Lunatic Fringe

by Allison Moon

  “Bye,” Lexie called after him, but he didn’t respond.

  Renee flipped off the lights, bank by bank, stoic silence replacing the hum of florescence. She stood outside the lab, still jingling her keys. Her ill mood hung over both their heads as Renee locked the door behind them and followed her out.

  “My partner bailed on me. I don’t know if you noticed,” Lexie said.

  “You shouldn’t have to rely on someone else to do your work. We don’t pair people up because it’s a two-woman job, we do it because rats are expensive and time-consuming to raise.” Renee’s frank lack of sympathy took Lexie by surprise.

  “How can you measure me against the other students when I’m working alone?” Lexie demanded.

  “I’m not measuring you against the other students, I’m measuring you against your potential. That sanctimonious little herbivore wasn’t helping you anyway.” Renee’s step quickened, her long legs making it difficult for Lexie to keep up. “You need to learn to focus on the task at hand and stop flirting with boys when you need to work.”

  Lexie stopped short. “Excuse me? Duane’s a friend. He was helping.”

  “Whatever. I don’t give a shit about your crushes. We need to talk.”

  Lexie bit her lip. The opinions that Renee and the rest had trained Lexie to express now percolated in her head, but all her criticisms were aimed back at the Pack and their hypocrisy. She couldn’t wait to return to Archer’s side, where she could be quiet and she could be understood.

  “About that night--” Renee whispered.

  Lexie shook her head, not wanting to remember any of that weekend’s events, except for Archer’s body weight, her taste, and her voice. The rest was detritus she was happy to let unravel like waking from a nightmare.

  “Why did you run?” Renee kept her voice low, but Lexie could still hear the hurt behind it.

  Outside, the sun was warm and the sky was clear. Lexie wished she was lying naked in the treehouse with Archer instead of fighting with Renee. “You were beating the shit out of a stranger while he pleaded for his life. What kind of sociopath would stick around for that?”

  “He was a werewolf,” Renee said at full volume, forgetting herself for a moment. She lowered her voice to a hiss. “He was. He changed right after you ran away.”

  “I believe you.”

  Renee narrowed her eyes, waiting as a cloud of students scurried by.

  “You do?” Renee shook her head. “Of course you do. Then why did you run?”

  “I couldn’t watch you do that.”

  “It’s not so bad. They don’t die until they turn. Then it’s easy to kill them.”

  Lexie looked down at the sidewalk, biting her tongue. She wanted to trust Renee. She needed another anchor on this wicked journey, unsure that she could trust her own judgment when it was so clearly clouded by her growing love of Archer.

  “What is going on with you all?” Lexie asked. “I was so excited to meet the Pack. And now . . .”

  “Just the Pack?” Renee asked.

  Lexie shook her head, unsure of Renee’s meaning.

  “Never mind. I just thought you and I had something going.” She tried to dismiss her concern with a flick of her hand, but disappointment dragged forehead to furrow. “Whatever. Fuck it. I know you’ve got a new thing going on.”

  “You do?”

  Renee rolled her eyes.

  “Oh,” Lexie’s ears grew warm. Her mind strayed to Archer laying naked in a sunbeam on the slatted floor of what was becoming their home. Guilt slithered against her heart. She liked Renee, even against her better judgment, and perhaps in different circumstances she would like to lay alongside her and wonder at the possibilities and permutations of their bodies. But Lexie was so enraptured with Archer that even homework came in a distant second to the mindless bliss of idling hours away in her arms.

  Renee shook her head and swatted away Lexie’s unspoken rebuff. “Forget I said anything.” She sighed, changing the subject with another confession. “We’re losing, Lexie.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve been fighting the werewolves for years and their numbers have only grown. We’re losing. And Blythe thinks you might help.”

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t know why Blythe wants you. Maybe because you know this area. Whatever the reason, she was pretty upset when you ran.”

  “I didn’t believe you then.”

  “What changed?”

  Lexie sighed, wishing she could confide in Renee, but listening to her better judgment when it told her to keep some of her cards close to her chest. “I asked around.”

