Constantine
It’s just a rock, a chunk of granite tumbled by ice and circumstance down from Canada to play its part in Homelands. Who knows how many thousands of years ago it came to rest here. Long enough for lichen to soften its surface, moss to colonize it, a treelet—a tamarack—to sink its roots into a fissure. A damselfly to sun its lacy wings on top. A fox to give birth underneath.
After a long day poking through the sphagnum and sedges and muck of that patch of wetland where Cassius died, I lean against this rock, my fellow refugee, and wipe the mud from my phone against my jeans.
Even though I can’t see her or hear her, I feel her here. I hold the phone up, so Evie will know that I’ve found it, then with a sweep of my thumb, I hit Last Number and hold the phone to my ear.
“So where is Cassius?” says the familiar voice as soon as she hears me.
“He’s dead.”
Somewhere on the other side of the continent, ice swirls against crystal while she takes this in. “Hmm. And where are you now?” she says, trying to sound casual, though I feel the hunger in her voice.
My collarbone hurts, but I don’t want Evie or Tristan to suspect I am in pain and change their minds about the advisability of letting me be wild.
“Let it go, Drusilla,” I say, hooking the thumb of my free hand through my belt loop to reduce the pressure. “They’re all dead. You got what you wanted. You—”
“Don’t,” she snaps. “They are not all dead.” A door creaks on her end. “And don’t you dare presume to know what I wa— I said stay out,” Drusilla yells away from the speaker.
There is a sharp crack at the other end of the line, and when Drusilla speaks again, her voice is calmer as it always is when she’s hurt someone. “So tell me where the mutts are, Constantine, and let me let you live.”
I hear a rapid-fire clicking and picture her, tapping at the mirror glaze surface of her desk, waiting impatiently for my answer, but I have nothing left to say to her. She knew who I was, but she knows nothing of the vast, uncharted land between who I was and who I am now.
The Titanix Thunderhead pops and crumples in my fist. A few pieces dribble from my hand as I remove the battery and fold the SIM card. I set them on the boulder.
“She doesn’t know,” I tell Evie as I pull off my shirt.
When the last of my clothes are folded in a neat pile next to the broken black case, I lie down, surrounded by the dry whine of the dog-day cicadas and the buzzing of bees at the nearby milkweed. A phoebe trills, then sings fee-fee-fee high among the shifting leaves of the lacework canopy. The black wolf lays her jaw on my shoulder as I give in to my wild. She will watch over me until I can join her.
Another of the lives that must be lived unspoken in the forest strong and fierce.