THE MOON THAT TESTED LIKE YOU

THE GIRL WHO DID NOW HOWL My village calls me by two names. The first is Amara. It means grace, my mother said, because I was born during a prayer. The second is Amara, who does not howl. That one the children whisper when they think I cannot hear them. I am nineteen, in my village of Moon Crest, which is too old to still be empty. Every child in my village is born with two hearts. One human heart that beats in your chest and one wolf heart that sleeps behind it, curled up like a dog by a fire. You feed it with meat and anger and first loves and first losses and on your eighteen birthday, under your first moon ceremony. It works up and breaks your skin for the first time. You shift, howl, your pack smells you and know you are finally one of them. I was eighteen a year ago, the moon was so full it made the river look like milk. My mother braided white moon flowers into my hair. My father killed a goat and put its blood on my forehead in the shape of a crescent. The whole pack stood in a circle around the clearing and howled for me, calling my wolf out. I stood in the middle with my dress made of undyed cotton and waited to feel the breaking, nothing broke. My skin stayed my skin, my teeth stayed small and flat. My nails stayed short, the wind changed and brought me the scent of every wolf around me. My mother’s anxiety was sharp as a lemon peel, my father’s pride heavy as a smoke, my little brother Taro’s excitement sweet as green mango, but I could not answer. The Elder, Claris, came forward. She is the only one who is allowed to touch you during your ceremony. She put her old hand covered in grey fur even in human form, on my chest. She closed her eyes, then she opened them and said ‘There is no wolf here’. No one howled after that. That is how I got my second name. A year later, I live in the healer’s hut at the edge of the village, where the forest starts. It is not a punishment. My mother says it is because I have gentle hands. Elder Claris says it is because if I had no wolf to guard me, I should at least learn to guard others. I like it here. The hut is made of packed earth and thatch and always smells of dried sage and wolf bane and honey. I have a low table where I grind leaves with a stone my mother gave me. I have a sleeping mat and a pot for my meals. A small fire that never goes out because the forest is cold at night, even in summer. This morning, the moon is still out, even though the sun is coming. It is the day before the next moon ceremony, for the children born in the winter after me. That means the wolves have been restless for three nights; they do not sleep before the ceremony. They pace and fight and love too hard. I was grinding wolf bane for a fever tea when I heard it, a sound that is not a howl but a choking. A human sound trying to be a wolf sound. I ran outside with my knife. He was collapsed at the edge of my clearing, where the tall grass meets the first trees. He was too big to be anyone from Moon Crest village. His shoulders were wider than my doorway, his hair was black and matted with blood and leaves. He wore only hunting trousers, torn at the knee and his back was covered in claw marks, four deep lines from shoulders to waist that were still bleeding. I knew him by smell before I saw his face. Willard, Alpha was born in Moon Crest village, son of chief Alessia. He left three years ago to fight in the boarder wars against the north pack. He was supposed to be dead. My mother cried for him when the news came last rainy season. He used to steal mangoes from my father’s trees and throw one to me when I was ten. He was nineteen too, his moon ceremony had been a legend. He shifted into a black wolf so large the elders had to step back. Now his wolf was trying to come out and could not, his body was jerking, his back was arching. He was growling, but his teeth were still human. I dropped to my knees ‘Willard’ His eyes opened, they were not human eyes, but wolf eyes, amber with a thin ring of black around them. Alpha eyes, he looked at me and his whole body stopped jerking, he inhaled. Wolves find their fated mate by scent on their first shift. They say it smells like the one thing you wanted most as a child but forgot. For most, it is rain, or fresh bread or river water. He inhaled me and made a sound I had never heard a wolf make. A whine, he tried to lift his hand to my face, his claws were half out, stuck between nail and claw. Blood dripped from his fingertips. ‘Don’t touch,’ he said, his voice broken between two throats. ‘You have no wolf you’ll ...’ I put my hands down on his shoulders anyway. My hands are small, brown and scarred from mortar burns, but they are steady. That is what Elder Claris taught me: ‘a healer’s hands must be steadier than an Alpha’s heart. I pushed him down onto the grass, the claw marks were deep but clean, not infected. A fight with another wolf, not a feral. ‘Who did this?’ I asked, pressing dried yarrow into the cuts. He hissed but did not move away from my hands. “North,” he breathed. “They are coming through the forest. Three days later, I ran.” His eyes never left my face, he kept inhaling me like a man who had been underwater. “Why did you come here and not to the village?” I asked. “Because if I went to the village like this,” he said, “my father would make me shift, and I would bite the first person I smelled. And I smelled you from the river, two kilometers away. I smelled you and my wolf stopped trying to kill me. My hands stopped In Moon Crest, there is one law older than the chief. On your first moon ceremony, if your wolf scents its fated mate and that mate rejects you, your wolf will never let you shift back. You will go feral, you will be hunted by your own pack. That is why everyone fears ceremony, not because they might not shift, but because they might be rejected. Willard was an alpha-born. His fated mate was supposed to be a strong she-wolf from a good family, with a thick coat and sharp teeth. Not me, not the girl with no wolf, but his wolf had been chosen, and his wolf had found me. He reached up again, slower this time, he cupped my cheek, his palm was hot, too hot fever hot. His half claws were careful not to touch my skin. “Amara” he whispered, and my name in his broken voice sounded different. Not grace, not pity, like a word he had been trying to remember for three years in war. From the village far down the hill, we heard the first drum for the new moon ceremony practice, boom, boom, boom. Willard’s whole body tensed, the moon still visible in the sky was calling him.” Your eyes,” he said suddenly. “They are brown but when you grind the leaves they go gold, did you know?” No one had told me that. I leaned forward and put my forehead against his. The way healers do to check fever, the way wolves do to share scent, his skin was burning. “You're not going to die on my grass,” I told him. He laughed, a wet painful sound, and for a second under the blood and the Alpha smell, I smelled it too, his real scent, underneath. It was mango, a mango stolen from my father’s tree when we were ten. And for the first time in a year, in my human heart, something warm twitched, something that had never been there before shifted in its sleep. I did not howl. But for the first time in my life, something inside me wanted to.