Ellida (12 page)

“Hi, Ingmar.”

“Hi, love. How are you?”

“Within the usual parameters for this
stage.”

“Let me see you.”

“I’m not switching to video, Ingmar.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gotten stuck between
two shapes,” he said, teasing her.

Astrid cracked a smile. “You caught my wolf
in her human form, if you know what I mean. Hey, you’re at the
Blakes’. I can hear Liv in the background.”

“I’m still staying with them. I took a year’s
sabbatical from my job. I’m now working with Liv on her food
allergy treatment research.”

“Oh, I see. I’m almost jealous.”

“I want to stay close.”

“I know, Ingmar. Thank you. That means a lot
to me.”

“No worries, love. Take care. Here’s
Tristan.”

Tristan actually made her switch to video.
“Well, you look okay, that’s all I can say. I’ll ask Gerhard
Falkenstein to come and do a check-up when you’re done.”

“We already talked to him, Tristan,” Betty
said with a smirk. “Either he or Debbie Altman, another friend of
ours, will come tomorrow to check Astrid. I know how protective you
and Liv are of Astrid, but we are too. She’s among her kind now,
she’ll be fine.”

“Hi, Betty. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to
preach. I’m not concerned about Astrid’s safety. It’s just that I
used to examine her to make sure she was okay. Who else is there
with you, Princess?”

“Ellida Morgaine and three Mohegan women,”
Astrid said. From the corner of her eye, she caught Peyton’s smile.
“Uncle James, Eamon and Takeshi are around the corner, not
including roughly five thousand residents with my best interests at
heart. I’m well protected.”

“Where’s Jack, by the way? He stopped by this
morning but left in a rush to get there in time.”

“I have no idea,” Astrid snapped. “Now it’s
too late anyway. This time it’s a girls’ party. Liv, we miss you
here.”

“I miss you too, darling.”

Ingmar’s face appeared again on the small
screen. “I like your eyes, Astrid. Take care, honey.”

“I have to… go now…” Astrid moaned as a sharp
pain slashed across her abdomen. She passed the phone to Peyton and
curled up on the couch.

Peyton quickly exchanged phone numbers with
Ingmar. “We’ll call you later. Astrid’s about to shift and she
needs some privacy now,” she said and unceremoniously ended the
call.

There were at least two more hours before the
transformation, but Astrid was thankful for Peyton’s small
intervention.

The women gathered closer to Astrid, as if
they were trying to shield her from the pain. There wasn’t too much
to do anyway, except to wait for the night and the first sight of
the silver orb on the horizon. The pain alternately increased and
subsided.

With a great effort, Astrid pushed back her
lustful thoughts about Jack. Next time he’d better be around or
she’d throttle him. Or she might ask someone else to help her out.
Sid Brandon, for example; he was handsome and had a nice sense of
humor, she thought, or she said, she wasn’t sure which. She was
caught up in the twisting and ripping last stage before she would
change shape.

With her trembling fingers, she unclasped her
necklace and, after pressing the cold metal of the silver wolf-head
to her burning cheeks, she gave it to Maggie. “Keep it safe
somewhere,” she whispered. The room started spinning, first slowly,
then faster and faster. Astrid crouched on the sofa, moaning and
breathing laboriously. “Move the table and armchairs,” she ordered.
“I need more room.”

And then it happened. In front of four pairs
of mesmerized eyes, in a split second, Astrid’s human form exploded
into a wolf.

Eyes fixed on the largest she-wolf she’d ever
seen, Maggie whispered, “And we thought those guys in the movie did
it fast?”

One by one, the other members of the
Fellowship of the Full Moon came out of the trance caused by
Astrid’s spectacular transformation.

MY FIRST thought was that I’d missed one
small segment of time, and then I realized that actually one
sequence of the transformation hadn’t happened: the between-moment
after losing my human shape and before turning into a wolf. It was
always brief yet the most horrible part of the whole process. It
was a truly terrifying sensation of being completely inverted. As
if an invisible, burning hand reached inside me and ripped out my
internal organs, blood vessels, muscles, and wrapped that bloody
mass around my skin. My erupting into wolf form that followed
immediately always came as an immense relief. My greatest horror
ever was that I would somehow get stuck in that short yet
indescribably painful stage.

