It was dark in the trees. Gretchen tripped over a root and fell. She hit the thorns before she saw them, felt the welt raise on her shoulder when she landed in the patch of wolfweed. She thought nothing of the plant, but the pain brought her back to her senses. Slowly, brushing leaves and needles from her hands, she rose and looked back toward home.
May wrapped her arms around Gretchen as she entered, put salve on the wound and said nothing of her flight. They each had to deal with Momma’s death in their own way. Molly, thirteen then, had curled into a ball on the sofa and was crying.
Two weeks later it began to happen. The moon, bloated with their grief, hung low in the sky. They were packing; May was moving them. They could not live in that house, she said. Not where Momma died. It was late, the three were tired. Molly was rubbing her eyes.
Gretchen, wrapping dishes in newspaper, suddenly felt her skin begin to burn. It started at her shoulder where the wound, red still but nearly healed, raised up, incredibly inflamed. Gretchen yelped, attracting the attention of her sisters, whose eyes widened as they turned to her.
“Gretchen, what is it?” May said as she rose from the floor and ran to her sister’s side.
“It burns,” Gretchen whimpered, her hands clutching her arms.
She began to rock back and forth as May held her. Molly crept over to her side. Huddled there, on the floor of the old kitchen, Gretchen learned the language of pain and her sisters, that of fear.
Gretchen didn’t know how they’d managed to get from there to here, but here they were, in another old house, near woods with no sign of wolfweed. Ten years gone, and it never got any easier. May and Molly still held her as it happened, still stroked her hair and whispered in her ear, we love you, Gretchen, speaking her name over and over as though to help her remember who she was. They accepted, now, there was no cure.
May put her plate in the sink as Molly staggered into the room. Gretchen turned from the door to greet her, but all she received in response was a savage grunt. Molly was no morning person, that was sure.
“Coffee,” she said, and May obliged.
“Rough night?” Gretchen asked when the cup was empty.
“Hell yeah. The Bailey boys were at it again, had Tucker pinned to the wall and would have beat him senseless if John hadn’t of walked in.”
May rolled her eyes. “John’s after you, you know.”
“I know it,” Molly said. “I’m not messing with a cop, no way.”
Gretchen and May exchanged a glance. They both knew Molly fancied him, but didn’t want to risk the law getting too close.
“I don’t see how it could hurt,” May said.
“I do.”
Gretchen turned away from them. “I’m going for a walk.”
“You’re in a mood,” Molly said.
“Yeah.”
“She’s hungry, leave her alone.” May put her hands on her wide hips and tried to stare Molly down.
“She shouldn’t be out there alone today, you know.” Molly stared back.
“She knows what she’s doing.”
Molly raised an eyebrow, but said nothing more.
Gretchen left them to their bickering. She wouldn’t be gone long, she knew the dangers and the risks. She was restless; she only wanted a little time alone. It happened this way, sometimes. The morning would call her out, as though the monster in her was willing to greet the sun, if only it was able.
She no longer knew who was the monster and who was not. She, Gretchen, walking upright, dressed in ordinary jeans and a shirt, brown eyes and black hair, could pass through any town without notice. No one would ever guess, much less believe, what she was. She carried her terrible secret and knew, as she passed bland strangers on the street, she would sink her teeth into any one of them if she must. She, it, hunting on all fours, sniffing the air, saliva dropping from her jaws, knew nothing about secrets. She, it, was a pure thing, run on instinct. It knew nothing but scent and sound. Gretchen hated the monster. She hated the unholy charade her life had become.
Her sisters were waiting for her when she returned to the house. They worried too much about the wrong things, Gretchen thought, but she smiled at them anyway.
“It’s a beautiful day. You want some help out in the garden?”
“Sure,” May replied to Gretchen’s offer with a smile. “The weeds must be taking over by now.”
“They are. Molly, you coming?”
“Why not,” Molly said. “There’s nothing else to do.”
The three sisters spent several hours beneath the sun, sharing gossip and a jug of water and laughing as though it was any other day. For a time, the specter of the evening was vanquished.
