Grey Lore

by Jean Knight Pace

  Ella nodded, distracted. Where were the other dogs? At least three were missing and Ella noticed one, limping slowly toward the yard. She had named her Foxy because she was fast, smart, and small, but now it looked like her paw was tucked up against her leg.

  Without taking her eyes off of the dog, Ella started walking toward her. Loco followed closely behind. When Foxy got to the edge of the yard, Ella could see that her paw was not hurt, but missing—completely gone, the stump wrapped tight in a bandage.

  “Oh my gosh,” Ella said, dropping to look at the small dog. “What happened?”

  The dog looked into her eyes like she was about to reply just as a voice said, “We’ve had a couple wolf attacks lately. Last night, they got three. Foxy was the only one that came back.”

  Ella stood as Jones flopped a bag of chicken scratch near the chickens’ pen. Ella scanned the faces of the dogs again—Curly, Leonard, and Blossom—they were gone.

  “But I thought the wolves couldn’t leave The Property,” Ella stammered. “I thought that was the law.”

  The farmer shrugged, then made a clicking noise with his mouth. “Supposedly they can’t. But there’s been a shift in wolf migration patterns. Usually, they just follow the deer herds north or south, but recently several wolf packs from Canada and Montana have headed this way. Even an arctic wolf was purportedly photographed in Indiana recently.”

  “Crazy,” Sarah said, coming up next to Ella with Sheila close.

  “Hello, miss,” Jones said politely, but with a slightly impatient edge as though annoyed that Ella was bringing even more people to his quiet little farm.

  “This is my friend, Sarah,” Ella said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Jones replied, though to Ella’s ear it didn’t sound quite like he thought it was so nice.

  “We met a few years back,” Sarah said. “My mom is Fiona Price. She’s gotten a couple dogs from you.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said softening. “She’s a good woman, Dr. Price.” He turned to Ella. “Haven’t seen you for a few of days.”

  “I know I…” she began, but couldn’t think up an excuse. She’d met with Jack one night, and there’d been the dress. Vivi had insisted on taking her shopping for shoes right after school the next day, though Ella still wasn’t sure she wanted to take part in the Festival.

  “Not got much left to do today,” Jones said. You guys wanna feed chickens?”

  That was better than bathing dogs. Ella turned to Sarah. “Don’t you have a dance class?” she whispered.

  “Whatever,” Sarah said. “I’m skipping it. We get to feed chickens.”

  They filled up the water trough and feeders and then sprinkled corn among the hens as they scratched and pecked.

  “It’s like a storybook,” Sarah said, her breath misting against the cool evening.

  Ella stood with Loco while several of the dogs ran among the chickens. Sheila stayed by Sarah’s side. And it was like a storybook. Jones brought out hot chocolates and they sat watching the full moon rise.

  Slowly, a howling started up near the east reaches of the farm. Ella saw Jones’ jaw tighten up and he said, “Let’s take these guys in for the night.”

  To Ella’s surprise, they led the dogs into a little barn near the house, and then locked them up like the poultry. Ella could tell the dogs hated it. Several started barking or whining when the door shut. “What about the chickens?” Ella asked.

  “Chickens seem safer than the dogs at this point,” Jones replied. “Doesn’t make sense.” He paused. “Those wolves are causing me all kinds of grief. I’m having more trouble training the dogs, especially when I have to lock them up. They’re like restless teenage boys.”

  Ella chewed her thumb nail. The dogs did look like that—like Sam looked pent up in his tiny trailer—like a monster ready to break out.

  Jones began to walk back to the house, and when he did, Ella turned to the one small window in the barn. Quietly, she cracked it open. It was just a small space—no animal could possibly get in or out, but at least they would have some fresh air and the unfiltered light from the full moon shining in.

  As Ella turned from the barn, she heard one of the dogs bark, but it didn’t sound like a bark. Instead, it sounded like a deep throaty voice, a voice that said, ‘thank you.’

  Ella shook her head. “You hear that,” she asked Sarah. “That bark sounded like ‘thank you.’”