With all my heart, I fervently hoped to never
go through the same process again.

Something else was different. I didn’t feel
exhausted, but strong, powerful and filled with energy. This time I
didn’t need to crouch on the floor and whimper like a wounded
animal. I wanted to go outside and run, run, faster and faster, to
the top of the nearest mountain, and howl at the moon.

One full moon ago I was happy to be with
Jack, happy that Astrid the Wizard had finally acknowledged her
wolf side. This time, Ms. Spock had gone even further: for the
first time in our life, she was happy being who she was: unlinked
and pretty much mixed up, still in pain, yet happy with her other
part. The same way I’d always been happy with her, even when she
let her boring, logical side get the better of us.

I looked at my friends, my faithful guard,
standing in front of me, all in a state of mild shock. Even Ellida
Morgaine looked completely taken by surprise. Betty blinked several
times as if she’d just woken up from a trance. Peyton’s deep-blue
eyes were fixed on me as if I were going to disappear if she but
blinked.

My young cousin recovered first. “And we
thought those guys in the movie did it fast?”

I chuckled, and my voice in their heads broke
the spell. Now everybody was talking at the same time.

“I’ve never seen anything like this!”
Morgaine said, clearly impressed.

“Are you okay, Astrid?” Betty said and came
closer, hesitantly touching my fur.

“You are huge, Astrid! God, you’re one of the
biggest wolves I’ve ever seen,” Peyton said, shaking her head in
disbelief. Her pretty auburn curls danced around her heart shaped
face. “Your wolf size greatly outmatches your human size!”

“
What are we going to do tonight?”
I
asked.

“What do you want to do?” Betty said. “It’s
your night, you choose.”

The room suddenly seemed too small for all of
us. I had to walk carefully not to bump into the furniture.
Besides, it didn’t seem natural to stay inside. Miss Spock, who’d
rarely wanted us to leave her safe place before—providing that
she’d been conscious at all—suddenly started pushing me toward the
door. This time she didn’t want to hide in her customary
semi-consciousness, staying close to me.

“
I want to run!”

“Great!” Morgaine said. “We’ll all shift, and
then we can hunt.”

I stopped dead. “
Wait a second! Hunt what?
I don’t want to hunt!”

“Oh, yes, you do. That’s why you want to run.
It’s in your blood. We’ll hunt deer. If you want to turn it into a
safari trip, that’s fine, too. But you have to come close to the
animals to learn to sniff them, track them, find them, and kill
them, if necessary.”

“
Is that a part of my apprenticeship,
Ellida?”

“It is, Astrid.”

Maggie and Peyton walked to the door. “We’re
going outside to change,” Maggie said. “You two, are you
coming?”

“I have to call James first,” Betty said.
“They’ll join us in the forest.”

Oh, how could I even think the whole
adventure would happen without my uncle taking part in it?

Their shape shifting was quick, easy and fun.
They took off their clothes and piled them neatly on the porch. As
their transformations started, from their feet up, like Jack’s,
they giggled and wiggled as if an invisible hand tickled them.
Again I got the impression they were putting on Halloween
costumes.

Peyton was proof again that our human and
wolf sizes often didn’t match. She was considerably bigger than her
petite human body would suggest. Her fur, dark and wavy, soft and
silky, did match her hair color. Her eyes were blue with a
greenish-gold shine.

Maggie was roughly Peyton’s size, with light
brown fur and amber eyes that looked so much like her
brother’s.

Morgaine and Betty came out of the house and
transformed the same way Maggie and Peyton had. The mother and
daughter looked very much alike. The Ellida was on the big side
with dark, reddish-brown fur. Her eyes were sage-green.

“
Lead us, Astrid,”
she said.

For a moment I was unsure what to do, and
then my instincts kicked in.

I walked to the backyard and across the
street, keeping close to the walls so that we weren’t in plain
sight, gradually increasing speed until we came to the clearing at
the beginning of the forest where the Ellida and I had been
practicing. The moment we reached the first trees, I started
running.

