Chapter One
The moment air hits the bottom of my lungs I know that it's coming. And it's too late to stop it. Wolf has control.
I skid to a stop, throw my head back, and howl at the night sky. My hands slap over my mouth, cutting the yowling off.
My breath is heavy against my palm as I crouch under a cover of brush to listen for anything upset by my loud mouth. An owl screeches in the distance. The whirring of cicadas stops. Then there's only a quiet rustling as various little animals scurry away.
Jeez, you're impatient, I snap at her.
She storms around in my mind as a migraine, her eagerness making my temples throb and my fingers twitch even as I try to keep them still. Wolf's so close to the surface, out here in the forest, under a full moon, in her element. She wants complete control. But it's my body, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let her do what she wants with it.
Out, she commands.
Beads of sweat bubble up on my forehead as I keep my feet firmly planted, resisting her control. It's always a fight over control.
Haven't you ever heard that patience is a virtue?
No, she growls.
Well, apparently it is.
After a moment, the woods return to their normal state of night. A hot breeze rattles the leaves and brush around me.
Wolf begrudgingly relinquishes all the control back to me, her influence disappearing from my lungs and vocal chords. Satisfied with her submission, I carry on with our daily patrol of our territory.
My stride is long and quick; my footfalls silent, swift and light as a deer's. I don't need Wolf's instincts or the lupine abilities that I can borrow from her. I know exactly where I'm going. I always know where I'm going. This is my forest. My territory. Not an inch of it is unknown to me. Every fruit, flower, and weed; every branch, root, and log. We belong to each other.
The ground is so moist and soft that the slapping of my bare feet on the forest floor is muted. It feels good; the aching, the sweat, the rawness of running, it's all a sweet symphony to my body. Running is natural. It's feral. It's freedom; freedom from concrete and brick, the small talk and insincere pleasantries, and the technological dependency of the world next to mine. The only rule that exists in the woods is to survive.
Here, we are untamed.
Energy from the Earth passes from the ground into my feet, teeming with life that I can't see but can feel around me. I know in my heart that I am one with everything, one with the souls of the animals and trees that I share this forest with.
It's a connection all soul binders have. It's why I have Wolf, why our souls are bound together. I've never known my body or my mind without her. She's been a pain in my ass, and my best friend, since the beginning, since before I have memories.
But mostly she's a pain in my ass.
No sooner do I think the thought, she pushes my foot too hard to the ground and I go sprawling forward into the dirt.
None of my thoughts are safe.
Falon. Pain. My ass, she declares.
Fine. Fair enough. We're both real catches, I laugh.
I assume all soul binders have this kind of relationship with their other soul. I've never met another one, but I know they're out there somewhere. And I've got to hope that I'd get along a lot better with them than I do humans. Sharing my mind and body with a wolf, shapeshifting—it's a lot of weird to try and cover up with normal. And I am not good at it. Especially when Wolf's mind mixes with my own. Trying to explain to my third grade teacher my need to mark the trees on the playground as my territory didn't go well. Neither did growling at anyone who came to close too my lunch.
Don't need. Humans bad, Wolf says as I push myself up onto my feet.
Not all of them, I remind her.
Not all, she remembers.
And the issue with humans isn't that they hate nature. I don't think it's anything as purposeful as that. It's indifference. Which is far more dangerous. And it's that indifference that has us out here every night, looking for campfires or garbage dumps or any signs of foul play. This forest, the Refuge, is protected land. And the only home I've ever known.
Streams of air glide around my stomach, through my knotted hair, and past my shins as I carve through the forest, humidity clinging to me. My eyes have to adjust as the as the Refuge grows darker. Thick canopies of pines, oaks, and sabal palms draped in Spanish moss dilute any light from the moon and I'm careful to focus on my path as I pick up speed. But just because there's no light from the moon, doesn't mean Wolf can't feel it there, full and bright above the canopy. Her excitement is a whirl inside of me, deep in my gut, buzzing like the mosquitoes that dance, ghost-like, along my skin.
A wild boar and her piglets run across the trail ahead and Wolf perks up, alert.
Chase, she insists, testing my dominance.
The urge to chase and eat the boars lasts only a moment before I inhale and pull her consciousness from my own, untangling them from each other like releasing a knot. All at once she's gone, pushed down into my subconscious.
Her absence weighs down on my chest, like a piece of me has been carved away. But she has to learn. As much I'd love to give in to her, to run on four legs, breathe the woods, see the moonlight through her eyes, she needs to be reminded that I'm alpha. I'm in control. I wear the pants in this relationship.
Though I rarely wear pants at all.
