Winter Howl (Sanctuary)

by Aurelia T. Evans

  Renee slid out of the bed and tugged Josh out. She felt a little shaky, but she knew Josh was mostly talk, no action, so she did not feel as threatened as she might have with Marcus or someone like that.

  “Every day,” Renee said. “You have no idea. But it’s also not you I’m looking for. God, it’s so not you.”

  Josh’s jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. She tried to pass by him, but he grabbed her arm again. His face was too close, and his gaze drifted down to her lips.

  “You sure about that? You really sure about that? ’Cause it is awfully out of the way where you live, and if…”

  It was Renee’s turn to blink. Maybe she had underestimated him, with that glint in his brown eyes, the set of his jaw.

  But she narrowed her eyes and murmured, her voice almost inaudible outside the truck, “You try and come on my land, and I promise it will go badly. And it won’t be any fault of mine. I’m sorry.”

  She tugged herself away, and he let her go without much of a fuss. Renee looked around to see whether anyone had been watching their little altercation, because if they had, she would have been mortified. But where she was parked, the last building on Main blocked most of the view.

  “So I guess this is the royal brush-off again,” Josh said, leaning back against the truck as she fumbled with her keys. “Frigid bitch.”

  She unlocked the door and whistled to Britt, who came over and jumped into the driver’s seat, then into the shotgun seat, settling down and keeping a sharp eye on Josh. Renee pulled herself up—it was a big truck for a small girl. Before she shut the door, she said, “Don’t I know it.”

  Renee thought she heard Josh snort before she revved the engine and left him and Main Street behind. She breathed a sigh of relief and felt a muscle in her body unwind for every second she headed out of Antoine.

  * * * *

  In spite of the fact that Renee had always thought Josh looked down on her, she had been surprised when he’d asked her to the winter dance, a gathering between the two Antoine high schools—East and West—Barrington High School and Lex High School. At first, she’d been convinced that it was a Carrie-like joke, but by the third time he’d asked, she had discovered that in spite of the shiftiness of his glance when he’d asked her, he’d been serious. And she’d had no idea why. Why he would want a girl who seemed afraid of her own shadow—seemed, not was. Why he would want a girl who rarely talked and generally avoided his crowd—or any crowd, for that matter. Why he would want a girl who never stopped to give him a second glance, other than to get out of his way.

  The third time she’d tried to walk past him in an effort to ignore what she thought was mockery, Josh had touched her cheek to stop her. And it had worked, because she hadn’t been used to other people touching her at all. The next thing she’d known, he’d been kissing her. His lips had been soft and a little sloppy, but it hadn’t been as bad as she had thought kissing might be. In spite of her nerves singing to get away from him, there’d been a strange warmth running from her lips down her spine to pool low in her belly. It hadn’t quite been arousal, as she had discovered later, but it had been interest, new and a little exciting. Her panic had only magnified the feeling, as it magnified everything.

  In spite of herself, in spite of the nervousness that Renee had taken for granted most of her life as just a part of her, she’d felt herself lean closer. The kiss had been nothing special. But they’d only been sixteen, and it was her first. Her fingertips had brushed against his neck. She’d felt the warm velvet of his tongue on her lips, and that was when she’d jerked back. It hadn’t been that she didn’t like it, but she had reached her quota for closeness. Her nerves had reached a screaming pitch.

  Renee had not given him an answer, and while her father had bought her a dress for the dance, she hadn’t gone. She’d sat at home in her dark blue, silky dress with the thin straps, corset-tie back and sparkles, and watched Prom Night and Ever After, in that order. She’d regretted not going to the dance, but she had known she would not be able to handle it, no matter what her father had said about it. The next school day, Renee had learned that Josh had gone with Kristin Fontaine. And she’d been just fine with that, although the touch of his lips had haunted her for months as she’d hidden under her covers and tried to sleep. After a while, the memory had faded. She hadn’t even missed it.

