Odds Are Good (12 page)

But did I belong here?

I looked at the pack that had assembled around us.
These
are
my
father's people
, I thought.
They
love him. He fits here. He . . . belongs.

I remembered how it hurt to know I was not truly a part of my village, to feel that invisible wall against me. I wanted to belong, too. I wanted to fit in as he did.

But was this the place?

“Tell me more about it,” I whispered at last.

He gave me a wolfish grin.

 

Hours later I sat in front of my cave, hoping the morning sun might somehow dissipate the chill that seemed to have settled into my soul. My father and I had talked long into the night. I understood better now how much he had given up to become the leader of the pack, and what he had gained. I understood, too, what I must give up to follow his path.

My shape was the first thing. If I agreed to his request, I would become a man only five times a year: on All Hallow's Eve, and on the nights of the solstices and the equinoxes. These were the nights my father had slipped into the village to visit my mother. It occurred to me that she must have loved him very much, to be so lonely for him.

My human shape was not the only price.

“I am young, for a man,” my father had told me. “But my body has aged as though it were a wolf's. My time is short. I must pass the burden soon, or the pack will be left without a leader.”

“And if I refuse?” I had asked.

He had shrugged and looked away, the only sign of his agitation the way his fingers worked in the scalp of the wolf he had been stroking. “I cannot force you.”

But he could entice me. And he did, talking of the joy he felt when he ran through the forest with the pack at his side, and the richness he found in their community. Yet he did not hide the darker side of their life, and he told me, too, what it was like to catch a smaller animal and kill it in your jaws, and feel its warm blood trickling down your throat.

But mostly he spoke of the wolves and his deep love for them. He cared for them as if they were his children, making decisions, settling squabbles, keeping the pack away from the world of men where they would be hunted and killed.

I could tell he had been a good leader, wiser and far more compassionate than the village elders who had sentenced Wandis and me to death.

It was to be our only talk. He would not assume his human shape again for another month and a half, when the winter solstice came. And, one way or another, he would be dead before then.

I picked up a stick and threw it at Wild Eye, who was sitting several feet away. He blinked at me, as if he thought it an astonishing thing to do. But he didn't move. I hated him, hated all of them, for taking my father away from me. His life had been shortened by his wolfhood. Now he was like a candle whose wick was guttering in the last bits of wax. Even worse, he had made it clear that the effort of passing his power, which was what he wanted more than anything else in the world, would make this the last thing he would ever do. If I accepted it, he would die in giving it to me.

I thought of Wandis, led to some distant village by the wolves. Did she wonder what had become of me? What if I did this thing, and then came to her as a man on the first night of winter, to tell her what I had become? Would she still care for me? Would she wait for me, as my mother had waited for my father? Or would she draw away with the same horror that I was still trying to fight down in myself?

I looked at my hands and tried to imagine them as paws.

I shivered, and stood up.

At once Wild Eye and Ragged Ear were at my side.

“Not supposed to let me go anywhere, are you?” I asked.

They stared at me.

I wondered what it would be like to be able to talk to them as my father could. I realized he was part of a whole world I was unaware of, a mysterious world of night and secrets. I was curious about it. I wished I could run with the pack for a night before I made my decision.

Another wolf came limping along the path. Though it was the first time I had seen him in this shape since I was five, I knew it was my father.

He made a motion with his head that I took as a command, then turned and headed back down the path. I rose to follow him. My guards made no move to stop me. When we had gone a way, my father dropped back to walk beside me. I looked at him and shivered. It was strange to see that dark, four-legged shape and know my father was inside it. And stranger still to think of inhabiting such a shape myself.

Passing through the quiet forest, we came at last to a rocky hillside where nearly two dozen wolves were gathered. Some were playing. Others lay dozing in the warm morning. Now and then their legs would twitch, and I knew that they were running in their sleep.

After a while I thought I understood why my father had brought me here. These were his people, the responsibility he wanted to pass on to me. He stepped into the clearing, and the others were instantly alert. I could sense their love for him. He came back and took my hand softly between his jaws, then drew me in beside him. He was introducing me.

The wolves crowded around us. I felt myself overwhelmed by their warmth, their musky odor.

“All right,” I whispered. “I'll do it.”

 

I opened my eyes. My father's naked body lay beside me, quiet and empty, but human once again.

I was still human, too.

Half relieved, half disappointed, I began to wonder if something had gone wrong. Then the moon slipped over the horizon and began pouring fire into my veins.

I cried out in agony. For all we had talked, my father had not warned me of the terror of the transformation, not spoken of the fear and the pain that strike as your skin begins to stretch, your bones wrench themselves into new shapes, and your teeth curve into deadly fangs.

I fell to the ground, writhing in pain.

And yet even in my pain, part of me watched in fascination as thick tufts of hair sprouted on my hands, my fingers curled into paws, and my nails thickened into strong, black claws. I began to rip at the clothing that seemed to bind me like a rope, shredding it in my torment.

As abruptly as it began, the change was complete. I stood on all fours, trembling with the wonder and the horror of what I had just experienced. Then I tipped back my head. Staring at the moon, I howled for the loss of my father, whom I had never had a chance to love.

Almost instantly Wild Eye and Ragged Ear detached themselves from the darkness and came to stand at my shoulders.

“Run with us,” said Wild Eye, and I was not surprised when I understood him. “Run with us. It is good for sorrow.”