My pace slows to a walk and I stick my hands behind my head to slow my breathing, taking the time to look up at the stars through a break in the canopy. Wolf taught me how to get my bearings by using the stars. She teaches me a lot of things. Things one would normally learn from their parents.
The thought stings. You're probably the reason why I don't have parents.
It's an unfair statement that I immediately regret, spurred on by leftover anger over her stealing control.
Wolf is quiet, no quip ready to reply with. She always clams up when I try to talk about my life before her. But I really can't imagine my real parents were excited to find a wolf pup in the cradle where a human baby should be. Do you give it a bottle or a slab of ribs? Who would want to deal with that? Who wants to find out that their child isn't actually a human child?
I push the thought from my mind then take a moment to look over the trees for their souls. Like taking off a pair of sunglasses that tint the world, I allow my eyes to see things the way they truly are, looking deeper than human eyes ever could. But nothing seems to change.
There's a darkness that rests in the shadows that shouldn't be there. I listen closely and hear none of the whispers, none of the voice of the forest on the wind. I suddenly realize why it's so hard to see. The Refuge is usually aglow with souls.
There's a large and perfectly healthy oak to my right, its low branches hang like hardwood hammocks. I run my hand along the oak's thick, dark bark, tracing my fingers through the ridges. Its soul glows at my touch, the barest of lights that only soul binders can see. Only I can see. The rest of the tree souls are hidden within their physical forms. Normally they'd be reaching out to me, their glowing tendrils curious and kind.
Not tonight.
"What's wrong?" I put both hands on the oak and lean into it, pressing my cheek against the rough bark. It glows for a moment more before the light disappears.
Sniffing at the air, I expect to find some evidence of danger, but everything smells normal. The sinking feeling in my gut says otherwise.
Feeling my worry, Wolf claws her way back to the surface of my consciousness with a growl. My head throbs from her effort. She demands to know what's wrong.
I don't know, I tell her. This has never happened before.
Strangers? she asks.
Maybe. I-I don't know. Why aren't they coming out? What could scare them like this?
You take a whiff, I tell Wolf, hoping that, with her keen senses, we'll catch wind of something that doesn't fit in.
She enhances my sense of smell with her own and I breathe deeply through my nostrils, picking apart the scents I take in. A bobcat and its fresh kill. Rotting wood. A raccoon.
Anything? I ask, hoping she can detect something more than me.
No. And yes, she says.
Helpful, I scoff. What's that supposed to mean?
Listen.
I do as she says and listen, closing my eyes to let her sharpen my sense of hearing. The forest is quiet. Not the quiet from before. This feels wrong. The usual buzz of night has turned into a hushed hum. The chirping of crickets, croaking of frogs and alligators, the rustling of raccoons and opossums; it's all missing. Something in the air has shifted.
We need to figure out what's going on, I say, rubbing at the goose bumps on my arms.
Yes, Wolf agrees.
I wouldn't normally be in a hurry to abandon our patrol of the perimeter, but when bad things like this happen, it usually involves humans. Poachers and construction companies love to push the boundaries of the Refuge, ignoring the border between public and protected land.
Luckily, I quite enjoy sabotaging their attempts. And the newest construction site, set up on unprotected land on the opposite side of the forest, is a good place to start; they've opened up a road into the forest from the asphalt ones beyond, inviting all manner of nastiness into my Refuge.
If something is affecting one part of the woods, it eventually affects it all. Like a network of roots, the trees communicate with one another about danger or disease.
Let's make sure they're not logging any further in.
Yes.
Wanna take over? I ask her.
She's slow to answer, making sure I'm not teasing her. That reaction stings a bit. My body is like a prison cell, my eyes her only windows to the outside. And I'm some kind of prison warden that chooses when she gets to leave her cell. Maybe I've been a bit bossy about when she can and can't come out. But I've had to play human more often than usual lately. My part-time job mostly requires two arms and legs and no massive canines or claws.
...Yes. Wanna, she says when she's sure I'm serious.
Okay, let's head straight there. No distractions.
Yes. Go. Now.
Wait, wait. I mean it. No chasing after anything that moves. We need to keep our eyes peeled, alright? We can't be careless.
We? Wolf is outraged and takes control of my finger to point it at me. You.
I laugh then step carefully out of my clothes, rolling them into a bunch before sticking them on one of the oak's lowest branches. I'll come back for them later. While shapeshifting is simple, like pulling a costume on over your clothes, soul shifting is a transformation, a trading of bodies, and it shreds my clothes to pieces.
And I hate shopping for new ones.
Naked, I take a deep breath. It's difficult to concentrate with Wolf's excitement whirling around in my skull. I close my eyes and direct energy into my palms and place them over my stomach. Another deep breath and I blow out air as hard as I can, emptying my abdomen.
