Moon Chilled (6 page)

I hadn't worn shoes that first morning, not quite sure what cold would actually feel like as I'd come from the drastic difference of a mild Arizona fall to an early and blisteringly cold Colorado winter. I'd played, raced, jumped, and sang in the snow. That had been the first morning I'd stuck my tongue out and tasted a snowflake. I remembered that I hadn't even noticed the pain that came with the cold until I'd been snatched out up into my father's arms after dancing in the frozen flakes for nearly half an hour. I don't think I'll ever forget the fear in his eyes as he wrapped towels around my feet.

I let the memory of that day drift away with the scolding I'd received that afternoon once I'd been warmed up with some soup and hot chocolate. I wasn't a child anymore and hadn't been for a few years. Though I was considered young by most people, I hadn't felt like a child in nearly a decade. And I was free to make my own choices now. Or at least I would be if I'd been a woman and not a wolf.

The wolf stopped, seeming as if she'd been startled. Deep inside of her mind I held still, not sure what had surprised her but knowing she'd keep us safe if it was something that could be a threat to us. But then she tilted her head back, and her long tongue rolled out of her mouth. A snowflake touched her tongue and then she was done, trotting away after the scent of a rabbit that was hiding nearby. We never linked like that, not where I thought about something and then she reacted to the thoughts. But the moment seemed over, so I let it pass as a simple anomaly.

Leaves, twigs, moss of all kinds, and wild mushrooms met my wolf's bare feet. Being at peace with myself had taken years. Being at peace with the earth was simply part of our anatomy, and we both reveled in it as a simple walk turned into a game of running through the dark forest on the trail of dinner. A rabbit, too young to be much of a meal, scattered across the wolf's path. I reminded her that she had yet to eat, but she would not kill something so young simply because she could. One rabbit wasn't much of a meal for a full-grown wolf; there was no point in chasing after one that would barely be a snack. Not while a larger rabbit waited to be taken only a few yards away. The large rabbit startled before my wolf could get to it, and my wolf had been slow to chase after it.

I knew we'd both regret that loss of a meal in the morning, when my stomach cramped from being empty for far too long and I found breakfast in a bit of trout I'd smoked over the summer. But while my wolf would have preferred a fresh kill and blood-warmed meat in her belly, smoked trout was still a far better option for a meal than canned food, and we both knew it.

I let myself slide back, no longer content to fight her for control, and closed my eyes. I didn't know what my wolf thought when I slept, or if she was like me— able to realize what was going on as we switched places. She was different than me and yet we were the same. I let her have the control she needed and trusted in my belief that she'd give up our body to me again when she was ready for a rest.

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Though we switched back sometime in the middle of the night and I'd gone out to get my scattered things, I'd given her back control early the next morning while it was still night. She'd nicely asked for it as the scent of an elk came around her while we were eating our breakfast of trout. She didn't want to hunt him. There was no point to it when we had no pack to feed with the kill. But she could track him and make sure he and his kind were given safe passage as they skirted the valley. It seemed odd for me, as I rode along in the back of her mind, that a predator would want to watch over a lone elk. But then I realized why as my wolf got close enough so that we could see her fully. What I'd thought was a young male was actually a healthy adult female, and heavy with the next generation. My wolf was a hunter, a predator, and she understood that animals needed to be left to reproduce, to continue on, to cover these woods in the summer and move along to lower fields in the winter.

She, unlike humans, understood the balance that was needed between letting something live and enjoying the kill, and she followed that single elk female until she was out of our territory. I assumed that the elk knew we were following her, but if she did, she never acted like it. There was no bolting, no suddenly turning and trying to kick out at us. Instead the elk had kept moving, walking as well as she could through the often deep snow drifts, until she got to the edge of our woods.

