Connor and the Wolves - 2. Cabin in the Woods

A cinnamon wolf waded through the Astar River. Congealing blood washed off his fur, and he dunked his head to clean his mouth. There would be no more hunting until the weekend.
The river carried him toward the city. A dilapidated house flashed by, and Soren pushed toward the bank. His claws scrabbled at loose river stones before latching onto a tree root. He dragged himself out, shaking off the water as best as he could.
Jade eyes swept over his surroundings, taking in sight and scent. After the midday run, his scent markers were strong. His mind said he’d travelled at least fifty kilometres — the extent of his territory — yet Soren couldn’t bring himself to care about the distance. His home was safe, prey was plentiful. He was as happy as a wolf could be.
But it could not last.
Heading back to the house, the wolf paused outside the narrow flap at the bottom. Something was in the air, mixed with the werewolves that carved a piece of his territory a week ago. He didn’t dare fight for the land — werewolves were vicious when pressed. His land held his scent. Everyone knew this was his hunting ground, just as he knew the grasslands he’d run through were no longer his.
He’d scented the pack before. The mother and father wore strange clothing, but his nose didn’t lie. They were a breeding pair with a large family. A pack that could tear him to pieces.
But they were also a reminder. The seasons were changing. The humans would leave for school soon. And that meant he needed to prepare.
Soren pushed through the wolf door. The house was dark and dusty. An empty fridge hummed, and he could see a bit of mould spreading across the kitchen wall. Up a flight of stairs, a den of warm bedding waited for him, but he couldn’t sleep just yet.
Padding upstairs, the wolf nosed his way into a bedroom. A white oak dresser leaned precariously, a leg missing. In the corner, a chewed-up mattress sat in a mess of stuffing. Stapled to a closet door, hand-drawn pictures of a human body waited for him. Soren lay in front of the portraits, studying them with his wolf eyes. He could do this. It had only been three months.
The wolf took a deep breath and focused. Warmth spread through his head, travelling into his body. Cold fought the heat as his fur retreated. Inside him, body parts squished and moved. His bones reassembled themselves, paws growing into thick hands.
Bit by bit, he sculpted his body, making sure organs were in the correct spot and proportions were proper. A minute later, Soren stood up on human legs, shivering in the chill air around him.
Opening the closet door, the human checked over his warm sepia body in the mirror. Small ears lined up with his eyes, and his slender nose ran right between the green orbs, down to a crooked mouth. Soren stared at the plump lips until the right side straightened.
His lean body showed hours of walking and running as a wolf, muscles remaining strong in all his forms. His penis dangled between his legs, shrivelled in the chill air, but still in working order… he hoped. Muscled legs completed his body, and Soren turned, angling the mirror to check his back. His spine was straight, his tailbone sitting properly just above toned cheeks, and his calves bulged as he stood on his toes.
Satisfied, Soren flipped on the closet light. Dozens of shirts and pants hung on either side. Most were far too small for him to wear. Five outfits sat near the front of the closet, and Soren leaned closer to them, inhaling. They smelled clean enough.
His stomach roared at him, and he scowled at it.
“You already ate-”
Soren ducked, growling at the baritone voice. He backed into the closet, eyes flicking around the room. No one was there.
His heart pounded, and he let out a shaky breath. It was just his voice. And it was right. He had just eaten. But moulding his body into the right shape took a lot of energy.
Abandoning the closet, he went downstairs again. Food wasn’t important. He could go weeks without eating — no, he was human now. Humans had to eat every day. He couldn't do anything until he had the heat on. And doing that required making sure the solar panels still worked.
The human shivered as he stepped outside, missing his coarse fur. He ignored the growing poplar in the front yard. The memories buried there would not suck him under.
Walking around the cabin, Soren stopped by a metre, holding a hand over it to block the sunlight from the screen. Satisfied that the solar panels were working properly, he hurried back into the house, closing the door. A switch flipped, and the heater groaned as it turned on. Soren fought back another growl at the sound.
“Okay, you have to get your tackle,” he said. “Worms are under the mushroom patch.”
Talking helped. By the morning, he would be used to voices again.
Soren paused by the back door. He’d smelled that new werewolf family in the house about a kilometre down the river. His usual clothing was bare skin, but if a werewolf stumbled upon him….
He shrugged and opened the door. If a werewolf saw him, it was their own fault. Soap for washing was hard to make, and he would not waste one of his outfits on the off-chance of a human seeing him naked.
It did remind him to stock up on soap for the coming winter.
His to-do list was piling up. Soren took a deep breath, fighting the encroaching sense of being overwhelmed. He hated being human… but it would pass. He just needed to get through the first few days.
Weeds covered the flagstone path to the shed. A firepit sat just off the path in a short depression surrounded by bricks, and a large stack of wood rested against the building. Soren checked the pit first, praying that there would be ash waiting for him. The dry rustling of a snake’s rattle met him instead, nestled at the bottom of the sun-warmed pit.
Soren froze at the sound. Gooseflesh appeared on his arms, bumps that had nothing to do with the chill air. The wolf’s caution warred with his human mind. He didn’t want to be near the snake, but he needed to light a fire.
He peered into the large pit, watching the sooty grey snake coiled in the pit. The snake’s head moved, its body rising as the rattling increased, and Soren scrambled back.
“It’s just a snake. He’s scared of you, too.” The words did nothing to soothe his nerves. “Where’s a branch?”
