Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(4)

“No,” he growled. He jerked his chin toward the other wolves. “Not like they have. You know right from wrong. Good from evil.”

“It would be easier if I could forget.” I knew what he would say even before he said it; he was not fond of self-pity, my da.

“Easier doesn’t mean better.” He didn’t say anything more. We never talked much at times like these, when he required me to take on human form. What was there to say? Neither of us wanted to talk of people long dead, nor of the day just past, or the one to come.

He believed that his mother would grow complacent and make a mistake. I had believed him long past foolish hope, but years and decades, and then tens of decades had worn my faith away as a river wears away stone. But I loved my da, and I would not hurt him more with my disbelief—let him believe in a better end than I saw. The end would come whatever we believed, and he found comfort in that future he saw for us. I did not tell him that even if we broke free—we would still be the monsters she had made us. My da, he was a smart man, he knew that as well as I did.

The other wolves waited, their eyes trained on my da. But it was the soft whine from Adda that my da acquiesced to. He sat down on the ground, threw back his head, and sang. I settled with my back to the oak and listened.

His voice had lost the old man’s quaver I’d noticed in that last winter we’d spent together as humans, just as both of us had lost the silver hair and the aging skin. Made young again by my grandmother’s magic or the bite of the wolf, I had no reason to ask or care.

My father had no instrument but that with which he was born, but that was fine indeed. When he sang, the others gathered around closely, but he only looked at the dying wolf, who laid his muzzle on my father’s na**d thigh and listened as his breath wheezed in and out. The music and the touch of my da’s hand seemed to comfort him.

Witches use the suffering of others for their power, and a werewolf could suffer a great deal before he died. The first sign that Adda was dying was when his ears never grew back quite right. Healthy, we could regrow bits and pieces we lost. Instead of leaving him be, letting him get stronger as she’d done a time or two to others, she’d taken his left front paw when she needed to harvest his pain for her power. We all did what we could for him. When he died, she would spend time with all of us again, until someone started to weaken. Then she would single him out and kill him by inches.

There had been two other wolves who had died that slow death, but my father had not sung to them. Had not sung at all in all the years of our captivity until this wolf had appealed to him without words. I didn’t know why this wolf was different—and I would not ask him.

After a while, I joined in Da’s song. Our voices worked well together, as they always had. Music hurt more than the shift to human had because music recalled better days, days when I had loved and was loved in return, days when the turning of seasons had meaning. But it hurt worse not to sing. Moreover, when it brought my father some bits of joy, even in the darkest day, how could I not sing?

•   •   •

When change came, it snuck up on me. I did not recognize it for what it was when it began. Autumn ruled, still, but the nights were longer, and I could catch the acrid smell of snow in the air. Not today or the next day, but sometime in the next week there would be a storm.

I was not far from the cottage when I spied one of the fair folk coming to call on the witch. That was unusual because the fair folk, the Tylwyth Teg, had their own powers and usually would have no truck with witchcraft. He was, as they all were, beautiful: tall with eyes as deep blue as the winter sea under dark skies. His skin was silvery with cracks of darkness like the bark of the bedwyn.

Before my grandmother turned me into this beast I had never seen a fae, though I’d heard stories about them. They were still a rare enough sight to attract my interest. After a brief hesitation, I abandoned the rabbit’s trail I’d been following to ghost behind the fae instead.

Tromping through the remains of the autumn leaves in the witch’s woods with no weapon in his hand and looking neither left nor right, this one looked as though he would be easy prey.

I knew better.

The fae were tough, vicious, and deadly—especially the ones that strode through the forest as though they owned it. The lesser fae mostly stayed to the shadows and kept out of the way of things with big, sharp teeth. This one was not one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the high-court lords, who, above all else, my grandmother feared, so I was under no obligation of her magical chains to report his intrusion. But he was a power; I could feel the forest’s attention upon him.

I moved closer to let my nose get a better read on this one. His track smelled of bitterness and jealousy, small, sniveling emotions, though his body language and the forest alertness spoke of his power. I stayed out of his sight as he walked directly to the clearing where the witch made her home.

He rapped sharply on the door, and my grandmother opened it. She was dressed in a thin shift that left nothing to the imagination, and her thick sandy hair glimmered in the sun like honey pouring over her shoulders and hips. She raised her eyebrows when she got a good look, but she stepped back from the entry and let him in without protest.

Curiosity had me skulking to the side of the building and pressing my ear to the wall. She didn’t know we could hear what went on in the cottage, and we weren’t telling her.

“I am surprised,” my grandmother said coyly, “to see one of your ilk here calling on such as me.”