“Why is this so necessary?” I grumble.
The mirth in his eyes fades. “Other shifters, as well as many people, are likely to alter their treatment of you—intentionally or not—based on your emotions that they perceive. If they cannot detect an energy pattern, then they cannot detect a weak spot. But don’t disconnect with yourself. Your emotions—and instincts—will save you. This is more like scrambling an outgoing radio signal, or making it undetectable, so that others can’t know what’s up your sleeve. An energetic poker face, if you will. It’s kind of like shielded cable.
“Survival is a process through a combination of actions, body language, eye contact, emotions, reason, kinesics, instinct, scent, and pheromones. Humans have a hard time with many of these because human reasoning has evolved faster that instinct can keep up. This is why they often make so many drastically poor choices.”
I want so much for this man to be proud of me it hurts. Then I realize what I’m doing and slam the imaginary globe around myself. A bizarre sense of an imploding force field crackles around the outline of my body. Rowan tilts his head, and his black eyes shine.
“Very good,” he says. I keep the shield wrapped tightly around myself, hoping that he won’t notice the elation over his approval that now sings in my blood.
“This brings us to the subject of intuition,” he continues. “It’s basically evolved instinct. The trouble is that most of us have been taught by adults to ignore it while we are still pups. All we have to do is let go of the counterintuitive lessons we were taught as children and learn to trust our gut feelings again. We have to pay attention when the hair on the back of our necks rises, when we ‘smell a rat,’ when someone rubs us the wrong way for no logical reason. When the rest of the world is talking, we should be listening and paying attention to signals. There is a reason that dogs can predict seizures and low levels of insulin or sniff out cancer. There is no reason why our kind could not do the same if we would only balance our egos with the world around us. We lycans potentially have the best of both worlds.
“Now about vibrations. A wise man once said, ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.’”
I can’t tell if he’s pulling my leg or not. “Is this some sort of mumbo-jumbo new age glurge?”
He grins triumphantly. “Close enough. It was Nikola Tesla. ‘Vibration’ simply means ‘oscillating motion,’ whether it’s in the form of an atom, a sound wave, or a solar system. They hold the very atoms of the physical world together. So everything is in motion, even when it appears to be still. We create vibrations with our thoughts, our voices, our emotions, and our minds. You can see the effects in water and sand sound experiments and moving particles around into patterns. There is an inexplicable bliss that comes from being completely one with them. And when the time is right, it is worth every risk.”
Before I leave, he suggests that I experiment with tuning my bass to a slightly lower pitch. He tells me that it’s a more relaxing frequency. “Besides, you’ll find that it’s accordant with much that is found in nature.” It occurs to me that a slightly lower pitch was what opened up the magic in our very first collective howl.
“Next session we will discuss The Wild Harmonic, for it is the most powerful thing that you can sing,” he tells me. My brain hurts, and I can’t even ask him to kiss it better.
By the time I reach my car, I lose my grip on the shielding. The harder I try to regain control, the worse it gets. Several dogs in nearby yards begin howling at my uncontrollable release of pheromones. Just pushing the speed limit, I head down the street in the direction of my home, in hopes that this novice attempt hasn’t alerted any of the unknown bad guys.
The rhythm of my footfalls creates a cadence in my mind, then a groove, and last a melody. Walking to the grocery store rather than driving is much more conducive to songwriting. Heading with such purpose, I still remain on the alert, and the slowing of an old Volkswagen combi bus behind me kicks my instincts into overdrive. With the crunch of tires and the squeal of brakes, I turn to face whatever it is that wants my attention.
I barely recognize the elderly lady emerging from the vehicle like a malnourished cicada molting from a steel exuvia. “Mrs. Peacock!” I chide my former next-door neighbor with careful affection. That was the only moniker by which I knew her, and whether or not that was her real name I haven’t got a clue. “Someone said you were moved to assisted living, and you never even told me goodbye!”
