The Wolf's Song

A Secret From Another World

Michael

It takes me less than fifteen minutes to get back, accelerating the car to full speed and leaving it parked anyway in front of Diana’s house, as my senses expand, looking for danger, but I sense nothing around the house, only her familiar scent, and that of her grandmother.

All in all, Diana’s trail enters the forest, and gets lost in it, and I follow it, in a hurry and use my more sensitive senses than usual to follow her. It takes me only another two minutes to find her.

“Diana, are you all right, what happened?”

She is sitting on the ground, her legs together and her arms around her knees, her back against the trunk of an old tree. Her nose and eyes are red from crying, but she has no signs of injury or abuse on her skin, nor do I smell the scent of blood on her.

“Oh, Michael…”

She throws herself into my arms, and I crouch down, at the same time that I am at her height, and wrap my arms around her body. She hides her face against the curve of my neck, and I feel the soft sobs, as the moisture from her tears dampens my skin.

“Diana, tell me what’s wrong, please. You are killing me.”

She pulls away, wipes her nose with the back of her jacket, and then begins to speak. The words come hurriedly from her lips, but gradually I understand her message and the force of the revelation makes me fall down sitting on the floor as I look at her, stupefied.

“No. It can’t be.”

I take a deep breath and try to process her grandmother’s theory, but inside my mind, I keep telling myself over and over again that this is crazy. It can’t be happening. She can’t mean that she’s also...

“Michael,” she calls me, her eyes find mine and I wipe away the trail of tears running down her cheeks. “Michael, my grandmother knew what you are. She has known all this time. She says my father taught her how to identify shifters. She says that blood runs through my veins. That the attacks... The attraction we feel, the power of my music, it all could be linked to...”

“No,” I repeat, unable to believe what she’s trying to tell me. “It can’t be true...”

She looks at me, but after a moment, she looks away and takes out from under her shirt the ocarina I have given her. She carefully places her fingers on the instrument, breathes in slowly, and closes her eyes before starting to play. A sweet and soft melody flows from his breath.

Sounds intermingle in my head, water running, rain falling, and the breeze rustling through the trees. I inhale, sigh briefly, and feel my skin bristle, as a voice seems to flutter in the depths of my consciousness. I don’t identify what it says, nor what it wants, but I can feel it there, like a second heartbeat, making itself present without needing to be sought.

I open my eyes then, and Diana stops playing. The sound of her melody rumbles inside me as if she refuses to leave me.

“Martha said my father had a special gift. One that I seem to have inherited.”

The sound of her voice is just a whisper, but I don’t have to pay attention to hear it. She looks at the ocarina, as her fingers run over the surface of it carefully.

“All this time I thought I was just a talent. A naturally acquired taste, accentuated by practice. Now I realize that there might be something else behind all my supposed ‘gifts.’”

Carefully, she seeks to stand up, and I help her when I realize I have been afraid from the beginning to involve Diana too much in my environment; afraid to reveal who I am, to show myself as I am, because I know I can hurt her; because I know my world is no act for the fragility of humans.

Yet now she reveals this piece of truth, so far unknown to both of us, and everything takes on a new meaning. A terrified, and to some extent, electrifying one. Diana could have within her the spirit of a wolf; this could also be her nature.

She takes a step, approaches me, and I open my arms for her. The security of her body gets me, and I breathe in as I smell her scent of freesias, petrichor, and something else.

“All this time... I spent years thinking that my father had abandoned us on a whim, and a part of me always hated him, because I couldn’t bear to see my mother cry for him,” Diana whispers, her voice choked as she lies against my chest, but I hear her perfectly.

I try not to interrupt her, so she can complete the idea.

“I spent years thinking he had abandoned us, and apparently, all these years he had a compelling reason for doing what he did. He left to protect us.”

“But Diana, he left to protect you from what?” I ask while making her look at me, and running my thumb across her cheek.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure Martha knows. She hasn’t told me everything. She confessed it herself.”

“Maybe we should go talk to her. Maybe I could use a word or two with your grandmother,” I state in a dry, hard voice, partly annoyed that she has known something so important all this time and has kept it from us. Diana, however, denies it.

“It’s not going to do any good. Martha won’t say anything she doesn’t want to say. She’s stubborn like you in that regard.”

“She must have some of the wolves’ blood running through her veins too then, even if she denies it,” I joke, and she tries to smile. My lips get it, I kiss the corner of her mouth and she sighs.

“Please tell me this doesn’t change anything between us,” she begs me.

“It doesn’t. You are still the most important thing to me. I still want to protect you from this war,” I affirm, my lips pressed to his forehead.

“But Michael. I can’t leave. Not now that I know this,”

“What Martha told you changes nothing, Diana,” I beg. “You may have shifter blood in your veins, but it doesn’t make you a wolf. It doesn’t prepare you for battle. And even if it did, I wouldn’t want you in the middle of Damien’s wolves and werewolves. I couldn’t bear to expose you to such danger.”

“Maybe this doesn’t make me a wolf, but Michael, my music has something to do with it.”

“You say your father ran away to protect that gift associated with music,” I remind her then. “If it’s such a delicate subject, don’t you think you should be careful with it yourself, that we should keep it a secret for a while until we know what it is, where it comes from, and how to use it to our advantage?” I say, but Diana denies it, and to my own terror, I see the resolve imprinted in her eyes. She has made a decision, and it is not one close to my perspective.

“No, Michael. My father may have run away from ‘something’ to protect me and my mother, but that has nothing to do with this. Or at least, that’s what I think... And if it does, well, I’m not afraid of it. My place is here, with you. I know that now more than ever.”

She looks at me, her gaze fixed on mine and stubbornness imprinted in every fiber of her being.

“And whatever is going on with me, whether I’m a she-wolf or not, whether I have a gift or not, we’ll figure it out together. We won’t gain anything by sending me to New York, because if danger got me here, it can get me there too.”

I sigh and, unable to help myself, pull her to me.

“I feel like I want to kill your grandmother,” I affirm, and she laughs.

“It’s probably not a good idea. I think she’s the only one who knows the answers to all my questions. And I have a lot of them.”

“Then you’d better tell us,” I affirm, half growling. “She’d better answer, because I won’t let her put you in danger for nothing,” I affirm.

She smiles and hugs me. She promises me that nothing bad will happen, but as I bury my face in her hair, I know that the worst that could happen has already happened because now I have no way to take Diana away from this war.