Ekaterina Sedia - Running with the Pack

“I know. It’s okay, really it is.”

“You’re lying to me. You’re a mess every time you come home. What’s going on?”

Gretchen turned her face away from her sister. How to explain the horror she witnessed daily? She had honed the skill of silent stalking, she had inspected the cabin from all sides and the cage next to it. She knew the habits of the man who kept the wolf in such horrific conditions. She knew how purely awful he was. She saw the locks, too, that kept the cage sealed, and the keys hanging from his leather belt. She knew the wolf now. Ragged and broken in body, its spirit remained intact though as far as Gretchen could tell, it wouldn’t for much longer.

The man was brutal. She saw what and how he fed the creature, rotted meat dangled over the cage, withheld until the creature crawled, begging, toward him. Her ribs pushed through her sides and her coat hung in patches over scabbed flesh. Her eyes wept dark matter down over her nose. Gretchen felt the monster in her shift and slither, struggling to surface. She fought to keep it down.

“If you must know,” she finally spoke, “it’s the wolf.”

There. Not a lie, but not exactly true, Gretchen offered this to her sister in appeasement. She also knew that to mention the wolf was to draw a line neither of her sisters would cross.

“Oh Gretchen, I’m so sorry. I wish I could do more to help.”

“Well, you can’t.”

May sagged and Gretchen, contrite, hugged her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t mind me.”

“What are you two fussing about?” Molly said as she swung in, a pleasant smile on her face.

Molly was going through a change of her own. Under John’s attention, at first reluctantly accepted, she was softening. An inner beauty once known only to her sisters was transforming the shape of her face, so much so that even the patrons at the bar had commented.

Gretchen wanted to say wolves , but she didn’t. There was no reason to deflate her sister’s good mood.

“The usual. Gretchen wants a whole cow for supper and I’ve only got three steaks thawed out,” May said.

They shared a laugh, but Gretchen’s was false and both sisters knew it.

Still troubled by her initial memory of a woman in the cage, she agonized over it until the night of the full moon. There had to be way, she thought, to be certain of what the wolf saw. She and the monster shared the same brain, didn’t they? Somehow the wolf knew to go home when the night was gone. Somehow she must be able to connect with the beast and remember, more clearly, what it would see. Gretchen soured at the thought, but it was the only way she knew to solve this puzzle.

That night, as her sisters held her, Gretchen fought for control. Pain, she could almost endure. It was the sensation of every cell dislocating from the others that was impossible to bear. Her consciousness separated as her tendons burned. Her vision blurred and shifted, condensed and expanded with her skin. Remember , she thought, my name is Gretchen. She screamed with the effort, but as her sisters moved away, all that was Gretchen was gone.

The wolf hunted. A young fawn, unattended for one moment too long by its mother, went down easily under her strong jaws. She shredded it, burying what she didn’t eat well away from the scene of its demise. In ever tightening circles she coursed through the forest, avoiding the outlying fields. Shortly after midnight, she found herself beside the stream. The running water triggered an echo of remembrance; she put her nose in the air and waited, for what she did not know. The wind stirred the upper leaves of the trees, bringing with it the taste of metal. The wolf shuddered and, as wolves do, it recalled. It turned and ambled along the bank, snuffling as it went, and then stopped as a cry pierced the night.

She would have run, but something held the wolf back. She knew that sound, it resonated and called her out, back to the clearing. Wolf eyes watched; she scented present danger but saw nothing. The cage stood empty. The cries came from within the shuttered cabin. The wolf crouched low and waited again, alert and still.

In time, the wolf’s patience was rewarded. The cabin door opened and the man emerged, dragging someone behind him by the arm. The wolf tensed; the stink was incredible. She watched as he approached the cage, kicked it open with his foot and heaved his baggage inside. The wolf saw the way his hands moved on the iron and heard the locks click into place. The figure inside did not move as the man walked away, but it wept with a most pitiful sound. The wolf recognized the song of sorrow. The place reeked of fresh blood and pain.

The wolf waited still. Night settled softly around her. It would be dawn soon and as the sun drew nigh, she felt her usual compulsion to return home. She did not. She was held as captive by the cage as the figure inside it. The scintillating scent of wolf buried within woman held her there.

Finally, at long last, the figure moved. It rolled onto its side and heaved itself up with a bruised arm. One hand wrapped around a bar of the cage. She leaned her head against it and sighed. The wolf, watching this, must have disturbed a leaf with its breath. The woman turned and met the wolf’s eyes.

Something was exchanged between them, some plea in a coded language only those two could understand. It lasted for but a moment, and then the woman lost her grip and slid back to the bottom of the cage.

The wolf was done here. She retreated through the forest, breaking into a trot only when the clearing was left far behind. Home called, dawn was coloring the horizon. She was running out of time.

She had not yet reached the boundary where wood met field when it came upon her. The wolf, mid-stride, twisted and fell. Leaves scattered in her wake as she slid for a few paces in the dirt. Tortured by her own mutation, she choked on vomit and released a burbling half-howl. When it ended, several endless minutes later, Gretchen lay motionless on the ground.

She did not respond to her sisters’ calls. They, trampling through the brush at the edge of the wood, were almost frantic.

“Where could she be?” Molly said, her eyes wide with fear.

“I don’t know.” May’s brows drew in. “She must be close. She knows to come home.”

“She’s been acting funny lately. I hope she’s okay.”

May was surprised Molly had noticed. “Has she said anything to you?”

“No, not really. She just seems so withdrawn.” Molly kicked a pile of damp leaves out of her way.

“It’s hard on her. She needs us, Molly, maybe more now than she ever has.”

“I know.” Molly hung her head. “I’ve been away too often. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” May was overjoyed at Molly’s newfound romance and did not want it to stop. Molly deserved all the goodness she could get.

“We just . . . ” May hesitated. There was nothing they could do for Gretchen that they weren’t already doing. “Never mind. Let’s keep looking.”

They were close to panic when they finally found her, stretched out in a copse of trees. She sat upright as May’s hand touched her, startling her sisters who gasped and jumped back.

“It was a woman,” Gretchen said. Her voice was hoarse, not yet acclimated to human vocal cords.

May recovered and wrapped Gretchen in the blanket. “We’re here, Gretchen,” she said. “We’re right here.”

Gretchen sagged into her arms. May and Molly said nothing as they tended her and half-carried her back to the house. Once she was in bed, they met in the kitchen.

“What was she talking about?” Molly asked.

“I’ve got no idea, but we’re going to find out. She needs to talk about whatever has been bothering her and we’ve got to make her do it. Tonight.”