I didn't feel like listening to another lecture, especially without Mom around to keep things from exploding between my dad and me. I also didn't want to lose the camaraderie my dad and I had tentatively found. He sounded tired and looked drained, but managed to pull on hidden reserves to get him through this, whatever this was.
The way he was looking at me wasn't his usual condescending smirking glare, nor was it the demanding drill instructor, the no-nonsense-tolerated, stiff-ass attitude I often got from him when he taught me anything about being one with the wolf.
It took me a second to realize he was going to try and speak to me like an adult, someone of equal standing. It's about time, I thought triumphantly. I took a breath and leaned forward a bit myself. I didn't trust myself to say anything other than, "I'm listening."
Dad gave me a small, wane smile. I was sure his usual way of talking to me was ready to come out the second I acted immaturely enough, in his opinion, to blow it. His self-deprecating smile was an acknowledgment of what typically happened when we tried to have any conversation since Mom died.
"Your mom and I had many discussions in our time together about the wolf that is part of me. Our conversations covered history, spirituality, physiology and psychology, practicality, and sexuality."
His eyes held a bit of humor with that last word. Shit, I think I knew where this "adult" conversation was heading. As if I needed a talk on sex! I'm twenty years old now. I bit back a sigh, trying not to roll my eyes or show any other sign of attitude, promising myself that for my mother's sake, I would hear Dad out. His grin only got bigger as he shook his head slightly.
"Let's start with history," he said, surprising me. "Specifically, my history. You know I met your mother at college, and that I came over to the United States from Europe. I've told you my parents had passed away, and that's partially and probably true. You know my mother died giving birth to me. My father..."
His eyes filled with sadness, compassion, and something I couldn't name. Dad looked lost as he reflected on his past. He refocused on me and continued before I could figure out what to say.
"My father gave in to the wolf, like I almost had before you pulled me back. Before he gave himself over completely to the wolf, he gave me his history, what he knew of it."
I wasn't sure I understood what Dad meant by giving into the wolf, but I wasn't going to interrupt his story to ask him.
"At the end of the Russian revolution, some soldiers found my grandfather in the ruins of an old deserted monastery in the Black Forest. The soldiers carried him out of the forest and left him with an elderly peasant couple in the first village they came across.
"It didn't take long before the couple figured out they had a demon child on their hands, one who could change into a wolf. They thought he should be drowned, but couldn't bring themselves to kill a child.
"Needless to say, my grandfather grew up without much human contact. He learned to stay in human form around humans. The old couple died while he was in his teens. When he got older, he mated with the local wolves in the forest, not trusting human companionship. One day, one of the half-grown pups started following him around instead of staying with the pack. That was my father."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had real wolf heritage in my blood? We were werewolves because a werewolf mated with actual wolves? No, that wasn't right, there was a werewolf at the beginning. Or was that mating as incidental as being able to be human because of a werewolf mating with a human?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Where was the natural separation between wolf and man? Or was there one? Was it that lack of a boundary that made us werewolves?
My dad noticed my shocked speculation. He grinned slightly at me and kept on talking as if that little tidbit meant nothing.
"My grandfather taught my dad all he knew about humans, which wasn't much, and everything he knew about living as a wolf, which was plenty. At some point, my father's curiosity about humans outweighed his wolfish comfort in the forest.
"He found and married some young woman from the village. They lived in the cottage once inhabited by the old couple that had raised my grandfather. My father was grief-stricken when my mother died in childbirth. There was an older couple in the village that had just lost a child. The woman offered to nurse me. My father accepted. He told me she would get upset because he always took me away after I'd nursed. She was a nice lady. She taught me a lot growing up."
Dad had a gentle smile on his face as he thought about his surrogate mother. I felt odd contemplating a woman I hadn't even known existed. Had Dad stayed in Europe, she would have been my adoptive grandmother, or rather, is my adoptive grandmother.
"Think she's still alive?" I asked.
"I don't know. She was when I left. My father took me to see her now and again after I gained enough control of my body. When I was two or three years old, I started experiencing pain. My father took me back to the forest."
Dad looked up at me with a smile. "You know what it was like. I tried my hardest to remember what it was like for me back then, so I could help you through it. My father force-fed me, little bits of mush at a time. I did the same with you. There's a risk of choking on any solid food if a spasm occurs while eating. When parts of me would shift, he would shift those parts of himself. He showed me what to do, showed me what I could become."
Once again, Dad paused, contemplating his past. Finally, he let loose a heavy sigh. "At some point, I remember a big wolf standing over me, shoving me with his snout, then sitting off to the side, looking at me. That's how I met my grandfather."
I did indeed remember my parents hovering over me, Dad shifting back and forth between man and wolf, Mom's constant guidance and reassurances. I tried to picture what it would have been like for Dad, being stared at by a stranger.
"My grandfather was wolf more often than he was man," Dad continued. "He didn't seem to understand why I preferred to be a human over being a wolf. My father defended me, though, both in the wolf and the human form. He thought maybe my preference was because I had a human mother. By the time I was in my teens, my curiosity about the world was too irresistible. I learned as much as I could from the people in the area. I realized how big the world was and longed to see it for myself.
