Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

---

I was on my way home, minding my own business, when a dog bit me.

It hurt. A lot.

The dog kept snarling and jerking and the woman holding its leash was having a hard time, even though she was easily twenty times heavier.

She looked scared, too, but I thought she was just embarrassed by all the people around us watching the dog growling and jumping. And me, trying to see if I was bleeding.

My leg had three deep little holes in it, just below the calf. The blood was dark, dark red.... I was no good with blood.

The lady at least had some help for that: a clean handkerchief and plasters. And lots of advice she gave from five feet away. Too close.

She had insurance. And the name of a doctor that she said she'd pay for - not that I'd go if I didn't absolutely have to - but she did have one. And she promised about twenty times that she'd pay, just call her, and that she'd make sure Josie never bit anyone again, who kept trying to bite me again the whole time.

As much as I didn't like Josie, I liked her owner even less. She was a Stylite.

I'd noticed the shiny double-cross on her necklace. They were fanatics who used a 'closer to God than thou' reasoning to justify anything. They were also supposedly sworn to poverty, so matching gold and silver crosses seemed more than a bit hypocritical.

I had a one for a third-grade teacher, who strapped me after he caught me reading a "heathen" comic book in class. Betty and Veronica. When my father took me to a doctor after my hand swelled up, he said I had two broken bones that had to be set before they'd heal.

I still had a fear of doctors.

So, all that, and the lady let slip that Josie'd bit other people before.

-

I limped to the station in time to catch the 5:45. It didn't matter that I missed my usual train, but my leg hurt and I resented it more with every step.

I hadn't slept well, I was tired, I was late, and I'd been bitten.

And all the way home, I watched out for other dogs.

-

I hadn't realized how tense I'd become until I actually felt my back relax as my front door locked.

Even my leg felt better.

-

But I was still anxious hours and hours later.

For a half hour or so I'd move from room to room, all around the house, stopping to examine my leg - or the bandage I'd put on it that never changed - or pick at chores, touching everything. I'd open and stare at the work I brought home... but I couldn't settle down to anything.

And then I'd completely crash, hardly able to make it to bed or the couch before I almost fell down, only to lay awake and have my mind chase itself in circles.

It felt like the same energy was messing with my brain after it left my body exhausted.

And it happened over and over...

-

At three AM, during another energetic period, and after an absolutely horrible night, I decided to beat the next crash and switched on the Marconi to listen to in bed.

I couldn't even close my eyes, but it was better watching the glow of the tubes on my bedroom ceiling than wandering around like a ghost.

I know, a radio set in my bedroom. But I mostly listened to late shows and the news, and it kept the room fairly warm when it was turned on. It got cold even on summer nights in Oregon.

Besides, I lived alone.

But anyway, at three the talk news station was the only one still on, and it was mostly about the plague.

I guess when the next Black Death seemed to be on the way, it was pretty hard to justify a lot of air time for some new Atlantic crossing record or a train derailment somewhere.

Even plague was better than I felt.

The first victims had been confirmed in some city in New Zealand and another fifty or so in Australia. New official total there: 741. Unofficially: thousands.

Even with confirmed victims, New Zealand was still sinking or chasing away boats from Australia.

Some island in the south Atlantic reported it was still free. Population: 338.

The Tsar's youngest brother was dead and some reports said it was plague. St. Petersburg said it was the Royal disease.

Doctors in Paris said they had a new lead on how to identify plague victims a few hours before it became contagious.

Countries affected, including the dark zones: 200, even.

So, basically: everywhere. Anyone.

And unless they could put a doctor in every rail car in the world, every gangway, every business and school - every day, all day - I didn't see how pointing out future victims two hours before they spread it would be any help at all.

-

I dreamt about dogs.

Dozens of dogs, sitting and standing, but not moving.

Looking at me.

I woke up shivering.

I'd slept maybe ten minutes. I turned up the radio.

-

Congress still wasn't reporting official numbers. Or any numbers at all, even though all the newspapers and radio networks were.

I remembered reading there were almost certainly victims in every state and commonwealth. They said Florida and the south-east were the worst.

The League Health Organization said they needed realistic numbers to track how the plague was spreading.

Constantinople still said the righteous would be safe, even though twelve of their archbishops and hundreds and thousands of priests had been reported dead in South America and Africa before the blackouts started. And ignoring that almost every state in the dark zones was - or had been - a theocracy.

Prussia was still maintaining its closed borders policy. It said it was too dangerous for it to allow free travel with so many countries denying the plague even existed. Without naming its neighbor, the Austrian Empire, of course.

Or us.

In the good ol' USC of A, doctors in thirty-three states and seven commonwealths had diagnosed and reported cause of death as plague. There'd been over ten thousand burials. And not a single 'official' case.

-

I listened to it because there wasn't anything else on so late. It didn't matter. There weren't any cures. Most doctors reported they couldn't even tell plague was there for certain until there was bleeding.

Most doctors also said the ones who said they ~could~ spot the plague in an examination were deluding themselves. Or lying.

-

The glow from the radio was too much like something in the dream... I couldn't remember what, but it suddenly felt that way.

I got up, even though I was even more tired than when I lay down. Maybe close to a crash again...

-

I turned the radio up so I could hear it in the kitchen. For the first time I'd been able to at least ~start~ something... filling the sink. Washing dishes usually relaxed me, but the black rectangle of the kitchen window made voices something I almost needed. I didn't have to listen.

I scratched at a tiny bump on a cup, then remembered it was a flaw in the glazing. Dip and rinse and into the drying rack.

Washing dishes or scrubbing the linoleum so I could relax was something I did pretty often. I beat each of the rugs and really cleaned the bathroom once a week, washed the windows every month and waxed the hardwood floors every two.

I knew I did a lot of things too often, but repeating things, doing them right, made me happy. Josie was a rarity. Maybe she'd been good for me, I thought.

Not just that she'd bitten me - but that she was something ~different~ that happened. That I had something to ~feel~ different about.

I finished the last cup and arranged it neatly with the others. Since the suds had gone flat anyway, I emptied out the wash water and left the cups to air dry for an hour, and then if I was still up I'd shave some more soap and do the plates and bowls...

I looked around the kitchen. I didn't want to get into cupboard cleaning....

The radio was talking East-West plague politics in my bedroom and I didn't want to go there. I could ignore what they said from the rest of the house.

My briefcase was open, on a kitchen chair.

I couldn't remember even carrying it home. I had the thought that it should still be sitting on the sidewalk, where I'd been bitten....

I looked over at the front door, suddenly sure it was unlocked.

I froze.

There was no noise. Nothing...

But I'd ~heard~.

The small, high window in the door was empty...

The front room blinds were closed. There was nothing.

But I could ~SEE~ there was something there!

Someone was there!

My breathing became the loudest thing in the house, drowning out the noise from my bedroom.... Anyone could hear it!

I could ~see~ the lock was on. The lever was over, secure. I'd even looked, before.

The base of the door had a draft, a crack, the seal worn and in need-

Someone ~was~ there! A cold wash - a splash of... something... some way I could feel... smell... the air...

... there!

I took quick, shallow breaths through my mouth and nose, both wide open, trying...

A noise! The front window!

BANG!

I hid!! My heart hammered in my chest - painful beyond belief!

Behind the kitchen wall, staring out the window... dark. Panting.

But I had to look... to see....

I inched to the corner...

BOOM!BOOM!-BOOM!!

I fell to my knees, my legs lifeless. I could feel tears running down my face...

"Jacob!"

I jerked like someone had hit me.

"Jacob! I know you can hear me! My name is Aya Maghuin and my brother Dane is with me."

She didn't yell. She spoke slowly and clearly. Like they talk to jumpers. I stared at the floor and... couldn't... feel it...

A man's voice.

"Jacob, open the door. We're not going to hurt you. You know that, Jacob. Open the door."

He hadn't shouted but I'd heard him, too. I knew they were both on the steps. Two of them.

And I was half-way across the front room before I was aware that I ~was~ going to let them in.

My panic had gone, like magic. But I was still scared, and I could hear them whispering.

A man, Dane... a woman shushing him to 'just wait'... Thieves wouldn't whisper so I could hear....

Murderers didn't shush....

The lock was a good one. It protected the whole house and was one of the reasons I'd bought the house, but it still had to be closed. And it was.

There, looking at it, locked, I still needed to touch the little lever, feel it in place. Press it ~quietly~ to 'locked,' even though it already was...

"Jacob! Just open it!"

I actually fell backwards, tripped by the small rug I put there for wet days. I caught myself, but I was ten feet back when I stopped backpedalling, hand against the wall, breathing in quick gasps.

"Jacob. We're not here to hurt you." The man. The lady was the mad one. "Well, ~I~ won't..."

There was a soft sound, like a... I couldn't tell, but between them. Physical. Then the man spoke again. A young man. He sounded young.

"Look, Jacob, I was just fooling... We have really, really important things you have to know, and right away."

I could hear him breathing. Sharp sounds, quick.

"Please, Jacob. You know I'm telling the truth. I wouldn't lie to you..."

And I did know. I knew they wouldn't hurt me.

I knew he wouldn't lie to me.

-

It was still the bravest thing I'd ever done, opening that lock. Letting them in.

I opened the lock, opened my house, stepped back... and let in two strangers.

In the night. Morning. Dark.

I stepped back and they stepped in. Where my little rug had been. The man shut the door. Locked it.

The lady put out her hand and smiled. Like we were doing something normal.

"Thank you, Jacob. I'm Aya Maghuin and this is my brother, Dane."

She said their name like 'Ma-kwin.' Like introducing herself to strangers was something she did.

Except her voice felt like the most... personal... contact I'd had in weeks. I thought that... even though I worked with dozens of people.

I finally looked up.

She was shorter than me and had dark brown hair, but without any styling like most women had. Just loose.

Her eyes were brown and large. I found myself staring at them, and then looking down when she did something... something else.

She had on a loose shirt, some kind with no buttons, and a loose skirt. And no shoes. Bare feet. Startled, I looked up again, and couldn't.

I found myself looking at the man, Dane....

I don't know, but my mouth probably fell open.

Dane was... well, he was... beautiful!

He had eyes... they were brown, like his sister's, and shiny... and he was a bit taller, maybe skinnier... and he had a ~dazzling~ smile.

His... he... he had dimples and... cheeks... and a tan and some freckles... and his... eyes...

He was the most beautiful ~anyone~ that I'd ever seen.

He put his hand out. And smiled even wider.

"Hi, Jacob. I'm Dane."

Then he reached down and took my hand and shook it, all by himself, because I wasn't. Couldn't.

But when he started to release me, I suddenly found myself holding on. Staring into his eyes and holding on... with both hands.

"Dane..."

He just smiled even bigger and said, "Yup. Dane. Great like the dog."

I thought maybe Aya laughed, too. I didn't care. Dane's smile was different when he was laughing... but it was still perfect.

He was just ~so~ beautiful!

Then he reached up and touched my face. With his fingers.

Wiped away some tears.

He was so ~beautiful~...

-

"Jacob."

Aya was in my easy chair. My reading chair. Dane was beside me.

"Jacob, listen to me. It's important."

I listened to her, vaguely annoyed. "What?"

"Listen!"

I didn't let go of Dane's hand, but I did sit up. Way more than ~vaguely ~ annoyed.

~She~ was annoyed, too, and I thought it might be at Dane... but she looked at me, then, and I got a different sort of frown.

"Look, Jacob. We have to tell you some things that are ~vitally~ important to you." She looked at me listening to her and then nodded. "So please pay attention?"

Dane was too. Paying attention. He pressed my hand. His sister looked at the both of us. At me. I listened because Dane was.

"Jacob. A... a dog bit you- "

"What?!" I couldn't believe they'd come about Josie!

