Evie
My first Offland meeting as Alpha had taken so much preparation. For days, Tara had prepped me on questions of engineering; Josi, on questions of the law; Leonora, on how to handle humans. I needed to be able to answer every petty, pointless question so they did not have any excuse to inspect Homelands.
I’ve gotten better at it, better at lining up my facts, better at identifying what Leonora calls bullshit. But in the end, to protect my Pack, I have to know four times as much as all the humans in the room.
I unroll another map, holding it open with skunk skull from the shelf of First Kills, rehearsing my responses for the Community Wildfire Protection Plan meeting.
The chart with water pressures riffles and floats slowly to the floor in the suddenly bright air. At the window, I taste the coolness of the breeze and the warmth of the ground and the scuttling lacy clouds against blue.
I’m not the only one who feels it: Pack emerge blinking into the sunlight. They are ill-tempered and ill at ease. Days spent inside hiding from blackfly do that. Soon, they begin circling me, bodies shivering with need.
“Go! Go!” I say loudly. “Before it’s too late.”
And they go.
“Rinnaþ, wulfas,” I whisper to myself.
Run, wolves.
The wild bursts out of them, and in their excitement, things are left undone. The stove is still on. The milk is out. A screen in the library is wide open. Clothes are strewn everywhere.
“Alpha,” says Leonora.
“Aren’t you going out running?”
“I thought we’d take this opportunity to go swimming, but”—the children are already pulling off shirts, whooping around, their arms waving in a premature celebration of nakedness—“we will need some adults.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
Arne runs back in, his back covered in pine needles.
“Forgot to turn off the stove,” he says.
“I did it, but, Arne, as soon as the 8th is changed, send them to Home Pond. Leonora is taking the class swimming.”
I squat down to pick up an armload of clothes.
“What’s happened?” says Constantine. “We were working and then everyone disappeared.”
“Blackfly don’t like strong winds and bright sun. It gives the Pack a chance to run.”
“Why’d humans hafta wear clowes t’go simming?” complains Edmund, coming up the stairs. “And why is the shit and pans so liddow?”
“Because humans think that by hiding evidence of their fucking, they can pretend they are more than animals,” she says. “The quicker you get dressed, the quicker we get to the water. Now, let’s see how well you’ve done.”
Edmund emerges from the stairs, pulling on a clearly uncomfortable blue-and-white-gingham bikini. Aella is wearing a pair of long shorts with skulls and a daisy-print tank top. Leofric has on a pink one-piece that covers the back but leaves the nipples exposed, which as I recall is acceptable because he’s male.
“Alpha? Would you like to comment on how the class has done?”
I wave her off. Those lessons were long ago, and I’ve forgotten everything save for that single arbitrary fact that while male nipples may be exposed, female nipples must never be.
She turns around. “Shifter, you will know,” she says.
“It’s Constantine, Leonora,” I say. Leonora pauses for a moment then her eyes flicker down, acquiescing. She starts again. “Well, Constantine, how has the class done?”
He had been watching me, a curious expression on his face, but now he reluctantly turns to the children. I know they’re not right. Their legs twitch, their dirty feet shivering in anticipation. They are unsure what to do with arms that until recently were used for running. And Margaret is really too old to be licking Oliver’s ear.
They hold their heads cocked to the side in hopeful angles.
He turns back to me. “Beautiful,” he whispers, a low hitch in his voice.
Then with a steadier voice, he tells Leonora that her charges are perfect.
Leonora’s eyebrows rise and her lips tighten in disapproval, but she shepherds them to the door, unwilling to keep them confined a minute more.
“No one on the dock until the adults come,” she yells.
“You know they aren’t,” she says without turning to look at Constantine.
“Aren’t what?”
“Perfect.”
“They’re only children,” he says.
“That they definitely are not.” One of our “children” has found a vertebra that has been picked clean; she puts it to her hind teeth, gnawing happily. “They are wolves. They have a hard enough time fitting in already. They don’t say what they don’t mean. They don’t ask things simply to make conversation. They sense things no one else does. They don’t understand things that everyone understands. Rainy!” she yells at a First Shoes who has reverted to running on her toes and fists. “Two legs!”
Rainy looks back, then pushes herself upright. It’s the angle of the slope that’s giving her trouble, but it can’t be helped. She must learn.
“You know what humans are like with anyone who is strange,” Leonora says, “and these children are as strange as they come.”
