| |
BRIAN
––––––––
I’D FOUGHT MANY WARS in my lifetime. I’d never let fear get the better of me, no matter how scared I was.
Every warrior knows about that single moment, a tiny fragment of time when all fears disappear because there is no way back. The mind becomes sharp and focused and the body ready for action. That is the point when the battle starts.
That was how I felt when Ahmed parked in front of James and Eve’s house.
I’d been trying to imagine this moment for years and years. What would I say? How would James react? What would Eve say when she saw me? Would James and I turn into wolves and fight? Or would we hug each other as best friends should?
The door swung open. Jack took a step aside to let us in.
With some sort of detached clarity, I heard the click as the door closed behind and the ticking sound of the grandfather clock. The low afternoon sun broke through the clouds and poured into the room. A comparison to a theater stage crossed my mind. In a sense, we were all about to play out the last act of a drama that had started a long time ago.
Eve stood in the middle of the room, between Astrid and James, whose hand was gripping Eve’s shoulder.
Eve’s eyes rested on me, impossible to read. Then she tilted her head and a golden spark twinkled in their amber depths.
“You had your hair cut,” she said. “I’ve never seen you with short hair before.”
Slowly blood was coming back to her ghastly pale cheeks. “How could you? How could you let me think you were dead all those years? How could you do that to me?” she whispered, took a small step toward me, and then stopped.
“I didn’t have a choice, Eve.”
“I burned your body, Brian. Or better, what was left of it. I keep the urn with someone’s ashes in my room, damn you! You broke my heart!”
A heavy sob broke out of her chest, and I thought my heart would break.
She took another step forward and the next moment she was in my arms.
“You’re back, Brian.” She sobbed, choking over her words. “You betrayed me. You lied to me. On our wedding day, you gave me your word you’d never lie to me! Oh, god, you’re alive!”
And you gave me your word you’d love me until death did us part. I didn’t die. I was alive. Shouldn’t your heart have known that?
I buried my head in her soft hair, breathing in the familiar, beloved scent, fresh and clean like spring air. My body recognized every curve of her soft form pressed against mine. Oh Lord, she felt the same as the last time I’d held her.
My senses frantically searched for my own scent mingled with hers, the mark I’d left on her long ago, as she’d left hers on me, the proof we still belonged to each other.
I couldn’t find it.
The ripping pain in my gut, more than her new subtle scent, told me she now belonged to James Mohegan.
Anguish ripped throughout my heart and my soul. I held her tightly and, while every fiber of my being screamed in agony, I sent a silent, final farewell to the woman I’d loved more than life itself.
So that was it. It was over. It’d been over maybe twenty-five years ago, maybe a minute ago. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t fight for her. No matter how much I still loved her, she wasn’t mine anymore.
I kissed her hair and, with the last ounce of courage I possessed, slowly released her.
I lifted my head and looked in the direction of James, my friend and her husband. He and Hal held each other in a strong embrace. “You’re back! Hal, you’re alive! My brother’s alive,” James repeated all over again. “Let me see you! My god, you’re both alive!”
He turned and stepped toward me, a thousand emotions written on his face.
I was dizzy from conflicting emotions.
“You better have a good explanation for this, my friend,” he said and smiled broadly. He slapped my shoulders and then, after a moment of hesitation, jerked me into a bear hug. “Good to see you, man. Welcome home!”
James’s genuine happiness to see me alive broke the tension.
For a moment.
“Daddeee!”
We all froze. Rosie stood at the top of the staircase, a stuffed frog prince under her right arm; a pink pacifier in her left hand. By the look on her smiling face, she was determined to come down.
I saw the blood draining from Astrid’s and Eve’s faces and heard Jack’s firm voice saying “Don’t move, Rosie.”
Then everything happened in the blink of an eye. One moment I was looking at my granddaughter’s smiling face from below and the next I was in front of Rosie, in my wolf form, blocking her way down. Beside me stood Rowena, who’d used her wizard powers to translocate at the same moment I’d change into a blaidd. She kneeled and grabbed Rosie in a firm embrace.
“We got her,” Rowena said in a shaky voice.
“You okay?” I asked her telepathically. My inner voice also trembled like a leaf.
“I’m fine. You?”
“I’m okay.” I looked down and saw my family in shock.
“Now somebody help me get down,” Rowena said and smiled weakly. “I can’t find my legs.” She turned to me. “That was impressive, Brian.”
“Likewise, asanni.” Translocation, a rare skill only the most powerful wizards were capable of, required a tremendous amount of energy.
Ahmed pushed his son into Eve’s arms and climbed the steps, taking two at a time. Jack was at his heels. Rosie, amused by the commotion she’d caused and oblivious of the scare she had just put us through, threw herself into Jack’s arms. Ahmed scooped up his wife and carried her down the stairs, ignoring her protests that soon turned into giggles.
Rosie seemed delighted to see so many of her family members surrounding her. She greeted us one by one. Although she was just the right size for an eleven-month-old baby, her mental development, vocabulary and motor skills were quite advanced. She had scared the daylights out of me when she’d appeared on the stairs, but deep inside, I knew she wouldn’t have fallen.
I climbed down the stairs.
Her soft amber eyes on me, Rosie stretched her arms and tried to wiggle out of Jack’s embrace. “Khali!”
“You recognize me, huh, Rosie? That’s amazing! You’re granddaddy’s clever girl.”
Although our ability to communicate telepathically usually came with the first shape-shifting, in adolescence, I had a feeling my granddaughter understood me as easily as she’d recognized me.
Jack put her down. She toddled to me and, closing her small arms around my neck, buried her nose in my fur and sniffed me.
