New Decameron Eight: Pamela Dean (Patreon)

The Wolf Far Hence

Pamela Dean

Beldi thought that the best thing about the Lukanthropoi was that they were such great astronomers. They had begun with the moon, of course, long ago, but now they understood all about stars and planets and comets. Their city was in the mountains, in thin clear air, and they had devices for making the moon and stars look larger and closer. Sophia had promised to show him soon.

In other ways he didn't like the city. It had too many people in it, and they lived too close together. Instead of there being a great deal of outdoors with little houses here and there, as at home, there were a great many buildings and stone streets, with little squares of outdoors, rather trampled, here and there. The city smelled wrong, too. When Beldi said that to his father, Bec laughed and remarked, “At least there are no horses.” Even in their ordinary form as people, the Lukanthropoi smelled strange to horses, and so they did not ride horses or use them to draw wagons. Beldi thought they used magic instead, but Frances said it was just their cleverness.

Sophia was clever; she could operate the star-seeing devices, which the Lukanthropoi referred to as telescopes, in what Frances called their Unicornish way. “Are unicorns afraid of the Lukanthropoi?” Beldi asked Frances later.

“Not they!” said Frances. “Nor of always-wolves, neither.”

“What are they afraid of?” said Beldi. Con had been talking about who was afraid of what or whom and whose families were or were not afraid of what other families until he could hardly think of any other questions to ask.

“Well,” said Frances, “dragons, perhaps, or a mort of sorcerers, it may be. Or naught; that may be, too.”

Beldi reported this conversation to Con, who looked very thoughtful. She asked him what a mort was, but he wasn't sure.

Now Con was asleep, probably dreaming of morts of dragons frightening sorcerers but never, ever frightening her; and Beldi was sitting in the roof garden of the enormous house in which the Lukanthropoi had given his family a kind of interior house. Sophia had said she would fetch Beldi when the moon was down. Sophia was glad that she was a full-moon wolf, because if her befurred time had come in the dark of the moon, being an astronomer would have been more difficult. On the other hand, she could never study the entire moon at once. Wolves did not study.

When Sophia arrived, she was person-shaped and dressed, but her eyes were bright and she smelled a little like a wet dog.

All over the eastern part of the city, as high up on the mountain as the city went, the telescopes had little houses to themselves, with round roofs that opened like heavy metal flowers, to let the telescopes see out. Each wolf pack had its own telescope house, though they always seemed to be visiting back and forth because something was out of order, or sometimes just to talk about what everyone was looking at.

The house of Sophia's pack was empty when she and Beldi arrived. Sophia climbed nimbly up onto the roof of the telescope house and came down again with a large key, which she put into the lock of the door. Everything must be very well oiled, for there was no creaking or squeaking.

Following Sophia inside, Beldi asked, “If we are all bitten, will my family have a telescope house?”

“It's called an observatory,” said Sophia.

Beldi nodded. Frances said that that was a Draconic word. He wondered why the house for a telescope should not also be called by a Unicornish name. Perhaps Dragons had built the houses, but it seemed unlikely.

“Will we have an observatory?”

“I don't know,” said Sophia, removing a ragged blanket from a long tube. “You would have to ask Julia, and I think that she would want to collect the Avalanche and consult them.”

“The what?”

“The people she consults.”

“But Bec says an avalanche is a fall of rock or snow.”

“Yes,” said Sophia. “Julia says it's a metaphor; that she only calls them when she wants to make a decision that will have weight and effect.”

Beldi was more interested in the stars than in Julia, but he wondered why giving his family an observatory was like burying travellers and even whole villages in snow. “Why would she want the Avalanche just to give us an observatory?”

“You would have to decide what kind of telescope you would use.”

“How many kinds are there?

“Two,” said Sophia, waving her arm around the observatory.

There were three telescopes, long shining tubes of brass. Each of them rested on something like a three-legged stool, but made of iron, and with wheels. Two were off against the wall, as if conferring, and the third pointed at the peak of the roof. It was set in a frame, perhaps so that it would not roll around the floor when one was trying to use it.

“Why are there three?” asked Beldi.

