Historia de la educación

Ethan Skemp

Selma’s pack was dead. And it would have been so much easier if she’d died with them.

The Dancers had been fucking clever about it. They’d come at the Fisher Kings outmatched and undergunned, just like you expected from fanatics. Picked a fight they knew they couldn’t win, and let her pack think that it was just a fool’s mistake. Let a couple get pulled down and torn apart, to make it look good. And then the sur- vivors bolted for it, limping — limping a little too much. Just like a whippoorwill, she thought, if it’s whippoorwills that do that. Pretending they had a broken wing,

and leading us away.

When the Fisher Kings had torn off after the Spirals to finish them off, they’d run right into the second wave. Two fresh packs and the remains of a third in all, against Selma’s one.

Now she lay in the dirt under a rusted El Camino on blocks, its bed full of sal- vaged car batteries. She had a wound that wouldn’t close in her side, and the reek of leaking battery acid all around her. Her pack totem? Gone, probably; one werewolf is not a pack, and so Fisher would be free to go off elsewhere. If he was still around, he wasn’t talking to her. It pained her Fenrir guts to crawl into a corner and hide — but there were too many of them, and still a chance she’d be taken alive. And whatever shame there was in hiding would be nothing compared to the degradations they’d have for her.

She hated the junkyard. She hated its acres of reeking metal and oily ground. She’d hated it, in particular, whenever Daryl called the pack over for a strategy meeting there, because she felt he was insulting them, but she knew her packmate too well to believe he was doing it on purpose. Nobody liked the junkyard. The place stank of rust and desperation, like the rest of the town all distilled into a pinpoint half

a block wide. Now here she was, lying in stinking chemical-soaked dirt, rusty and desperate herself.

Am I giving up?

All she had to do was hold out. She’d dragged herself under the car, and fallen into dream, and found a dreamer when she was there. She’d been lucky; she’d found a Silent Strider. Travels-With-the-Wind swore she’d find the other two packs of the sept for Selma, and then the Strider was gone, awake and on her way. Selma didn’t linger in the dream after that, however more tempting it might be than the junkyard. Now there was nothing left but to run, to hide, or to fight a pack of Dancers on her own.

Tactically, the clever thing to do was to hide. When the Skybreakers and the Rust Paint Band came in, then she could fight and they would win. Running would be a fool’s game — unless the Dancers thought so as well, and expected her to hide. The more time they spent looking for her hiding place, the more distance she could put between them. Fighting — it would be a brave death, but a useless one. She couldn’t take out enough of the Dancers to make a difference when the other packs came, and she wouldn’t be able to tell the others how her packmates died. But with two packs beside her, she’d be able to carve out her vengeance and, if lucky, be around to pass on the tale.

All she had to do was live. But as she lay in the chemical-soaked dirt under a ceiling of rust, she realized she had been composing her last song — the song she’d sing before Great Fenris.

I come before you, Great Fenris, in hopes my death was a worthy one.

She almost growled at herself. Is it? Will it be a worthy death if I lie here in the

dirt? Or will it be a straw death later on?

She abruptly shook her head. The straw death: her grandfather had kept talking about it like that, as though he expected her to be burned on a pile of straw if she died at peace. As if many Garou had the luxury to die at peace these days. Weren’t many Litany-breakers who suffered their people to tend their sickness. Weren’t many last- ing long enough to get sick enough to die from it. Her grandfather hadn’t. She won- dered if he was happy, wherever his spirit had gone.

From the northeast came a whistle. Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.

So they were here already. She couldn’t smell anything over the battery acid, but she knew the scents that’d be following her. Their speaker, his reek of expensive body spray and excessive detergents. The sickening musk of their lupus. And blood. They’d smell of blood.

No good, she thought. They’ve been scouting. They know the best way to lose a tracker would be to run through this stinking junk. She closed her eyes. I can stand a chance if the Skybreakers and the Rust Paint Band get here. The Strider must’ve gotten through. How far will they be?

She focused again on the song, not even really conscious she was doing so. It wouldn’t come together. When she stood before Fenris, would she sing of these last horrible hours? Could she sing of her dead brothers and sisters?

