Songs of Love and Darkness
Page 13
A ripple of excitement ran around the classroom as we walked in.
“Don’t worry,” I said calmly. “He’s had a good run this morning, so he’ll probably just lie on the floor and go to sleep while I talk. Don’t any of you guys copy him.”
That got a laugh, bigger than it deserved. I was suddenly much more interesting to my students.
“What kind of a dog is that?” one of the girls asked.
“He’s a wolf.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cody.” It just came out. All through the weekend I had called him by various terms of endearment, but hadn’t thought about changing the name Cody had given him.
But now, quite suddenly, I had done it.
The animal himself raised his head and looked at me when I spoke Cody’s name, recognizing it, and it was obvious from the caught breaths and exchange of looks among the students that they had, too. Everybody had heard the news of the death of the local drug dealer, Cody “Wolf-man” Vela, most of them in far more lurid, graphic detail than I’d picked up from local radio.
I wondered if I’d just made a huge mistake and put my job on the line. But I couldn’t have done anything else.
Luckily, the kids loved him, and weren’t going to do or say anything that would get him banned. They were more attentive in class, and although word must have spread fairly quickly around campus, even if it caused Nadia to wonder about my honesty, I didn’t get called into her office again. Maybe death had absolved me; anyway, nobody could blame an innocent animal for the sins of his master, and somebody had to look after him. I found out that my wolf wasn’t the first animal to become an accepted fixture on campus: There was a cat in the science department, some teachers had brought their dogs, and, in one case, a parrot, without causing any trouble.
Over the next few days, I learned more about Cody’s death than I really wanted to know. Probably no death by violence is easy, but his had been especially hard; it was referred to as a “punishment killing,” with talk of mutilation and torture. Some people wondered if the wolf-man’s famous pet had managed to inflict any damage on his killers—it might help the police if anyone was reported with unexplained animal bites. It was widely assumed that Cody’s wolf must now be dead, too. Such is the fearsome reputation of the wolf; few would believe that he would sooner hide, or run away, than attack armed men. I knew better, knew it was foolish to judge an animal by human values, yet even I couldn’t help feeling that Lobo had let Cody down. His response seemed shameful and cowardly. The man who had saved his life was dead, and the wolf hadn’t done a thing to stop his murder, hadn’t tried to rip his killers’ throats out.
And yet, if he had attacked armed men, he’d be dead too, and I couldn’t bear that.
Although I mourned the loss of the man I could have loved, the truth was that I’d never really known him. The wolf to whom I’d given his name was more real, and now even more important to me. Maybe it was because I now had the responsibility for another life, so I couldn’t afford to indulge in feeling sorry for myself, but the two weeks that followed Cody’s death were rich and interesting, full of life, hardly a sorrowful time at all.
At the end of October, a norther blew in, and as I felt the cold for the first time since leaving Chicago, I put on my favorite sweater and rust-colored corduroy pants, and felt my spirits rise.
Cody’s mood changed, too, that day, but not, like mine, for the better. He seemed restless, distracted, and somehow aloof from me, not his usual self at all. Despite a good, long run, he didn’t snooze through class but sat with his ears pricked, glancing at the door every now and then as if waiting for someone who never came. When a couple of students tried to pet him, he retreated under my desk. After we got home, it was worse. He didn’t want to stay in the trailer with me, but every time I let him out, I had to get up again a few minutes later to answer his anxious scratching at the door.
“Cody, make up your mind!” I told him. “It’s too cold to leave the damn door open tonight!”
A minute later, he went out again. I settled down to mark some essays, and this time I wasn’t disturbed for almost an hour, when I heard a low but terrible sound outside, a deep groan that sounded almost human.
I jumped up and flung the door open, calling his name. It was dark outside, the profound darkness of night in the country, but even deeper than usual because there was no moon. A single, low-energy bulb fixed to the right of the doorframe cast a little murky light in a small semicircle around the steps, but beyond that I was blind.
“Cody?” I called again, my voice strained and cracking with worry. “Cody, sweetheart, where are you? Come here, Cody!” I hurried down the steps.
“Katherine?” The voice came out of the darkness, a voice I’d never expected to hear again.
Then a man walked out of the darkness, and it was Cody Vela, alive, stark naked, and staring at me with a look that mingled confusion and longing. He came closer still, close enough to smell, and the scent of sweat and musk took me back to the day we’d met, and stirred the same desire.
“I thought you were dead!” I cried.
“Me, too.” He shivered convulsively, and he reached for me at the same moment I reached for him, and then we were hugging each other, and it was crazy, but I’d never wanted anyone so much in my life, and nothing else mattered. I could feel that he felt the same way, and when he started to nuzzle my neck, and his hands moved down to squeeze and caress my bottom, I almost fell onto the ground with him. But even though he was naked, I wasn’t, and the awkwardness of trying to get undressed was just enough to give me pause, and so I managed to pull him inside, where it was warm, and we could make love in the comfort of my bed.
The first time was hungry and desperate, but after that we were able to take things more slowly, indulging in sensuality and exploration, teasing and playing, until, finally, resting, we talked.
I expected an explanation, a movie-worthy plot involving doubles and disinformation, or lies and kidnapping, but there was nothing like that. He had no idea how he’d turned up naked and disoriented in the woods outside my trailer.
His last memory before that was of intense, agonizing pain. He’d been on the edge of death, horribly tortured by three men, one of whom he knew, two he’d never seen before: “But I’d know them again,” he said darkly.
