Chapter 9
Don’t Put Your Blame On Me

“Pancakes.” I paced left to right. “Pancakes, look at me. It doesn’t make sense.” The overly large puppy kept licking his own paws. “I’m going to need you to listen,” I continued. “Sure, some of it does. So it turns out that I go full wolf around the full moon. Perhaps a day  before and after. Ish.” 

I’d read once that a full moon only actually lasts for a split second, but that, because of how bright the thing is, it just appears that way. That made sense to me. So me being a wolf coincided with about a day before and a day after the actual full moon I guessed, which had seen me turn back into a human halfway through the night. It had been a little awkward. 

“So that part made sense, right? Werewolves! Heck, maybe you’re some kind of werewolf and you got me infected somehow. Or maybe the Witch was already a werewolf and I just got here and took his place.”

Pancakes yawned but dutifully sat in the middle of the main common room where I’d put him. I needed to talk to someone, and Pan was the only one close by I could rant to. He pawed behind his ear, and I gave him some scratches while I put more of my thoughts in order. Okay. So. Being a wolf was… not the worst, the urge to pee on things notwithstanding. 

“So I did some digging,” I said. Pan tried to eat my hand a little bit. “Turns out the Witch is a journaler. One of the rooms upstairs is a study. I don’t even know how I didn’t find it. Anyway.” I started pacing again. “Except that he keeps some kind of weird cataloguing system and it’s not alphabetical or in order of writing, so I’m having trouble digging through. But I did find this.” I held up a journal. 

After turning back in the middle of the night, I’d been unable to sleep, so I’d spent until dawn digging through the journals. The Witch catalogued everything. The plants that grew in the valley, how they needed to be treated to get certain effects and how to cure common ailments. At first I’d just been looking for words like ‘wolf’ or ‘werewolf’ or a diagram or something, and putting everything back where I’d found it, but after a while I realised that some of these were probably going to be useful in the future. 

So I’d started taking my own notes. I didn’t know where he got them — I’d expect paper to be more than a little rare in a land like this — but the Witch had empty notebooks by the crateful. I’d taken one for myself, and instead of messing up this extremely meticulous person’s filing system, I’d just started noting down the location of every notebook I came across that talked about remedies, and then another for plant treatment, and then finally notes for things that might come in handy, like maps to a nearby creek so I could refill water should I need to (I’d been boiling snow so far, which seemed to work but was a bit annoying). 

“So I found this one, right? As far as I can tell, this is one of the earliest diaries.” I waved it around for emphasis. “And it mentions the reason he came to this valley in particular. He talks about a ‘Family’, capitalised like that, and the research he’s done into movements, especially around the full moon.” I crouched down in front of Pancakes and took his face in both hands and squeezed it. “You know what that means, right? He knew about it. And look,” I said, holding up the journal and showing it to my sweet stupid meow meow, who just licked my face, “he made diagrams about stellar movements so he could predict when the shift would happen, to the hour, and then there’s a note here, ‘ſee journal 544 for recordingſ of movementſ of The Famelye’ which doesn’t even make sense because there’s no way there’s five-hundred of these things. Anyway.” I took a deep breath. “So he was busy following this pack, and he wrote down everything.” There were more journals. “There’s the occasional additional mention of ‘the Family’, but always in like, coded language, it looks like.”

I sat down next to Pan and wrapped an arm around him, then buried my face in his fluffy coat. Pancakes said “mrrp” and shoved his nose in my ear. 

“But in all of these,” I said, tossing the journals across the floor, “there’s literally only one mention of what they look like in human form. Hold on.” I crawled across the floor to find the right one, and leafed to the offending page. I’d read and reread it a dozen times to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “Says here: ‘Appearanſe regular. Not worth diſcuſſing ande or conſidering further.’ That’s it.” I tossed it aside. “It does not mention any of them having their bodies changed. Anywhere!”

I put my hands behind my head and laid down. Pan put his head on my chest, and I scratched him behind the ears. He went “Brep” and drooled a little bit.

“Nor does it mention why someone would turn back into… what they looked like before the shift.” I sighed. After I’d turned back, I hadn’t really fit into the clothing Octavia had given me. Well, it did fit — the Witch didn’t have the most imposing frame — but it didn’t fit-fit. My hips didn’t fill out the dress. My waist didn’t support the bodice. My shoulders felt uncomfortably wide. I rubbed the stubble on my face. I was back here. And it bothered me, and it bothered me that I didn’t know why it did. 

Pan whined a little bit, and I liked to imagine it was because he felt bad for me. It was more likely because he was still upset that he hadn’t gotten any of the steak from last night. I’d made the right choice putting it away, and it had made for a very good midnight wolf-snack. 

