Page 31

S imon was still complaining about the smell of new paint in his room on Monday, but asked Rose to do something with the notes he’d recorded about a new project with the transported wolves.

‘What does Sue say about how it links with the original one?’ she asked. ‘Is it still going to be broadcast at Christmas? Surely they must have organised the schedules by now?’

Simon grunted.

‘Don’t you know?’ Rose paused. ‘These notes – what happened on your trip to the forest the other day? Can you talk about it now? Or do I just have to work things out from your recording? I could tell you were a bit upset.’

‘I’m fine. I saw the pack. I saw Sky in the background.

It was strange seeing her older. You can’t just multiply wolf years by human ones.

She was about eighteen months as a wolf when I last saw her, and appeared to be about twenty as a human.

Now, I suppose now she looks a bit younger than you.

Listen, about tomorrow, I was thinking…’

Rose shook her head. ‘No Simon, you can’t be less sedated. I asked Andrew. You can’t risk it. I promise if Sky arrives, I’ll film her for you. It’s all I can do. You don’t know if you could hurt her. You can’t risk it.’

The following day, Simon started fasting and took a low level of sedation. Rose got Andrew on the phone and passed it over to Simon who went off to speak in muttered tones outside. She counted the tablets and checked everywhere she could to see if he’d spat them out or hidden them.

He wasn’t an actor though. He couldn’t pretend the lethargy, the dry mouth, the depression enveloping him, the slow speech. By Wednesday morning they exposed the cage together.

Simon swayed a little, his finger slipping on the key and Rose took it from him. ‘How… hard… is …. it … to … decorate?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean? ’

‘Damage in … wall… Damage … to … lock.’

Rose peered, there were scratches on the lock.

Peering at the rest of the structure, she saw other marks by the hinges.

She went cold. But it was still fast and secure.

She said nothing as she opened the cage and checked the walls and bars.

She had prepared everything while Simon was away.

They should have been used to it after a year, but now, as she prepared to look away while her brother stripped and climbed into the cage, she felt her eyes fill and reached for his hand. Just as if they were children.

She remembered when a bully snapped her first bow and she had cried all the way home, barely able to bring herself to pull the ruin of wood and hair from the case and show it to anyone.

Her parents were at work. There was only Simon.

He had said nothing, taking it from her and then hugging her tight, before asking what she’d like him to do to the bully.

‘Nothing,’ she’d said. ‘I just want her to be sorry.’

‘She won’t ever be sorry,’ he’d told her, ‘but you just need to show you don’t care.’

‘I do care.’

‘Pretend you don’t. Come on Posie, if she thinks you don’t care, she can’t hurt you.’

Then there was the day his first wild animal had died.

It was a rabbit, left for dead at the side of the road.

It seemed to recover, he studied it and he was incredulous when in the end he had been unable to save it; blaming the cold right angles of a cardboard box compared to the curved warmth of the warren, the isolation from its colony. But perhaps it had just died.

He had said little, stroking the cooling fur, now no more than a piece of discarded fluff over deflated lungs.

After a moment, he had started to take photographs and write notes.

Then Rose had put her hand in his and after a moment, he had turned to accept her hug and she knew she wasn’t imagining the tears soaking into her shoulder.

She remembered holding hands at the funeral and coming home, closing the door and hugging, pretending their parents were holding them too, feeling them drift away.

There are some things that can’t be glued back together.

Now, she hugged Simon. His hold was weak and his chin was shaky on her head.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Your cage too.’ he replied, then released her. He ruffled her hair and turned her round.

A few moments later, he looked up from the pallet as she locked the bars.

He had a thin blanket over his nakedness but he was starting to change.

His closing eyes had reddened, his skin becoming grey, the hairs on his body were lengthening and thickening.

Through sedation and metamorphosis, his speech was too slurred to understand but he flicked his gaze to the camera Rose had set up.

‘You want me to record you changing?’ A slow, awkward nod.

‘Yes,’ he slurred.

‘Are you sure?’

Another nod.

‘It’s on motion sensor mode,’ Rose said. ‘I can’t promise it’ll record everything.’

Simon’s eyes closed. Rose had never watched him change.

Andrew had whisked him off as soon as they got back from Denmark and kept him in isolation for the first few months, doing tests and making observations.