"Please listen! In Harmony Park, six weeks ago. On Sunday, August 22nd. A dog bit you. Remember?"

I didn't know why, but I clutched harder at Dane's hand with both of mine and pulled it up. Not Josie. The park...

It was her dog!

"It was just an accident... it wasn't a bite... and I wasn't hurt! I didn't even try to find the owner..."

Aya looked unhappy. I held on even tighter. I felt like somehow I'd gotten Dane in trouble!

"I know. He was running and you were there." She made a tiny frown at Dane but he didn't seem to be in trouble... maybe. However he could be...

"Did his teeth bruise or cut you?"

I nodded. No. Yes. But it wasn't his fault...

A huge dog had come out of the bushes just a foot away and knocked me down. It almost fell down too, and then it sat and stared at me with big, brown, sad eyes. After maybe a few seconds it stretched closer and sniffed at me. Then it looked right in my face a second, yipped, and ran back into the bushes.

For some reason I hadn't been frightened, even though it was so big. It'd looked more shaken than I was. I even felt guilty.

It was weird, but mostly because I hadn't been afraid. I had a few red marks, and I rubbed off a tiny roll of skin, a sting. That was all.

"That was Dane."

He squeezed an apology. "Sorry."

What? Dane's dog? I tried to understand, because I knew she meant... Dane.

Himself.

But it was a dog. The same as... Josie. A big, leggy dog.

"Jacob. We didn't know you were bitten. He didn't smell any blood and if he had we would've come a lot earlier. We only found out because Dane had a dream about you, and we paid for a search..."

"How..." I didn't know what. How...

What they meant. It was all crazy talk.

But I could tell they weren't lying. And Dane was sorry. He put his other hand on mine, too.

"Jacob. Look at me." Aya.

I looked up at her. She was even more serious.

"We're Waere."

Waere?

"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...

-

End of Part One

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

Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

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.

-

I had way more strength when I woke up. And I could see, without even squinting and blinking.

I was still little, though. And not very strong. I couldn't seem to stand... or find my feet...

Aya still had me on her lap, and maybe that was part of my clumsiness, since her legs were all uneven and hard to figure out, and it felt like I was stuck in the middle.

She put me down after I guess she decided I wasn't going to get hurt lying on the floor. And that I might fall off the couch, since I seemed to have half-rolling nearly down.

Aya sounded like a radio play, almost... she kept up a running commentary, or maybe half of a conversation, because Dane and I weren't saying much back, even though he did make a lot of noises. As she lifted me down, she scolded him to be gentle and - whatever he did - ~not~ to eat me! He whined like she was no fun.

I was listening, kind of, but I wasn't really paying attention to Aya's words as much as how she sounded. And Dane too, so I knew what he meant as much as her.

It was further down to the floor than I was long. It was kind of dizzying, too... I felt my back feet for the first time, like that - doing something more than me trying to move them - then my body, elbows... and she let go...

I was alone. On the floor. Dane was far across the rug, even if he was closer-looking when I was up on in Aya's lap. But two feet away seemed a long way from the floor... And he was watching me. I wanted to watch him, too, the way he was, how he looked as a Waere, all dark browns and grey and black... I wanted to go over and smell him better and taste him.

But I couldn't stand up. I couldn't even get my back legs to crawl!

I still couldn't figure out where my back feet even ~were~, even though I could feel them! Like I couldn't... figure out how I... was... connected. I didn't have enough coordination to lift my ~head~ where I wanted to when I tried! It went ~sideways~, too!

And I wasn't strong enough! So MANY things were going wrong! I could see Dane just ~there~... and I was STUCK!

Just when I began to cry in frustration, Aya reached down and grabbed me - my skin - behind my neck and shoulders, and back... along my back... It...

I was standing! Or ~up~! I was ~standing~! My skin felt like it was sliding up off my whole body, or tight... but I was UP!

Dane laughed and kind of lurched over to plonk down in my face. His front legs were spread out both sides of me, elbows down, with his rear and tail high in the air. I could see him all! He licked my whole chin and mouth and nose hello. Or Hi, shorty!

And even with his chin just a few inches above the rug, his eyes met mine. I was a tiny. I was a shorty...

But Dane was laughing at me. For me. His eyes and ears and tail had all the fun in the world in them, all the places to run and play and smell and all the things we could do! His breath and the way he moved and his... scent...

I don't know what or how Aya saw, but she helped (lifted) me to Dane. He dropped his rear and rolled over onto his side and Aya put me on his neck and face and helped hold me there. Held me.

Dane's fur was so much warmer and softer than Aya's legs, and the hair!! Licking and smelling and touching and biting... I ~wallowed~ in him!

And he MOVED! I ~loved~ moving!!

I yipped my joy when he rolled over and dumped me on the floor and pretended to bite with his huge teeth! I wormed and squirmed in his mouth as he growled and shook me with tiny, gentle motions until I couldn't ~imagine~ a better feeling!

Then Aya got down on her knees and started with the tickling and ~human~ growling!

-

I ended up peeing on my rug.

I think Aya almost did, too.

-

As we played, I found a little coordination, and a tiny bit more strength.

I listened to Aya more, too. She still talked to both of us like she knew we understood, and I guess Dane did, but I mostly listened to the sound of her, except I heard more of her words, too. About how I was learning so fast. And what games she'd played with Dane when he first changed, and what she remembered from hers...

And I found out Dane was still a big puppy.

-

As suddenly as I'd changed, I was back.

I was trying to see, or maybe bite my rear leg-

Blackness- like a flash... a dark flash?

Or wind? Like a fast train ~rushing~ by. Not exactly, and not wind, or any noise, but as if the ~air~ surprised me, if that was even possible? I was back, human, laying on the floor between the two of them.

And I was weaker than I'd ever been in my life. Lives.

~Paralysis~

... tired...

-

Dane's nose was right beside mine when I woke up.

Before I opened my eyes, I knew he'd been there a long time, his scent strong, over everything... my shoulder and side were warm where he'd laid, rested his head...

I managed to roll my head an inch his way. He gave me a little lick. I gave a little smile. He smelled sad.

I peeled my eyes open. He gave me another. He was there. I was safe.

Aya was on her knees on my other side and she gently rolled my head back to look at her. Or so she could see my eyes.

"Welcome back, dear... that was so quick! You only changed for an hour or so and you slept half of that. Do you feel okay? You're so tired..."

I couldn't talk. I could think, sort of, but I couldn't talk. It was more than I had in me. I could hardly listen...

Just like when I was a puppy, I blinked.

-

Aya was gone when I finished my blink.

Dane was there instead, his head on my shoulder again, nose against my chin. I remembered Aya telling him... something...

He nudged me. I hummed or breathed noisily, and he huffed.

He was worried. And I was boring if all I did was sleep.

-

Aya returned with a glass of milk. She even brought the bottle.

After figuring out the best way, I suppose, she sat on the floor beside me and supported my head.

I drank almost the whole quart.

Dane licked up what I spilled. What Aya spilled. It didn't matter... It tasted great...

The rug needed cleaning anyway.

-

Like when I was a puppy, my strength came back pretty quickly. In a half-hour or so, I managed to at least roll onto my side and cuddle around Dane.

I got strong enough to lay on the floor. Aya brought me a pillow.

-

I dozed a little, but each time I nodded off, strange sensations woke me. Smells, sounds... things I had no experience with. I couldn't stop feeling my face, what it was touching, the tiny hairs... it was all too new to ignore.

And besides all that, Dane was there, and sleeping with a hundred and thirty-plus pound Waere was ~also~ too new to be ignored.

So I rested on the rug, Dane snoring loudly under my arm. I'd open my eyes just to be sure it wasn't a dream, to see his fur that I could already feel and smell...

I wasn't normal. Aya said my change wasn't like anything they'd ever heard of, and they were worried.

She'd called their parents. They said they'd send the Fenrir as soon as he got there, if he thought he could after driving all night.

The king was coming to my house. He was hurrying, because something was wrong with me...

I felt like I should've been scared of everything. Of that.

I wasn't a big, powerful Waere like they said I would be. Being helpless. Little.

I could barely lift my head, an arm... I couldn't even sit up.

Aya'd said I was a girl, too. A female pup. I was. I could smell it. I wasn't like Dane.

And I was a man again when I changed back, and Aya thought that was wrong, too... some way...

But when I nuzzled Dane's soft, warm neck, none of it seemed too bad.

-

Even with the radio off, it was warm... no... I wasn't in bed...

I buried my face in Dane's neck and breathed in.

I could smell Aya. And someone else. Almost more than Aya's scent, that was everywhere... another man was all over him. I took a long time finding all of it I could reach without moving...

I could smell Dane like he was human, too, almost... like part of the feeling of him was both... I could feel him, too...

He was less than a year old, Aya'd said. Less than a year since he'd changed...

I was less than a day old. Hours.

I finally fell asleep. The last thing I remembered was how Dane felt smooth, too...

-

By the time the Fenrir was supposed to arrive I could just ~barely~ sit up on my own. They'd both helped me to the couch and I was sitting. Just like a grown-up. See?

The Fenrir had called and said he was on his way, though I'd apparently slept through the ringing. But he was on his way, after driving all night. And wanted to talk me since I'd changed back so fast. Aya said.

To preserve my dignity, what little I had, I had pants. A pair of light twill summer trousers Aya'd dug out of my closet that I remembered being better-fitting... and just a singlet, because Aya said we still had to worry about if I changed into a more full-grown Waere again until we knew for sure.

Or something like that. More coherent. I was too dopey from lack of enough sleep to really understand. And changing into a Waere, I supposed... But it was just eight in the morning. Or nine. It was nine. Start of a new day.

Aya had coffee perking. Toast toasting. Rise and shine...

It was Friday, so there'd been ~two~ quarts on the step, a pound of butter and a pint of cream. We were all set for the king.

I ate in the front room, on the couch, and Dane poked at me whenever he wanted a bite. He didn't like coffee much, but he still had a lick now and then, mostly because it was wet.

Aya ate at the table and told me a bit about the Fenrir as she had her toast. That he was Irish, even though he didn't have much of an accent the few times she'd met him. That he lived up in Fort Athabasca and must've come down through the Fraser... and that was a six hour drive in the day, just to their parents...

-

Dane lifted his head from my lap and looked at the door long before I could hear anything. He stretched up to lick my face. Be brave.

After feeling so brave lying on the floor, I seemed to have run out. I was scared about meeting someone I could tell even Aya and Dane were a little nervous about.

Aya and Dane felt like they belonged. That they were a part of my home already, and that was a bit frightening too. But just in a weird, intellectual way.

In a more real sense, in my feelings for both of them, the way I wanted to touch Dane and hear that Aya was close by... I hadn't ever been more comfortable with anyone than I was with them.

I liked the way they argued and made up. The way they were almost the same age but Aya was really five years older. And that Dane was just a bit older than me... I'd never had a brother or sister.

They were ~family~. How could they be family in just hours?

Just because Dane ~made~ me? And Aya was his sister? Or that they were there when I was... born? It felt like more than that. More than anything.

Having a brother and sister felt like a part of me was healed that I didn't even know was hurt.

I wanted to introduce them to my mother. It felt like she'd love them...

But Mr. Garret Conaan, the Fenrir-king-leader of the Waere in all of Oregon was just scary.

He was ~their~ king... not my family. It felt bad that a stranger was coming into my home. It frightened me.

Being as weak as a kitten made it feel terrible.

Whatever, all the reasons, and despite feeling so good about Dane touching me, I was actually shaking when I finally heard the sound of a car, the tires crunching to a stop. A metal door, closing, hard shoes... on the steps.

Dane whined.