“This is a refracting telescope,” said Sophia. “Those are reflecting telescopes. Some people will only use one kind.”

“Why?”

Sophia looked at him as if he were being rude. Beldi just looked back at her. After a moment she shook her hair out, like a wet dog in fact, and seemed less affronted. “Because of their theories about going befurred,” she said.

Beldi decided that he should not ask her any more questions, but she had apparently paused only to think. She went on, looking at the central telescope rather than at him, “This telescope has lenses in it,” she said. “They collect the light, to make things look larger. Maren, one of the people who built the city, thought that going befurred made us larger, not in size or weight, she said, but in our spirits. She thought that if we looked for a cure, we would shrink in our hearts. And she thought we should go befurred at the full moon, because that was the largest moon. But her sisters, who helped build the city, thought that we were the same, befurred or naked, and that our spirits would be the same if we were cured. Maren invented the reflecting telescope, which uses a mirror; and that was her metaphor about going befurred. Her sisters couldn't invent another kind of telescope – that was Claudio, who thought of refracting telescopes much later – but they did find some cures for befurment.”

“Did her sisters have names?” asked Beldi.

“Yes,” said Sophia.

Beldi had not lived six years with Con and learned nothing, so he just went on looking at her expectantly.

“I'm not allowed to say them in polite company,” said Sophia. “But if you listen when Raphaela hits her thumb with a hammer or Gregory burns a batch of bread, you may hear them.”

“But you use their telescopes,” said Beldi.

“My family doesn't believe the metaphors,” said Sophia. “But we have to live with people who do.”

“But I'm the only one here.”

“Good habits are important,” said Sophia.

Beldi laughed. “Arry says so too, but she says it about cleaning your teeth.”

Sophia said, “I thought your mother's name was Frances.”

“It is,” said Beldi, “but she doesn't talk much about habits. Arry is my sister. She took care of Con and me while Frances and Bec were being wolves.”

Sophia frowned. “That wasn't the right way to do it,” she said.

Beldi agreed with her, but he felt that she should not have said it to him. “Nobody told us,” he said.

“Who bit Frances?” she asked.

“Bec,” said Beldi.

“Well, who bit Bec, then? He is a full-moon wolf, but I can't believe that Julius or Octavia or --”

“It was a travelling wolf,” said Beldi.

Sophia's eyes grew huge. Beldi was surprised that this knowledge had stayed a secret, given the way that everyone in the city talked about everyone else. He supposed that Bec had not told anyone to begin with, and that perhaps he ought not to have done so either.

“No wonder Frances doesn't wish you or Con to be bitten,” said Sophia. “It's very different with a proper city wolf.”

“Con is too young,” said Beldi. Frances had said so.

“No, the change is easier for a young person,” said Sophia. She seemed to be thinking, while she worked at a handle that cranked open the roof of the observatory. “Especially a young person like Con.”

“Because she's fierce?” asked Beldi.

“No, that might be a reason to make her wait,” said Sophia. “Because she likes change.”

Beldi considered this while Sophia moved the barrel of the telescope, peered through the end, moved it again, and finally made a pleased sound. “Here,” she said.

Beldi stood on tiptoe – she was taller than he was – and put his eye to the cold round cylinder as she had done. Blots of white swam in a dark soup.

“Twiddle the knob if there's need,” said Sophia.

Beldi took his eye away and looked at her.

She showed him the knob. “To focus the image, if it's blurry,” she said.

Beldi stood for a moment committing the new words to his mind, and Sophia mistook him. “You need a stool,” she said, darted into a corner, and returned with a milking stool. Beldi climbed up on it and then had to bend a little to fit his eye to the cylinder. He found the knob and turned it. The white blots became a smear like cream added to the soup. He thought for a moment and turned the knob the other way. Like salt spilled on a table, the stars scattered into sharpness.

“What is it?” asked Beldi, one eye wide open and the other squeezed shut. His stomach felt odd, as if he were standing at the edge of a high cliff that a sheep might have plunged over.

“It's the rainy Hyades,” said Sophia.

“I don't see any rain.”

“That's what it's called. Sailors think it brings rain.”

