Liar. Part 18

Grandmother says it's an old Polish saying. (Great-Aunt Dorothy says Russian.) What it means is that wolves are wild. Their other oft-quoted saying is Latin: lupus non mordet lupum. "A wolf does not bite a wolf." Which leaves the rest of the animal kingdom free for the biting.

We can't be tamed. We shouldn't live in cities.

Grandmother quotes those to me a lot. Said them even more back then, when she was trying to persuade me and Dad that it would be best for me to live on the farm. To stay there for the rest of my life.

I cannot explain to her why I love the city so. I have tried. But how can I describe it to someone who has never been there? To someone who fears it?

She hates the city because she says it destroys nature. She thinks there's no nature here.

She's wrong.

Nature is everywhere. I don't even have to go into the parks to find it. There are weeds and gra.s.s poking up between cracks in the sidewalk, out of the sides of buildings and walls. In the city there are no streets without plants. There are gardens in abandoned lots, on balconies, even on the roofs of buildings.

Plants mean insects, microbes in the soil.

Nature's the same in the city as in the country. It's just tougher. There are not many varieties of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs in the city, no deer, precious few racc.o.o.ns. But rats, pigeons, mosquitoes, flies? They all do fine.

Nature's everywhere. Under my feet, rats and insects. Over my head, pigeons, sparrows, even the occasional red-tailed hawk. There's nowhere in the city-in the world-that a spider isn't within reach. There are bigger animals, too, not just the people, the cats, the dogs, but the occasional pig or llama, the horses, and the squirrels, the foxes and woodchucks and snakes and lizards.

The Greats cannot see how strong nature is. How it survives even in the least hospitable circ.u.mstances. Just like them.

FAMILY HISTORY.

The Greats are divided on werewolf origins.

Grandmother says it goes back to the beginnings of humans. We evolved from wolves; they evolved from monkeys.

So why don't humans turn into monkeys once a month?

Grandmother has no answer to that.

Great-Aunt Dorothy tells about a deal made between a man and a wolf way back in the early days. They were escaping a predator bigger than either of them. They both ran for a narrow cave opening. There wasn't enough room for both of them so they fought. The predator came closer. The wolf proposed they share the s.p.a.ce. He cut his belly open and told the man to crawl inside. Then the wolf wedged his way into the cave.

But when it came time to separate they couldn't. They were bound to each other. A mannish wolf, a wolfish man.

Dad said his grandfather told him that there was no cutting involved and that it was a woman, not a man. The wolf and the woman had squeezed so tight together trying to get into the cave that they melded into each other so that you couldn't see where the wolf began and the woman ended.

Great-Aunt laughed at that one. She said that's not how she heard her daddy tell it. The woman and the wolf fell in love, lay together, and werewolves were their babies.

The other story Grandmother told was that the Wilkins had made a deal with a pack of wolves way, way, way back before countries had names, when people lived in tribes, eking out an existence, moving from spot to spot. The pact was to keep from moving, to stay in the one spot, safe and sound even in the winter. The Wilkins would share food with the wolves; the wolves would fight their enemies.

The Wilkins were able to s.h.i.+ft from hunting and gathering to planting and harvesting, raising goats and pigs and grains and vegetables. They fed the wolves; the wolves defended them.

They lived so close together that it wasn't many seasons before the human tribe and the wolf pack were indistinguishable. Not too many years before they were all part wolf and part human.

They're interesting tales though I doubt they're true.

Here's what I think: Horizontal gene transfer.

You have brown eyes and the ability to curl your tongue, and your kids have brown eyes and can curl their tongues. That's because you pa.s.sed on those genes, which is the regular way genes get pa.s.sed on: vertical gene transfer.

But genes can also be transferred horizontally from one organism to another. It's called HGT. I know there's no doc.u.mented case of HGT happening between big organisms. Humans and wolves are big. Each with at least twenty-three thousand different genes, way bigger than bacteria and viruses, who can have as few as eight. But if it can happen between bacteria why can't it happen between bigger organisms? If a tomato can have fruit fly genes in it or, more relevant (since humans put the fruit fly in the fruit), if cows can acquire a gene from a plant to help their digestion, then why can't wolves and humans do the same?

Though I'm not talking the one gene, I'm talking many. There'd be the gene (or genes) that makes the change possible. A gene no one's ever heard of, let alone mapped. Then there's all the wolf genes that express when I'm wolf and human genes for when I'm human.

