Terrance’s retelling

21 years ago

May

The familiar acrid smell hit my nose as Father came home. He was stumbling through the living room by the time I made it into the kitchen to warn Mom. The hollow look in her eyes when I told her made my heart squeeze, she already knew. This happened every time, every month. Mother hustled me out of the room and met her drunk fate at the door.

Just because Father went on about needing a daughter to seal the alliance with the Wildcrown pack didn’t mean he has any right to hurt Mother. Why was I still too young to help? I could not even bring my wolf out on my own yet! What could I do being still tied to my mother’s shift? I had already turned 10, others change as early as 8!

‘I try,’ Oak whispered sadly. He felt my pain and distress. I just nodded, covering my ears with my hands to dampen the arguing in the nearby room. I had to hide on the back patio, Father had blocked the path to my room. This made it harder to block out the repetitive slapping sounds and- ‘Terrance, how many bricks are on this wall?’

‘817’

‘Ceiling has how many wood planks?’

‘24’ and so it continued.

 After a time, it became quiet and I risked entering the main house again, Mother had tearstains on her cheeks and was at the counter dishing dinner onto plates. I handed her a tissue and began setting the table.

“Don’t let your father see you doing that,” she whispered. I set the cup down roughly and continued setting the table regardless. My Father be damned, I would help where I wanted to, expected roles or otherwise.

The rest of the evening went by in silence, until I began clearing the table. “Your Mother will do that,” My father’s deep voice growled. I continued the chore, ignoring him, but my father slammed his hand onto the table in protest, rocking the table and spilling the remaining contents around.

“Son.” He said, using his spirit’s strength to command me, “Put that down.” Oak whimpered in my mind and forced me to turn around, I fought and strained against the pull but was too powerless to resist.

My arms ached and trembled from the strain as I placed my dishes back on the table, and I gnashed my teeth in protest, but it was all for nothing.

“If you don’t like how I run this home, then leave,”

Mother made a strangled sound but otherwise didn’t respond, she couldn’t. “I am Alpha here and you won’t be welcome if you don’t adapt. No one will take in a Rogue, so leaving isn’t an option either. Learn your place boy and your life will be well taken care of, fight it and discover how cruel our kind can be.”

It is not the first nor last time I would hear that lecture, it has been inscribed onto the back of my head since my father realized I had softer inclinations than he.

The next morning, I woke to mother screaming and objects being thrown. I squeezed further into the dark corner under my bed until her choked scream cut off and a dull thud sounded. This was not the usual pattern. I clawed my way out from under the bed so fast to see my open drawers. Father had searched my room while I slept and found the pills mother kept deep in my drawers. I twisted my ankle on the stairs as I slid down them. Mother was crumpled on the floor and he had the small container in his fist. A few decimated dining room chairs were barely recognizable, their fragments littered the front room. Father was cranking his foot back to kick her lifeless form as he spewed some nonsense about betrayal. I saw stars as I interposed myself between her body and the blow.

“Shit Boy get away!” He cursed, but I just clamped my small form around mothers most vital spots and waited. Panic was ringing in my ears so loud I could not decipher the steam of profanity and accusations he was roaring. Eventually the front door slammed, he was gone. It wasn’t long until Jamie from next door peeked in to check. She let out a small gasp and ran off for help.

4 months later

September

I was trying to make my own breakfast. Mother had been sick a lot lately and crying even more often. The eggs weren’t too bad, some parts brown and some parts still wet, but the scrambled parts were the same shape and all one color, so I know I mixed them enough. Besides, maybe the wet parts were the cheese, it was hard to tell being the same color. I poked at them, trying to only put dry ones onto Mothers plate, until I heard the toaster pop. “Well that just made it worse,” I grumbled.

‘Isn’t toast supposed to be all one color?’ Oak asked me, curious.

“That’s why I put it in again!” I complained at the half white half burnt toast, I tried brushing off the black pieces and that didn’t work, so I started to try and cut them into two pieces to give Mother the lighter halves. I looked up sheepishly as she came rushing into the kitchen, her nostrils flaring.