“Khali,” she said, confirming my identity through my scent.
Astrid blinked rapidly several times. “Jack, she can communicate telepathically!”
“And she recognized Brian!” James said. “How does she know him?”
“She recognizes our scents, regardless of the shape,” Jack added, amused.
Astrid crouched to her daughter and hugged her, “Rosalie Canagan, we all agree that you’re a remarkable little girl, but you scared us to death! My god, thank you, Brian! And to you too, Mom.”
“How do you know Rosie?” James asked again, puzzled. “And why is she calling you after her frog?”
“Ah, we’re all old friends, aren’t we Rosie?” Hal said and explained our secret meetings with our granddaughter. “She knows us as Khalid and Malik, but this is the first time she’s seen one of us in wolf form.” Hal outstretched his arms and called Rosie. “Come on, honey, say hello to Grandpa Hal.”
Rosie turned to him and let out another happy squeal. “Malik! Malik!”
“Miss Rosie, I’ve heard you named your penguin after me, and I’m honored,” Hal said and lifted her high into the air.
A well-known tingling sensation in my body was a warning sign I was about to shift back to human form. I turned and walked toward the bathroom. I would be fully dressed when I turned back, but my clothes would be in slight disarray.
“Brian.” Astrid stopped me as I turned to leave the room. “I used to change like that, in a blink. Does it hurt you?”
I walked back to her. “No. My shifting is faster than ever before, but it doesn’t hurt.”
She took my head between her hands and said in a voice so quiet that nobody else could hear us. “You probably heard about my troubles with shifting. It started getting better when I fell in love with your son. I needed Jack to connect my loose parts. It was that simple.”
“I used to have control over my shifting, like everyone else. Then I lost it.”
She smiled. “Really? You were about to change when I stopped you. You haven’t shifted yet. Consciously or subconsciously, your blaidd, or your dyn, does control it.”
She was right. Something had stopped the change. It didn’t matter if it was my wolf or my human spirit.
I looked at her moss-green eyes, filled with insight that was above the comprehension of ordinary people. The wise and timeless eyes of an ellida.
“Don’t fight it when it comes,” she whispered softly so that nobody else could hear.
“Fight what?”
“Love,” she said simply. “It will make you whole again.”
Would it? Right now, I was broken into a thousand pieces, and love was the last thing on my mind.
––––––––
ASTRID AND JACK TOOK Rosie upstairs to investigate her breakout.
“She always sleeps in her crib when she’s with us. It’s a safe crib,” Eve said, still upset. “How did she get out?”
“She needs a toddler bed, Eve,” Ahmed said. “She has outgrown her crib.”
“She is strong on her feet. Maybe we should teach her how to climb the stairs,” James said.
Rowena and Eve looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “She’s eleven months old, James,” Eve said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Tomorrow morning you’re going to a hardware store to buy a baby gate for the stairs.”
“That’s just going to be another challenge for her,” James said. “She just climbed out of her crib. A baby gate will be a piece of cake for her.”
“Then put a wrought iron gate there, floor to ceiling, I don’t care. I want her safe!”
“Come here,” we heard Astrid from above. “Let us show you something.”
We all went upstairs. Jack lifted Rosie up and put her back in the crib. “Now, little rascal, show your grandparents how you did it.”
We all went upstairs. Jack took Rosie from my arms and put her back in the crib.
“Now, Rosie, show us how you did it.”
With very little effort Rosie mounted the railing and easily lowered herself to the floor. She turned and looked up at us, a triumphant smile on her little face.
“Why would you want to stay in bed when all the fun is happening somewhere else, huh, Rosie?” Jack said and lifted her into his arms. “Dad, cribs are out, here and in our house.”
Dad. I knew he was talking to James. I wasn’t surprised he called him “Dad.” Jack was a grown man when Eve married James, but they perceived each other as father and son. Our family ties were strong and went beyond blood relations, so the fact that they were stepfather and stepson didn’t make any difference. And I didn’t feel jealous. Not because of that, at least.
“Dad,” Jack continued, and this time he was talking to me, “you used to be good with wood. Can you figure out a baby gate for the stairs? Do you have the material and tools to make it?”
My heart swelled with emotion. “Give me a couple of days and I’ll make Rosie a nice toddler bed as well. I’ve turned my garden house into a carpentry workshop; it’s time I start using it.”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you, Brian,” Astrid said. She slipped her hand through the crook of my elbow. “Now we’re going over to our place. Jack made dinner.”
One part of me wanted to be alone, to process everything that had happened today. The other part didn’t want to let Jack, Rosie and Astrid out of my sight ever again.
“We’re going home, muffin,” Jack said to Rosie. “Be a good girl and go fetch your shoes. They’re beside your playpen.”
Rosie walked to me and touched my hand. “Khali?”
“Khali is going to go with you, sweetie,” I said.
“Malik?”
“Malik, too. Come, sweetie, hold your grandpa’s hand.”
––––––––
ROSIE’S GREAT ESCAPE from the crib had put things into perspective. Hal’s and my sudden return from the dead was of secondary importance compared to Rosie’s little acrobatic mischief and the safety concerns it had raised.
That was how it should be, I thought as we all crossed the lawn between the two houses. Rosie’s tiny hand in mine seemed like a symbolic connection between my past and future.
Hal and I had been gone for a long time. Our families had to continue with their lives. Now that we were back, it was up to us to find our place among them again.
I’d start by making a bed for my granddaughter.
During dinner, the phones started ringing, first Jack’s, and then Astrid’s, James’s, Rowena’s and Eve’s.
Red Cliffs and Copper Ridge had learned about our return.