The Last Wolf

by Maria Vale

  I prod him with my nose until he gets up again. Clearly, the first thing that needs to be fixed is his leg position. He stands like a nursling, with his paws wide apart. Makes me wonder when he last shifted.

  This time, I swing my head, bumping against his legs. I pull my own bum leg down as far as I can. It doesn’t matter that a tearing pain shoots through my hip; I have to be able to show him what a proper wolf stride is supposed to look like, with his legs nearly lined up straight down the center of his chest.

  I walk slowly in front of him. Front right paw forward, rear left paw forward, almost kicking the front left paw forward, then the rear right paw. I bark at him, trying to encourage him to move, but he startles and his hind legs wobble and he sits on his tail, mystified. He holds up his paws, first one, then the other, and opens his mouth, his tongue flapping and his gums slapping, like he expects something to come out.

  I slump down on a bed of soft moss, watching my life flash before my eyes, followed in quick succession by a roly-poly and an oblivious shrew. I bat at the shrew. They’re not particularly good eating, because their spit tastes bad and numbs the tongue, but I can’t help myself and bat at it again. And again. And then I’m up on my paws and running around and herding the angry shrew toward Ti. Maybe all he needs is prey to get him up and moving.

  He hasn’t had much to eat, and I hear his stomach grumble, but he shows no interest in hunting the shrew. Maybe…I hold its hindquarters under my paw and bite off its head, so Ti can eat it without having to deal with shrew spit.

  He just stares at me forlornly and then jerks to the side and stumbles away.

  What a crappy wolf.

  * * *

  “You’ve got mouse blood,” he says, rubbing at the corner of his mouth, “here.”

  Peanut butter. Dried apples. “It was shrew.” I rub my chin distractedly. I’m sure I packed the bacon.

  “You didn’t get it. It’s on the other side. And there’s more here…” He dampens the cuff of his sleeve with water and wipes hard at my lips. Then he stops. “Are all Pack like you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pulls my lip up, revealing the tips of my canines.

  “Ah…no. Just me.” When they’re in skin, Pack look human, and though their teeth aren’t always perfect—orthodontia is not really an option for werewolves—they look human. My canines are perfectly appropriate to a wolf, but they somehow forget to change when I’m in skin and remain too long, too sharp, and too feral ever to be mistaken for human.

  “Gran Sigeburg always said my leg and my hair and my teeth don’t change the way they’re supposed to because I was premature and never cooked properly.”

  I stare at a bag of acorn flour. Why did I bring acorn flour? “And can I ask you something?”

  He picks up the peanut butter.

  “When exactly did you last change?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A while.”

  “But this.” I sweep my finger around my neck. “And this.” I point to the spot on my own body where he now has the aster scar. “Those come from fights with wolves.”

  “The men who did this”—he lays his hand on his stomach—“had changed so they could track me. I hadn’t changed. It wasn’t meant to be a fight; it was meant to be an assassination.”

  Miso. Dried eggs. He doesn’t say anything about his neck. Halloumi.

  He looks at all the things I’ve pulled out of the backpack. “Is it that you just don’t like meat?”

  “You know that’s not true. I brought you a bunny this morning.” I scratch at my back and yawn wide. “It was nummy. But that wasn’t really what you meant, was it? What you meant is, do you have carrion in that backpack?”

  “Carrion sounds disgusting, but something that isn’t still breathing would be nice,” he says.

  “Do you really not hunt?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “But you don’t eat what you kill?”

  “No.”

  “Now you see? That…that’s just a sin.”

  “I think,” he says, scooping a finger full of peanut butter, “it depends on your perspective.”

  He pops the peanut butter into his mouth.

  “What a human. You kill without eating, talk without meaning, and turn without changing.”

  “What do you mean turn without changing? What do you think I was doing crawling around on all fours?”

  “You believe what you want, but you’re not really a wolf. You’re just a man in a wolf suit.”

