OF WOLVES AND MEN
The sea was rough, the waves humping and bumping around the ship like blue-green hills. "You know," said Enric, "this reminds me a bit of the place where I first entered R2."
Storytelling was one of our favorite pastimes on the Naronica, and neither of needed much encouragement to begin. "Tell me about it," I said, and Enric smiled.
The door he'd chosen opened onto a hilltop, the countryside rolling around him in sage-colored waves. Away on the horizon was a small pond, glittering like a diamond beneath a perfect blue bowl of sky. Eric Matheson took a deep breath and threw back his head. "Uncle Mick," he howled, "I made it!" Then, laughing, he flung himself head-first down the hill.
Eric had actually grown up on stories of R2, dished out with a grin and a wink by his eldest uncle, a man who wore his eccentricity like a badge of honor. In Eric's younger years, the dreamworld had seemed every bit as real to him as America, and only marginally more exotic. Not even the unmasking of Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy could shake his faith in R2; it took adolescence and the teasing of four relentless siblings to do that. But ghosts and dragons, castles and sorcerers, still swam in the depths of his soul; and he never tired of hearing his uncle's stories.
Mick died when Eric was twenty-four. A massive heart attack had claimed him in his sleep -- or at least, that was what the doctors said. But Mick had no history of heart trouble, and he'd been only a few years older than his sister, Eric's mother. Such a death would have made anyone wonder, even if they hadn't grown up on stories of R2. From the time he was seven, Eric could have told you what happened to a dual who died in the dreamworld; and now, at the age of twenty-four, he found himself believing again... or, at least, doubting less than he had before. From the time of Mick's death, it took Eric only six months to find out the truth for himself.
Lying there now, at the bottom of the hill, he closed his eyes and drew a deep, contented breath. The air practically bristled with smells: sunlight, grass, dirt, dust, water, insects, wildflowers, a rabbit --
Eric brought himself up short. The animal's scent was as clear as a photograph: the musk of its fur; the warmth of its blood; the delicate, slightly waxy smell of its ears. He jerked upright, then leaned forward into a crouch, nostrils flaring as they homed in on the scent. His muscles twitched, his bones itched, and he remembered the gifts he'd rolled back in the Guardians' chamber. Well, he thought, why not?
The change roared through his body like a flood, drowning everything in its wake. Eric gasped at the strength of it. Half the sensation was pain, half pleasure -- a bit like the stretching of sore muscles -- so that he hardly knew whether to laugh or scream. That was all right, though, because in another second he had lost the ability to do either. His jaws bulged outward, drawing teeth and tongue into a wolfish snout; while his vocal cords thickened and twisted.
Next came the tail, but by that time his clothes were long gone -- and a good thing, too. He'd have split the seat of his pants wide open if he'd still been wearing them. Just the thought of it set his newest appendage wagging. Eric laughed, a throaty bark with no trace of human in it anywhere. It's done, he thought gleefully, and bent backward to take a look at his new self.
The wolf's body -- no, his body -- was covered with a glossy brown pelt the same color as his hair. Thick paws ended in sharp black claws, and his mouth bristled with razor fangs. Thoughtfully Eric ran his tongue over the points. Then he remembered the rabbit.
With a happy bark he sprang off in pursuit, nose buried deep in the long grass. The trail could hardly have been clearer if it had been spray-painted. In fact, this new world was a smorgasbord of scents, each more tempting than the last. He'd run them all down, in due time, but for now he had a single goal.
The rabbit crouched motionless in a thicket, round-eyed and quaking with fear. It must have smelled him at about the same time he smelled it, Eric thought. He scrambled to a stop at the edge of its hiding place, then stared in doggy fascination. R1 rabbits came in two varieties: scrappy, gray-brown wildlings and lumps of domesticated bliss. He'd seen plenty of each growing up in the country back home. This animal, though, constituted a new species altogether. Sleek as a cat and muscular as a dog, the rabbit practically reeked of untamed health. What have you got to tremble about? Eric wondered.
