Stranger Skies
Wolf Moon
Shocked or surprised were words that were too light to describe what Thalaea felt as her wolf friend, Laeanai, changed into a human man before her…well, before her nose. Her feelings went far beyond surprise. She couldn’t fathom what she was feeling, so far beyond surprise there was no word for it.
“You’re a man.” It was a silly thing to say, and she knew it, but she could think of nothing else.
He chuckled. “No. I’m a wolf that becomes a man on the new moon.”
Her hand was still on his back. It felt as if it were glued there; as if letting go would change reality again. Laeanai did not shift position, nor ask her to remove it, so she stopped trying to will her fingers away from his skin. He was solid and real. At least for now.
“Are you still trying to figure that out?” he asked, humour rippling his tone. His voice was a soothing baritone.
“Yes,” she said, more of a gasp than a word. I knew the wolves here were different, but….
“So you are from somewhere else,” he said, and she jumped. Had she projected in Wolf again? “I smelled it on you. The scent of another world, of other wolves.”
“I am. I was a wolf once. Now I am trapped as a woman.” Gods, it felt good to say that out loud. The lump in her throat eased a little; tears pricked her eyes. She breathed out in relief.
“You are still a wolf,” Laeanai replied, and she felt a very human hand rest on her leg, warming her limb through her thick pants. “You smell of wolf, though you wear human clothes made of sheep’s wool, and you speak Wolf. And your face was that of a wolf, as were your teeth. The wounds you gave that hunter were wounds from a wolf.”
Thalaea felt like laughing and crying at the same time. “Yes, but I cannot control it. You say you can change at the new moon, from wolf to man — can you change at any other time?”
There was a pause, and when Laeanai spoke he sounded uncomfortable. “No. I cannot.”
“Well then. I cannot make my face a wolf’s again, let alone my entire body. You’re better off than I am.”
She could smell his irritation before he spoke and his words sounded more like growls. “I would be dead were it not for your human form. Perhaps it is not so useless as you think.”
He removed his hand from her leg, then, and moved away. Her hand fell from his back, and her fingers curled up, bereft of his warmth.
There was a minute of silence, Thalaea feeling chastened. She’d spent too long feeling sorry for herself. Laeanai was right. Her human form was useful and she had to be grateful for the good it could do.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. “I have felt lost for too long.”
Laeanai’s warmth preceded him, like a cloud of comfort. He inched closer until they were sitting next to each other, thighs touching. He seemed to generate heat, whereas she was always cold.
“You’ve found a pack now. Regardless what my mother says; you are welcome here. She’s just wary of those who seem human but she knows you are wolf. Even if she won’t admit it.”
Thalaea’s hope that he couldn’t smell the salt on her eyes from her tears of gratitude was futile. She wiped her eyes discreetly and sniffed. “From what I’ve seen of this planet’s humans, she has every right to be.”
Was she so quick to betray her loves? A small part of her cried out at hearing her own words. Brinna and Enendoa had never wronged wolves; yet here Thalaea was lumping all the humans of Min in the same basket as Kaz.
She shook her head briskly. Of course she wasn’t. But seeing the attitudes against wolves in Min, even from otherwise good Minae folk like Brinna and her family, she could see why the wolves were not exactly trusting of anyone who seemed human.
“She still mourns my sister.” Laeanai’s voice made Thalaea jump, coming out of a long silence. Hesitant, as if he had been debating on whether to tell her.
“Hunter?” she ventured, though she knew. The wolf’s head in the tavern had been the same colouring as Laeanai and his mother; had been female, and young.
He murmured in the affirmative. “The same ones who trapped me. I was being stupid. Again.” He sighed gustily. “I was with her when she got trapped. I looked for a way to get her down, but I wasn’t able to. I hid when the hunters arrived but I could still see…could still smell….” His voice choked with unshed tears. Thalaea grasped in the dark with her hand, looking for his; she found his fingers and squeezed tight. She knew.
He sniffed, and let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, wasn’t quite an expression of rage, but met somewhere between the two.
“Well. That’s not why I wanted you here tonight. I wanted to talk to you about other things.”
“You guided me to your den’s place so you could talk to me as a man, instead of a wolf?”
She felt him shrug. “Your Wolf dialect is weird. Hard to understand. But your Minae is much easier to decipher. I figured communication would be better.”
Thalaea laughed a bit. It was fair enough.
“So, my friend the wolf who is also a man,” she said, and heard him chuckle, “what did you want to talk about?”
Laeanai and Thalaea spoke through most of the night. They answered each other’s questions and talked about everything from the history of Min to Thalaea’s entire life story — both stories.