  I finally find the dinged aluminum bento box. “Here it is. Bacon.”

  He opens the box and shakes the broken crumbs of dried marinated tempeh strips into his palm.

  They were a lot longer when I put them in.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, I had turkey for breakfast and got a feather—one of the tricky little undercarriage ones—caught in my throat. Ti drank his coffee and ate gorp and watched me twisting and turning to try to cough it out.

  I really don’t understand why humans give thanks for turkeys except that they’re stupid and clumsy and easy to catch whether you’re a sickly Pilgrim or a crippled wolf.

  Finally, I give up and change, because the simple act of changing usually causes the things that plague us in one guise to fall off or go away. As soon as I start, the feather is dislodged, and I cough it out easily. I’m blind still, and deaf, but I can feel a broad hand so warm on my naked hip. I try to struggle away, pulling with contorting front paws on the grass, but a strangled mewl of protest is all I can manage.

  He keeps feeling the hip until the joint pops up from its crippled position and falls back into my better human arrangement. His fingers prod and push, the pressure painful and a relief in turns.

  As the throbbing waves begin to ebb, he puts his hands on his knees and stands up.

  “I think it’s nothing but a joint that dislocates when you change.”

  “That’s what our doctors said too.”

  “Then why don’t they just pop it back?” he asks, pouring himself another coffee.

  “Because if I was whole during the rest of the month, I would be more vulnerable during the Iron Moon when no one could fix it. I have to be able to function this way.”

  The spoon hits against the enamel cup—trink-trunk-trink-trunk—as he slowly stirs in the sugar.

  “When are you going to be ready?”

  “Hmmph. I’m not even human until my second cup of coffee,” he says and takes another sip.

  “That is the whole point. The Pack thinks you’re still healing, but they’ll send someone to check on us soon, and they’ll see that you’re miraculously cured, and then we’ll have to fight the Alphas of my echelon, and if we lose against them, you’re no worse off than when you started, but me? I’ve lost everything. Do you hear me? Everything.” My breaths have become shorter, and my voice has moved up an octave, dangerously close to the yipping of a panicked fox. “You need to take this seriously.”

  “I do take it seriously,” he says, taking another sip of coffee. “I happen to be a very good fighter.”

  “You also happen to be a very crappy wolf.” I slap the cup from his hand.

  As I fall back to the ground, the last thing I see before the change takes my senses is Tiberius staring sadly into the empty coffeepot. While my ears are filled with static and my eyes with the usual dense veil of floaters, Ti puts his coffee-warmed hand on my hip. At first it feels kind of nice, kind of soothing and sensual and…

  I bite him. He yanked my leg free of the joint and turned it, so I bit him. Not because it hurt, but because it unleashed a frigging avalanche of pain. Pain that leaves me panting and dragging my leg. He scuttles back as I chase after, snapping at him. Then I stop, because although it is a little numb, I realize that my leg can actually touch the ground. I stretch it out tentati
vely at first and then more firmly.

  I know I shouldn’t indulge in this, but maybe just once. So I can show Ti how a real wolf is supposed to move. Cantering around the Clearing, I run into the woods, jumping over branches and blowdown and bushes that I would have had to skirt before.

  Running back, I move faster and faster, and when I hit the Clearing, I bound.

  Bounding.

  It’s what wolves do: pushing off with their back paws and diving up into the opalescent sky before falling back to earth on their front paws, then starting all over again. Bounding propels proper wolves over long grasses and thick snow and each other. It sends them high enough so that when they come down, their weight crashes through the crunchy ice into the subnivean caverns of voles, the buttered popcorn of a wolf’s winter diet.

  I twist in the air and bound some more until the huge, black wolf blunders after me. I bounce against his flanks and nip at his tail and circle his nose with my jaws. I push his tail up. He always forgets about the tail and just drags it behind him like a thoughtless toddler with a blanket.

