Still Life With Shape-Shifter

by Sharon Shinn

  “Wolf friends or people friends?”

  His smile was like a glimpse of moonlight on a cloudy night, brief and breathtaking. “People friends. There was a church group that brought poor kids to the parks to go to camp in the summer. They’d set up a couple of folding tables and cover them with food and yell for everyone to come and get it. So I’d run up with all the other kids and stuff my face. Most of the kids didn’t know each other, so it didn’t matter that they didn’t know me. I just ate as much as I could and ran off before they started playing volleyball or whatever. It was great.”

  “And no one ever questioned you?”

  “Well, eventually. Every week, there’d be different kids at the camp, but some of the same grown-ups were there all the time, and after a while a few of them noticed me.” He gave me a sideways glance and that quick smile again. “But, like I said. Church group. Trying to do good things and take care of people. So one day a couple of them came up to me and said they’d noticed I’d been hanging around, and they wanted me to feel welcome to stay for the whole experience. They even had an extra sleeping bag so I could camp out overnight with everyone else. A sleeping bag! It was the closest thing I’d had to a bed for six months.”

  I wanted to cry; I wanted to cover my mouth to hold back my horror. But Cooper spoke so casually that I felt I had to show the same serene acceptance of his fate that he did. “How much did you tell them about yourself?”

  “Not much,” he said. “I told them I was living on my own. Told them I didn’t want to move to town and go live in the boys’ home like they said I could. One of them, James, he told me he would let me spend the summer ‘running free,’ as he put it, but as a concerned and responsible citizen he was duty-bound to inform the police that there was a minor living on his own in the woods behind the Boy Scout camp, and that he was pretty sure someone would come looking for me.”

  “That was actually a nice thing for him to do. The right thing to do.”

  “Sure, maybe, but I couldn’t go to a juvie center any more than I could go to a boys’ home.”

  “Did anybody ever come out to the park looking for you?”

  “Yeah, a couple of times, but they didn’t look too hard and they weren’t very smart and it was easy to stay out of their way.”

  “So what did you do once summer was over and the church didn’t bring kids out anymore?”

  “Well, by then I had a sort of permanent place set up. James had given me one of the old tents that he said was so beat up they were just going to throw it away. And he let me keep the sleeping bag and some other things—a plate and a cup and soap and matches and some T-shirts. So I had, you know, my own campsite pretty deep in the woods. I was by water. I still knew how to hunt. I was in a lot better shape by the time winter came back.”

  “And nobody from the church ever figured out what you really were?”

  “Didn’t seem like it.”

  “Does anybody else know the truth about you?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think my mom even told her parents or her sisters.”

  “So—your mom. All this time, you’ve never seen her again?”

  He shook his head. “I used to go by the house now and then at night. Try to see in the windows, watch over them, make sure everyone was still okay. But they moved about a year ago, and I don’t know where. There’s a new family living there now.”

  I was quiet a moment, turning all this information over in my head. I didn’t love my own family, but at least they provided a place where I could sleep, a more or less steady supply of food and other essential items. I was used to believing I was self-sufficient, but compared to Cooper, I was woefully dependent and unprepared for adversity. His story made the world seem like a much bigger and scarier place than it ever had before—and I’d considered it intimidating enough as it was.

  “Did she ever tell you—before she kicked you out—did she ever tell you how you got to be this way?” I asked presently. “Were you born under a full moon or something like that? Did she get bitten by a radioactive spider when she was pregnant with you?”

  He grinned briefly, and I was somehow heartened to realize that, despite his odd circumstances, he was a teen boy who understood a comic-book reference. “My dad was a shape-shifter.”

  “What was he like?”

  “She never talked about him much, but when she did, she sounded like she really hated him. I remember this one time when I was about eight, and I almost changed when we were at the Laundromat. She had to shove all our wet clothes into a couple of laundry baskets and run me out to the car so no one would see me turn into a wolf. And I remember her crying and swearing the whole drive home. ‘That lousy bastard! He never told me what kind of kid he was leaving me with! He said there were things I should know about him—he said he had a disease, except he called it a condition. He didn’t tell me it would ruin my life!’ Stuff like that.”

  “She said that? Right in front of you? You’d ruined her life?”

  “Well, I was a wolf.”

  “But you can understand people even when you’re a wolf, can’t you?” He nodded. “And she knew that, didn’t she?” He nodded again. “Then that was awfully mean.”

  “She was upset.”

  “Did she ever tell you any more about your dad? Like, where you might look for him if you wanted to find him?”

  “I don’t think she knew where to look for him. I don’t think it occurred to her I might want to find him.”

  I tilted my head and surveyed him by the faint yellow light from the house. “And do you want to find him?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Might be interesting to get some answers.”

  “What would you ask him?”

  He thought a moment. “If there’s a way to control it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He knotted his hands into fists, and for the first time I saw a darker emotion course through him—fear, maybe, or a kind of tired, hopeless anger. Not so accepting of his fate after all. “Maybe there’s a way to stop the changing from happening—or from happening so often. Maybe there are drugs I could take or exercises I could do or food I shouldn’t eat. Maybe I could hold it off for a few days, at least—be human for longer periods of time. And then figure out how to lead a more normal life.”

