The Wild Harmonic

by Beth W. Patterson

  I wonder why I’d never thought to explore the Bonnet Carré Spillway before this. Built for flood control in 1931, the land stretches from the levees of the Mississippi to lake Pontchartrain, diverting the waters of the former into the latter. The forty-two acre wilderness is used for assorted recreation during the day: biking, four-wheeling, hiking, and fishing. At night, however, it seems the sort of place where a wolf can be a wolf.

  I remember that it’s also used for hunting, and although I know that we will be cloaked, I am discomfited by another nagging detail. “We will be warded, but not invisible. What about eyeshine should we encounter any oncoming vehicles or flashlights?” I’d seen enough glowing eyes of critters in my own headlights at night.

  “I guess you have no way of figuring this out by yourself, since you’re not exactly going to look at yourself in a mirror while there’s an oncoming car,” chuckles Raúl thoughtfully. “Don’t worry, Little One. Somehow our kind has evolved to have no eyeshine. It’s a way to stay hidden in the modern world. That’s one of the only ways a human can differentiate a lycan from a true wolf at night. But no one will be looking for lycans on the Spillway, or even know what we are. People will not see what they are not expecting to see.”

  Piled into Raúl’s van and heading in the direction of Baton Rouge, we grow quiet. The Bonnet Carré Spillway between Norco and Laplace seems like an ominous location as we approach. The eternal flame of the oil refinery lights up the night sky, and I remember why they call this stretch of road “Cancer Alley.”

  We have agreed to meet Sylvia at the Spillway Bar in Norco. At first I don’t see her at all until she steps in front of me and waves a hand in front of my face. I realize that she is fully warded, so the locals take no notice of the ill-fitting nun in their midst.

  First we ward together before trotting down to the makeshift wilderness. This is my first time being a part of it with the whole pack. In a protective cluster, we growl a note to match the earth. I feel a wave of strength descend in a benevolent fog around us. It is a soft cloak of obscurity, a one-way tinted window allowing us to see all without being seen ourselves.

  Gathered under the swollen moon, Rowan shines so brightly with power, it almost hurts to look at him. Desire mixed with awe force me to avoid eye contact with him. He’s taller, leaner, and more savage than I’ve ever seen him in the mundane world. For all of his musical wisdom and gentle heart, he is still potentially dangerous.

  Sylvia sings a hymn that I have never heard before.

  Give thanks for moonlight, ever what we need

  A shade of gray between instinct and lore

  A hunger that propels us to the core

  And music we create, on which we feed

  A total satiation would mean death

  But craving ever drives us to expand

  Through fervent congregation, pack, or band

  A pathway to wild places with each breath

  A razor wire of truth on which we run

  More delicate than glass the balance hangs

  Between the hunt, the coarse display of fangs

  And existential thought, the two made one

  That moment when all four paws leave the ground

  The savage breast supplanting human tears

  The pounding of our thoughts ring in our ears

  But pumping hearts that scarcely make a sound

  Live for the sake of living, flesh and bone

  Between two worlds the night bids, “Welcome home”

  I am slightly incredulous that this holy woman is the same person with whom I once created such childhood mischief. Perhaps I, too, have lived many lifetimes without knowing it. I stand in awe and love as she now invokes a lycan blessing:

  May you see in the darkness

  even while your enemies would hide your light

  May your ears always be attuned

  to the music of the spheres and of the howl

  May you always be downwind from the scent of friendship

  May your hearts remain hungry, your bellies full but never satiated

  And may the warmth of man-made flame

  or the collective heat of the pack

  still pale compared to your fire within.

  Off come the clothes, but for some reason I don’t feel self-conscious. In this palpable five-way energy connection, all human stigmas that I have been taught crumble and fall away like so much dust. These strange ornamental wrappings only hinder me and give me little protection from the elements compared to what my full animal potential has to offer me, and I shed them in my eagerness to feel the night air on my skin.