I stretched my legs and headed into the night with them, and then stopped, almost dizzy with sensation. It was as if I had been blind and suddenly found that I could see. Except it was not only my eyes that were keener now, but my nose and my ears as well. I could hear the voles rustling in the soil beneath me, and smell where the weasel had passed an hour before. Stranger still was finding a man-scent and then recognizing it as my own, the path I had followed the day before. What a shock, to discover I had possessed such a rich and distinctive odor, and been so unaware of it.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come, as one by one the pack reached out to greet me.

“Welcome!” cried each voice in my head. “Welcome, welcome, and thrice welcome!”

How can I write of this thing that my father could not tell me, of this oneness that we share? For each of them is always with me now. And the pack is more than a pack, it is a being of its own, of which we are all a part. As they took me in and embraced me as their leader, I knew why my father had loved them so.

I knew, too, that I had found my community at last.

I am a wolf, and I will never be alone again.

 

Tonight is the night of the winter solstice. I have spent my precious time as a man writing all this down, while it is still fresh within me. When I have finished, I will also write a letter to Wandis. Because it is too soon for me to leave the pack, I will ask Wild Eye to carry it to her, tied around his neck.

But three months from now I will travel myself to the village where the wolves took her. And on the night of the equinox, when the change has come over me and I am a man once more, I will go to her, to learn her answer.

I think if anyone can accept this, it will be she.

I hope I am right.

After all, someday I too will need a son to whom I can pass the pack.

It was a house full of white bread and death. Silence grew beneath the chairs like balls of dust. Nothing was out of order, nothing seemed to breathe.

In the center of it sat an old woman, waiting to die.

That she had been full of life at one time I well knew, for she was my grandmother, and I had seen her eyes flash with a fire that seemed stolen from the stars; heard her laugh in the night with a clear joy that easily banished my terror when I was upstairs, lonely and moon-frightened.

Now that was gone, the fire and the clarity drowned in the muddy depths of an unyielding old age that, glacierlike, had crept across her and locked her in a grip of ice. Loss lay like dust in every room of the house: loss of husband; loss of friends; loss of strength, of sharpness of sight, keenness of ear, delicacy of touch. Loss, most of all, of memories, the most recent going first, so that if I entered the house and greeted her, then went to the kitchen to make her some tea, she would cry out in surprise when I re-entered the room five minutes later.

If I reminded her that she had said hello to me minutes earlier, she would shake her head, moaning that she was worthless.

Even that was not as painful as when she asked where my grandfather was, and I would have to remind her that he had died three years earlier. She could only remember him alive, and only knew he was dead when it was brought to her attention. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, she learned again that the man she had lived with for over fifty years was gone, endlessly repeating that horrible first moment of discovery.

Her memories peeled away like layers of an onion, each layer with the power to bring tears to the eye. I found myself growing younger in her eyes as she remembered me not as her youngest and most disgraceful grandchild, the high-school dropout with no prospects, but as the little boy I used to be. I wondered if her failing mind would finally carry her to a time before I was born, and if so, if she would then forget who I was and no longer recognize me when I came to visit.

This had been going on for some months before I began to suspect that as she lost memories she might not be simply moving away from the present, but might indeed be moving toward something else, something long lost that she wanted to regain.

“I can almost see it, Tommy,” she moaned once, holding my hand, her eyes squeezed shut, something like tears but thicker oozing from their corners. “What was it? What
was
it?”

But the memory, and then the thought, eluded her.

 

By the next week she was confined to her bed. Being the only one in the family without a job, I began to visit daily to care for her.

It was during this time that she began to hint at her secret. “Did you ever see them?” she asked one afternoon while I was sitting beside her bed, working a crossword puzzle.

“See who, Gramma?”

“The fair ones,” she replied impatiently, as if I were a stupid child not paying attention to something obvious.

“I don't think so,” I said cautiously.

She sighed, then whispered, “Of course not.” After a moment she added, “I wish you had.”

“What are you talking about, Gran?” I asked, totally mystified.

She closed her eyes. Her face relaxed, and for a moment I thought she had fallen asleep. But when she spoke I realized that she was seeing something in her mind.

“Elves,” she said. “I'm talking about the elves.”

“I wish I had seen them,” I answered with some conviction. I had the terrible feeling that she was finally losing her mind. Even so, it was a fact that I had wanted to meet an elf from the first time I had read about them.

“I helped them once, you know,” she continued. “At least, I think I did. Do you think I helped them?”

“Of course,” I said, squeezing her hand. It was the first note of whimsy I could remember hearing from her in many years, and I was amused. Amused, and oddly touched. I found something both sweet and very sad in the way we were exchanging roles, me becoming the grown-up, she the child.

“Didn't I ever tell you about it?” she asked. Before I could answer, she muttered, “Oh, of course not. I'm not supposed to talk about it. Never did, either, till now.”

It was one of those moments she had when she suddenly seemed to lurch into the present.

“You can tell me about it,” I said.

“Probably shouldn't,” she muttered. Then she did sleep.

 

The next day she seemed stronger and more alert, and for a moment I wondered if her body was actually growing younger along with her mind. But the look in her eyes was almost feverish.

“I'm so glad you're here,” she said. “I want to tell you about them. I think it will be all right.”

It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about the elves again.

“I was nineteen,” she said, leaning toward me and whispering, even though there was no one else in the room. “And only recently married to your grampa. Falling through was an accident, actually, but they were desperate, and I was able to help them.”

“How did you meet them?” I asked. I felt myself slipping easily back into a childhood mode where I had listened eagerly to her stories. Besides, there was no harm in humoring her.

“I fell through,” she said softly. “I was walking across the field, the one between the house and the barn. One minute I was there, the next . . .
pffff
t!”
She made a burring noise, almost a raspberry. It was quite funny, coming from that ancient, wrinkled face.