The Dare story continues as the Onijwa, a young woman possessing the spirit of a wolf, finds herself without a Master. Caught between two worlds, will she find a home with her human neighbors, or can she join her mate's Pack hunting in the wild? Only time...and Fate...will tell. -Note: you should read "Dare Book I" before reading this sequel.
The world was in twilight, the grey moment between day and night, and I was moving amongst the people. I'd left the house, sneaking away because I didn't need or want my brothers to follow me. I thought perhaps that I was looking too far when there were a lot of people living on the reservation.
The Native Americans knew me already; most of them had seen me at least once, during the Awakening, but little beyond that. I was more like a rumor, I suppose, a ghost maybe, and some of them understood and accepted me, but many didn't. I had little knowledge of that, however, just as I knew next to nothing about any of my neighbors. Except for Joe and his family, White Cloud and a few of the tribal elders, I hadn't spoken with anyone. My new Master could be among them, I thought, and I was trusting my spirit to guide me. It seemed as if I should recognize my new Master instinctively, if I could only find him.
The first stars appeared as I moved through the reservation cautiously and for the most part it wasn't concentrated as a real town might be, but sprawled across the valley. There were large trailers and small houses here and there, with fields and small tracts of land, much of it wild and overgrown, to separate the families. I couldn't say how many people were there, but it seemed like a lot and I became hopeful as I ran and crept and even crawled through the reservation.
I watched the people moving about, many of them outside to enjoy the warm summer evening after their dinners, or visible through their windows as they sat inside, watching television or reading or whatever it is people do. I could smell the place and the humans, strong and strange smells, different from the home in which I lived, but familiar all the same. Too strong though, those scents and the sounds as well, too loud were all these people and I felt overcome at times by my senses. I was nervous and my heart would leap at every alien noise.
I was determined though, and so I was moving as a wolf might, from shadow to shadow, staying low and wary. I approached from downwind so much as possible, though even when I was caught by the shifting breeze the people didn't seem to notice me at all on the air. I didn't completely trust these humans, not for any real reason except that I was not one of them. It was very much like trailing the pack in the hills, on those occasions when I would venture high and look for Chance, my mate. I would be wary of the other wolves and watch them from a distance. This was the same for me and if I was always struck by the differences between my human self and my animal nature, now I was also reminded of the similarities.
"Who's that? What are you doing there?" A woman had spied me and it was late already, the sun having long set, but she'd caught me moving as I crossed her yard, wanting to look through the windows into her trailer.
She wasn't so old and pregnant maybe, sitting in a chair and smoking. I could smell the acrid smoke and it made my nose itch. She had a dog with her and children inside. I could hear them arguing and a man's voice yelling something, probably telling them to be quiet, or go to sleep. The dog was what caught my attention though, even more than the woman who was staring at me. It was a male and large, like a German shepherd, and he was up and barking at me.
I gave him soft barks of my own and stepped back, into the shadows as the dog came close, jumping from the porch with shoulders high and his head low. He was curious and protesting my late visit, but that was all. The woman said nothing more, or if she did I didn't hear her. Perhaps she thought her dog would run me off, but I was waiting for him, getting down to meet him and he sniffed me for a moment and then stood there as I pressed my nose close to his belly to scent his sheathed prick and the musk there.
Being a female, I was no threat to him and dogs had always liked me anyway. He nosed my cunt and satisfied himself, deciding I wasn't in heat, and so the animal went back to the woman. He paused long enough to mark the nearby leg of a rusty swingset before laying down close to her feet with his head and ears up, staying alert but relaxed.
"Get out of here. Go on. I don't know what you're doing, but do it someplace else..." the woman was telling me and her words meant very little except that there was no Master for me there.
Sometime later, maybe a week or more after my futile and incomplete search of the house for a newspaper, the paper which advertised for things like dog girls and presumably Masters, I brought up the subject with Joe during one of his evening visits.
I was signing a check, slowly and deliberately writing my name on the bottom so that Joe could buy more food and vitamins and soap, and all the things that we needed and which I'd always taken for granted. I was also paying the two boys, Jay and Mike, for the work they did everyday, although Joe told me they should be paying me, since they were having sex with me as often as they could. He promised me he'd talk to them about that, but I hadn't complained or anything and I didn't mind it very much anyway.
"Joe?" I asked and my voice cracked even on that one simple word. I hadn't spoken in a long time. Not since the funeral.
"Huh? Yeah, Dare. What is it?" He looked at me with some surprise and I think he was used to my silence.
"I ... We..." I looked at my three brothers who were sitting on the floor because it was cooler than our bed, " ... need a Master."
"Ahhhh..." The big Indian licked his lips and blinked at me and I wondered if I'd chosen the right words or not.
"A new Master," I tried, keeping my eyes on his. "For us."
"Right. Yeah, well..." he cleared his throat, " ... I'm not exactly sure how to go about finding you one of those." He chuckled softly and I tilted my head.
"Why?" I asked.