I didn't know what stopped my wolf from going further, but she halted abruptly by a shallow, iced-over river, and we watched the elk cross before my wolf turned away again. I would have thought that maybe she'd even lost interest, except that she hadn't. I knew when my wolf was bored, and this was not one of those times. No, she'd definitely stopped there on purpose, signaled by something she knew and I could only guess at. I couldn't even ask her, because she didn't think in words. Her thoughts were a jumble of images, and they mostly didn't make sense to me. So I let them pass over me like a summer breeze through my hair as I liked to sit on the lowest branch of the tall pine tree that stood as a marker in front of the hunting cabin on those warm nights. My wolf sent me thoughts of a crow, of a lamb that I assumed was nearby, of rain falling on a river. None of it made sense to me; I let them go, not even trying to hang onto any of them as she trotted through the woods, the dark paws that I could see in front of us sometimes a stark contrast to the white snow that she walked on.

I wondered if she was cold, if she could feel the ice in her paws, if it bothered her to be out here. Though our thoughts were forever connected, she didn't respond to any of my questions. I wasn't even sure if she knew how to.

A crow flew overhead and my wolf looked up at it. I watched the beating of its wings through her eyes and imagined that I could feel the wind in strong beats against my skin. Her breath came out in a fine white mist in the cold winter's night air as she watched the crow disappear into the blackness around us. She stared at the spot he'd been for a few long minutes, and I waited with bated breath, wondering what could be holding her attention, because I saw nothing. I looked through her eyes and listened with her ears, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Noises of the forest at night were there, but they meant nothing to me. And there was no panic in the heartbeat within her chest.

I relaxed and tried to be patient until she moved again, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she trotted on tall, lanky legs over the forest floor. My wolf was swift and nearly silent, the way I tried to be when I walked. I emulated her as often as I could. She was grace and speed, a complicated mix of predator and guardian, yet she was also surprisingly simple. My wolf existed to give balance to the part of the world we called home. When she killed, it was because she needed to. When she slept, it was because she was tired. She never took more than she was able or spent too long in one place. Being inside her was peace; giving myself over to her felt like coming home to me, a woman that had none and only had a vague idea of what the concept actually meant.

The wolf tensed and crouched, the gently falling snow clumping against her charcoal fur as she listened to the telltale noises of the animals in the forest with her. The wind whispered through the tangle of barren branches above us, calling to my wolf and begging her for a race. Her lips curled up into a smile, and her nails dug into the soft snow beneath her paws as she prepared to charge after that challenge. I could feel her excitement, her anticipation of the run.

But then a new sound broke through the quiet of the familiar forest. My wolf's ears flicked back at the unnatural noise, and I became more alert. My wolf didn't understand what it meant, but I did, and I slowly took control from the creature as I eased back into my flesh. Panting, broken, and bleeding, I lay in the snow, letting the chill beneath me ease some of the burn from my skin.

I was renewed when I got to my feet, all of my scars gone with the uncomfortable and likely unnatural ease of the shift. No one I had ever known shifted like me. It was a painful process, and I didn't think it was supposed to be that fast. The speed of it left me weakened and near exhausted. I could have likely been in better shape had I bothered to go slower. But for years I'd been going as quickly as I could, nearly making a game of it, as I forced my body to press through the change despite the pain or the blood I could taste in my mouth and that I knew would be under my fingernails. I spat, trying to get the taste off my tongue before walking away from the blood-speckled snow a few hundred yards from my cabin. I didn't know what the blood would reveal if it was found and analyzed. I wasn't nearly paranoid enough to care. I walked on wobbly legs and shivered as the icy wind whipped against my naked flesh. My breath came out in thick clouds as I panted. The ringing of my phone continued and I knew that I needed to get to it, needed to answer it, as there was only one person that had that number, and if she was calling, I knew that I'd answer. But I had to be walking first.

"You just had to take us out here again, didn't you?" I grumbled to my wolf as she settled in for a nap somewhere in the back of my mind.

My muscles were sore from the shift, but it felt good to walk on two legs again. I'd been steadily letting my wolf have more control over the past few years. We weren't near anyone, and I thought that we couldn't be in any danger, so it made sense to me to give myself up to her, to let her enjoy herself. And besides, I trusted her to protect us or hide if someone did come too close to us. But we were careful and never went too far from town. She seemed to be as wary of the humans as I was. And it didn't make sense to keep the beast inside of myself chained up when we had so much room to simply run.

