The Last Wolf

by Maria Vale

  I will never see our land again.

  And all I can do is see it. It is beautiful: the dark green of the spruce and the occasional early red of the overeager sugar maples, but it still lacks the depth and dimension it has when I’m wild.

  I can hear geese and hawks and woodpeckers. But the under-leaf scrabbling of mice and the under-bark burrowing of beetles and the faraway bolting of a rabbit are gone. I can’t smell how the sky will change. I can’t smell the fear of the squirrel as it races up the tree. In my skin, the rot of the bog stinks, but when I’m wild, I can smell the heady promise of new life inside the decay.

  “Did you lose something?” Ti asks, tightening the straps of his backpack.

  Too soon, I hear the sounds of home. Wood chopping, a screen door slamming, voices calling, a car starting. Pups mewling and barking and screeching those high-pitched screeches of a trodden tail or a too-hard bite.

  I can’t help but slow down, straining against the inevitable, like the future is on a leash that I can control.

  Voices drop, and the sound of wood chopping stops. Someone shoos the pups inside.

  Varya strides toward us, a heavy ax balanced in her hands. She’s the one who’s been chopping wood, and her skin is slicked with sweat. She sniffs the air warily. Varya came from a Pack that dissolved into chaos under pressure from hunters. She never speaks about what she saw, but she is a stickler for laws and hierarchies.

  Others are gathering behind her. Most are carrying something. A rake, a lacrosse stick, a butcher’s knife. Those who aren’t simply rest their hands on oiled sheaths at their waists.

  My people are a wall of strength, the result of genetics and generations of breeding toward power. Every one of them—every male, every female—towers over me and weighs twice what I do.

  Ti’s expression barely changes. It helps that he’s bigger than any of them. His chest slowly expands as he breathes their scent deep into his lungs. The Pack merely sniffs, reluctant to get too much of that almost-human Shifter smell.

  With a small flurry of activity, the Pack makes way for a man who is nearly as tall as Ti. His thick chest strains against the worn flannel shirt. He wears jeans and heavy work boots. He is bare-handed.

  “The gun?” John asks.

  “Threw it into the bog.” I carefully avoid the question of who did the throwing.

  “Still smells like steel,” our Alpha says, rubbing at his nose. “Solveig and Eudemos?” he asks someone over his shoulder.

  “They’re on their way,” Tara responds, coming up from the back.

  John nods before lapsing into the uncomfortable silence of waiting. The intimidating stares of the Pack only make that silence louder and make me more anxious.

  “So…when were you thinking?” I ask John.

  “We have to wait for Solveig. To coordinate schedules.”

  I nod, trying to look as though I know what it’s like to have a “schedule” that must be “coordinated.”

  Varya taps the poll of the ax in her palm, her eyes boring so hard into Tiberius that I’m doubly grateful when I hear Solveig’s fast tattoo coming toward us.

  “Sorry, John. I came as soon as I could.” She glances warily at Tiberius.

  “I don’t think we have to wait for Eudemos to get the formalities out of the way.” John turns to me. “Silver?”

  I push my shoulders back and stand upright, because our rituals may be ancient and formulaic, but they still deserve all the dignity that a runt in a BU Terriers sweatshirt can give them.

  “Solveig Kerensdottir. By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors and under the watchful eye of our Echelon, our Pack, and our Alpha, we, Quicksilver Nilsdottir and Tiberius—

  “Wait… Ti, what’s your last name?”

  “Leveraux.”

  “Uh, yeah…so under the watchful eye of our Echelon, our Pack, and our Alpha, we, Quicksilver Nilsdottir and Tiberius Leveraux, seek to add our strength to the Great North Pack and prove ourselves worthy of a place at your table. With fang and claw, we will attend upon you tomorrow at… What do you think? 2:00?”

  Solveig reaches into her jeans pocket. “Hold on a sec.” She swipes the home screen on her phone. “I’ve got a lunch meeting at 12:30. Can we make it in the morning? Like 10:00? No, better 9:30. You know.” She shakes her head. “Road work on Route 9.”