Laeanai told her as much as he could about the history of the Steelmint wolves and the Minae people. His own knowledge of it was patchy; over the generations many of the original packs had died out and with the loss of the Lorekeeper for each pack, they lost a little more of their history.
He was able to tell her a bit about her namesake, however. Thalaea the witch had left her grimmerie in Steelmint Forest after writing the last entry. Then an earthquake had shaken the land and had sunk the Minae town of Landfall. Many of the Minae had died.
It was believed by the wolves that Thalaea had caused the earthquake, somehow, as vengeance on the Minae for the destruction of several of the packs. The person who had found the grimmerie had been the daughter of the easternmost pack’s Alpha — she’d had powerful magic of her own, and had become the next witch in the long line of witches that had ended with Enendoa.
That was what her mentor had meant when she’d said the history of witches and wolves was closely linked.
“So was she — the witch — was she able to take human form more often than during the new moon?” Perhaps the inability to change more than once a lunar cycle was new.
“That’s how the legend goes. The myths of our past say that once we were able to change into anything, not just humans, and that we ruled Thaen alongside our friends the Elves.” Laeanai shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s any truth to that. I find myself hoping there is. I would love to take the form of a raven, if only for a day.”
“That would be wonderful,” she agreed. “I have another question, though.”
He laughed. “I expect them in great quantities.”
She asked him about the Elves of Thaen. She wasn’t sure at first that she’d heard the correct word but then he had said it again. Elves.
Not “elves” in the sense that Terrans or Cetians would think, she gathered from his explanation. She’d thought the features of the Minae were particularly elfin, but Laeanai’s description of these mythical beings who used to rule Thaen alongside the wolves didn’t sound very elfin.
They were very short beings, according to Laeanai, and quite hairy. Beyond that, details were lost to time, so Thalaea found herself imagining a humanoid version of that strange dog that was popular on Terra for a while…what was its name? Afghan? Something like that.
Now Thalaea slept, curled up against Laeanai. He was naked, as a man, for the wolves had no way to create or buy textiles. This didn’t matter. He was naked in wolf form, too, and had she been able to survive the temperatures of this land without clothes, she would be more comfortable naked as well.
There was neither shame nor awkwardness. Curling up next to each other was as natural as between wolf siblings and, after their long conversation, that was what they were.
From the start, when she’d first spoken to him in Wolf, Laeanai had known that Thalaea was different. When she told him her name, he knew he had to bring her back to his pack.
Their Lorekeeper had taught Laeanai about the witch that was the ex-goddess’ namesake. He’d grown up knowing that name was meaningful; so he could hardly ignore the coincidence of a human woman saving his life who happened to carry the same name. There had to be something deeper there.
Thalaea wasn’t so sure. What she was sure of was that the wolves could not stay in Steelmint Forest.
They were dying. Slowly, but surely. There were only three packs left and they kept to themselves. There were no more group Howls among packs. The Howls of Laeanai’s own pack were few and far between.
Their culture was fading as surely as their physical numbers. The borders of the forest shrank every year, Minae logging scraping away at the corners like a mouse nibbling at a piece of bread.
Heartpin Town was still surrounded by farmland; still more wild than domestic. Daetus City was another matter. Industry boomed there — the wolves could smell it. They could smell the changes brewing in the human city and they could see the wilds getting smaller all the time. Soon there would be no more land for the wolves; they would be driven out into the open, and killed.
Thalaea told him they had to leave. The three packs had to go, as soon as possible.
“Where would we go? How would we convince the others to leave?”
She didn’t have an answer for the second question. To the first, there was only one answer.
Thaen.
She knew almost nothing about the neighbour to Min, except that it lay far to the north, just beyond the Eronenian Mountains, and that it was where the original Thalaea had first come from.
Thalaea the Forsworn. Thalaea, the Lady of the True Woods.
She didn’t know what any of that meant. All she knew was that Thaen was the safest place for the wolves of Steelmint. That might not be much but it was all that seemed certain. She didn’t think she could take the packs to Gssn, even if she was on good terms with D’ssah.
So. In the choice between north or west, the only option was north. North and the unknown.
Laeanai agreed with her, finally, but doubted the rest of his pack would be so easy to convince. The other wolves hadn’t even bothered to change into human form that night, or, if they had, they had refused to come say hello to their guest. Not even his mother had come, for all she’d said that she wanted to talk to Thalaea, which surely would have proved easier in Minae. Thalaea was still an outsider and any suggestion from her that they leave their homelands would be met with hostility.
She could deal with that. She hoped.
As long as the wolves here were safe, she could handle whatever hardships life threw her way.
A new purpose flooded her. It was as if all the events in her life had conspired to point her towards this moment, where she would save the wolves of Min.
