Forever Wolf

by Maria Vale

  As punishment and reminder, Silver was made to take the stone and was branded with the rune of Tiw. The rune of the law.

  “I know the law requires restraint, Alpha. It is written on my skin.”

  I manage to stop my hand before it goes to the ridges on my stomach. What is it about Pack that we must always write our reminders in the flesh?

  “But,” she says, “it cannot only be restraint. Our law is also a living thing that must grow and breathe. That is what Gran Sigeburg taught and what Ælfrida knew. Laws that cannot bend will break. For Victor, the law is dead, petrified and unchanging. He will use it against Tiberius. Against Evie for accepting him into the Pack. Against the human who saved Theo’s life. This is not about protecting the Pack. This is about protecting the Old Ways, which is not the same thing.”

  One of her pups starts to mewl at her, and Silver picks her up, giving her a big openmouthed kiss. “He is wrohtgeorn,” she says. Strife-eager. “You say that fighting for our lives is our birthright. I know that. But since the Deemer is protected from challenges by the law, I have no choice but to fight for what I love using the law. And”—her upper lip curls back from her teeth—“I will win.”

  The runt is not like the rest of us. Ripped from her dead dam’s belly before she was fully formed, her hair stays a wolf’s color even in skin and her eyeteeth remain those of a wolf. It is part of what gives her a fierceness that is completely out of keeping with her size and status. But only part. There are other wolves who are far stronger, but their power is entirely superficial. They are not, as wolves say, strong of marrow.

  Silver is nothing but marrow.

  I tap the desk near Ælfrida’s letter with my fingertip. “Do you know Arthur Graysson?”

  “The 12th’s nidling? Not well.”

  “I would have him help you.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “I didn’t say you did. But I would have him help you nonetheless. I would have you teach him…something.”

  I look out the window toward Westdæl.

  “One more thing…”

  “Yes?”

  “How would you translate sida?”

  “That which is known, familiar. Custom, I suppose.” She frowns slightly. “Gran Sigeburg always told me to treat sida with respect and with caution at the same time. Never to acquiesce to something simply because it is known, because it is custom.”

  From the Alpha’s window, I can see the southernmost tip of Westdæl.

  “John brought me to Homelands, even though sida demanded I be left to die because I was too weak.”

  Theo, the tiny runt, drags his prized cheese chew away from his bigger siblings.

  “You too. Gran Sigeburg said when you came, you were Wearg and had the mark of an outlaw.” She lays her hand across her sternum in case I’d forgotten. “According to sida, you should never have been allowed into the Pack. You were too dangerous. But Nils refused to follow custom without knowing what someone barely more than a pup had done to be clawed.”

  I trace my finger across the perimeter roster to the empty square that stands at the intersection of the 12th Echelon and Westdæl, that most distant corner of Homelands and scrawl my rank there.

  “Gran Sigeburg,” Silver continues, “said that the reason we carve only a name and the date of the last hunt on the stones in the Gemyndstow is because law and hierarchy are things of life. In death, she said, you stand before the moon not as part of a pack, but as a lone wolf, and as a lone wolf, you answer for what you have done.”

  When I leave, I touch the lintel again.

  Chapter 11

  “Where are you going, Shielder?”

  I pop the last of the honey oatcake into my mouth, then brush the crumbs from my naked breasts.

  “Westdæl. Perimeter watch.”

  “Perimeter watch?” Lorcan repeats again. By the change of the light in his eyes, I can tell that my Alpha has forgotten his peevish outburst. “Why so far away?”

  “It was available.” Which is true as far as it goes. I take another cup of coffee, the last I’ll have for a while.

  “Oh, and, Arthur, you will be helping Quicksilver Nilsdottir.”