Little remains of the spry old woman I once knew. Her usual impeccable sense of fashion is gone, her habitual elegant garb replaced by a grubby white jogging suit. Whenever I’d dropped by her house for visits, she never answered the door without lipstick on. Now her unmade eyes are hollow and her white hair is wild—what hair remains, anyway. A massive chunk of it is missing across one side of her head, exposing speckled pink scalp.
“You there,” she croaks. “Come with me.” She fumbles in her handbag and begins pulling out some sort of net. Her arthritic talons become entangled in the fibers, and my gut instinct is to assist her even as I know that the net is meant for me.
I take several steps backward. “Mrs. Peacock, what are you doing?” I intone, calling up a slight whistle-whine.
She pauses, blinks, and straightens her jeweled cat-eye glasses. “Buzz? What are you doing here?”
Is it Alzheimer’s? Dementia? I wonder. I take a deep whiff and smell drugs on her.
Her red-rimmed eyes fill with tears. Her hands begin to shake, which I’d perceive as frailty if I couldn’t smell her unshielded terror. “Get out of here, Buzz. Stay safe. God loves you the way you are. Don’t ever change!”
The double meaning of the warning could not be clearer. How did she know about my protean nature? But before I can grill her with questions, she totters back into the driver’s seat of the combi. With a roar of vintage engines, she drives away, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust and panic.
The grocery store no longer seems important.
Back in Sylvia’s office the next day, I rehash the encounter with Mrs. Peacock. I’d spoken to Rowan about it the instant I’d gotten home, and his protectiveness of me in his tone had nearly made me weep. My best friend confirms our suspicion that my former neighbor was under the influence of this mysterious boogeyman.
“I used to deliver the old lady’s groceries, and the next thing I know she almost attacks me,” I moan.
The nun’s face is completely neutral. “According to a two-thousand year old study, nine out of ten lepers are ungrateful bastards.”
“You are ever the holy archivist,” I reply dryly. “So what have you got to show me today? Be easy on me, wise one, for I’m totally freaked out.”
“Then let’s chill with some music first. Have you ever heard of shape note singing? Check this out.” She hands me a book full of old choral music arranged in three- and four-part harmonies. The note heads all have different shapes: round, square, triangular, and diamond. The tradition is an American one dating back to the mid-1800s. Sylvia tells me that the notation was used to facilitate sight-reading for singers, the shapes indicating the degree of the scale.
“There is still the normal number of notes, but only four syllables in this scale: fa, sol, la, and mi. The act of replacing lyrics with the syllables is called ‘fasola.’ Julie Andrews would have had to truncate her little song had she lived in early America! See, in this form it’s no less of a note, in fact it’s far more. The shape represents a note as well as a solfège syllable.”
“Isn’t that sort of metaphorical for us musical lycans?” I muse aloud. “Shifting shapes in order to be more widely understood, and always about the music.” My best friend silently commends my quick learning with the sparkle in her eyes. She pops a CD into her player and I am washed in the glory of the severe harmonies, pure and primitive. The hair stands up on my arms. I begin to believe that religion would be much more effective if it involved a lot less talking and a lot mor
e singing. We sit in silence for a minute, savoring the aftereffects of the sonorous spell.
“So … I have been thinking a lot,” I say at last. “There are so many myths about werewolves, and sometimes they contradict each other. We’re good, neutral, or evil. We can’t fight the change, we’re at the mercy of the lunar phases, or we can change at will. Transformation can be brought on by anything from rage to sexual desire. Change is sometimes an excruciating process, or some say that it’s ecstasy. What is the real deal here?”
She appears pleased with my question. “It doesn’t matter any more than what we are really called: werewolves, lycanthropes, Úlfhéðnar, Loup-Garou, or Rougarou. There are many different stories and theories throughout history, literature, and folklore, branching even further variety in pop culture and entertainment. Here’s the lowdown on the myriad beliefs: all are false and all are true.”