Something splashes, followed by excited yips and yells made by children who aren’t used to the form until one of the older ones calls out: “Tasha felled!”
Leonora starts to run, hampered by sandals. I run, too, hampered by the jostling of injured ribs, but Constantine races past me, wolf-fast on two legs. The children huddle to the side of the dock as his feet pound down the dock and he launches himself far out into the water, cutting through it like an otter.
At the edge of the dock, I lie down, my arms in the water where she should be, searching. Tasha isn’t even First Shoes and doesn’t know how to swim in skin.
The sun catches something bright in the churned water and I grab for it, pulling. My ribs scream even though she is being pushed up from below.
Constantine emerges as I gather her, tiny and coughing and terrified, into my arms, marking her over and over again until the shaking subsides.
His fingers grab hold of the edge of the dock, just below my bent leg.
“Coodn beethe,” she sobs.
“It’s not the same in skin. That’s why you have to learn. That’s why I told you to wait.”
I let my leg fall, feeling his fingers, cold and damp even through my jeans.
“I don’ wann be in thin. Don’ lig it.”
“It doesn’t matter what you like or want, you will do what you must. Like every Pack.”
Leonora is next to me now, in her bright-orange bathing suit, her handbag shaped like an oversize plum made of shining purple stones, bristling with antlers and cheese chews.
“Tasha, what do we say to the Sh—Constantine?”
I feel her tighten in my arms, her head raised to me for help, but honestly, I have no idea what Leonora wants from her.
“He saved your life. What do you say?”
“I don’ know,” she wails.
“‘Thank you,’ Tasha. You say ‘thank you.’ Wolflings, I have said this over and over, but I can’t emphasize how important it is. Humans are not Pack. There is no assumption of mutual support. A human may help another human or they may not. Because of this, there is always the expectation of gratitude. They will look very poorly on you if you do not say ‘thank you’ every time they perform any service, no matter how small or obvious.”
Licking away the last of the water dripping into Tasha’s eyes, I set her upright as the 8th emerges from behind the Great Hall, racing toward the water.
I lift my leg from Constantine’s hand, but one finger catches on the loose threads at the hole of my jeans. I lean back down, letting him free himself, and immediately regret his absence. Water beads on his hair and on his face, dripping down to collect in the notch of his collarbone, and I am suddenly, unaccountably thirsty.
“They’re coming.” He opens his mouth to say something to me, but whatever it is, there is no time to say it before Arne and other wolves of the 8th charge the length of the dock. At the end, they leap, paws extended, noses to the sky, before dropping with an unceremonious splat against the water.
Other wolves walk more daintily into the water’s edge.
Constantine’s sopping flannel shirt lands on the side of the deck with a damp splat, followed quickly by his pants. His hair swirls against his broad shoulders. He leans back, his throat long and exposed, the striations of the muscles of his chest glistening in the water. Upright once more, his hair smoothed back, he watches the children jump or wade in, all of them paddling around. It’s the littlest ones, the ones who aren’t used to the tiny squat noses, so unlike the longer muzzles, who have so much difficulty keeping themselves above water. There is a lot of coughing and flailing, but only for the moments it takes for an adult to swim closer. Then little fists curl around the long guard hairs and they lean their heads into the fur, their unfamiliar bodies swaying to the rhythm of their protector’s strokes.
Constantine swims around them, sleek and muscular, strong and fast, making ever-widening loops. He’s not guarding them anymore, not watching. He’s just a shining hint of gold and dark heading out into the middle of Home Pond.
With a ferret-quick twist, he turns his body, spreads out his arms, and floats, far removed from everything.
“Should I send Arne?” Leonora says. “Before he gets too far.”
I raise my hand. Wait.
I stare after him.
Come back. Stay there. Show me how. Help me.
Where is this coming from? He’s an interloper, an outsider. He has no purpose in the Pack. I must choose someone like Poul. Or maybe Lorcan. Let them fight it out for cunnan-riht. For fucking rights. Between the two of them, it’s a rock and a hard place. A pot and a kettle.
John was my friend. We knew each other. I trusted him, and when he died, my heart shriveled and dried. Why is it when this, this…this Shifter looks at me, touches me, I feel just how parched I have become?
Lifting his head from the water, he combs his hair out of eyes with long fingers. He looks around like he’s only now realizing how far he’s gone. Catching my eyes, he starts back with a slow and exaggerated stroke, coming for me.