  We flow into our animal shapes like a grove of nocturnal blossoms, a graceful unfolding of fur and fangs, reaching for the moonlight that nourishes us. This is a step back into Eden, before the first divine sacrifice took place. It is reminiscent of an ancient ancestral memory, before the dawning of consciousness, when all was pure. When we spoke as freely with animals as we did with angels, demons, and gods. Before we were cast out of our innocence with our newfound enlightenment, and set on our journey to discover Who We Are.

  Rowan moves from wolf to wolf with his nose scrunched back, fangs prominently displayed in an act of something between asserting his dominance and smiling. Our warm-up consists of tumbling, rolling, playing, nipping, and generally being silly as we acquaint ourselves with this newfound collective freedom. Clustered together, our tails wag as we reassure ourselves and each other that it’s still the same old us. We trot away from the highway and farther towards the river, comforted by the cover of night and increasing seclusion. Five is a small number for a true wolf pack, but for a band of shape-shifting musicians, it is just right.

  Now that I have been in training, I am even more attuned to the howl, and it is like nothing I have ever experienced. One by one as everyone joins in, the crescendo swells to an otherworldly mantra, like a chorus of Tibetan singing bowls. The auditory spectrum shines like a prism and fragments like a kaleidoscope. An unmistakable line of energy connects us to one another in every possible combination like a star, a snowflake, and an intricate geometric pattern. There is a palpable pull like the ebb and flow of a tide, and I wonder if it is the moon or this wild new sense of unity that causes it. I am intoxicated by the music and at the same time more aware and alive than I have ever felt before. Is it because of my sharper lupine hearing, or is this something that only lycans can perceive: heightened senses with a human appreciation for beauty?

  We are all tiny filaments of one sentient being, like five petals of a flower. Ten eyes look to the moon, a heavenly body that pulls at the tides of an endless sea of blood cells pumped by five hearts. Rowan points his nose at a star and we feel a surge of life force pulling us in a definite direction. He arcs into the air like a dolphin and aims himself like an arrow at the horizon. We surge together around him like a school of fish, like one complete organism as we take off at a hard run across the land. My center of gravity has shifted. No longer limited by the precarious balance of a bipedal run, my body now rocks into a different cadence as my weight is propelled across forelegs and hind. Tail extended, I am streamlined like a comet. The interlocking rhythm of twenty paws across the earth is the wildest music yet, a beauty that humans addicted to symmetry and patterns cannot understand. The moon holds the steadiest rhythm ever, a pulse that only the most eternal of beings can fully comprehend: a beat once every twenty-one days, with the occasional flam of a lunar eclipse.

  I delight in the intense speed I can maintain; faster than anything I could ever experience in human form, and so effortless. It is like low-level flying: fast as a vehicle but devoid of any wheels or windshields to detract from my trajectory—the vehicle is me. My body elongates and contracts, a self-winding spring.

  We carry the blood of the moon and the sun, our mothers and our fathers, our beasts and our people. Each breath is a gateway to a sacred duality. We are the stuff of fairytales and fables, a mystery that no one has ever solved. The hunt is eternal, f
or it is not in the felling but in the chase that brings us to our most aliveness.

  We each alternately push ahead and fall behind like migrating birds. It becomes hypnotic, and for a split second I wonder if the others are in this trance as well. I look with my eyes, but I cannot even pick them out individually, nor separate my consciousness from the rest of the pack. We all melt together into a vortex of trust and strength. We are a single electrical current, a flow of blood through veins of instinct.

  And then in a miniature bang, we splinter and expand. Our diaspora extends our consciousness. Gone astray, every one to his own way. I pick up a hundred different trails and take notes by rolling in whatever smells interesting: scent rolling is lycan social networking. I am an oxygen-seeking blood cell, gathering life force for all. I am a single tendril, a lone neuron eager to collect information and send it back to the brain center, the central hub that is the pack.

  All doubt and confusion is somewhere far behind.

  Run it off. Run it all off.

