Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

Aya leaned close, before I could move. She was kneeling by the bed and kissed my nose and stayed that close, hugging me.

"Oh, baby! It's nothing bad! You can heal people! You're a ~healer~! I bet it's that you won't even hurt us when you're asleep- or unconscious! And there's stuff about Waere that ~nobody~ understands, even little stuff, like why we don't always stub our toes when we change! Or none of us need glasses that way! They still just call it magic! You're just more careful! It's bigger, but the same!"

I didn't say anything. I managed to get an arm from under the sheet to hug her a little, too.

It made sense. It explained at least the bumping, sort of. But I was worried.

A lot of it ~didn't~ make sense.

-

Nobody would like becoming a girl Waere... no man would.

-

When Aya and I came out, Alfaarr and Dr. Vivian had lit a fire and were sitting on the couch close together. They both had really happy smiles, but Dr. Vivian kind of stopped when she saw me.

Aya squeezed my hand and whispered, "Young love. Kids."

She might have giggled, but I knew why.

"Dane is out," Alfaarr smiled at Aya, "having a run."

Aya did something small I didn't understand, but I noticed and looked. She smiled at me.

"He's probably in the woods past the park trails... I'm gonna go find him."

She did a little shrug and shimmy thing and dropped her skirt and panties on the floor and- changed. She tossed her head and her shirt fell off too.

She was reddish-tan and black - her whole face was black. She was beautiful.

And she was bigger than Dane, slimmer and taller. Her head came up past my waist.

I wanted legs like that. I knew what she looked like from before, somehow, but I hadn't realized she was so tall.

She hopped on her long front legs and I knew she wanted me to open the door for her. A quick nose-kiss on my hand as she passed, and she was gone.

I could hear her running all the way to the end of the street.

I could smell a raccoon, too, that way. Close. It made a strong smell and some noise as it ran away.

"Don't worry, you'll be able to run with them sooner than you expect."

I closed the door and didn't lock it. Alfaarr and Dr. Vivian were both watching me.

"Do you need a coffee or anything, Jacob? Did you sleep well?" Dr. Vivian was still watching me with that odd look.

I shook my head, but then I thought maybe I might, and some toast, or eggs. Maybe some bacon...

I could still smell the raccoon.

-

I ended up eating a lot, a lot more than I would usually eat for a breakfast.

While I ate, Dr. Vivian asked me about a thousand questions. Over two hours' worth, all through a late-late breakfast-supper that I just couldn't seem to get enough of.

I had to ask what day it was. Saturday morning. Except for the BBQ, I really hadn't eaten much in two days...

Dr. Vivian said I didn't look my age, and she thought I looked almost adolescent. I felt more grown up than I had since Dane and Aya came on Thursday night.

Alfaarr said I looked younger than my age, too, though he seemed surprised at it. He even said he didn't know why he hadn't noticed, but he thought I'd changed even from the last time.

He said I was acting different, too. More mature.

-

When I finally finished eating, Dr. Vivian examined me. There was no pain again, but the feeling was nothing like the other time.

I could ~tell~, just before she did, what she was going to do...

When she put her hands on my chest, I could feel her... it was like she was gathering something from me... Or maybe touching, like a hand brushing grass, just the tips. But all through me, my torso.

I could feel her, too. Her hands and... her knees and feet... and her breathing hurt. Her ribs on the right side. And why.

Her joints hurt because she was old, I thought, but her chest was different. There was a thing in her breast and in her ribs, all around the side.

I didn't have a name for it, but I could feel it was bad.

-

Her scale said I weighed eighteen pounds less than I thought I did, but then I didn't weigh myself very often. I was at least an inch shorter, too, and Alfaarr said maybe two...

Dr. Vivian suggested I try on a jacket and some slacks that fit me well, and they were both too long and too big around. I'd lost two inches across the shoulders and more than that around the waist. Even more than I'd gotten shorter.

She said it was like I was having a backwards growth spurt.

-

We sat down on the couch, me in the middle.

