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By Root 7186 0

him pass for human. The night was suddenly alive in a way that it hadn’t been. The still air held a thousand scents: the ripeness of apples from the orchard behind the house; grass like a thick green blanket against our face; trees, the spicy tang of sweet gum, the softer scent of birch, the sweet pungent wood of poplar, and over it all, the dry richness of fallen leaves all around us. Sounds, then. The last crickets of the year chirping their plaintive song. Other insects from the woods, singing their last songs before the cold came. The wind raised, and the trees creaked and groaned around the house. The big oak by the driveway threw its branches against the stars, and Richard raised his head to watch that wild wind. There was barely a breeze on the ground, but up high in the highest trees, the wind ran fast and pulled at the bare limbs at the very top of the trees. Most people don’t look up, animals look up, because they know that there is no true safety. They don’t worry about it the way we do, but they’re aware of it in a way that we aren’t.

Richard walked into the edge of trees that began the woods that bordered the western edge of the family land. He touched a trunk, laid his hands on it, and it was rough and hard, with deep grooves in the bark like tiny tunnels. He laid his face against that roughness, and it was spicy and pungent, and I knew it was sweet gum. He gazed up into the bare branches where the tiny rough balls still hung on to the edges of the tree. He hugged the tree, hugged it so tight that the bark dug into his skin, he rubbed his cheek against the roughness of it, like he was scent marking, then he was off. He was running at an easy lope through the trees, into the woods. He wasn’t hunting. He was running for the joy of it.

He twisted through the underbrush like it wasn’t there. And as I’d felt only once before, it was as if the trees and bushes welcomed him, or turned aside for him, or as if green growth could be water, and he dived through it, running, dodging, twisting, giving himself to the brush of twigs and branches and the feel of the living ground underfoot. There was life that didn’t run or hide, it was all alive, alive in a way that most humans never understand.

Richard ran, and he took me with him, as he had one night long ago. Then he’d held my hand, and I’d struggled to keep up, to understand. Now it was effortless, because I was inside his head, inside him. The night was alive for him in a way that it wasn’t for Jean-Claude, or for me. I was too human, and Jean-Claude’s interest in life was too shallow. Neither of us could feel what Richard’s beast could give him.

Something touched my hand, and I was jerked back to the grave. Requiem was still at my back, dead still, but Graham was on the grave. He looked uncertain, but he was sniffing the air near my skin. “You smell like trees and pack,” he said softly.

Richard looked up at us. “Why is Graham there?”

“Bodyguard. Jean-Claude was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t have someone with me.”

“Tell him he’s supposed to guard you, and he can’t do that on the grave.”

“You’re supposed to guard me, Graham, you can’t do that from here.” The sharp scent of wolf thickened around me as I said it.

Graham reacted to it like he’d been struck. He cringed to the ground, doing the wolf grovel. “I’m sorry, you just smelled so good. I forgot myself.”

“Stop groveling and get back to work.” Richard said it first, and I echoed it for him.

Graham did what he was told. He went back to very serious bodyguard mode, looking out into the dark for whatever might come.

Richard took in a deep breath, and I smelled that thick, sweet scent of deep woods. He’d run miles, effortlessly, not for the same reason that a human will run well, but because the land itself helped him run, gave him strength, welcomed him.

He stood there in the middle of the woods, his feet anchored into the ground. I realized that Richard was my ground, my center, his joy, his heart pumping in his chest from that joyous run. I kept my tie to him open and full of scents and sounds