“I’m starved,” Molly finally said, and then glanced at Gretchen, who had suddenly become very still. “Sorry.”
Gretchen shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m not that hungry now.”
She lied. Her belly growled, but not with a hunger her sisters could ever feed. Unless she ate them, she thought.
It was a fear they had, early on, before they realized their scent scared her off. They would not be pleased to find Gretchen contemplating it now. Gretchen stifled a cruel laugh. It was the monster, easing its way out.
She showered as they ate their supper and cleaned up after them when they were done. They worked, she tended the house. It seemed an unfair trade, but fair had nothing to do with this life they lived.
Afterward, they all became restless. These last hours were the worst as they waited for a thing that would give them little warning when it finally appeared.
They never, ever used the word werewolf. Gretchen was not some figment of myth or superstition. But they knew, sure as they knew the sun would rise in the morning, that’s exactly what their sister was.
Wolfweed: rare, mysterious, grown out of the book of legend. They would never have believed it, had they not seen firsthand what it could do. When they finally made the connection, they went back to the old woods and burned every inch of it out. Only one thorn survived and this, Gretchen kept, as a reminder to heed Momma’s words.
They had no idea how it worked. Years of their own research had not offered a clue and a medical assessment was entirely out of the question. Even to ask that the thorn be examined was too dangerous. May had visions of her sister being used in weird genetic experiments. She imagined the military becoming involved. No sister of hers would be treated like an animal, even if animal she was.
At dusk, Gretchen stripped off her clothes, right there in front of her sisters. They watched as she wrapped a sheet loosely around her lithe body. They would reach out to her then, if they could, but Gretchen was tense and closed in. Her long night was already beginning as she prepared for transformation.
As the sun touched the ground, they filed out of the house. Somberly they sat on the earth behind the garden, where laughter echoed from only a few hours ago. The moon was still pale, but as night crept in around them it pulled shadows along the ground. Gretchen began to shiver and her eyes rolled.
May gently unwound the sheet from Gretchen’s shoulders and pulled her into her arms. Molly, close behind, leaned against her.
“We’re right here,” they said. “Gretchen, we’ll be right here.”
Gretchen could no longer hear them. Her body was aflame and her sinews tense as her bones reconfigured themselves. She growled and groaned as fine hairs thickened in their follicles. She arched her back and flung out her arms. Her sisters ducked, but did not leave her side. Gretchen wept and she screamed as though touched by a thousand suns.
They clung to her as long as they could, until—for their own safety and hers—they had to back away. Squatting, they watched as their sister transfigured from young, lovely woman to wolf.
It rose on trembling legs, shook itself and loped away, bristling. It would have run if it were not so weak; the scent of humans terrified it. The woods called, the moon shone down and behind it, two sisters put their heads in their hands and cried.
The wolf stopped at the tree line, sniffed the air and padded its way into the brush at the edge of the field. Its fur condensed the heat still wafting up from the mulched leaves below. Pines, a few twisting maples, an oak here and there: these were the wolf’s landmarks, scented time and again as it made its way down the familiar trail.
It reveled, one could say, in the freedom of movement. Limbs stretching as blood pumped through its veins, it ran, dodging fallen limbs, leaping through bracken, careless, for a little while, of the sound it made as it traveled.
Soon, the wolf slowed. The trees were thick in this part of the forest, close and tall. Moonlight trickled over the uppermost leaves, but close to the ground light was scarce. The wolf did not steady its pace because of this, however. It knew, as wolves do, that it must attend to its surroundings. Each scent and sound meant something. The wolf translated; its ears flicked back and forth, its nose pointed north.
Hunger moved it. She knew, by the hollow of her belly, that it was long since she’d eaten. She smelled prey, but it was distant. Water was close. A stream that wound its way over a rock-strewn bed, once much wider, ran just west of where the wolf was standing. She picked her way between the trees until she reached it. A dam, abandoned last season, was slowly being dismembered by the current. She had feasted here, before the beavers left for less dangerous turf.