by Geonn Cannon
Her secrets were larger than her friends, however. Where other girls were educated about the changes their bodies were going through via giggle-inducing film strips in Health class, Ari was sat down in the privacy of her home and given a hushed speech. She was a canidae. Her education began a few nights afterward, when Ari woke in the middle of the night with cramps that she knew couldn't be natural.
Gwyneth had helped her through the first horrific transformation. She'd coaxed the trembling wolf out from underneath the bed where she was cowering and held her until she calmed down. When the initial panic was passed, Gwen demonstrated a transformation of her own to show Ari what it was supposed to be like. They left the house through a doggie door and ran through the wilds of Seward Park.
The next morning Ari woke unable to move. Her entire body was stiff, like someone had poured quick-set concrete into her bed while she slept. Gwyneth, certain it was just a result of a night of overexertion tried the tough love approach. She tried to force Ari out of her bed and accidentally broke her right arm.
The canidae doctor who examined her revealed that Ari's body was reluctant to the change. Going from one form to the other was more painful for her than it should have been and he had no idea why. He wanted to do tests, but Gwyneth asked to speak to him privately. When he returned he gave Ari a subscription for painkillers, set a date for her to get the plaster cast on her right arm removed, and flatly told her to call if she had any problems. Ari knew before they left the doctor's office that they would never go back to that doctor again.
"I don't want to do that anymore."
"You have to, Ariadne." Eyes on the road ahead, not on her daughter. "That cast isn't going to fall off by itself."
Ari shook her head and looked out the window. "I mean the wolf thing. I don't want to do that again."
Gwyneth was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, "Well, that's not your choice. It's who you are."
"It hurts." Ari hated the tears in her eyes, the tremble in her voice.
"Of course it hurts." She reached over and touched the back of Ari's head, but Ari shrunk away so she returned her hand to the steering wheel. "It was a bad first time. In time it will hurt less, I promise. Once your body realizes what it's supposed to do, it'll stop hurting as much."
Ari was implacable. "No."
Gwyneth just sighed and shook her head. The matter was dropped.
The cast came off six weeks later, the procedure performed by a different doctor than the one who put it on. The first night she was back at home Ari found herself pacing from room to room, pausing to look out the window at the moonlight bouncing off the lake. She locked herself in her bedroom, she did exercises, she even thought about going for a jog until the itch urging her to leave the house became too strong. She took a long shower and, when she emerged, her mother was waiting in the hallway outside the bathroom.
"Nothing's worked, has it? You still feel the draw."
She bumped past her mother and continued to her bedroom. Gwyneth grabbed Ari's arm and stopped her.
"If you're going to fight it every time, you will hurt just as badly every time. The wolf will take you, and it will dominate your body. A canidae shares its body with a wolf, but you're making it fight. And if you fight it, the human part of you will lose."
Ari yanked her arm out of her mother's grip and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
The next night she was too in pain to get off the couch. She sobbed, clutching her mother's hand until her fingers curled and her nails darkened. Gwyneth stayed with her until the transformation was complete and then carried her outside. The wolf took over, and Ari didn't remember anything for three days. When she finally came back to herself she was in the bathtub at home, her arms and legs covered with a crosshatching of scrapes and cuts. She lunged at the toilet and retched, throwing up again when she saw something small and furry land in the toilet bowl.
Her mother found her an hour later curled in the corner of the bathroom, trembling and sobbing. Gwyneth knelt beside her, stroked Ari's hair, and whispered, "Now then. Are you going to fight it any more?"
"No, ma'am."
"Good. Good girl."
After that Ari's true education began. Lessons in evading Animal Control, in how to slip through people's backyards, avoiding people who might hurt a stray dog just for fun. Gwyneth taught her the concept of stashes, bags of clothing and money hidden in various spots of the city in case she needed them. Ari learned to love the wolf, just as Gwyneth promised she would. She would look forward to Friday nights not because of hanging out with friends or late curfews but because the weekend was the only time she could be the wolf.
By the time she was fifteen, Ari and her mother were a dynamic pair. Hunting together, terrorizing small animals, exploring their environment. Ari had come to terms with who she was by that time, with her identity as a canidae. She became more mature, more serious, and she became her mother's partner in crime rather than her apprentice.
It was this newfound respect that prompted Gwyneth to finally tell Ari the truth. She was born with the gene to change but not the ability. The doctors examined newborn Ariadne and sadly revealed there was no chance she could transform. So Gwyneth took Ari to a specialist, a doctor with an untested and unproven method of naturally engineering a canidae. Historically canidae were either bitten as children or it was passed on genetically. With the gene already present, part of the work was done for him, but it was still a madly dangerous procedure.
At four months old, Ariadne Willow's blood was drained. The doctor replaced it with the blood of another canidae, using a wolf donor so that it would match the gene already present. She survived the procedure. Gwyneth didn't say how close she had come to dying, but she refrained from saying it in a way that Ari knew it had been dire.