  “Okay, fine, then add our strength to yours and all that and… With fang and claw, we will attend upon you tomorrow at 9:30.”

  Solveig squiggles her finger across the touch screen, then slips her phone back into her pocket just as Demos lumbers up behind her.

  After a whispered conversation, Demos nods. Solveig takes the long way, walking around Tiberius and watching him carefully. He doesn’t move. Finally, Solveig says, “Silver” with a nod. “Shifter.” As she walks away, she whispers urgently to Demos.

  “John?” I look briefly at John and then down again to the area between chin and chest as is right and appropriate when addressing the Alpha. “Since we’ll be here tonight and Tiberius”—my voice drops—“isn’t comfortable sleeping wild, I was wondering if—”

  “Tara?”

  “The Boathouse hasn’t been closed up yet.”

  “Fine, use the Boathouse,” he says, turning to leave. “But, Silver? You need to get your things out of the juvenile wing.”

  As soon as he goes, I start to make my way toward the Great Hall. I am small and familiar, and while my packmates don’t get out of the way exactly, I am able to thread through the beefy backs and bulging shoulders. They close behind me, blocking Ti, who stands with his thickly muscled chest pushed hard against the wolfish blockade surrounding him.

  “Oh, for the love of…” I thread my way back, grabbing Ti with one hand and clearing a path with the other. I love my Pack, but sometimes the only thing they understand is an elbow in the brisket.

  It’s not far to the outlying buildings of Home Pond. That’s what we call the pond and the Great Camp of nearly a hundred buildings scattered through the forests around it. Most of those are cottages for paired wolves. Others are work areas, like the Laundry or the Carpentry, but the heart of the Pack is the Great Hall. It is a huge, rambling two-story building of rough wood with a roof pitched high enough to slough off the thick snow of an Adirondack winter.

  This is where we have meals when we’re not hunting. This is where we watch movies. This is where the pups live once they’re no longer nurslings. This is where the Grans, our elders, live too, because it’s warmer and the pups need someone to teach them Pack traditions and stop them from eating the banisters.

  Until a few days ago, this was where I lived.

  I hold the screen door to the Great Hall open for Ti. The inside smells of Pack, of their shoes and muck boots and cheese chews and damp jackets and fur and slobbery rope bones. When the door closes with a loud pop, my heart clenches.

  Soon the screen door that protects the entryway from blackfly in the summer will be replaced by a solid storm door that will protect us from the shattering winds of winter.

  The next door leads straight into the Great Hall itself. It’s huge, with a high cathedral ceiling, but I’ve never really thought about how big it is. To me, it’s just home. The walls glow warm in the late-afternoon light that streams through mullioned windows and dust motes before making diamond patterns on the log walls’ irregular surfaces. And though those logs were peeled more than a century ago, the scent of cedar is still there.

  At the far side is the enormous stone fireplace, flanked by huge piles of wood and a big basket of kindling. Its grandeur is offset by the shabby plaid sofas at either side. No point in replacing them because the pups are always scampering across them, picking loops in the upholstery with their untrained claws and shedding uncontrollably in the summer.

  Graceful birch trunks support the branch-banistered staircase that leads to th
e children’s quarters and the juvenile wing and where, until a few days ago, I spent my entire life.

  Gran Jean stops me.

  “Yes?”

  Gran Jean’s known me since before my eyes opened. She taught me how to use the library. She was the one who told me that John didn’t like books left splayed. “It’s bad for the spine,” she’d said.

  But wolves have little patience for sentiment. The past doesn’t matter; what matters is the position you hold in the Pack hierarchy right now. It doesn’t matter that once upon a time, when I was snug and secure in my mother’s womb, I was the much-anticipated offspring of the Great North’s Alpha pair.

  Within the past few days, I fell from the 14th Echelon’s Kappa to nidling and then—pop!—I dropped right out of the bottom. I am fremde—a stranger, an outsider.