  My inhibitions drop further as something breaks the concentration of my data gathering. Its long hind legs and white pom-pom tail make it an irresistible chase, and the closer I get to my quarry, the more myopic I become in my hunger. So single-minded am I, I don’t even hear, smell, or feel the presences of two beings bearing down on me. Rowan and Teddy nearly collide with each other as they both strive to stop me in tandem. Only for the heightened awareness of each other is there no colossal lupine sumo splat. Rowan catches the scruff of my neck in his teeth, an act that reduces me to something between an abject puppy and a suddenly very horny woman. My body instinctively goes limp and he releases me. The rabbit is well out of sight for now, and I would do anything for Rowan to grab my neck again. I pant in exhilaration of the run, the profound high, the mystical experience, and Rowan, Rowan, Rowan.

  Sylvia and Teddy catch up with us both, alternately trying to jump over each other and nip each other on the butt. Raúl grins at me and I manage to say, “Waheguru.” He sneezes in amusement. We all just congregate for a long while, sharing the various scents we’ve picked up, sniffing, posturing, and wagging.

  Back in the van, we feed our faces on protein bars and sliced beef. Rowan gently explains to me that if I’d caught and eaten the rabbit, I’d have had to either digest it fully before returning to human form or be horribly sick from lacking the capacity and enzymes to process it. And he knew for a fact that we wouldn’t have enough time for the former, and Raúl would not be happy to have anyone barfing raw meat and fur in his van for the latter, pack mate or not. His eyes are shining, mouth curved in a reluctant grin. I have a gut feeling that he may have learned this the hard way in his youth, finally able to laugh about it now.

  I wonder if this ritual will ever become less delicious over time. I am so ridiculously happy that I almost stay awake in the van on the ride home. Before fading out of consciousness, my last thought is how much I still want that rabbit.

  ACT II

  PHASE

  SHIFTERS

  “The meeting of two personalities is like

  the contact of two chemical substances:

  if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

  —CARL JUNG

  CHAPTER

  5

  PHANTOM POWER

  The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is upon us, and we are all suddenly insanely busy for two weeks. Even Sylvia, who is no longer publicly gigging, is off on a mission to Guatemala. Even if I’d had no Jazz Fest gigs, I wouldn’t have been able to ignore the vibe. Not just in the Quarter, either. Across the increasingly gentrified Bywater, the Marigny, Mid City, Garden District, West Bank, and practically at my Uptown doorstep, festive visitors are everywhere. Most of us show our local pride subtly, such as fleur de lis jewelry around our necks and ceramic impressions of Water Meter lids hanging on our walls. But now I start to see the annual influx of tourists with straw hats and Hawaiian style shirts printed with chili peppers, washboards, and alligators. They support our music, bless their hearts. Even if they haven’t yet learned the unique ways we pronounce certain street names like Calliope and Burgundy, let alone pronounce Tchoupitoulas.

  Raúl and Teddy are the rhythm section of The Zydeco Sex Puppets at the Fais-Do-Do stage on the first Friday. I’ve got the early morning spot on the main stage with Descendientes the same day, then an afternoon set at the Lagniappe Stage with the Round Pegs. We each get passes for two in our performer packets, but parking passes are scarce, so we carpool in Raúl’s van. I nag Teddy to put sufficient amounts of sunscreen on his arms, and then I have him slather my back. It’s going to be a scorcher today, and my skimpy halter top is allowing skin that never sees sunshine to get burned to a crisp if I’m not careful.

  The shuttle vans are efficient as ever, and both of my sets go without a hitch. I’m so busy catching up with the other musicians that I almost forget we have a job to do. I don’t notice any glaring errors on anyone’s parts, and my own are subtle enough that I don’t think anyone notices.