In conclusion, Dr. Vivian thought I was a perfectly healthy young man, but I seemed a ~lot~ younger than my age, more like a growing boy, and at most, under twenty.

I was a bit like when I was in Waere form for her, too, because she couldn't see my joints as clearly as examinations usually did.

She couldn't find any scars at all, or even any moles. She asked a lot of questions about the burn, but all I could really say was that it hurt like one, and my father and the doctor had argued.

She was confused by that and said it shouldn't have happened. She said simple healing shouldn't ever hurt, even though it had both times I'd had it, even the examinations. She thought all the healing on my skin was very strange.

"I just don't understand it, Garret. Even if the bite was a kind of self-healing like you have, it still doesn't explain his scars. Scars aren't injury, they're already-healed flesh, and you carry your old scars across both forms..." She rubbed her thumb over where my burn scar had been.

Alfaarr took my other hand from where I was trying to see if the little scars had just faded. I had less hair on my arm there, too, I thought...

"I can't, but ~you~ healed them." He had a little smile.

"I didn't!" It sounded selfish. I knew what Dr. Vivian had... or that it was bad, anyway. Healing a freckle was selfish...

"You might not have tried to, but you change more than just your form." He looked at my face, like examining it the way we'd been looking at my hands. Then he looked in my eyes.

"Jacob, are you a boy or a girl?"

-

"She seems to heal across whatever separates our forms. She becomes... ~he~ becomes a ~girl~ pup, out of... gods know where! But you yourself said he's a healthy ~boy~! Even though he's at least ten years older than that! A conundrum! Where does the female form come from? Where does his sex and size and weight go, and return from? And you don't just change, you heal, possibly everything, every change. And perhaps ~that's~ why you're so tired, afterwards?"

I heard Dr. Vivian make a noise, like "ohh..."

Alfaarr smiled at me and I relaxed a little. When he asked questions, they seemed almost like answers, and he smiled like there weren't even any problems.

"Jacob, the more I see, the more your change seems a wonderful gift. I've heard a thousand years of campfire debates and claptrap about why we have two forms. How it happens. About 'magic realms' where Waere chase deer while we slog along in human shape, and heavens where we laze and drink while our Waere hunt here! Or cursed to soulless half-lives, oblivion if we die as Waere, and damned to some devil's fire if we die in human."

He made a face at the end. His ears went back, too.

"Something about our experience, perhaps the way our changes are so sudden and complete, seems to convince us that our Waere are separate, magical bodies. But we're the same size! The same weight! We bring our injuries and scars and memories to both! And you can see us! You touch us, both at the same time! We don't send our other forms ~elsewhere~, we ~are~ our other forms! When you see - and heal - both our forms, you're proof of that! A thousand and thousand years, and you've proved our true nature in one day!"

He was laughing when he finished. Dr. Vivian almost laughed or something, too. But I was scared again. He hadn't said anything like that before!

He pulled me into a hug. I hadn't seen him move, and turned away. I was so near tears I was ashamed.

"It's a ~good~ thing! You... " He stopped whatever he was going to say. Touched his face to my shoulder and neck instead, and spoke quietly.

"Ah, maisie... It's not such a good thing to feel your world slip away, is it?"

I nodded. My throat was too tight to speak. It wasn't. It hurt...

He just held me. His breath was warm on my back. I wanted to reach up and touch his legs, their impossible embrace.... I didn't. He'd feel it, but he wouldn't see.

I was a freak.

"When I hold you, I wonder at the world again."

He whispered it. I didn't understand the words, but he meant something good.

He kept holding me, but turned his head and lifted one of my hands out in front of me and looked at it with me, his head against mine.

"I see your hand in mine. But I'll dream about what ~you~ see, child! That you can see and touch and know... without faith, that we're one soul? To know we're not cursed! Because you healed Dane in his ~self~... you showed we are one body and soul, blessed with two forms... that we're as real and true as we feel, and not an illusion of magic! And if the Gods grant healing so, then the Gods smile on us, too! Araichd!"

