Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  Silver's eyes narrow, her mouth downturning at the corners, and she reaches up. The movement is slow, cautious, like she's reaching toward a frightened animal and she doesn't want to startle it.

  One hand grips my own steadily, and then she rubs a thumb beneath my right eye, catching the tear that spills out there.

  Her thumb lingers, tracing gently over my face.

  It's...soothing. Surprisingly so.

  That connection is the only thing anchoring me to the world at present. The warmth of her skin against mine, even the roughness of a callous along the tip of her thumb...it grounds me.

  “I...I don't know if I'd believe me either,” she tells me, each word low as she shakes her head. “To an outsider...well. I can imagine it'd feel impossible.” Her eyes remain on my own. “But I can...show you. If you'd like.”

  “Show me...?”

  “Proof.”

  The word holds weight, and when she whispers it into the stillness, it feels like a turning point, somehow.

  Like the hinge of some enormous “before” and “after” in my life is locked to that single word.

  Proof.

  I open my mouth, and then I shut it. I was about to ask her if she was joking again, but I don't think I have to actually voice the question.

  My expression speaks it loud and clear.

  “If you let me show you, I can. Proof. Of what you are.” She doesn't wait for me to stutter through another question. Instead, she lowers her voice. “The thing is,” she mutters, rocking back onto her heels on the bed and rising a little, “we don't have much time. I've got to get you to safety before they catch on to where I've taken you.”

  I don't even know what to say. And I think she knows that. She hasn't let go of my hands, and when she leans forward now, she rises over me, her face a study in sympathy, her brows furrowed, her mouth tugged into a wry smile.

  “If you're going to believe me, you need proof, right?” she asks, each word slow, as if I'm incapable of understanding—but it's not unkind. There's sympathy as she cocks her head, as she studies me.

  I nod slowly. I don't trust myself to say anything.

  “Then I can get you to change into a wolf,” she tells me then, each word coming slower, careful. “If you'll let me.”

  My stomach roils inside of me. I'm ready to shake my head again, ready to push up and off the bed, start pacing across the floor.

  I'm ready to cross the room to the front door, open it, exit and not look back.

  But her gaze is so...so damn sincere.

  I'm already full of second hand embarrassment for her, and it sours in my gut. How the hell does she think she can change me into a wolf? All of this is so, so awful...

  But there is one small part of me, deep inside, down in the depths of somewhere almost forgotten...

  One small part of me that is, I suppose...curious.

  Curious to see how she'll fail.

  Curious to see what she could possibly have in mind.

  Just...curious.

  So as I stare at her, ready for that second-hand embarrassment to cover me in slick horror, I nod, nod the teeniest, tiniest bit.

  And Silver's smile...

  It grows.

  She nods, too, and then she's rising. She pushes off the bed, glancing around the room, her hands on her hips.

  Now that she's fully upright, I can make out everything, every inch of her nude body, and quite clearly. In the back of my head, I gather the scene to think about later. Because, later, I'm going to think about those curves and the raw strength she possesses as she stands, feet apart, hands on hips...

  But I certainly don't have time to think about it right now, because Silver is moving.

  She prowls around the foot of the bed and grasps the edge of the battered television stand and drags it toward the mattress.

  The TV on the stand is one of those big old ones: no flat screen in this dump. The set is so old and clunky, in fact, that it looks like it weighs two hundred pounds. But when Silver picks it up and sets it on the mattress, her arm muscles barely even flex...which is shocking, in and of itself.

  But not as shocking as the sound of breaking glass.

  Silver's hand is a fist, and it's through the screen of the television before I can even blink.

  Silver just punched a whole in the television sit.

  I stare in horror at the vision of jagged sharpness, of flesh so close to that sharpness...

  But there's only a bit of blood. Not that much, considering the spiderweb cracks over the entirety of the television screen.

  The fist-sized hole, off-centered in the glass, is an ugly void that draws my gaze.

  The tiny part, in the very depths of me, the one that questioned all of this in the first place...it wonders: could a human hand possibly have done this? Just like that?

  Could a human hand survive punching through such thick glass, relatively unscathed?

  For when Silver pulls her fist out of that hole in the screen, there is only a single ragged slash across her flesh. It's on her first two knuckles, the skin torn, blood edging the top gap in the glass, blood dripping down her first finger.

  I stare at that wound, mouth agape...

  And then...

  A few things happen all at once.

  I realize: the TV was still plugged in. She punched the television, she broke the screen with her fist while it was still plugged in.

  And...

  The television is glowing.

  Not the set, but the screen, and what is behind the broken glass and inside of the set itself.

  For half a heartbeat, I think the TV is sparking, or perhaps on fire...

  But, no.

  It's just...glowing.

  And the glow begins to rise.

  I stare. I watch the light, like a faint finger of mist, ascend out of the hole in the television set. I watch it ascend slowly, slowly, drawing toward Silver's outstretched fingers.

  I watch the light move over her skin.

  I watch the light enter the wound on her knuckles.

  And I watch as the cut begins to heal.

