by Karen Ranney
I wondered if Marcie had set me up, sending me to the garden knowing Mark would be here. I was torn between irritation and gratitude.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m normally more pleasant.”
He inclined his head slightly. “As am I. Perhaps lack of sleep makes us both irritable.”
I had an idea how we could relax a little bit more, but I immediately stepped on my libido and sent it squealing back to its cave.
Turning, I began to walk away, hearing his footsteps on the gravel behind me. I didn’t object to his company. In fact, I found that I didn’t particularly want to be alone.
That was the problem I’d faced most of my life. I was set aside, marked as different. I knew I wasn’t the only female Were to have the feelings I did. My grandmother was proof of that. Yet no one else — not one of my contemporaries — ever came up to me and told me that they, too, disliked their restrictions.
Maybe I needed to take out an advertisement somewhere. Perhaps I could buy time on a television station, produce a commercial.
Female Furries, are you tired of being subjugated to a man’s whims? Are you sick of living in a perfumed garden? Do you want to assert yourself? Do you want to walk with your mate instead of behind him? Be the first to eat? Do you want to have some degree of autonomy about your own life?
In actuality, I couldn’t fund a commercial. First of all, I’d be punished for bringing Weres into the public’s consciousness. After that? I could just imagine the furor that would result. My clan would come after me. The dismissal with which they treated me with would change to: get her, silence her, bury her body so deep nobody could find it.
I heard Mark chuckle behind me and glanced over my shoulder at him.
“What’s so funny?”
“Merely an errant thought,” he said.
LED lights illuminated the path, the cool blue white light not intrusive or so bright that it eliminated all the shadows around the bushes and plants.
I sat on one of the white metal benches, wondering if he’d sit beside me. Did I want him to? Wouldn’t it be better if he explored the courtyard on his own, leaving me and my occasional libidinous thoughts alone?
It would certainly be safer, but for whom? Him or me?
“Why can’t you sleep?” he asked.
I hadn’t expected the question. Before I could come up with an answer, he spoke again.
“Having trouble deciding whether to go through with it or not?”
“Where did you go?” I asked instead of answering. “I saw you in the room, but then you disappeared.”
“Being there brought back memories I chose not to revisit.”
Now that was interesting. “What kind of memories? Are you a lottery winner?”
“Yes,” he said.
Curiosity filled me. I wanted to ask so many questions, but the way he’d answered silenced me. What kind of paranormal species was he? I should’ve known there was something different about him from the very beginning. No one could be that gorgeous naturally. Maybe he was creating a spell.
Was he a wizard? Was that the reason my libido always perked up when he was around? Or an elf?
“Are you married?” I asked.
I didn’t look in his direction. Instead, I concentrated on the flower bed in front of me. Tulips swayed slightly in the predawn breeze. Someone had planted them with an eye to creating a rainbow of colors ranging from purple and red to orange and yellow.
This would be the perfect place to come when I was depressed. How could you possibly be in a bad mood in the face of such bright, optimistic flowers?
“No.”
It had seemed like an eternity before he answered me yet he’d done so with a one word response again.
“Are you always so monosyllabic?” I asked.
“Occasionally,” he said, his smile broadening.
I went back to contemplating the tulips.
“If you had to do it over again, would you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I didn’t even look at him this time. “Was it scary?”
“No.”
I shook my head. “Are you willing to return if there’s war?”
“It’s part of the deal,” he said.
I glanced at him again. “Look at that, you can say more than one word at a time. I thought you were one of those silent types who only sit there looking handsome.”
One of his eyebrows arched upward, his smile taking me aback.
“Do you always say what you’re thinking?”
“Hardly ever,” I said, realizing it was true. Why had I spoken so honestly to him?
I hadn’t slept, which came on the heels of a sleepless night, which came on the heels of only sleeping a few hours. So I was good and tired. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was because I had already sailed over the abyss and was about to do something scary and strange.
Or maybe it was him. There was something about Mark that intrigued me beyond his masculinity. There were secrets in his eyes and I wanted to learn them. I’d rarely felt such curiosity about a male, but that was because I was, by physiology and culture, restricted to only lusting after Weres.
An even more curious thought: if I were made over in my own image, if I were made more me than I was right at this moment, could I mate outside my species? Looking at Mark, I found myself wanting to, very much. A human man — or whatever species he was — had never before made my libido bounce up and down and wave its hands to get my attention.
He just studied me with those beautiful eyes of his. I could have stared at him for hours. He truly was magnificent looking.
“You don’t have to do it,” he said. “You can just go home and forget about the whole thing.”
I nodded. “I could.”
“Don’t you like being a Were?”
“No,” I said, feeling strangely sad to admit it. “I don’t.”
“Care to explain?”
I was tempted to just say no, but I startled myself by telling him.