He was rocking us, clutching my hand to my chest. Laughing strange, throaty words as he cried.

"Ah, maisie! Caluman coghail... beannachadh araichid!"

-

Dr. Vivian answered the scratching at the door. I was still cuddled under Alfaarr's arm, where he'd held me since we both stopped crying.

"Fenrir! Fenrir!!"

Dane changed even before the door closed and immediately dropped to the floor and began a weird foot-waggling, staring and grabbing at them. Aya ran past us into the house and I heard her make a human noise a moment later in the kitchen.

"Yes!" Dane sprang up and vaulted over the couch arm and slid to his knees in front of us. He put his hands on Alfaarr's knees.

"Fenrir! My foot's healed! It's perfect! Like it never happened!" He was yelling, laughing!

"I know, child! We all saw it, remember?" Alfaarr laughed too, at Dane's craziness.

"No! My back foot, where I broke my toe and it ached? It's healed! I can't feel it at all when I run! I can't even tell, now!"

He looked at me and his look was joy and... fear?

"Jacob! I think you healed it! I smashed it years ago and it- it was stiff! But it's gone!" He took my hands in my lap and seemed to slow down, all at once.

"I think you might've healed ~all~ of me."

Alfaarr hugged me closer. I needed that, right then.

Dr. Vivian started asking questions and said she wanted to examine Dane...

-

Before, while I'd cried and he'd sort of recovered, Alfaarr told me that he loved me no more or less if I could see or heal or change any different than anyone else, I was always his. He said I was his Maisie, his pen bairn. His lovely child.

He said I was the Gods' blessing, not a freak.

"Maisie?" Alfaarr asked it like I was supposed to do something. I looked, and he wagged his brows at Dane. Waere looked more like they were pretending to be sad when they waggled their brows, but I understood.

I looked back at Dane. He was still sitting on the floor and holding one of my hands and had big eyes. Funny-big. I smiled.

"Well, if I did heal your foot, then you're very welcome." Prim and proper, like Helena Olds in the movies. Then I grinned.

"Does that mean I can bite harder when we play now?"

He ~really~ got big eyes! "NO! your teeth are ~sharp~!"

"What a big baby! She's just a little puppy and you're afraid of a gentle nip or two?" Aya was dressed, and apparently heard us.

"She is NOT gentle! All she wants to do is play at me being her chew-toy!" He twisted as if to show his neck or shoulder - and then stopped. And glared at me, like ~I~ was lying instead of him.

"But now there's no evidence, and nobody's going to believe zuh beeg, bed voolf over poor, little miss innocent, are zey!?"

He yanked my hand and I fell off the couch and onto the floor... to stare up at the Big, Bad Waere, snarling down at me!

Before I could shriek - before Dane could strike for the kill - Aya yelled at us.

-

Back to my bedroom...

... to my DOOM, to a waiting killer!!

I even pointed out that I could hear him... ~snarling~ in there!

Grownups had no sense of justice....

-

"Are you two going to be able to sit still for a while? Maybe listen and participate?"

Sometimes Aya was ~way~ too much like a schoolteacher than was healthy. We still nodded.

Alfaarr had lifted his arm and smiled as we returned, rumpled, scratched and tired from our adventures. Well... ~I~ was. Dane just had to shake and his fur looked perfect again.

I slid under Alfaarr's arm and hugged his paw down across my chest. I wasn't going to worry about the shape it made, or how. I just wanted to stroke his nails. He liked it too, I could tell.

Dane jumped up beside me where there really wasn't enough room, but having him half-push me over was nice. Squished between Dane and Alfaarr.

And I guess we all squished Dr. Vivian.

Alfaarr leaned down. "Have you worked off a little of that food, Maisie?"

Dane and Aya both looked at him. Alfaarr smiled up at Dane and chucked under his chin, then at Aya.

"Maisie is old Irish, or Gaelic, I guess. We didn't call it anything in the old days... and I guess boys don't get named Maisie anymore... It means beautiful child."

