“Tell you what,” said Jules, “I reckon we’d give that Bear Grylls a run for his money.”
I laughed and kept eating. I was hungry. Ravenous. I ate a lot, but I still felt unsatisfied. Jules seemed to feel the same way. Once he’d finished his fish, he gnawed on his stick for a bit. Then he started fidgeting and moving around, sitting on this log and then that one, seemingly unable to find a comfortable spot. His movements were jerky and sudden. He was moving around a lot, even for Jules, and that was saying something.
I looked up at the moon. It was swollen, almost full. Dappled and milky in the black night sky. I found myself chattering mindlessly. “The waxing gibbous moon. The last quarter before the full moon.” I was saying it more to myself than to Jules. “More than half-illuminated, but less than full. It’ll be a few days yet till full moon. The wordgibbousmeans ‘convex’ or ‘protuberant.’ It comes from the root word that means ‘hump-backed.’ Waxing moons are a time for introspection. A time for preparation. A time to refine yourself before the next phase of your development.”
I had no idea why I was talking like that. I did it sometimes when I was nervous or didn’t know how to behave in social situations with humans. When I felt like that, I tended to spew a whole lot of facts and information about whatever topic popped into my head. It made no sense that I was doing it when only Jules and I were around.
Jules jumped to his feet again. He tugged at his T-shirt, twisting his body as if the fabric was chaffing him. I found myself unable to sit still either. I paced around the fire pit, and then I paced around the whole cabin. When I returned, Jules was still on his feet. He was scrubbing his nails over his chest and scratching the sides of his neck and face. I noticed that I was doing the same thing. My skin felt wrong. Too tight. Itchy. Creeping and crawling.
Jules looked at me suddenly. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was breathless. “Sully, I think I’m going to shift.”
The second he said it, I knew he was right. I started ripping my clothes off, tearing my T-shirt down the middle and kicking my jeans off. By the time I was naked, Jules was too. He’d already fallen to his hands and knees. I followed suit, though I don’t remember actively deciding to do it. I looked up at the moon, and beside me, Jules did the same. The gentle beams caressed my face. It felt like the touch of a mother or father. I didn’t blink and I didn’t fight it. I accepted it gratefully. I allowed it to flow through my skin and into my veins, and as it did, my body started to burn. It felt like I was on fire. Everything I was, or ever had been, was scorched. Burned. It should have been painful, and it was. To a point, it was, but before it became unbearable, something deep, deep inside me shifted.
Click.
In a split second, every cell in my body was altered. Changed. Imbued with ancient magick. It felt euphoric. It was euphoric. I was euphoric. Beside me, I could tell that Jules was too. His back was arched up away from the ground almost grotesquely. He snapped and snarled, saliva spraying as he did it. I did the same. My breathing was labored and my heart rate was out of control. My vision blurred and with a flash, the world went bright white.
When I came to, I found myself on all fours. I looked down and saw my hands weren’t my hands. They were paws. I had paws instead of hands! Instead of skin, I had glossy black fur. I had sharp claws instead of nails. I’d known I was a shifter forever. I knew this was what I was meant to be. It was what I’d always been. Still, there were no words to describe what it felt like when I finally, finally shifted from human to wolf.
“Holy fuck!” I cried. “We did it!”
That’s what I meant to say, anyway. What came out was something closer to a choked yelp. I spun around to face Jules. He was a wolf! He was Jules, but he was a wolf. He was mainly gray with brown and white markings. His eyes were different, wild and wolfy, but they were his eyes. Even if I hadn’t known for a fact that shifting was real, if I’d stumbled across this wolf in the woods and looked into his eyes, I’d have known right away—those were Jules’s eyes. One of his eyebrows was up and the other was down. His mouth was wide open, and his tongue was lolling out to one side.
He looked so ridiculous I started to laugh. It came out sounding like something you would expect from a wolf whose balls hadn’t dropped. That set him off too. He stamped his front paws on the ground, opened his mouth, and barked hard. It sounded exactly like the bark of a purebred Chihuahua. The sound was so squeaky and high, he jumped, as if he’d scared himself.
