Aru
By Rin
A short transformation fantasy
“Elder Vann?”
“Yes, child?”
“How old were you the first time Aru spoke to you?”
He gave me one of those kindly smiles. The ones that mean he’s about to tell me how wrong I am. “I have felt her presence my whole life, but the wolf has no voice, not as you and I would understand.”
Somewhere behind my shoulder, Aru scoffed. “Like hell I don’t. Old goat never listened.”
I glanced over at her, and said, “I think there’s more to it than that.”
But of course Vann thought I was talking to him. “Much more. She makes herself felt in other ways. Subtle ways that you will come to learn in the next few years as your instruction continues.”
“By which,” Aru growled, “he means he looks for stuff he can use as a metaphor to explain that what I want is actually the same thing as what he wants.”
With a lazy kick of her legs, she drifted up over his head. “He can’t hear a word I say but I still have to go along with things. Never should have made that deal with your people. Hey…”
I stared up at her. I really didn’t like that look on her face all of a sudden. Too many teeth. “What..?”
“Oh, yes,” Vann continued, oblivious, “sealing the compact is only the beginning of your education.”
“Yes,” she said. “The compact. I can use this. Tell him, in these exact words: even now I feel the call of the pack.”
I didn’t think I liked where this was going, but what exactly can you do when your god tells you to say something?
“Even now,” I said, trying to keep the uncertainty out of my voice, “I feel the call of the pack.”
For once, Vann actually looked impressed. “Well now, girl. Maybe you’ve picked a few things up after all. I didn’t expect you to have learned the words already. We can do this right now, if that’s what you want.”
Aru backflipped in the air. “Yes! All right, kid, we’re going to give the old man a surprise. Trust me, you’ll like this. Pull up the hood on that skin you’re wearing and repeat everything I tell you.”
I was so doomed.
Still, I did what I was told, and placed the head of the skinned wolf on top of mine. Vann did the same, just as he always did for ceremonies.
“Kiri, you have heard the call. Do you mean to follow it wherever it leads you, as our people have since time immemorial?”
“I do, as we have sworn,” Aru prompted and I recited.
Vann nodded. “Then cite the compact.”
I’d heard bits of it before but could never have read out the whole thing from memory. But then, I had Aru telling me what to say.
“I call upon the ancient bond between our people and Aru, Mother of the Pack. The spirit of the wolf is with me and I bind it to my own. By shared blood we are inseparable.”
Vann shook his head, smiled sadly, and took his hood back down. “Ah, and you had me hopeful. No, Kiri, that’s the wrong rite. We are to perform the basic initiation, not the high-”
“Keep going,” Aru hissed. “Repeat after me. By Aru’s manifest will…”
“By Aru’s manifest will, I invoke the high mantle and claim— wait, really?”
“Really!” Her voice was a growl now. “Now repeat! I invoke the high mantle and claim my place as chosen and speaker for the Mother.”
I took a moment to catch my breath, then pressed on over Vann’s words. I wasn’t really sure what he was saying, but I could hear disappointment turning to anger.
“…as chosen and speaker for the Mother.”
“Child,” Vann roard, “I will see you skinned for this! Do you think this is a joke? These words are not, will never be for you to—”
I ACCEPT. THE COMPACT IS SEALED.
Vann went pale. He’d heard that.
“Sorry about this next part, kid,” Aru said in her normal voice. “It’s going to be a bit rough.”
Then everything went white, and my whole body was on fire. No, not on fire, more like being surrounded with boiling water. Everything tingled and burned and… itched? Like something was trying to crawl out of my skin, everywhere at once.
Then something grabbed my face and pulled. It felt like my whole jaw was being stretched like wet cloth. I reflexively pulled away from it, lost my balance, and tipped over backwards.
White faded away to black as abruptly as it had come as I hit the floor. Candlelight started to creep back into my vision. And everything ached.
“Owww,” I growled. “I shink I landed on my ta—”
I stopped. I’d been about to say tail. And yeah, something down there did hurt, where I hadn’t thought there was something to hurt.
And why did my voice sound so slurred?
“In Aru’s name,” I heard Vann gasp. “I never imagined the transmutation was supposed to be so literal! Forgive me, Mother Aru, I never…”
“Tell him Mother Aru says to put a sock in it,” Aru complained.
But I couldn’t find it in me to say anything. I was staring at my nose. My glistening, black nose that now sat a hand’s length in front of my eyes.
“A… Aru?” I tried. “What did you..?”
“Congratulations, kid. You just took this ass’s job as high priest, and you’re the first half-wolf the world’s seen in six generations. Oh, we have so much work to do now.”
“…yeah. Vann?” I struggled to get my unfamiliar mouth around the words. “That was… the wrong rite.”
Vann’s eyes gleamed in a way I’d never seen before. I could smell the excitement and awe radiating off him. “Oh, no, Elder Kiri. It was more right than I could ever have known. Aru has granted us a miracle.”
She nodded, her tail thrashing back and forth. “Damn right I have.”
“So, Aru,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level. “I think, under the circumstances…”
“That I owe you an apology? Yeah. Sorry I didn’t warn you.”
“Yes, that. Why didn’t you?”
“Well, as harsh as it sounds… if you’d known what was going to happen, you’d have said no. And I couldn’t risk—”
I barked - literally barked - a laugh. “Said no? Are you kidding? Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of something like this? I have a tail! I can smell everything! And look at me!” I pointed at the mirror. “I’m beatiful!”
“Well, you did choose the most beautiful of my children for your skin.”
“I still feel bad about that. So I guess we can call surprising me with this your revenge and call it even?”
“Revenge never appealed to me. But you’ve earned my forgiveness and it smells like I’ve earned yours.”
I sat back down on the chair and tucked my tail through the hole in the back. “This is the real reason I wanted to be a wolf priest. Well, not this, but I knew your gifts made us closer to them.”
“You mean made them closer to you.”
“I suppose I do. Didn’t think I’d ever get… all this. And not all at once. It takes the priests years to learn how to use their gifts.”
“It’s not supposed to.” Aru drifted to the ground in front of me and laid her head in my lap. “It’s going to take some time to explain how much we’ve both lost.”
I brushed my fingers across her incorporeal ear. They went straight through, of course. “I’m starting to get some idea.”
“Some, but you’re missing the biggest part of it. Do you know why the initiation involves killing one of my children and taking their skin?”
“No. When I saw how angry you were, I figured it wasn’t your idea.”
“Because it wasn’t working properly. It’s supposed to bind your spirits together. You have two souls, Kiri. And that makes you one of my children now.”
“Is that why it’s been so easy to learn to, uh… do things, when everything’s a different shape?”
Her tail thumped on the ground. “You understand. Your wolf soul knows how all of it works.”
I felt my ears turn forwards. “You mean I didn’t really kill her?”
“Oh, you killed her all right. And it’s going to hurt when you start to remember that happening. Those arrowheads you used are something nasty. But dying doesn’t have to mean you stop being alive.”