This Is Not a Werewolf Story

by Sandra Evans

  “If we could only figure out where Raul went during all those weekends, we might have a chance of finding him.” Dean Swift pauses and then looks at me. “Of bringing him back,” he corrects himself. “In the meantime, it’s now clear that Tuffman took advantage of Raul’s loneliness and your desire to do whatever Raul needed to cope with the loss of his mother. We’ll notify the police. But I wanted to know how many letters he sent, and if you kept them?”

  My dad nods. He gets up and walks with hunched-up old-man shoulders to the bedroom.

  Dean Swift bends down and whispers, “I suspected you were one of my kind. But I thought it would be many years before your second self would call you. We can recognize each other now only because we are both wearing our second skins. It’s the way of the woods. It prevents us from hunting one another.”

  I nod. He smiles. Then he stares at me, a long thinking line between his eyebrows.

  “Are you hiding from someone in your wolf skin?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Are you trapped?”

  I nod.

  “Have you lost your threshold?”

  I tilt my head at him.

  “The place where you shift.”

  No.

  “Have you lost your light?”

  No.

  “Have you lost your clothes?”

  Yes.

  “Was it Tuffman?”

  Yes.

  Dean Swift runs his hands over his face. “I’m a fool. Ms. Tern warned me about him, but I refused to see the truth.”

  He jumps as a crash comes from the back of the trailer.

  “I’m all right,” my dad calls out. “It’s a mess in here, that’s all.”

  Dean Swift exhales and then leans back down to me. “So few of our kind harm one another that it seemed impossible. I went down to the fort the night they captured the cougar. When I saw the shadow of Tuffman’s face above the skin of that cougar, I began to wonder if he had something to do with your disappearance. I searched his room but found nothing. This morning Mary Anne came to my office and told me about her visit here. She wanted to know about white wolves. It reminded me of Ms. Tern’s strange theory that Tuffman is a notorious hunter of spirit animals. I decided to search his room again. What I found has led me to believe that he was trying to separate you from your father, and worm his way into your trust. But why? Was it simply to get to the white wolf through you?”

  Yes.

  My dad comes back with a stack of papers.

  Dean Swift sits up straight and clears his throat.

  “Here are all the letters,” my dad says. He drops the stack on the table and slumps back in his chair. “And you’re telling me Raul didn’t write them.”

  I put my paws up on the chair and rest my head in his lap.

  “No,” Dean Swift says. “He didn’t write even one of them.”

  “He must have wondered why I stopped coming,” my dad says sadly. “He must have thought I abandoned him too. Now he’ll never know how much I love him. That I think of him every second.”

  Dean Swift looks at me and talks to my dad. “I imagine he knows the truth. Children always do.”

  He stays until the sun starts to fall behind the cedars, cruising down toward the water, lighting it up so that the blue sea glows like my wolf mother’s eyes. They don’t talk much, my dad and the dean. But Dean Swift’s silence is a kind of hug, warm and filling the room with his understanding.

  When he leaves, he bends down and scratches my ears. “I’ll get you out,” he whispers. “I will make inquiries. Have no fear.”

  Chapter 29

  SOMEONE’S BEEN CLEANING MY LIGHTHOUSE

  In the morning the phone rings.

  “No,” my dad says. “We can’t separate her from the gray.”

  He listens. “They have to stay together.”

  He listens. “No. You can’t put her in a zoo.”

  He slams the phone down.

  I learn more when he calls a friend. “They’re coming for the white one later today,” he says. “It’s all about money.”

  When he hangs up, he sits on the floor next to me. White Wolf settles down on the other side of him. I don’t know how much she understands. Sometimes I think she’s been a wolf so long she doesn’t understand words.

  I look at her for a long time. Ever since Dean Swift left, I’ve been looking at her. But no matter how hard I look, I never see the shadow of my mother’s face above White Wolf’s head. What does that mean?

  Soon we will all be separated again. It will be like when my dad stopped coming to get me and I hadn’t found White Wolf. Only now I don’t have Bobo or Sparrow. I don’t have the other half of myself anymore either.