Aya opened the door as he got there, and even if she seemed nervous before, she smiled a real smile. "Mr. Connan. Please come in."

A draft of air-

He smelled like woods and Waere - I could tell they weren't just him - and car and... woods... people...

And he was inside a... a ghost. A ghost was around him.

A Waere ghost.

I didn't understand how I saw it. Knew it. It wasn't there - and it was.

He was a short, ordinary man, with a grey beard and mustache. And he was a Waere, too. Strong and... smaller than Dane, or shorter... with white-grey fur and face and legs...

I couldn't think what to do.

When Dane whined again I realized I'd hunched over and was hugging his neck. I loosened my arms and he poked up for a quick lick. Be brave. It's okay.

I wasn't okay, but Dane was right...

I sat up a little, but kept both hands clutched in his neck ruff.

Garret Conaan the Fenrir was looking at us when we looked back. He was serious, but he almost had a smile.

And the invisible part of him was... it was friendlier than he looked? He looked like someone I shouldn't be afraid of...

Aya took a small step away from him. She was smiling for real. I realized that they'd been talking, that she ~did~ like him, even from just the few times they'd met.

"Fenrir, this is Jacob O'Hara."

He smiled at us. Me. A real, you-could-tell he wasn't just putting it on smile. Both of him. All of him.

"Jacob. It's good to meet you. Please call me Garret."

He had a normal voice. Maybe even one I wouldn't remember from someone else. He stepped closer and held out his hand.

I felt a wash of skin-shivering ~energy~, like goosebumps - but warm! And his... ghost... he put out his paw too!!

Dane licked up at the air under the Fenrir's hand and whined a funny, breathy way. Then he kept his head down, with his eyes rolled up to watch us, back and forth.

Fenrir's hand was still out. He still had the same real smile. His ghost tilted his head the tiniest bit and twitched his ears.

And all at once, that energy-sensation stopped being scary. It felt good and warm. It was always warm...

Dane moved. He kept his eyes on the Fenrir, but he struggled around on the cushions and stepped on me so he could sit up.

Aya liked him, but then I'd thought maybe Dane didn't. That he might even be afraid of him, and I guess I took my cues from him. But he wasn't. He liked the Fenrir!

I suddenly had the strange feeling that maybe Dane was thinking the same things about ~me~...

The Fenrir's hand was still out. And he had a look with his smile. Like he'd wait. Like he knew he was scary, and it wasn't my fault. His ghost was almost laughing like Dane did.

Dane stretched out and licked his hand for real. A big, friendly hello.

Fenrir brushed his fingers across the top of his nose and smiled at him. "Hello, Dane. Beat any hares yet?"

Dane's tail moved against the couch and he smiled. At me, too. Like he beat ~all~ the hares.

I wanted to stop and feel the warm ghost-paw more, but I was human.

Fenrir's human hand was cool. Smooth. He was as old as Stonewall - older than anyone I'd ever met.

And he cared about me. And Dane and Aya. All of us.

He showed me his... his love. Like I could smell him...

When he let my hand go, I knew he'd protect me. Knew he'd die for me.

And I knew I'd do whatever I could for him, to make him proud. I wanted his... affection. I wanted him to be happy.

My father died when I was twelve. I remembered loving Dad that way... I remembered his hugging me, like the feeling of Fenrir's warm ghost...

The Fenrir - Garret - had the funniest expression.

And I had my strength back. I was awake.

-

"How long did the actual change take?" The Fenrir was asking everything he could think of about me. He was still eating, too. He'd driven all night and hadn't even eaten.

"I think it was about like ours. But he changed so much, shrinking down and then back to full-sized, both times... it felt like faster... but I think I was just surprised." Aya was doing all the talking, except when he asked about my feelings. What things felt like.

After the Fenrir had sat down to eat some breakfast and Aya'd started telling him all about everything, Dane convinced me that playing was more fun than sitting around...

I still listened, though, and when they called at us and asked something we always stopped. Or when we knocked something over or Aya said we couldn't run around food.

We were resting right then and Dane was showing me places where it felt good to scratch him by trial and error, with silly panting and fake snarls for feedback. And he was being a strict teacher and nipping at me whenever I listened to Aya and the Fenrir and didn't pay enough attention to him, and he missed every time. Nyah!

I was good at finding the ticklish places too, because Aya'd already showed me on me. On my puppy body.

"... but she... it was hard to tell for sure because she seemed to take a long time to completely wake up and I don't know if that's just because she was so little? Like how sleepy some dog puppies are? And she took ~forever~ to open her eyes-"

"It was too bright." I added. Garret smiled at me and Aya huffed. Dane purred. Or whatever you'd call that sound. Happy grumbling? There was a spot in front of his hip he just loved.

"Anyway, it was maybe just a minute, and she made a wail so it wasn't just tired or sleeping. I think she really fainted."

I remembered that! Dane almost ate my nose! So I decided to bite him! I dove at his throat with no warning and growled as I tried to get enough of the loose skin in my mouth. And he started to howl and thrash and wave his paws in the air! I was ~winning~!!

I growled LOUDER! as I got my hands in his ruff (and one in his ear... sorry!) and my teeth in ~just~ the right spot on his neck... and Dane made one more really funny noise- and went limp.

Totally dead...

I sat up. Fast. I didn't know what... I thought I'd hurt him, taken the game too far... or maybe he hadn't been playing! I didn't know!

Maybe Waere didn't do what I'd been doing!!

I checked if I'd hurt him with my teeth. His throat was okay... it looked okay... His heart was beating... and he... but he stayed still! Unconscious! I was afraid to move him.

He wasn't breathing! And he was quivering! I started to get ~really~ worried... and touched him... wiggled...

"Dane? Dane!"

There was chuckling from behind me. I looked back and was somewhere between completely scared and getting mad he'd not help, when Fenrir grinned at me.

"Caught a bear?"

I looked at him..? What?

Under my hands, Dane moved.

~Really~ moved!

He did a fast twist that had his front legs under him while his rear were still the other way and half under me! A moment later ~he~ was on ~me~ with his teeth around my throat! All the way past my ears! Shoving me back and down!

He snarled like a killer, his breath hot and moist!

(Well, ~drooly~ more than moist...) But lots of breath! And warm!

And as the final act of complete domination, he put a wide paw on my stomach... and pushed. Right where he ~knew~ it would hurt!

I couldn't help it. I HOWLED!

I was still laughing and gasping and rolling around after Dane was just sitting there doing his eye-laugh and smile "I won!" thing and Fenrir and Aya laughed at me.

That's when I changed again.

It was ~more~ than the last time. Like every feeling, every sensation in my entire body changed completely - in an instant. It wasn't as gentle as a wind. And brighter.

My vision changed. It was white, blurry... And all the colors were still there but they were different. I ~saw~ differently.

Someone pulled at my head and I could see!

I saw Aya, changed. Her eyes more, her mouth. I knew what her hands said as she folded my singlet, what she meant as she kneeled closer, how her body... I saw so much I stopped seeing anything but her eyes...

Movement

Dane! ~His~ eyes! And the ~shapes~ in his face... his ears....

Everything ~meant~ something! His smile was a ~hundred~ times more beautiful!!

He was more himself than he'd ever been as a human. All of him....

And I could see all of him, almost...

Dane turned.

Fenrir!

When he sat forward I couldn't help myself. I cried in fear that when he touched me I'd DIE from it!

He was so HUGE!

I think I shrieked. The sound hurt my ears. But he still touched me.

His hand was soft. He was gentle. It wasn't more, it was less. His paw...

He didn't move, he just held his hand so I could get used to it.

But his paw was ~inside~ me!

After a few moments, he pressed down, a tiny pressure from all of his giant hand...

And somehow I could feel my new body better. Put the pieces of... all those feelings together... or more together....

Like I could see Dane, I could see the Fenrir better, too. His ghost was the right size... just him, just right...

I licked at his leg, and there was nothing there to taste... mostly...

He stopped pressing. I looked over more and saw his finger was in reach instead and licked ~that~. He tasted exactly like he smelled, though his Waere smell was better. I tried to sniff at it...

He pulled his hand and paw away and sat back on his heels.

I stared. He looked more together in that position. Legs and arms and hands and paws in line, even if his knees were ~really~ different...

Then Fenrir leaned right over me and I rolled, trying to see it all, the wonder of it... and he lifted me up. With the human hands. I couldn't see his other legs... how they fit... He lifted me right up to his face.

I tried to lick his mouth and again there was almost nothing! Even though it was as real as everything! It tasted like him, too!

He held me further away, so I couldn't quite reach, and I looked into his eyes that were the only things in the same place, and he looked at me. He had a serious expression. Right at me.

He almost looked like he was going to growl with both faces, but he wasn't. He wouldn't. I stretched out and dared another, better lick. There!

And ~he~ licked his nose too! And wrinkled it! He showed all his front teeth... and his ears went ~sideways~!

Fenrir suddenly reared his head back and opened his huge, giant mouth, all fangs and teeth...

and ... sneezed!!

Both of him!

It was ~WONDERFUL~!!

-

End of Part Three

Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

He almost looked like he was going to growl with both faces, but he wasn't. He wouldn't. I stretched out and dared another, better lick. There!

And ~he~ licked his nose too! And wrinkled it! He showed all his front teeth... and his ears went ~sideways~!

Fenrir suddenly reared his head back and opened his huge, giant mouth, all fangs and teeth

and ... sneezed!!

Both of him!

It was ~WONDERFUL~!!

-

"She sees me in both forms. Don't you?"

He didn't stop wiggling my leg while he talked with Aya, and occasionally to me. He twisted and bent my joints in ways I couldn't ~begin~ to keep up with. But I could feel how my leg and... shoulder moved... inside...

I smiled yes at him. He'd never asked before if I saw him like that before, too... I tried to remember to tell him next time.

"I don't understand... both ways?"

"I don't either. But when I sneezed, it was because she touched me. I felt her almost as if I was in Waere form... even though I wasn't."

"But-" Aya looked at me. "But even if she can see you... how does that..?"

"Make me feel what she sees? I have no idea." Fenrir smiled at me and moved my legs like they were waving, or conducting an orchestra.

"And I don't... know... why... she's a pup! ... or fe! male! ... or weighs less! ... or is... so... fun! ... to... play! ... with!" He grinned with each little wave and stretch and made big eyes at me.

But I stopped feeling what he was doing and saying and whined at how he sounded, or felt or something... something bad.

He bent over, almost straight down, and his Waere licked through my nose just before he touched my nose with his human one. I didn't think he knew he did that, either.

"Don't worry, little one. We'll figure it out."

He squeezed my legs close together and made a little smile... and it was the same, all three ways.

-

I could almost stand. I ~couldn't~... but I knew how. If I just... could.

I knew where my legs were supposed to go. Or feel like. Not just under me, but how to ~stand~!

"She'd learning faster than any dog puppy would... or getting stronger, faster..."

But they wouldn't!

"I don't think she's developing muscle or stamina. More like she was exhausted. Perhaps it's hard to change size that much. It'd be a powerful spell, if it was just that..."

Aya or Fenrir would take turns holding me up and I'd... hold... steady... and feel. my. legs.

"But she's been stronger the two times since she changed... I think better each time..."

When they let go... I'd be still... ~careful~... and then shiver...

"So it might not be a simple size and weight effect..."

... wobble...

"Or is she even the same size in human form? I mean, nothing about her is usual..."

... and crumple.

"Do ~you~ think maybe she's changed? You saw her before she even knew."

Usually one leg at a time, but sometimes all of them at once. That it was only a few inches to the rug was the only good part, since if my front legs went first, I went in nose-first.

"I..." Aya looked at me. I could feel her.

It was a nose dive I was recovering from just then. It felt like my back legs might still be up...