  She still did not miss it. Josh might have been more interested in her than any of her other classmates had been, but that did not mean she was interested back. It did not mean that Josh was anything good for her—he was quite innocently misogynistic, intentionally anti-intellectual, although Renee remembered he had been good at math. A lowest common denominator. Her father had told her to never settle, and she intended to keep to that advice. Not to mention that she was not nearly as lonely as Josh thought she was.

  * * * *

  After an hour of driving through the Northern Highland region, alternating between radio stations and a Celtic album and memories, she felt at peace with herself. Most of the forest was state and national parks, but her land was nestled just on the edge of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

  Britt became restless the closer they got to her land, and at the first sight of the massive wrought-iron gate protected by electronic security, she gave a high whine.

  “Almost there,” Renee said. “Bought sirloin steak for tonight. Looking forward to that.”

  She pushed the door opener on her visor, and the gates swung outward. In spite of the appearance of the gate, her land did not have heavy security. Just a standard, primitive barbed wire fence spanning its circumference. It didn’t need to be too protected.

  They passed through the gates, and as the iron squeaked to a close, the paved street gave way to a greyish dirt road.

  Over hundreds of acres, with a mix of sugar maples, aspens, basswood, pines, birch, and scattered with hemlock, there was nothing but state-protected land and private ownership. Aside from the odd call by geographically distant relatives, there wasn’t much to remind her that there were other places in the world. A few planes passed by overhead, trucks came by to bring her supplies, the mail came every day, and a few people visited the sanctuary, but mostly her world was just hers. It was like Josh had said, as infuriating as it was for him to be right—it was easy for her to pretend that her land was all there was in the universe.

  On the side of the dirt road—Renee guessed she could call it a very long driveway—there was a wake of turkey vultures, and Renee slowed down to get a look at what they were picking at. Britt shifted to watch the movement of the birds as well as they shuffled away from the truck, although they did not shuffle far, persistent creatures that they were. Renee breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was just a hare. Just as this was a little too far north for turkey vultures in this season, it was a little south for hares, and she did not see them very often. The dead animal was big enough to confuse her only for a moment. There was something about the animal’s face, though. It was gruesome to see that the mouth looked oddly human, more gruesome than the belly, which had been gutted and strewn a bit on the dirt in a harsh orange-red, and not entirely by the turkey vultures. Renee was not too concerned, though. Dead animals were all too common in her area, and they were usually taken care of by the garbage disposals of the animal kingdom, such as the buzzards.

  Renee sped up again and continued on her way home. It took about seven minutes to drive from the gate to the compound.

  Her house and the series of large buildings behind it loomed on one of the forest’s highest hills—which was not saying much, but it made the sight more impressive. The house itself was pretty big, although not so big that it wasn’t dwarfed by the three buildings behind it.

  As she neared the house, she had to slow the car down to a crawl, but a grin spread over her face. It was like frozen glass shattering. She was happy to be home.

  At least twenty dogs of varying sizes ran up to her truck and started barking, with the excitement an
d energy only dogs and young children seemed to manage. They jumped up with their front paws, and Renee had to be careful not to crush the smaller ones, but for the most part, they kept out of the way of the front of the truck and stayed to the sides. She finally stopped about twenty yards from her house. She would drive it into the garage shed later.

  She opened her coat and slid herself from the sleeves, then unwound her scarf before opening the door, so that all that got the brunt of her canine friends’ excitement was her T-shirt and jeans. She did not let them jump on her—she had a strict rule and trained as many of them as she could to stay down, at least the ones who jumped at all—but excitement and greeting was not a crime on the sanctuary land, and she wanted her dogs to be happy.

  Most of the dogs who came to greet her, all of whom she knew by name, bounded off to whatever else they desperately had to do at the moment. A few calmer dogs stuck by her side, along with Rufus, a long-haired chihuahua who was never calm. There was Ki, a mutt on the smaller end of the medium scale with Jack Russell markings, who was followed by Max, a black Yorkie terrier. On the other side of her—beside Britt, who had climbed out of the truck—was Leslie, a chocolate brown male boxer with a perpetually comical look on his face. Renee was sure that Malcolm, a grey whippet-Australian shepherd mix, was not far behind.

