Graveborn

This story starts when I am young, dumb, and eighteen.

I wouldn’t have called myself dumb back then, and I wasn’t — except for that one night near the end of February.

I walked home from my after-school job. The town is cold and quiet, the latter an unwelcome reminder; there are only adults and young kids around, and they are all inside as it’s already dark out.

I am bored out of my mind and pick at the food my aunt made for me.

‘I know, honey,’ she sighs as she sits down with me.

‘I remember when your mother was your age and the waiting game was driving hér mad.’

I’ve heard this story at least a hundred times this last year alone, but I still like it. It’s comforting.

‘When she turned sixteen and her wolf still had not shown, she even went as far as to search for a witch.’

I swallow my food and continue the story in my aunt's place.

‘You didn’t know where she was for over two weeks. You only had that little note she left behind.’

My aunt nods. I have the note visualised at the back of my eyes, her handwriting hurried yet graceful.

‘She never finds the witch and spends all her savings just coming home again, gets scammed at a hotel, and none of you are allowed to stay away for a night for two years by Grandma.’

My aunt’s disgruntled face at that part of the story puts a smile back on my face.

‘Four months later, she has her first shift,’ I say wishfully, concluding the story.

‘And such things are hereditary,’ my aunt adds.

I stare at my human fingers. It’s just harder in the weeks when everyone is away training or bonding in the woods. And after two weeks, when they come back, there’ll be that many more inside jokes that I won’t get.

‘I washed your sheets today,’ my aunt says as she opens her sewing box, starting to fix the tear in my younger nephew’s jeans.

‘They are drying on the stairs.’

I thank her and clear the table.

‘I’m going to read something in bed, so good night.’

‘Good night.’

Not much later, I am in my bed with a good book, breathing in the smell of freshly washed sheets. It’s eleven, and the book is too good to put away. It’s twelve, and my eyelids are getting heavy.

The story fades into a dream. I finally shift.

The dream is lucid. I move through our house, but being a wolf isn’t like I was told it would be.

When you shift, all sensations get so much more intense. You smell and see things that have always been there but you never quite noticed: the details in the tree bark, the smell of all those who passed through a place before you, the feel of dirt between your paws.

In my lucid dream, I have none of that. I am floating instead of grounded in the dirt, sensing everything. If anything, I feel disconnected instead of hyperconnected.

I wander through the pack house. Perhaps I should have gone to the woods, but I did not. A door opens at the end of the landing, and Evelin comes out wearing PJs. I am about to greet her, but then she screams and runs, slamming the door behind her.

Confused, I run too. Perhaps there is something to be afraid of. Down the stairs, where I cross paths with Jupiter.

‘Ghost!’ he screams, turning white as paper.

Only then do I become aware of the knot forming in my stomach — a swirling feeling whispering that it is me. I am why their faces pale.

I keep running, away from the pack house this time.

Alone in a dark part of the forest, I come to my senses. Realising I don’t need to catch my breath, I look down. Down at my legs: furry paws, white as snow.

I know the legends of ghost wolves, with their pure white fur, always bringing bad news.

There sounds a friendly and oddly familiar voice — the first thing about any of this that is as it should be—my wolf.

“I am sorry, my love.” A common way for a wolf or human to nickname their other half.

“It’s okay,” I mutter. It finally hits me that this is no dream. I finally shifted.

“It is not, and your pack will not find it so.” Her voice, filled with sadness, almost makes me shift back and cry.

“It will be better if you tell your pack I am dead.” The echo of her words is odd. All of this is odd. Surreal.

“But you are not,” I counter, after my fingers get a grip on reality again.

“You won’t tell them this straight away. Wait until you are seventeen. Tell them you felt the weak wolf in you die.”

I do not answer her, and we walk back home in silence. I shift effortlessly a mile before we enter our backyard, but her closeness doesn’t leave me.

And it never does afterwards. Despite her unwillingness to ever shift again, it is really nice to have a true best friend — access to the other half of myself, someone who is always on my side and thinking along.

You might think that is the night that changes my life for good, the beginning of this story. But it is merely one of the causes that leads me to act like the young, dumb eighteen-year-old that night in February.

Not having, and pretending not to have, a wolf isn’t easy. Packs aren’t adjusted to those kinds of disabilities.

At first, they are waiting for me to shift, but that waiting gets uncomfortable when I turn sixteen.

When I tell them two days after my seventeenth birthday that I felt my wolf die, no one doubts me. My aunt mourns with me, and so do some of the other pack members I am close with.

My childhood friends drift away from me. Besides the training and bonding trips, some of them find their mates; while others undergo military training. I can no longer relate to their worlds.

I do still speak to them from time to time — when they go to the grocery store where I work as a team leader with their younger siblings, or when there is a celebration at the pack house, or when I do other odd jobs around the pack territory.

I know my future isn’t here.

There are packs that send some of their kind off to college or university; our pack isn’t like that. We don’t like outside influences too much. After high school, we get taught by our elders, whether that’s to be an electrician, businesswoman, or politician.

I dream of building my own life, escaping the whispers and the pitied looks. Escaping the bleakness.

Last week I even bought a laptop with money saved from my jobs, though I have yet to open the thing, scared to burst this bubble of a dream.

I have my parents’ inheritance too, but touching that money feels wrong. Even if it isn’t meant for anyone but me.

You should probably know that when I was six, my parents and I got into a car accident. I was the only survivor and moved in with my uncle and aunt. They raised me and paid for my food and my place in the pack, whether that be at school or sports.

My wolf tries to cheer me on; she knows of the sad and lonely sinkhole I am slowly drowning in. Even if I rarely let my thoughts drift back to that day and the sadness only reaches my waist now, no one but her is going to pull me out of there.

“I think tonight, at the party, you should have some real fun.”

It is just the two of us working at the checkout now. The woman walking out the door couldn’t contain her excitement about tonight, and it flares something in me.

We have an important guest — an Alpha from a large pack. He has been staying in the pack house for three days, and tonight the pack has organised a goodbye party.

I haven’t been to a pack house party in a while; not counting the ones where I was part of the staff.

‘What does real fun even look like, huh?’ I answer my wolf out loud.

“The fact that you even have to ask me tells me you really need this.”

I agree. I want to let loose too. To feel alive.

There is no need to behave, to disappear even further into the shadows of others. The pack is going to gossip either way.