  Cook Patsy is right. Love is a circle. It goes on forever. But I’m right too. It’s also a chain that means you belong to someone. My family’s chain keeps getting broken. When they take White Wolf from us, and me from the ranger, then I won’t belong to anyone anymore. And nobody will belong to me.

  I will have lost so much that there won’t be much of me left.

  I look again for the shadow of my mother’s face. Maybe that’s what happened to White Wolf.

  I put my nose in my paws. It’s despair. I can’t change what’s happening. Turn the light on me as much as you like, I’m just a dandelion seed floating in the wind—shining bright and alive but helpless.

  That afternoon is so hot the trailer feels like the inside of a volcano.

  “Come on,” my dad says as he opens the back door. “You two will be more comfortable outside in the shade.”

  He trusts us. He knows we’ll walk from the door of the trailer straight into the cage.

  I nip White Wolf as she trots out the door. She swings her head back at me. I make a low noise in my throat.

  Right then we hear a truck coming up the dirt forest road that leads to the trailer. My dad turns at the sound. The blue jay darts up from her branch and flaps her wide indigo wings to the sky.

  We bolt.

  My dad hollers.

  White Wolf is already at the edge of White Deer Woods. I’m close behind her. I slow down and stop, right in the shade of an enormous cedar. I swing my head back toward my dad. I give him one long last look. I make the sound that means Good-bye.

  Then I hear him say it. “Go!” It’s a whisper of a shout. “Go!” I can see him take his hat off and wave it at me. “Go!”

  We run and run.

  The woods are deep and dark and cool. The rabbits haven’t missed us.

  We return to our ledge deep in White Deer Woods. I know the ranger won’t try to track us. We’ll keep quiet and he’ll keep quiet and soon the others will forget us.

  We’re free from our cage, but White Wolf and I are trapped. Nobody can help us. We’ll be wolves until the day we die.

  I’m melancholy. Do you know the word? If you were a melancholy wolf, your tail would droop. If you were a melancholy boy, you would shut the door to your room and listen to sad songs. If you were a melancholy kite, your streamers would straggle. A melancholy ball would go flat on one side.

  At the lake I can smell the fish and frogs. I look to where the Tuffman straw man once hung. Now it’s just a pine like any other. I look at the bicycle up in the oak. I look at it for a long time because something is different. I sniff. Fresh sawdust. I trot slowly toward the tree. I see the marks of a saw’s teeth in the branches. Someone is trying to cut the bike from the tree. Soon every trace of me in these woods will be gone.

  Late that first night, very, very late, I lope out to the lighthouse. By the orange light of an enormous moon I see that the shrubs and brush around it have been cleared. A small garden has been planted. I sniff. Broccoli, carrots, kale, basil. It makes me so mad I could growl. I’ll never be able to eat those things again; to crunch and chew and taste something other than meat and bone and fur.

  Who has uprooted the bleeding hearts and fern?

  I nose the door open carefully. The room has been swept and
cleaned.

  I sniff. The smell is familiar—like the dining hall after Cook Patsy has sprayed the tables down with her special cleaner.

  I look in the oven, even though I know it will be empty. The ashes and bits of wood and charcoal have been swept out.

  It has to be Vincent.

  The wolf rage simmers in me. He took my skin and now he wants my lighthouse.

  I’m going to play a little prank on him. I’m going to scare his pants off.

  I come back often, staying in the shade of the cedars at the edge of the clearing, waiting. My gray fur makes me look more like a shadow than an animal. It’s how I feel, too. I’m between skins, between shadows, between shapes.

  One day I hear them.

  They are coming out of the woods from the path I used to take.

  “Are you sure Raul wasn’t the one?” Vincent asks.

  “He didn’t tell me,” Jack almost shouts, like he’s been giving the same answer to the same question for an hour. “Give it up, already. Raul never told nobody nothin’. Tuffman told me you freaked when you heard the cougar. Then I told everyone else—’cause it was funny, that’s why. Nobody ever told me not to tell.”