"My grandfather stopped coming around. Father took to the woods looking for him, fearing some sort of attack. He came back to the cottage a few days later and told me he found my grandfather dead in the middle of the old monastery ruins. The old wolf had gone off to die alone.
"Father took me to help bury Grandfather there at the old monastery in the forest. Our digging revealed a small cemetery full of dozens of skeletons. Some were full wolf, who don't bury their dead, or part wolf and part human. Some were infants that never lived past a few months, or maybe even survive birth. Together, we made sure to re-bury everything deep enough so there wouldn't be a risk to us by them being found."
I tried to picture it, a living, breathing, werewolf community, dead and gone. The thought of unmarked graves of children who didn't survive took my breath away. Maybe they were born with boundary walls within them that didn't allow free access to the wolf.
I understood better now the deep current of possessiveness I'd always felt from my dad. After seeing multiple baby skeletons, no wonder he held me so tightly. It explained some of the pain and compassion I saw in his eyes moments ago when he considered his past. I couldn't imagine handling the remains of so many small bodies.
"Somewhere, at some time, there had been a pack of werewolves, living mostly as wolves, based in that run-down monastery. I made a point after that of shifting around any wolves we met, in the hopes of finding another werewolf. In all the time we lived there, none ever made themselves known to us.
"My father and I concluded they either died during the Russian revolution or ran off to deeper parts of the immense Black Forest. They might have lost their humanity, living as wolves, or they might have left to other parts of the world."
Dad paused, waiting for me to process all that. He sighed. When he continued, he sounded drained again.
"And that's about it. Father saw my restlessness, my desire to find out anything about how we came to be. He gathered up every possession in the old cottage, every coin, every trinket. My father took me to town, sold everything, sold the land that the cottage was on. He even sold some furs from his kills. He gave it all to me.
"Father told me to go out into the world, to see what I could find, to be careful. Then he added that when my journeys were done, if I found nothing that gave me peace, I could return and howl from the old monastery. If he still lived, he would come to me. "
Silence for a while. Not only could I not think of anything to say, but I was also too scared that anything I said would come out wrong and blow this chance to hear Dad talk about his past like this.
"He's probably dead by now," Dad finally mused quietly, "but he might still be alive. I don't know if the wolf lives as long as the man. My father took to the forest when I left. I doubt he ever came back out of it."
The sad smile on his face made me consider my dad's life. He'd lived as a wolf in the forest. He left his home and the only family he had. He came to a strange land. The woman he loved died in front of his eyes.
Mom had been fascinated to look at the world through wolf senses. Where Dad drilled the practical uses of those wolf attributes into me, Mom made sure I noticed the beauty of it as well. I think she spent most of her time with wolfish eyes in her human face, her nose flared to catch various scents.
"The rest, you know, " Dad continued. "I made my way across Europe, traveling as a wolf, my sparse belongings were bundled up so I could carry them with my teeth.
"I spent my time learning about the world. I watched from the outskirts of cities, peeking through many windows to watch television. I learned languages as I traveled, hiding outside open school windows, sneaking into colleges, learning what I could. I was in Italy when I heard about the opportunities available in the United States. I spent the last of what I had getting here. Finding your mother was a godsend."
Dad paused, his face softening into that look he reserved for Mom as he thought about her.
"Living here on the reservation, away from most people, made things so much easier for me. There's privacy at the reservation you don't get out there in the world. No one wanting identification, among other things," he added wryly, "and a different spirituality that was worth investigating as well."
I was angry for a second. He made it sound like my mother was nothing but a way for him to live somewhere in peace, even though I knew my anger was misplaced. The bonds of love that existed between my parents were real. I took a few deep breathes to calm down before he noticed. His gaze sharpened then. He took in what he saw in me. It seemed to confuse him.
"I know you don't want to hear it, seeing as how you're about to go out and explore the world yourself, but it's different out there. You have to remain vigilant. You can't get careless."
A bit of the drill instructor was coming out of him. I tried not to stiffen up and pull away. We'd had this conversation many times. Dad constantly harped about being careful and vigilant whenever I went anywhere, on or off the reservation. He'd hammered his refrain at me for as long as I could remember; it was his first and ongoing lecture. Many times in my teens, I yelled back at him that I had heard it enough. I bit my lower lip to keep from saying anything now.
He noticed of course. He swore slightly to himself under his breath, raking both hands through his hair. He got up and took the towel into the laundry room, coming back to just stand in the doorway, his eyes filled with pain.
"Look, I'm sorry. I know you've heard the drill. You're going to be tempted out there in ways you don't even think about around here, both as a wolf and a man. Don't hate me for worrying about you. I couldn't make it out there; it's just too much, too foreign. Too many people, just too much," he repeated softly, his eyes filled with memories that seemed to haunt him.
I'd never seen him like this, distracted and somehow vulnerable. He was a wolf, I realized, struggling to live in a human world, without the one human that made the journey worth the effort. And what was I?