I fell to the ground, rolling on my back in wonder, amazement, and, most of all, glee. He pounced on me, and we rolled around on the ground, snapping at each playfully. Right then, we caught the scent of something. Something small. Not the kind of thing that was worth killing, but definitely the kind of thing that was worth chasing. We pricked up our ears and scented the air. It was a squirrel. It was to the west of us. It was two or three hundred yards away. I started to walk toward it but only my hind legs moved. I toppled over, and when I got up, I saw Jules’s wolf eyes dancing in amusement. He walked slowly and deliberately, carefully lifting one paw in front of the other, making sure to use all four. I did the same. My first steps were tentative and unsure, but in seconds, it felt like second nature. I took off after the squirrel and Jules followed, hot on my heels. We sprinted through the bramble, sending birds off their perches, squawking and hooting as they warned their species that we were headed their way.
We didn’t catch the squirrel. It wasn’t really our target; instead, we explored the forest at breakneck speed. It felt like a different planet from our new vantage point. The smells were unreal. Bark and pinene. Feathers and moss. Tiny heartbeats fluttered around us. We ran as we took it in. Our paws pounded the ground. We were moving like lightning, and it required next to no effort. We ran like the wind. We were the wind. We were one with the wind and the trees. We were the earth under our feet. We were born to run. We were made for this time and this place and this shape.
We ran till we reached the highest point we could find. We scrambled up rocks and boulders until we stood at the peak and looked out over the valley. I looked up and was transfixed. The sky was alight. A black curtain glittering with tiny lights. I saw stars like I’d never seen them. Millions and millions of them. I saw starlight hurtling through space toward me. I looked up at the moon and felt her majestic power course through my veins.
“Say my name, Sully,” she whispered to me.
I opened my mouth and my lungs, and woke the sky with a long, mournful howl. To my right, Jules tilted his head back and howled too. We howled and howled until we were spent, and the entire valley echoed, alive with the sound of our call.
15
WhenIwokeupthe next morning, I was buck naked and lying tangled in a bramble bush. I clambered to my feet and saw a hint of the cabin through the trees. We’d almost made our way home. I looked around and spotted Jules a few feet away. He was sitting up, bare ass on the ground, and was rubbing his eyes. One side of his face was caked in dirt, and he had a twig stuck in his hair.
“Jesus fucking Christ, how wild was that?” His voice was so loud, it made me wince. He clapped a hand over his ear and screwed his eyes closed. It must have sounded too loud to him, too. “Holy shit,” he said, lowering his volume considerably. “How unbelievable was that? Dalton was right. He was right about everything. It was the best surprise on the planet. It waseverything.”
“I . . . It was . . . I was . . .” I had no words. What we’d experienced was indescribable. It was the best night of my life. The best night by far. It was more fun than the first time Jules and I stole his dad’s minivan and took it for a joyride. It was more beautiful than the time my parents took me to see the Grand Canyon. It was more exciting than the first time I saw a woman naked, and it was more satisfying than anything I’d ever experienced, and that included every single night Jules and I had spent with Storm.
It was better than all those things rolled into one.
“Should we go down to the river?” I asked, lowering my volume and softening my voice until it didn’t sound like the heavy bass in a nightclub.
“Yeah, I need it. I’m a fucking a mess.”
I laughed, but when I looked down, I saw I had dried mud all over one side and I didn’t need to run my hands through my hair to know it was matted.
We fetched our toiletries and towels from the cabin and headed down to the river. I felt disoriented and had to refamiliarize myself with my human form. Everything was loud and my nose was flooded with the scent of every creature in the forest, living or otherwise. It was overwhelming. My eyesight was bothering me too. It felt kind of like when you try on someone else’s glasses. My eyes felt like they were being strained.
“Have you worked out the eye thing yet?” Jules asked as we walked.
“Nah, they feel weird. Everything looks too sharp. It’s making me dizzy.”
He stopped walking and turned around to face me. He was still stark naked. He had his toiletry bag in one hand and his towel draped over one shoulder. “You’ve got to let your eyes relax. Relax them as if you’re not trying to focus on anything.”