  Rufus saw one of his favourite large dogs, a St Bernard and German shepherd mix named Pom, and bounded off like a fuzzy, excitable rat to be with him, leaving Renee to most of her primary pack, the one that had been with her for more or less her whole life that she could remember clearly. There was only one missing, and he was walking out of the door of the cabin, wearing only his jeans and carrying a hot chocolate in his hands, just the way she liked when she came home from her winter trip. He also had a midnight-blue dressing gown draped over his arms, which he tossed past Renee to the quite naked woman who had appeared behind her.

  “Don’t suppose you have some chocolate for me, too?” the woman said, wrapping the dressing gown around herself. While Renee did not have a strict policy of wearing clothing on her property—although she herself preferred to stay clothed—the cooler weather made it more necessary than during the summer months.

  “Waiting inside,” Jake said. “The rest of us have had our share.” He leant down and gave Renee a light kiss on her cheek as he handed her the hot chocolate. “I see you made it through another day.”

  “Somehow I survived,” Renee said. “Thanks. Hope you don’t mind that I brought steak for the pack tonight. Means you have to cook them.”

  “Such a trial,” Jake replied. “I’ll find a way to bolster my strength and manage.” He walked over and kissed Britt, the girl who had sprouted from her fur coat into a woman. This kiss was a bit more than a simple peck on the cheek. Renee gave Ki a scratch behind the ears, then headed into her house with her hot chocolate.

  The other dogs followed her in, transforming on the way and grabbing their respective dressing gowns from the coat rack. Britt pushed past them for the hot chocolate waiting for her on a coffee table coaster. She settled into the living room armchair, breathing a sigh of relief in her other skin. The living room was decorated like a rustic lodge, with an asymmetrical coffee table and carved wooden furniture softened with red cotton and denim cushions. One of the house cats, a fourteen-year-old arthritic Maine Coon named Claire, was sleeping on the sofa.

  Renee joined the cat on the sofa adjacent to the armchair, sipping from her own hot chocolate. While she had lived with Britt since they were both seven years old, there was something about the woman’s self-confidence and presentation that could sometimes be a little off-putting. Renee was a small person, around five feet three inches tall, and petite. Britt was tall for a woman at five feet ten inches, and built with the classic hourglass figure. She could have gone out and become a model or an actress, but instead, she stayed in the wilderness with Renee to help her take care of the sanctuary, heedless of the physical blessings with which she was endowed. It was just another skin to her.

  Ki, Max, Leslie, Malcolm, and Jake joined them in the living room. They were all usually hard at work around this time, but Renee’s quarterly forays into town translated into fairly relaxed evenings for them. They would pick up work again tomorrow.

  * * * *

  When Renee was seven, Seward and Frances Chambers had already started their collective dream to create a dog sanctuary—a no-kill shelter for all kinds of dogs from mutts to purebreds, as long as they were of a reasonable disposition. The only exceptions were the rogues, the ones who had been raised wrong and showed signs of violence. Cesar Millan might have been able to handle them, but Seward and Frances were just dog lovers, not whisperers. A little exuberance, a little bad training, that was okay. They took the supposedly violent dogs that were just defending themselves, the large dogs no one else wanted, and sometimes people from other shelters came by to ask the Chamberses if they could take some overflow. On the seven hundred acres of pure forestland, with the exception of the more cultivated house hill, there was plenty of space for them to just be dogs, to enjoy fresh air, to live out their days in peace without threat of being put down. The Chambers Dog Sanctuary did have an adoption programme, and it was supported by both regular and irregular donations from all over the country and for all kinds of reasons. They had a special relationship with the three local vets, in Antoine and the other nearby towns, who regularly came up to check on the dogs for a reduced fee and sterilise the newcomers—at least, the ones who were just dogs. The sanctuary sometimes even took cats, although dogs were its focus.

