If you were to walk up the hill from the pack house, you’d pass a few empty cottages, then you get to the Hawkinses. Bob and Melinda. They were the newest members of our pack. They joined when Jules and I were about ten. They were well into their forties, but they didn’t have any kids. For a while, when they joined, everyone hoped they’d have pups, but I guess it was one of those things that just didn’t happen.
Across from the Hawkinses, were the Zielinskis. Maggie and Janec. If you wanted to know what the Zielinskis were like, all you’d have to do is to picture two people who were permanently in a bad mood. Like PMS level ten. Grouchy didn’t begin to describe it. Despite that, they were all right. They meant well, as my mother always said. Jules and I knew we could knock on their door anytime and Maggie would serve up a plate of snacks for us. We could count on it. Sure, she low key scolded us for something or other the entire time we ate, but we didn’t mind. What can I tell you? The woman made one hell of a snack.
If you kept heading up the hill, you’d pass old man Lou on the left and the Donavans on the right. Isla and Bob. They were like pure sunshine compared to the Zielinskis. We were welcome there anytime, too. The snacks weren’t as good, but they came with nary a bark, a bite, or a scolding. In fact, if you were feeling a bit down on yourself, the Donavans was the best place to be. Fifteen minutes at their place and you’d come out of there feeling like you were best in show.
Jules lived next door to the Donavans, across the way from our place and two doors down. There were a few more empty cottages, and our place was right at the top of the hill. Mrs. O’Malley’s place was directly across the way from us.
She was a strange one, Mrs. O’Malley. She looked like the type of grandmother that you’d expect to see in a commercial for farm butter or fabric softener. Round, smiley face and curly gray hair, but believe me, that’s not what she was. The magick was strong with her. She was definitely strange. Her place was strange, too. It kind of gave me museum vibes. It had done ever since I was a boy. Almost everything in her house was covered in some sort of plastic. The sofas were wrapped in it. The dining table always had a cheery yellow-and-blue-striped tablecloth on it with a clear plastic table cover over it. Even the carpet in the hallway hadn’t escaped. It had one of those plastic runners that made a “zooff zooff” sound if you dragged your feet on it.
Aside from that, I liked her house a lot. It always smelled clean. Like she’d just used beeswax wood polish. She had by far the best furniture of anyone in the pack. Some of her things were part of a matching set. She also had art on the walls. No one else had that. As you walked in, she had a whole lot of ink sketches of various animals framed and hanging in two perfect rows at the entrance. A deer, a coyote, a mountain lion and a grizzly, a hawk, a harrier, a Great Horned owl and a house wren.
When I was little, I used to love standing in front of the drawings and trying to get as much information out of her as possible about each animal. Mrs. O’Malley was special. She was what we called a shifter of yore. She shifted to a wolf, like our whole pack did, but that wasn’t all she could do. Rumor had it, she could shift to just about any animal you could ever imagine.
“How do you do it?” I used to ask when I was a boy.
“It’s magick,” she’d say with a wink.
“Buthow?” For a long time, I firmly believed that if I nagged enough, eventually she’d crack and tell me something worth knowing.
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
Adults were always saying things like that. Shifters were known to be secretive, but our pack took being secretive to the extreme. It drove Jules and me both crazy as kids. It drove me crazy as a teen, too.
“But, buthowdid you learn how to do it? Did someone teach you? Who taught you?”
“You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
“Who drew these pictures?” I’d say, trying to change tactics. I knew damn well who drew them. I’d asked the same question a hundred times or more.
“Ah, my Herbert drew them. May he rest easy.”
Her Herbert died of old age before I was born. That should give you some indication of how old Mrs. O’Malley was. She wasoldold. She was the oldest person I’d ever met. Hell, she might have been the oldest person on the planet, for all I knew.
“Have you shifted into all of these animals?” I’d ask.
Sometimes, I’d think I saw a twinkle in her eye, but she wouldn’t answer. Instead, she’d change the subject. “Which picture is your favorite, Sully boy?”
“The grizzly for sure.”
“Predictable,” she’d say with a slight roll of her eyes, and then she’d lower her voice. “Predictableandeasy. Too easy.”
A pit of excitement would form in my belly. I thought she might be about to spill something important. “Do you mean it’s easy to shift into a grizzly?”
“If it was easy, everyone would do it.” She’d give me a knowing look and I’d know she was about to clam up.
“Which picture is your favorite?” I asked once.
Without hesitation, she raised her bent forefinger and pointed straight at the wren.
“Why?”
“That’s enough of this why, what, and how. Why don’t you take your momma this batch of tea? I made it specially for her. Then go and play outside. Wolves grow big in the open.”
Despite how impossible she was, or maybe because of it, most days I thought that although Jules was my first and best friend, there was a chance Mrs. O’Malley was my friend too. She was a friend, but not like a friend like Jules. She was the kind of friend that kept me on my toes. She was sweet as pie one minute, and the next she’d be all but sweeping me off her porch. Sometimes she annoyed me and sometimes she confused me, but I never stayed away from her place for very long. I couldn’t. She was too interesting. She had too many good stories and if she wasn’t telling stories, she had this faraway look about her that made me so curious I could hardly stand it.
When she looked like that, my mother always said, “Leave her be, Sully. Mrs. O’Malley is a wise woman. She needs time on her own to be with her thoughts.”
I never managed to work out exactly what it meant to be a wise woman and despite my best efforts, none of the adults were inclined to enlighten me. Best I could tell, it explained why Mrs. O’Malley just knew things. Sometimes she knew things she had no business knowing. Like, how she knew when Jules had been in trouble at school before we even walked up the drag, or how she’d start battening down the hatches days before a storm warning was issued.