"Since she changes weight and size by over a hundred pounds every time, both ways, a small change might not even be noticeable."

I managed to get an... elbow... and splayed my... right... paw! out!! for balance!

"Where does all her mass go?"

Then I couldn't get my left leg out from under me. And when I tried pushing with my right, I felt myself begin to roll...

"Or a better question might be, where does ~she~ come from, and where does ~he~ go?"

I thought if I could maybe figure out how to walk my back legs... up a bit...

"Or come back from, yeah."

If they were even up.

"Is he any different than when you first saw him? As a man?"

Dane chose that moment to poke me in my rear with his nose so that I kind of spiraled down around my leg under me. I ~had~ kept them up! I stared at them, up in the air just then, but to see if I could figure out where they'd been when I couldn't see...

"Completely." Aya chuckled. "He was all stiff and afraid to show he was scared. Now I can hardly tell him apart from her..."

Dane laughed so hard at me he slipped on the hardwood with a back paw and almost followed me.

"Silly oaf..."

I heard Fenrir laughing, too. And the sound of happy panting.

I looked at Aya, but she was just her.

Weird.

-

When Dane was mad he moved a jerky way, with his knees almost locked and his spine all hunched.

He stood over me, stiff like that.

He stared at me with his eyes just slits, and his nose pulled back as tight as his ears. His fangs were huge!

I tried, but all I could do was try to make myself smaller. It was hopeless...

In a flash he knocked me over onto my back and bit down, teeth entirely around my throat! The snarling was enough for a ~pack~ of maddened Waere!

I wailed my mortal terror with my last, final... breath...

"Dane! Stop that!"

In an instant he froze- and rolled his eyes up at his sister. I did too. My own eyes.

"We're trying to ~talk~ here! If you must kill her, you heartless beast, drag her into the bedroom first. And please close the door."

I looked back up at him and he smiled at me. I started wailing again as he snarled and grabbed my throat a bit tighter... and dragged me into the other room. To my ~doom~.

I hoped he was going to teach me to snarl like he could... but only after he killed me some more.

~That~ was still way too fun to stop!

-

He sniffed at my bottom, under my tail.

I didn't know what I felt about that. It seemed sort of... rude. At the same time, he was Dane, and he wasn't rude...

He'd put me up on my bed and he was sitting beside it, so we were at a level, and eye to eye. Or eye to ear, when he did that.

Then he stood and turned and I had a bed-edge view of ~his~ rear.

-

It was just him. There were things I didn't understand that were really strong, and still didn't mean as much as even the thinnest odor of his breath or skin...

I put them all together as "Dane".

Then he licked my nose and I could almost understand how ~he~ saw me....

-

Dane wasn't soft, there, but his fur was, if that made any sense.

Snuggling into the angles and shapes of his ribs and elbows and listening to his heart... was about the most comfortable, comforting place I'd ever been. A safe place to think...

I was a girl to him. Both ways, since he could smell me that way in both forms. And I was a baby to him, too.

But I felt normal. Different than I could remember... and changing sure felt different! - but I felt like my body still was right, somehow.

Maybe it was just that being a Waere was... it was so new I couldn't compare it to being a human. Like everything was just the way it was, and comparing it was no use.

But playing before, too, when I was human, I could only remember feeling the same...

Or I couldn't remember ~thinking~ I was any different, anyway...

Dane made a long, deep growl. Grumble.

Almost before I could tell he was asleep, I was too.

-

"Hey there, sleepyhead."

Dane. I smiled and started to lick his face and missed - and only then realized he was back in human form.

Like I was.

"Weird, hunh? I get mixed up, too, sometimes." Dane smiled and leaned in for a lick and instead kissed my nose. I smiled too, then. It was exactly the same, inside.

"Morning."

I stopped smiling. We were in my bed. Face to face in a bed too small for two people to sleep in, and I could feel him against me, down there...

He was holding me from falling out, arm around my waist, and we were naked. My hands were on his chest.

Touching him, feeling... felt wonderful, and warm and just right... except my penis.

I was a man again, and in bed with a man.

Who... I loved.

Too much new stuff. I felt my face crumple like my legs always did.

"Hey! What's the matter?" Dane held me tighter and touched our cheeks. "Nothing's wrong... you're safe... and you had a good sleep, and Aya and Fenrir are out getting us some supper."

He held me tight for a few seconds.

"Is something wrong?"

Yes, of course something was. But I couldn't figure out what. What was first. What was most wrong.

That I was with a naked man who I wanted to stay with...

That I was suddenly fey. That I was Waere. A werewolf, even if that was an insult.

I was a fey Waere...

I huddled down and found myself licking his shoulder, moving so I could get my arms around and hug him closer.

Dane was a fey Waere... and ~he~ loved me, kinda...

He whispered all sorts of things, I guess to make me feel better, but I didn't hear.

With my ear against his neck, his pulse...

I just smelled him, and listened to his heart, and licked, and tried to relax.

Before, when I was a Waere, I had it figured out better...

But I ~was~ a Waere. Even then.

I couldn't see myself the way I saw Dane, but I felt everything the same.

-

"I just don't understand..."

Dane breathed. His body was like soft music. Calming. Tiny, quiet feelings with no names. Like me. Something with no name...

"Which don't you understand? Out of the millions..." He understood, too. But I needed to ask about him. And me and him.

I thought and thought... and almost started crying again at the thought that I might not be able to say anything without hurting him.

"I'm not really fey..."

I turned my face away and whispered it into his shoulder. It felt bad to turn that way. To be afraid to see his eyes when I said it.

"That's okay." He kissed my hair. "But I am. Is that okay?"

He kissed my hair again. I nodded. Of course it was. He was Dane. I knew all about the other man. His scent.

"We're not going to have sex. I'm not attracted to you that way, and I already have a man I'm in love with... and I bet you're not attracted to me that way either, are you."

I had to think, but I mumbled no... He smiled into my hair.

"Don't be sorry for being who you are. I love you just the way you are, and you'll love my husband. His name is Tony Robinson."

I nodded, still turned away and afraid to say anything about the other... thing.

"Oh...!"

He snorted a chuckle and bit my hair a little, shaking my head.

"It's morning, silly. I need to pee." He laughed.

I was too embarrassed to laugh.

-

I couldn't let go of him. Literally. More than needing to be near him, like before, I ~couldn't~. Taking my hand away or moving so we weren't touching was impossible. I was sure it would even hurt!

Dane thought it might be I was just really stressed, or maybe afraid I'd change and be alone? Or maybe it was a 'Dane's so attractive he's magnetic' thing.

He said he'd always suspected the last one, too.

-

By the time we were clean and dressed, Dane was almost in pain from laughing at me.

He was in the same loose stuff he'd worn over and I was in another singlet and some beach-style shorts that I'd never worn. They almost wouldn't stay up.

I was still way too warm.

Showering had been almost normal. Small tub. Steamy heat. Beautiful man. Drying each other. Dressing. Tickling.

It was ~all~ almost like normal, except having to use the toilet in the same room as another man when I couldn't lose touch.

Hence: laughing. Dane had very little shame about his body or its functions. None, really.

I had a really annoying new blush.

-

He still loved tea, and I had a better sense of smell. And tea smelled ~horrible~!

-

We ended up on opposite ends of the couch with our feet up in the middle and touching. I had a glass of milk and Dane was hugging a mug of steaming turpentine.

Just as I settled in and began trying to twine my toes in his a different way, Dane's ears twitched and swiveled.

"They're here."

I listened, and after a moment I thought I could hear what he'd noticed. Or how ~those~ tire and motor sounds were Fenrir's, like last night. Morning.

I looked back at Dane, a question occurring to me again. Something urgent.

"Do I call, him, um 'Fenrir,' or Garret, or ~Mister~ Fenrir...? And what language is it? I've never heard anything that sounds like 'Fen-rir'."

I knew I'd called him at least two or three wrong things already, but Dane smiled at me like it was a good question, and flexed his toes.

"Well, I'm not sure, but I think Dad said it was old Celtic, and it was a rank. And he said he had a regular name too: Alfaarr."

"Alfar-ar... Alf-aarrrr..."

I liked it. It sounded like him. Alfaaar. Alf-aar. Fenrir Alfaarr. I said it over and over in my head. It wasn't a normal name, but neither was Dane, or Aya...

"So is Fenrir... like 'Captain' or something? How did Garret come from Alfaarr? Is it his real name?"

"I paid for it, it's mine."

I almost sloshed milk all over the couch. I hadn't even noticed the door opening!

"Stay there, stay there... we'll put this on plates." He touched my shoulder and then went to the kitchen. Aya smiled hi too as she walked by. It smelled like barbecue.

Dane made a face at me, like "Oh, wow, are ~you~ in trouble!" I even believed him for a second before he cracked up and Aya yelled at him to stop teasing!

"Yes, stop teasing, Dane, or I'll tell a story I heard about a young Waere and a blackberry patch... and some hair clippers." He sounded like he was smiling.

Dane made a hilarious face and I almost drenched myself. Again again.

"And whatever you want to call me is okay. I might even change my name back to Alfaarr... it's been a long time since it was a problem..."

-

Even with the cartons on the counter, we all just barely fit around my little table. Alfaarr made us sit down and pretended to serve us like a butler. He bumped and shoved his way around and made up fake manners that were almost as funny as Dane.

By the time he sat down we were laughing at anything anyone said.

"I shall now make a toast to celebrate this occasion." He smiled at each of us and raised his glass. We couldn't stop smiling and giggling, but he grinned, too.

"To youth and age together, the finest spice."

He smiled at just me then, "And to you, our wondrous host, a blessing from my distant youth: Gum bi thu, a naoinein bhig, fallain, sona air feadh do bheatha gu leir."

I didn't know what to say or think, but Dane leaned over and whispered. "I think he said that the beef smells funny and you should give me yours... just to be safe."

Aya made a noise, but Alfaarr laughed.

"I wished you luck and health... but I ~should~ have warned you about bad companions and worse advice. And ~you~..." he funny-glared at Dane.

-

"I was born Alfaarr Berger." Fenrir smiled at us. "And that was a ~long~ time ago, a long time indeed."

I wanted to ask. I ~so~ wanted to ask!

He licked his nose and I had to make a face trying not to laugh. He grinned like he knew why, too.

"Over a thousand years ago. In northern Ireland."

-

"I don't know why I'm telling you lot this! It's long gone, the cause of a hundred blackened eyes, and better forgotten! So don't you tell anyone!" He made a great fierce face that was spoiled by his Waere laughing.

"Alfaarr, in the language of the fierce Vikings, means..." He snarled like he was going to scare us.

"House elf."

Aya covered her mouth.

"You be quiet. I get enough grief from these two." Fenrir smiled and almost winked, but I was too close and I think he knew it, so he huffed me back.

"My father was Norse and my mother was a local woman, and my name might've been normal back in Bergen or Scotland, but my friends gave me no end of it..." He smiled in memory.

"Father said it was a lucky name, and that I'd be a better father someday because of it..." He grinned at all of us.

It was a really odd grin. It looked happy, but wasn't. In the middle of saying just that, he changed. Even his ears were back.

"Mayhaps I indeed had a magic name, or maybe because my da truly prophesied it... but I ~was~ a lucky father, once."

He looked so old. His human face was almost expressionless, but his real one was... old. I didn't know why... all his hair and whiskers and all were fine, but I could see how tired he was, like that. His eyes were... cloudy, maybe.

But he still had that sad smile.

"A hundred or so years after my father was gone, I found myself Fenrir - den-mother to a motley little pack of Waere - my own and more than a few foundlings." He made a better smile at me. I tried to smile back, but he breathed no. He looked at Aya and Dane.

