Skin of the Wolf (19 page)

I
want to look at that shoulder again,” Livia said as they neared the car. “And don’t tell me you’re fine.”

“I’m not fine. The damn thing is killing me. I wish I’d gone looking for a healer.”

“Where? You mean, here? There are healers here?”

“According to my brother, yes.”

“You want to go back and find one?”

He shook his head and didn’t say anything more. She briefly kept her silence, for which he was grateful; but what was he expecting? That she’d be content to be his driver and leave him to—to what? What was he hoping for, what was he going to do?

He looked back up the hill, at the house, then turned again to the bleak woods where Edward had disappeared. Wearily, he got into the car. And of course Livia wasn’t content. Even an Indian, consumed with the questions she no doubt had, would have had trouble staying quiet. As the car crunched down the long drive, she asked, “Did you find out what it’s about? Why all those people are here?”

Michael thought he saw a gray shadow moving among the
trunks and branches, keeping pace with them. Near the main road he lost sight of it. “Yes,” he said.

Livia waited again, then asked, “Can you tell me?”

He changed position, which did nothing for the pain. “It’s so . . . Telling you goes against everything I was taught.”

“I understand that. Believe me, I know how hard that is. But whatever’s going on, I think you need us, Michael.”

He wished it weren’t true. All his training rebelled against sharing this work—whatever that turned out to mean—with anyone. And with white people? But it was what he’d heard on the bluff, in the voice of the wind and the words of the river, when he’d asked for counsel:
Accept the hand that’s offered. This is not a task for one man alone.
And if two of the people offering hands weren’t quite—or were more than—human, and the third was a wide-eyed Jesuit priest, did that make a difference? Surprising himself, Michael laughed.

Livia threw him a glance. “Something’s funny?”

“Among my people, pretty much everything. It’s how we survived. The stories say the Creator likes to hear us laugh and we honor him when we do it.” The car turned onto the main road, the growl of gravel replaced by the soft whirr of asphalt. “I said I thought Edward wanted the mask because he’d identified another Shifter. A child who’d need to Awaken. I was almost right, but in grad school we used to say ‘almost’ blows the lab up. He hasn’t identified anyone. He needs the mask to do the Ceremony wholesale. They’ve been doing it that way already. Fifty, sixty people at a time. To Awaken any Shifters among the people here. That’s why these people have come.”

“I’m not sure I understand. These people are all Shifters?”

“No. Some of them may be. They all apparently hope they are.”

“And Edward can do the Ceremony? I thought Shifters weren’t the ones who did it.”

“We’re not. He can’t. Peter van Vliet claims he can. He’s the one who’s been doing it.”

“And? What’s happened?”

“Van Vliet and Edward both say they’ve had four ‘partial successes.’ Two people died, Edward says, and two had incomplete Shifts. I don’t believe it, though. The Ceremony—it’s mesmerizing. Most likely what happened is, someone, some people, got carried away. Thought they felt something they didn’t feel. Tried to fly, who knows what? And Edward and van Vliet thought they saw something they didn’t see, because they wanted to see it.”

“Maybe,” Livia said slowly. “But I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?” Michael asked, but his heart knew. He felt no surprise, just a growing, icy dread, as Livia described what she’d seen in an outbuilding on the edge of the horses’ field. When she was through he sat silent for some time; then he said, “As we were driving up. In the trees—I said it was a deer. I was lying to myself. That’s what I wanted it to be. It was a woman, wasn’t it?”

Livia nodded. “I think so. Naked, lithe, and frightened. She moved like a deer.”

Michael let out a long breath. “Damn it. Oh, goddammit. They’re right, then. Edward and van Vliet. They’ve had Shifts. But they’re incomplete. The Shifters can’t control it and they can’t go back.”

“Shifters.” Livia’s voice was quick with excitement. “Then there
are
more. More than just you and Edward. And they’ve found them.”