  “Arthur?” Both Arthur and Lorcan look toward the table where the 14th sits. Two of Silver’s pups are sleeping on Tiberius’s huge lap. Another is snuffling around at the butter and crumbs in Eudemos’s beard. The fourth is gnawing on Kayla’s finger. When their eyes and ears and muscles are strong enough, they will join the other pups on the floor. Then they will belong to the Pack as a whole, but for now, they are coddled by their parents and their echelon.

  “After breakfast, you will report to the Theta.” I look at him over the rim of my cup. “And, Arthur?”

  “Yes, Shielder?”

  “Learn something.”

  Both Arthur and Lorcan look at me quizzically but say nothing.

  * * *

  I’d originally planned to tell one of the wolves in the 12th that I trust to call me if there was trouble, but I didn’t, because Lorcan needs to learn something too.

  I believe without a doubt that Lorcan would sacrifice his life to save the 12th. I don’t believe he will sacrifice one jot of his popularity to lead it.

  The sky is dark again as it will be more and more often now.

  The wolves of Vrangelya talked—when they bothered with words—of two seasons: damn cold and not so damn cold. “It’s damn cold today,” they’d say for much of the year. Then one morning they’d walk out and it’d be “not so damn cold today.”

  The Great North talks of five seasons: summer, fall, winter, mud, and blackfly.

  Mud season will be starting with a vengeance now. I can tell from the leaden color of the sky and the heaviness of the air and the cracking of ice and the thawing of earth. Soon it will rain: fine drops at first, then fat drops as the temperature warms up. That rain will mix with snowmelt, and because the substrata are still frozen, anything that is not literally rooted by vegetation will turn into muck.

  It rained at home, the first time I heard about the Great North. I remember, because rain was so rare, at least in my memory. It was coupled with a visitor, another rarity. Like all Pack, we were very suspicious and watched this new wolf from a distance, though it didn’t take long to ascertain that he was no kind of threat. So the adults all changed—that is where we got the Kusmi chai. We got it from the visitor—because the Alpha, Illarion, gave the visitor permission to hunt our land as our guest as long as he shared the fire afterward for æfenspræc, evening talk, so that we could learn whatever news he had of the world beyond our island.

  The news was as it had been for years.

  “They especially like to hunt the pups,” he said in that pointedly cruel way disillusioned adults do when they think they see innocence. “Their heads are easier to carry, and the government pays out the bounty just the same.”

  Mitya and I stayed away, busy with a game of lemming toss. He hadn’t heard the stranger, and I didn’t want him to.

  But then there was a change, and the stranger stopped talking about where he had been and started talking about where he was going, and that I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear about a better place, a place one actually wanted to go.

  I nipped at Mitya to move closer. East, the stranger said. Across the vastness of North America, what we Vrangelya wolves in our isolation still called Vinland, to a spot near the eastern edge called the Great North.

  In the Old Tongue, he called it Deore Norþ. I always wondered why he didn’t use a more common word for great, like Micel—Great and Vast—or Mægenrof—Great and Powerful—but instead called it Deore, which does mean great, but also precious, beloved.

  We all listened to him describe this land of no little airplanes that shot at you and many, many trees that were good for hiding. Of deer and black bear that were easier to hunt than our
own musk ox and polar bears. And raccoons that were like lemmings but had real flesh on them.

  And this land, this perfect land, he said, was owned by the Pack, and they had signs all around telling the humans to keep out. He said. And the humans did. They stayed away.

  He said.

  When he was done, the Pack fell silent. The pups looked to our Alpha for some kind of confirmation. There would be none, because it was his turn to disillusion us. He’d heard tales of the Great North before, he said with a hard laugh. We would all reach it soon enough. When the westends cut off our heads.

  The pups—actually the nonadults: Vrangelya wasn’t large enough to be divided into echelons, just adults and nonadults—turned on Mitya the way they always did, because despair makes wolves cruel.

  It ended the way it always did, with my claws stained with other wolves’ blood and my mouth full of other wolves’ skin.

