by Amanda Milo
The hounds’ baying gets ever louder.
Ever closer.
There are hounds bred for their ‘soft mouths.’ If they have this trait, it means the dog can retrieve a heavy bird without destroying the delicate feathers. The canine knows to bite gently; they don’t worry their prey.
Then there are hounds who are bred to dance faster than a boar’s tusks can sing through the air—and bite hard enough to break a full-grown hare’s back in one crunch.
Our king doesn’t hunt birds.
Neither does Gareth.
And they rarely lose a dog to a vicious boar.
Somehow, I’m certain it’s a slower death than a severed spine for me. If the hounds get ahold of me, I’m too large for them to perform a quick cervical dislocation.
I can’t let them catch me.
With a building sense of foreboding, I stare down at my trapped limb.
CHAPTER 6
I’ve chewed through the nerves and muscles and sinews of my leg, down to the bone, and I’m almost through my agony-riddled limb when the hounds reach me. Tongues lolling, tails wagging, you’d never know they were here to dispense death.
I’ve grown up with most of these dogs. Gareth and I play with every litter. We’ve been accused of being under the houndmaster’s feet as much as the dogs themselves are.
Maybe my wolf-smell isn’t all that different from my human scent, because I’d swear the dogs greet me with recognition.
At first, no aggression… but then the metal tang of my blood and the greasy scent of my exposed marrow hits them, and their tails stiffen, their faces grow keen.
A man’s boots make quiet, swift shushes on the leaves, and Gareth appears. “Sweet hells—FUCK!” he shouts, and he rushes me.
My hackles rise.
His approach... falters.
After a shuddering breath, Gareth’s drops into a crouch, his gleaming eyes meeting my wolf’s eyes.
He looks positively berserk.
He says something. His voice is so rough, so deep. He doesn’t quite sound angry; but he doesn’t sound right. Then again, I’ve never heard him when he’s hot on a hunt.
And I suppose everything is bound to sound wrong when it’s your leg in the trap.
I crack down on my limb even harder.
Gareth’s hand darts out, as if he might catch me by my ruff.
I let go of my hold on my leg—yelping even as I snap my teeth at him, warning him not to try grabbing me. Without my jaws’ pressure, my leg oozes blood. But it doesn’t gush with it; from the squeezing pain, I’d guess the trap is pinching my veins. Perhaps nerves too; I’d have thought gnawing through your own leg would damn near kill you with pain. In truth, it only makes you wish you were dead.
“STOP this!” Gareth bellows, his words either so loud or so fervent that they finally break through to me. “You’re ruining yourself!”
My heart shrivels into a cold, deadened lump.
Does a wolf with a chewed-up hind leg make for an ugly pelt?
I wouldn’t have thought so, but—
Gareth’s hand shoots out again.
Snarling, I flatten and chew on myself without mercy, my mind breaking along with my snapping bones, the taste of my own living bonemeal filling my mouth and making me sick with madness, and wild.
Gareth’s words have turned into underwater burbles again. His tone has turned sharp, even if he tempers his words. His dogs mill around us, circling, getting closer, and I imagine I can feel their hot breath, and when I dart a terrified look around, I see nothing but gleaming teeth and fangs.
I stay hunched for another breath, the smell of steel and the taste of my own flesh filling every one of my senses. How will he kill me?
If I can avoid it, I’d really prefer not to find out. With one last scissoring snap of my jaws, I sever the last of my leg.
The tension from the trap’s strained chain slices away with my limb, and I fall back.
My sudden movement spooks the hounds, and they take up their baying again, leaping away from me even as they spin and renew their excited barking. They aren’t slavering or looking cruel. They’re looking thrilled, because they’re bred for this, exactly this, and they love the chase.
Oh pups. You all are about to love this.
I don’t look at Gareth. I can’t. Yanking my bleeding stump under myself, I rise up, and run.