Her words echoed in his head:
there are more
. Others like him.
He felt it, too, that excitement. Up that hill behind him, Indians, from the West, from the South, Mohawk and Sioux, Navajo and Seminole, native people of this land, the small tattered remnants of great nations. So many now with nothing left, no land, no language, no clan, no culture. But they had this: they had this gene.

He’d been right. This was his proof. The results Edward and van Vliet had achieved were disastrous, but they weren’t failures. This was the empirical evidence his research needed. These were the experiments he’d never have done. The deer-woman in the woods, the eagle-man in the shed: they were his corroboration. He’d been right.

Almost, in his exhilaration, Michael wanted Livia to stop.
Let me out here,
he nearly said.
Let me go back. These are my people. Doubly so. I’ve been asked to stay: I’ll stay.

But they’d reached the edge of town, were rolling down the main street, past the butcher shop where the kid had asked, “What’s going on up there?”
If he had known,
Michael thought. The heat of his excitement dissipated, revealing the ice in his spine that had not left him since Livia’s story of the shed. No. They had to be stopped. Their results weren’t failures. But they were disastrous.

Livia pulled the car into a parking spot. “Wait here.” She got out, and he sat and watched the people on the shopping street of a pretty town, a pretty white town, where Indians were sports teams’ mascots, or war-paint-wearing primitives battling cowboys in some mythical long-ago.

“Here.” Livia got back in the car, handed him a large coffee and a bottle of aspirin.

Again, he laughed. “It’s that obvious?”

“You’re dead on your feet.” She peeled back the top on her own coffee. “And I’m freezing.” She started the car, steered through the
town back to the highway. “Michael, talk to me. Other Shifters: this is what you hoped for. You told us that. And in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s what Spencer and I hoped for, too.”

“That was clear.”

“All right. Your brother’s found them. What do we do now?”

The coffee was old and bitter but she’d sweetened it with honey, thickened it with cream. “I wish,” Michael said, “I wish we could celebrate. But even disregarding the three deaths they’ve already caused: if they succeed it’ll be catastrophic. In a lot of ways.”

“How? If they can identify Shifters—”

“They can’t. Like the elders who’ve always done the Ceremony for the children, they don’t know who can Shift until it happens. But the elders knew what to do. How to help, how to control it once they saw it starting. Edward and van Vliet have no idea.”

“Is that what went wrong, then? The eagle-man I saw. He can’t . . . He’ll be like that forever?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen that. The stories say it can happen that way, though.” He threw back three aspirin. “But that’s just part of it. The other part is, these are adults.” A hawk wheeled against the gray sky. Michael framed his thoughts. “To children, the world is magical. I don’t mean unicorns and rainbows. I don’t even mean benign. I mean, causation isn’t obvious. Or a possibility. My people tell children to walk slowly in the dark because that’s when the ghosts come out. If you run you might bump one and anger him, and he’ll hurt you. So if a child runs at night and falls and breaks his leg, he’s perfectly willing to believe he offended a ghost and the ghost threw him down. An adult would believe he couldn’t see and he tripped. The child will move slowly at night from now on. The adult will buy a flashlight and if he’s in a hurry, he’ll run.” Michael looked over at Livia. “But what if there really are ghosts? The child’s learned a
different way of being in the world now, and it’ll matter. He won’t offend any more ghosts and he’ll be fine. The running adult, even with his flashlight, will break his leg again when he bumps another ghost.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I don’t really believe in ghosts. But I try not to run in the dark. And I know I can become a wolf. I learned that when I was too young to understand that it was impossible, or even strange. I could, my friends couldn’t. One of my friends on the rez, he had blue eyes. None of the rest of us did. In my mind, those phenomena were equal. Do you see? I was told I’d been given a gift, that it was to benefit our people, that I’d have to learn to control it, that I couldn’t talk about it except with Grandfather and Edward. None of this seemed odd to me. I learned how to live in the world in both skins, before I was old enough to have established any other way to live.”