  He keeps on with his slow, measured walking. I sniff at his foreleg and lick at the spot where I bit him. He noses me away. I squat low in front of him, nipping at his muzzle and jumping away. I do it again and again until he finally gets irritated and tries to nip back, and I leap a yard into the air with my perfect legs. When I hit the grass, I churn it up into his face as I race away.

  Now he moves faster, coordinating his legs. It’s stuttering at first like a pup, but soon he is scrambling after me. He rounds a copse of tamaracks and loses his footing among the fallen needles and worries the warblers. I run across the edge of the bog, but he comes to a stop, staring first at his muck-covered feet and then at me with dejected eyes. He sneezes and licks his nose at the smell and turns once again to the Clearing.

  I refuse to let him. I harry him and tease him and force him to chase me and bring him round until he moves not fast, but not slow and spurtive either. Zigzagging through a throttle of spruce seedlings, I settle into a slow trot, because I want him to follow close behind. I make a break for the high sedges and race through right where the big rock juts over Clear Pond.

  I’m flying.

  Before I hit the water, I hear the scuttle of claws failing to find purchase on schist.

  Another, bigger splash hits the water moments after I do.

  I paddle contentedly while he rights himself and splutters. But he’s so big that when he does right himself, his paws reach bottom, and he bounds toward me until we are paddling flank to flank.

  I clamber up on a submerged rock in the middle and lie on my back, my right leg sagging over the side. It’s something I do because there’s a spring here and the icy water lapping against my hip is usually a relief.

  Something struggles to the shore and flops down. I twist my head and shoulders, watching the huge shadow settle in next to the wooden post that holds the bright-orange ice rescue sled. That’s how I lose my purchase on the slick rock, splashing into the water. My front paws churning furiously, I head toward him, my nose barely above water. Ti props his head on his front paws.

  When I finally make shore, he rolls his eyes.

  Even the littlest pup knows not to annoy a wet wolf. Knows to wait until after the shake-off. Our fur carries a lot of water.

  Ti tries to retaliate, but he doesn’t understand that it’s not just the shaking; it’s the torquing. I show him how to do it, slowly shaking my hips one way, my shoulders the other, like I’m wringing myself out. He gives it a try, but the force of his powerful shoulders sends his hind legs flying up, and he falls to his side, taking me down too. Struggling to find his footing, he steps on my tail, pinning me down, and then he trips over me, and we end up tangled together. His breaths are shallow like a man. His heartbeat is slow and human too.

  Pretending to be winded, I lay my muzzle across his damp, warm fur and search through the carrion and steel for his wild, for that lovely smell of crushed bone and evergreen.

  Nearby, someone gives an ostentatious yawn followed by a snap of jaws. Ti looks into the woods. As soon as I see the big, gray wolf with dark markings, I leap up, my own wolfish heart sinking.

  Tara is John’s Beta. She sneezes and then licks her nose. Ti raises himself to his full height, his legs no longer splayed but pulled into correct alignment under the line of his body. You don’t get to be the Great North’s Beta by being a coward, but even Tara steps back, disconcerted by his size.

  Since she wasn’t at our Dæling, this is her first encounter with Ti in any form. She circles us, scenting and growling. She pushes her nose between Ti’s legs, checking for the wound that she knows must be healed if he’s shifting and swimming.

  He snaps at her, and she snarls, straightening her back, her thighs tight, her ruff bristling. Ti plants his front feet, his rear legs pawing the ground. He refuses to lower his eyes. Instead, he shakes his body, torquing faster than I’d shown him so that he sends spray after deliberate spray toward Tara.

  She blinks twice, clearing the water from her eyes, and lays her head next to mine. She howls once, waiting for a response before sprinting to the forest.

  Ti bumps at me as I head slowly toward the Clearing. What he doesn’t understand—and I can’t tell him—is that we have been found out, and tomorrow we will have to go home.

  When I look back, Ti is sitting on his haunches, his tail splayed behind him, looking at his raised paw. He turns for me to see. It’s nothing, just a burr between the pads. Without a second thought, I nip it out neatly with my teeth.