"And since I was ~Fenrir~, which meant a lot more in those days, I made the decisions. Such as whether to lead them off to glorious, historic, honorable battle... or order them all to tuck tail and follow me in a cowardly escape..."

-

It was the Cleansing. He said it just like that: they escaped from the Cleansing. Like it was normal. Nothing important. Like how his real face was so sad and his human one could smile, almost.

I let go of Dane for the first time all that day and sat on the floor beside Fenrir's legs. After he didn't say anything, I hugged them and rested my head on his knees.

-

It was a long time before I could say anything.

"If..."

I closed my eyes against the feeling of him.

He called them a... pack... and he was their father...

Everyone knew the story of how Saint Patrick came to Ireland and walked through all the villages seeking out the devil. And all the werewolves in Ireland were found and killed. Chained to carved stone posts and burned. Six hundred and sixty-six of them, the number of the beast.

The Cleansing of Ireland.

They said just sixty-six soldiers and priests died in the Cleansing. Less than one-in-ten, sacrificed unto the Lord...

They still drew the devil as a wolf, even if everyone knew the Waere were a myth.

Like everyone thought the Cleansing was, really. Just a Sunday school story.

Even with the dozens of ~real~ stone posts, all carved and with iron rings in them, all over Ireland.

He saved his family from that. A thousand years ago.

"So... Dane and Aya... are... your family?"

I heard Aya sigh, and Dane move.

He put his hand on my neck. It didn't send any shivers or anything. It was warm.

"They are, little one. All the Waere are my family."

I closed my eyes. I remembered his huge, gentle hands... I reached up and took his paw so I could feel it better.

It was almost as big as his hand. The pads were rough, but with the softest, most wonderful hairs between them... and his nails were cool and long... and sharp.

I held it against my cheek.

-

End of Part Four

Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

"So... Dane and Aya... are... your family?"

I heard Aya sigh, and Dane move.

He put his hand on my neck. It didn't send any shivers or anything. It was warm.

"They are, little one. All the Waere are my family."

I closed my eyes. I remembered his huge, gentle hands... I reached up and took his paw so I could feel it better.

It was almost as big as his hand. The pads were rough, but with the softest, most wonderful hairs between them... and his nails were cool and long... and sharp.

I held it against my cheek.

-

"My bite is gone!" I was amazed I hadn't noticed before, but my ankle where Josie had bitten me didn't have any marks on it. I looked as closely as I could, but there wasn't anything...

My hair looked different too...

"What bite? I thought-"

"A little dog bit me yesterday, Thursday, on the way home from work. She, I had to bandage it and everything..." It really was gone. I couldn't even feel it like a healed cut. I looked up at Aya and Alfaarr.

"But it's completely healed up." I wanted to ask if being Waere meant I healed..? Alfaarr leaned closer and gestured.

"Can I see, please? You say it was a bleeding cut?" I sat beside him on the arm of the chair and managed to lift my leg up and sideways. He took my ankle and examined at it. I pointed and rubbed the area with my finger.

"Right about there. There were three holes that bled a lot and I needed a pretty big bandage..." It felt completely normal. But it wasn't really ~that~ big a bandage, either... Josie'd been a pretty small dog... Alfaarr kept looking at my leg but he sat back up.

"Do you have any other... do you have any scars?" He looked at me. Away from my leg. I had to think. Of course I did.

"My hand has a burn and my... "

My hand didn't have the scar... from when... ever since I was little...

I looked at it. Stared.

Ever since my father'd taken me to get my broken hand bones healed I'd had a burn scar on the back of my right hand. A half-circle shaped curve of white scar. It wasn't hard or a bump, but it was a scar, almost an inch across.

And it was gone. I turned my hand over. The little scar on my middle finger was gone. I looked at my left arm. The small scars from scrapes and little cuts...

"They're all gone..."

I looked up at Alfaarr and almost felt like crying. It felt like my world had changed. Like I wasn't ~me~ anymore.

Then I heard myself. What I'd just thought.

"All your scars are gone?" Alfaarr interrupted me before I laughed, or whatever I might've done. I looked for a few more I thought I remembered. I nodded.

"I think so... all the ones I can remember... I can't see them anymore, and there was a big one on my hand, here." I drew the old shape with a finger. "It was a burn, or the doctor said it was like one, from a healing when I was little..."

"What happened? Why didn't the doctor heal it so there wasn't a scar? Was it really bad?" Dane looked like he was thinking about something else, too.

"I remember I smelled old blood when we arrived..."

"Yeah, I do too." Aya looked at my leg. "And you didn't have a cut when you changed the first time... but I think..." She stood up and headed towards the hallway. "Wait a minute. I want to check something."

Dane and Alfaarr both took deep breaths. I realized what they were doing and took one myself.

I could smell... well, tea and coffee and us... toast and milk and urine... and... it was too hard to tell what all the little smells were...

"It was in her pants." Aya had a small bundle of bandage-tape and gauze pad.

"That's what I had on my leg. The lady with the dog had a first aid kit in her purse."

"Well, it has dried blood on it. And your pants smell of the dog and your blood, too." She grinned at me, not funny. "And your leg doesn't have a mark."

I didn't know what to think. They weren't acting like it was a normal thing.

"You don't heal? When you change?"

Aya shook her head. Dane said, "Nope."

Alfaarr put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me down, half off the arm of the chair into his side and hip.

"I heal a great deal with each change, little one. It's why I've lived so long."

He looked at me, really serious.

I remembered that he was over a thousand years old.

I blinked.

-

Alfaarr and Dane just had to 'share' me. Thirty minutes each. Aya said. I was too tired to argue, and couldn't anyway... But she was really bossy, even with Fenrir!

I just wanted to lay on them. Either. Both...

They said they'd try not to wake me up when they moved me... every half... hour...

-

Napping - on anyone - was my new favorite thing.

Maybe dozing was a better word. I could hardly stay awake, but I wasn't sleeping, either. Laying length-wise on Alfaarr's chest, rising and falling with each breath, my own breath almost timed to his heart, I couldn't imagine a better world.

That I could peel my eyes open and see his face - and every time he noticed me he'd smile and ruffle my ears - just made it perfecter...

I tried to listen, too. I wasn't asleep ~all~ the time.

Alfaarr called a doctor he knew, a Waere specialist. Because I was different. Healing like I did - cuts and scars - was different. Even Alfaarr had scars.

He said... or someone did... that there were no Waere healers... but he knew one... Maybe Aya and Dane did, too...

I had a nap right then.

-

They were still talking about me. About how small I got.

Waere never became ~any~ heavier or lighter when they changed. They didn't lose even an ounce of weight.

So people became very big Waere, and almost everyone tried to keep trim and light because being ~too~ big attracted attention.

And young Waere (like Dane) ~behaved~ like great big, overgrown puppies (according to Aya and Alfaarr, with mild objections from Dane). But they were still adult Waere.

Babies didn't become baby Waere. Little kids didn't become little Waere. Even if they were Waere inside at ~birth~. They just didn't change until they were grown. Alfaarr said nobody knew why.

Nobody became a Waere puppy. Even if a baby was bitten, it wouldn't change until it grew up. It's why there was no language for young Waere, like cubs or whelps or whatever.

There ~were~ no Waere puppies. Except me.

There were no ten-pound Waere too weak to walk. Except me.

And Waere didn't change sex. Except me...

-

Dane had a faster heart, and he breathed too much... but he knew ~just~ where to scritch... and smelled wonderful....

-

"Come on, darling..."

Aya picked me up and slung me over one shoulder, like I was a human baby, I guess. I objected to her waking me, just when I'd been dreaming about... something I forgot....

Then I yawned, which ~really~ woke me! I could yawn bigger than my HEAD!

-

She showed me how to go. Had to hold me up too, actually, while I went.

First my rug, then my own back yard.

And being told I did it ~just~ right? How embarrassing....

The only good part was discovering, while she carried me back in, how much fun it was being koochie-kooed.

And trying to drink from the hose while she held me. That was fun, too...

And she told me what some of the sounds and smells were, too, like there were mice and owls and bats and raccoons and rabbits... all in my neighborhood!

So it wasn't that bad...

(But, really, the best part ~was~ her tickling me.)

-

Dr. Kerr wasn't a man: he was a ~woman~! A real one, too!

A woman doctor! I'd never even heard of one!

I was sure medical colleges were even just in ~universities~ for men!

And besides, all healers were men.... But Dr. Kerr was a woman!

They told me just when her taxi was pulling up, just to see my face, I bet, and I'm sure my eyes were worth it.

But their joke was ruined when I saw Alfaarr. I mean, when he went to the door, I could only watch him. The way he looked when he opened it and saw her.

I could tell they were more than friends.

She smiled that way, and Alfaarr... I couldn't tell just what, but he was ~younger~ when he shook her hand. I didn't even hear what they talked about, he was so ~happy~!

It was like him being both forms. They just smiled and chatted hello and polite stuff, but I could see he loved her, too. And that she... she wasn't as easy to see, but she smiled really a special way when they touched or she looked at him. She even smelled like she liked him, all the way from the door.

I was on Dane's lap when they came over to the couch and Dr. Kerr sat beside us and took my paw, and shook it!

"I'm so pleased to meet you, Jacob. My name is Vivian and if you'll allow me, after I get a coffee to make sure I'm awake enough, I'd like to give you an examination to make sure you're healthy?"

She was almost the only person to treat me like an adult! Even Alfaarr didn't really, though he knew I was one, too.

I licked at her hand and tried to nod! She laughed and said she'd take that as a yes.

When Aya went with Alfaarr and her to the kitchen, Dane whispered that she was a secret doctor, and a veterinarian, and took care of all the Waere all around. And that she'd studied with a veterinarian who did it ~before~ her.

And he admitted that they'd surprised me about her on purpose. I licked him okay. It was a good trick.

I could see why her being a doctor for us was secret stuff. People didn't even know ~Waere~ really existed. There wasn't even anything about them in books or films anymore. If it was anywhere it was just in comics.

And when I thought about it, any doctor would be able to tell Alfaarr was more than a regular human. Or Dane or Aya. ~I~ could tell!

So keeping the Waere secret would need a special doctor.

But ~her~ being a doctor... that was almost a bigger secret! A woman!!

-

By the time they got back and Dr. Kerr - Dr. Vivian, she said to call her - well, she said just Vivian, but she was a doctor... but by the time they'd had their coffees and finished talking about me, or Alfaarr and them telling her, I was almost calm.

I'd only let one doctor touch me since the burn, and he'd hurt me too. I closed my eyes.

She took me in her lap and said I could keep my eyes closed if I wanted, but she wouldn't hurt me...

I knew it would.

I closed them tight and tried to hold my breath so I wouldn't cry... and she put her hands on me.

Nothing.

Well, no pain. But I felt her, all through me...

I felt her hands, and the way she hitched her breath, how it hurt, and her... breast...

-

They weighed me by Aya stepping on and off a heavy little scale Dr. Vivian brought, with and without me, about ten times.

She said my nails and feet were a lot like a newborn's, and my joints might be, too - she couldn't tell for sure - but I was as big as six or eight weeks old, if I was compared to a wolf or a really big dog breed.

She looked at my teeth, too, and said they looked about right for a few months old, still pointy, but nothing like a newborn's.

She said I could probably ~try~ eating solid food.

So I was officially a 'puppy.' But not a usual one.

And not a ~baby~ puppy.

Well, ~I~ said the last part. In my head.

It was almost as if Dane heard me think it, because he leaned way down and bumped his forehead off mine and whispered I was going to grow up into a ~huge~, fearsome Waere!

Dr. Vivian said I was completely healthy, too, and I had all the proper girl-bits, no different from every other female Waere, except I was immature.