"I don't even know how Jim found you," he scratched his head. "I mean, there's probably a lot of guys who'd love to meet you, but you have to be careful."
"Careful." I nodded because that sounded important.
"Yeah, like ... Well, you have a lot of money for one thing, Dare," he said and I just shrugged, which made him laugh. "Right. I know you don't care, but you need to think about it. Um, you have to find a man who understands about your uh, situation. Right?"
"Yes," I nodded seriously.
"I just..." he held up his hands, " ... I don't know, Dare."
I finished signing the check, which I'd been doing on the hardwood floor, and I sat up slowly, leaving the funny paper and pen on the floor for Joe to pick up. My impression wasn't only that he couldn't help me find a new Master, but that he really didn't want to. Not because he didn't want to help me, I'm sure Joe did, but only because he had no idea about that sort of life. More to the point, Joe didn't want to know about it beyond what he shared with me.
"Is that why you've been going around at night?" he asked, watching my face to see if I was surprised that he knew about that. "Some people have been talking. They don't understand what you're doing."
I just shrugged, having no real answer beyond the one Joe already knew.
"You might want to just stay around here, okay?" The Indian cleared his throat and he wasn't comfortable saying this to me. "I mean, some of the folks around here, you know, they just don't ... They don't know what to think, see?"
He was telling me that I wasn't welcome around the reservation and he plainly wished that were different, but I was going around after sunset, naked and prowling the shadows. What would people be expected to think of that? There wasn't any good reason for it. None that a normal person would understand, and while I'd been safely kept by my Master, nobody had cared or even noticed. Now I was loose. The crazy girl who thought she was a dog, and that would frighten people, the way all of us are afraid of what we don't understand.
It disappointed me, perhaps even saddened me, but I couldn't blame the man for telling me. He was my only real friend and I depended on him, much more than I knew, probably. I was mostly just frustrated because there was nobody else I might ask to help me. I left Joe to sit there and went outside, wanting to run suddenly. I needed to exercise and lose some energy. I felt tight all over, coiled up and knotted. I was happy with my brothers, there was little for me to complain about, except for that longing I felt to be with someone who understood me. A Master who could own me.
The sun didn't set until late now and most often I was already asleep by the time it did, but not this evening. The pack was high in the hills now, ranging at the edge of the timberline where the mountains started, and I'd heard them many nights in a row. My mate was there. Chance was with them again and I needed him. I ran across fields and into the forest, following trails made by animals and not men. It felt good to run and my spirits were lifted in the cool shadows. I was scratched occasionally by rough brush as I passed, but I hardly noticed such things. My feet were calloused after more than two years without shoes and even the sharpest rock was a mild discomfort at worst.
I howled as I ran and entered the high meadow, startling a deer and her fawn so that they bounded quickly away. I laughed at them and kept going, working my way higher until the grass thinned and the ground became hard with loose shale and grey sand. There were trees here, spread wide apart and they were ancient. Hardy pines growing from the side of the mountain, their tops reaching a hundred feet or more into the air. I was breathing hard by then and behind me I could see the valley and the reservation spread out some five miles away or more. I howled again, calling my mate and he answered and his voice was joined by others. They were close, but still higher than I was, in the place where they'd made their summer dens.
I caught a brief scent of them as the wind shifted and then lost it as the wind changed again. They were over a dozen adults now, this small pack, their numbers swollen with the litters birthed some three or four months earlier. I was moving slowly, cautiously and announcing my presence with low barks until I could hear the pups fighting over their mother's teats, or just playing roughly with each other. Their small growls and yelps made me smile and they were there, just beyond a short ridge in a shallow bowl of dirt and rocky outcroppings.
The leader was mature, but hardly old, and thick with muscle. He challenged me before I'd come within even twenty yards of the place, dropping his shoulders and baring his fangs. He growled with real menace and his hackles bristled at the back of his powerful neck. I dropped quickly, lowering my eyes and stretching my arms in front of me. I kept my knees close to my hips and tummy and made my own soft growls in reply.
Others watched and the younger wolves barked excitedly, prancing around impatient for a fight. They knew me, most of them, but not well. I'd never tried to join them before, not this way, but merely trailed them on those occasions when they would hunt in the forest. I would find Chance then and we would occupy ourselves without concern for the pack, but this was different. I was an outsider, an intruder, and the animal's instincts told him I was a wolf, but his senses told him I was a human. It was confusing to him and he was nervous and frightened because of it.
I stayed very still, with my chin on the ground, my eyes focused on his neck, avoiding the wolf's eyes and giving him dominion over me. Chance was close, watching and making his own noises, pleading my case if you'd like to think of it that way, but this was nothing so complicated as that. It was a life and death decision; if he would welcome me to stay, or drive me off and most likely try and injure me in the process. If I'd had the body of a wolf to go with my spirit, this would have been easy and being female I'd have been welcome and allowed to stay.