  “If you could control it completely, would you ever choose to be a wolf again?”

  He looked at me gravely for a long moment. Even in the uncertain light, I was struck by the wild beauty of his face—the full lips, the enormous eyes, the dark halo of his tousled hair. “No,” he said.

  I didn’t know him well enough to be surprised, and yet I was. Maybe because what he was seemed to be so exotic and, therefore, something to prize. Maybe because I was still young enough to be intoxicated by mystery, and he was the most mysterious creature I had ever encountered. “You’d be ordinary?” I said, my voice half-teasing, half-curious. “Instead of extraordinary, which is what you are?”

  “I think anyone who isn’t ordinary wishes he was,” he said quietly. “No matter what makes him different, he wants to be the same as everyone else.”

  “But all of us who are ordinary—and boring and predictable and just like everyone else in the world—all of us want to be unique. We wish we were different. Or at least interesting.”

  That swift smile again, quickly fading. “I have to think you are a little different,” he said. “I can’t imagine anyone else I’ve ever met just sitting down and having this conversation with me.”

  “Well, you haven’t met that many other people, so you aren’t really qualified to judge.”

  “Maybe not, but I think most people would be afraid,” he replied.

  I considered that for a moment. “I don’t think I was ever afraid,” I said at last. “Even when you first showed up as the wolf.”

  “I could tell you weren’t. That’s why I got close enough for you to see me. But I don’t know why you aren’t more—” He made a slight g
esture, searching for a word. “Freaked-out by my story. I don’t even know why you believe me. “

  “I used to hear about shape-shifters all the time,” I told him. “My grandmother was part Navajo, and when she lived with us in Arizona, she’d tell me stories about the skinwalkers. Of course, they were pretty scary! They’d steal your soul if they could. So I always believed that people could take the shapes of animals.” Now I was the one to shrug. “I don’t know why I wasn’t frightened, though. Maybe because I always wished I was the one who could change shapes.”

  He lifted his heavy eyebrows. “What animal would you want to be?”

  “Any animal. A bird, maybe, so I could fly away, anywhere I wanted to go.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the house, shadowed and sleepy except for the gold light in the kitchen windows. “You’d leave your family?”

  I made a rude noise. “In a heartbeat.”

  “Why?”

  “My dad’s crazy, and my mom’s a loser.” It was more complicated than that, of course, but I figured that was what it all boiled down to.

  “Still, if they love you—” he protested.

  “I don’t know that they do,” I interrupted. “Your parents don’t have to kick you out of the house to be terrible people.”

  “I suppose not,” he said. He gave a little laugh. “I used to prowl past houses at night—not just my mom’s, but homes in the neighborhood where I used to live, and other little towns I happened to be in. And I would look in the windows, and I’d see moms in the kitchen making dinner, and dads outside mowing the lawns, and kids running up and down the stairs or watching television or playing some game. And I’d think, ‘I want that house. I want that life.’ From the outside, they always looked so perfect.”

  “And from the inside, a lot of them probably sucked,” I answered. “You can never tell from looking how good or how bad someone else has it.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  A short silence fell between us. I knew there were hundreds more questions I ought to ask, but my mind had gone completely blank, and I was, all of a sudden, so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. Too many late hours and nights of little sleep. I found myself unable to stifle a yawn.

  “I should go,” Cooper said, coming abruptly to his feet.

  I jumped up beside him. “Wait. Not yet. Tell me—you’ll come back, won’t you?”

  He gazed gravely down at me. When we stood side by side, he was so much taller than I was that I had to tilt my head way back to meet his eyes. “I will if you want me to.”

  “I do! Isn’t that obvious? I want to be your friend.”

  “It would be good to have a friend.”

  “And you’ll have to let me know what I can do for you. Like—should I buy you clothes? Is there anything you need?”

  That swift smile, just as swiftly disappearing. “I can always use food.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Meat’s pretty easy to come by, at least in the summer,” he said. “I miss fruit the most. And bread. And potato chips. And cookies.”

  “But you probably don’t have anywhere to keep perishables for long,” I said, thinking out loud. “What about—do you have a can opener?”

  He looked surprised. “No.”

  “I mean, obviously the wolf can’t use a can opener, but if you’ve got some soup and chili and peaches on hand, you could eat all that as soon as you turned human.”

  “That would be great,” he said. “But you’ve done so much for me already—”

  I smiled up at him. “I’m just getting started.”

  * * *

  Over the next two weeks, Cooper came to my house every night. I had developed a rhythm for my days that allowed me to accommodate these strange nocturnal assignations and still manage to do everything else I was committed to. I slept late in the mornings, ran errands before my shift at McDonald’s, took a nap in the afternoon before my parents came home, and made sure they saw me diligently doing my chores before they went upstairs to bed.

  Then I waited outside for Cooper to come.