And she didn't understand about me changing size and weight. She said so far as she could tell, my magic was just Waere. She couldn't tell anything different.

Alfaarr and Aya both looked really serious listening to her. Aya told her about how I'd been infected, what I'd told them, and how it must have been the tiniest bit of blood and saliva, and could that matter?

Dr. Vivian said since there were stories about Waere from even tiny contacts all through ancient history, she didn't think so. And Dane didn't have other magic.

And even him being fey wasn't all that rare....

Then Alfaarr told her more about my seeing and touching his other form and I remembered I still had to tell him I saw him both ways, too... and before.

Dr. Vivian got really serious and asked what ~he~ sensed.

He had to think a long time and then said when he shook my hand the first time, he just knew ~I~ was seeing something in him, and he wasn't sure how, and then it was more and more something that ~he~ sensed, and the last times, he felt it as if he were in his Waere form when I touched him. He said it better.

He said it was very "disconcerting," too. Then he smiled at me and reached over to ruff my head that that wasn't bad, either.

"Jacob?" Dr. Vivian sounded like she wanted to ask some serious question at me, too. I blinked yes. (Aya told her that was yes.)

"Do you see or feel Aya's or Dane's other forms the same way?"

No. And yes. I blinked three times because I didn't know how else. I saw a lot more of Dane that way than Aya. But I thought I could see her a bit too, and I even heard her, once. But I could always see Alfaarr, even if at first I didn't understand, 'cause I saw him first. That way.

She had to ask about a hundred yes and no questions to get even part of that right, but she did.

Even, finally, that I did when I was human, too. Saw them both ways.

-

Dr. Vivian wanted to wait and see my human form. She said she had some theories and needed to talk to me and examine me that way too, to check them.

But first, or right then, she wanted me to do an important experiment about my leg and scars healing. I blinked and she asked to have Dane's hand.

"Dane, may I make a small cut on your hand? I promise it won't be more than a prick?"

He said sure, and she took out a small box with needles in glass tubes about the size of toothpicks and broke one and scratched him with the needle on the back of his hand, near his wrist.

A little cut. Blood.

I watched with wide eyes and heard myself whine.

"Okay. Now, Jacob?"

I looked at her, but had to look at Dane's hand again.

"Jacob, you see the cut? Can you try to make it better?"

Dane put it close. I wanted to make it better. I knew it didn't even hurt him, really, but when Dr. Vivian asked, I needed to try!

I couldn't see exactly where, but I licked it. I knew doctors didn't lick, but I didn't have hands, either, and I remembered sucking on a scrape to make it sting less....

I licked and wished... I didn't know what for...

I felt him.

It was a bit like when how I felt her when Dr. Vivian examined me... inside Dane...

It tasted like blood and Dane and... other people. Toby Robinson, maybe. Dr. Vivian. Aya. Alfaarr. Me. People, too faint...

little things that were bad, or... wrong...

just different...

Tingles... too many... animals and plants... like the backyard...

The tastes changed. More little ones I didn't know....

Suddenly, I got his fur wet, and kept licking, everywhere I could reach... until it was different, again. A pain, a place with a sour taste... Small tastes...

Then... just Dane. It was a good taste. Some of the little ones were gone, but all the scents that were left were him... like they'd changed to be him. Or I learned them, him...

-

I felt a hand around my neck and then Dane nosed me. I looked up and he licked my nose. I blinked at him and tried to lick back, but missed. I was wobbly tired...

Everyone sounded really excited, but I was so sleepy all of a sudden I couldn't even listen. Even for Dane. To see he was better... But he was smiling...

Dr. Vivian had a magnifying glass, and said it was healed.

I couldn't keep my eyes open.

She said I was a healer.

-

I woke up with Aya, in my bed. I was still a pup and she was still human, and awake. Kinda curled around me.

"Hey, puppy..." She sounded pretty sleepy. I felt pretty awake.

I gave her a yip, and since I had some experience with my bed from before, I managed to half-crawl, half-stand-wobble-fall over to her, all of a foot, and give her human nose a lick, wagging furiously all the way.

She said she was ~very~ impressed!

I was too, though I was still glad she lifted me the six inches back to let us talk better. Backwards was harder. She smiled at me as I got settled, and stroked my ear for me.

"What you did with Dane was pretty impressive too, you know."

I looked at her. All I did was lick it.

"It really was. Dr. Kerr thinks it's a first too, like your size. I've never heard of anything like it."

I still didn't understand. If I was a healer, then I could be a doctor, but there were hundreds of them, just in the Commonwealth. Any of them could.

"Jacob, you're a healer! A ~Waere~healer! And you healed Dane's hand without touching it! He says he could ~feel~ you licking his Waere form, but his human healed at the same time! We can't even ~be~ both at the same time!"

She scared me, talking so loud or something, but stopped when she saw, and hugged me close.

"I'm sorry, sweetie! It's just so exciting. I promise not to yell, okay" She kissed my mushed forehead and then kept her face close enough to breathe on me.

"It's just you're a ~healer~! And Dane says he can almost feel his other form now, from what you did!" She smiled again.

"Okay, I promise not to talk about it anymore. For now."

-

Still holding me close, she kissed my head again.

"Why on earth do you have your radio in here?"

-

When I woke up, I'd changed. Aya was sitting in a kitchen chair by the door, reading a book by the hall light. The radio was on, the sound really quiet. Music.

I listened and thought. I guess I dozed a while, too.

-

Aya must've covered me since I had a sheet on and I was pretty warm, and I think that's what woke me again. I was tired, too, not as bad as before, but tired. Aya was still reading.

I had a thought.

"Aya?"

She looked over at me and smiled when she saw I was awake. Reached to turn off the radio, too.

"What is it, honey? Did you sleep okay?"

I nodded. I'd slept a lot, here and there. I felt weak, but awake.

"Aya? How come when I change when I'm awake it's so... so strong, but when it happens when I'm asleep I don't even wake up?"

She thought about that one. I did too, or remembered the feelings. She moved over the edge of the bed as she thought, and brushed at my hair with her fingers.

"I don't know. And when you say it that way it doesn't make any sense, does it? We usually change on purpose, so we're awake, and I suppose it's something I'd wake up for...." She made an odd face and stroked my cheek.

"Something else happens that doesn't make sense, either."

"What?" A million things... her hand moved different when she said that. Like it was bad. Her smell even changed, to... different.

"Well, when you change to human, and you have twice in bed with us now, and in the other room? You just do, and we aren't pushed or bumped or anything. Nothing is." She smiled like that was really weird.

"But-"

"But we only usually change when we're awake, and if we're sick or hurt or something and change any other time, things get bumped, just from our shape, and we don't even change our weight... or our size, too much. But you get a ~lot~ bigger and heavier, and it all just... appears!... and you still don't push or bang anything."

I ~really~ thought about that. I was afraid to ask what occurred to me first. Afraid to even ask if she knew. If they moved when I changed. Or noticed, if they did.

I could touch things that they couldn't even see...

I was a freak. A magic freak. And a whole other horrible idea occurred to me.

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.

-

End of Part Five

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

Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

"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 find myself thinking of all those centuries, never having the joy of a puppy about."

He sounded sad, but he was smiling at us when I looked. Dane and Aya both looked, too. He grinned at all of us.

"Though there've been babes and bairns aplenty, I suppose... and gods know this one is childish enough!" Father leaned forward and lightly tugged Dane's tail. He yipped loudly. Father chuckled and sat back.

"We're truly blessed, Vivian! Times of wonder and grace!"

Aya bit my tail and I growled, which would've been scarier if I could've faced her but I was in an odd position and couldn't seem to get around...

Dane joined in, but instead of batting me around too, like usual, he leapt over to counterattack Aya, using his devastating neck grip!

Or so I imagined. I'd really lost whatever connected my brain to my back legs...

Dr. Vivian picked me up and set me on stiff legs.

I waited for the lurch that would tell me that one of my four corners had collapsed... and waited...

"Well! Look at you!" "Brava! Brava!" Dr. Vivian and Father both applauded at the very moment I realized it too!

I was ~standing~! Really standing on my own!!

Then Aya kicked out from under Dane and by chance connected with my right shoulder... and I tumbled over. But I knew ~how~!!

Dr. Vivian made funny noises at Dane and Aya that were supposed to make then quiet students, I guess, but she picked me up again and placed me just... so, again...

And I was! I was! Holding myself... carefully... balanced between too stiff and... messing it all up... I looked over at Father...

He wasn't smiling all over like I thought he would be.

He ~did~ have a smile, but it was little. Instead, he was almost crying.

Then he nodded. Go on, I'm watching.

I had to turn, hold myself straight. Think. Feel. I was still standing!!

Decided on my right back one. I didn't know why, but it felt readier...

I leaned... ~ever~ so carefully forward... and felt...

My foot moved. Down. A step! I was still ~up~!!

Wobbling didn't count!

But I didn't know which one to move next! I guess I whined. I'd walked! A step! I was standing up!

I ~couldn't~ fall!!

Aya was in front of me. Standing. She took a step, right rear. Stopped. Looked right at me and, ever so... slowly... slowly.... moved her left front leg an inch.

Dane nipped my back. Held on. Huffed. Got you. He didn't even lift, just held me.

It was harder. ~Way~ harder..

I didn't have... good... balance with my back leg that... way.

I tried.

I tried again.

I moved my front leg with a jerk. Too far.

I lost my balance -

Dane huffed.

Aya did something I couldn't see. I was still up! Dane!

I whined with the effort, two legs feeling like they were all that was holding me and ~so~ not wanting to fall! and... moved my front leg.

All that was keeping me up was Dane.

Aya took a long step. Left rear.

It didn't look safe.... she had three legs together!!

But Dane still had me. I was safe, even if Aya looked wobbly all of a sudden!

"Aya!" Father barked, like, "Look out!"

She jerked! We both jerked! And like bowling pins, her legs just went ten different ways! It was so funny I ended up hanging from Dane's teeth, nose in the rug, and I didn't care!

I could stand up! And ~everyone~ fell down!

-

Father said balancing was the hard part, and I'd learn that quick enough, but if I moved ~both~ front feet...

Dane hopped. Aya hopped. I watched them...

Dane hopped again, a tiny one... Front legs...

I bounced slowly on my front legs... all toes and neck and shoulder.... and fell.

But I felt it! I almost... if I could bend my elbows...

Father helped me up and took my ruff and I yipped! Yes!

And I hopped!

~Walking~ was hard! ~Jumping~ was easy! And FUN!

I hopped twice!! I turned to show Father, and fell, but it didn't matter because he saw me! He was laughing and smiling and was proud of me and I ~walked~!!

-

In no time at all, I was jumping! And it was ~easy~! It's just you have to make sure your back legs wait a second before, after your front jumps, before ~they~ jump, or you crash! And if you jump both together, almost, too close together at the same time, you just go up or lose your balance, but it feels funny too, and it's fun! And if you just jump in front, you don't go anywhere, but you can look higher! And it was almost, just I could feel myself going ~forward~ and... and Dr. Vivian and Father said it was practice for balance and almost the same as ~running~!

And I fell asleep.

-

Dr. Vivian said I almost fell down, I fell asleep so fast! But I deserved it too, she said! I was working out all those muscles that I didn't even ~have~ two days ago! She said I was a very strong puppy and developing soooo fast I'd be running around all over in no time! That soon Aya and Dane would be taking running and jumping lessons from ~me~! She said my daddy was so proud of me he couldn't stop talking about ~all~ the things I could already do and how talented I was! That I was the best little puppy any of them had ever seen!

I could see warm light swing in time with a gentle rocking feeling. My tongue was out just enough to taste her hair... her skin, the fire... the reassuring scents of home and my... family.