“What are you doing?” her voice was a strange mix of exhaustion and panic.

“I’m making breakfast!” I held up my butter knife triumphantly.

The welled tears threatened to spill when she saw two separate plates next to me.

“Oh, Terrance,” she cooed, “That’s lovely! But I just can’t have the toast today, the smell is too strong for me,” She fought to finish eating the eggs I had made her.

“You’ve been sick for a long time,” I said quietly when she came out of the bathroom for the third time that morning.

“Just don’t tell your Father.” She pleaded.

1 month later

October

After lessons with the other children, I heard commotion behind the communal building. Rounding a corner, I saw a familiar sight. “STOP!” I yelled, Oak’s voice sounding out with mine. That, in and of itself, was enough to make me pause, but then I realized that the boys had halted mid-motion, Sara peeked out of her arms and made eye contact with me.

“Terrance?” she whispered. That was enough to break the trance, and the boys came back to themselves, the instigator stripped, shifted, and lunged for me, biting at my neck. I threw up my hands in defense, and as the teeth came down, they caught my arm, drawing jagged streams of blood. I felt Oak flair in response and the confines of my own clothes. Throwing off the other boy I tore at my shirt, getting it off.

“He can’t shift, keep at him Jake,” one boy taunted, and the growl that escaped my lips held the resentment I had for all the bullies of the world. The whole group paused again, but their pride did not let them back down. I tore my pants off and felt the thick haze of magic descend onto me as I pulled Oak forward in my mind. Something shifted and suddenly there was a space behind him I could go to.

He was ready, he burst forth with an ease we had never before experienced. The still human, younger boys panicked and started crying for help. The older wolf stood his ground, but seemed so much smaller than before. I knew my wolf was large, Oak was already the same size as my mother’s spirit Jasmine, but we felt completely different this time, like the whole world had shrunk.

Suddenly, there was a 3^rd voice in my head, the Pack Coordinator, ‘Name yourself.’ He said firmly.

‘Oak and Terrance,’ we growled back, still on the defensive.

‘Ahh, you’ve finally shifted, congratulations boy,’ he said, his tone morphing to one of praise.

‘Jake and his friends were hurting Sara, call him off.’ I said, still angry, ‘He bit me,’ I tattled, not caring for their friendship.

‘Hmm, Alright,’ the coordinator replied before cutting the mind link.

Seeing I was distracted by the conversation, Jake lunged at me again and I was forced to grapple with him. I managed to pin him down sloppily and gnashed the air just millimeters from his nose few times before he submitted. I wasn’t sure if he was mind linked and called off, or if he submitted because of me, but I was able to go home after that. Sara had thankfully taken her chance to run off as soon as their attention turned away from her.

When I returned home mother was gone. There was a tearstained note in the far corner under my bed.

            I am sorry.

            I love you.

            Please understand,

            You cannot have a sister.

2 years 1 month later

November

The screams echoed through the area. Rushing outside, I watched in growing horror as Mother was being dragged towards the main building by her hair, she was scrambling to keep up, her arms and legs bloodied from scraping against the cold ground for purchase. As soon as I was able to push through the shock and feel my limbs, I ran out to try and help her, but I was no match for my father’s Alpha command to stop. It felt as if my heart were on fire with the desire to disobey him, but my body would not move.

The fire in my heart exploded into shards of pain as she was shut behind a heavy, bolted door.

2 years later

Early November

Every night after my father was asleep I had attempted connecting to Mother mentally. Keller and I spent most of our free time developing these skills. Finally, after years, I got through. Mother was extremely weak, the infant had been born a few days before, under a full moon, lunar eclipse on October 28^th. Father had celebrated into the night. Mother was in absolute despair about the female child, knowing that she would be used solely for Father’s benefit. She barely understood it was me mentally connecting in with her at first. But finally, I was able to get her to understand.

‘Mother, Mother please. I can help, I have a plan!’

