“Why do you say that?” Grandpa raised his bushy eyebrows.
“Because . . .” Mordur rubbed at the side of his neck like he was trying to ease a kink “. . . because my dad once said a story to me. In 1950 a local crofter wounded a female shape-shifter feeding on a reindeer. He caught her in a net and dragged her to the town square at Hvammstangi.”
“How did they know she was a shape-shifter?” I asked.
“She had the head and body of a wolf, but she was walking on two legs. She lived only for a few days. They took photographs. I looked it up. There are articles in the library about the strange woman-wolf, even a drawing. People came from every corner of Iceland just to stare at her.”
“Did you see the photos?” Sarah asked.
Mordur shook his head. “None were good. Just a shadow lying against the stump of a tree. When she died, her body fell all to pieces. My father went to see her a few hours before that. He said it was the most very frightening thing he had ever laid his eyes on. But he felt sorrow. She was tied to a stake and left to rot while strangers stared. Dad said he had many nightmares after. His mother tried to say it was a circus trick, but he could not believe her. It had looked too real.”
“Perhaps he was right,” Grandfather said. He coughed another phlegmy cough, then said quietly, “It was my brother Jóhann, Thordy’s father, who found that shape-shifter.”
We did simultaneous double takes. “What?” I said. “You . . . you knew about this story?”
Grandfather nodded solemnly. “Yes. My brother phoned and told it to me. I was already living in Manitoba then. He was very excited . . . I thought he had dreamed up the whole thing. Jóhann had a real gift for exaggerations and he was a little scatterbrained at times. He insisted he had caught a shape-shifter; he even sent me the faded photographs of the lump against the tree. I told him he’d been hoodwinked. Up to his dying day he swore it was a true story. Maybe I shouldn’t have doubted him so much.” Grandpa coughed again. “There is one thing that bothers me. Jóhann said he could hear a high-pitched howling for weeks afterwards. It sounded like a younger wolf. He believed there was one more.”
“Oh great,” Michael said, “is it Onni, then?”
Grandfather fell silent, his lips a tight line. He drank from his coffee.