Page 77 of All That Has Flown Beyond
“Right. There are not just two, there are lots and lots, and even between two colours one can change in little fractions into another, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, for some reason, people think that with genders, there are only two colours. Girl and boy. But really, you can be one of the million little shades in between. And sometimes you can be one shade one moment and another shade the next. And that can be confusing, but what can hurt the most is if you tell yourself there are only two options, even if they don’t feel good at all. Maybe you don’t know what shade you are right now. That’s okay! That’s okay, Isla. I can call you whatever you like. You can wear whatever you want to make it fit with what you feel.” Kaiyo could feel the dampness of Isla’s tears against the collar of his robe.
“I want to be normal,” she said brokenly. Kaiyo squeezed her tightly, gently.
“Being different can be tough, Isla, but everybody has something that’s different from most people. If they don’t…honestly, I feel sorry for them. At the end of the day, though, you can only be who you are. And you’re brave. And kind. And smart. You’re determined, hard-working, observant. You are so funny. Isla, I love you a lot, you know. I don’t want you to be anybody else. And if you didn’t have this part of yourself…you wouldn’t be you. So, I get that it might hurt right now to have it, but I’m glad, because I’m glad you’re you.”
Isla’s arms squeezed around Kaiyo’s neck. He let her cry like she was divesting herself of something, a reservoir of stagnant water being released.
“How about I ask you at the start of every lesson if you want to be called she or he or something else and you tell me?” Kaiyo asked softly when Isla’s sobs had subsided.
“Okay,” they said quietly after a pause. “But…don’t tell anybody, okay?”
“Okay. When you’re ready to tell the pack, I’ll be by your side.”
Kaiyo heard Isla take a shaky breath and just held them.
WINTER
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the full-moon light, Kaiyo’s heart was a rabbit racing ahead. He looked down at Isla, who was grinning up at him. They had been the one to ask him to participate in the Yule run, and he hadn’t been able to say no. Although Isla obviously wanted him there, Kaiyo had to wonder if Thea had planted the seed of the idea in their head.
For the past decade, Kaiyo had celebrated Yule with his mom or by working through it in an attempt to forget it existed. It was a time overstuffed with the poltergeist of memory. The large pack celebrations of his childhood, the Yule run which took place on the last full moon of the year, the pack gathering around a pine and cedar bonfire, then transforming into their wolf forms and running through their forest at night. He remembered tumbling with Ahmik and Thea in their wolf forms, feeling the cold in his lungs as he let himself be led by them, no doubt in his bones they would steer him true. Remembered his father’s bright eyes, his lithe body cutting through the forest without a stumble even in its foliage-dark, as if the land and he were one. The Yule celebration was always a big affair, with decorations and presents, food to feed an army, noise and laughter and that strange, otherworldly quality Christmas has when you’re young.
After the pack had been decimated, Ahmik, Thea, and Kaiyo had struggled to find any motivation to celebrate, but they hadn’t skipped the Yule run. They had built a small, masochistic fire in the backyard. They had huddled around it in the overcast cold, three children lost in grief and responsibility. In the flickering light of that dark night, it had seemed they were the only creatures on earth. As if they were all the other had.
Now, for the first time in many Yules, Kaiyo was surrounded by wolves again. By Thea’s elegant, brown form. By Lars’s light coat, like wheat swaying in the breeze. By Emil’s stocky wolf, his long, winding tail. Amaya’s large, playful wolf. And by Ahmik. His dark form, the white of his belly and paws as if he had played in paint as a pup.
Kaiyo ached at the sight. They were all larger than normal wolves, towering around him and Isla. Edu was bundled against the cold in Isla’s arms, not due to shift fully until he hit puberty but feeling the call of the moon nonetheless.
Ahmik tipped his head back and let out a long, yearning howl. The moon didn’t have a voice, but it seemed to respond, glowing down on them as the rest of the pack answered. Something overtook Kaiyo. A feeling like the expansion of the universe, like the sudden urge to cry deep in your chest. He howled with them. The sound was torn from his lungs, from his belly. Loss and longing and grief and joy. It was a purging of the old. It was a baptism of light.
Ahmik looked at him as the calls rang out into the night. His eyes were the forest, were the past, and the pull inside Kaiyo.
The wolves darted into the trees. Emil and Thea guided Isla. Lars and Amaya jumped around each other, more energetic than Kaiyo had ever seen them. Ahmik, a ghost from his memory, circled Kaiyo, tail wagging, eyes playful, and nudged him forward to be guided by him.
What could Kaiyo do but follow?
As was tradition, although one Kaiyo doubted the Garrow pack had kept up consistently, they all gathered to sleep together in the pack house after the run. The need for contact and scenting was strong after any run but especially so on one as celebratory as Yule. They’d pushed the living room furniture to leave an open space in the middle of the room, filling it with mattresses from the unused rooms, with pillows and blankets to make an inviting nest after the winter cold.
The wolves shook off most of the dirt before transforming and dressing. Kaiyo was unable to turn down the offer as Isla dragged him to the nest. He tucked into the folds of the pack, their scent and warmth, the breath of them. The feeling of family around him. He could feel Ahmik’s body at his back, a furnace. Kaiyo’s ties to the land were singing.
As dawn started to turn the darkness translucent, Kaiyo closed his eyes and melted away.
**********
Kaiyo woke up to laughter and the sound of pots and plates clinking. His brain was slow to catch up. Sheets. The scent of pack. The content, settled feeling inside him, an echo of the warmth of his skin. He opened his eyes and there, of course, was Ahmik. Kaiyo smiled at him, a thoughtless instinct from his body. Ahmik’s eyes widened a little, but his face softened with his own smile.
Time caught up with Kaiyo in increments, dimming his smile. Complicating the pure feeling behind it. But it couldn’t extinguish it altogether.
“Everybody else up?” Kaiyo croaked, burrowing into a pillow at the concept of having to leave the warmth of the nest.
“They’re making breakfast. I’m sure Isla will be here to hound us when it’s ready.”
“And what areyoudoing, lazybones?”