  “Sure, whatever,” Sarah said. “Let’s go. I hate to see them penned like that.”

  Ella walked behind her friend. The bark came again, though this time it sounded even less like a bark and more like the words “Thank you”—a sound that was so much like the “Look down” she’d heard in the corn maze that it made Ella shudder. And Loco—Loco had been in the corn maze with her. But of course it couldn’t have been him she’d heard speaking.

  And then Ella stopped. She remembered the mental illness she’d seen on her aunt’s computer, the one Napper had developed a serum to detect. PTr4. For those who started hallucinating that animals could talk.

  Her heart skipped a beat and she trotted to catch up with Sarah, her normal friend who was taking her someplace for a normal pizza on this very normal night.

  Sarah drove them to the country club for pizza. She couldn’t quit talking about Sheila and had big plans to ask for the dog for Christmas.

  Sam couldn’t come. He had a killer headache. Or so he said. Lately, Ella felt like he had an excuse every time she wanted to hang out.

  Ella sat in a dark corner of the booth, looking out over the indoor tennis courts and thinking about the look in Loco’s eye as Jones had shut the door—hurt, intelligent, desperate, and a little wild.

  Ella chewed on a hangnail.

  In front of her, only one of the courts was being used. The ball seemed to bounce back and forth endlessly—lulling Ella into a comforting trance. Until a familiar figure walked onto one of the empty courts.

  Ella gasped and Sarah stopped mid-sentence to see what she was looking at.

  Vivi faced a man who held up a ball and racket, seemingly explaining the basics of how to hold them.

  The man walked to the other side of the net and slowly, deliberately served the ball straight at Vivi’s racket.

  Her aunt swung. And missed.

  Ella held her breath.

  “What?” Sarah asked. “Are you grounded or something? Do we need to get you out of here before she sees you?”

  Ella shook her head. “What’s she doing?”

  Sarah gave Ella a weird look. “Taking a tennis lesson. Obviously. That’s Harold, the beginner instructor.”

  Ella shook her head again. “Vivi’s supposed to be really good,” she said.

  “Who told you that?” Sarah said, laughing. “She doesn’t seem to know a racquet from a broom.”

  “She doesn’t seem to know anything,” Ella said.

  Sarah quieted, and looked at her friend, then said slowly, “And?”

  “And my mom always said she was really good.”

  It just didn’t make any sense. There was no reason for her mom to lie. And no way she could have overestimated her aunt’s skill level this much. Besides, Ella’s mom had been good. And she must have learned from someone.

  “Maybe she’s trying to date the instructor,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe,” Ella responded. It was the only thing that made any sense, but Ella couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a pretty thin straw to grasp at.

  When Ella got home, it was after nine and Vivi wasn’t there. She’d left a note reading, “Had to drive out to do some research. Probably won’t be home until very late.”

  Ella set it down. Maybe Vivi was dating the instructor.

  Chapter 41

  Sam’s head thudded like drums in a tribal war zone. His window was still broken out. His father had said nothing about it, but Sam had come home from school one day to find a large piece of plywood covering the opening. Classy.

  It made Sam’s room—which hadn
’t exactly been a suite at the Hilton—even more dismal. No sunshine came in. No moon either. Which made sleeping easy, but otherwise he stayed out.

  Tonight nothing sounded better than the blackness of his room. He could see why his dad had his own bedroom window covered in dark curtains. When the headaches came, it helped.

  Sam kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed with his clothes still on. He just wanted to close his eyes and try to sleep.

  He didn’t succeed.

  Through the thin walls and even thinner plywood, he began to hear calls of night animals—owls first, followed by the barks of foxes, and then the slow, lonely howl of one of Napper’s wolves. The call was soon joined by a chorus, followed by the sound of running. And then the scream of a rabbit.

  Sam bolted up. His head was pounding, but he was furiously hungry.

  He got out of bed. He had to eat. But then a dizziness hit, an ache in his shoulders, swelling in his hands. He could smell the blood of the rabbit—the trail it made as it was carried away in the mouth of another hunter.