  “John said I needed to get my things from the juvenile wing.”

  Gran Jean eyes me like I’m some opportunistic Chihuahua making outrageous claims to kinship.

  “John said,” I repeat.

  “Juvenile wing and then out,” Gran Jean says, stepping aside to let us pass.

  “Can we grab something from the kitch—”

  “Are you Pack?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Are you guests of the Pack?”

  “No.”

  “Then no,” she says. “Juvenile wing, then out. That’s what John said.”

  It still smells like the 14th Echelon, even though we cleaned and whitewashed the rooms before our Dæling in preparation for the 15th Echelon who now lives here. Most of my echelon have continued their own stumbling steps toward adulthood either Offland or in cabins. Ronan and I probably would have gotten number 98 or one of the other tiny satellite cabins occupied by the wolves nobody much wants to remember.

  Ronan’s bunk is empty. Mine has been taken over by Avery. I know this because my old desk now has a purple cup with AVERY written on it in yellow swirls. Avery is a very strong, beautiful red wolf with dark mahogany markings, and while I remember her scent, I cannot bring to mind a human face. I’ve probably never seen her in skin.

  Did she have to dump all of my stuff on the floor? There wasn’t much: some clothes and a couple of books that belong to me that I have, yes, left splayed, even though it’s bad for the spine. It all could have fit neatly on her bed. It’s not like she’s using it. I can tell by the quarter-bouncing neatness of all the beds that the new juveniles are still sleeping wild.

  And now some pup has chewed the thumbs from both my mittens.

  I toss my stuff into the backpack and then rifle through every drawer and every bag of every juvenile until they have all made at least one contribution to Ti’s dinner.

  For myself, I will eat whatever the wetlands provide, as long as it’s muskrat.

  Chapter 8

  I still sleep wild too. The fascination with sheets doesn’t happen until Pack have spent some time Offland. Usually during college. They come home for the summer and start mumbling something about blackfly, but really they’ve just gotten used to beds and sheets and pillows for their heads. They wear pj’s.

  And every summer, some of these wolves in sleep’s clothing bunk down in the Boathouse.

  The Boathouse has three narrow bays. Two at water level shelter a motley collection of boats: a paddleboat and two rowboats, a catamaran that needs some repairing. Kayaks and canoes hang on the rough-planked walls. Between those bays is a narrow room with a high-pitched roof and shallow clerestory windows. Shoehorned into the back is a tiny shower room that never quite airs out and always smells a little musky.

  Next to it under a single small window is the kitchen, though kitchen seems like a strong word for a hot plate and a sink. The only thing that passes for refrigeration is the hatch in the floor that opens onto a rusted basket where Offlanders keep their stores of Vernors and A&W chilling in the cold waters of Home Pond.

  The furnishings are similarly spare: a functional pine desk, a rocking chair, a couple of old lamps with damp-stained shades, two long pullout beds with sun-bleached cushions, and an ancient warped chest that serves as a footrest and coffee table. Every year, the summer wolves leave piles of summer reading wherever they settle, so there are plenty of new books and magazines.

  “Where should I put these?” Ti asks, holding up his little stack of clothing.

  Putting the books on the floor, I open the chest/coffee table. He drops his clothes to one side, I suppose leaving room for me. “D’you mind if I take a shower?”

  I shake my head. And stare at the empty space in the chest.

  I’m not sure there is any point in unpacking. This time tomorrow, I’ll just pack it all up again. I will go my way, and this man, the root of my misery, will go his way and—

  “What’s this?” asks the root of my misery, a bottle in his hand.

  “Shampoo?”

  “It’s dog shampoo.”

  “It’s what we use. I know humans like to disguise themselves with artificial coconut and fake freesia, but if you do that here, no one will recognize you.”

  He takes a long look at the label before disappearing into the shower.

  What a crappy wolf.