‘No one can stand against your father, there is nothing!’ she wept in absolute anguish, the emotions flooded into me and I shook violently.

‘There is! Keller and I have found a safe place to put her, there won’t be any trail, not even scent, we have our escape route ready. I just need your permission.’

‘A Spiritdancer would be found, the Alpha is too powerful. I already failed at that,’

‘Mother, it would be with a simple human family, there would be nothing to link her back here.’

‘The shift?’ Mother’s voice was a whisper in my mind.

“You’d give that up Mother. You and Jasmine would have to agree to stay inside. Unchanged.”

The link wavered as Mother turned inward to think on it and most likely discuss the answer with Jasmine. There was something dark in her simple response, but at 14 I was too young to understand then the meaning of her reply. ‘We will never change for her.’

It took a little more than a week to get everything lined up, and in the dead of a mid-November night, Keller set fire to the lookout post during training with “accidental” purpose. I used the confusion to break into Mother’s holding cell with a key Keller had copied for me and raced with her and the infant to the river, taking the same path I walked to school every day to make my scent completely expected. The usual tree I stashed my clothes in had a sealed bag from the nearby city’s laundromat. Freshly laundered clothes consisting of two outfits and a blanket. I carried the packet with me to the edge of the bank, Keller and I went fishing there that afternoon to disguise my scent again. Hopping into the water I stripped my clothes and stashed them under a large rock found previously, currently under it was a bagged bar of soap which I used to wash off my and my sister’s scent. I offered it to Mother but she shook her head, undressing my sister and clutching the clothes to herself. “I will spread the scent in the opposite direction.” I heard warning bells in my mind but did not heed them specifically as I was already on high alert. I clasped my now clean baby sister to my naked chest bag tucked under my arm and ran downstream on the opposite bank to the third good exit I had scoped out previously as Mother went upstream. We blew each other a kiss as we reached the end of the viewing distance.

It was a little more complicated than I anticipated to climb out of the river with my sister, but I managed safely. Her stomach was full and there was no wet diaper she was content as a lamb, even with the night air on her drying skin. The fresh air and new smells seemed to be entrancing her. I swaddled her quickly, dressed myself and kept the spare clothes for mother in the bag.

I wandered in the direction I knew I needed to head, working at a pace that would not work up a sweat or leave any of my natural scents behind.

I saw the city lights and finally climbed out onto the street’s sidewalks as I passed the park. The sun was just setting. But I got to my next check point, switched clothes and wiped myself and my baby sister down with sanitizing wipes in a public restroom. The new clothes from a different laundromat, shifted our smells once again and I strapped my sister to my back in a carrier I had gotten a hold of. It was built for hiking and climbing and was able to hold her safely against me as I ran. I had much ground to cover, and a shift wasn’t possible here. I finally made it the next morning. My baby sister had been fussing for quite a time and I pulled the last shelf stable bottle out of my pack and fed her in the courtyard of the hospital.

After one last snuggle, which lasted most of the morning. I brought her to the metal hatch cut into the side of the building.

I placed her inside with a last kiss and nuzzle, not taking the orange parent supply bag. My heart clinching tightly as I gripped the handle and Oak was howling in my mind at the loss.

I closed the small door, and my sharp ears heard it automatically lock and a distant buzz go off to alert the staff of the Safe Haven delivery.

I waited around until my sister was no longer mine and a family was called-in to be hers. It was early the following morning when I smelled her with a family. It didn’t take as long as I had anticipated. Tears flooded my eyes and I sighed in relief that it was over.

‘This was best, this was best.’ I chanted to myself.

‘This choice IS best.’ Oak reassured me. With a relieved but heavy heart I left for home.

The trip home was not as challenging, I went to a well populated area I frequented and changed into the used clothes left behind.

At this point I reached out to Keller mentally, He asked me to wait it out one more day before returning and so I did. My heart too heavy to care about living another day off granola bars and drinking fountain water. Thus, with Keller’s insight, I missed most of the drama around the discovery of mother’s body.