When he had finally come home, Andrew had set up the cage in a spare room, helped Rose for the next two full-moons and then left her and Simon to reach some sort of pattern.

She had seen him in the early stage of change and she had seen him fully altered.

The process took about half an hour. Somehow she had felt that if she didn’t see the metamorphosis she could pretend it hadn’t really happened.

‘I thought it would be quicker,’ she’d said to Andrew.

‘I think it’s because it’s viral, not genetic,’ he’d replied. ‘It’s not natural for his body and his body is fighting back. Only the virus can’t win.’ She had wondered what he meant. Now, having seen Sky on the film, one moment a wolf, the next minute a human, it made more sense.

Rose still couldn’t face standing there watching his slow destruction. After checking that the blackout curtains sealed the window, she shut the door and locked it.

Now it was just a waiting game.

She would feel better when Andrew arrived. The thought of leaving Simon on his own while she went to the Ceilidh, even if Sky did turn up, was impossible.

It felt like more than a month since Emmeline had been here. Rose padded round the house from room to room, getting boxes out of the spare room, taking things out, putting them back. She took her cello from its case and tuned it up, started to play disconnected phrases, then put it down.

Looking out of the kitchen window while she made coffee, she spotted Rob in his kitchen, raising his hand in greeting, disappearing then reappearing at his front door .

She went to her own door and stood there with her coffee. She would ask him over, only Simon had started the low growl which indicated he was now fully transformed and dreaming. How could she explain?

‘Morning!’ called Rob. ‘Ready for the ceilidh?’

‘Sort of. Nervous.’

‘Want to run over some stuff?’

‘No, it’s OK. I’m waiting for Simon’s doctor to turn up.’

‘Bad again?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll still be OK later though?’

‘Yes, don’t worry. Though you could manage without me.’

‘We don’t want to.’

Perhaps she should invite him over. Simon cried out from his room and his bars rattled.

Rose tensed and looked up and down the road.

Surely Emmeline wouldn’t just turn up again.

Would Sky? She couldn’t bear Simon’s disappointment if she didn’t.

Yesterday, they’d put clothes under the tree for her. There was no sign of anyone anywhere.

‘I’ll be ready at seven thirty,’ she said and went back inside.

After fidgeting round a bit more and trawling the internet, Rose decided to open the patio doors to get some air into the house. She’d just have to prime herself for Emmeline. Then, although it was too early, she went to get her clothes ready for the ceilidh.

She’d dug out a dress from last year. It was long and light. She would be able to hold the cello without exposing anything she didn’t want to, yet it was cool and pretty. She dug around in her drawer and found a narrow silk scarf for her shoulders and sat at her mirror practising with her hair.

If she left it down, it would be hot and annoying, if she plaited it, she would feel like a child, if she put it up… Rose lifted and twisted her hair, pinning it and teasing out tendrils. Where was another woman when you needed one?

Reflected in the mirror, the bedroom door opened on its own. Rose stared, her arms suspended over her head. Her heart quickened and over the thumping in her ears she could hear breathing. Arming herself with a hair brush, she turned.

Behind her, at the foot of the bed, was a wolf. It opened its mouth, licked its teeth, then, with closed eyes, dropped to crouch on the floor, drawing its tail round.

In seconds, the fur receded and thinned, except for the head, where it grew and flowed, covering the face and falling forward over the chest. The ears altered and shifted position, skin showed, lightly tanned.

Limbs changed: paws became hands and feet, the shape of spine altered, now curved and visible through the skin, the tail was no longer there.

It was like watching a flower open to the sun.

The wolf was gone, a slender young woman sat hunched on the floor. Flowing hair covered her face and then she lifted a hand to part it and stood up. She was starting to mottle with cold.

‘Why don’t humans have fur on their bodies?’ said Sky. ‘It’s very stupid.’

Rose lowered the hairbrush. ‘Good question. It would solve trying to work out what to wear all the time.’

Sky perused Rose’s hair, ‘What are you doing with your fur?’

‘Another good question. It’s called hair. I’m trying to make it pretty. Don’t suppose you have any ideas?’

Sky tilted her head again and raised her eyebrows. It was the same sort of expression as she had had when confronted with tomatoes. She hugged herself and shivered.