“But it hasn't rain in it?”

“No, it's made of stars, in emptiness. It's a kind of star pack called an open cluster.”

Frances said that in the Hidden Land, the stars were huge and close, and that children were told unicorns lived in them. At home, though, the stars looked as they did here in the city of the Lukanthropoi, hard and bright and far. Unicorns might still live in them, Beldi supposed, if they wanted to.

“Do stars command the Lukanthropoi?” he asked. Con had been going on and on like a stream in flood about who and what commanded what and who. If he could give her any answer at all, perhaps she would be quiet while she thought it over.

“No,” said Sophia. “We used to wonder that, too. There were theories about which stars commanded which shape of the moon. But Onophrion showed that it's only the moon directing us.”

“Who is Onophrion? Might I meet him?” Perhaps Con could ask him all her questions. 

Sophia said, “No, he's dead. He was a wizard from Fence's Country and was bitten unwilling. He spent the rest of his life finding out what had happened and how it all works. He never lived here; he didn't like us.”

“Where did he live?” asked Beldi.

“Sometimes in Fence's Country and sometimes in the Dragon Kingdom.”

“Well, the Dragon Kingdom does have shape-shifters.”

“He didn't like them, either,” said Sophia. “Here, your field will have drifted. Let me show you how to recover the object.”

Beldi considered Onophrion as he watched Sophia. Beldi liked almost everyone, even people like Tany at home, who didn't seem to know what liking was. “Did Onophrion like anyone?” he asked.

Sophia straightened from the telescope, looking a little irritated. She would want him to be paying attention to what she was teaching him, of course. But she did answer him. “He liked his family,” she said. “But it's hard to like anybody if you are bitten unwilling. And he'd dislike other many-formed people more, wouldn't he?”

“I don't see why,” said Beldi. “They didn't do anything to him.”

“Well, no,” admitted Sophia. “But they would remind him.”

Beldi started to make a further argument, since after all his own father had been bitten unwilling and still liked people; but he decided against it. He put his eye to the telescope. The field of stars had drifted since Sophia recovered it. He wondered why they did that. He gently joggled the telescope as he had seen Sophia doing, but the stars he could see were mere random dots.

“No, here, the telescope is not a shape-shifter that you can shake from one form to another,” said Sophia. “Look, there's a method to moving it.”

Beldi giggled at the thought that the telescope might suddenly become a snake or a cat, but he watched Sophia more carefully. “How do you know which way the stars are drifting?” he asked.

Sophia unbent herself and regarded him with astonishment. She reminded him briefly of Con. “They move from east to west, like the sun and the moon,” she said.

“But they're called the fixed stars,” said Beldi. Halver would have taught him about the stars at home, next year, if Bec and Frances had not become wolves. The stars, regardless of where he was or who became what, were not his province. Sophia's surprise itched at him; he wanted to make a long speech and explain himself to her, but what if she were like Onophrion and decided not to like him because he reminded her of something?

“Nothing is fixed,” said Sophia, with finality. “Here, let's look at the Sisters before they set.”

Sophia had small dry ginger cakes and, wrapped in paper and cloth to protect the telescopes from it, greasy but satisfying bread with cheese and chives in it. They ate these things when a wisp of cloud moved across the Sisters. Sophia promised to show Beldi a late-rising planet, if he would stay until nearer dawn. Beldi did not need ginger cakes and cheese bread to make him stay, but in the chilly dark he was glad of them.

The planet was almost blindingly bright and white. Beldi asked its name, and Sophia told him that he must live in the city longer before he could be so familiar with any planet.

The eastern sky was pink, and the clouds that had come up in the west were dark, dark gray streaks when Sophia said goodbye to Beldi at the corner of Market Street and Juniper Way. She went on along Market, and Beldi climbed Juniper Way, which did have juniper trees on either side of it between which the houses seemed to peer like squirrels. It was a very steep street, sometimes breaking out into short flights of steps. The hills at home were not so high, but they were just as steep. All their neighbors in the giant house with small houses inside it had made jokes about how long it would take Beldi and his family to come up to the top of the street, where the giant house was, while having a philosophical discourse in an ordinary voice. But it had not taken them any time at all. They were not much for philosophical discourse at home, Bec said, because they had people who knew things and did not need to invent them on the spot; but they were excellent at climbing hills while talking, just the same.

