Tierney's uncle was not a great storyteller, but she has learned to remember in a particular way. She retains best the things that hurt. Her brain is on a swivel for them for the rest of her life. Like plastic forks.
Sheâs heard a hundred stories of valor and grand wolf hunts. But she remembers best the one about the newly made werewolf practically in their own garden. Like it was eager to get it all over with. Like it was dead twice over as soon as it was born. Werewolves without a pack are as good as dead to begin with; a rule proven over and over by the ragged half-turned bodies recovered from roadside accidents and fast food dumpsters.
This one was alone and basically on Smudgling turf, doubly a goner from the start. Tierney gets a lump in her throat to think about it, crouched in some village rubbish dump rooting through the overflow of bags with an elongated skin muzzle, human teeth, broken and bent furred legs, and black claws ripping bloody out of its stretched wrists. Werewolves who arenât born to itâwolves who are made, who donât come from a lineâoften look like this when theyâre found. The first transformations are so painful, incomplete, leaving them not a wolf and not a human but a mangled creature made of desperation for relief and bottomless hunger. Because itâs not easy for them. It takes nearly all their strength to become that sad creature, and it leaves them starving. Honestly, according to everything sheâs read, it never really becomes easier for them. For the rest of their life, even if they figure out how to make their hands into paws, their jaw into a predatorâs maw, theyâll feel like theyâre dying each time. But they donât know that yet. Donât know itâs a mercy that a Smudglingâs found them so quick and early.
What the hungriest youâve felt in your entire life? Maybe youâve woken up at four in the morning after a night of heavy training, and your skin was crawling because your blood sugar dropped while you were sleeping, and the aching, sharp pain of your stomach couldnât be abated by stuffing a pillow hard into the hollow of it. You had to get out of bed, had to crawl to your kitchen and make a shameful breakfast of toast ends and some half-wilted strawberries at the bottom of your crisper that you ate on the floor until you stopped shaking.
A new werewolf is hungrier than anything. It doesn't remember that it's sometimes human; it'd gobble one of Tierney's sweet new puppies in one bite without a second thought. A newly made werewolf canât open a refrigerator or make toast. But it can knock over a rubbish bin smelling of last nightâs dinner. If itâs lost in a city, it can find its way to a wheelie bin. If itâs out in the countryside, it can smell the landfill like itâs the best sausage in the world.
Thatâs what happened to this werewolf. By the time the Smudglings got to her, barely a few hours after she was reported, she had swallowed all the things you know you're supposed to recycle but donât because you can't be bothered: aluminum cans sharp like razors, plastic forks. She was swallowing the regular rubbish, too, the chicken bones and vegetable skins, because it takes a lot of energy to become a werewolf and while there were rabbits to be found, a bin always smells stronger and is an easier get for a starving, hurting, half-crazed dog.
The way Tierney remembers the story, maybe the way it was told to her, the sun was coming up over the horizon and the werewolf was stuck in that half-transformed hell. Her stomach couldnât decide if it was more wolf or sad girl, but it didnât matter much. Either way, she was filled with plastic forks breaking off tines inside her. Sheâd been a werewolf for one night, tops, and it killed her by morning. They were just lucky she hadnât taken anyone else with her.
Animals donât know whatâs bad for them. A lost dog is the worst of it: all hunger, all alone. It has an ache it will never fill, except maybe by tearing everything to pieces, and something in it that will do anything to survive. Even eat trash. Nothing deserves that.
Itâs a mercy, Tierneyâs uncle said. Itâs a responsibility.
