and he’s coming toward us again, and now I am not just sickened, I am rearing up in alarm.

  “Back off,” I say.

  Duncan stops, stunned. “Sorry.”

  Aggie moves her body between us protectively, her hand out to ward him off and I think here is my sister, and because he is looking at her too I also think thank god, she’s real, she’s alive, I’m not mad.

  “Please don’t be afraid of me,” Duncan says. “Either of you. I’m just here to help. They’re dealt with, all right? Those pricks, they’re locked in the truck. They weren’t gonna do anything, they were just trying to scare you.”

  Good fucking job they did.

  His eyes keep going back to my belly. “Is that…?”

  “Get out, Duncan!” I shout.

  I am still, but for the vibrating core of me. I wait to see if he will come at me again. Would I have time to reach for the knife?

  The devastation on his face almost cuts through my certainty that there is some threat here. “It’s all right, I’ll go,” he says, “you’re safe,” and then he does go.

  Aggie and I hold each other. Does she feel as fierce as she seems? She is more real in my arms than she has been in years.

  She pulls away and signs, He’s the father.

  I nod.

  Don’t let him in again.

  I meet her eyes. I thought her fear was madness but there is nothing insane about learning from your experiences. Her vigilance might be
the sanest thing in our lives.

  “I won’t,” I promise.

  * * *

  Later I learn that the sack used to smash our windows was full of what remained of Fourteen’s body.

  24

  I had a plan, a desperate one. If Aggie couldn’t leave her husband then I would become her, I’d play the old game and don her disguise, and I would end this toxic marriage of theirs, I would leave him for her. And I would only tell her after it was done, so she wouldn’t try to stop me.

  * * *

  I spent the day with Aggie, remembering what it was like to slide inside her skin, to see the world through her eyes. With a great deal of passion, and a temper that sparked wantonly. I’d seen enough of her with Gus to understand that power was at play constantly between them, that it was a never-ending game of one-upmanship that bordered on flirtation, a walk on the knife edge of anger and desire.

  When it was time I dressed in Aggie’s clothes and did my hair and makeup like she did hers. It was a costume, it was armor, and the truth was that slipping back into Aggie was the easiest thing I’d ever done. I felt at home, somehow.

  I sent him a message from Aggie’s phone and met Gus in the city after work. We had a drink at a bar and I took up a deliberateness to the way I moved, to where my eyes rested, to how I arranged my expression, because that was Aggie. Composed—bored, even—until she wasn’t. Gus was tired and stressed out, but I could tell he was focused on me. Studying me. I didn’t let it make me nervous; instead I enjoyed it as Aggie would, knowing she had control. I enjoyed being desired, the truly forbidden shiver of lust over my skin I had long ago renounced but was now given full rein to embrace.

  I didn’t know how to broach the subject delicately, how to warm up to it, so under the dim lights of the bar I blurted, “Inti and I are moving out.”

  He stared at me, and there was a flash of something in his eyes but he didn’t move or speak for so long that I began to feel a shift beneath my feet.