  There's no other way to put it. The strange, mist-like tendril that's coming from the hole in the television has drifted over the wound on Silver's hand. A little like a snake responding to a snake charmer, it rises to coil around Silver's fingers and her wrist. And now it's drifting up her arm.

  The logical part of me is weakly yelling (internally) that it must be electricity: that Silver is getting electrocuted by the television. But I know that's not what's happening. She's standing there, watching the light rising out of the set and she's only vaguely interested in it, like someone watching the city skyline go by through a taxi cab window.

  But as her skin and the light merge together, as her skin begins grafting to itself, the sight is too...well, it's just too much.

  So I flick my gaze up to her face.

  I want to see what she's feeling, want to see what she's thinking.

  But she's staring straight at me.

  The glow is soft and gentle as it emanates from her skin. The light is drifting beneath her skin now, like she's absorbing it. There's no other way to put it.

  The glow shows her face clearly, the light illuminating every curve and plane of her.

  She's gazing at me, her eyelids lowered, just a little, as if she's ready to lean forward, tell me a secret.

  And that's exactly what she does.

  The wound heals. It heals, because when she reaches out her light-filled hand, there's no gash striking an ugly mark across her knuckles. There's only smooth skin and light, so much light.

  She holds her hand out to me.

  It glows softly in the dull motel light.

  Silver leans forward.

  She whispers:

  “If you take my hand...I can show you what you really are.”

  I stare at her. I stare at her fingers, her palm, stretched out toward me in a gesture of gift-giving.

  Maybe I'd make a diff
erent choice.

  If my mother hadn't just passed away.

  If I hadn't watched a man killed in front of me.

  If I hadn't seen her transform from wolf to woman.

  Maybe I would choose something different, if we weren't here, together.

  Maybe I would.

  I don't know.

  Because, here and now, I make a decision. And I don't look back.

  My head screams at me.

  But my heart is what makes me move.

  I take her hand.

  Chapter 8: Wolf

  She squeezes my fingers.

  Her smile is brighter than any of this light.

  And then she whispers:

  “Okay...just take deep breaths. I'm right here with you.”

  I nod. But then, she's grimacing.

  “One last thing. It might hurt a little.”

  My frown deepens. I'm about to open my mouth, about to ask her what she means, but before I can even ask...

  Pain.

  Bright, blossoming, incandescent.

  Sharper than anything I've felt before.

  And everywhere.

  I scream. Or, at least, my jaw opens, and the sheer agony tries to erupt from me in the form of sound. But Silver steps forward, places a hand over my mouth, presses me to her long, lean body. Her naked body.

  “Sh, sh,” she croons to me, her mouth against my hair, her breath too warm as she wraps her arms around me. “Sh, it'll all be over in a minute...take deep breaths, okay? In and out. In and out. Just like that. Breathe with me.”

  The pain engulfs me completely. I'm drowning in it. But I reach up, out of the swelling depths of that agony.

  And I try to listen to her.

  I try to hold onto her words, her voice.

  Breathe with me.

  She's taking deep breaths in and out, her stomach rising and falling, exaggeratedly so, like a meditation instructor giving a class to hyperactive toddlers and trying—very much—to get her point across. But it's working. Because I can hear her, even in the midst of the keening of my body and blood, I can hear her. Breathing in and breathing out.

  My eyes are closed involuntarily. I'm panting hard, can't get enough air.

  But I try to breathe deeply.

  In.

  And out.

  I try...

  I hear a great cracking. Pain roars from my legs. My bones...did my thigh bones just break? A bright new agony swells up but Silver tightens her arms around me, tightens her embrace.

  “Stay with me,” she growls into my ear. “Breathe.”

  There's light everywhere, or maybe that's just the pain entering my eyes.

  I don't know.

  I've never felt anything like this. Never.

  The worst pain I'd experienced before now is something that's laughable in the midst of this.

  I'm going to die.

  Maybe I'm already dying.

  “I'm here,” Silver croons. “I'm right here. Take deep breaths. It's almost over.”

  I let out a groan on my next exhale as my legs cave beneath me.

  But it doesn't sound exactly like a groan...

  It sounds like...

  Impossibly...

  A growl.

  Like, a real growl.

  An animal's growl.

  Despite Silver's tight hold on me, my body buckles, and there's momentum in that single movement. A spasm, uncontrolable.

  I curl inwards, a spiral, my back clicking into place like every vertebra was somehow out of joint.

  I know this because the sound...oh, the sound.

  I will never forget that sound.

  Silver lets me go.

  The comforting tightness around my arms and shoulders, the strong embrace...it's suddenly absent. I didn't realize how much it was holding me in place...

  I didn't realize how much I needed it so that I would remain...

  Whole.

  I splinter.

  My body disintegrates. A thousand tiny points of sharpness lacerate me from the inside out. It is excruciating in every way, an indescribable agony that is at once all too much for any one person to bear...

  And then...

  I bear it.

  It is in the solidity of that moment, when I realize that, yes, I can bear this, yes, somehow, I can survive this...that's when it happens.

