Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

"Jacob. Jacob! Do you understand? You were bitten, and it's really close!"

Waere... wolf...

"Jacob! Listen: you're going to change. Soon!"

Dane.

His eyes...

His beautiful, sad, brown... eyes...

-

"Jacob?"

"Jacob!"

"What?"

"I said you need to call in sick."

"Sick? Why!?"

Dane looked... not happy. Aya looked almost mad. Frustrated. I immediately thought of a hundred bad things they hadn't told me yet. They hadn't told me anything yet!

I probably squeezed Dane's hand too hard, too, because he made a noise. When Aya spoke again, she made it sound like I was being stupid.

Which, since she might've told me the same thing three times for all I remembered, I was. Seemed. But I was listening to her: Sick. Call in. And she hadn't said what kind of sick. Illness.

"Because you're ~changing~, and you need time. Do you have any other appointments or things like that today? Or this weekend?"

"But why?" She really wasn't telling me anything. How sick was I going to be?! Would I need a doctor? Could I die? The weekend was... three days!

When I said why, again, she huffed. Or chuffed. Her nose got wider when she was mad, too. She hadn't been mad before.

"Would you please LISTEN!? ~BECAUSE~ you might CHANGE at work!! Because even if you DON'T, and manage to change HERE, you're going to be a great, huge, clumsy ~Waere~ for at least a day AFTER you change! And they WON'T let you in the DOOR!"

I stared at her.

They won't let...

I couldn't type if I was a werewolf. Anyway. While I was that way. Shape.

Dane started to giggle.

-

I called the building front desk from the number in the directory and got the night security guard. He wrote down that I was ill and wouldn't be in and what papers I had at home and promised to put it in our office mail slot.

I ~didn't~ tell him that I was going to become a hundred and fifty pound werewolf.

Waere. I hung up the earpiece and then lifted it again to untangle the cord. Waere, waere.

Aya'd already told me 'werewolf' was human slang. She sounded like my mother lecturing me about table manners: We weren't wolves. We had all of our original intelligence. The moon didn't have anything to do with us. We weren't monsters.

And we ~didn't~ eat people.

Dane had added, "Ick."

-

Back on the couch, I had a hundred questions, but they seemed to occur to me randomly. The ones that I was most afraid to ask were the ones that came again and again.

Was I was going to be out of my head. Or if I could lose control. Or be dangerous. Stuff from the old movies. The horror ones.

I didn't want to insult them. Or find out any of my worst fears.

Dane moved his thumb in small circles on my hand. I watched it and knew he was trying to reassure me, but I could still feel Aya. She seemed to be getting more and more tense.

"Am I going to know what's happening?"

Aya relaxed a bit. A lot. Probably that I hadn't asked if it was going to make me sick again, I realized. She'd been mad...

I looked up at her. She was just thinking, and only looked at me after she started.

"Well, when I changed, I... I knew what was happening the whole time, but it took me a few minutes to figure out all the, the new feelings... how differently I could sense things? Mostly having a different body-feeling? It took a while to get used to that." She made a face.

"I guess it was kind of overwhelming, really, but Mom and Dad were there and I knew what was coming..."

"The first thing I felt was my nose hurting." Dane interrupted. Aya snorted. He crinkled his nose at me and grinned.

"At home, at our parent's house the smell was so strong it hurt. We finally figured out I was really sensitive to a soap she used on everything... so I just moved out."

Aya snorted again. "Like you lived at home..."

"Moved out officially, then. Besides," he grinned at me, "when your parents sell the house and leave town on you, you've ~officially~ moved out."

"They were ~planning~ to move to the cottage-"

"~And~ a sore nose and sneezing was better than breaking things." He smirked at Aya.

She squinted at him. Glared, I guessed. Then she just looked at me. Like to show me ~he~ was her lifelong curse.

"I had trouble running, and I got a little dizzy for a few days-"

"Weeks. And first thing she ever did, she knocked one of Mom's nice vases off a table." Dane grinned at me. "It broke."

Aya huffed when she was just irritated, too.

"Broken furniture too. Cracked plaster... Annnnd her head through the screen door..."

