Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(2)

People brought him a little of whatever they had to pay for his music, and between that and the medicine I traded in barter, we had enough for winter stores even though I hadn’t put things back as I usually did. I hadn’t been worried about whether there was enough food to eat or enough wood to burn.

I hadn’t worried about myself because I’d have as soon joined my little family in their cold graves. With my da here, that route now smacked of cowardice—and if I forgot that sometimes, my da’s cool gaze reminded me.

It felt odd, though, not to have someone to take care of; for so long I had been the head of the family. I was not in the habit of worrying about my da: he wasn’t the kind of person who needed anyone to fuss over him. He’d survived his childhood—not that he’d spoken of it to me beyond that it had been rough. But my ma, she’d known whatever it had been, and it had sparked fierce pride tinged with sorrow and tenderness. I knew only that he’d left his home while still a stripling boy. He had traveled and thrived in a world hostile to strangers.

He was tough, and it gave him confidence that had backed down my ma’s folk when they objected to her marrying a man from outside the village. He was smart—and more than that, he was wise. When he spoke on village matters, which he didn’t do often, the villagers listened to him.

He’d survived traveling the world after my mother’s death—and he was still lit with the joy that made my home warmer than the logs on the hearth, though the chill left by the death of my little ones and their ma was deep.

My da, he could survive anything, and his example forced me to do the same. Even when I didn’t want to.

TWO

Samuel

On the shortest night of the year, when the full moon hung in the sky, my grandmother came to us. I’d returned to my duties as village healer, so I didn’t even think of not answering a knock in the dead of night. Da had gotten used to the middle-of-the-night summonses that were the lot of a healer. He didn’t stir, though I was certain he was awake.

I opened the door to a stranger. She was a wild-looking young woman with hair that flowed in unkempt, tangled tresses all the way to the back of her knees. Her face was uncanny and so beautiful that I didn’t pay much heed to the beast that crouched beside her, huge though he was.

“The son,” she said to me. The magic flows strongly in you. Her voice echoed in my head.

“No,” said my da, who had exploded to his feet the moment I opened the door. He stepped between us. “You will not have him.”

“You shouldn’t have run away,” she told him. “But I forgive you because you brought a gift with you.”

“I will never willingly serve you, Mother,” my da said in a voice I’d never heard from him before. “I told you we are done.”

“You speak as though I would give you a choice,” she said. She glanced down, and the beast I had taken for a dog lunged at my da.

I grabbed the cudgel I kept beside the door, but the beast was faster than I was. It had time to bury its fangs in my da’s gut and jerk him between us. The only reason I didn’t brain Da was because I dropped the cudgel midswing. And after that, there was no chance to fight.

•   •   •

She turned us into monsters—werewolves—though I didn’t hear that term for many years. She bound us to her service with witchcraft and more cruelly through her ability to break into our minds—in this she had more trouble with Da than with the rest of her wolves. Though she looked like a young woman to all of my senses, I think she was centuries old when she came knocking on my door.

The first transformation from human to werewolf is harsh under the best of circumstances. I now know that most people attacked brutally enough to be Changed die. The witch had some way to interfere, to hold her victims to life until they became the beasts she desired. Even so, I would have died if my da had not anchored me. I heard his voice in my head, cool and demanding, and I had to obey him, had to live. That he was able to do this while undergoing a like fate to mine is a fair insight into the man my da is. That I lived was something that took me a very long time to forgive him for.

I do not know, nor do I wish to, how long I lived as a werewolf serving my grandmother. It could have been a decade or centuries, though I think it was closer to the latter than the former. It was long enough that I had time to forget my given name. I deliberately left it behind because I was no longer that person, but I had not thought to lose it altogether. My name was not the only memory I lost.

I no longer remembered my first wife’s face or the faces of my children. Though sometimes in dreams, even all these centuries later, I hear the cry of “Taid! Taid!” as a child calls for his father. The voice, I believe, is that of my firstborn son. In the dream, he is lost, and I cannot find him no matter where I look.

My da likes to say that sometimes forgetfulness is a gift. Perhaps had I remembered them clearly, remembered what I’d once had, I would not have survived my time serving the witch. I learned to live in the moment, and the wolf who shared my body and soul made it easy: a beast feels no remorse for the past nor hope for the future.

THREE

Ariana

Once upon a time, there was a fair maiden of the faerie courts who rode away from a hunting party, chasing something she could glimpse just ahead of her. Eventually she came to a glade where a strange and handsome man awaited her with food and drink. She ate the food and drank his wine and stayed with the lord of the forest even when the rest of her people found her, sending them back to the court without her.