“You don’t think adults can learn what you did as a child?”

“I don’t know. I want to think they can, but there you have the curse of science—I can’t believe things just because I want to.” He drank more coffee. It wasn’t melting the ice inside him but it was warming his arms, his legs. “Livia, your people. You Change as adults. Is it always easy?”

She met his eyes, then looked back to the road. “It’s never easy. For new Noantri, there’s an initiation, a period of learning. Sometimes it doesn’t help at all. Some people are overwhelmed from the beginning by their new, heightened senses. They never learn to filter or ignore. Others seem to adjust without difficulty, but slowly it grows on them: eternity is a very long time.”

“What happens to them?”

“Some go mad. They have to be protected and cared for. Others . . . Spencer told you there are ways we can die. Suicide is a problem among us.”

They rode in silence for a time. Finally, Livia asked, “Will the mask help? Or do they only think it will?”

“It will. The real one, if they can find it. If they’ve done the Ceremony seven times, conservatively figuring fifty people each time, and had four responses, that’s just over one percent. It’s not high enough. It should be closer to one and a half or even two. Van Vliet’s obviously good but he’s not good enough. He needs more powerful tools. Why are you smiling?”

“The way you rattled those numbers off. In case I didn’t know you were a scientist. But Michael, the one percent, the one and a half. How do you know those numbers are right?”

“It’s my work. It’s always been my work.”

M
ichael had fallen silent again. Part of Livia wanted to let him be, to let him digest what they’d learned and choose a course of action. But she felt a growing sense of urgency. “You say this is your work,” she said. “But you study smallpox, Spencer told me.”

“That’s how I get grants. I wouldn’t get far if I told the NIH I’m looking for the werewolf gene.” He finished his coffee. “And on one level it’s true. Smallpox took a disproportionate toll on Shifters. It’s a hard trail to follow. Whites weren’t keeping records of who died where, just shoveling them into mass graves as fast as they fell, but some of the tribes did, in the wampum, in the buffalo robes, in the stories. I’ve spent years piecing it together. The same way blacks are more likely to develop sickle-cell anemia, or Ashkenazi Jews, Tay-Sachs, people who carry the Shifter gene seem to have even less ability than the native population as a whole to fight off smallpox. I’ve found if I follow the virus, I can follow the gene.”

“So your work is the gene? What you told us back at Spencer’s about the research—”

“It’s my research. No one else is doing it and no one knows. My whole life’s been about this. But Edward won’t hear me.” His voice
wavered; then he went on. “My thought was to be able to identify the children. If I could find them, if I knew . . . At the same time I’ve been searching out people who can do the Ceremony. I’ve found some. They’re all old, so in a way I’m racing the clock. But in a way, not.”

“How, not?”

“When I first told you about the Ceremony, about the specific emotional state, you brought up neuroaesthetics. The brain’s and the body’s response to art—to anything—it’s all physical. The cause isn’t the point. It’s like . . . You can put a potato on the fire and cook it from the outside in, or you can put it in the microwave and cook it from the inside out. It’s cooked either way.”

“But cooked differently.”

“In a way that matters? I’m not sure. If I can identify the biochemistry, what goes on in me as I Shift, maybe I can give a child that same experience without the Ceremony.”

“Or an adult.”

“No. Just because it would be controlled still doesn’t mean an adult could handle it.”

“But a child . . .” She trailed off, unsure how to put into words what was bothering her.

Michael looked over at her. “You’re worried it’s unethical. Interesting, isn’t it? When it’s demystified, when it’s just a physical state and not the magical result of some romantic ancient ritual, it’s different. If I chant and dance and a girl turns into a deer, she’s fulfilling her fate. What the Buddhists call her dharma. If it happens because I gave her a shot, it’s a bizarre kind of human experimentation. Well, don’t worry. I’m not nearly there yet.” He rubbed his eyes. “And I’ll never get there if Edward and van Vliet aren’t stopped.”

