Distant Cousins
Author's Note: There is an audio version of this story available on The Voice of Dog as part of their Ghost of Dog 2023 series. Story starts at 1:14.
The evening breeze prickled the back of Bert's neck. There was something at the crossroads.
She saw nothing, no pattern among the lightning bugs darting about the tall grass in the corners, heard no sound of footsteps or engines beneath the chorus of crickets. But there was definitely something in the air.
She'd always had a sort of gift, what Ma called the second scent, maybe what the wizards who sold spells in town called feeling the current. She knew little of wizards: in the UNM correspondence course catalog, the magic classes had all been labeled In Person Only, which everyone knew meant No Werewolves Allowed.
She preferred to call it seeing the things that were really there. And it was easier to do with fur on.
She stopped a few paces from where the roads crossed and closed her eyes, shutting out the world and gathering herself the way Gran had taught her, imagining the very fibers of her being knotting themselves together like the rag rug in Mama’s kitchen. When she opened her eyes, the night was warmer and the breeze full of smells and sounds she’d barely noticed in her other body.
The shape in the breeze was stronger now, in some combination of sight and scent that no one but Gran had ever really understood when she tried to explain. And it was a shape she almost recognized. Another werewolf in the middle of the crossroads, as faint and faded as campfire smoke over the next hill, thumbing in vain for a lift that would never pull over.
She approached cautiously, hands out to show she meant no harm. There was no guarantee they could see her, but it never hurt to be careful.
The stillness stretched, the cricket chorus swelling until it threatened to deafen her.
She realized she was holding her breath at the moment the ghost turned their head and looked her dead in the eye.
She dropped her gaze as quick as she could, focusing instead on their mouth and making no sense out of her attempt to lip-read. They held out a hand–maybe inviting her to hitch with them? She shook her head and pointed down another branch of the road.
They paused, head tilted as if hearing a distant whistle, and fixed their eyes on her hand. Looking down at it, she saw the bracelet of braided fur that had fallen out of her shirt cuff.
“To keep you safe on the road,” Mama had said as she'd tied it around Bert's wrist mere days before. “Your ma's fur and mine, it'll find you your cousins no matter where you go.”
She glanced back up at the ghost, who was now holding out their other arm. On that wrist, they wore a bracelet very like hers. She held her arm beside the ghost's to compare them: theirs had a fancier braid, and a bit more wear and tear, but it was definitely still a fur charm. How long ago had they died, she wondered. How far back did that tradition go?
She looked back up at the ghost's face, and found its mouth half-open in a canine grin. The hand with the bracelet moved again, resting above her upturned palm, not quite a handshake, but close enough for someone who could reach right through you. She glanced back down at the movement, and when she looked up, the ghost was gone.
“Thanks, cousin,” she whispered after them. No telling if something of them lingered on the breeze, or if finding unexpected kin out here was what they’d needed to send them on West.
Regardless, her own soul felt a touch lighter as she stepped back from the middle of the road and considered her options. In the direction she’d pointed, she saw a glimmer of campfire just out of reach. That was good enough.
Even if the people there were no friend to werewolves. Bert closed her eyes again and imagined picking up Mama’s old rag rug and snapping it into the wind. The breeze became sharper, the scent of ditch-flowers duller, and there was nothing left to do but head up the road and see who’d built that fire.
If she was lucky, it was someone who needed to hear a story like this tonight.