I can’t hold back the huge sigh of exasperation. “Please don’t tell me that this is one of these holy mysteries that we’re not designed to fathom …”
She chuckles. “Getting predictable, am I? Well, not to worry, because the reason is quite simple. First of all, look at the different kinds of wolves there are all over the world. At least thirty subspecies exist. Then you have to look at the varieties of people in general, from a cultural standpoint, an ethnic standpoint, and an ideological standpoint, to name a few aspects of humankind. Now if some sentient being from another world asked you to objectively describe ‘people’ in a few sentences, a few paragraphs, or an entire book, could you do it?”
I know where she’s going with this. “I know I’m supposed to say ‘no,’ but I think I could still give an overall snapshot of the basic natures of the human race.”
Her eyes meet mine in a compassionate challenge. “People are bigoted, true or false?”
“Well, some people certainly are, but not …”
“People are generous and empathetic, true or false?”
“Sylvia, I see what you mean, but you’re giving absolutes here, and it’s more complicated than that.”
“So is the nature of your original question. You asked, ‘what is the real deal here?’ And I said that they are all false and all true. Wolves are diverse, people are even more diverse, and lycanthropes are the most diverse of all. The answer to your question is: what kind of lycanthrope do you want to be?”
Growing frustration burns in my veins. Just give me a fucking answer! is what I want to scream at my best friend, and yet I know that this is for my own good—which further annoys me. I rein in my temper and force levity, trying to practice some shielding while I’m at it.
“Damn you, Penguin!” I growl, tugging her black sleeve in mock aggression. “Why do you have to answer a question with a question? Aren’t you tired of being right all the time? Shouldn’t you go back to fighting Batman or something?” She expertly parries my sleeve tug and imitates the comic book villain with a nefarious waddle.
Of course, that has to be the moment that Father O’Flaherty decides to walk past the office. Upon sight of our impromptu superhero battle, he rolls his eyes to the heavens, throws up his hands in a helpless gesture, and mutters something that sounds like “Jesusmaryandjoseph …” before continuing on.
It melts away my agitation. We clap our hands over our mouths and pinch our noses shut to stave off the snickering until we finally hear his footsteps fade down the hall.
“We will continue,” Sylvia finally wheezes, wiping a tear from her eye, “with the teaching of the holy lycans of India—the dhole people—and how mantras can assist you. I am more versed in the history of lore-songs, but Raúl knows more of the actual mantras themselves. Now go on, Batman, before I get into any more trouble!”
I laugh all the way back to Orleans Parish.
My second day of personal training with Raúl is two days later. He gives me a lift, since he says he has to run some errands Uptown anyway. I am trying to key myself up into the mood, and Raúl plays a CD in his van of the Mozambican group Ghorwane. I ask him if he ever heard them live back in his native country, and he shakes his head. “They are after my time, Little One. I came to the States so long ago, I even missed out on the Mozambique’s independence from Portugal.” And we leave it at that.
After a women’s self defense class with the renowned trainer Dalia, Raúl meets me by the weights. We go upstairs this time to shoot some hoops. It’s for increased coordination, he tells me, but I know he’s just itching for a little one-on-one playing, which is fine with me.
As he readies to aim yet another slam-dunk over my head, he suddenly stops dead in his tracks and cocks his head. I sense something as well. Someone in here—a female—is warded, but the physical exertion is causing her to let her guard down a little. We both detect the unmistakable energy of a strange lycan and begin surveying the room. I feel a stab of something territorial as my eyes fall on the strikingly beautiful woman from Boot Camp. She’s running laps above us on the track that wraps around the court. Her jaw is set determinedly, but her eyes tell me that her mind is elsewhere. Is she or isn’t she?
Raúl makes a chuffing sound in his throat, a canine equivalent of a throat clearing politely for attention, a note intended to be heard only by others like us.