  Rowan is mixing all day, every day at the Jazz Stage. Many of the most venerable and noteworthy jazz acts are performing, but sadly, it seems as though the majority of the attendees ignore these artists in favor of the larger-than-life pop icons. After my last set I sneak over to the soundboard to surprise him with an iced coffee. I don’t want to distract him by hanging around for too long, and I’m starving anyway, so I prepare myself to make a beeline for the food stands. Depending on how exorbitantly long the lines are, I’m either going for the crawfish sacks or the boudin balls first. My stomach snarls in agreement.

  There’s a new lineup on next. The Anatolian Fusion Project. Drums, electric bass, Nøde organ, guitar …

  … and Aydan on the bağlama. Beaming at the crowd, she is dressed in vibrant textiles with their ancient geometric motifs and brilliant contrasting colors of traditional Turkish finery, yet the clothing is clearly tailored to accentuate her slender body. Her glossy black mane flows freely down her back, yet she doesn’t appear to so much as break a sweat in the ferocious heat. Her rosebud lips pucker slightly in concentration.

  Her playing is beyond flawless. She blends Sufi singing with complex Western chord changes and Byzantine modes. Her blazing riffs fuse microtonal bends and jazzy blue notes, hands a blur in a dervish of their own. Her cheerful, demure attitude belies her stellar chops and only endears her even more to the rapidly gathering crowd. Her band is clearly digging it, smiling and swaying with the music. I recognize most of these guys from Snug Harbor, and I know that they are loving the challenge.

  And of course Rowan is mixing her to sound like an international superstar. His concentration on her music is unwavering. Does he know that she is lycan, and are they communicating in ways other than musical?

  I’ve spent so many years in music trying to be a team player and tame my ego that I don’t know how to handle jealousy when it strikes. Especially when it’s a white-hot slug in the gut like this.

  I recognize a well-known music writer standing nearby, murmuring to his buddy. He’s out of normal earshot, but helpless to my wolf senses, I hear his commentary anyway. “Do you see that fingerstyle she’s using? That’s called ‘sherpe,’ and it’s a really expressive technique. I wonder if she’d be interested in doing a cover story …?”

  His companion is equally enthusiastic. “She was on Past Your Bedtime with Titus and Ronicus recently …” Oh, gods! I don’t want to listen to this conversation, but I can’t help it. Now is not the time for me to find out that it was she who got the spot I’d auditioned for, the exposure that would have been my big break.

  I steal a glance back at Rowan and instantly regret it. He is clearly enthralled with the music. And it’s a sound that never in a million years could I have thought up.

  With that, my hunger is gone, the growling monster in my tummy locked behind bars in a futile effort to cage my envy. But now the free beer in the trailer behind the stage looks really good to me.

&nbs
p; I desperately want to talk to Sylvia, but she’s out of phone range. I should be able to confide in my other packmates, but I am terrified of rocking the boat.

  I meet Teddy by the Lagniappe stage, where we’re supposed to catch the shuttle to the parking lot. I drunkenly slur to Teddy …. “There’s this girl from Wolf and it turns out she’s a wereturkey ….”

  “Oh, yeah, I’d heard about Aydan Çiçek through the world music grapevine. Did you know that her name means ‘of the moon’? Fitting for a lycan. Then Raúl was just saying that you guys met her at the gym. Um. I really think you ought to eat something, or at least drink some water.”

  I roll the weight of my head in a clumsy no. Since I don’t have to drive tonight, I want to more than shield myself—I just want to numb these feelings altogether. The harder I try not to dwell on Aydan, the more impossible the task. She could pass for a model, she got the TV show, she has the frontperson diva charm, the musical mind to organize a band, and now my love’s respect and admiration—it’s all too much for me to handle right now. I reach for another beer. I’ll deal with the hangover in the morning.

  By the time Raúl meets up with us, I am decidedly weaving. Neither man chides me. I have stopped caring about what signals I am sending out. Teddy waits in the van while Raúl walks me to my door, coaxes me to drink a glass of water and down some aspirin, pulls off my shoes, and rolls me into my bed. Before leaving he gives me a sympathetic look. “Be careful what you piss on, Little One,” he softly cautions me. “You might end up marking it as your own.”