Eyes of the Wolf

33
I am exhausted. I feel like I slept for a long time. My mouth is gaping open, and my tongue tastes the floor beneath my head. My muscles are sore, and it hurts to breathe, even though the air teems with smells, many of which are unfamiliar to me. My nose twitches, and something attached to my cheek tickles, embedded in the skin. It doesn’t take much of that to set me sneezing. Skin flaps around my head, and it takes me a moment of consideration before I recognize my ears.

Something pads along around me; four feet, I instinctively recognize. The sound echoes slightly, so I figure I am inside. Farther away, outside, I hear more footsteps. More feet.

A solid thing shoves against my back, making all my fur go the wrong way. My lips curl away from my teeth, and a growl tickles at my throat. I cough, but continue growling and open my eyes.

A wolf is standing behind me. I glare it in the eyes until it look away, then stand up despite my exhaustion. It takes a lot of effort, but if there’s a wolf in here, I will not lie down. It drops to its belly when I do not look away. I sniff it at the nape of its neck, and it roll onto its back, submitting to me. I walk a few circles around it, and my legs begin to feel a bit better from the exercise. When I make it back around to the wolf’s head, I feel better, and leave it alone. I turn my back on it, since it is not a threat. The door is closed, and I paw at it. When nothing happens, I growl at the other wolf, who becomes a person and opens it. I go to follow the person, but it tries to close the door between us. I snarl and rush forward, grabbing its leg in a warning and not letting go when it tries to pull away from me. It jabbers something. A couple of other humans trot over, and then I hear more answer their chattering and run off.

Their message relayed, they go about trying to get me to release the leg. When their hands reach for my face, I duck my head, making my person yelp. One of the people drop to a crouch and grab my nose to look me in the face. I meet its gaze squarely, my lips lifting off of my teeth and a growl tearing my parched throat. After a long time, the human’s gaze drops. I bite at its hand and get it, but I lose the leg. The human pulls back, but stops when I tighten my grip. When it stops struggling, I release it and shoulder my way through the door and the humans.

I don’t go far before a wolf runs in from the trees. It smells familiar to me, but that is a secondary concern compared to the aromatic smell of whatever is in its mouth. The wolf stops in front of me and drops its prize a few feet away, then backs away before I pounce and snarf the food, ripping meat away and leaving nothing but the bones. That accomplished, I drop to my belly and go to work on those, too. When any wolf comes too close, I warn it off with a snarl.

As I start chomping at the big, round bone, another wolf comes forward. I growl again, but this time am rewarded with teeth clamping over my muzzle and giving it a quick shake. I yelp. Upon my release, it is my nose that drops, my belly that is exposed. The wolf’s nose tickles at the hair on my belly, but ventures no lower. Finally it stops, and I am allowed to return to my former, upright position. This is the familiar wolf. I recognize the scent, but cannot place it. The fur he has is of a medium shade, neither dark nor light. His nose goes to the back of my ear, and he nips it and skitters away.

I stare in confusion as he stands a little bit away, panting and wagging his tail. Is he playing with me? He just scolded me; am I allowed to play back? I stand, feeling my own tail brush my ankles, and I duck my head before venturing to look up into his face. He barks and runs forward, grabbing one of my bones and leaping away. This time I give chase, barking and a little unsteady as I struggle to run with too many legs. But when have I had more than four?

He rushes past me, shoving me with his shoulder, and the question flies from my head with my next bark as I follow.

:o3

By the time the sun was going down, I am lying down in the trees with five other wolves, two of which are familiar, including the one that stole my bone. We pant with our eyes barely held open to slits as we fight exhaustion from our sprinting. The darker wolf that smells familiar to me lies down at my left, and the bone thief at my right. I drop my head, feeling happy that my pack and I are together.

:o3

When the sun rises, my eyes open, and we all scramble to our feet and stretch. I am hungry, but I don’t know how to get food. Remembering that it was the neither-dark-nor-light wolf that last brought me food, I nudge him with my nose and whine, complaining of my plight. He growls at me, but I notice that my darker familiar wolf is nosing at one of my new friends, and then he tells me that she will take me to get food.

She leads me into the woods, where I am easily distracted by all the scents and sounds until she grabs at my ear and shows me a scent she finds, which I recognize as the same thing I ate yesterday. She let me follow the scent until we hear movement ahead of us, and the smell is stronger. I charge in after the animal, and it flees, its white tail flashing as it runs. Its fear tickles at my nose, and gives me more speed and a hungrier belly. I close in, open my mouth…and lose it as it ducks into a hole. Frustrated, I growl and dig at the burrow, but it does not make the prey come out. I would be there longer, but my friend calls me to another scent.

We hunt until I catch my own breakfast and wolf it down. She already caught a few of her own, so she is not hungry, but I feel the need to guard my catch anyway until I finish eating. After I am done, we return home.