Her pack. Daryl, huge and rough and covered in burn scars. He died with a deed name he’d never answered to, a bar tab at Malone’s that would never get paid off, and an army of friends who’d never know he’d be drinking with Mother Rat from now on. Val Dollar-by-the-Dozen, who’d looked at the war like a math puzzle and had always been pretty sure she could solve it. Val had sworn just last night that she was on the cusp of a pact to invoke the old spirit of Local Jobs without getting the Weaver entangled as well.

Sturn. It had taken Sturn the better part of the thirty years she’d known him to accept her as Valkyria. The man had thought like a relic, probably just to be perverse, even though he was ten years her younger. But Sturn Blood-on-His-Hands would be standing before Great Fenris now, tall and proud in his death, maybe telling him that she’d be along directly herself. Jace... Jace would be somewhere else, wherever Pegasus gathered her women. She said she dreamed of clean water and silver that wouldn’t burn. Maybe that’d be her reward, paid for by those last silver bullets she’d sent burning into their Dancer attackers.

Ahmet. It hurt most to think of him. Ahmet had always been her closest friend, since they were cubs together. It had always felt as though they shared blood. He was one of the few people who’d ever made her laugh. When she took her husband on the night their child was conceived, she had secretly thought of Ahmet in the dark, calling to mind his easy grin and the smell of his sweat. It was the finest lovemaking she’d ever shared with Orson, to her shame. And he had died without ever knowing. They both had.

How do I sing of my pack to Fenris, she thought, when I outlived them all?

The whistle came again. Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.

My pack — I outlived my pack. My family — I outlived my husband.

Orson. The poor man. Good-hearted and strong, man enough to be a father to their child all but on his own. Never complained, no matter how much right he had. And he’d had plenty of right to. Selma had made a poor wife, by the way most people measured it. Never needing him. Never there for him when he needed her.

She’d been surprised how quickly he was gone. An accident, late at night, and she’d gotten to the hospital as soon as she could — but he hadn’t pulled through. She had always suspected he might not have had the strength to hold on. His heart had been broken since the day he first realized that as good and strong a man he was, Selma didn’t love him like he deserved. She pitied him.

Enough. She drove away the face of her husband. I have a son. My son will live on.

Arn. She remembered the smell of him when he was an infant, and... so little else. She had avoided him. Her son, her blood — her duty to the line. She flinched; shame came on her, a phantom pain. Her nails dug into the dirt.

• • •

“For God’s sake, Mom! You don’t take any interest in me for twenty years and now you want to tell me how to live my life?”

“I have one child, Arn.” Her voice had been so cool. “If had known he would be a homosexual, I would have made time to have another. Someone has to carry on the family name.”

“THAT’S what this is about? You’re worried I’m not going to give you grand- children?” He held his head in his hands. “I can’t believe this. My God, Mom, it’s the twenty-first century, I’m bi, and for fuck’s sake, when the time comes we could even adopt. If I even wanted to have kids, and—” he choked a little— “do you even have any idea how afraid I am that— that I’d take more after you than Dad?”

“Don’t worry, Arn.” She shook her head. “You never took after me nearly as much as I wanted.”

• • •

Whip-poor-will.

So close, it started her. The crunch of boots on shifting, oily dirt. She lay still as as the boots walked past the El Camino, all casual and easy like an evening stroll. She couldn’t smell the body spray and detergent over the battery acid, but she knew it was him — the man with the shaved head and the roughly trimmed beard. The Dancers’ speaker.

“I’m a little disappointed, Thundertalker. As a Get of Fenris, I mean. I’m disap- pointed in you as a Get.”

Did he see her? No. His stride was slow, but he didn’t pause. His tone of voice — he was pretending to be disaffected, but a drum-taut tension lay underneath. He wasn’t sure if she’d escaped.

“You ran, Thundertalker. You ran, Selma. No Get ever wants to live that badly. Well, a few do... but then they wonder if they might be better off as... something other than Get. Do you take my meaning?”

The boots kept going. She thought she heard him sniff the air. Still he walked. Her heart heated up. The stink of the battery acid — it seemed to be working.

“We’ve welcomed a few of yours. Ours now. I don’t mean our tribe has some of yours — you already knew that. Our Hive. We have a few there.” He was maybe fifteen feet past the El Camino. “And yet, even though they realized they didn’t want to die just yet, now they’ve lost that fear again. You know?”