  “Lexie, I have never been anything but honest with you, so please trust me now. Blythe thinks you’re special, and I’m inclined to believe her. I’m sorry we scared you; I’ve been at this for so long, I forget how ugly it can seem. I don’t blame you for running. But the fact is, we need your help. Blythe and I disagree on a lot of things. If I were in control, a whole hell of a lot would be different. But right now, Blythe’s in charge, and she’s got her own ideas of how to handle this situation. And one of those ideas is getting you involved.”

  Lexie shook her head. “This is all about werewolves, huh?”

  “We like you, Lexie. We just get lost in our own shit sometimes. But we’re working on it. I’m working on it.”

  “Okay,” Lexie said.

  “So are you in?” Renee asked. “We have another mission next week. Blythe insists you come along.”

  “After bathing in the majestic scene at the campfire, my family returned to our den and spoke of what was to come. Our parents explained to us the choice we faced, but it was clear that it had been agreed upon already. Under the light of the full moon, our tiny Pack decided to become human.

  “My brother, Sage, abhorred the idea, to live in hiding alongside those who would delight in and profit from the murder of our family. So, he chose instead to venture out on his own, staying in wolf-form, to find a partner and create his own pack. My parents were devastated to lose him at such a young age, but they didn’t stop him. They knew no better if their plan was the right one. That night he walked north, towards the tundra, where he believed no murderous human would follow.

  “After watching Sage disappear into the night, the three of us remained, huddled in our cave, contemplating our future. We spoke of where we would go, who we would be. My father was the first to decide. He chose to be a male, knowing the privileges available to him in that role, and it hewed to his honed skills of fighting and hunting. As a human-shaped father and husband, he could perform roles not so different between pack life and human life. He modeled himself after a French naturalist who was one of the first to encounter the natives in our territory--a fair man, with blue eyes, silver hair, a strong nose, and a gentle mouth. He stood with dignity and intelligence. His handsomeness was subtle yet undeniable. That choice fit my father well; he was the fairest of all the werewolves of our pack, with light grey fur and cool, blue eyes. It was a safe choice, a right choice. He would be able to provide and care for our family moving through many communities with the privilege of a white man.

  My mother thought longer about it, knowing too well the meager status of women in human societies. She would have to sacrifice her role as the leader of a tribe and subsume her natural alpha status to conform to the rules ascribed to the human gender. It was a difficult choice, but she longed to be openly partnered with my father, which would be infinitely easier, particularly with a child, if she were in female form. She recalled a klootchman from the tribe near our territory. She was an elder, a warrior in her youth who had used her acumen in war to become a healer and a mother once she reached the proper age. Her hair was as black as coal, her eyes were dark and deep. My mother, too, was black, with classic lupine yellow eyes. As with my father, it was a perfect fit.

  “My parents’ minds made up, they looked to me, their tiny, clumsy cub. I didn’t know what they were asking of me at first. They were becoming human; I k
new I’d do the same. But, they gave me a choice. They asked me what I wanted to look like, what kind of human I wanted to be. I had only known few humans in my short life; I had little to go on. To give me, so young, the choice among infinite paths . . .”

  Lexie was stunned with envy. To choose the body, the face, the identity of who you wanted to be? A pit formed in her stomach, pulsing with all the self-loathing she had felt for a lifetime. To choose to be someone else, to be given the option as soon as she developed the faculty to speak in full sentences, to decide the path her life would take based on a childhood choice?

  “What did you do?”

  “What would you do?” Archer raised an eyebrow.

  “I’d pick the most beautiful person I knew.”

  Archer placed her finger on the tip of her nose. Bingo.

  “I knew that night I wanted to be that woman I saw by the fireside. I wanted to dance and spin and smile like that, every day for the rest of my life. I thought that’s what womanhood was. Freedom.”

  “What do you think now?”

  Archer laughed heartily as her answer.

  “The three of us stood in the moonlight that night and transformed ourselves, our minds holding onto the images of our human forms, of our new family, of our new life together, unafraid of being gunned down in the night.”