"What-ever! The ~point~ is, not everyone is the same." Plus the nostril thing.

Dane smiled and I could tell he was kind of apologizing for teasing Aya.

"And we ~all~ get through it. And it's embarrassing little stuff that's the problem for the first while, not anything big or important."

-

But they were kind of making it up as they went along, too. When I asked why they'd waited until so late to come and see me, Aya twisted her whole body around.

"Because the idiot search didn't work! You are the most ~invisible~ man in the territory! It kept-"

Dane interrupted.

"Because the search only found you a couple of hours ago."

Aya huffed. Dane smiled at her, but not happy. "We started before noon, but it only just worked after one. This morning. We don't know why."

"He called me last night with his dream and he told me about you in the park before but said he hadn't smelled blood or anything, but..." Aya made that frustrated face again.

"We called our parents and they called our, um, leader, he's called Fenrir, and he said we needed to contact you and tell you what was happening, and..."

Dane took over. Not happy at all, from his hand. But he smiled, too. So, then and now.

"And we had to find out if you lived alone, or with twenty other people... or were going to freak. Which you aren't."

Though Dane remembered that I'd smelled like I lived alone. From the park. Or that I didn't have anyone else's scents on me.

Apparently, though, freaking out about whether I was going to freak out was something everybody was doing.

Their Fenrir had called about five times after the search stalled and his last call was that he was driving all the way down from Fort Athabasca. And that was at nine. Yesterday. Last night.

He was going to go to their parent's cottage and they were going to call around dawn, when he was supposed to get there.

I said they could call, then, right away? Aya thought about it and decided she should. They were just up in Saamish, but it was still a two hour drive in good weather.

While she was in the kitchen, Dane said he knew I was so close to changing by the time the search worked that he could smell me from across the river. (Not really, but he said he could still tell.)

"Jacob!" Aya leaned around the corner. "Mom wants to talk to you."

Dane almost-laughed and whispered to me as we got up.

"Not, 'do you want to talk to my mother, the venerable Mrs. Maghuin?' No, 'Get over here!'" He grinned. "Don't worry. That's just Aya. Mom's great. You'll like her."

Aya acted like she knew what he'd said, but she scowled at him, not me, anyway. I took the earpiece and stepped close to the cone.

"Hello, Mrs. Maghuin? This is Jacob O'Hara."

"Hello, Jacob, and please call me Mary. It's good to meet you, though I'm sure these are trying circumstances. How are you holding up? Are my two terrors being good guests?" She had a pleasant voice. Deeper, not at all like Dane's or Aya's.

"They've both been very polite, Mrs- I mean Mary. And I can understand why they came when they did and why it was urgent. And they're telling me as much as they can about what's happening..."

And I was running on. I didn't know why she wanted to talk to me, or what I wanted to ask her, really.

"Jacob, dear. Have they told you that you're our first new Waere in a very long time?"

"No?" I didn't know what she meant. Aya and Dane changed... with her...

"Well, it's true. That's why our Fenrir is hurrying down, to meet you and welcome you to the clan. I think you're the only bitten Waere any of us youngsters will have ever met!"

And.

People who were bitten were rare. Really rare. Aya'd said Waere didn't bite people.

I didn't understand much about what Mary said to me after that. Or remember it. Aya told me her name was really Morag. Mary.

I needed sick days because I was bitten, not born, and they didn't know if I was different than them.

-

"But ~I~ got bitten!"

Dane made a sound and I realized that that sounded pretty mean.

"I'm sorry... I mean, but, but it ~has~ to happen! ~Accidents~ have to happen, sometimes!"

"No. They ~don't~ have to happen! We don't go running ~blind~ without even looking where we're going through the woods. We're usually smart enough to ~not~ run into people." Aya smiled not-nice-at-all at Dane. He slumped.

"It was an accident..."

"It was ~stupid~! What if it'd been a ~doctor~, or a ~priest~?!"

"I-"

"You're ~old~ enough to take ADULT responsibility... to be more... ~careful~!"