  After that, Mitya and I pretended sometimes that we lived in this precious land protected by signs that read WESTENDAS, AGAÞ ONWEG—Humans, Go Away—on a land thick with sheltering trees rather than rusted barrels oozing oil. Where we wouldn’t have to listen for the drunk voices of hunters warning us that we had to change into skin if we had time or hide if we didn’t. Where we wouldn’t have to run desperately from the strafing of their malevolent buzzing planes. We imagined how it would feel not to be hungry. And I practiced hunting for deer so that when we got there, when I made my first kill, there would be a lung for each of us and Mitya would have the heart.

  I’d always thought that as long as I was strong enough and ferocious enough for two wolves, I could keep my gentle, dreamy Mitya with me always.

  What a child.

  Chapter 12

  It doesn’t rain under the pines, except for the occasional bead that rolls down collecting more and more water until finally it lands on my nose in a heavy, balsam-scented plop.

  Something is splashing nearby. It isn’t regular enough to be rain. Too loud to be an animal drinking. Could be weasel. Weasels like playing in the water, and I like eating weasel. The Great North doesn’t like their musky umami, preferring deer, which, let’s face it, tastes like chicken.

  Keeping low and quiet, I follow the sound to a rock pond carved into the hardpan fed by runlets carrying melt-off.

  It’s not a weasel.

  The wounded wolf sits up, his hair glowing gold in the low sun. He squeezes out the small towel from his backpack and scrubs his skin in the rain and icy water. As he bends to the side, the ropy muscles under his skin coil even with the little effort of dipping the towel back in the water. He gingerly wipes away blood and dirt from his leg stretched out straight in front of him.

  The olive canvas backpack is slung across a ragged tree trunk.

  He freezes, then turns his head toward me, his eyes half-closed against the setting sun.

  “Where did you come from?” he asks. “I didn’t think there were wolves left in New York.” His voice is odd, cracked and dry as a heel of week-old rye. That part’s not odd. It’s the mark of a wanderer, of someone who hasn’t talked for a long time. What’s odd is the wolfish depth and resonance. As if no one told him that while wolves sing with the lungs, in skin, we must speak with the mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” he continues, holding his hand out to me. I eye it warily, unsure what, exactly, he expects me to do with it. “I would never hurt you. I know what it’s like to be you.” He looks down at his body. “Well, not now, obviously, but sometimes. When the moon is full.”

  I take a step backward. I am pretty sure this moon-mad fool thinks I’m an æcewulf. A real wolf. A forever wolf.

  I could play this game. I could just walk away. If he’s well enough to find his way here, he’ll find his way down to the Outer Woods and out of Homelands.

  He slides his palm closer to my nose. I would bite it, but it smells like mint and chocolate. What wolf eats chocolate?

  “So here we are. New York’s only wolf and the world’s last werewolf.”

  Oh, for the love of…

  Like some shopworn carnival barker, he adds a lackluster “Ta-da.”

  I should just ignore it, but I can’t. Werewolf. Manwolf. Of course humans would give themselves pride of place. With an exasperated huff, I throw myself down, tightening the muscles at my hips until I feel the change take hold. The last thing I smell is the damp moss. The last thing I see is the final arc of the sun, shining gold breaking through the single gap in the gray clouds.

  The last thing I hear is a shocked intake of breath followed by silence. Not real silence; it’s never really silent. Just muffled and milky, like the empty canvas of my changing eyes.

  Muscles loosen, becoming rubbery and useless before tightening again as they pull against lengthening limbs and a torso that stretches, becoming broader and shallower. My heart stops galloping and settles into a trot, and my breathing slows too.

  Then I feel. Something cold against my skin. My nerves may still be misaligned, but they fire in succession, registering not pressure or pain, just an overlapping softness, almost like liquid against my hip. The liquid moves around my helpless changing body: hip to waist to breast. From left to right, it pours softly across my scarred torso. Breathing hard in my shallow human-shaped lungs, I coil my shoulder muscle and try to aim my arm at him, which is a mistake because all it does is unbalance me, forcing my face and eye into the ground.