Keep walking, cocksucker, she thought. Keep walking, and when the others catch up, then I’ll break that salesman’s patter of yours. I want to hear you scream for what your pack did.

The thought of it gave her new fire. She recognized the warning signs, purged her imagination of the dreams of his pain. Not the time to Rage. Not here.

And then a rune at her wrist, tattooed under her skin, came alight.

Now?

She pulled her hand close, half-disbelieving. The birch-rune. The black had turned to red. She had mixed the ink with Arn’s own blood, so that she would know. The child was born. A month before they’d expected, and she hadn’t even known about the labor.

Arn’s son. A grandson.

She shuddered. Slowly she raised her gaze from her tattooed rune-bracelet to her right hand. She held it in front of her, and stared at it. Shaking.

I’m afraid.

I... I don’t want to die.

The Spiral-speaker’s voice was farther away now. Upwind — if he couldn’t smell her before, he wouldn’t do so now. “It’s strange, Selma. Sometimes I think the Get are closest to us. Do you know what I mean? In not being afraid to die, that is. Everybody is afraid to die. Except you... and us.”

She closed her hand into a fist.

The voice was fainter. So was the whistling. She heard his speech clearly all the same. “I’ve often wondered about that. Are you that like us? When you want to die in battle, is that because you’re so wounded and raw that death would be a release? Oh, we all go on because it hurts, because we don’t have much choice in the matter, but when the blood spills, there’s really nothing more to fear in death than there is in life. I think you might understand me here, Selma.”

He mocks me!

No. He believes this. He is wounded and ashamed, like I am. He doesn’t know how to live any other way. He doesn’t know any other way to die. He is a Galliard and he doesn’t know any other songs.

She stared at the birch-rune on her still-trembling wrist.

Only a Black Spiral Dancer would look at death and call it release. Even a bro- ken animal wants to survive. A good death is glorious, but a good life...

I want to hold my grandson. I want to live. I want the straw death. I want... why can I not speak?

She closed her eyes. The stink of the battery acid faded, and she drifted for a moment into the dim ocean of dream. She was alone, and her own voice came to her.

You are a Galliard. Put it in words. Everything you have to live for. Every vital gulp of air stolen on the doorstep of Hel, every heartbeat shared with someone you hold. The scent of your grandson. Of your son, now a man. The howls of triumph when your allies come and avenge your pack. Everything you could experience, ev-

erything you could achieve with even one more day. Everything you are. Everything you aspire to be.

Put it in words.

She closed her eyes, and waited for the words to come. In the dark, she felt phantom pain, and then determination.

And her lips moved in a whisper.

“Hail, Great Fenris, firstborn among wolves, king of valor.” The diminishing noises to upwind suddenly stopped.

Whip-poor-will.

She rolled out from under the El Camino and slowly stood. “I stand before you in pride and humility. There is no greater honor in being your daughter, and every day of my life—”

More agitated. Whip-poor-will! Four paws running toward her. Close.

She took in a breath, sang louder. “I lived every day of my life striving to be worthy of your blood!”

“She’s here!” Shouts from all sides. “She’s broken! We got a broken one!” She straightened up. She remembered the viper-spirit she’d held in her teeth, and what it had given to her. She called on the memory of its bite, and her blood thickened, burned within her, ran black and poisonous from the wound in her side. “I have failed people, but I did so for you. I have made my kin weep, but my tribe will sing in joy remembering what I did for you. I walk to you on a road of my enemy’s bones and blood and terror!”

The first one, skinny and matted, leapt up on the El Camino’s hood. He locked eyes with her. She tasted fear on the wind even as he bared his teeth. “Fffool,” came the guttural snarl, “schhowed yrrrselff—”

She let go of the wound in her side, raised her bloodied fist. The Call of the Wyld rang from her throat. “My scars are glory. My pain is wisdom. My death is HONOR!”

He seemed to understand, for a moment, before her Crinos claw tore his jaw from his head and sent him spiraling into the junkyard dirt.

Nobody was whistling anymore. They came howling and snarling and blas- pheming. They came for her, and she ran into them, tearing at them, pulling muscle from bone, opening them up in rushes of blood and filth — and singing. She sang until the Rage boiled away her sight and her pain, until the oblivion of fury drowned her.

That Kind