“Why not? Why is your work and their . . . whatever they’re doing, even connected?”

“You don’t see it?” He gave another laugh, but a humorless one. “That’s because you’re not American. Do you know much about our history—my people’s history, Indian history, I mean?”

“I’m sorry, no. The art that comes into my area is from early in the discovery of the continent.”

“Right there, that’s a loaded word, ‘discovery.’ We ‘discovered’ this continent fifteen thousand years ago when we crossed the land bridge from Siberia. When Europeans first came we were curious but not impressed. They had oceangoing ships but they couldn’t paddle a canoe. They didn’t know how to hunt or farm this land. We helped them out the way we helped each other, and you can see where that got us. We were destroyed. By the nineteenth century we were hunted for fun.”

Livia made no response. What could she say?

“Now,” Michael said, “now there’s a museum in Washington and everyone claims to have a Cherokee grandma. We’re romantic figures. Mother Earth, medicine men, the Seven Generations—no one has any idea what the hell they’re talking about but boy oh boy, do they admire us. But in the 1970s when Indians started demanding rights, like women and blacks, that didn’t go over well. At Wounded Knee, on my own rez at Akwesasne, there were gun battles, armed standoffs. It’s what Spencer said. It’s what happened to your people until your Concordat was signed. Once it’s known that this is an Indian gene, once it’s clear that all Shifters, even if they look white or black, must carry Indian blood or it wouldn’t be happening, once the Shifters all go mad or die—or kill—Jesus Christ, it’ll be open season on us again.”

Livia went cold. She flashed back to last fall, to being told by the
Conclave that she must not fail at the task she’d been given. She heard Counsellor Rosa Cartelli saying that if she did,
the fires will come again
. She hadn’t wasted a moment imagining that Cartelli might be wrong.

“And you want to talk about human experimentation?” Michael said. “A gene that gives this Power? Just wait. The NSA, the CIA, whoever the hell, they’ll be all over it.”

Quietly, she said, “I can’t argue. It’s an ugly picture but I’m afraid it’s true. Michael? Just now, when we went back to see van Vliet, and he wasn’t there. What were you going to do if we found him?”

For a long time, Michael didn’t speak. Then: “You were right, wanting to go after Edward. I shouldn’t have let him go.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking with my heart. Hoping to find a way . . . But now I understand: they’re not deluded, ineffectual dreamers. They’re dangerous and they have to be stopped.”

“Stopped, how?” Livia asked, but she knew. “Michael, he’s your
brother
.”

Miles passed in silence. She asked, “If you can’t find them? If they move their operation, do the Ceremony somewhere else?”

“They want the mask. If they get it they’ll do a Ceremony as soon as they can. If it succeeds, they’ll go underground, traveling rez to rez. As van Vliet has more Shifts, as his confidence grows, his power will grow. Soon he won’t need the mask. He’ll pass it to someone else and he’ll teach others. He’s dying, Livia. Edward told me. But if he teaches, if they can see it happen while they learn from him . . . Ivy Nell’s fire. In her dream. I don’t know if it was real or metaphorical. Or both. This could be it. It could be coming.”

“If they don’t find the mask, would it stop them?”

“It might, because they think it would. They think their failures
are related to van Vliet’s weakness. The same way confidence will make his power grow, self-doubt will diminish it. It’s not magic. When you’re uncertain, you stutter, you stumble, you sweat. He won’t perform the Ceremony perfectly and he won’t get as many Shifts, even partial ones, if he’s not sure of his power.” Michael paused. “And then he’ll die.”

“And then? What about Edward?”

“He’ll need to find someone else who can perform the Ceremony. I’ll need to find him before he does.”

Livia didn’t ask again what would happen then. “Then we need to find the mask. Or at least be sure they don’t.”

“Yes.” Michael blew out a weary breath. “But I have no idea how.”

“I don’t either. But there’s someone who might be able to help.”