“I’m female,” I said. “That limits me. That labels me. I’ll never be seen as anything other than a female first.”
To my surprise he only nodded.
“I can have a career until I marry, but after that I have to stay at home and be a wife and mother. If I want to have a career, then I have to give up any thoughts of being a wife and mother. It’s just the way of our culture.”
“And you think that getting a transfusion might change that?”
He didn’t ask easy questions, did he? I didn’t know how to answer him.
Thankfully, he spared me from having to try to explain by asking a question I could answer.
“What made you become a veterinarian?”
“I’ve always loved animals. As a girl, I collected every stray in the neighborhood.” Hearing myself tell him that made me wonder if that’s why I had such an affinity for Dorothy. “I don’t think it surprised anyone that I became a vet.”
“Don’t you want a family?” he asked.
Another difficult question.
“Are you always so blunt?”
“Occasionally.”
This time I couldn’t help but smile at his monosyllabic response.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to have children.”
“That’s a question you need to ask.”
I nodded. He was right.
Up until this moment, a family had been something I’d pushed to the back of my mind. Yes, I wanted to be married and have children, but the price was too high. I would have to give up my autonomy and my career.
In the Were culture, just as there was no such thing as a working mother, there was no illegitimacy.
If a girl came up pregnant and the father of the child could not support her or could otherwise not marry her, then the alpha Were in her clan had to find someone who could. Money changed hands. We called it a dowry, but everybody knew what it really was — a payment to keep the family honorable.
“Why can’t you sle
ep?” I asked, changing the subject. “A guilty conscience? Things you haven’t done but need to do? A strange environment?”
“I’ve been here for the last month,” he said. “So it isn’t a strange environment. Maybe thoughts of the past are keeping me from sleeping.”
I wanted to ease him in some way, make the somber note in his voice disappear. I wanted the smile back on his face and his eyes to light up at me.
I was in deep doodoo.
Standing, I glanced down at him, realizing I needed to get some sleep. I may not be able to mate with him, but a few hours of kissing and cuddling sounded great. I was going back to my room and lock myself in for my own good.
My libido sagged in disappointment.
I said goodnight before making my way back to the elevator.
Only then did it occur to me that he’d told me he was a lottery winner. He’d had a transfusion. Did that mean he could hear my thoughts just like Marcie? I pressed the button and moaned aloud.
Chapter Twenty-One
Fear is like cranberry sauce
The next day I went through a battery of tests to find that I was healthy. Extraordinarily so, according to the British sounding physician who gave me my test results.
“We don’t anticipate any deleterious effects on your health after the transfusion,” she added. “We’ve never experienced any in the past.”
I asked her the question that had come up during my courtyard visit with Mark.
“Will I be able to have children? If I do, will I pass on any of my new traits to them?”
Dr. Hallam sat back behind her desk, her fingers drumming on the wood as she studied me.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Honestly, I don’t. In so many ways we’re in our infancy with this work. I’m referring to whether you would pass on any traits to your child. I’m certain you’ll be able to have children. Is that something you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, echoing her words. “It’s just something I thought I should find out.”
“Very wise of you. I’d ask the assembled experts at dinner as well. They may know something that I don’t know.”
I wondered just who all the experts were if they knew more than a physician. I hadn’t asked, but maybe it was a good idea to get a list of them.
The medical testing turned out to be easier than the psychological exam.
“You’re very angry at your father,” the psychologist said. “Why is that?”
I’d never before been able to communicate the discordance I felt in my own clan and I took advantage of the situation to explain the different roles of men and women in the Were community.
“Men are godlike. What a man says is the law. What a man decrees is followed. I don’t hate my father because of it, but I do resent the power he wields.”
“Perhaps you envy him that power?”
I thought it very odd that I was trying to explain this to a man, but at least Dr. Madison didn’t try to change my attitude. If anything, he made a good faith attempt to understand it.
“I’m fascinated by the dynamics of the Were community,” he said. “It’s a closed society. I’ve attempted to study it more, but my requests to do so have been summarily rejected.”
“You represent change,” I said. “Change isn’t valued in our community. We carry cell phones and we embrace technology, but the laws we follow and the rules that are in place haven’t altered for hundreds of years.”
“Yet you seem to have escaped that,” he said.
“I have, to a certain degree,” I admitted. “And so did my grandmother a little.”
“Do you think that accepting the transfusion will make you less lonely?”
The question startled me, but not any more than my instant answer.
“Yes,” I said.
Dr. Madison and I looked at each other. He didn’t say anything to refute my response. Nor did I attempt to explain further, because I wasn’t sure I could.
The second night at the castle was a repeat of the first, except for two things. I met the people who’d been in the audience the night before. I’d guessed correctly in a few cases. Three of the individuals had advanced degrees and were DNA experts. A few were vampires and I had to force myself not to cringe when shaking their hands.