Frances was in the kitchen when Beldi came in. She had never used to get up early, saying that the only way she saw dawn was when she waited to meet it. But since she became a wolf, sometimes she would get up early. Beldi considered her tousled red hair and rumpled shirt and decided that she was being Frances, and had stayed up all night. There were books on the table and stacked on the floor.

“What are you reading?” he asked her.

Frances was not reading, she was waiting for some water to boil, but she understood what he meant. “Con is concerned about something Mark told her, that all the first things were wizards,” she said. “I was trying to find out about that. I do wish we had Sune here to read for us. She would feel she was a bee in a clover garden, and I would not have a headache.”

“How do you know you have a headache?” asked Beldi.

“Oh, I've always known,” said Frances. “Remember that I was born in the Hidden Land. But Bec knows now, too. I think it must be the wolf.”

At home, it was Arry who knew if they hurt, and she told them, and then they did what she told them to do about it. Did she still know, about all the strangers at Heathwill Library? Beldi hoped not, and then wondered at himself.

“And thou?” said Frances. “How dost thou get on with these new sensations?”

Beldi considered the question. He wondered why Frances had not asked it earlier. He said, “I don't like hurting myself, but unless I fall down or somebody hits me, it seems as if I've always been like this. If I feel too cold I put on a jacket and I don't even think about it until later.” He had more to say, but he stopped.

“But then?” said Frances.

“I think about how we hurt Arry, all the time.”

“We didn't,” said Frances. “'Twas the spell.”

“But we fell down and didn't listen to her so we got sick and our heads and stomachs hurt and we hit one another and it was all play to us and she had to feel it.”

“It does give one to wonder,” said Frances.

“You knew,” said Beldi. The words tasted strange in his mouth.

“Bec and I did speak of taking her away,” said Frances.

“To the Hidden Land?”

“Very like.”'

“But you didn't.”

“She was happy,” said Frances.

Beldi stared at her. Frances nodded. Beldi thought about it. “Except after you and Bec left,” he said.

“One day,” said Frances, “I will find that wolf.”

Beldi wanted to go with her, but decided not to say so just now. She looked as if her head hurt worse.

“There's no almond-water here,” said Beldi.

“Ah, but there is,” said Frances, as if the entire conversation about Arry had not even happened. “I made some while you were out with Sophia.”

“Did you drink it?” said Beldi suspiciously.

“Not yet. Did you like the telescope?”

“I did,” said Beldi. “I wish we had one.”

Frances's brow creased. “I will see what I can do,” she said.

“Don't we all have to be wolves?”

“I trust not,” said Frances. “I will be speaking to Octavius about it later today.”

“Con thinks we all have to be wolves.”

“Con likes to think so,” said Frances. Her water boiled, and she took a handful of tea leaves from the canister and rubbed them over the water, letting them fall slowly. They smelled grassy and smoky.

“Ought Con to be a wolf?” asked Beldi.

“Ought?” said Frances, as she always did. “As she ought to be fed and housed and treated kindly? As she ought to behave kindly?”

“Would she like it? Would she,” Beldi said slowly, “would she be more like Con?”

“Ah,” said Frances. She stirred the tea a little. “Thou hast been thinking, I do see. No. No, I think that she would be more like Con as Con believes herself to be, but less like Con as she is.”

“Are you?” asked Beldi, a little breathlessly.

There was a wooden table in the kitchen, with stools set about it. Frances put her hand back to the table, and sat down carefully. “To myself,” she said, “I am like myself still. The wolf is a dream, not unlike dreams I did have before the biting. But I am not a child. I had tens and tens of years to be myself, before this transformation. Con is six. Also, she is Con.”

“What do you think she should do?”

“Wait until her years of discretion.”

Beldi considered this. “What if she doesn't have any?”

Frances began to laugh, and then leaned forward and scooped him into a very tight hug. Beldi hugged her back, well pleased, but also hoping for an answer.