Maybe if she could help the packs of Steelmint, she would be the Lady of the True Woods again.
Hope blossomed in her chest; a tiny, shivering thing. She nurtured it and kept it close, letting its small light warm her through the night.
She and Laeanai slept late that morning. She woke curled around the same lanky, adolescent wolf she’d first met. It would be another full moon cycle before she could speak to him in his human form.
She felt a small twinge of regret at that. Their conversation had been so freeing. She’d finally been able to be herself, for the first time since her arrival here. Not just as Thalaea, the witch’s apprentice, but Silva, the Wolf Goddess, as well. Suddenly living two lives in one mortal body seemed an option; skies full of possibility opened up to her. All because of one conversation with Laeanai the man.
As if summoned by her melancholy the wolf in her arms shook himself awake, then, and stood up next to her. He leaned over and gave her face a lick, as if to say I’ll always be here, wolf or man, and then bounded off into the forest.
It was rather unexpected, but when he returned shortly with a rabbit dangling from his jaws it made a bit more sense.
Thalaea’s stomach rumbled, a sleeping giant awakened. Sudden pain gripped her abdomen as she realized how hungry she really was. She sat by patiently, waiting for Laeanai to finish with the kill; he dropped the rabbit to the ground and began to separate the skin from the meat with his fangs and claws.
It was a messy job and the pelt wouldn’t have been worth much to any peltier. But the meat was fresh and still warm; when he offered it up to her Thalaea growled her thanks and sucked it back appreciatively.
They were both alphas. He could have pulled rank, as she was on his pack’s land, and demanded to eat first. He didn’t and they shared the rabbit happily.
She’d missed the taste of raw meat, truth be told. Oh, sure, both Natai and Enendoa were amazing cooks and she hadn’t been disappointed with her fare while she lived among the Minae. But there was something wholly satisfying on a visceral level in the taste of warm, raw meat between one’s jaws, blood dripping down one’s chin, the smoothness of the liver, the grainy texture of the heart. They ate every inch of the rabbit, and when they reached bones, they cracked down on the ends and sucked out the marrow.
Soon they finished the beast and rested back on the ground together, sated. Thalaea looked at the sky through the treetops. Now the long dendrous fingers were decidedly green against the violet sky. Orange clouds floated by. It was a nice day, for wintertime. Not warm, but not freezing, and no rain or snow. In fact, most of the snow in the forest was gone. It had melted, and there had been no fresh snowfall. She counted her blessings: she was cold enough without new snow.
She didn’t know how long they rested after their repast before Laeanai got up, saying he needed to ask the alphas to gather the pack for a council that night. They needed to bring forth the motion to move the pack away from Steelmint, formally, in council. Thalaea nodded. She understood.
The council was set for just before nightfall. Laeanai’s mother came to see Thalaea before it started.
Stranger, she growled, formally but not friendly.
Alpha. Thalaea bowed her head and tilted it to the right, exposing her neck to the bitch’s jaws. The wolf gave her a cursory sniff and then growled acceptance of Thalaea’s submission.
Where did you learn Wolf, stranger?
Thalaea didn’t know how to answer the alpha. How was she to say that Wolf was the language that brought her into existence and, simultaneously, the language she brought forth to the universe? That Wolf was the source of her creation; lupine songs formed her bones; her blood came from growls; her hearts beat because of the whines of wolf cubs in the spring? That Wolf was what she taught to her first mortal cubs, so they could sing her to life, so they could keep the universe going with their song? How could she say any of that?
On another world, she settled for, finally.
The alpha wolf’s lip curled up briefly. My son told me you were once…a goddess of wolfkind. It was obvious she felt some disdain for this idea. That you fell to this planet and became mortal.
Thalaea gave a growl in the affirmative. The alpha scoffed.
My son may believe you, but he is young and foolish. Still a pup. I am not so easily fooled. Wolves do not have gods. We do not need any.
Thalaea wanted to ask why the packs were dying out, then, and whom, exactly, the wolves expected to help them — but she did not. It would have been seen as a challenge to the alpha, something she meant to avoid as long as possible.
I hope you have a better argument for council tonight, stranger. The rest of the pack will not be so superstitious as my son.
Formal goodbyes were growled and then Thalaea sat alone again, waiting for council to begin. She sighed. She wasn’t looking forward to the arguments ahead.
Council was held just outside the cave. The rocks formed a natural amphitheatre where the wolves gathered around the edges. Laeanai sat close to Thalaea. The rest of the pack kept their distance from the newcomer. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that hurt a little.
Commencement of the council was formal; the Lorekeeper stepped forward. His black coat was grizzled on his muzzle and paws. Thalaea could smell his age and wisdom.