The betrayal was too much for Ari. She left the house for the weekend, traveling across town in wolf form just to put as much distance as possible between her and her mother. She ran to Alki Park and walked the paths, watched the boats, and left her footprints up and down the beach until the sun went down. When the visitors left, the homeless returned to claim their pieces of land. One group took pity on Ari and shared what little they had with her. She ate two slices of bread for dinner and slept with her back against a wooden pylon.
In the middle of the night she woke to the sound of crashing waves on the surf. She watched it lap against the sand, hypnotized by the movement. Finally she got to her feet, took off her shoes, and walked down the sand until the water was touching her toes. She submerged herself to the knees, then the waist. It was freezing, but she kept walking until her shirt was soaked. A wave went over her head and she pushed forward against the surge of the Sound.
Her feet left the sandbar and the force of the water threw her back toward the beach. She landed hard, spluttering and sobbing as she stared up into the sky. She rolled onto her front and saw she was being watched by one of the homeless men who had shared his food and space with her. She felt ashamed of herself, broken from the trance of self-pity that had drawn her to the waves. She curled her fingers in the sand and pushed herself up. The man nodded to her as she ran past him, and she was certain he thought she was going home.
At that point home was still a possibility. Ari thought there might be a chance she would forgive her mother, and that she could get over the hurt and pain enough to move past it. But for that night, she had to be on her own.
First she missed a day of school, and then a week. She found a place to stay, a warm and safe place where she could forget what had been done to her. Two weeks after her arrival there she snuck off and transformed by herself for the first time. She took the long way back home and lurked in the shadows until her mother came outside. She stood on the porch for a long time and, although she never looked in Ari's direction, she knew she'd been spotted.
Ari waited until her mother went back inside before she turned her back on her home once and for all. She went back to her life on the streets, which led
her to Eva and then to Glory and to Dale. And somehow as far as she had come, the path of her life led her back to another large house in a different affluent neighborhood, staring across the dining room table at the woman she'd long ago cut out of her life.
#
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Gwyneth smiled. "I paid for the house. Well, with Benjamin's help." She gestured at the man who had let Ari in when she arrived. "Millicent needed a place to stay while she was in town, so I agreed to finance it."
"You paid a woman to come here from England to break up me and Dale? Wow, that's... I've heard of parents disapproving of a relationship, but damn woman." She started for the door. "Whatever you have planned, forget it. I'm done being your paper doll."
Benjamin moved to block her exit. She glared at him but he maintained a look of apologetic ambivalence. "This is not the way we wanted things to happen."
Milo scoffed and pulled out a chair to sit down at the table. "Yeah. Tell her what the original plan was."
Gwyneth cleared her throat. "Ariadne, please have a seat. If you're going to be so bullheaded about this, then you deserve to know the truth." Benjamin's eyes widened at Gwyneth and she shrugged. "She's obviously not going to let it go. Our original plan won't work, and Millicent's plan is impossible now. We have to salvage this before wolf manoth."
"Before what?" Ari said.
Gwyneth gestured at the seat across from Milo. Ari hesitated, reluctant to follow any of her mother's orders. She walked around the table and sat next to Milo. Gwyneth sighed and closed her eyes before she took the seat she'd offered Ari for herself. Benjamin sat down next to her, and suddenly Ari felt like she was about to be fired by Donald Trump.
"Where should I begin?" Gwyneth asked.
"The beginning is good."
Gwyneth smiled. "The beginning? All right... eleven hundred years ago, canidae thrived in Great Britain..."
Ari rolled her eyes. "Oh, for crying out loud."
"That's the beginning." She continued. "We outnumbered humans and made it impossible for them to thrive and spread the way they wanted to. We were savages in those days, but show me a species that isn't a little wild for their first millennium or so. We killed their livestock. We desecrated their graves for the sport of it. Eventually the king had enough of it. Tributes were paid with wolf pelts, and criminals were spared the death penalty in exchange for an annual fine of wolf tongues.
"The king knighted a group of men to hunt and kill as many canidae as possible. They trapped us, destroyed the forests where we made our homes, slaughtered our children... eventually we got the message we were unwelcome so we left. We spread out to Europe, Asia, Africa... The king was satisfied and disbanded the knights. Some of them went peacefully to retirement, but others..." She looked down at her hands, flat on the table. "Sometimes when a soldier is trained to do something well, that becomes the only thing they can do. The knights became hunters, dedicated to hunting us down wherever we ran."
Ari nodded. "And yadda, yadda, yadda, now I have to break up with my girlfriend. Thanks, it all makes sense now."
Gwyneth pursed her lips. "If you're not going to pay attention then I'm not sure what the purpose of explaining is."
"Fine. Can you please just get to the point?"
"The two species were at war for centuries. Our side was hardly blameless. We retaliated. We were cast as monsters so we decided to earn the title. We slaughtered them. They massacred us. We desecrated their graves. They burned our children. Hundreds of years passed. We became creatures of myth, hiding in the woods and transforming in secret to avoid the blade.
"Events came to a head in the early nineteenth century during the Napoleonic Wars. A canidae named Simon Lehner wanted to become a god to our people. He set humans and canidae against each other hoping to cull the herd of any of us who didn't kneel before him. He was stopped when a hunter and a canidae realized what he was doing and joined forces to stop him. They fought together, bled for each other, and in the end they were victorious. But more importantly, but the time the last sword was sheathed, the hunter and the wolf had fallen in love with each other."