The rabbit cringed even further.
Oh. Oh. Chastened, Enric hung his head and retread several steps. He hadn't meant to frighten the creature; it was just that, in the excitement of following his first trail, he'd forgotten what he looked -- and smelled -- like. Poor little guy, Eric thought guiltily. Take off; I won't hurt you. He jerked his head to urge it on, but the rabbit only shivered. If he stared at it much longer, Eric feared, the creature would slip into shock. Reluctantly he turned aside and started back down the trail, the rustle of brush assuring him of his quarry's escape.
Sighing, Eric settled onto the ground and stretched, letting the clash of fur and grass tickle away his disappointment. It was ironic, he thought, that someone who loved animals as much as he did should choose an R2 role that terrified them. Instinct told him that the rabbit wouldn't have been afraid of a human -- or even Eric himself, if it had seen him first in man-form. But once he took the shape of a wolf, nature treated him like a wolf. And so would humans, he supposed, wondering if R2 denizens knew as little about the animals as their cousins in R1. If so, one glance at his furry head would convince them he was a killer -- and probably rabid, at that. Eric decided he'd better hide his true nature, at least until he had some sense of what to expect from this world.
Thoughtfully he lifted a paw and restored its human shape, noting how his shirtsleeve reappeared during the process. Pretty convenient, he thought, and stopped the process at the elbow. Then he rotated his arm and flexed his fingers, fascinated by the interplay of wolf and human. Scaring rabbits was a small price to pay for this. After a moment he let the change slide downward again, this time taking it more slowly and halting the process in mid-shift, so that his fingers grew claws but kept their original length, while the new-grown fur only half-obscured his skin. Eric smiled through his fangs. Yes, this was definitely worth the price of a little prejudice.
He spent the next half-hour exploring his gifts: the limits of his strength, his control over the change. At top speed he estimated he could shift from man to wolf in about ten seconds -- a rate which should lessen, with practice. In either form he could probably outrun a bicyclist; as a man, he should be able to lift the bike and rider together.
More importantly, though, his senses had sharpened -- especially his sense of smell. Scents as far away as three kilometers flared in his wolfish nose, while those nearby glowed vivid as colors. Anything Eric had smelled, even slightly, in R1, he could identify in the dreamworld; and as for the newer scents, well, tracking them down would be as much fun as learning them.
Eric was enjoying himself too much to note the passage of time, but several hours must have passed before he heard the music. He cocked his brown-furred ears, then scrambled up a nearby hill to have a look around. A dusty brown road spooled away to his left -- a fact he'd missed before now, thanks to his new, low-slung vantage point. He'd have to remember that in the future. Meanwhile, his wolf's eyes widened as they took in a caravan's worth of wagons. My first R2 humans, Eric thought, and ducked low in the grass to avoid being seen.
There must have been forty or fifty vehicles in all, each a different color, and they fanned out behind a nine-wheeled monstrosity of gewgaws and pennants. Some of the wagons seemed little more than carts; others, cages on wheels; while many swelled large as double-decker buses and carried their occupants even on their roofs.
The travelers, too were a varied lot. Young people and old, men, women and children -- they dressed in bright, homespun robes and tunics or elaborate confections of feathers, leathers -- even scales, if Eric's eyes didn't deceive him. Fanciful hats and headdresses mingled with bald pates and tattoos. One woman's hair filled an entire cart, spilling back from the crown of her head across the laps of a dozen children, who chattered happily as they plaited her locks with flowers.
A steam of bright notes floated from one of the central wagons, and an eight-piece band rocked merrily on its roof. Dancers whirled around them, keeping time to the music, while acrobats turned flips on the wagon rails.
If this wasn't a circus, Eric thought, he'd eat his boots.
Eagerly he scrambled down the of the hill, not resuming his human shape until he'd reached the bottom, then swaying a little as he climbed back onto two feet. Funny how quickly you got used to running on all fours.
Shaking away the vertigo, Eric set out for the road at a run.