  Wolves aren’t prudish; we spend too much time naked for that. But except for the Iron Moon when we are all changing and all blind together, we give one another a little space as we phase. It takes a long time, and most of that is spent in a monstrous state when we are neither in skin nor wild, when our jaws flatten, but our teeth are still sharp, when our pointed ears migrate down the sides of our skulls. When our shoulders pull back away from the still deep and narrow chests. When fur recedes, leaving naked muzzles.

  I can’t tell him to go away because my tongue is too long and thin and the roof of my mouth is too high and narrow. I can just make him out now, crouching next to me, bone-pale and naked except for underwear soaked by water dripping from his moon-colored hair.

  He is bleached out except for the blue and green of his harlequin eyes and the blood of his reopened wound.

  I don’t know where the makeshift bandage has gone.

  Finally, my ears pop. Not that it matters, because he’s speechless.

  “Rangrawalra!” I snap. I pop my lips twice and try again. “Yr nodda wurwolv!”

  I get up to my knees and wiggle my tongue, then try one last time. Slowly and carefully. “You. Are. Not. A. Werewolf.”

  “I am human now,” he says urgently. “But when the moon is full—”

  “Stop. Just…stop. I know what you are and it is not a werewolf. Werewolves are made up by humans. You and I? We are Pack. Wolves, if you prefer. Never werewolves and never, ever human.”

  He goes quiet for a minute, one hand to the back of his neck, the other at his rib cage. “But…you have…” He bends his fingers into stiff claws and draws them from his right nipple down to his left hip, mirroring the path of the four claw marks across my body. “And I have these.” He pulls his hair to the side and stretches out his neck. “They feel like bite—”

  “It’s not something you catch, like rabies. We are born, not made. Those on your neck? Those are carry marks. Sometimes when an adult carries a pup, they can be a little…rough.” Wolves’ jaws become like pincers if they are frightened or angry or running. My fingers press at the tiny knots of thicker tissue hidden under my skin. My Pack was always frightened and angry and running.

  He presses his fingers into the back of his neck. “I had a dream once, at least I thought it was a dream, but now I’m wondering… A wolf carried me in her teeth. I don’t know how I knew it was a ‘her.’ Just a dream thing, I suppose. Anyway, she carried me and then put me down in the middle of…nothing
. Endless white and cold. And then she leaves. In my dream, I try to follow, but she was fast and the snow was higher than I was. My legs…” He stops, clearing his throat. “My legs were too short.”

  Then he looks at me, his eyes focused again. “What do you think?”

  “Are you asking me if it was a dream?”

  “I guess.”

  I am familiar enough with the workings of desperate packs to imagine what happened. The white pup eventually opens his eyes for the first time, revealing one the blue of heaven, one the green of earth. There follows a flurry of superstitious whispering, then some wolf—the Alpha if it was a well-led pack, some lower wolf if it was not—is tasked with getting rid of the cursed thing.

  I imagine the pup going limp as they always do, as the wolf takes him somewhere far, where the Pack will not need to know whether their problem has been solved by predators or the elements or the despair of loneliness.

  “Yes,” I lie. “It sounds like a dream.”

  The imagining is easy. The unimagining is harder.

  Chapter 13

  He stares at the blood welling up from the straight line sliced in his thigh.

  “I remember now. You stabbed me.”

  “I didn’t stab you. It was surgery. With a knife. I needed to clean you out. We are strong, but you were dying.”

  The blood mixed with water has turned his knee pink.

  “How did you know what I am?”

  I wonder where the bandage has gone.

  “Your smell. Humans smell like steel and carrion. Wolves smell wild.”

  He holds his wrist to his nose.

  “You can’t really smell it on yourself. It’s easier to smell on other wolves.” He leans toward me, but there are limits to my tolerance for this wolf’s curiosity.