:o3

That afternoon, a bunch of wolves and I go out. This time we follow a scent that I noticed earlier, but I don’t know what it is. We follow, and I split from the group when the scent divides. I am told by the bone thief—Sparrow, I was told earlier—that we do not chase that scent, for it will have a baby. When I compare the two scents, I find that the one we follow is muskier, and the other is strong and bitter.

Finally, we find our quarry, which is a big animal with small antlers on its head. Sparrow noses me to the side, telling me to follow the darker-familiar-wolf, Blaze. I obey, and try to imitate Blaze as his footsteps grow silent, and I can follow him only by scent and his white feet. We drop to a crouch and wait. The prey’s head snaps up, and then we all race from our hiding places, circling as we leap for its throat and belly. It is not long before we bring it down.

I run forward to eat, but Sparrow grabs my ear and shoves me away with a snarl and bared teeth. Stunned at being refused my dinner, I drop to my belly and watch as my hunting partner from breakfast—named Thorn—eats. Then come the other three, Sparrow being the one to back off and allow me my share, which turns out to be the flesh off the legs and the meat left over on the ribs. One glance at my packmates and I know better than to complain. Again we return to the rest of the pack once I have eaten a meal that does not quite fill my stomach.

:o3

We arrive at the home as the sun drops away from sight, and I am tired. However, Sparrow and Blaze tell me it is not time for me to sleep yet. Since I know I cannot make them back down, I do not tell them that they are wrong, and I follow them instead. They lead me into one of the houses, which is opened when Sparrow puts his nose in the handle of the screen door and nudges it from the frame.

Blaze and I follow him into a large house, with relatively little furniture. A female wolf—I am learning to distinguish gender by scent—picks her head up and gets off of the couch she was lying on. Blaze and Sparrow leave the way we came, and the female wolf pushes the screen door closed. I can tell she is an old wolf by the stiff way she walks and the dusting of white on her dark muzzle. Her belly is white, and there are white spots above each of her eyes.

She meets my eyes, and I drop my eyes to her paws. She walks forward and runs her nose down my back, and we sniff each other, then come nose-to-nose again. Her name is Silver. For the sixth time, I have no name to give her. It does not seem to bother her.

Introductions being over, she backs up until there is a wolf-length between us, and then her eyes meet mine again, unchallenging this time. Hair retracts into her body, and her black skin gains a brownish tint, the pink skin over her eyes darkening along with the hair. Her dewclaws shorten, and seem to melt down her leg until the nub of a pad lengthens into a fifth finger. Her elbow, having been just level with her ribcage, drops like her thumb until it is halfway down her arm. The shoulders grow pointed, and her body widens and grew more shallow. The ten teats down her chest and belly shrink away until there are only two, and they swell. Her hock sinks into a human heel, and her foot grows a toe. Her tail recedes. Her nose shortens, and her ears grow stiff and round.

After the change, only the blue eyes are indicative of her wolf form. My chest seems to burn from the inside, and I am overcome with longing to do what my packmate can, what she is trying to teach me to do. Her hand strokes my head, and I relax a bit, though I still wish to change like she did.

*Remember,* a voice echoes in my head. I don’t understand at first. What do I need to remember?

*Two legs.*

Only two? But I need four…

*Thumbs.*

I don’t understand…

*Think!*

I am! I—

I remembered.

I remembered two legs and thumbs and speaking and grabbing with hands and running and clothes and my hair and school and Chris and my dad…

I whined, but it sounded wrong to my ears. My body was twisting, limbs adjusting and sinking and lifting to suit a human. Something was pinching at my morphing ears, the pain sharp. My joints popped all at once, and I cried, but it sounded more like a teenage girl’s squeak than a dog’s yelp. I curled up, trying to make it stop, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t even sure how I had started.

I came back to myself, curled naked and in the fetal position on the linoleum at Silver’s feet, and shivered. Cold sweat coated my body like fur had been just moments before. I jumped at a hand’s contact with my skin, but I followed the coffee-colored skin with my eyes until I met the old woman’s blue eyes. It took very little eye contact before my eyes dropped to her chin. I spared a moment to feel odd that she was naked, but dismissed it, reminding myself that I was no more clothed than she.

“I will go get you some clothes,” she told me. She was gone for a few seconds before coming back with a thin white camisole, a pair of boxers, and some navy blue drawstring sweats. I donned the clothes, finding that the cami needed a lot of strap-tightening, and the sweats needed a few folds up before they stopped being open-toed footie pants.

Silver smiled at me when I was done, apparently having gotten dressed herself while I was adjusting all my new clothes. I realized that I could keep my eyes on her chin and not feel rude when conversing.

“You can go outside now. You will probably not change again for several hours. First change is always hardest.” She tilted her head to the side. “You were quicker than most, though. It usually takes an hour or two before you figure it out.”

“How long did it take?” I asked. My voice was raspy and sore.

“About fifteen minutes.” She nodded to the door. “You can go outside now.”

I took the hint and left with a “thank you.”

Outside, Adam turned to me and blinked along with a bronze wolf with white socks and facial and tail markings. He smiled as Blaze gave a few happy tail thumps.

“Welcome back, Maya.”