Not to mention why. Could it be a means to preserve genes-wolf genes-that were approaching extinction? That would explain the Canis dirus werewolves. Increasingly the Canis lupus ones, too. Though when the first werewolves emerged gray wolves were everywhere. There are other animals of roughly human size that have gone extinct. Are there were-saber-toothed tigers?

I would love to map my own DNA. What would it show? Humans have 85 percent the same DNA as wolves. What do I have? Ninety-five percent? Ninety-nine? Or do I have the same 85 percent as everyone else? Along with hidden werewolf DNA.

When I'm a scientist-a biologist who specializes in wolves-I'll find out. I'll map my own DNA. Secretly. I'll prove that it is HGT. That we were made by a horizontal transfer of genes a few million years ago.

Unless it was a virus. Something that attacked an ancestor's DNA and caused ma.s.sive mutations resulting in unstable genes that express both as wolf and as human.

There's so much I don't know and that I can't ask Yayeko without making her eyebrows go sky-high.

Why am I Canis lupus while most werewolves are Canis dirus? Is that even true? How do I find other people like me? Does that mean there are two kinds of werewolves? Or are there more? Are there African werewolves who are Canis simensis? The sole African wolf? Or Canis rufus werewolves? Or are they both too small? There are many recognized wolf subspecies. Are there werewolves for every one? Or only the ones that are roughly human-sized?

I don't know where I come from. Or what I am. I don't know how I am. I don't know anything.

BEFORE.

The real change came on me four weeks after the false alarm. The warning signs were the same but this time I ignored them. I did not want to sit in that cage waiting, getting filthier and more wound up and miserable by the hour.

The first sign was a tightening of my skin as I walked to school. It felt itchy in the exact same way it had with the false alarm. I kept walking. It didn't feel so bad. At recess there was a tiny bit of blood. Spotting, same as last time. I figured that even if the change was real I still had plenty of time to get through the school day and then walk home.

Like before, I didn't feel hot. My teeth didn't hurt.

It was in math cla.s.s. Second-to-last cla.s.s of the day. We were learning number puzzles. We had to draw three shapes but make sure they were all touching, then four, then five. Five was impossible. I was trying to make it work when the first wave of heat hit me. Then more itching. Then sharp pains in my belly, dots in front of my eyes. My head began to throb. My teeth hurt.

Inside me things were moving. I knew what it was. I had to get home.

I stood up.

"Micah, sit down," the teacher said, without looking at me.

I fell down.

I didn't mean to but the muscles turned to liquid in my legs. At least it felt that way. But when I looked down they looked like human legs.

"Are you alright, Micah?" The teacher was staring at me.

"No," I said, amazed that my tongue and mouth were cooperating. I tried to stand up, clutching the desk for support. My bones were turning into knives. "It's my illness."

I had a file. The note about my illness was in the file. All the teachers knew about it.

"I have to call my dad."

I think that's what I said but the next thing I knew my body was buckling. It felt as if the spine was coming out of my back. "I have to go. Call my dad. He knows."

I have no idea if the words came out or not.

I reached for my bag while crawling to the door, groped inside for the cell phone. The pain was spreading all over my body.

I was sure I would die.

Somehow I got out of the cla.s.sroom. Somehow I got the phone into my hands. Pressed for Dad. Screamed for him to come get me. Told him I would be getting home as fast as I could. The school was only five blocks from home: one avenue, four streets. Running was fastest. Ordinarily I would be home in minutes.

But liquid muscles, moving bones, pain in every fiber, every cell.

I kept moving: toward the exit, down the few steps, out onto the street.

I didn't know if I was going to make it, if I was going to turn into a wolf on First Avenue in the daylight of a busy Thursday afternoon.

The teacher was still hovering, I think. Had she followed me? Maybe it was someone else. More than one. My eyes weren't processing right. There were less colors. I saw red. I saw yellow. But mostly red. But I knew which way to go. Down. South. West.

I kept moving.

They were calling my name. I concentrated on breathing, willing the change to slow, for the one foot after the other to turn into a run. I think I progressed to a shuffle. I don't know how many blocks I got before Dad grabbed me, pulling me along.

I heard shouting and questions. I squeezed my eyes shut.

By the time Dad pushed me into the elevator there was fur all over my arms and I was bent double. I could smell the fear and sweat of my father. Or was that me?