Aya and Dane were still Waere. I could smell them. Father was somewhere... I couldn't hear him, but he was near. And Dr. Vivian was sitting by the fire, holding me to her neck. Rocking.

I was just awake enough to hear her whispered reassurances, hardly understanding, her pulse much louder in my... heart.

-

When I woke, Aya and Dane were sleeping on the couch, barely managing to fit, Dane curled up and Amy using his back as a pillow.

Dr. Vivian carried me down the hall to show me Alfaarr in my bed, his legs splayed out over the edge.

-

She asked me to try another healing, on her, while everyone else was asleep because she was pretty sure it'd knock me out too, and she could write her notes then.

I blinked yes.

But I didn't want to try on her, not really. Whatever happened with Dane, I wasn't trying and it just happened.

But Dr. Vivian- something more was wrong, that I only knew from her examination, when I felt it... and I didn't know how to heal, I just wished.

She scratched her hand, even less than Dane's had been, but there.

I looked at it, the small blood. I could smell it. I tried to smell more, to be ready before I had to touch it...

I could smell her healing... thing. What made her a doctor. Even though I couldn't before. It wasn't really a smell, but I felt it in my nose and at the back of my tongue and... it was something ~like~ a smell.

And it was different than when she examined me.

And it was sick... more than before. It was like garbage and vinegar. I closed my eyes and wished. And licked.

Her skin was different-feeling than Dane's. Maybe that it was just human skin, with no fur or layers. He doctor-tingle taste was still there, but on my tongue it was just skin.

I tasted the blood and a different, salty stuff for just a second, and then other, tiny things. There wasn't really any outdoors smell... but it was like that, like dozens and hundreds of animals and plants, more than Dane's little feelings, but just the smallest...

Some of them went away and some stayed the same. I tasted a sour one... but it wasn't really sick, just different... and it went away, bit by bit. There was still some there when I stopped, but I couldn't taste it enough to find more.

A sharp, sweet smell, like an apple. I knew it was the thing that hurt her chest and was surprised it tasted that way, that it smelled like... a tree, almost. Like leaves smelled.

I licked at it, tried to understand, but it stayed the same taste a long time, like it wasn't as mixed-up as her normal smells...

It disappeared.

I searched a few sniffs and licks, but it wasn't there anymore. The taste of blood was gone, too, just the little not-really-outdoor smells... and the tiny sour one...

I decided the sour one wasn't the really bad thing and that the scratch must be gone, so I stopped.

I couldn't lift my head.

I could barely open my eyes.

Dr. Vivian was holding her other hand to her chest. She was crying.

-

She'd been right. I collapsed, way more tired than from exercising. I was hardly able to stay awake to listen to her. Her petting wasn't helping...

"You healed the cut, Maisie."

She said it so quietly. She was touching her chest again and I whined. I knew she was sad, but it was a scared kind of sad.

"Oh, I'm sorry, baby, I was just thinking about something else." She ran her hand down my back and drew out my tail. It felt nice...

"I looked, and at least two scars I had are gone, and... some pains..."

She stroked me, half-way between putting me completely to sleep and waking me a little. I knew she was talking about her wrists and fingers, and her breathing. I could feel them when she did that, how she was remembering what they were like before... It made me stop worrying.

"Honey... if I can arrange it, would you try a healing on someone you don't know? I know it's hard for you, but it might be very important?"

I thought, yes, of course.

She smelled scared, but I could tell she wanted to laugh, too.

-

I woke up beside Alfaarr, in my bed. His breathing was really deep and slow and the tip of his tongue was showing just a little in his Waere face. He looked cute.

I could smell how old he was. Or feel it. Like his... like he was heavier than he really was. Like there was more to him than just what I could tell with just my nose. I didn't want to wake him up so I carefully wriggled in a tiny bit more, just so I could put my head on his leg. Arm.

He was over a thousand years old. He smelled like Dane and Aya, but had more outdoors, and more little animals and things than Dane, and he had some of the same tingle as Dr. Vivian, but not as much, and different, somehow.

I wondered if healing was what I smelled, not just doctor. I didn't think I smelled that way...

I needed to see my mother and tell her what was happening.

I needed to see her to show her I was still me.

I needed her to meet Father...

-

The telephone rang. I was asleep one second, and then awake.

I heard a thump and some skittering of nails on the floor before someone changed, then I heard Aya answer.

"Hello?"

I realized it must be Sunday morning and that it must be my mother because she often called Sundays and nobody else would...

"Oh, yes, Mrs. O'Hara, excuse me. I'm Aya Maghuin, a friend of your- son's... Yes, I'm visiting, with my brother..."

I tried to get up, and Father's hand scooped me up instead. I was still a Waere, and couldn't get the phone.

Father got up, holding me, and I saw he was still dressed, except for his shoes. He nuzzled my head and smiled.

"Shall we go see who's calling?"

I smiled yes and-

I was standing beside him. The cold rush of air was kind of surprising, again, but the really new feeling was being tall.

Father had one arm around me and I realized that it was how he'd been holding me, but his arm was out... He grinned and patted my back, as if to feel where I was.

"My! Did you do that on purpose, Maisie!? That was an amazing thing... I think I know how a conjurer feels!"

I was still a bit surprised, myself, but I heard Aya talking again and looked that way.

"Alright, that can wait! Let's go answer your caller." He swept his arm like an old-fashioned... old manners. Person.

I had to laugh at my brain and licked at him as I went by. He laughed, too and I knew he was feeling his nose in the air.

"Oh, here he is... yes, please wait, I'll get him to the box..." Aya put her hand over the cone and whispered, "It's your mother, I told her you were out for a walk..."

She gave me the earpiece and I smiled thanks at her and leaned in.

"Hi, Mum, I'm sorry I missed when you called."

There was a funny echo in the line, and a long pause.

"Jacob? You sound odd..." She sounded upset.

"We have a bad line, Mum, I have an echo on this end, too. Do you want me to ring you back and try for a better connection?"

As I was speaking, I realized I had no idea what else Aya had told her about her and Dane being there. Or if that was why she was unhappy. But she seemed better right away.

"No, I can understand you fine... I was talking to your friend, Aya. Where do you know her from? I don't remember you speaking of her and she has such an unusual name..."

"I met her brother in the park a month or so ago, Mum, and then this week... we met again, or they looked me up, really."

I had to see her. I looked over at Father sitting at the table, smiling at me.

"Mum, could you come around today? I'd like you to meet my friends, and... I need to- to talk to you?"

"Today? I don't know..." I wondered what Aya'd told her.

"Could you, please? I can meet you at the tram, at the petrol station past Pacific? I really need to talk to you. Please?"

She was quiet a few seconds.

"Are you okay, Jacob? You do sound different."

"I'm okay, Mum, really. Can you please come, for supper, maybe? I can even call a car for you, if you need?"

Father smiled and waved at me, then pointed at himself and mouthed, "Me. I'll get her."

"We can come pick you up, Mum. Please?"

"Jacob? Are you well? You're not sick, are you? Please tell me if you are... I know you hate doctors so but if you need to see one-"

"Mum, I'm not sick, really, believe me. I just need to talk to you and tell you something..." I could feel myself starting to cry.

Dane bumped into my leg and looked up at me.

"Please, Mum..."

"Alright, Jacob, I'm going to check the schedule and take the next tram. If you want to, I'll meet you at the station, but I can walk alone just fine and give you time to straighten up."

I had to swallow. "Thanks, Mum. I'll try to be there, or my friends will?"

"You're sure you're okay?"

"Um-hm" I nodded.

"I love you, you know?"

"Me too, Mum. I'll... see you."

I pulled the hook down and had to hang on to it.

"Maisie? Are you alright?" Aya took the earpiece from me. "Do you need to sit down?"

Father pulled a chair out from the table and held it for me. I sat. He put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. I reached up for one. Dane put his chin on my leg and whined. Aya sat down in the end chair.

Aya blinked at me. I looked at her.

"My mom's coming."

"We heard. Are you okay?" She looked like I looked not-okay. I looked at her, at Dane...

"I can't go meet her... I might change..." I had the horrible thought that I might change while she was... there.

"In the bedroom, Maisie." Father leaned down and looked at me sideways. "Did you do it on purpose?"

I remembered he said something like that in the bedroom... I shook my head.

"No... I, it just happened..."

"Are you as tired as the other times?" Aya smiled. "You look a lot better."

I shook my head. I wasn't.

"But something's wrong...?"

I looked at her, and Dane and... I leaned my head over so I could feel Father's arm. They... they were all born Waere. They never had to tell anyone what they were, or their parents...

"I have to tell Mum about... what's happening." I looked at Dane and he smiled. "I have to tell her about being Waere and she doesn't even- I don't think she even ~believes~ in me! That Waere exist!"

Dane still smiled at me, and even laughed a bit, and I felt like he was making fun of me, but then he changed, and reached up to take my hand and kissed it.

"Your mom loves you. I can tell just from how you love her." He talked into my hand and then smiled at me the regular way.

"She doesn't have to believe in us, because we can show her? And you'll still be her, her boy..." His smile went away when he thought of that, but he still looked up at me and held my hand to his cheek.

"And even if you change, you're still you. Who she loves. And we're your family now, too."

I started crying when he said he knew she loved me. I thought, when I could think, that Tony must be the most wonderful man to make Dane love him...

-

After that, it was a busy morning of getting ready.

Dr. Vivian had gone home after I'd gone to sleep. She'd woken Aya up and told her she'd be back later on, or would call for sure, but she had "plants and a husband that needed watering."

I tried everything I could, but still couldn't just change. I didn't remember anything different that happened or that I felt in the bedroom, and I didn't know why I wasn't as tired as I was before when I'd changed.

Father said if my change lasted as long as I had before, then I should certainly be in human form for at least long enough for my mother to arrive and for me to talk to her.

And none of my nice clothes fit.

Aya and Dane both dug through my dresser and closet looking for something, anything, and I ended up with an old pair of dungarees I only barely remembered owning, and then Aya only said they were nice enough because she said they looked cute when she belted them tight with a tie.

While we worked at sweeping and tidying up, Father looked at the tram schedule and we figured Mum would probably be by at about eleven, or the one after that, and at a quarter to he drove over with Aya to meet her. I gave them a note so she'd believe them and not get worried that I wasn't there. They knew what she looked like from my pictures.

I wanted to start on lunch, but Father had suggested I should wait for everyone to get back to decide what they wanted and when. While Dane put on his pants and shirt, I filled the kettle and laid out the things for tea, at least, and put on a pot of coffee.

Then we sat down to wait. For a while, we just sat. I was getting more and more nervous about what I could tell Mum, and what she might say or ask...

Dane looked at my hand really closely and mentioned that I needed to trim my nails more... I looked at my other hand and wondered what he meant since I had pretty short nails already...

"If you keep them really short and neat then any dirt you have on your feet's easier to clean up when you change. It doesn't matter when the weather's nice, but it can be a pain in mud." He showed me his nails and they were shorter than mine, even.

I hadn't thought about stuff like that. I knew smells and stuff carried over changes, and even clothes, but I hadn't thought about dirty feet.

I wanted to ask him about changing, and if he could tell me anything more about why I couldn't. Or about what he did when he went running, and where he liked to go. Instead, I asked about his husband.

"Dane..? What's Tony like?"

"My Tony?" Dane looked up and smiled. I nodded. He smiled even bigger and sat up more.

"Well... he's the handsomest man I've even known... he's taller than me, a couple of inches, and he's twenty, and... and he's fey, of course..." He grinned like I didn't know that. I rolled my eyes but then he lost his smile a little bit.

"And he's not Waere... and he's black." He didn't have any smile at all left. Even his ears went back a bit. I could understand.