CHAPTER 7
My volant escape sees me leagues into the forest, so far ahead of my pursuers, I can no longer hear the hounds.
Eventually, I calm enough to recognize that I need to find water, I need to rest, and then I need food, because I have blood to replenish and a hideous wound to heal.
I try to keep the ragged stump from touching the ground, not only to avoid a deadly infection, but because the nerves sitting raw on the end of what’s left of my leg scream at every instance of contact.
Will I survive this? Wild animals survive encounters with leg-hold traps enough that I know I might see tomorrow. But now that I’m fatherless, family-less, soulmate-less... I find I don’t much care.
When I find a creek, I drop into it. Despite the temperatures being fair, the water is icy cold. It’s a relief on my tender paws and swelling leg.
With the need for water and rest being met, my mind switches on.
It keeps replaying the wolf’s arrival to our door.
It told me I inherited this wolf form.
Did my father know? He wasn’t panicked, therefore, I think he must have. Why didn’t he ever tell me?
Because the very first thing I would have done was tell Gareth.
Gareth, The Wolf Slayer’s son.
If my father knew I might turn into a direly-hunted beast someday, why did he ever let me get close to Gareth?
Is this why he kept putting off our marriage? At what point was he going to reveal to me why I couldn’t stay with my love? Wouldn’t it have been better for him to break my heart when I was a little girl declaring her future with Gareth, rather than wait?
Why didn’t my father tell my stepmother?
Then again, what was he supposed to say? “Ah, my newlywed dove! I have a spot of information I seem to have left out about your new stepdaughter, whom we intend to raise alongside your two tender innocents that you’ve brought to our marriage. Oh, no, no—no need to worry. She probably won’t be inclined to bite her sisters more than any other girl in any household… wait. Why are you sending word for the Asylum? I’m not mad or daft, woman—and in a few years when she transforms into a furry beast, I can prove it!”
I suppose… there might have been merit in keeping mum.
I lower my muzzle, too weary and heartsick to keep my head up.
The wolf told me not to fear.
My snort makes bubbles burble under the water, and I raise my nose so I can breathe.
It told me to go to him. Him who?
Who should I be searching for?
The only person I want in all the world isn’t my mother, my stepmother, my sisters, or even my… my dead father.
I want Gareth.
I bury my muzzle underwater again, and give in to the urge to howl.
CHAPTER 8
I keep to the king’s forest, because the way I figure it, here I only have to dodge the king’s pack of wolfhounds—and poacher’s traps. If I were to seek wildlife-asylum in any other kingdom’s woods, I’d be in more danger. All realms save for ours, it’s legal and encouraged for every subject, commoner, and layperson to kill a wolf on sight.
On another note, unfortunately, just because I presently happen to be a wolf doesn’t mean I can hunt like one. For the first time in my life, I starve. I knew privilege before; now I know desperation.
At least water is mostly easy enough for me to obtain. I quickly learn where it’s safe to drink—and where it’s not. The obstacle is not because the waters in this forest are impure, but because I find with some shock that river otters are extremely territorial and a hell of a lot fiercer than I.
It has to be poisoned.
For the life of me though, all I can smell is food. Even with my keener nose, I pick up no strange odors. I don’t even smell the human who butchered it. A little tang of leather gloves, but that’s about all.
And I’m so famished, I give in and fall on it.
If poison’s been sprinkled on the meat, I neither taste it nor suffer from it.
So the next day, when I lope a couple leagues East following a boundary trail, I pause when I encounter another butchered hunk of meat.
Of course I’m wary.
But I’m also a piss-poor hunter, and my stomach says it’s time for more food.
***
I survive.
I learn to be a three-legged wolf. And the day I grow so acclimated to being fed by the benevolent meat-giver that I nearly walk right into their wolf trap is the day I learn to catch my own food, little as it is.