  Without thinking Sam slammed his fist against the plywood. It splintered and broke, but Sam didn’t feel like he’d struck it hard. He hit it again—not thinking, just letting his body move like it wanted to move. The plywood broke out and he climbed through.

  He could feel it now—the expansion of his body, the skin stretched taut yet thick—teeth, nails, strength. It seemed like he should be afraid—something was happening, something was wrong. But what he felt was nothing like fear, nothing like terror.

  Raw, ravenous, driven.

  He jumped, and when he did he flew high up, like a tiger into a tree. He jumped again—this time with intention and landed on a branch. The moon was full and clear, the night cold. It pumped into his blood like fuel, like adrenaline, like force.

  From the tree where Sam stood, Napper’s fence looked small and thin. He wouldn’t have to crawl through some tiny licorice stick hole now. He wouldn’t have to fear the wolves. He wouldn’t have to fear anything.

  He jumped down, ran to the fence—a few steps, then one leap over. Sam laughed out loud—deep, raspy. That’s what he thought of Napper’s chains and locks; that’s what he thought of keeping a poor kid off this beautiful property.

  Sam looked out over the acres and acres of The Property—woods, ponds, creeks, deer paths, huge outcroppings of stone. Sam had always loved running—the blood and oxygen pumping into his body until it burned. Now he ran and it felt like he had never run before.

  He jumped tree trunks, splashed over cold creeks, climbed up large boulders like they were short steps to the sky. He stopped at a glossy pond lit by the moon, and stared down at himself. He was huge, muscled, with hair over most of his face and body. His hands were enormous—nails sharp and white, face square and broad, arms stretched out in lines of muscle so defined that they rippled like eddies of water with every movement. He clenched a fist, watching his forearm tighten into strings of strength. Only his eyes were familiar—the same brown discs they had always been. Something about that surprised Sam, calmed him. He remembered for a moment the human inside of him.

  And then he heard it again—the howlings—feral and rich. There were clearly many more than nine wolves. He climbed up a tall tree and watched. The nine were there, but in the distance he saw grays and whites, blacks and reds—dozens, hundreds maybe. They all surrounded a small stone altar on top of a cliff near an overhang. Standing around the altar, the large group of wolves howled in unison until an elderly wolf stepped from them.

  Except that he was no wolf at all. He walked on two legs, but was covered in black fur with silver shot through it—the fur on his muzzle lighter than that on his body. He used a dark, familiar-looking staff to walk forward, though Sam could see he didn’t need it. And when he struck the staff against the ground, four more werewolves came forward—two females and two males—young, strong, some ugly, some strikingly beautiful. One of the females had a long jagged scar running up her thigh and looked at the staff resentfully, as though she would like it broken in half. The other female was light-furred and flawless.

  The old black werewolf was clearly the alpha, the scarred female the beta, with the other two males obeying readily. The final female, the smallest and most beautiful, was pushed to the end of the line—the omega. Next to the alpha stood a dark, mottled wolf—ears pricked upward—a sentinel.

  The council, which it seemed to be, convened with Dark Staff taking the lead.

  Sam was still a good distance off. He looked to the next thick tree over and then, quietly, he leapt. The ten-foot jump was easy. He settled into the thick-needled evergreen and listened.

  “Tonight,” Dark Staff said, “we gaze toward the last moon of this earth.”

  The wolves howled toward the thick disc of light.

  “When the solstice comes, so comes the new day. We will be led there, as we were brought here so many moons ago—by a child. Inferior. Ignorant. Human. And yet necessary to this cause through the stone she will bear.”

  As he spoke, the other four werewolves lit fires around the stone altar. The flames blazed red and gold, licking to the sky, tall as steeples.

  Even from where Sam hid, he could feel the warmth creeping into the night. He wondered what would happen if he got caught here listening. He was, after all, one of them. But not. No, not.