  I spent every cent I earned over those two weeks on stuff for Cooper. Not only did I buy him the junk food he craved, and the canned goods that would sustain him during lean times, but I picked up camping gear that would improve his life: an insulated cooler, an LED lantern, a radio and batteries, matches, a Swiss Army knife, and a first-aid kit. That made me think of other toiletries that might come in handy, so I bought him soap, shampoo, and toothpaste. And a toothbrush. He didn’t look like he needed to shave yet, but I made a mental note to think about razors in the future. I even secured a bicycle for Cooper when the teenage boy down the street got his driver’s license and hung a sign saying FREE from the handlebars of his old road racer.

  “Tell me what size jeans you wear, and I’ll pick up some new clothes for you when I get my next paycheck,” I told him at the end of that second week.

  “I don’t know what size jeans I wear,” he said.

  “Hmmm. I guess I should take your measurements.”

  “You shouldn’t,” he said. “Janet, you should stop buying me things. You can’t spend all your money on me.”

  “Why not? I don’t need any more clothes. I have as much food as I want. I’m not making a car payment. Why can’t I spend my money on you?”

  “Because it doesn’t seem right.”

  I patted him on the arm. Usually, at least once every evening, I found a reason to touch him, briefly, just in passing. Just to reassure myself that he was real. “You’re not used to generosity,” I said. “But I never knew how to be generous before. I like it. It makes me happy. You have to let me give you things, so I can keep on being happy.”

  He made a small sound of helplessness and frustration. It had become obvious during the past two weeks that I could argue circles around him even when I was wrong. He hadn’t figured out yet that the only way he could win a quarrel with me was to simply fail to show up one night. He didn’t have a clue about the power dynamics between two people.

  “I just don’t want to take more than you have to give,” he said finally.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m surprised to find out I know how to give anybody anything at all.”

  He nodded, glanced away, looked back at me. “This is the last day,” he said in a quiet voice. “I can feel the change coming over me.”

  Something made a sharp stab in my chest—excitement or disappointment or both. “So you’ll be a wolf tomorrow,” I said. “Come back anyway.”

  “It’s more dangerous.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “For me.”

  Maybe he did know how to win an argument, after all. I couldn’t possibly beg him to put himself at risk for my sake. “I’ll worry about you,” I said. “The whole time you’re gone.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “And you’ll come back? The first night you’re human?”

  He nodded. “If you want me to.”

  “Of course I want you to! Two weeks from now. Here. In this very spot. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “It might not be two weeks exactly.”

  “Well, I’ll be here anyway.”

  He nodded again, and, after a moment of silence, we both came to our feet. And then we stood there a moment, awkward and indecisive. Good-byes were hard even for people with well-rehearsed social skills, and neither one of us qualified. “Let me give you a hug,” I said softly, “then you can go.”

  He stepped forward willingly enough, but put his arms around me uncertainly, as if he couldn’t tell how close to pull me, how much pressure to exert. I wrapped my own arms around his waist and hugged him hard, laying my cheek against his lean chest. He smelled like sweat and dirty boy and grass and woods and summer. His heartbeat was stronger and wilder than my own.

  “Be careful,” I said, letting him go with reluctance.

  “I will.”

  “Don’t forget me.”<
br />
  “I won’t.”

  Another moment of silence so full of unspoken thoughts that it did not seem silent at all, then he was gone.

  I went to bed and cried for half an hour before exhaustion shoved me down the crooked stairwell into sleep. Over breakfast I was monosyllabic, at work I was sullen, and in the afternoon, I was too inconsolable to nap. Instead, I wandered out to the deck to flop down on the lawn chair and stare moodily over the yard to the border of trees that marked the beginning of public land. Somewhere past that boundary, Cooper had slipped into his alternate existence. I was beyond curious to know what the other half of his life looked like. I wanted to jump off the deck, break through the tree line, track him to his lair, and gaze around. I wanted to know what the wolf saw. I wanted to know how the wolf lived. Someday, perhaps, I could convince him to take me to his camp in the woods.

  But part of me was afraid that, despite his promise, he might never come back at all.

  I had been sitting there maybe half an hour when my eyes fell on a white plastic bag that had blown onto the lawn and come to rest against the lower edge of the deck. It was the kind of bag you’d use to line a kitchen trash can, and after a moment’s inspection, I realized it had not drifted into the yard by accident. For one thing, it appeared to have been wrapped around some short, cylindrical object; for another, it had been carefully weighted down with a couple of ornamental rocks from my mother’s garden. This was something someone had deliberately left behind.

  I jumped up and knelt in the grass to unwrap the package. Out slipped a stiff piece of paper, maybe twelve by fourteen inches, that had been rolled into a tube. I flattened it over my thighs, then simply stared.

  It was a pencil sketch on the back of an advertising flyer, an intricately rendered woodland scene as viewed from about the height of a toddler. Every inch was crammed with detail—summer bushes dense with leaves; fat tree trunks alive with squirrels and birds and butterflies; fallen logs covered with lichen and mushrooms and busy ants. The perspective was imperfect, and the artist’s hand had smudged the graphite in more than one place, and there were a number of places where dirt had marred the purity of the paper. But the drawing was exquisite.