Eileen Wilks - Only Human

"Yes, you did." He held out his hand. "Walk with me, and let me give you the explanations you deserve."

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she took his hand.

THE SKY WAS messy with sunset when they left the little house, darkening to indigo overhead. Lily didn't speak as Rule led her away from the scattering of lights that was the little village. It felt so good to be with him. She wanted to thump him in the head—hard—but still it felt right to walk beside him.

"This path leads to the lake," he said. "Though that's a rather inflated term—it's more like an ambitious pond, but lovely by moonlight. I asked the others not to take you there today. I wanted to be the one to show it to you."

"You also wanted to explain some things," she reminded him. "Not that I haven't figured some of it out. The Council meeting was never set fornine o'clock, was it?"

"No, though you weren't the only one who believed it was. They met around six, after most of them had had a chance to meet you and form an opinion."

Lily had been passed from person to person, group to group, all afternoon—courteously, often with real friendliness, but after a while it had been obvious her time and encounters were being managed. She'd thought they were checking her

out because they were curious about the cop Rule had gotten himself involved with—and that they were making sure she didn't speak to anyone she wasn't supposed to. "Why all the secrecy?" she burst out. "Why go to the trouble to trick me?"

"We are a secretive people. Too much so, perhaps, but we've had reason to be wary. My father knew his councillors wouldn't agree unless they trusted you. They in turn wanted to meet you without your knowing who they were. Didn't you wonder why everyone you met put you to work?"

"I thought it was a custom or something." She'd fixed tea and swung a hammer, helped clear away deadfalls in the woods, washed a baby, and swept an old woman's floor. "What did they learn by watching me work?"

"What did you learn by watching them while you worked together?"

It was a fair question. An excellent question, actually. "A lot. One of the biggest surprises was how familiar some of it seemed."

She'd startled him. "Familiar?"

"Sure. The respect for tradition, the importance of family, work, and honor, the duty owed to one's elders—that's all very Chinese, you know."

"I hadn't thought of it that way."

"You don't know much about my people, either." Not yet. Would he? Did he want to learn? "I also began to get a grasp of why some lupi oppose the Citizenship Bill. It will change a lot of things, won't it? Your whole governance structure is based on the challenge. Not that I like it, but it does provide a check on the Lupois's power."

"Some of my people believe the proposed law will make tyrants of our Lupois, yes. But humans evolved a system of checks and balances that doesn't necessarily involve killing each other. We can, too."

They came out from under the trees and walked for a few yards along the shore before drifting to a stop. The sky overhead was salted with stars. Ahead, moonlight spilled across water as dark as Rule's eyes had been when the Change tried to take over. “The moon is almost full."

He looked at her. "You aren't at all frightened, are you? Going for a moonlit stroll with me doesn't worry you. All of

the lupi councillors who met you said you gave off no fearscent."

“They didn't give me any reason to," she said, surprised. "Neither have you. Maybe if I'd met a young teenage boy I'd have been worried, given what you said about them."

"They live separately until they learn control."

That made sense. "So—who were they? Which of the people I met today were councillors?"

"Nettie, Nicholas Masterson, Emile Hunter, Arthur Madoc, Fera Bibiloux—"

"Fera? The blind woman? But..." Her voice trailed off as she remembered the odd feeling she'd had, sitting in the dimly lit cabin drinking tea while the old woman worked her loom, her hands sure in spite of her lack of sight. A prickly feeling, yet peaceful. Belatedly she understood that she'd been in the presence of power. "Okay, I guess I understand that. She's Gifted, isn't she?"

"Something like that. Fera said you made good tea and would be welcome to return—from her, that counts as approval. She also said that something you haven't told me is going to come as a big surprise. She seemed amused, so I gather whatever it is won't be too much of a shock."

"Ah. Well..."

"You don't have to tell me right this second." He sounded amused himself.

Her heart was beating a little too fast and her mind jittered along the surface of her thoughts like a water bug. "I'm more than a little surprised that Nettie is a councillor. I thought they would all be Nokolai."

"Nettie is Nokolai."

"Is she?" They were facing each other now, their hands clasped. "Did she become part of the clan when she married your uncle? Or does mating mean something more than marriage?"

He touched her cheek. "I should have known you would turn up a clue or two. You heard about mates."

She nodded. Hope and guesses tangled in her throat, keeping her from speaking. So much depended on the accuracy of those guesses....

"There is something about my people you don't know. Something no one outside the clans knows." He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Over half of all lupi never father a child. And fertility is ... limited ... in the rest of us."

It wasn't what she'd expected to hear. "But—you have two children—"

"By two different mothers. Few women conceive by us, and of those who do, none has ever borne more than a single child."

"It's the magic in you. It screws with the results in DNA tests, too."

"You see why only a lupus who has sired sons is able to become Lu Nuntius?"

She nodded slowly.

"The outside world considers us promiscuous. In your terms, this is true. The need for children shapes us, defines us. We are seldom fertile with women of our own people, so we seek bed partners wherever we can. Not indiscriminately. We don't want our children birthed or raised by a chance-met stranger in a bar. But our survival as a people depends on those of us who are fertile siring as many children as possible."

"And you're fertile." Lily was dazed, as she'd heard gunshot victims sometimes were in the first seconds—the blow registers, but isn't real yet. Not real enough to hurt. She remembered the men at the childcare center arguing over who got to stay with the babies. The swarms of children everywhere.

Not everyone gets to be a mommy, the little girl had told her. Not everyone—relatively few—got to be a daddy, either. "That's why lupi don't marry," she whispered. "Because to be faithful to one woman would be to betray the needs of your people."

"Yes."

Abruptly the numbness was ripped away. Pain wrenched her around to face the water, hugging herself as if something vital was leaking out, like blood from a gut wound. "I can't... I can't do it, Rule. It wasn't long ago I said you were going too fast, and maybe I'm doing that now. You haven't... but for me, this has gone too far. I can't share you."

"No!" He grabbed her shoulders, spun her around. "Lily, I didn't mean—I thought you knew about mates!"

"I thought so, too. At least, I'd made some guesses." Her voice shook and her legs weren't too steady, either. She held

on to his arms. "But no one came right out and said what—"

One second she was holding him and being held. The next she was rolling on the ground where he'd thrown her.

Rule howled. The eerie, ululating cry had goose bumps popping out on her flesh even as she threw her arms out, stopping her skid toward the lake. She pushed up onto her hands and knees—and stared.

He was Changing. Flickering—no, it was as if reality itself flickered, time bending in and out of itself like a Mobius strip on speed. Impossible not to watch. Impossible to say what she saw—a shoulder, furred, or was it bare? A paw; a muzzle that was also Rule's face—a stretching, snapping disfocus, magic strobing its fancy over reality.