Free Skin of the Wolf by Sam Cabot Page B

Shifter mad.”
    “I see. And once you’ve been trained?”
    “Once you learn, the Power can be accessed anytime. Edward and I will be able to Shift for the rest of our lives. But traditionally there’s a prohibition against Awakening adults. A life lived without the Shift, suddenly interrupted by it—most people’s minds can’t take it. They never learn to adequately control the Power. Children are different. The world’s magical to children anyway, in the sense that pretty much everything is inexplicable. So why wouldn’t you turn into a wolf, into an eagle?”
    “What is the Awakening process?”
    “Traditionally, women brought each child at five or six. The children were told it was an initiation ceremony. If nothing happened, then that’s all it was. If the Shift occurred, no matter how brief or incomplete, the child was given as much instruction as he or she needed to be able to access the Power, to control it. The instructions were secret, of course. Everyone in the tribe knew about thepossibility, but no one except the medicine man and the Shifter ever knew whether it had happened.”
    “Not even the child’s mother?”
    “No. What I said before was true—the identities of Shifters were always protected.”
    Bonnard stopped and wiped his hand down his face. He looked spent. Now that he’d begun, though, he seemed determined to finish.
    “You can see the problem, can’t you? It’s the Ceremony that’s been lost. Few still remember how to perform it, fewer with each generation. It’s not clear why they stopped, unless it’s just that all our ceremonies and feasts are in shreds. Some of the medicine elders can still do it, in some of the tribes, but even so they might not have the objects. Those are all in museums now. And if they know, and have what they need, no one brings the children anymore. Edward and I were among the last.”
    “Who did the Awakening Ceremony for you?”
    “One of our grandfathers. Technically, a great-uncle, though that’s not a term we use. Our Grandma’s brother.”
    “Your parents are Shifters?”
    “Our father wasn’t, according to Grandfather. Our mother may have been. She died when we were born. Grandma raised us.”
    “Ah. Are you the younger?”
    “I know what you’re asking, but no. I was first and my birth was normal. Edward’s was complicated. Unexpectedly. There was no doctor on the rez then. By the time the one from town got up there, there was nothing he could do.”
    Spencer shrugged. “It was too trite a psychological cliché in any case. But can you tell us, why does he hate you so?”
    “If you asked him he’d say it’s because I’ve sold out. He thinksI’m what we call an ‘apple Indian’—red on the outside, white on the inside. Boarding school, college, grad school, postdocs. City living. Everything he despises, everything that destroyed our people.”
    “That’s what he’d say was his reason. Would it be true?”
    “Not entirely, I think. It may be now, but we’ve always fought, from my earliest memories. It’s as though I’m a part of him that he’s been trying to tear out, shake off, leave behind, but what that would mean—killing me—he can’t quite bring himself to do.”
    “He tried to, tonight.”
    “No. He tried to kill
you
. I was vulnerable before I Shifted. It was his chance, but he didn’t take it. He’s had that chance before.”
    Spencer nodded thoughtfully. “Michael, you say Shifters are very few. Have you met others?”
    Bonnard shook his head. “I’ve heard rumors. If others do exist, they must have also, about Edward and myself. But my brother is the only one I know.”

19
    M aybe the whole damn Job really was a mistake.
    Staring at the crimson splashes and smears on the shelves, the carpet, the boxes housing their precious objects, Charlotte Hamilton heard her uncle’s voice. “What does it matter that you weren’t born up here? You can still come home. This land is where you belong.” Uncle