In my former life, I did not eat rabbit. Any animal that needs to ingest its own feces in order to digest its food properly has enough problems. But I learn that being choosy is a gift for the entitled, and I’m no longer that. I know this when I accept that I’d be lucky to taste rabbit; my diet is mostly rats, which are so mean, they’ll eat each other. They’re easy enough prey for me, because no matter that my injured leg has formed a thick scab, the rodents seem drawn to it. I give them names, like Mack, and Russ-Russ, and Bruno. They try to bite me; I eat them.
Life is simple. There are no gowns, no carriages, no etiquette lessons. Just find food or die, stay close to water or weaken. A simple life it may be, but it isn’t easy.
I manage.
But the wolf is no more meant to be a solitary creature than a human. Barely a season passes before I’m lonely, and unbearably homesick. But I stay cautious until the chill of my second early winter chases me home, where I crawl to the back doorstep of my family’s house.
I stay there, tucked beside the staircase for a windbreak when I nap, only leaving when I need to creep off to the woods to hunt. More and more, I sit on the stoop just to listen, with my family unawares. I hear my sisters, my stepmother. I hear all the minutiae of their daily life; much quieter than it used to be, with less laughter.
My stepmother had to tell everyone that my father and I died in a carriage accident. Supposedly on our way to my aunt’s home. She had to tell them something to explain two sudden disappearances, certainly, but I wonder how she pulled off such a story. Word travels; someone would have noticed our carriage house was missing no carriage. How would she explain no bodies for mourners to weep over? Extroverted people feed on the interactions others provide them, and the next best thing to kissing babies is flocking together to cry over other townspeople’s dead relatives. We have a lot of extroverted, busybody folk. Folk who love to talk.
How did Gareth take the news?
The fur on my ear freezes to the door one morning when I hear his name mentioned, because I don’t move; I barely breathe, hoping with everything to hear more about him.
When they say his name again, it’s in conjunction with some upcoming ball. Something big-to-do. I curl my lip. Gareth despises social functions, and the thought of all the eligible ladies trying to get him on their dance card has me snarling. I decide to spend the rest of the day mercilessly chasing down rodents in the barn.
Persephone, my mare, barely misses a beat at my appearance. When I gather the courage to greet her, she wuffles her velvety-soft muzzle over the top of my head just the same as she’d always done when I had a regular head of hair as a girl. And then a smaller, even more velvety nose pops over the stall door. Persephone foaled! Equine gestation is just shy of a year, and I’ve been gone for longer. The little one is already bigger than a newborn by several months. I’ve missed so much. From what I can see above the door, the foal is fiery red, just like his or her fearsome-looking sire. Gareth’s stallion is now a papa. My heart pangs, knowing Gareth isn’t likely to have seen his favorite mount’s progeny. He’d be so proud.
Stepmother’s cat, Lucy, is less welcoming. She spits at me and swipes her claws over my nose, dragging four fiery scratches into my sensitive flesh.
I must look awfully miserable by nightfall though, because when I make my way to the doorstep to huddle in the cold, icy rain turning the tips of my fur to frosted spikes that tinkle and crunch when I move, Lucy strolls over to me, and curls into my side.
I’m stunned—but I’m grateful too. Not only for the warmth (which I dearly appreciate)—but for how desperately I crave company. I tuck my nose to her ribs, and we sleep curled together like that until morning.
CHAPTER 9
I dream of Gareth, who sits on the edge of his bed, staring at a litter of what must be a dozen little pups curled against their dam’s side, all of them squirming along on his featherdown quilt. Which is strange, because Gareth provides his bitches with whelping boxes; they don’t whelp on the royal bed. Certainly not on expensive goose down. But he looks upon them lovingly, with a deep satisfaction.
The bitch raises her head, a proud look in her eye. But instead of a wire-haired wolfhound, the beloved thing is a wolf.
When I wake up, I’m a woman.
A naked, very chilled woman, and it’s damned inconvenient to be missing one foot.