  The story seemed to be over. Archer fell silent, letting the words of her story echo and die. Lexie wondered how often she’d told it and felt privileged and oppressed to be included in that number.

  The treehouse glowed like a golden cathedral, glorious in the afternoon sun. Nothing, save the living roof of cedar needles, separated their bodies from the rays peering down upon them. For a few precious minutes every afternoon, the sunlight glanced off the creek below, casting shimmering reflections against the canopy above their heads. Both Lexie and Archer lay naked on the fleece, watching them undulate overhead, a plate of fruit, dried meats and cheeses between them.

  They had spent every afternoon this way, since their first morning in the treehouse together. In that time, Archer had shared many stories with Lexie, about her time on the road, bits about her life in Milton years ago, and her travels abroad. Lexie marveled that she had grown up so near to Archer and wondered if they had ever crossed paths when she was younger. This was the first time, though, that Archer had told her this story.

  “So, you’ve looked exactly the same for . . .”

  “A hundred seventy-five years? Yep,” Archer replied, her right cheek dimpled with a wry grin. “Well, almost. Age is catching up with me now.”

  “You got to choose your gender? Are you not actually female?”

  “Hermaphrodite,” Archer answered, popping a grape into her mouth. “Gender differentiation for my people happens later in life, during puberty, but even then, it’s not nearly as defined as with humans.”

  “Whoa,” Lexie said. “Does this mean I’m not a lesbian?” She was only half-kidding.

  “What do you think?” Archer asked.

  “I don’t know what I am.”

  Archer fell silent, giving Lexie the space to complete her thought. After a solid silent moment, when it was clear that Lexie had nothing to add, Archer spoke. “In my opinion, not knowing what to call yourself is a good thing. Humans are inclined towards making grand edicts, declaring what is true and what isn’t. It’s limiting and a lousy way to go through life.”

  “I think it’d be great to know who I was or what I wanted.”

  “Well, you’re not going to find the answers in labels. Stay open to the transmutability of the world and of your identity. I was born onto this planet as a furry little pup. Now, look at me. Life doesn’t give you one set of rules to live by. If you declare yourself a lesbian, or an anthropologist, or martyr, or criminal, or whatever, life doesn’t lock you into that. Humans are the only animals that imprison others, and they do it to themselves, every day, with the arbitrary rules of behavior that they invent. Other people will spend their lives trying to lock you up. Don’t make it easy for them by conceding your own identity.”

  “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Begin by giving yourself permission to follow love.”

  “Following love is what sent my mother out the door.”

  Archer cocked her head in her signature canid manner.

  Lexie answered her silent query with half of the story. “She followed some guy. I don’t know the details. She left my father and me, in the middle of the night, off to pursue some bullshit romance.”

  “Did it work?”

  “How could it? What a stupid, horrible thing to do!” Lexie sat up, her anger surprising her as much as it felt perfect in its escape.

  “Absolutely, leaving one’s family is a horrible thing to do. I’m not condoning her actions. She was a fool to leave you behind.” Archer stroked Lexie’s leg. “All I’m saying is, sometimes walking away is the lesser crime.”

  Lexie bit her lip to fight the tears, and though they welled in her eyes, none dared escape down her cheeks.

  “Hey,” Archer said, pressing her forehead against Lexie’s. “You deserve a family. You have so much joy to share. I can’t wait to see you light up when surrounded by people you love and who love you. And I know it will happen soon. What I’m saying is that now you get the chance to choose. You didn’t get to choose with your mother. She left without your consent, and that’s unfair.”

  “I just don’t understand. Giving up one family for the hope of another?”

  “Would it be better or worse if she had left for a different reason?” Archer asked.

  Lexie shrugged. “Probably worse. Maybe. No, I don’t know. Better, I think. Leaving town for an education or for adventure, or even for a job, they’re all better than leaving for love.” Lexie spat the last word, though her own first taste of love made her momentarily sympathetic to her mother’s choices.