Ari stood up and turned to leave.
"Where are you going?"
"Johanna Brion and Agatha Westreich," Ari said. "My bedtime story. You told me this bedtime story when I was six, Gwyneth."
"Because I knew that one day it would be necessary. Johanna and Agatha were real, Ariadne. After years of bloodshed and fighting, they gathered their respective leaders and proposed a truce. They were handfasted to one another as a symbolic gesture, a joining of the two races. For the first time in eight hundred years, canidae could live in peace. Hunters put down their swords. We declared a truce, and it held for nearly one hundred and fifty years."
Benjamin said, "But the truce is fracturing. Our numbers have grown and, at the same time, the hunters have grown bored and they are coming for us again."
Ari looked at her mother. "I thought you said the hunters stopped hunting two hundred years ago."
Gwyneth nodded. "Yes, after eight centuries. By that point, hunting was a part of them as much as being a wolf is part of us. They passed down the legacy to their children, taught them how to fight and how to kill, but they were inert. They were a silent army with no enemy to fight passing along wisdom so it wouldn't die out. Just in case."
Benjamin said, "In the sixties, the hunters began attacking us with guerilla tactics. It took us a while to realize what was happening but eventually we understood the truce was falling apart. There has been no true declaration of war as of yet, but we fear it's imminent. Traditionally January is the start of a time known as wolf manoth, when hunters move in force to kill as many wolves as they can. We believe they're gearing up to start the war over again, and they're using the upcoming wolf manoth as an excuse to draw first blood. We've been monitoring their movements and we believe they are massing in America in order to begin the assault here, in the Pacific Northwest. Washington, Idaho and British Columbia have such large numbers of canidae that they can make a sizeable dent in our population."
Gwyneth said, "A group of us attended a summit on a neutral ground. We agreed to renew the peace between our races by recreating Johanna and Agatha's handfasting. The human delegates chose a canidae to represent our people. Millicent was relatively well-known due to her wealth, so she was chosen."
Ari looked at Milo, who was steadfastly staring at her hands.
"And the canidae delegates chose a human to represent the other side. Our decision was for the delegate to be Ms. Frye."
Ari looked accusingly at her mother. "And how exactly did they even know Dale existed, Mom?"
Gwyneth didn't avert her gaze. "Yes. I was a member of the summit, and I nominated Ms. Frye. She is a rare candidate, Ariadne. Thanks to you she not only knows about our people, she accepts us. She has fought alongside and bled for a canidae just as Johanna Brion did two centuries ago. I'm not sure you understand how rare it is for us to interrelate the way you are. Humans are afraid of us, and canidae have been taught how to distrust humans."
Ari's eyes were wet. "Go to hell."
Milo said, "Ari, you have to understand the stakes. If this treaty doesn't happen, then the hunters will come back in force and hundreds of canidae will be killed. Maybe they'll get all of us this time."
Gwyneth said, "Either this ceremony takes place or we go to war."
"You made me a wolf. I was born a human. So forgive me if I don't want to sacrifice the most important person in my life for your little treaty."
Gwyneth sighed and stood up. She took put her hands into her pockets and stepped around the table to where Ari was standing.
"Regardless of how you came into this world, Ari, you are one of us. The hunters have a new weapon they'll be using. It's called wolfsbane." She took her hand out of her pocket and Ari saw she was holding a clamshell case. "Would you like to see how it works?" She opened the top and blew a cloud of fine powder into Ari's face.
"What the hell?" Ari leaned forward, rubbing at her eyes as the burning powder worked its way in. She lifted her head, saw her mother in front of her, and lunged. Benjamin managed to grab her arm and spin her around. He held her hand in his and extended the wrist so that her elbow was inverted, forcing her to the ground. Ari pistoned her other arm out and hit him in the solar plexus, giving her a moment to get free. She yanked her hand away, spun on her knees, and hurled herself at her mother.
Ari smelled blood, could almost taste it in her mouth as she slammed into Gwyneth. She grabbed her mother's neck and jumped, taking both feet off the ground and slamming them into the soft skin of Gwyneth's stomach. Gwyneth fell back onto the table and Ari perched on top of her. She felt her face twisting into a mask, her lower jaw extending out as her eyes turned black. She lifted her hand, fingers twisted into claws, and held the pose for a moment as she savored the fear she saw in her mother's eyes.
Milo pressed the Taser into the small of Ari's back and pulled the trigger. Ari howled in pain, giving Benjamin and Milo the opportunity to pull her off. They were none too gentle, hurling her to the floor. Milo flung herself across Ari's mid-section and held her to the ground as Benjamin pinned her arms.
Gwyneth was ashen, shaken by the attack, but she straightened her clothes and looked down at Ari.
"Millicent, did you bring the sedative?"
"On the table."
Gwyneth picked up the small black box and knelt. Ari felt her pants leg pushed up, the pinprick of a needle on the tight skin of her calf. Gwyneth stood again and looked down at Ari.