I'd never been in so much pain. I was going back into the cage. I wasn't sure which was worse.

As Dad dragged me into the apartment, into my room, into the cage, the bones were trying to push their way out of my face. I could no longer see. Or hear. My eyeb.a.l.l.s and eardrums had exploded.

Then I was a wolf.

In a three-by-six cage and hungrier than I have ever been in my life.

Dad told me afterward that I howled for twenty minutes straight. He'd lied to the neighbors to keep them from calling the police. I don't know what lies he told, but after that they all looked at me funny.

FAMILY HISTORY.

My biology obsession ignited after my first change. I'd always been interested but now it was a pa.s.sion, no, it was a necessity. I had to know what I was, how I was. I had to learn more.

How was it possible? How did ma.s.s reshape itself like that? I was a 105-pound twelve-year-old. I became a 105-pound wolf. It made sense when I thought of the conservation of matter. Equal weight. Both mammals. Both warm-blooded. It would be much weirder if I were to turn into a snake, go from warm-blooded to cold. From human to python. Or what if I changed into a slug? No blood, no bones. No slug has ever weighed even close to 100 pounds.

Human to wolf: matter is conserved. But how do I change?

How does the hair come and go, bones s.h.i.+ft and grow and shrink? How can I be a wolf and a human?

When I change back, am I the same human I was? Is it the same skin, the same cells? Or am I re-created each time? A new wolf, a new human. If so, why do my memories not change? Or do they and I just don't know it?

Who am I? What am I?

To understand, I was sure-I am sure-I had to learn how humans function. How we absorb and expend energy. What happens when we breathe. What we are made of. Genes, DNA. I had to learn the same about wolves.

I have to understand how I am in order to understand what I am.

I know so little. I don't know if I'll ever know enough.

I can say "werewolf." But I don't know what that means. Not below the surface of my skin, of my hide.

I've asked Grandmother, Great-Aunt Dorothy. They have a few answers, but not enough. Most of the time they don't even understand my questions.

I asked Grandmother why she'd tried to breed the werewolf out of her children.

She denied it.

"But your story?" I asked. "About finding someone who wasn't a werewolf to have a baby with . . . about marrying out so you could weaken the family illness?"

Grandmother clucked. "That was a story for your father. I'm proud of the wolf in me. In you. I would never try to kill it. Why do you think I work so hard to keep this place the way it is? To make it bigger? Why do you think I want you here?"

"Then why?" I began. "Who, I mean. Who was my grandfather?"

"You won't tell your father?"

I thought of all the lies he'd told me, everything he'd kept hidden. "No. I promise I won't tell him." I thought of the lies Grandmother had told me. I could break my promise.

"Your father's not a wolf. He doesn't understand." For a second her eyes seemed yellow. "Your grandfather was a local boy. Never saw him more than once or twice. He wrote me letters. I never answered. That was that."

"Is he still alive? My grandfather?"

Grandmother didn't answer at first, looking at her bony hands, her scarred knuckles. "He's long gone."

HISTORY OF ME.

Grandmother said that taking the pill to stop the change was an abomination. That we were killing an essential part of me. That if we kept the wolf in me down it would eat away at the human. It was too dangerous. I could explode. I would explode. Her arguments were not rational.

Grandmother says it gets easier. That putting it off only makes the next change worse.

I didn't care. I would not live on the farm. Not for more than the summer. I could not be a wolf in a cage. Even if it was possible, which it wasn't. The neighbors might not have called the police that first time, but it was unlikely they'd refrain twice. What would happen when the cops found a wolf in a cage? It's not legal to keep a wolf as a pet in New York City. What if they came and it was human me in the cage waiting to change? What if they saw me change?

Never again, Dad decided. Never again would he deal with me changing in the city.

They decided to send me to the farm.

Forever.

Living without electricity, without hot water, without my parents, without anything I cared about. With my grandmother, my great-aunt Dorothy, my aunts and uncles and cousins who could barely read and write, let alone do calculus or trigonometry. Who know as little about fast-twitch muscles or mitochondrial DNA as they know about how to catch a cab or how to order a pizza.

No college. No future. No life. I would never unlock werewolf DNA. I would never understand what I am.

I would rather die.

I cried for two days straight. While Mom and Dad told me in turns why my living in the city was impossible.