  As he gets closer, I can see Vincent’s eyes darting all around. Is he looking for me? Good. ’Cause I’m looking for him.

  I push the growl down. I’m not in a hurry. I’ve got him right where I want him, finally.

  “How’d you know this was out here?” Jack asks as Vincent leads him toward the lighthouse.

  Vincent stops on the threshold. “I’m fixing it up. In case Raul comes back.”

  “Why do you look so scared, Vinnie?” Jack asks. “You do something off the record?”

  If he’s scared now, just wait until I come charging out of these woods and run him right up to the edge of the cliff.

  “You remember that gray wolf at the ranger’s place?” Vincent asks.

  I hold my breath. Is Vincent actually going to do the right thing?

  The two of them step into the lighthouse.

  A few minutes later they come out.

  “We better get the ranger,” Jack says. He’s shaking his head.

  “No grown-ups,” says Vincent.

  “Face it, it’s too big for the two of us,” Jack says.

  “He’s Raul’s dad. He’ll hate me,” Vincent says.

  “Well, you ain’t gonna come out of this smellin’ like roses.” Jack shrugs. “But we don’t have to tell the whole story, get it? Let Tuffman take the rap.”

  They’re walking away from me now. My heart is beating so hard the blades of grass on the ground in front of me are trembling.

  I can’t stop myself.

  I run out from under the cedar. I sprint across the meadow. They turn and see me. Vincent screams and falls down. Jack stays on his feet, but he looks scared. I trot the rest of the way to them slowly, tail wagging, tongue out of my mouth, lips drawn back in one wicked smile.

  “Get up, Vincent,” Jack says in a tired voice. “It’s just Raul.”

  I jump and put my front paws on Jack’s chest.

  Jack scratches my ears. “Don’t worry, we’re gonna get your dad.”

  “Tuffman made me do it,” Vincent says, his face pressed into the grass.

  I walk over to him and sniff at his back. He’s shaking like a leaf on a tree.

  “I’m sorry, Raul,” he says. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  What can I say? Nothing. Those are the words I’ve been howling to hear.

  I wait at the edge of the forest. White Wolf waits with me.

  The sun is high in the sky. It gets lower. Then lower still. The light of the setting sun streams down through a small opening between leafy branches, making a tunnel of speckled, spackled, dappled light from sky to earth. Through this tunnel of filmy light two boys walk. Behind them are two men. I take a big breath. Thank goodness. They brought Dean Swift.

  White Wolf sits up. I nudge her with my nose. Stay, I’m saying to her. Because my only fear is that White Wolf will leave.

  “I’m still not clear as to how you knew Raul’s clothes were on the top rung of the ladder in the Blackout Tunnel?” Dean Swift asks.

  “Tuffman told me,” Vincent says. “But I didn’t remember until just now.”

  Dean Swift makes a face like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You didn’t remember?” he says.

  Then he sees the lighthouse. He whistles softly between his teeth. “So they never destroyed it. Red Bluff has been here all along. I should have guessed.” His face lights up like it does when he learns something new.

  I get up and walk across the meadow. We meet in the middle. Tears stream down my dad’s face, and he kneels to stroke my fur.

  My dad looks up at Vincent. “This better not be some game.”

  Then he stands up. “Give him the clothes.” He yanks Vincent by the arm so that he’s standing in front of me. Vincent stares at the ground.

  “Wait,” says Dean Swift. “Let’s put the clothes in the oven. Isn’t that where Tuffman found them? And then the rest of us should step back into the forest.”

  Vincent doesn’t look at my dad, but I hear him whisper, “I’m sorry, Mr. Ranger.”

  My dad nods, but there’s an unforgiving look around his mouth.

  Vincent takes a big breath and walks over the threshold.

  Dean Swift tilts his head curiously. “So this is where Vincent has been coming all summer. He told me he had made a memorial garden for Raul.” He scratches his head. “But how did he find the lighthouse?”

  Jack pipes up, “Raul told him it was a place you could only find if you knew it was there.”