I slip and fall and curse loud enough that the door whips open, and I’m face to face (or essentially I am; I happen to be at the bottom of the stairs on my naked arse) with my sisters.
They help me up, rush for my clothes, and my stepmother cries when she sees me, and cries harder when she sees the state of my limb.
It could be worse. At least I have most of it as a human. As a wolf I’m missing nearly half a leg. On my human body, I’m just missing everything from the heel down.
Still, despite the distance not being more than a scant few grains-of-barely stacked end to end in length, it makes for damned difficult walking, because I’m unevenly set. And despite the scarring where I chewed through it, it’s damned slippery. Far, far less traction than a foot’s pad. Also, my stump doesn’t like to press into cold, rough floors. A cane helps for keeping my balance, but does nothing to help what I feel with every step.
“I’ll darn you a sock,” my oldest sister offers. And she does, making one regular one for my good foot, and a wider, cushier sock to pad the bottom of my damaged limb.
“You’re clever, and I love you,” I tell her. And perhaps I didn’t tell her this enough when I had the chance, or perhaps it’s simply because I’ve been gone so long and she’s been worried, but she bursts into tears and throws herself on me.
I soak up the hug. I could do without the tears, but I have craved touch almost as much as I’ve craved dinner that doesn’t taste like raw rat.
My next dream sees me waking as a wolf. Without knowing how to change back, I’m at my system’s mercy. Carefully using my teeth, I tug off my new socks (I don’t want to get them dirty running around outside), and I easily keep my stump tucked up and well above the ground. By now, I’m used to it.
In the hopes that I turn back into a human, my family leaves me a dress and even a cloak downstairs, and they also risk leaving the back door cracked open so I can come and go.
I do turn human from time to time, but no matter my form, thanks to their open-door kindness, I’m permitted in or outdoors as I please.
But an open-door policy also means rats feel welcome to help themselves inside, so I do everyone a favor and clear out the rodents. When I succeed, I hunker down with my catch, pleased with myself.
When my stepmother turns from her baking to see what I’m crunching on, she whacks me with a spoon and shouts, “Spit that out, you’re not an animal!” and she gestures to the table where she’s left me a tray of biscuits.
I catch it midair.
My family still has servants, so I must be careful when I come and go, in both of my forms. Being spotted in either one would garner us trouble. My changes begin to happen when I’m awake too, and my family starts leaving me looser dresses so I can escape out of my clothes without such a struggle. Everything is trickier when you have no hands.
***
Except for forays into the woods when I’m a wolf, I stay hidden in the bottom of the house. No one can know I’m here; no one should suspect that I’m even alive.
I’m rarely alone below the stairs. Today is a good example; Stepmother has been baking desserts all morning, and with a wolf’s senses and a woman’s love of sweets, it’s torture.
I’m not the only one drawn; I spend a good chunk of time chasing a rat from the larder to the buttery and back again. Lucy deigns to enter the fray when I’ve done half the job of running the rodent down until it’s tired and its reactions slow enough to give us a sliver of chance for its demise.
We end the chase in the hearth beside the baking oven. Before that, the rat had nimbly skittered along the lintel, heading for the woodbox, and had it made it, the hunt would have ended for sure. You try hauling a rat out from a pile of spider and centipede-covered logs. You have to dig the entire box empty, with the cat glaring at you in censure the whole way, as if you’re playing around on her precious schedule. By the time you've nearly got that done, the rat’s regained its breath in the time you've exhausted yours—and it leaps right over your head.
Thankfully, the fire had cooled to embers so I wasn’t singed in the hunt. Nevertheless, there were still enough ashes and soot present to smear me thoroughly as I snapped and wrestled one of the wiliest, most determined creatures in all of creation.
I tell you: rats are mean. Smart as whips though, and obdurate about not dying. I take three blinding-sharp bites to my muzzle, and one on my poor tongue before I manage to catch the flea-infested vermin between my teeth so that I can whip my head to the side—and let the momentum snap its spine.