“Nay, that is the very question,” said Frances. “I know not.”

“Con doesn't like waiting. Mally said so.”

“No,” said Frances, sitting back but keeping an arm around him, “indeed and truly she does not. But she needs must wait now and again; it is in the nature of things. She wants the practice.”

“Do I?” asked Beldi.

France's grip tightened on him for just a moment, and then relaxed. “You are nine,” she said. “That's not so very long, to have been Beldi. But I think, too, that Con understands what it is to be herself, though in a manner someways enlarged; and I cannot tell, chick, if thou dost understand what it is to be thee.”

Beldi said, “I don't see how I could not understand it.”

“Ah,” said Frances.

“Con says that means I'm being stupid but you don't want to say so.”

Frances rolled her eyes. “You are never stupid,” she said. 

“Does it mean Con is being stupid?”

“No!” said Frances. “It means that I want a moment to think.”

“Ah,” said Beldi.

Frances burst out laughing and hugged him again. “Perhaps more than a moment,” she said.

“You ought to drink the almond-water,” said Beldi.

“I suppose that I ought,” said Frances. “But tell me, doth the wolf call to thee?”

“What wolf?” said Beldi, though he thought that he understood what she meant.

“The wolf thou mightst become.”

“How would it call?”

Frances laughed again. Beldi wasn't sure when she had last laughed so much. Certainly it would have been before the wolf came. “The Lukanthropoi speak a tongue more like mine,” she said. “It likes to ornament and hide things. Or, to do it credit, it likes to show forth every small aspect not like any other. But let me be more plain. I see from thy questions that Con wants to be bitten, but I cannot tell if thou dost.”

Beldi said, “Mally says that children want to be like their parents, right until they don't. Is when they don't the years of discretion?”

“No,” said Frances, firmly; she looked as if she were trying not to laugh yet again. “The years of discretion are much later than that.”

“Oh,” said Beldi.

“So thou dost wish to be bitten, to be like Bec and me?”

Beldi nodded.

“Thou knowest,” said Frances, with no sign of laughter at all, “that a wandering wolf did bite Bec and Halver, and that such wolves are not well regarded here.”

Beldi nodded.

“Bec and I will not wander,” said Frances. “Here we will remain. If thou art bitten, thou must remain also, or travel only as a boy, or with others that may watch over thee.”

“I never thought I would leave home at all,” said Beldi.

“Well, chick,” said Frances, “when I was of thy years, never did I think that I would go to live in the Dubious Hills and have three black-headed children.”

“Why did you?” asked Beldi. Frances would always listen, but it was not so often that she would talk freely.

“Bec smiled at me,” said Frances.

Bec had a very nice smile, it was true; Beldi liked it, and Tiln at home, who knew, had said it was a beautiful smile. “Wouldn't he smile at you, if you stayed in the Hidden Land?”

“Not so often,” said Frances. “He longed for home, for the hills he was born in.”

“Why did he leave the hills?”

“His Psyche told him it would be best, for a time.”

“Oh,” said Beldi. “Like Mally told us to leave, only forever?”

He could tell that Frances was managing not to make an expression, but what the expression was he couldn't tell at all. “Not precisely like,” said Frances. “But somewhat like. Bec's Psyche did think that Bec had an outward-looking mind, and so sent him out to see what he could look at.”

“I just found out I have an outward-looking mind too!” said Beldi, extremely pleased. “But I want to look at the stars, so it's all right to stay here.”

“Others do look at the stars.”

“Where?”

“The College of Mercy in the Dragon Kingdom,” said Frances, after a pause. “Heathwill Library, where Arry has gone. The Assembly of Whirlpools, in the Outer Isles.”

“But are they all up in the mountains with the best air?”

“Heathwill is in the mountains, but someways foggy betimes. But the Assembly of Whirlpools is so.”

“Is it very far away?”

“If you do take the distance from home to here,” said Frances, “and think of three such, that is how far it is to the Outer Isles.”

“I wish wolves could fly,” said Beldi.