Wolf takes the next inhale with me, pulling the air through my mouth, down my throat, through my lungs, and into the pit of my stomach and it's like unlocking the deadbolts on my door. Her energy fills me and the shift begins. It happens in seconds, but time seems to slow as our consciousnesses flow into each other, mixing until there's no more me or her. Just us. Then they separate again.
My skin ripples. The air and energy inside me compresses and streams out of every pore, releasing in a rush, enveloping us in a warm gust, as it exits. My shoulder-length, wavy, dark blonde hair disappears, replaced by fluffy ears that sit low on our skull. Thick gray and white fur covers tan skin, and my strong limbs are shaped into even stronger legs with massive, clawed paws. We are Wolf.
I've learned to swallow the fear of never getting control back. For the most part I still hold the reins, but if she really wanted to, and I'm sure it's always tempting, Wolf could refuse to return my human form.
Only once has she done that, when we were young and still getting the hang of our strengths and weaknesses, and only with some coaxing from my former guardian, Finn, did she let me shift us back. We weren't on good terms after that. But she's a roommate I can't get away from and, after apologizing in her own stubborn way, she earned my trust back.
The past is something we deal with together. Today, even though she's been pushy, I trust her. And we've got bigger things to worry about than a custody battle for control. So, on four legs, we head for the site.
The moon is so full and bright above us that Wolf can't help stopping to howl a few times. It's wonderful to be free with her. The world has color, even in the dark. The scents and smells of the forest are thick and rich. And she's fast as hell. Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy the ride. But the soul of every tree we pass stays scared inside its form. Worry hangs over our head as we run. There is no welcoming from them and the animals are still in hiding.
Every foot we get nearer the site, the fouler Wolf's mood gets. Especially when we start to smell it: the exhaust fumes, dirty oil, and the burning oaks fill the air with a thickness, a sick and mournful scent. I let Wolf lead the way, knowing better than to bother her when we're in this area; she gets extra snappy and I have less patience for it. Seeing trees ripped from their life source and tossed aside like trash wrenches our heart with anger and sadness.
Wolf sniffs along the ground at the edge of the site. A stag passed through here about twenty minutes ago from the look of the prints, and the smell of coffee permeates the air, bitter and stale. The port-o-potty on the other side of the area is impossible to ignore and Wolf flinches when the stench fills our nose.
Enormous machines fill the space—big, ugly, and yellow, ready to deface the Earth. The assholes have been setting up and surveying the land for the past month or so. This is the first time I've seen the site actually ready to start clearing. They've already taken down two massive oaks. Wolf's growl rumbles through our whole body as we pass, their roots ripped and exposed, frayed like torn fabric.
We'll come back for them, I tell her. Stuff some oranges down the exhaust pipes, cut the hydraulic hoses.
Promise? she asks.
Pinky, I say, an answer I've given her since we were young.
Wolf is satisfied. Today, she trusts me too.
This will be the third construction company that's tried to go over their boundary and cut into these forty acres of unprotected land. Our land. They won't be the last to try, but as long as we're here, they won't get far.
We continue along the border of the Refuge and find no hint of whatever it is that's got the forest feeling so off. But it'll be a hard night's sleep worrying about the woods. Maybe it's a new thing. Maybe the level of pollution has done it. Maybe there's something wrong with the water from the channel that borders the north side. It could be anything. And, I guess, it could be nothing.
Then Wolf finds tracks. Tire tracks. And not from the trucks that the park rangers occasionally drive through the Refuge.
Poachers, she snarls, following the faint smell of bottled deer musk and gun powder.
But the scent and tracks are old. They've come and gone. These are days old, Wolf. They're not here anymore. Leave it alone.
Even as I tell her to move on, my anger is growing. Trespassers and construction companies are bad enough. Poachers are the worst. Every creature in this forest is protected. It's a wildlife refuge. But humans have a horrible habit of thinking that everything on this planet is theirs to do what they want with. And that really pisses me off. But there's nothing we can do now except be extra vigilant the next few days. They'll be back.
Wolf trudges along, straining against my control, ignoring me as she follows the trail.
They aren't here! They're not what the forest is scared of! I prepare to force a soul shift when she startles at something in the moist ground: over top of the tire tracks are two clear impressions. From bare, human feet. That aren't mine.
Who else runs around the Refuge barefoot? These prints are recent, not like the tire tracks. They are sharp and clean around the edges with no debris in them.
Wolf sticks our nose to the ground and breathes in, trying to collect any kind of information left behind. But there is only the barest scent.