A morbid thought struck him — if he could kill the snake, they tasted good. He shook the thought off. Humans didn’t mix well with snake meat.
His foot hit a rock, and he hissed.
“Fuck!” Oh, he had missed that word. “Fuck fuck fuck.” So sharp, so expressive… it was good to be human again.
He tossed the rock into the pit. The rattling increased even more somehow, and Soren picked up another rock.
“Get the fuck out of there!”
The rock clanged inside the pit, and the snake slithered over the edge. It dropped to the ground between him and the pit, and Soren scrambled back.
Snake and human stared at each other for a second. Then the snake was off, racing into the woods around the house. Soren let out the breath he’d been holding, waiting a moment to ensure the snake wasn’t coming back.
He tipped the fire pit, shaking the rocks out. A pile of leaves covered the bottom of the pit, and Soren gathered a large log. Smaller branches rested against the log a few minutes later, their ends buried in the tinder.
Jogging back into the house, Soren grabbed a magnifying glass. Starting a fire was as easy as setting a thin piece of bark under the lens. He set the smouldering bark into the pit, waiting for the leaves to catch. The fire grew, and he watched until he was sure it wouldn’t go out.
Finally, the human was ready to hunt.

Building the weir was easy. A heart made of stone sat in the river near a short dam. With luck, a fish would swim through the funnel at the top of the heart and be trapped. A dozen earthworms floating through the water made dinner a little more certain.
While he waited, Soren began picking the blackberries from a bush nearby. Thorns scraped over his flesh, but they didn’t bother him. He just reformed the skin and kept picking until he had a bucket filled with the fruit. He would freeze some. Others would go with the trout he was hoping to catch.
Catching that trout would be more certain if he could become a heron or even a bull shark.
It was yet another thing to add to his to-do list. But at least this would wait. He had all year to create pictures of the animal he wanted to morph into.
Soren wouldn’t turn into any of them.
He knew he could — it would be easy, even. As a kid, the thought of sharks in the nearby river enthralled him. He had pages stashed away, filled with shark anatomy and physiology.
But every time he changed, his life grew that much shorter. One day he would die. And Soren hoped it would be peaceful. He didn’t want to burn out like his parents.
He planned every morph carefully, focusing on efficiency. Turn into a wolf at the end of the school year. Nature provided for him. Return to a human at the start of the year. This had been his life for eight years, never letting anyone get close.
It wouldn’t last. He was nineteen now… probably. When was his birthday? Sometime during the summer. He was an adult even in the eyes of the elves that went to Elias Academy. As he got older, human things would be expected of him. Soren had achieved a tenuous peace between himself and nature on the bones of his family. A single misstep would destroy him.
Like a pack of werewolves discovering his den.
He plucked several potatoes from the small garden beside the house. A few garlic bulbs followed, and Soren tried to remember where he’d left the radish seeds. Probably with the herb garden inside.
His stomach roared again, but Soren ignored it. Food would come. If he didn’t eat tonight, he would eat tomorrow. That was certain.
Even more certain, he had a long weekend ahead of him. The potatoes needed harvesting, the radishes needed planting, and he had to pick as many berries as he could. If he was lucky, the apple tree he’d planted four years ago would start fruiting soon. The oaks would shed acorns soon. He could make flour from those.
Warmth greeted him as he stepped back inside. Soren shivered as the cold leeched out of him. He wiped his feet on the bristly mat in front of the door before venturing into the kitchen.
Washing the potatoes and garlic took a few minutes, and he left them to dry on the kitchen counter. A cloth cleaned off the stove, and the burners turned on with an easy click. Soren shut them off again, satisfied that everything was still working properly.
He turned on the TV, searching through the laptop connected to the screen.
“Aera, I get to swing next!”
A black werewolf appeared on the screen, swinging on a large seat. A remake of Quarius the Wolf-Mage, and one of Soren’s favourite cartoons. There were several reincarnations of the show, some with Quarius as an adult, and others, like this one, with the werewolf as a young kid just learning to juggle his magic and his lycanthropy.
Soren let the voices flow through his mind as he cut the potatoes. There was no dairy to go with the meal, and his spices were limited to whatever he could grow. But the internet always provided, through the grace of the Royal Council’s edicts.
One step into the sunroom off the kitchen told him the weekend would be even busier. Herbs filled their different trays, and a suspicious buzzing came from the corner of the room. Glancing toward the sound, Soren’s heart plummeted at the sight of a wasp nest just outside a window. He had no idea how to get rid of that, and he certainly didn’t have the money to pay anyone to take the wasps away. The problem would probably take care of itself within the next month, but Soren had no idea if the pests could get inside.
Keeping an eye on the nest, Soren began plucking bits of parsley from a tray. Restarting the garden after his father’s death hadn’t been easy. The healer had used all sorts of strange herbs to cure the sick, but few of them had been useful for Soren’s purposes. Now, between the outdoor garden and the sunroom, Soren had nearly any plant he might need for cooking. It was still difficult to come up with dairy-free recipes online, but he managed.
He set the fresh herbs beside the sink to wash later. Heading back outside, Soren stopped by the fire, where the log had nearly burned through. By nightfall, he’d have plenty of ash to wash himself, the dishes, and his clothes for at least a couple of weeks.
Satisfied, he made his way back to the weir. His stomach was growling again, and there were fish to be cooked.