  Dean Swift looks at my dad. I can see them put it all together. My dad cracks his jaw. He looks after Vincent with pure hate on his face.

  “Vincent knew about this all along, didn’t he?” the dean asks Jack.

  Jack lifts his left hand in a lopsided shrug.

  Dean Swift’s face turns purple. “Here I’ve spent endless hours reviewing every account of these kinds of occurrences, trying to find some way of bringing a boy back, and that little traitor had the answer the whole time!”

  Now Jack and my dad look at the dean with surprise.

  “You knew Raul was stuck in the gray wolf?” Jack asks the question before my dad can figure out how to say it.

  “Thirty years of research has given me one irrefutable and entirely natural fact: These woods are magic. Native cultures the world over and throughout time believe that there are places scattered over the earth where thresholds, or doorways, exist that allow us to move between the physical world and the world of the spirits. And in these special places, white spirit animals, like the wolf that accompanies Raul, are messengers between those worlds. The local tribes have always considered White Deer Woods to be one such sacred locus.”

  See how he does it? He only tells as much as he thinks you need to know. He’s not going to mention that Fresnel lens. Even he doesn’t know how the lens fits into the woods magic, just like he doesn’t know that the white wolf is my mother. He knows more than anyone else, but he doesn’t know it all, and he’ll never tell all that he knows.

  “So you’re sayin’ Raul’s a wolf because of these woods?” asks Jack. “Can they turn me into a bear, then?”

  “Well, yes, and I don’t know. I believe the ability to shift between human and animal states and gain access to these thresholds is passed down genetically from mother to child.” The dean speaks slowly. “The unusual forms of light in these woods are most certainly involved. Either these lights actually give special powers to certain people or they activate those powers in individuals who carry the code.

  “I can only make observations,” he says. “The light phenomena in these woods spoke to me long ago—first as a scientist and then, well, then in the way that only Raul can understand.”

  He looks down at me. And I see the shadow of eagle wings on his back. The feathers ruffle in the breeze.

  My dad look
s skeptical, but he keeps his mouth shut. I mean, here he is in the middle of a clearing at the edge of a cliff on an island in the far west of the country, waiting for a lighthouse to turn a gray timber wolf back into his son.

  So what’s he really gonna say? That he doesn’t believe in magic?

  When Vincent returns, they all enter the woods.

  I hug my old clothes when I pull them out of the oven. Joy, relief—I can’t tell you how happy I am.

  I found myself. I am right where I was.

  Socks. My feet are warm. My jeans won’t button and my shirt and shoes are snug, but I feel light, like I’m walking on two inches of air. My skin is smooth and my head is full of thoughts and words and things I have to say.

  I run out of the lighthouse, and before I know it my dad picks me up and holds me tight.

  “White Wolf,” I say. The words come out like a creak and a growl.

  We both look over to where we last saw her.

  She’s gone.

  “It’s Mom,” I tell my dad. “I’m sure of it.”

  Dean Swift’s eyes bulge. “That never occurred to me.”

  Dean Swift is flabbergasted, but my dad acts like I just told him mom got stuck in a traffic jam somewhere. Like it’s no big deal. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll bring her back. We just have to figure out the right steps.”

  Do you see how quick a man of science can become a man of magic?

  Seeing is believing.

  “We’ll fix it,” he says.

  He’s my dad. So I believe him.

  Chapter 30

  ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A HAPPY ENDING

  Let me break it down for you. Even happy endings feel sad, so let’s make it quick, right?

  First we go back to the school.

  Mary Anne skips down the steps, throws her arms around me, and squeezes me so tight I burp. How’s that for a hero’s homecoming? My belch cracks everyone up, but Mary Anne doesn’t seem to mind. She keeps saying I’m the most heroic boy in school. I’m not sure what kind of lie Dean Swift has come up with to explain it all, so I just smile. Now, if I can figure out how to make the things I want to say to her sound like words instead of gastric distress, maybe she’ll do a slow dance with me at the Christmas party this year. My armpits get sweaty just thinking about it. Ha! There’s something I didn’t miss when I was a wolf. Nervous perspiration.