How can there be so little scent? I ask her.
Finn? she wonders.
Why would Finn be running barefoot through the woods? And he has no scent.
Wolf sniffs the ground again. There's still nothing to grab on to. That's not good. No scent could mean Finn's kind, but there is some scent. So what does that mean?
The hair along our spine bristles. I barely have time to put it together before Wolf takes off through the woods, in the direction the prints are headed, a growl rumbling in our stomach.
There's not enough scent to follow, but we find more of the prints, all going the same way. Branches tear at our dark fur and a strong wind whips past us, but Wolf's mind is on a track—find the intruder—and I'm having trouble making sense of my own thoughts with her loud mouth in our head.
We rush past one more pair of prints and get maybe fifty yards when we realize there aren't anymore. They've stopped dead. Doubling back, we look at the last pair to see if they've just changed directions. None to the left. None to the right. There aren't any more. Where the hell did they go? Wolf starts to pace around the prints, her mind a torrent now.
Stranger. Small scent. Can't find. Bad. Not safe. Find. Stop. Kill.
Shut up, shut up! I'm trying to think. And for Christ's sake would you stand still? I need to look at the prints again.
She stops, but continues to chant in our head, looking around wildly.
You have to look at the prints for me to see them. Get it together, dogface!
Finally, Wolf looks down at them. They're set in the ground, a bit deeper than the others and the toes and pads even more so. It starts to sink in.
We slowly tilt our head back. The dark canopy of a massive camphor tree towers above us. Beams of moonlight that manage to penetrate through the thick broadleaves glint off the waxy lower leaves, giving an effect of twinkling stars amongst the boughs.
The camphor's soul is faint and quiet. Even to Wolf's sharp eyes the shadows all blend together, a mass of darkness between the limbs and leaves. But up on one of the higher branches is a shadow more solid than the rest, a darkness that's thick and unmoving with the sway of the wind through the tree.
And then my chest starts burning, a hot and liquid burn, like swallowing boiling water. Wolf grits through my pain. A flash of images rush through our head, fast and incomprehensible, flickering like a movie in fast forward. And then the burning stops, the images are gone. Gone before I can make any sense of them.
What was that? I ask Wolf.
She ignores me and shakes our head, trying to clear the confusion away. In the span of the two seconds that she takes our eyes off the shadow, it's gone. We panic. There's a noise ahead of us, a rustling in the underbrush.
It must be the barefooted trespasser. Go! I yell at Wolf.
She gives chase. Whatever it is, it moves fast. It's a good fifty yards ahead of us, but we're quickly closing the distance. It sticks to the cover of the firebush and palmetto, and weaves through the thickets of privet. It starts to curve to the right and Wolf moves out further to try and cut it off.
We're so close. So close we can hear its heartbeat, hammering in its chest. Our own heart matches the pace as we push faster and faster. A few more feet and our paths will intersect.
Wolf snarls and lunges, just as a large stag leaps out of the thicket and over our head. Wolf is ready to give chase as he sprints a few yards away, but she freezes when the stag stops to turn and look at us, his brilliant coat shining in the moonlight and large antlers like the sharp branches of a cypress. Our eyes connect and there is no fear in them. Like he was running to show off, not because we were giving chase.
There's some kind of exchange between Wolf and the stag as we hold each other's gaze. A conversation I don't understand, maybe a passing of acknowledgement or respect. Then the stag huffs and shakes his antlers side-to-side, turning to take off deeper into the forest.
We're left to stare after him, tongue hanging out of our mouth as we pant.
It was just a deer, I say, though unsure if "just a deer" is accurate. What was that little interchange about?
Wolf ignores me again, continuing to stare down the path the stag had taken. Her anger resurfaces and her humiliation and frustration blends into my own. We were so sure we'd been chasing the owner of the footprints that we didn't even bother smelling for it. It would've given the stag away only if we'd been paying attention. What the hell is going on tonight? Most people would blame strange occurrences on a full moon. But a full moon is when we are usually at our strongest.
Wolf starts back towards the camphor tree, but I pull on our body.
Hey, we're done, I snap. Whatever was in the tree is long gone by now.
She doesn't listen and tries to leave again.
Look, it was probably nothing, I say even though we both know it's not true. Let's go home.
No. Prints. Shadow.
Maybe Finn did run through barefoot; maybe it was just a weird smell, I don't know. The forest obviously doesn't want us here tonight. And I want to go home.
She resists as I try todirect our legs homewards and stares back in the direction of the footprints.As if pulling on a horse's reins, I manage to face us forward and after one bigpush, she gives in. Our sigh is heavy and our tail hangs limply as we walk backhome.