"Stop it!" I had both arms around Dane. I didn't know if he needed it, but I did.

"It was an ACCIDENT! Accidents HAPPEN! Even if it was... if it only happens once in a... a million years, it was just an ~accident~! What if ~you'd~ hit someone - when you were clumsy?! Is- are you going to tell me I can't ever go out because an accident might happen! Because some kid might run into me on a bike? And Dane's not ~stupid~!"

Aya didn't look mad anymore.

I couldn't look at her anymore, either.

It wasn't Dane's fault. It was an accident. I was.

I was a freak accident and nobody on earth knew what was going to happen.

-

"I'm sorry, Jacob." Aya had her arms around both of us, behind me. Rocking us.

"I didn't mean it.... I'm, I'm just scared that we don't know what's going to happen, or what we should do... so you'll be okay." She got so quiet I couldn't hear her.

After a little while, I could hear her breathing fast and swallowing. Over and over.

I turned so I could hold her too.

-

I never hugged anybody. Even Mom. Not really...

-

Aya said they'd been afraid to tell me.

They said it was why people thought Waere were a myth instead of real. Because there weren't any Waere who didn't have family to help them and hide them while they learned to be careful.

Like I was. Like I didn't have.

I thought of my mother. My family... What I'd have to tell her...

If I ever even could.

"Hey, it's not that bad... We're here, after all." Dane hugged me.

I felt tears again. The second time in an hour. In years and years.

Even though I was holding his hand in both of mine and was pressed up along him, I'd forgotten... Maybe that I wasn't alone.

I was used to living alone, but Dane and Aya felt... normal. Like they weren't strangers. Even holding hands.

Even after one hour.

The feelings were so completely different, and I couldn't tell them apart...

There was too much happening.

Dane rocking me felt like my mother holding me when I was twelve. I remembered that.

-

They said they both could tell I was going to change soon. They said I smelled more and more like a Waere.

Dane said he just ~knew~, too. He said he'd never felt anything like it before, like in his dream about me.

"Maybe you're turning into a seer." Aya almost sounded serious.

"Oh, sure." Dane put his hand on his forehead like a movie magician. "I see... calling my sister... so ~she~ can remember to buy a search spell... and maybe call Mom and Dad..." He grinned at us.

"Some seer I'd make. I bet I'd get lost if I left ~here~! I just followed Aya!"

-

They kept telling me funny stories about changing to keep my mind off it, since they said it just happened, and it didn't hurt.

And being nervous didn't help.

Aya said Dane was one of the oldest Waere to change in years and years, because he was nineteen when he finally did and then he acted like the youngest, like he was a little kid again.

Dane laughed and said that he was just so ~frustrated~ with waiting to change by then he'd had about ten years of running around and chasing deer to get out of his system, and he did it all in the first week. Aya said 'Month... Maybe a couple of months...'

I remembered how he'd looked when he'd knocked me over. So shaken and... scared... and really long legs. That he kind of had legs like a deer.

Dane laughed when they made me tell.

-

I was a lot older than Dane. I didn't say anything, but I was a lot older than ~nineteen~ for my change...

-

Even with everything, it felt like I was about to crash again, so I asked would they like anything to drink? Coffee, tea? Since they said I wouldn't change if I was asleep, they thought that was a good idea.

Then Dane said maybe that was why I'd been having such a terrible night, too? Not being able to sleep... before I changed?

Neither one could remember anyone mentioning anything like that, before... but I was different, too.

-

I found out Dane loved tea.

And we all found out that as long as I could peek around the corner and at least ~see~ him I could stand to be separated from Dane. So I was in my kitchen, all by myself.

I felt quite proud, for some weird reason...

And whenever I peeked, he smiled and waved.

I put the kettle on for tea. Dane loved tea.

I kept tea on hand for my mother, but I was glad I had it there for Dane.

And Aya. For both of them.

-

By the time the kettle whistled I had to lean on the wall to stay upright... whenever I wasn't doing... anything. Finding something.

Remembering something.

I thought of Dane like I saw him a month ago, and had to smile. Deer legs...

He had big feet. Big for a deer...