Today’s council is called by current Pack Leader, Salia. Salia, will you speak to the issues you bring forth?
Laeanai’s mother stepped forward. I will speak to the issues, Lorekeeper.
Then proceed. The Lorekeeper bowed and returned to his seat.
Thalaea wasn’t surprised that Laeanai’s mother was Pack Leader. The alpha bitch hadn’t seemed to need anyone else’s approval when allowing Thalaea to spend the night. Were Salia not in charge, she wouldn’t have been free to make such decisions.
Salia moved to address the council. She stood proud and strong and looked at each wolf as she spoke.
Many of you have noticed the stranger in our midst. There was a murmuring of agreement and a general shuffling as many pack-members sent glances Thalaea’s way. She tried not to fidget.
Salia continued. My son, Laeanai, has assured me of the stranger’s well-meaning to us, and she has so far given us no reason to distrust her. By virtue of her understanding our language and speaking a small bit herself, I gave her leave to stay with us last night. Some grumbles, at that, but no one openly contested the Pack Leader’s decision. It wouldn’t have been worth it.
Tonight, however, she asks something of us that I know many of you will not find easy to accept. I ask, as your Pack Leader, that you listen to her words with an open heart and mind. As befits true and free wolves, do not dismiss what she says based on her appearance. Salia looked directly at Thalaea then. Will you speak your request, stranger?
Thalaea felt unaccountably nervous. Speaking to one pack should be no big deal — after all, she used to be Alpha over all wolves! She nodded and stepped forward, onto her hands and knees so she was level with Salia. She replied formally: I will, Pack Leader. I thank you for your generosity.
Then proceed. Salia nodded at Thalaea. The Pack Leader moved to the side but did not fully leave the focal point of the gathering. That was perhaps wisest.
Thalaea rose and moved to where all the wolves could see her. She knelt and sat back on her heels, setting her hands palms-up in her lap while she gathered her thoughts. Where on earth to begin?
My name is Thalaea, she said finally, and watched a shift happen in the pack. Many wolves, especially older ones, murmured to each other with increased interest. She wondered if it had helped or hindered her that Salia had not told them her name.
I may appear Minae but I used to be wolf. I became trapped in this form through very strange circumstances, which would take too long to explain. I do not even think I can make sense of them. A few nods of understanding, at this. They were warming up to her.
I lived with the Minae in Heartpin for a while. They…do not like wolves. And I fear it is no longer safe for you to stay in Steelmint.
That’s an understatement, murmured one of the younger wolves in response, before an elder chastised him with a bite on the neck. The pup yelped.
Do not speak out of turn, hissed the elder and then gestured to Thalaea to continue.
Thalaea nodded her thanks to the elder. While she was glad the pup had agreed with her, she would not contribute to the weakening of their social order.
Partially, this is my fault. In self-defense I killed one of their hunters. They may be searching for me — he had connections and was well-loved. If they are searching for me, they may find you. I cannot abide harm to come to you because of me.
But there is more, she continued, ignoring the general wave of impressed surprise that came from the pack upon her admission of killing a hunter. Laeanai has told me that there are only three packs in the woods, when I know that long ago there used to be thirteen. I’ve read the grimmerie of Thalaea the Forsworn; I know part of your history. I know the woods are being eaten away by the Minae from Daetus City. Soon you will have no more forest left and you will be forced into the open.
Life in Steelmint has no more safety for you. My suggestion is that you leave and find a new life somewhere else. Now, while you still have a chance.
A brief silence followed her words. Then, an older wolf stepped forward and asked formally to be given leave to speak. She acquiesced gracefully, even as her stomach churned in anticipation of his answer.
With respect, stranger, where do you suggest we go? There are not many safe places for wolves these days.
I think there is only one place you can consider going, she replied, steeling herself for what they may say to her answer. Thaen.
Growls and snarls filled the air and many wolves spoke out of turn. She only caught bits and pieces of what they said:
Thaen? Never—
—Not after they left us to rot—
—They are cowards—
—If they’re not all dead—
—It’s too far anyway; we’d never make it—
—Steelmint may be dangerous—
—But it’s our home; more so than Thaen ever will be.
Before Salia could call order to the pack and before Thalaea could feel completely discouraged, a cry from the west broke through the chorus of wolf protest.
“I can hear them! Onwards, lads!”
Thalaea looked out into the forest and saw flickering firelight bobbing in the air, through the trees: torches. A moment later she smelled their stench, the sweat of men, and the musk of hunting dogs. She could hear barking and more male voices.
They’d found her. She’d led them straight to the wolf pack she’d been trying to protect.