The second flap of hides and furs caught the stray wind and snow, preventing the winter from entering the comfortable dome. With three deep breaths, I shifted into a man for the first time in nearly a decade.
I moved to pull back the fur and caught my hand’s tremble.
Destructive, interesting, miserable, rare, fresh fear coursed through me, but this sensation was no mystery. I knew precisely what scared me. I was afraid that she’d grown to love the animal and would reject the man. I was scared that she would look at me and send me from the tribe like the demon I was. A wolf was one thing, but this form? Me?
Three more breaths.
I forced my hand to still and gripped the lip of the fur, startled by my own fingers, as if I’d forgotten how ice-white I was. I tried to move forward but was caught on the threshold by a note. She was humming.
It was no Qawiaraq song.
I’d heard their lullabies, their bonfire ballads, their histories sung for the better part of ten years. This was something else. Nine haunting notes rising, five falling. I listened to the fractured lullaby in a minor chord, over and over. I’d heard it before, covering the scraping of basalt as she’d crushed grain with her mortar and pestle. I’d listened to it in Athens as a student watched the stars beside a fountain. But in nine years, I’d never heard it from Yuka.
I moved forward without thinking. I’d never spoken Qawiaraq aloud, yet my first words to her were, “How do you know that song?”
Yuka had her back to the door when I entered. She’d been combing her hair with an ornate, ivory brush while she awaited my return—the only one in the village, as their tribe was not one for vanity. She looked at me with the sort of calm fortitude that told me she’d been expecting this for a long, long time. She lifted her chin in a sign of strength, the hand-poked tattoo running from her lower lip down her neck highlighted by the red-orange flame as she did.
She did not answer. She simply stared.
It was so strange to realize that while I knew her, she did not know me. “I’m…” I struggled for a name.
With the quirk of one corner of her lip, she supplied: “Fluffy.”
The corner of my mouth tugged. “If it pleases you.”
“And whatisyour name,” she said, voice clear and even as though she were calmly addressing a crowd. “So that I might properly address you.”
Her shoulders were too level. Her posture was too straight. The formality hurt me almost as much as if she had feared me. I shook my head. “No, Yuka. I’m not seeking recognition. The only name I want is the one you give me.”
She exhaled, brows pinching in the middle. She resumed brushing her hair.
“Interesting,” she said. That was all. No argument. No questions. No fight.
“I suppose it is,” I said, unable to keep the edges of a smile from my expression.
She set the comb beside the bed and turned to face me. “I sense thatyoumight be able to tell me why I know this song.”
The perception struck me.
I was so unfamiliar with being on two feet that it took a moment to ensure I hadn’t wavered. I gestured to the furs on the bed, asking permission, and waited for her nod before I took a seat.
“This is the first time I’ve heard you sing it,” was all I said.
She tilted her head to the side. Loose, freshly-combed locks tumbled over her shoulder as she listened. The high, metallic noise of the lights informed her of their presence even if there was no window in her home. “Perhaps it’s a night for the spirits,” she said. “Including ghosts of the past.”
A sacred night. Yes, I supposed there might be something to that. I didn’t know much of humans and their clairabilities. I knew of their lore and of days they’d gossiped and warned of spirits and demons, but as I had only paid mind to one human, I’d spared little time thinking about the veil being thick or thin. Athena, in her wisdom, created a crack in the veil for me to appear in the flesh to humans who belonged to another pantheon. Many gods could take the shape of men at will, but stepping into corporeal form was not an ability afforded to all of us. I was new to the practice, and had no idea how much of it was achievable without external help.
Could I take the shape of a man and walk through a city as a stranger, seen by all?
Would I always need to be chosen, or take a safe, accepted form?
Had I always possessed the ability, but never searched for the edges of my power until I was pushed to grow?
I suppose I had lifetimes to figure it out.
As it stood, I had to use the gift sparingly. Even when wearing the skin of a man, I could never truly blend in with humans. But on a sacred night such as this, perhaps my appearance wouldn’t be so terrible.
Again, she spoke. “Truly, you come with no name? No message from the gods? No wants as our guardian spirit? Ask it, and it’s yours.”