"Oh, that's perfect!" Aya actually clapped!

Dane yipped and licked my ear. I grinned at him. "Thank you."

"So, my Maisie, are you ready to settle down to a little bit of thinking again?" Alfaarr would've made a better teacher than Aya.

I smiled and nodded. He smiled too, and then looked at Dr. Vivian.

"You were saying, Vivian?"

She leaned forward and looked at me around him. Serious, but not bad.

"J- Maisie? Have you noticed any different moods since you changed? For instance, when we were talking just a half hour ago you seemed very adult, and now you seem a lot younger than your human age. Almost a child."

"No?" Younger? I didn't feel younger... "But, all the stuff from finding out about healing and... seeing things... was pretty scary? Or serious, I mean? Is that what you mean?"

She nodded, but not like what I said was what she meant. Aya nodded too. She was on the floor, leaning against the side of the chair.

Dr. Vivian looked at Alfaarr for a second, then at me again.

"Maisie, did you play... Would you have played like you and Dane were just doing? Roughhousing and... pretending? Last week?"

I just sat there. Dane whined and touched my hair. I looked at my hand holding Alfaarr's paw. It was hard to think about... comparing. My eyes stung.

"I was alone... last week..." I didn't look up.

I hadn't laughed like I did with Dane, or Aya, even... in forever. I looked at her and tried to remember.

I didn't think the same when I was Waere. The same way. But I remembered thinking, concentrating on Dane's foot. It felt the same as I'd always thought. I remembered talking with them about... stuff...

Listening.

I thought I was the same.

I looked down at Dane's hand... paw, on my leg. He whined and I nosed him okay in his shoulder. Just thinking. He licked my eye and nose back. Just checking, love you.

I didn't have anyone like Dane before. Or Aya, or Alfaarr, or Dr. Vivian. I wouldn't have. I wasn't close to anyone but my mother...

"Maisie?"

Alfaarr chose just the moment I decided that I was different after all. He hugged a second tighter. Tighter for a second.

I smiled back and got the message. And licked his chin thank you.

He reared back, his Waere snapping his teeth, and stared at me, all over my face. His eyes looked wild, weird.

Then he pulled me in hard, a huge hug, and kissed my hair. And rocked us.

"Maisie, thu'se beannachadh araichid! My sweet bairn!"

He held me tight a long time. It was confusing, but really nice, too.

He whispered that he'd felt me. Perfectly.

-

"Alfraarr? Dr. Vivian looked at me and winked, and then looked back at him, all serious.

"Have ~you~ perchance noticed any different feelings since Maisie changed? Different than before, say... last week?"

Father hugged me tighter and kinda hmmm-ed. I was half-backwards to him so Dane could lie on our legs and Dane lifted his head around so I could see, and he laughed with me.

"Feelings? No... I don't think so..." Alfaarr kissed my hair.

"Though the weather has improved, you know. Yes, I think I feel the sun smile more since then." Kiss.

"Odd that, too. I can't remember being outside all that much to have noticed the brightening..."

"Like magic, then? This brightening?" Dr. Vivian had a laugh in her voice.

"Oh, a little magic, yes... but there's magic even in the flowers! No... I think this is more that I'm noticing the lovely world again. It's been a while."

His voice had a huge smile in it, I didn't even need to look. Dr. Vivian was looking at him that way, too.

"I'm seeing it through the eyes of a child, you could say."

Dane suddenly yelped and scrambled up, scratching and elbowing us! He planted a huge paw right in my hip and his ribs in my face, and attacked Alfaarr! Then he went at everyone else!

He licked, slobbered and wagged a dance with yips, yelps and whines.

"~YES~!!! WHAT HE SAID!!!"

Or that's what we decided he meant, while I hugged him on the floor and he twisted and laughed.

-

Breathing in the warm, dry air through Dane's soft ruff, I realized something.

I had to call my mom. I had to see her. I was changing more than into Waere.

-

End of Part Six