She comes to a dead stop and her head snaps in our direction, eyes wide in disbelief. Raúl waves. There is no need for any of us to verbally disclose what we are. In a heartbeat, she’s down the spiral stairs and standing before us, her energy a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Her large, dark eyes are liquid, her lips full and pouty, and her long black hair lustrous. Her olive skin is fresh and young. She has a body like a racecar.
She nods at me. “I’ve seen you in Boot Camp class. My name is Aydan.” I can’t place her accent.
Raúl’s smile is annoyingly generous. “Where are you from?”
“I am from Izmir, in Turkey. I am a musician and I want to stay here awhile and learn everything I can about jazz and funk.”
“Well, it seems as though my friend Birch and I could show you a few things, couldn’t we? My name is Raúl, and I’m a drummer. Birch here is a bass player.” I suppress the urge to kick Raúl in the ankle. I don’t want to share my family just yet. It’s a childish notion, but it appears that my territorial lupine side has just snuck to the surface of my consciousness to say hello.
I freeze my emotions and quickly file them away. “What instrument do you play?” I inquire politely.
“Bağlama. It’s like… a guitar, but it has seven strings …”
“I know of the instrument,” I chime in, grateful not to be completely out of my league already. “And the frets are laid out in microtones … very expressive. I’ve been listening to some recordings of Neşet Ertaş.”
Her whole face lights up, further enhancing her loveliness. “Yes, I love his work! You know him? ‘The Plectrum of the Steppe,’ they called him. I got to meet him once in Izmir. I am so glad to have someone to talk to about this!”
And so the three of us chat, about odd meter music, funk, and local cuisine, with Raúl turning on the charm until I am nearly jealous. Shield, Buzz, shield! I tell myself. Not that I desire Raúl, who is like a brother to me. I don’t like this unexpected side of myself. When we all leave, Raúl offers me a lift home.
I am quiet in the car, which I’m certain is uncharacteristic of me. Raúl says casually, “There is a whole world of music and a whole world of wolf people out there, Little One. We are only getting started.”
His message is loud and clear. I may be a preternatural being but certainly no rare unicorn, and had better get used to meeting other formidable wolves. As long as I have my chops and my pack, I have nothing to fear, I assure myself.
Being back in Teddy’s apartment cheers me. I have secretly needed some comfort and good cheer in the wake of the nagging insecurity gnawing away at my belly, as well as the deep shame I carry for letting it bother me. Teddy has just finished a matinée gig on the upright bass near the French Market, an
d we are both happy to let the strains of Weather Report cleanse our musical and psychological palates. He sinks into his favorite chair with a can of NOLA Blonde and sighs, grateful for a moment’s peace, but then frowns. “Aw, fuck, not again!”
The sound hits me too: an approaching rumble of about twenty pairs of tourists’ feet, let by the righteous tromping of some tour guide’s boots. Vociferous, whooping and hollering, they gather under Teddy’s window. Teddy rises with a sigh and goes to his refrigerator. “Check this out,” he bids me.
He’s got a stash of about six cantaloupes in there. He chooses one, holds it up to his head for size reference, and grins. Trotting to his open window overlooking the street, he holds the melon, listening and waiting.
The tour guide rattles off a carefully rehearsed script. “This is a typical New Orleans home, called a ‘shotgun house’ because if you were to fire a shotgun through the front door, the bullet would continue straight out through the back.”
“Unless you’re a piss-poor shot,” growls Teddy under his breath.
“This establishment,” continues the guide, “is considered to be one of the most haunted buildings in the French Quarter. Legend has it that the owner, a wealthy entrepreneur, came home to find his wife engaged in a love affair with her slave. In a fit of anger, he grabbed his broadsword, sliced off his wife’s head, where it defenestrated—that’s ‘flew out the window,’ to you boys and girls –and landed on this very spot!”
This is Teddy’s cue. With a blood-curdling wail that he usually saves for singing early Rush songs, he heaves the unfortunate melon out of the window. It smashes on the pavement with a satisfying thud, spraying the closest tourists with a light smoothie, as the startled screams immediately ricochet down the street.
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