  When the pain becomes an agony that I can carry, when the pain becomes part of me, not separate from me...

  It happens.

  A sudden unfurling through each limb and bone, beneath the lines of muscle, into me.

  A rush of heat.

  I exhale, gasping, growling, and I press my hands to the floor.

  My...

  Not my hands.

  I open my eyes.

  Everything's seen through a sort of prism. There's two of everything, maybe three of everything, for a minute, as I try to focus on one single point...

  Silver.

  Silver's face, right in front of me. Silver, sitting back on her heels on the ground, holding out her hands to me. Instead of palms up, like she did before, now she's spreading her fingers. She lifts her hands again like someone gesturing to a startled animal, trying to calm them.

  She's smiling. That smile is so bright that it is the single, still point I can pin my gaze to as I try to quell the rising nausea.

  I look at her to keep the world from spinning.

  I look at her because I need her gravity.

  “Ella,” she whispers. Her smile spreads as she moves her hands toward me, gently, slowly.

  Her face is shining. Her smile conveys so much, all at once. Pride and determination and a sheer, potent joy...

  “I want you to keep breathing deeply, okay? It's going to feel weird at first. But just stay calm.”

  Stay calm?

  What is she talking about?

  I gaze back down at my hands again.

  And I blink.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  I'm upright immediately, scrabbling for purchase on the floor. I skid in place, wobbling. Shaking.

  So... Suddenly “upright” isn't the “upright” I'm used to.

  “Upright” isn't on two feet.

  It's on...

  Four.

  I gaze down at the paws below me. A million excuses and rationalizations zip through my head, faster than light.

  But you can't exactly listen to your head when panic roars up inside of you, intent on devouring you whole.

  Which is what happens now.

  I'm staring down at paws. At forearms that aren't so much forearms as they are forelegs.

  Fur.

  I'm covered in fur.

  It's thick and coarse and black. There are highlights of a dark gray scattered throughout, like salt in a sea of pepper.

  These are my legs.

  These are my paws.

  This...this is my fur.

  I look up at Silver, and I'm panting as she reaches toward me. Again her movements are slow, almost hypnotic. She smiles in sympathy, a little pained. Like she can feel the anxiety oozing off of me.

  “Listen...” she murmurs. “Listen to me. Everything's going to be okay, all right? Everything's going to be okay.”

  But everything does not, in fact, feel like it's going to be okay.

  In fact, everything feels like it it's very much not okay and will never be okay again.

  My heart is hammering against my rib cage, over and over again, with the kind of insistence that's going to drill a hole through my bones.

  And then, the old instinct rises.

  Fight or flight.

  Fight or flight...or die.

  And I'm just not the fighting sort.

  I need to move, or my heart is going to explode out of my chest.

  I need to move, because if I don't, I am going to die.

  So...I move.

  I turn, and I bolt.

  Away from Silver.

  Away from everything.

  The motel door is made
of metal, but the hinges are old, and I'd bet a dollar or two that it's been kicked in more than once.

  It gives away easily beneath my bulk as I barrel down on it.

  It gives way, and then there's the unforgiving wind, screaming around me, snow billowing and blinding.

  And cold, supreme cold, covers me like a blanket made of pins.

  The motel door opens out onto the parking lot. The motel is one story. I take in these facts from some sort of distant place.

  And I set off straight ahead.

  I run.

  There's not much to see in the snow, but there are shadows, absence of shadows. The world is a deep, dark gray, but there's just enough light to see by, and that's all that matters.

  My paws thunder across the frozen pavement, and then—when I cross the parking lot and head toward the stand of trees on the other side of the road—they crunch on the densely packed snow.

  I flounder—the snow is up to my chest—and I scrabble, nails sliding on the road, on the frozen earth, but once I'm beneath the trees, I find my balance.

  The searing air burns my lungs as I take in great breaths: I need more oxygen to keep up my panicked pace. My entire being is full of terror, and I can feel the snow and pine needles beneath my feet, but in a very distant place.

  So distant, it's another universe.

  But as I breathe deeper, faster, panting, as my shoulders burn, moving in unpracticed patterns, I start to feel my body, actually feel it in all its alien power.

  And it is powerful.

  I cover ground like a hawk skimming above trees, fast as man-made machinery, but there's nothing unnatural in the thrust of my muscles, in the inherently pleasing sensation of lungs expanding and filling.

  The shadows of the looming trunks pass me in an increasing blur, and I realize that I'm running so fast it feels heady...

  It feels...

  Good.

  The winter is all around me, from my fur coated with sharp ice and melting snow to the cold air entering my lungs. But...I'm not cold, not really. I inhale, and the frozen air is invigorating.

  Exciting.

  As my paws thunder across the snowy forest floor, my breathing begins to find a strange rhythm. I've never been one for working out pretty much ever in my life, but there were times at school, at track meets, when I'd ignore my screaming muscles and screaming lungs and screaming body parts that did not, under any circumstances, want to be doing what I was doing...