Page 1 of A Wolf in the Garden

One

ELLIE

Yesterday went really well. Today will be the same,I tell myself, breathing in the sweet morning air.People love the garden, and it looks perfect right now.

My attempt at positive self-talk doesn’t really work; I still feel restless and full of nervous energy, and the lavender and lemon balm tea I’m currently sipping is ineffective against the churning sensation in my gut. It’s the same feeling I get whenever I’m involved in an event, though today seems particularly personal as my own garden is on display rather than a client’s.

The sound of car doors slamming has me rising to my feet, my mug of tea left abandoned on the small deck that surrounds my tiny house as I descend the wooden stairs, the familiar old Jeep that’s parked on the road making me smile. The shell path that cuts through my yard crunches under my feet as I head for the front gate, passing row upon row of raised garden beds, all filled to the brim with lush growth. While I’ve left a few grassed areas here and there — small spots hidden away for secret picnics — the vast majority of my quarter-acre section is densely planted with an eclectic mix of native shrubs, flowers, berries, vegetables, plus stone fruit and citrus trees. It’s an intentional jumble of plants, a riot of colour designed purposefully to evoke nostalgia, and the beehive and three free-range chickens only add to the strong cottagecore vibes. It’s everything I ever dreamed of as a little girl.

Perhaps that’s strange, but I’ve been obsessed with gardening for as long as I can remember. I grew up followingKoro, my grandfather, around the garden — both the one at the old house I shared with my mum and the one at his — and I learned so much from him. He taught me to use themaramatakato know exactly when to sow seeds, when to plant seedlings, and when to harvest, and I still use the Maori moon calendar in my day-to-day gardening. Those childhood experiences withKorohad a lasting impact, influencing my career choice in landscape design. Now I work for myself, using a mix of modern design principles combined with traditional Maori knowledge to create gardens that my clients love.

I lift a hand in greeting to my two very best gardening buddies, Ana and Betty, both in their early seventies. I met both ladies through the local gardening club after I moved here two years ago, just after the Unravelling. Ana and I bonded immediately over the fact that we’re from the sameiwi— Ngapuhi — and that we both grew up in Northland. Although we only see each other once a month, the old grannies and grandpas of the club have become some of my closest friends and found family.

Today these two are here to man the volunteer station at the front of the yard. We’re on day two of the weekend-long Garden Festival here on Motuwai Island, and my yard is one of the ten chosen this year for the festival goers to attend.

I can already tell by the wide-eyed look Ana gives me that she’s got some serious gossip, and I shake my head. I taught the oldies what the phrase “spill the tea” means, and now all I ever hear is some sort of mangled version of it.

“Ellie, I’ve got so much tea to spill that my old teapot can’t handle it!”

I bite the inside of my cheeks to stop myself from laughing, just as Betty adds, “Somuch tea!”

They’re both fizzing with excitement, and I grin as I help them unpack the last of the items from their bags; wristbands for visitors that don’t have one yet, a first aid kit, a huge pump bottle of sunscreen, plus some flyers. To that I add a fresh stack of my business cards that I pull from the deep pocket of my maxi dress, tapping on the top of the pile to bring their attention to it.

“We know,” Ana reassures me. “Don’t you worry, we’re talking up your business to everyone we see, aren’t we Bets?”

“Yes we are.” Betty is originally from England, and her proper British accent is such a contrast from the Kiwi slang that Ana and I speak.

“Have you got your sunscreen on?” she asks. “You’re not quite as pale as me but you’ll burn just as easily.”

“Not yet, I’ll do it now.” Betty’s right; I’m of Maori and New Zealand European ancestry, and with long blonde hair and a lightly tanned complexion, I’ve definitely fallen victim to the sun a bunch of times. “I don’t know why, with all the magical powers that now exist in the world since the Unravelling, that someone hasn’t fixed the bloody ozone layer already,” I complain as I slather on the sunscreen I’m currently stealing from the bottle reserved for guests. “Surely there’s a spell for that. In Europe I went half a day without my skin frying; here, I’m burnt in twenty minutes.”