I had two Waere waiting for me in my front room.

Mom'd have a fit. She'd like them, though...

I carefully poured the hot water. I needed a nicer tea ball for company...

I'd set out the tea tray as neatly as I could. She'd approve of that. Mom liked tea, too...

I just had milk... hoped Dane didn't need cream...

Friday... the milk cart came... in an hour...

I could leave a note...

And the... the iceman was coming

-

Dark

I was... twisted... around.

My face was... covered... something...

- sniff...

Sniff!

SNIFF!

Color! Sound! Taste! SMELLS!!

- sniff TASTE... sweet, tart, wet, warm...

Something pulled- my back... arms... arms?

BRIGHT! Bright! Dark...

sniff... Aya! Her hand... on my face...

MY FACE! My body!

My body was different! I was changed! It happened!

Dane!!

Dane YIPPED! He was a dog... a Waere! Too!

Bright!

Dane yipped LOUD! and then took my whole ~face~ in his tongue and mouth and I could ~taste~ him! He shook me, my head, my body - I could feel ~everything~

DANE!!

There was a high, piteous sound....

-

"There, there...." Waves of pressure. sniff... Aya.

"You big oaf! You can't be that rough!!"

I heard a huff and could almost translate: "Nobody says 'oaf'..."

"There, there... that big silly... it's all better... All tangled up in those big bad clothes..."

The heat of Aya around me... smells... overwhelmed me. Fascinated me. Kept me awake...

Her skin was a new, salty, tart... taste-smell. Her breath was strange-hot-familiar. I remembered her breath from... before?

I could smell her woman-ness.

And a different... Waere smell?

I was a... Waere. Her smell was like me! Like Dane! I could smell ~me~! My scent!

I was a Waere!

I squirmed, remembered... tried...

She was holding me on her legs. On my side. In her lap. My eyes were covered... by her hand...

I slowly opened my eyes and the light was still too bright, but Dane was there and gave me a quick lick on my nose and mouth.

Emotions washed over me like his tongue had earlier - love and caring and... home? I had no words for them all. I had to close my eyes.

He licked my nose again and I answer-touched his tongue with mine... and he smiled.

I could smell it.

I could taste his smile.

-

I fit on her lap. All of me. Touch on my... ears... ears? It felt lovely.

"Jacob? Do you understand me? Can you look at me?"

Moving... I kept my eyes closed. I could think with them closed.

I decided that she was lifting me. Or an earthquake...

It took a moment... to... find... right... muscles. But I managed to open my eyes - just a little.

Bright!

Her out-of-focus, huge nose. Soap. Tooth powder. Warm.

Her breathing was relaxing. More small sounds. Familiar. Or not familiar, but... I trusted it. Her.

"Blink for me, okay?" She smiled. I could hear it. Smell it.

I blinked, not as quick and easy when your eyelids feel new. And almost closed already. And one was... slower.

But she smiled even more and I felt my tail wag, thumping at her..?

It was good that she was holding me tight, because I completely ~exploded~!

A little, weak, barely-shivering explosion, but I ~had~ to feel every muscle I had, find every nerve and joint...

I had a tail! I licked my own nose!

And ~hands~! I had ~four~ feet!! Four LEGS!!

I had a TAIL!!

-

When I collapsed, Aya was still laughing. Still cradling me. She rubbed my tummy. Such a feeling!

I laughed too, just to be on my back like that. And Dane's whole, huge upside-down head was there and his nose...

I could smell...

A smell like Aya... I smelled like... Aya.

I sniffed Dane's nose, Aya's leg, her hand...my scent on it. All of it...

Not Dane.

After a long time trying to think, to understand, Aya hunched down over me, or cuddled me up closer...

"I don't understand it either, but you're a puppy... and a girl..." She leaned in even more and pressed her face against me, my front legs and head. It was very comforting...

"Poor little thing..."

Little?

Of course I was... I was little. But it didn't seem as frightening an idea as I thought it should.

How could I be a puppy?

They said I'd be big...

I fell asleep around then. Feeling my tail...

I still wasn't scared.

-

End of Part Two