Another woman was Marcie’s grandmother and a witch. I asked her if there was a way to tell if someone was a witch. She’d only shaken her head, but her watchful eyes didn’t leave me for the rest of the night.
I called Joey again and he answered, the first time I’d been able to connect with him. He assured me that everything was fine and that he and Dorothy had spent the day together.
“What the hell have you gotten me into, Torrance? The woman thinks she’s the animal control facility all by herself.”
“A little altruism never hurt anybody,” I said.
“I hope you still feel that way when you get home. So far you’ve got three new dogs.”
“What?” I stared at the night darkened window and my reflection.
“You told her to bring her strays to you. Simon’s building them dog houses in the back garden.”
I rolled my eyes a little and sighed.
When I hung up I stared at the phone for a minute. I hadn’t said anything to him about what I was thinking. I wanted to confront Joey face to face. The more I talked to other people, the more my suspicions made sense.
I didn’t like to admit it, but I’d been masterfully played.
The second change from the first night was that I managed to sleep a few hours. Exhaustion will do that to you. When I woke at two, I actually decided not to go down to the courtyard again, only to find myself in front of the vanity applying my makeup.
I’d be an idiot to go to the courtyard on the off chance that Mark would be there. Being around him made me yearn for something I couldn’t have.
When you’re on a diet, you don’t go to the candy store and peruse the display cases, salivating at the sight of the fudge, bonbons, and truffles. Maybe you do, but only if you’re a masochist. I wasn’t.
Still, I found myself in front of the elevator.
The door opened to reveal a child standing there staring at me. I would put her at five years old, maybe. The look she was giving me was about a hundred and two.
I took a step back when I didn’t mean to. There was just something about her, something that warned me that I wasn’t in the presence of a mere child.
The air didn’t sparkle. I didn’t suddenly smell roses. Yet I got the sensation that we were in a garden, one bathed by golden light, flowers blooming for as far as the eye could see.
“It’s my favorite place of all,” she said. “Here at the castle.”
Holy crap. Could she read my mind?
“Come in,” she said. “Please.”
I entered the elevator. She looked toward the doors and they closed.
My stomach iced over.
She stood in her pink robe and pink slippers staring forward, her chubby little hands clasped together in front of her. Her black hair hung down her back like a shampoo commercial, each strand perfectly in place.
Turning, she looked up at me and smiled. In a few years she would be a beauty. Even now she was a gorgeous child with an oval face, delicate rose tinted cheeks and green eyes lit with amusement.
I immediately felt the ice begin to melt.
“What are you?”
Her smiled grew until she looked like a little girl again, delight bathing her face, her striking green eyes sparkling with joy.
“Most people ask me who I am,” she said. “Not what.”
“I think you’re Marcie’s daughter.”
She nodded. “I’m Antonia,” she said. “I’m a wizard.”
My eyebrows rose. “A female wizard? Is there such a thing?”
“I don’t actually know. No one does, I’m afraid. If there are any others, they haven’t come forward. I do wish they would. Daddy is a wizard, and he said he didn’t kn
ow of any other girl wizards. But Mommy is a witpire so anything is possible, don’t you think?”
“A what?”
She laughed, the sound reminding me of gentle wind through tree branches. “It’s my name for it. She’s both a witch and a vampire. A witpire.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m five and a half.”
She couldn’t be. I was having a cogent conversation with a five and a half year old.
“It’s your nature, you see,” she said when the elevator doors opened.
I stepped out to find that we weren’t at the courtyard at all but on the roof. The stars spread out above me. I’d heard them described as diamonds on black velvet, pinpricks of light, or the eyes of God. Instead, they struck me as teeth against a midnight blue background.
“It’s your nature,” she repeated.
I glanced down at her. “Shouldn’t you be in bed? Especially if you’re only five and a half?”
“I heard you,” she said. “Some people wake me up. You did. Besides, Mommy knows where I am.”
“She does?”
She nodded. “We can see each other,” she said, walking past me to the center of the roof to a wicker couch filled with pillows.
She wriggled up onto the couch and turned to look at me, a summons from a five year old.
“What’s my nature?” I asked, sitting next to her.
The night should have been cool, but I was comfortable. I didn’t know if the area had secret heaters or if the temperature was regulated by the precocious child at my side.
“Why you think the stars are teeth,” she said. “Why you’re afraid. It’s all right to be afraid,” she added, glancing at me. “But fear must never become strong enough to be a motivation all on its own.”
I swear, I couldn’t think of a thing to say to a five year old, not one who had Mona Lisa’s smile and Yoda’s wisdom.
“Fear is like cranberry sauce,” she continued. “A little cranberry sauce makes you pay attention to the rest of the meal, but too much of it is, well, too much.”
“I take it you don’t like cranberry sauce,” I said, having given up being surprised by her.