“Sune says there are stories of swans who turn into people,” said Frances, “but no one knows if the stories are true.”

“Swans and wolves might not make a family,” said Beldi.

Frances smiled, and stopped smiling suddenly. “Many animals may make a family,” she said. “Never doubt it. Should you be turned to a swan, you must still come home. But absent accident, you say truly, swans and wolves might be an uneasy mix.”

“But wolves and people,” said Beldi; but he could not make a proper sentence of it.

“Derry said something to me, before I left to find you,” said Frances. “She said that wolves are dogs whose custom is not to live with people. But you saw at home how dogs are.”

Beldi's family had not had a dog at home, but cats. He thought of Mally's dog and Tany's dog, and nodded. “Derry says that dogs like us, and want us to like them,” he said.

“Just so,” said Frances.

“Does Con understand that wolves are dogs?”

“Perhaps not,” said Frances. “And ought she?”

“If it's true,” said Beldi.

“Of a certainty I would tell her the truth did she ask,” said Frances. “But that is not the same as calling it to her attention.”

“Do you want her to be bitten, or not bitten?” asked Beldi.

“I want her to consider and delay,” said Frances.

“Mally says those are not her strong points.”

“Oh, I know,” said Frances.

“Did you drink your almond water?”

Frances took a jug from the cupboard and poured the cloudy liquid into a cup. She put the jug away, lifted the cup, and drained it.

Beldi studied her intently. “Did it work?” he said.

“It works over time, not all at once,” said Frances; oddly, the creases in her forehead and around her eyes did ease as she spoke. “Tell me about the stars thou didst see,” she said.

******************************************************************************

"Beldi!" Maya said happily. "Beldi and Con and Frances from The Dubious Hills in a city of werewolves with telescopes! That's such fun. I don't suppose there's any more?"

"It's from a novel called Going North that's nearly finished, and should be available soon -- but there isn't a date yet. But the cool thing, the really coolest thing, is that it's a sequel not just to The Dubious Hills but to the Secret Country books too. Lots of it is about Arry and Ruth meeting at --"

"At Heathwill Library!" Maya interrupts. "Oh stars and delight! When did you say?"

"She's working on it. She has a Patreon and she sometimes posts bits, though not this bit before. And she's not the kind of person who works better for knowing you're clamouring for it." He grins. "Actually I'm not sure any writers do. It's pressure rather than support, mostly, however much you mean it as support. Have you read all the books she's already written? Sometimes people are pushing for the new one when they've not read all the old ones."

"I've read the three Secret Country books, and The Dubious Hills and Tam Lin, of course," Maya says.

"Then you're missing Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary which I think you'd like a lot. It also has telescopes in it. And time travel."

"I'll put in a loan request for it the second the library opens again," she says. "Oh there are so many great books coming, The City in the Crags and whatever book five of that is, and Going North and the new Rebecca Kuang and a new Caroline Stevemer and just so many wonderful things." She looks at him intently. "Books are the best thing. Books take you right away from bad places."

"Even when you're in a good time books are still great," he says. The cat purrs as if in agreement and they laugh.

"Did you get any of the food?" Maya asks. "The cakes and bread?"

"Oh you are taking it for granted now," he says. 'Yes, of course I did. Ginger cakes and slightly greasy but delicious cheese bread. Help yourself. He unwraps the bread and hands half if it to her.

"Oh it is good," she says, with her mouth full. "We'll have to wash our hands again again again. And then can we read more before bed?"

"One more thing," he says, failing entirely to look stern.

"Two more things?" she counters.

"All right, two more things. Now finish your ginger cake, and then we'll read this poem from William Alexander." 

"I like William Alexander. He wrote the Goblin books. And the Ambassador books, with all the aliens." Maya speaks around her cake.

"He won a ton of awards for them. But my favourite thing of his is The House on the Moon, which was in the Uncanny Disabled People Destroy SF edition last year. I just loved that. I hope he writes lots more like that. But this one is a poem. Do you like poetry?"

"Mmm," Maya says. She is carefully sweeping up the crumbs of bread and cake with her hands. 'I like it sometimes."

"Well let's wash our hands and come back and try this one."