The blood rushed through my body, supplying
my muscles with energy I didn’t know I possessed. There was a
completely new kind of force that soared inside me. The trees
blended into a dark blur speeding toward me, and yet at every
single moment I knew where my body was and that I would never crash
into anything.

My senses sharpened and my mind was
crystal-clear. I heard my pack half a step behind me. The Ellida
and Maggie were on my left side, Betty and Peyton on my right.

I heard the sounds of the night—wind in the
trees and grass, the distant soft rumble of the nearby creek, frogs
and birds. My nose detected many different scents that surrounded
us: earth, snow, water, pine and other werewolves. I could see
every shape, sharp and clear, every color and every movement.

The faster I ran, the more energy I seemed to
have. I could hear the crunching sound of my paws on the crusty
surface of granulated snow, and the rush of blood in my head.

Would I ever be able to stop?

I did. As soon as my nose detected the scent
of prey, unknown and familiar at the same time. Deer. A small herd
a mile down toward the creek.

I continued running until I led my pack close
enough for a swift attack. Without thinking too much, I picked my
prey. A healthy male, strong and fast, but not the leader.

The chase was short. We separated the animal
from the rest of its small herd and drove it into the open. We
corralled it, keeping the same, symmetric “V”-shaped formation as
before.

In a few long, fast leaps I closed the
distance between my game and me. My full body weight crashed into
the animal, knocking it down. My jaws closed around its exposed
neck. The grip was deadly; there was no escape.

Yet I didn’t increase the pressure. I stopped
myself before my teeth broke the skin.

I heard two sets of heartbeats—one delirious
with excitement, another one frantic with the horror of a certain
death. A predator and its prey. I sniffed the animal. It smelled
mouth-watering, and my stomach rumbled in approval. It also smelled
of fear.

And life.

I listened to our hearts until the two
erratic beats blended into one indistinguishable sound.

I released my firm grip around its neck and
stepped back.

“
Go
,” I ordered it silently.

The animal certainly couldn’t understand my
soundless language, but it perfectly caught the meaning of my
movement. It rose swiftly to its feet and ran toward the woods.

I turned around and looked at my
companions.

Ellida Morgaine took a few steps forward.

“
Ellida Astrid
,” she said and bowed
her head.

I bowed back.

I’D SEEN the other wolves when we started
the chase, and now my nose identified them as Jack, James, Eamon
and Takeshi. Now I could see them. They stood on the edge of the
meadow, silvery-gray under the moonlight. They had watched the hunt
without interfering, but now they were coming toward us. My mighty
bodyguards, I smiled, here with me tonight so that I could play
safely.

I could also sense more werewolves around. I
recognized them too: the leaders of the eleven Red Cliffs families,
who had come to greet me a few days ago. Tonight my uncle invited
them to meet me in my wolf form.

“
And where have you been?”
I growled
at Jack as he came closer. All I wanted was to launch myself at
him, but kept a good distance between us, circling around him
instead.

I heard him laugh. “
Good to see you, too,
Astrid! It doesn’t look like you missed me much.”

James stepped between us. He was a big wolf,
strong and bulky, although not as big as my favorite canine
specimen. “
Nice hunt, Astrid. How are you feeling?”

“
Free, Uncle. I feel free
.”

I heard Maggie from behind. “
It was scary,
Dad. Astrid was in a great deal of pain, but once she shifted,
everything seemed okay. We’re having lots of fun.”

Betty turned to James. “
You didn’t believe
me, did you?”
Then back to me, “
I told your uncle you are
almost Jack’s size.”

I laughed. “
Well, it came in handy when we
stumbled upon those vampires. I was quite a big fireball. I scared
the tuna-salad out of them.”

“
Did you see how she knocked the deer
down?”
Excited, Eamon was jumping around me. “
I’m surprised
the poor animal didn’t die out of sheer terror before Astrid even
touched it.”

I smiled and walked to Peyton, who stood
aside, under a tree, not quite alone, but not a part of the group
either.