“But!” I said “All is not lost. It looks like our Witch was a real Witch.” I frowned. “Well, I suppose he already was because Witches were always just, like, clever people, but point stands. He was a proper magic Witch, looks like. He just didn’t do a lot of it, because — and I quote — ‘ſuch frivolityeſ are to be avoided for they avoid real work and conſequenceſ’. Who looks at magic and goes ‘that’s for lazy people’?!” I shook my head. “Anyway, looks like he succumbed anyway, because in his latest journal,” I tapped the one on the ground next to me, “he mentions experimenting with ‘otherwiſe frivolouſ magicſ’ to do… something. Then there’s a lot of stuff about synchronicity — sorry, ‘ſynchroniſitye’ — and about creating a consistency of presence. The point is that I think that’s what he did that caused me to be here.” 

Thoughts raced through my head while nothing at all raced through Pan’s head. He snored a little bit, and I lowered my voice so as not to wake him up. 

“But you know what that means, right? That means magic is real, and who knows what else it can do? For one, it might help me figure out what the whole werewolf thing is about.” I scratched my neck, annoyed by the hairs growing back this fast. That meant I was likely going to have some kind of shaving tools. Blegh. “I also need to remember that there’s a clan of them around here somewhere, that he’s been studying. I might need to go through the rest of his journals and see if I can find any other mention of them.”

It was worth seeing if I could replicate the whole process, to see what it was about. If that turned me into a woman again, it was worth figuring out why that happened too, and why that didn’t bother me, and why turning back had. 

Finally, I had to go into town and give… the butcher? Anyway, I had to give the butcher his butt-cream, because I had managed to get my hands on some aloe vera, and turning that into a paste hadn’t been too hard. 

“So now I guess I’m going to learn how to do magic while trying to make myself useful,” I said. “And I kind of want to see Octavia again, but a part of me feels strange talking to her while I’m like… y’know, this.” I gestured vaguely at myself. “It felt more comfortable to talk to her when I was… uh… the same height.” I blushed a little bit, remembering what it had been like to be face to face with her. “And I’m worried that maybe my behaviour will be different now that we’ve met when she didn’t recognise me, and also I don’t like the idea of not being fully honest with her. 

“Frrp,” Pancakes snored. I was going to have to buy some more food when I was in town, too. I wasn’t quite feeling up to putting out traps the way the Witch had, and I also wasn’t in the mood to eat rice for a few weeks, especially considering how little rice I had. 

“Okay,” I said. “In order: go to town. Maybe see Octavia. If I feel up to it. See about her dad’s leg, replace bandage. Butcher Butt Cream. Get food. Come back. Research wolf magic. Try not to get eaten by the pack of wolves that apparently lives around here.”

I was trying to think. I was forgetting something. I was trying not to think of something. Pan lazily opened his eyes and looked at me. Now that he was a wolf, his eyes were more blue than they’d been, and he was looking at me intently. 

“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I like Octavia, I do. And I don’t want to avoid her. I just don’t want her to find I’m not… who I looked like. Or that I’m a werewolf, for that matter. I know what medieval folk were like.” I thought back. I’d read stories when I was a kid, of the origin of the werewolf myth in Europe and how it had been used, much like accusations of witchcraft, as a way to lash out at, oppress, or otherwise demonise people with various disabilities. And almost always it had not ended well for the accused. 

“Mwem,” Pancakes said. “Mew. Mrowl.” 

“Yeah,” I groaned. “Me too. But I just… She makes me feel nice and she doesn’t… well, the way she looked at me when she gave me those clothes was really nice…”

“Mwee,” Pan said. 

“You shut your mouth,” I said, like what he said had any meaning and I wasn’t just projecting thoughts onto him because thinking thoughts to myself was too oppressive and scary and carried with it pitfalls I might not find any way to climb out of. “I know. I know. I just… want her to look at me like that. Like we’re equals. Like we’re the s— Like I’m not—” I glared at Pan. “This is your fault.”

“Wrowl?” 

“You know what you did,” I said as I rubbed the spot between his eyes. “Okay. Maybe I can force the change a little earlier, so I can visit again as…” I smiled at the thought. “As Maya. That’d be nice.” I perked up a little. “And it would mean that I get t— that she won’t get suspicious if Maya doesn’t show up for a while. And that she won’t get mad at me for not visiting sooner.” I nodded. “Yeah, it’d be good to avoid suspicion. Now that she’s seen Maya, Maya has to be around more.”

That made sense, right? Like, if people came up here looking for her and she was nowhere to be seen, it would be weird, and if she never visited people might suspect that I was some kind of shape-shifter, and then they might figure out I was werewolf, and then all hell would break loose. 

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “That makes sense.”

I almost convinced myself, too. But something niggled at the back of my head, like Octavia wasn’t the only one I was lying to. Oh well. It was Pan’s fault anyway.

Elamimax

I wonder if anyone has noticed that every chapter is a song lyric.