The phone stopped ringing, and I held my breath, waiting for it to start up again as I walked unsteadily on human feet numbed by the icy cold. Luckily the ringing started up again, and I kept walking toward it, my strides growing longer as my muscles adjusted fully to supporting my human body again. Being inside my wolf was like seeing through a dream. I knew what was going on, for the most part, but everything was filtered through her senses, but I couldn't easily interpret them. I smelled some of what she did, but I didn't have the information that she did from the scents around us. Sounds pricked at my wolf's sensitive ears, and I didn't know what they meant. I relied on her to process everything we encountered in that form.

It was nice to have made peace with the creature after so many decades of fighting my wolf for control. I mused on this, thinking of the years that I'd wasted believing that my wolf was anything other than a friend that only wanted to protect me when she used to fight me for control. As I thought, I followed my wolf's faint trail out of the thin forest. Thankfully my phone had been put to its loudest setting, letting me hear the ring even against the sound of the wind. Though it never rang, I'd always been in the habit of keeping its volume turned up. I got to the little cabin, picked up the phone from where I'd left it on the unmade bed, and sat down on the pile of blankets.

I didn't look at the caller ID. I didn't need to, since only one person had the number. But my breath still caught at the sound of the voice on the other end of the line.

"There's a change in the air," the voice said the moment I answered.

My heart clenched and my hand dug into the worn table behind me as I fought for balance. I clung to the soft wood, needing its strength to balance me as the familiar voice worked its way through me.

"Maiki?" I whispered, the name trailing over my lips like a lover's kiss.

"The air," Maiki reminded me, her voice her voice harsh and stinging my sensitive ears. "Something's coming." There was a low growl on the other end of the phone. The sound made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and I shivered, glad I was nowhere near the wolf that had made it. My Maiki had probably been completely unaware of the noise herself, like I was when my wolf slipped into an everyday conversation against my will.

"Where are you?" I asked, hoping she was listening to me and not just parroting the same information about the air. I couldn't hear anyone else in the background, but I didn't put it past the wolves she lived with to be right there listening to our call. At least that was how it had been when I'd left them.

"Elderthorne. Colorado. The air. Shae. Do you feel it?" Maiki whined anxiously. It was not anything near the noise a human could make, and my breath caught as I recognized the sound. Her wolf was worried.

I prodded the sleepy creature inside my mind, asking her to rise again. My wolf came awake instantly, eager to be let out so soon after her last run. I put a stop to that. I didn't want my wolf out, merely aware. Using pictures and feelings, I tried to convey to the wolf what I needed from her, then stepped aside, hoping I'd asked her enough that she would make sense to Maiki's wolf. I could have tried to talk to Maiki's wolf, but they didn't communicate like Maiki and I did. Their language was one of sounds that we could only play at making and pictures that made little to no sense to me.

A growl bubbled up from my throat, and though I wanted to clear it after making such a noise, my wolf had other ideas as she tried to comfort the one on the other end of the line. It was difficult to communicate this way, especially for a creature that relied on touches and eye contact much more than sounds. But after a few minutes, my wolf stepped back, giving way to my mind as she settled into the darkness again and went back to sleep.

When I took the phone again, I was glad to hear no more whining from the other end of the phone. "Maiki?" I asked tentatively, hoping her wolf was calmed as well.

"Shae."

I could hear the smile in Maiki's voice, felt it like sunshine against my fur in the early spring as it chased away the cold, and it settled something inside me. "Do you need help?" I asked, keeping my voice soft, gentle. I could not risk upsetting her frail wolf with too many questions or too harsh of a tone. I knew that Maiki's alpha did that plenty on his own, and I didn't want to put in my problems on top of hers. I may not have known much about Maiki's life after I'd left her in the pack, but I knew that she didn't need that kind of stress.