I had to think what to say.

I had to think again. I looked at Dane's hand that was holding mine. I could smell how afraid he was. That I'd say something ugly.

I twisted my hand loose and held his instead, so he wouldn't get even more scared and hurt me.

"It must be hard, the... the way so many people are prejudiced?" I thought of more and smiled at him. "He's lucky to have you."

He had shiny eyes.

"But how can he not be a Waere? I mean... don't you... ~kiss~? And how did you meet him? Did you tell him right away that you were? And does his family know about you? What does he look like? He's taller than you? Does- do you dance with him? Where do you go to dance?! I've never seen two men dancing except in dance class..."

I was going to ask him if they kissed, what it was like if they did it dancing- He put his hand over my mouth. He was grinning when I checked.

"So... not too shocked I'm married to a black man?"

I shook my head and puckered on his hand. His dew claw was right in my cheek. Inside.

"Mnt oo mnsh..." He moved his hand and I smiled.

"Not too much, I guess." I twisted around and leaned closer, though.

"But how can he not be Waere? I'm one and you barely scratched me and you just ~have~ to kiss him, don't you?"

Dane laughed and squirmed almost the same way I had, and kissed my cheek.

"Yes, we kiss and even have... ~sex~!" He made big eyes and grinned his head off, his ears all over the place. "But nobody becomes Waere from our human forms."

His smile drooped at the end. I thought of all the things Father'd told us, about what even Waere used to think we were. Curse and devil stuff. About Mum.

"Hey, Maisie..." Dane hugged me closer.

"Not everyone wants to be the same things. He loves me and I love him... it's just something he doesn't want."

-

End of Part Seven

Scents
 

 by Michelle Wilder
 
A story of another world

 

-

Dane laughed and squirmed almost the same way I had, and kissed my cheek.

"Yes, we kiss and even have... ~sex~!" He made big eyes and grinned his head off, his ears all over the place. "But nobody becomes Waere from our human forms."

His smile drooped at the end. I thought of all the things Father'd told us, about what even Waere used to think we were. About the curse and devil stuff. About Mum.

"Hey, Maisie..." Dane hugged me closer.

"Not everyone wants the same things. He loves me and I love him... it's just something he doesn't want."

-

"How did you meet?"

Dane had been describing Tony's amazing record collection that he bought at yard sales and used shops and how he had some of just about every kind of music and they'd have parties where their friends danced and sang along to whatever was on...

His eyes kind of looked at something that wasn't where I could see and he smiled whenever he thought of him. I wanted to hear him smile like that even more.

"We both took the same evening class at the college downtown. Small business accounting." He really grinned, bigger and bigger. "He came over and asked if the seat beside me was taken and just introduced himself. So I said sure, no, hi, and thought, hey, another ortho boy I can't even talk to..."

I laughed at his face, one ear back and the other almost waving. He giggled.

"Exactly. Except he ~wasn't~ straight, and he ~wasn't~ hard to talk to, and by the end of that first class we were already friends and just kept getting friendlier..." He winked and I cracked up at it, and how bad he was at it compared to Father.

Thinking of him, picking up Mum and what I'd have to tell her, I lost my smile pretty fast.

"How did you tell him? That you were a Waere..?"

"You mean, how are ~you~ going to tell your mother?" Dane smiled un-funny. I didn't smile at all. His hand was suddenly too interesting to look at anything else, too...

"I dunno how I'm going to tell her about anything..."

Dane twisted his hand around to hold one of mine tight and pulled me over a bit. "Hey. It's not that bad... Let me tell you about me, okay?"

He pulled me over a bit and hugged one arm around me.

"Wellllll... we'd gone out on some late dinner and dancing kind of dates and I gradually found out Tony was really liberal, like he was against ortho or conservative stuff... and then I asked what he thought about magic people, like healers and sorcerers and, finally, when I was pretty sure I was falling head-over-heels in love with him and couldn't really go any further without starting to lie, I asked Aya, and she knew him from taking him to her place and her coming over and we'd all gone out together... and well, she said she thought he was worth the risk," he made a face like, grrrr, "and who'd even believe him if he freaked? And there aren't any other fey Waere south of Whitehorse, believe it or not, and so I raised the topic of Waere, like if they were real..."

He grinned at me. "And he was all like 'Ohmigawd, wouldn't that be incredible?!' And, 'I remember this old movie from England!' And.. he even used to pretend he was a Waere." He made a silly smile.

"But he doesn't really want to? Be Waere?"

"No." He smiled like it was okay, though. "That was just a pretend thing, and it was pretty different when he didn't even know we were real."

"What did he say when you told him? How did you?"

"Well, I told him at my apartment, and I had Aya there too, just so I'd feel less nervous, and we'd called Mom and Dad that afternoon to tell them I was gonna tell him and they said as long as we trusted him and he was 'worth the risk.'" He made a grrr face again.

"Anyway, I guess he figured something big was up from how freaked I was, but I just took a breath and said, 'I'm so scared I'm shaking, but I love you and want you to know before we go any further, but I'm Waere.' And he got big eyes and froze a bit while I guess he decided if I was crazy and we waited to see if he'd freak and if he did Aya was going to tell him I was joking and I was really a mental patient, but he finally said, "Really?" and I nodded, and the rest is an ~epic~ love story!"

"And you got married?" It sounded like the perfect end to an epic love story...

"This spring." He smiled and wagged and waved my hand around a bit before hugging it. "He asked me last Steven's Day, got on his knee and gave me a silver ring and everything!"

"That's so sweet..." I changed my mind to more romantic than epic.

"It was. He is. I can't wait till you can meet him..."

"You've been here for days! He must be worried about you!"

"No, I told him what we were going to do and Mom and Dad keep him up to date, between Aya and me calling them and Alfaarr talking to them last night when they were out for food. He knows I'm okay." He shoulder-bumped me. "And he knows staying with you for now is important."

"I'm glad you're here..."

I heard something, and then a second later... the noise of Father's car.

It stopped on the street and we could hear an occasional word. Waere. Jacob.

They'd already told her.

They sat out there a long time. We listened a long time, but still only heard single words.

"It's gonna be okay, Maisie. She loves you. She isn't a crazy ortho. She'll still love you." Dane pulled me in tight and licked my mouth. "I'm here for you. We're all here for you. And I bet Alfaarr's told hundreds of people! He must be an expert at it."

We finally heard the car doors open and Mum talking.

"... still don't know if you I believe you or not, Mr Alfer, but thank you for the ride here."

"You're very welcome, Maryanne."

Dane made a face and snickered. "Mr. Alfer?"

I pushed against him.

Had they really told her already? She was being polite, not scared or... How could she be so normal?

"Please..." The front door opened and I smelled all three of them. I was already standing and Dane stood too, which was good, since I was afraid to let go of his hand. Father stepped in and held the door, and smiled at us. A real smile.

Mum came in past him, pulling her silk scarf off, as normal as any other time, and she looked over at us and froze. Stopped walking.

My chest suddenly felt hollow. I couldn't understand her expression, like she was seeing strangers.

She looked at Dane and me and then at our hands and then just at me... and then up at Father. He nodded towards us. She looked back, and then into my eyes.

"Jacob?" She took a step towards me and dropped her scarf. "Is that you? You look..."

Her eyes opened really wide. She ran the last steps.

"Oh, Jacob! Are you alright?! You're so skinny..." She stopped hugging so tight and stepped back, holding my arms and looking me up and down.

"But you're- " She looked back at Aya and Father at the door and then at Dane.

"Why is he smaller? He looks like he did in school..."

"Mum..." I finally found my voice - and realized she was almost as tall as me. She stared at me.

"It wasn't the phone lines! You sound like when you were ten!" She hugged me again and looked at Father.

"You didn't say anything about this! Is this all some... story... to hide a spell?! I want the truth!"

She was holding me really tightly and I could feel her anger and I didn't understand it. What she was angry at, because it wasn't me...

Father looked at us like he didn't know what to say. Aya stared at me like she'd never even seen me before.

"NOW!!" Mum yelled at them, and Dane too.

"What have you done to my boy!"

"Mum." I didn't understand what she meant. Dr. Vivian said I was shorter...

"Mum." I took a breath and said it louder, and she looked at me. She smelled really scared, and it was scaring me more, too. She was scared of Father and them...

"They didn't do anything! I'm just... I'm different than they thought, but it's not their fault."

I tried to smile, to show her. To tell her.

"I don't know what they said... but I'm... just... Waere." I reached over and touched his shoulder. "Dane bumped into me and scratched me by... by accident... and, and I changed... on Thursday night, and I'm okay... and they're really nice people..."

She looked all over my face, confused. She still smelled scared and her eyes were too wide. I was starting to feel faint.

"But you're... younger. Why are you smaller? It must be a spell! Are you sick?" She sounded more worried for me than anything else, then, but she felt... the anger wasn't gone. I still could hardly breathe. Every time I tried I filled up with too many feelings...

"I... I turn..."

I was afraid. I was afraid to move too much and make her madder. Dane put his hand on my neck.

"She turns into a puppy."

I could hear him smile and he leaned in and whispered, "I was going to tell her you were crazy to think all this, but I think she believes you..."

"And he seems to somehow weigh less each time when he returns to human form, which he can't control just yet." Father didn't sound like he was smiling, but he was when I looked. Like everything was okay.

"She? Did you say she?"

Mum was staring at Dane. He smiled again and nodded.

"He turns into a female pup."

Before I could even ~think~ what I was gonna do to Dane for just saying it like that, I realized something terrible! Something else!

"Father! Dr. Vivian!"

I almost fell down trying to reach him. I couldn't breathe... Mum held me up and I could feel how confused she was, but I had to tell him.

"She'll ~change~!"

-

"She... she asked me to... to... lick her..." I looked at Dane and then back at Father. "Like Dane."

We were all sitting, except Father. He was pacing in the dining area.

He was a hundred different feelings too, all bad. He was mad at Dr. Vivian that she asked me to heal her and hadn't talked with him about it first, that she used me, he said, that she didn't even know if there were risks...

Explaining to Mum that there was a doctor who was a woman seemed to make him even madder, too. I thought it might be just that she was interrupting his worrying, but maybe just that it was secret... that she was.

He kept asking me what I could remember about what Dr. Vivian said, and tried to call her on the telephone three times but there was no answer. When he came back after the third try, I remembered something he hadn't asked.

"I think she was really sick."

"What? Sick?" Father looked at me and Mum.

Mum said, "Sick?"

"There was sour stuff, and a thing like a tree, or it tasted like one, and like apples, or the way they smell..." I tried to remember everything in the right order.

"I felt it when she examined me... and, and the second time, too, and the tree thing, it was in her chest and her ribs on that side and her..."

I didn't want to say it in front of Mum, but I knew it might be important. I still had to look just at my hands.

"It was in her... breast... bad... and it hurt her to breathe, before..."

Mum took a sharp breath. When I looked, she seemed mad, or confused...

She smelled scared again.

"She told you... about..."

"Maisie is a healer, Mrs. O'Hara. She healed a cut on my arm, and she made an old scar on a bone disappear at the same time, without even knowing I had it."

Mum looked at Dane's foot where he was waving it in the air. He grinned at me all crazy.

"I just realized! What if you turn me into a girl!? What will Tony say?"

I stared at him like he ~was~ crazy! "How can you joke about that?! She might change!" He just smiled.

"And if she does, she certainly knew what might happen. I'm not going to worry about that part, and I don't think you should. She's not going to panic or anything, and her husband must know about us because he knows about ~her~."

He was looking at Father at the end. And he was right, I guessed. Father had a look like he knew it too, with his ears up for the first time in minutes.

I still felt like she'd... betrayed me.

-

End of Part Eight