  Of all the things his father had told him recently, he had tried to make that the most clear. Sam had pressed his father—pressed him for more than the cryptic hints about weird mob bosses with wolvish names. His father had refused to say more. But Sam had wondered—maybe even suspected.

  If he wasn’t crazy, then what was he?

  He was this.

  He looked at his hands. But this, this was not the same as them. Sam put the pieces together. His mother was human; his father was not. That made Sam half. That was why his father had refused to tell him more. His father had been hoping that the human half would win, that Sam would not become this. But why? Why wish away the strength and power of a god? And why keep him from others who might be like him?

  Sam looked around and there, two branches down, sat the little cat Gabby—like a stump-tailed Cheshire, watching.

  The stumped tail.

  Zinnie was not here. But there. In the institution.

  For a minute Sam felt guilty. In the euphoria of all his strength and speed, he had not even considered checking on her.

  Sam thought suddenly of the strange diagnosis he’d seen on the computer at the Havensborough Unit. Miscegenatosis. From the word Miscegenation. He’d looked it up on the internet after he’d broken into the Havensborough Unit—the intermarrying of two races. Sam had seen that word somewhere else. He pushed deep into his memory, and there it sat on his father’s desk—some old medical papers—a diagnosis. But for whom? Now he knew. A diagnosis for him. Miscegenatosis. Half-breeds. They were half-breeds. He was. And Zinnie was.

  Looking down to the cat, he said, “You’re not her, are you?” He spoke softly through the tree branches. “You’re not Zinnie transformed?”

  “No boy,” the cat said, and Sam nearly fell off his tree. “Though I do wish it were so. My lady is not here. She is presently in her containment.”

  Sam swallowed. “Will I be contained as well for imagining you speak?”

  “If you are contained, it will not be for imagining anything,” the cat said, a bit of offense in her voice. “A boy turned wolf who cannot conceive of a cat speaking. I mean, really?”

  “Are you a human, then?” he asked, trying to be polite. “On the other days?” he said, nodding to the moon.

  “Well, of course not. You’ve seen me on most days. I’m a cat through and through—though somewhat improved when My Lady is not in that awful confinement.” Gabby looked sadly at her tail stump.

  “But you can speak,” Sam said.

  “Cats can always speak to those who listen. Which is usually no one, especially teenage boys. So listen well because I will not speak
often, if I do so again at all.” Gabby made a strange sound in her throat like she was clearing it, and then she looked Sam dead in the eyes,

  “Before the rise of men

  There were wolves.

  Before the fall of maidens

  There were witches

  Before the beauty, there was changing.

  Before the solstice there was aging.”

  “You know poetry,” Sam said, confused, but still trying to be polite.

  “It’s not poetry,” the cat said, her small voice indignant. “It’s prophecy. Now, of my lady’s containment: you must get her out. They are treating it out of her—the werewolf, the witch. They’re making her human so she will die.”

  “She won’t die as she is right now?”

  “Miscegenates—half-breeds—have always been special. She is especially so—daughter to a volatile match of werewolf king and human apothecary. She is one of the two who have seen this world from its start.”

  “And she is part wolf?” Sam asked.

  “No,” the cat said, looking at Sam like he was stupid. “She is part werewolf. Which has made her part magic—that is the gift her genes received. The Changers are both wolf and magician. Some better than others.”

  “And I?” Sam asked. “Can I do magic?”

  “No,” Gabby said, as if explaining something to someone even denser than the tree. “It is quite clear; is it not?”

  Sam looked at her like it was definitely not.

  He wasn’t sure a cat could roll her eyes, but she gave him that impression. “You, my boy, are also half werewolf, but for whatever reasons, your genes have chosen the wolf—and a fine, strong strand indeed, but as half-breed you can only be half. You cannot be magician and changeling; and if you could, you would likely be neither well. You are no more magical than your human mother. Though you will call yourself lucky if you inherited even half of her strength.”

  “But my father is weak.”

  “Your father is afraid. Which is often much the same, though it is fear born out of love for you. Which is really quite different. Now be quiet and listen,” the cat hissed. “Or we shall miss the important bits.”