  One day after school, when it was beginning to get dark, Renee had been walking one of myriad trails, humming to herself and listening to her portable cassette player, when she’d seen a half-grown puppy panting in bushes. There might have been a lot of dogs at the sanctuary, but Renee knew every one of them, the same way she could differentiate between all the people in her school. This little pup had been new. It looked almost like a wolf puppy, but from the way the dog moved, wagging its tail in its happy way and licking its muzzle, Renee had known it was not a wolf. The puppy had crept towards her, cautious but generally friendly, and Renee had not been afraid. It had done as dogs do and sniffed her hand, then her leg, then her ass, which had made her laugh and wriggle away, only to gasp as the dog had become a girl right before her eyes. If she had blinked, she would have missed the transition, it had been so seamless.

  The girl had been skinny and dirty and scraggly and naked and cold, and Renee had led her back to the house without a thought. She did not even consider whether the little girl was dangerous or not. Seward and Frances had been more than a little alarmed, but Frances had taken in the little girl, given her a bath and dressed her in some of Renee’s clothes—that had been around the time they’d been the same size.

  The little girl had told the Chambers family her story—that she’d come to them from a home that did not want her or understand why or how she changed. She had run away before they’d been able to throw her out, thinking she was some kind of witch. She had heard through fellow canine shapeshifters living on the streets as strays that there was a dog sanctuary in Wisconsin, and some dog shapeshifters went there when they did not want to live on the street anymore. They’d said it was safe. So she had followed the rumours until she’d reached the sanctuary. Her name was Brittany Lewis, and she’d been hungry and thirsty and had wanted to know whether she could stay.

  Seward and Frances Chambers had initially thought the mention of shapeshifters was just a little girl’s fancy, a way to escape from terrible reality, maybe from a home that had abused her in more than a spiritual or emotional sense. But when Seward had asked her gently if she could shapeshift for them, Britt had done so without a thought.

  The Chamberses were stunned. Then they’d slowly asked Britt whether other shapeshifters were there, at their sanctuary. Britt had shrugged, but if Britt had made it to the sanctuary, other shapeshifters might have as well. They’d left Renee to stay wi
th Britt and get her acquainted with Baal and Beelzebub, the two original lazy house cats that preferred being inside to mousing.

  As it turned out, among the twenty-five dogs that had been living in the barn—which was a loose term for the huge building they used to house the dogs during the winter or bad weather—three had been canine shapeshifters like Britt.

  Seward and Frances had initially not known what to do with this new information—they had arranged for a dog sanctuary, not a people sanctuary. Or a nudist sanctuary, as they discovered that shapeshifters could not shift their clothes and appeared before Seward and Frances completely naked, if a little chagrined at the situation. One had been named Henry, and he was relatively old at sixty-three. He was much happier in his canine form than in his human one, which was ill, while his canine form was not. The other two were teenagers, Ki and Max, who had met at a shapeshifter community meeting.

  “They have shapeshifter community meetings?” Frances had asked incredulously.

  “They’re like conventions, with more fur,” Max had answered.

  They had come there because their parents, who were also shapeshifters, had wanted them to be humans more than dogs and become valuable members of human society like they had done. Max and Ki thought that their dog sides were just as valuable as their human sides, and as much a part of them. They had not run away, per se, but they had left. Their respective parents, somewhat bewildered at the choices of their children, had wished them well and had been donating regularly to the Chambers Dog Sanctuary ever since their children had sneaked to the phone in the cabin and called their parents to tell them where they were and that they were all right. Once the Chamberses got an Internet connection, it was even easier to keep in contact with their families.

  After learning about the new developments in their sanctuary, Seward and Frances had been forced to decide whether they were going to work with it or deny the canine shapeshifters access. If the sanctuary had already developed a reputation on the street, surely that reputation could be changed by word of mouth. But if these people needed a place to go, if they had been a part of the sanctuary without the Chamberses’ knowledge, it was questionable whether they could really stop it, even if they tried. And then there was the question of whether they wanted to. The three shapeshifters had actually been very good dogs, and once they’d shifted into human form, they had answered questions about the other dogs in the sanctuary and assisted Seward and Frances with their unique perspectives.