The traumatic memories made him break out in a cold sweat; although he spared me the gory details, his hands went convulsively to his genitals, ears, mouth, knees, chest, seeking the remembered damage.
But he was whole, there were no wounds, not a trace of any injury, as I had already so pleasurably discovered. He’d switched on the small, pink-shaded light on the night table as we talked, and it was clear to us both that his lean, muscular body was unmarked except for the pale, curved line of a very old scar on the side of his neck, and a screaming face tattooed on his left bicep.
I thought about drugs, hypnotism, false memories, but before I could say anything he continued. “I wanted to die. After what they’d done to me, I knew I couldn’t live, but dying was so hellishly slow. But then I knew it was happening, because the pain wasn’t so bad, and I couldn’t see, or hear those bastards taunting me anymore—I realized they must have taken me somewhere, and left me, because I wasn’t in my house anymore. I wasn’t tied to a chair. I was curled up on my side, on the ground, outside—hard earth—sticky with blood, but not really hurting, and Lobo was licking my face.”
He reared up in bed, alarmed. “Lobo! I yelled at him to run when those guys grabbed me—but he must have come back. If those bastards got him—”
“He’s fine,” I said, putting my arms around him and hugging him tight. “He came here to me the morning that … that they said you were dead. I’ve been looking after him. He’s outside—do you want me to—?”
I started to get up, but he pulled me back until we were both lying down again. “Later. Long as I know he’s okay.”
“So Lobo found you,” I said. “And th
en what, the police arrived? They took you to the hospital?” I was struggling to make sense of it.
He made a small, negative movement with his head on the pillow. “No cops, no doctors, no hospital. Just Lobo. But that wasn’t right, because he was huge—or I was really little—and he put his head down and picked me up, very gently, in his mouth.
“I wasn’t scared. I was glad. I relaxed, and knew he was going to take care of me. I thought I’d died and been born again as a wolf cub—as one of Lobo’s pups. I thought, I get to have another chance at life, this time as a wolf, and I thought maybe that would be better than what I was the first time around.”
I said, “So you died and turned into a wolf?”
He laughed, and rolled on top of me. “Does this feel like wolf to you? Is this fur? Are these claws? Is my nose cold?” He licked my face, then kissed me and laughed again. “I’m not dead, and I am definitely still a man!”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, my love. I’m just telling you the last thing I remember, I guess it was a dream, and I was asleep until I woke up in the dark out there and heard you call my name.” His face wrinkled in puzzlement. “How did you know I was there?”
“I didn’t. I thought you were dead, I told you.” I closed my eyes and held on to him as tightly as I could, feeling the unmistakable warmth and weight of him pressing me against the bed, inhaling his scent, yet even still fighting the fear that I’d lost my mind. “Oh, this must be a dream,” I said sadly.
“Does this feel like a dream?” he asked. “How about this? Hmmm?”
Surely no dream could ever be so real, so physical.
We made love until sleep overwhelmed us both.
When I woke, the little room was full of daylight, and I was alone in a bed with tumbled sheets and the heavy, cloying odor of sex. He must have just gotten up to go to the bathroom, I told myself, but anxiety made me sit bolt upright, and I couldn’t keep it out of my voice as I called, “Cody?”
There, blocking the doorway, in his customary sleeping spot, was the wolf. He lifted his head in response to his name and sleepily blinked his amber eyes. I recognized the animal I loved, but this time I also saw a second awareness, a different intelligence, looking back at me, and I knew.
I CAN’T SAY that I understand, even now, but there’s no doubt that the wolf Cody rescued was no ordinary animal. Once upon a time, a man called Cody saved a wolf. Later, when the man was about to die, that wolf saved him, taking his soul inside himself. I called the wolf Cody before I knew how true that was.
He comes out at the dark of the moon. For me, it’s wonderful. Life has been good to me. I have my work, the company of my wolf, and four nights a month, the undivided attention of my lover. For him, he’s told me, the wolf-time passes like sleep. He’s conscious, he can think like the man he was only during the moon-dark days, and although he loves me dearly, there’s more to life than love. I’m not afraid of him, but there are some bad men out there who should be.
When you really think about it, which is more frightening: a man who turns into a wolf, or a wolf who becomes a man?
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN has been called “the American Tolkien,” and his books, including the volumes in his landmark A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, have been on bestseller lists around the world. He’s won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards®, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. As editor, he’s produced the long-running Wild Cards anthology series as well as the New Voices series and others. He’s also worked for Hollywood and television and was part of the creative team behind such shows as Beauty and the Beast and the revival of The Twilight Zone.
GARDNER DOZOIS has won fifteen Hugo Awards and thirty-four Locus Awards for his editing work, as well as two Nebula Awards® for his own writing. He was the editor of the leading science fiction magazine Asimov’s Science Fiction for eighteen years, and is also the editor of the annual anthology series The Year’s Best Science Fiction, now in its twenty-eighth annual collection. He is the author or editor of more than a hundred books.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Rooftops copyright © 2010 by Carrie Vaughn LLC
Hurt Me copyright © 2010 by M.L.N. Hanover
The Demon Dancer copyright © 2010 by Mary Jo Putney
Man in the Mirror copyright © 2010 by Yasmine Galenorn
His Wolf copyright © 2010 by Lisa Tuttle
These titles were previously published in an anthology titled Songs of Love and Death
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition October 2012
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ISBN: 978-1-4767-0875-1
eISBN-13: 978-1-4767-0875-1