Part 16 (2/2)

Dad decided to tell me the truth up on the farm. He said a week away from the city would be good for me. We could relax with the Greats and their a.s.sorted children and grandchildren.

I was grateful. I knew they wouldn't say anything about the hair. Some of my cousins were every bit as hairy: the family illness. It wasn't that they wouldn't tease me. They would: about being a city girl, about the color of my skin, about how I dressed, how I talked. Before I'd hated it. Now it seemed like nothing.

When we played they weren't as vicious or violent as they normally were. They didn't lead me out into the depths of the forest and leave me there. Didn't make me do their ch.o.r.es: cleaning out the stables, spreading compost, feeding the pigs.

They liked me better when I was covered in hair. They didn't laugh at me as much and I didn't rag on them for being the same age as me and not reading as well as my little brother.

When Dad called me into the house, we were playing soccer on a cleared patch of land where corn had grown, but was now left fallow.

I kept playing. My cousins stopped, looking at each other and glancing at me. As if they knew what Dad wanted. I kicked the ball at the two cans that marked the goal. Even with the goalie paying no attention I missed.

”Micah!” Dad called again. I headed toward him slowly, looking back at the cousins. They knew something I didn't. I wanted them to tell me. I wanted to keep playing. Instead I followed Dad through the trees and into the house.

Grandmother and Great-Aunt Dorothy were sitting in front of the fireplace. Their dog, Hilliard, curled up in a silvery gray ball at Great-Aunt's feet. His white snout with the brown stripe that started on the top of his head and ended at his s.h.i.+ny black nose rested on his paws. He raised his head and looked at me and then put it down again.

Dad sat on the chair next to the couch. I sat in the one on the other side, closest to the fire. Despite all the extra hair I was cold.

”You know we have an illness in our family,” Dad said.

I nodded even though it wasn't a question. I didn't point at my hairy arms or say anything sarcastic.

Grandmother and Great-Aunt tutted. I couldn't tell if they were disapproving of Dad or of me.

”Well,” Dad said, ”it's not quite what we said it was.”

Both the Greats harrumphed.

”She's only ten,” Dad said. ”She needs me to break it to her slowly.”

”Break what to me slowly?” I asked, feeling a p.r.i.c.kle of irritation at being called ”only ten.” Dad knew I wasn't dumb. It was true my grades weren't that good, but what else would you expect with all the moving from school to school? He just liked hiding things. How bad could it be anyway? I was already covered in hair. I could take whatever it was they were going to tell me. ”I want to know.”

”You're a wolf,” Grandmother said, jerking her head toward their dog. ”Same as your great-uncle there.”

The farm dog was my great-uncle Hilliard? Great-Uncle Hilliard who'd died? Not just named after him? Grandmother wasn't smiling. Not that it would have made a difference. She never joked.

”Werewolf,” Dad said, glaring at his mother.

I looked at Hilliard. I looked at Dad. Then at the Greats. None of them were smiling.

Great-Aunt Dorothy nodded. ”Same as your grandmother, your great-uncle, your aunts Jill, Christine, Hen, and uncle Lloyd, and your cousins Sam, Jessie, Susan, Alice, and Lilly. The rest of us are carriers, pa.s.sing it on, but not wolfish ourselves.” She sounded a little sad. ”That's why you're hairy. Once you start turning wolf the hair will go. When you're human, that is. You'll be hairy only as a wolf. A gray wolf to be exact, Canis lupus. Though most werewolves are Canis dirus, the dire wolf what's extinct except for werewolves. That's why we Wilkins are smaller than other werewolf families. Gray wolves only get up to 175 pounds or so. Mostly not even. Same as us. Long and skinny.”

”Lean,” Grandmother said, stretching out a stringy well-muscled arm. ”Strong.”

”We're a werewolf family?” I asked. The hair on my arms and face was silvery and coa.r.s.e. Like animal hair. Like Hilliard's coat. I felt the skin on my entire body tighten.

”I told you there's no point p.u.s.s.yfooting about,” Grandmother admonished Dad. ”Micah already understands. Should have told her years ago. It's not right growing up not knowing what you are.”

Dad shot his mother a poisonous look. I didn't know why then but now I'm sure he was thinking of his unknown father, of battling through all his mother's lies to find him, and failing.

Even at ten I'd known my family was a mess, but I hadn't realized how messy. If they were all lying . . . I looked at their faces. They weren't lying.

”I'm a werewolf?” It made more sense than the doctors' explanations for my hairiness. Hormone imbalances and all that. Great-Aunt said the hair was going away. She had, hadn't she?

Grandmother leaned forward and patted my knee.

”It's not so bad as all that,” she said. ”You can live up here with us. Plenty of s.p.a.ce for wolfishness here.”

Hilliard was still looking at me. I thought of all the times I'd petted him and played with him. I hadn't even known he was a wolf. I thought he was a regular dog. Named after my dead great-uncle. Except that Great-Aunt Dorothy and Grandmother and the others always talked to him as if he was a person. But then I'd seen people in the city carrying dogs in their purses and talking to them as if they were babies. People with animals are weird. Except Dad and the Greats were saying Uncle Hilliard wasn't even a regular wolf.

He was a werewolf. Like me.

”Can he understand what we're saying?” I asked.

”Mostly,” Grandmother said. ”Though it's hard to tell. Hilliard doesn't change anymore. He's a wolf all the time.”

Would that happen to me? Did I have to live up here? Did Mom know? Would it hurt?

”When will I become a wolf,” I asked. ”How long for?”

They told me. They told me everything they knew about the signs that would tell me the change was coming, about cycles, what the wolf me would know and what the human. How to control it. How to live with it.

They told me how long the Wilkins had been wolves. (Always.) What the family legends were. (Many and varied.) Why they'd come to America. (s.p.a.ce. Freedom.) When they were finally done my b.u.t.t was numb, my head was spinning, and I was so hungry my stomach growled. Yes, like a wolf.

FAMILY HISTORY.

When The Change-menopause-comes most of us stop the other kind of change. One way or the other. Grandmother stayed human, greeting each new month with a tightening of the skin, with headaches and hot flashes, sometimes an itchy layer of fur that's shed within hours. Human still.

Hilliard went the other way. He's wolf all the time. Prowling, howling, stuck on a farm that isn't even a tenth of the size of a normal range.

He strays of course. How could he not?

He takes deer and racc.o.o.n and rabbit. Sheep sometimes. But not often.

Humans? you ask.

Never humans. Wolves don't eat people. Neither do werewolves. Not unless there's a reason. We never kill a person for food. Too dangerous. Too suspicious. Besides-rabbit, deer-they taste better.

Upstate, when those sheep disappear, everyone blames it on coyote. Coyote bigger than anyone's ever seen before. Coyote are bigger in the Northeast. But that big?

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