  When he comes out, a towel wrapped around his waist, the steam billows out around him.

  “Turn around.” He circles his finger in the air. “It’s too small in there to get dressed.”

  I look out the french doors that open onto the dock, with its two big Adirondack chairs and the countless claw marks of summer wolves who race across the wood before launching themselves into the pond.

  And the reflection of the man standing naked behind me, briskly drying his shaved head.

  The paddleboat creaks and jostles whenever the water is disturbed. The first frost will come before long, and then Home Pond will be covered with what looks like crumpled and smoothed foil.

  “Tiberius Leveraux, huh? If I Google you,” I blurt out, “what will I find?”

  “Nothing.” He moves on to his well-muscled arms. “If I Google ‘Quicksilver’ whatever it was…”

  “Nilsdottir.”

  “If I Google ‘Quicksilver Nilsdottir,’ what will I find?”

  “Nothing. Wolves don’t leave traces. Humans do. You say you’re human, so I should find something.”

  “No.” I can’t tell from the reflection if he’s actually grimacing or if it’s just the way the light shines from the surface of the pond on the other side of the glass. “Like you, we can’t go to doctors or hospitals, so there are no birth certificates or medical records or social insurance numbers. But in every other way—all the ways that count—we are human.”

  He dries his left calf and thigh.

  “What is a social insurance number?”

  “Canadian. Like social security.”

  He moves to his right leg.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  “Twenty-seven. How old are you?”

  He rubs his back.

  “Two hundred seventy moons.”

  “What’s that? Like, twenty-two years?”

  “A little more. Did you go to school Offland?”

  “We don’t have a territory like you do, but yes. I went to McGill. You?”

  “No. And…”

  He dries between his legs.

  “And…and what did you do after?”

  “I was in human resources management.”

  “Is that a job you do for your Pack?”

  He hangs the towel over the door. I hold my hand to the window, covering his reflected body.

  “Sort of. There aren’t enough of us to make a Pack”—soft cotton sweats swish against his just-damp skin—“so it’s more like a company that employs a lot of humans.”

  “And you challenged the head of this company?”

  “Not the way you think o
f it. I didn’t want to take over. One day I got sick of it. ‘Mongrel’ whispered one too many times, and I lost my temper.”

  He picks up his sweatshirt.

  “Why do you want to know all of this now? Why not yesterday or the day before or this morning?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because it didn’t feel real before and I thought there would be more time. But there isn’t. And now I’m here seeing everything I’ve lived with and I’m about to lose.”

  “What makes you think we’re going to lose?”

  He pulls his sweatshirt over his head, and I stare for too long, until his head emerges from the collar and those eyes catch mine, and I shake a little, though I’m not cold. “It’s a question,” he says, “of who needs it most.”

  “Needs what?” I think I’ve lost track of the conversation.

  “To win. Isn’t that what we were talking about? I need it. Otherwise, I’m a hunted man with no home and no country. Is there a bed?” he asks.

  I lift the hand-darkened and tooth-chewed rope handles on one of the benches to the storage with bed linens underneath.

  “And what would you do,” he asks, “if you weren’t here?”

  One sheet? Is that what they like? I try to remember what my own unused bed in the juvenile wing looked like. I think maybe there were two. I pull out two, and Ti doesn’t seem to blink.

  Whenever I’ve been struck by a worst-case scenario, I’ve always held out hope for the little Pack on Manitoulin that was so desperate for members it would take anyone, or so the gossip went. No challenges or fights or unmated wolves. When I mentioned it a few months ago to Kayla—casually, of course—she said the gene pool of that Pack hadn’t been stirred for over two centuries. “Solid Deliverance territory,” she said.

  With one more jerk, the sofa pulls open into a queen-size bed.

  “I’m not strong enough to be accepted into another Pack. I think…I think I’d probably go someplace with, like, no people, someplace with musk ox. Have you ever had musk ox? It’s supposed to be delicious. Anyway, I’d probably go and turn and never turn back.”