“Maybe you should try and do one of those magic spells yourself, since you’ve got some of that in you,” Ana replies, pointing to my head. “Your ears are showing, sweetheart.”

“Ahshit,” I hiss, grabbing at my ears.

Two years ago, on the day the Unravelling occurred, the entire world suddenly found out that humans weren’t alone but instead lived amongst monsters and mythical creatures. It was quite literally a veil lifting from our eyes, revealing the sometimes-bleak reality of what was really going on between monsters and men.

That morning I woke, looked in the mirror, and found that overnight my ears had changed shape and were suddenly pointed, as if I were an elf straight out of some fantasy world. I’d screamed, freaked the fuck out, and wondered if I was going crazy, before I finally checked my phone and realised that I had over fifty different messages from people I knew saying things like“Holy shit, Shirly Smith from high school is an orc!”and“Turn on the news!”and“People are going nuts at the supermarket and there’s no toilet paper left!”

Turning on the news had given me some answers and many, many more questions. Turns out there was an entirely different realm, like a second Earth, mirroring ours for all time — one where centaurs and kraken, elves and witches, vampires and werewolves, and so many others had lived for as long as humans had roamed the Earth. Some had chosen to live in the ‘human realm’, their identities protected by the collective magic of the millions of magic wielders — witches, mages, wizards and the like — and they went about their day to day lives wearing glamour that meant no one was the wiser to what they really were.

I’d sat watching the news for hours, frozen as stories poured in about people likeme; people who did not know they were not quite human, and woke to find they now had extra body parts, funny ears, tusks, or sharp teeth. Some men woke to find they had a different shaped penis, or no visible penis at all where there had been one. It was on that day that I learned what a ‘cock pocket’ was, as well as a knot, and that dragon shifters existed and they hadtwodicks, because somehow one wasn’t enough.

Two years on, most humans have processed it enough to comfortably coexist with their paranormal neighbours, while many of those that discovered their non-human status in the Unravelling formed support groups, helping each other make sense of their new bodies and place in society.

Then there’s me. I have absolutely no issues with anyone being supernatural or magical or monstrous in any way, shape, or form, but I still haven’t truly processed what the Unravelling has done tome. When my mum saw me for the first time afterwards she cried, and at first I thought it was because she couldn’t stand seeing the physical change in me.

It turns out that they were tears of frustration because she couldn’t give me the answers I needed; Mum didn’t have any physical changes from the Unravelling, so it’s safe to say that whatever I am has come from my wonderful ‘sperm donor’ of a father, a mystery man known only asTJ. Mum had been a flight attendant when she met him at a bar while on an overnight stay in Wellington, had invited him back to her hotel, and when she woke the next morning he was already gone, never to be seen again.“He left me a present, though,”Mum always jokes, as if my conception was just some minor inconvenience and not something that completely upended all of her long-term plans. At one point I’d considered doing one of those DNA test kits to see if it gave me any leads on who my father was, but then the Unravelling occurred and that option no longer felt safe to me.

As a result, I’ve been stuck in this weird limbo of not knowingwhatI am, and not knowing who I could really trust for advice. Given how some humans initially reacted to the Unravelling — ranging from fear to outright hostility — joining a support group felt too vulnerable to me at the time, especially because I stillfeelcompletely human.

Consequently, I’ve been hiding my slightly pointy ears with my long hair or hats and have become paranoid about people finding out about me. Other than my mum, only Ana and Betty know — and only because I messed up and forgot to braid my hair over my ears on a particularly windy day. The lie seems to get bigger as more time passes, the stakes higher now that I’ve made friends and established myself within this community as a human, and although I always do my best to push it aside, the weight of it sits in my chest, bubbling to the surface every so often.

Like now.

“Just go and get your hat,” Betty says, patting my arm reassuringly. “Nobody will know with that thing on. Then come back here and listen to our news before the first group arrives. We’re getting an extra special guest here today!”

“Oooh yes,” Ana adds. “Hurry back bub, you’ll want to hear this.”

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