  The man in a wolf suit fumbles up and starts back quickly toward the comforts of camp and the fire and the food in packages. He hesitates, looking over his shoulder to make sure I’m coming.

  For all sorts of reasons, I wish we had more time.

  * * *

  Does Tiberius know about fire fairies? Doubt it. Doesn’t seem like he had anyone to guide him through the pitfalls and marvels of our dual nature. Sad to think that nobody ever told him stories about the mischievous sprites who lull pups into a trance and then dance their incendiary dance in our fur.

  Poking the embers with a green stick makes more fire fairies zip into the air, looking for dry fur. There is none here. Just human skin and damp, musty cotton. Maybe it was spending these hours wild, but Ti is actually warm enough. Too warm, he says and pulls off the sweatshirt. His body twists to the side as he pulls it over his head. For just a moment, I see the curved line that leads down from the top of his hip below his waistband. I poke furiously at the embers.

  He starts to unbutton the flannel shirt. He makes short work of it, his fingers flying over the buttons. I stare so hard at the fire that the flames dry out my eyes. He lies back, the muscles moving across his hard chest as he does. His body isn’t like the ones I’ve seen in human underwear ads, where men’s muscles divide into compartments like egg cartons. Ti’s body is thick and burly and threaded with lines marking muscle and tendon and vessel and vein. The scars that decorate his firelight-burnished skin glow like black runes.

  We were always taught that fire fairies loved us best and tormented us most when we were wild, but I think maybe they’re just as mischievous when we’re in skin, because there’s a sharp gnawing burn at the join of my neck, at my breasts, and burrowing deep inside my womb.

  Tiberius stretches out on the bed pad, cradling his head on his crossed arms. His eyes closed, his chest expands slowly while his nose flares.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks without opening his eyes.

  Let’s see… That I want to lie on top of you and feel your belly against mine. That I want to taste your mouth. That I want to tongue your skin. That I want you to harden and tear into my…

  “Nothing.”

  When he moves his leg, his ankle brushes against my calf. It’s just the accidental whisper of skin against skin, but there’s a rea
son we fight wolf and fuck human, and it’s skin.

  I scratch furiously at my leg with one hand and stir up more fire fairies with the other, sending them flying into the sky. I make the mistake of looking toward him. Now his eyes watch me, all black with shards of gold, like embers rising in the autumn night.

  Standing quickly, my hands fisted under the hem of my shirt to keep it away from my painfully sensitive breasts, I mumble vague excuses, bank the fire, and then start for the woods and the cedar stump where I sleep.

  At the entrance of his tent, he stops. He doesn’t turn much, just a little, looking toward the overcast night sky. In this low light, his eyes glow green. Ours do too, when we’re wild and the lucidum in our eyes concentrates even the feeblest light. But it doesn’t happen when we’re in skin. Never in skin.

  “You know…when you were stitching me up, I had a dream,” he says.

  “Really?” I squeak.

  “The moon came down from the sky. She touched me here,” he says, rubbing his hand along his bare chest. “And she touched me here.”

  He turns to me with those glowing eyes, his hand settling at his waistband.

  I’m already crashing through the forest cover when he calls out. “I didn’t mind.”

  Chapter 7

  As inefficient as it is, we will walk to Home Pond on two legs.

  Me, I need nothing more than water, a good cedar stump, and a bunny. But humans… Ack. Humans need tents against rain and clothes against wind and fire against cold and food against hunger and other stuff against other eventualities—and then they need a backpack to put it in and a back to carry it on.

  We—I—pack slowly. A slow breakfast. A leisurely wash in Clear Pond.

  A howl rumbles across the woods from Home Pond, telling me to get a move on.

  I pull on the backpack, and that’s when it hits me with all the force of a bull moose that a crappy wolf and a crippled wolf really have no chance against Solveig and Eudemos, and I will almost certainly be exiled, not in three months’ time but now.