  “The blessing is that now, in creating your own family, it’s up to you what it will look like.”

  Lexie ran her fingers along Archer’s brow. “Archer, I want it look like you.”

  Archer smiled, her own eyes growing moist. “Me too.”

  She held Lexie’s face in her palms, and they shared a sweet kiss. Lexie’s eyes drifted shut as heavy gray clouds rolled in over the horizon, the wind kicking them along fast enough that she hoped they would drift on without dropping their payloads.

  “So . . .” Lexie asked, after a good long pause, cracking one eye open, “What makes it happen to people?”

  Archer reached for her water glass and took a long swallow. “Oh lord, I don’t know. Hormones, I suppose. What’s it matter?”

  Lexie let a little chuckle escape her mouth.

  Archer looked at her dubiously, not understanding the humor. She tilted her head to the side. Now that she knew Archer’s secrets, Lexie enjoyed noticing the tiny not-quite-human parts of Archer’s mannerisms.

  “What?” Archer said, confused.

  Lexie let the laugh out. “It sounds like classic chauvinism.”

  Archer replied with a blank stare.

  “Seriously? You don’t know about the stereotype that all women are crazy because of hormones?”

  “Sure I do,” Archer replied. “I lived through the women’s lib movement . . . All the women’s lib movements.”

  Lexie laughed again, this time at the sheer ridiculousness that was her life.

  “Nevertheless,” Archer continued, “hormones are very powerful things.”

  “You’re actually serious? You’re telling me that I ‘go crazy’ in sync with the moon because of hormones? That’s hysterical!”

  Archer rolled her eyes. “Craziness is hormone-driven. All emotions are. It’s not gendered.”

  Lexie looked askance at this.

  Archer continued, as even-tempered as ever. “It’s the implication that your emotions aren’t valid because they’re hormone driven that’s the misogynistic part.”

  Lexie pondered it all for a moment, then
reached for a slice of apple, balancing a piece of cheese atop it. The combined textures and sweet versus salty sent a shudder of delight through her mouth. “Well that’s disappointing,” she said, chewing.

  “What were you hoping for, a magic spell?”

  “I don’t know. A mutation, a virus?”

  “We are not a virus,” Archer replied, deadly serious.

  “Ok,” she said, holding up her hands. “Hormones, then.”

  “Yes. That’s my best guess. It explains why human half-bloods change when they get worked up, either sexually or violently. It explains why the shift replaces menstruation in women. And it explains why I find you so damn sexy right now.”

  Lexie blushed. “Har har.”

  “You think I’m kidding?”

  “But you said ‘you’ as if I’m something different from you,” Lexie continued.

  “You are. You’re a half-blood.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I’m a pureblood.”

  Lexie looked at her, grin growing wider. This time Archer was in on the joke and laughed as she replied, “What? It’s true!”

  “That’s a little hierarchical, isn’t it?” Lexie said with faux disapproval. She was mastering the condescending tone that was an essential part of the Pack’s repertoire.

  “I suppose so. But so is the world.”

  Lexie thought for a moment. “But wouldn’t some say that the hierarchy is unfair by design?” Lexie wasn’t sure she knew what alternative she was positing but suspected this would be the basic arc of Blythe’s rebuttal. She decided to take it for a ride.

  Archer smiled as Lexie batted around new ideas like prey between two paws. “Some would insist that the hierarchy is based on antiquated notions of society and class that dictate who gets to be in power based on arbitrary but historically significant qualifiers of intelligence and clout,” Archer spoke in a blas√© tone not unlike Renee’s. “And those people would be wrong.” She drank the water glass empty.

  “But,” Lexie was feeling bold, “don’t you think there is a power difference?”

  “Between whom?” Archer’s voice dropped register. It was almost--but not quite--a growl. It intimidated Lexie more than the Pack but aroused her more, too. Like their love-making, despite how much it unnerved her, she never doubted she could handle it. Just as their bodies tumbled together, she was eager to volley ideas with Archer, feeling genuinely smart and empowered for the first time in her life.