He came closer, sniffing and growling and he didn't like my smell. I stank of my brothers and the bed on which we slept. I smelled like soap and dog food and Joe's hands upon my skin. I pushed myself back slowly, understanding the rejection and hating it. The wolf didn't attack me, but snarled and snapped his teeth with sharp barks that told me to leave. I crawled back the way I came, without taking my eyes from his body, ready to fight if it came to that, and several minutes later I was able to stand again.
It was an ache inside me, to be unwelcome as I was. I should have known better than to expect otherwise. I settled some distance away and Chance joined me finally, as the sun was setting and the night grew chill. The ground was soft and loose with dirt and sand and I pushed it this way and that, making a place for us to lie down. He bathed me slowly while I stretched beneath the rising moon, Chance's long red tongue scraping across my body like wet sandpaper, as if we had all night for only that. He still loved me, he was still my mate, and while the other wolves would sleep and groom each other and some would sing to the moon, we would do the same.
I buried myself against the wolf's soft belly, curling up and hugging him close. When sleep came for me, it was restless and filled with dreams. A man was in them, speaking in a voice that wasn't human and I tried to understand him, but I couldn't. He spoke as a crow and when he flew away blood fell from his wings. I woke up in the darkness and Chance was asleep beside me. The only sound was the wind as it came over the mountains above us and there was no blood, no man there.
The dream was familiar to me, but I didn't know why. I couldn't recall having one like it before, but I felt very sure that I had. The dream was fading though, receding faster the harder I tried to remember it, slipping from my mind until it was gone and all I had left was only that thin sliver and nothing more. I stroked Chance, feeling his hot breath on my skin, and I reached between us to feel his cock, firm but well sheathed and I didn't want to wake him.
Near dawn I left him there, walking down the hillside slowly. I couldn't stay there, the other wolves weren't ready to accept me and Chance would follow me in a few days. We'd meet in the forest and spend our time there, alone and secluded, just a day or two every few weeks. He was drawn to me, just as I was to him, but we couldn't exist in each other's world. He had to be a wolf and I ... Whatever I was, I required a house and a Master, and my bed and soaps and brushes to care for my imperfect form.
I was very unhappy then.
By the time I reached the meadow, the sun was up, but not yet over the mountains to the east. The grass was wet with dew and I bathed in it, rolling my body in the cold damp. I washed myself with just my hands and then some bark I'd stripped from a young oak on the edge of the clearing. The outside was rough, but inside it was soft and curved and I smiled at the sensation of sloughing dirt and old skin from my body. It was nice and when father sun finally did show himself, my spirits were much improved by the warmth of his gaze.
"Don't stop," the man said and so I did stop, staring at him as he sat beneath a brightly hued pine tree, green and young and rich with moisture.
I was sitting in the grass and I stood up slowly, smelling the air, but the wind was from my back and I couldn't find him there. He was an Indian, like Joe, and perhaps a few years younger, or maybe older, but thin and less friendly seeming. Not dangerous, but of a serious nature and I felt my muscles tense, my calves and thighs, as if I might spring away from some approaching threat that I couldn't see yet.
"Do you know this tree?" he asked me and he was reaching for the lowest branch, pulling at the fruit, red berries, lush and fat.
I didn't say anything, of course, but merely watched as he gathered some of the berries into the palm of his left hand. For a moment I was afraid he was going to put them in his mouth and I started forward, shaking my head. The tree was poisonous and animals didn't eat from it. I wasn't sure if it would kill a human, but I had no wish to see this man hurt.
"It's a yew," the man smiled. "It's poison, but you know that, don't you? It's medicine too, like everything else. It's good and bad, see?"
He was putting the berries into a small leather pouch. The man wasn't dressed any differently from most of the Indians I'd seen. Boots, worn jeans and a flannel shirt, but it was his hat that caught my attention suddenly. Or not the hat itself, which was an old felt cowboy hat, a Stetson I think they're called, but the feathers in it. They were black with red edges at the tips, three of them, cocked at odd angles as if they'd grown out of the wide leather band into which they were fixed.
"Everything is good and bad," he sighed, "to something else. So long as it's true to itself though..." He shrugged and closed his pouch. "The yew doesn't know if it's poison or medicine. It doesn't care. It is what it is; we're the ones who decide. See? And sometimes we're wrong."
"Crow," I said softly, pointing at his hat. His words made no sense and it was my dream. He was talking but I didn't understand and he was going to fly in a moment.
"Red Crow," he nodded and narrowed his dark eyes. "Do you remember me?"
I nodded slowly, thinking he meant my dream, but then I realized he was talking about something else and so I shook my head, which made the man chuckle.
"Maybe, huh?" Red Crow smiled. "I understand."
He was standing up, dusting off his pants and lifting his hat briefly, smoothing his long black hair back from his broad forehead. His eyes were black, like the feathers in his hat, and I looked away when he turned them on me. I didn't want him to fly, but I wasn't sure how to stop him, or even why he should be important to me.
Red Crow didn't fly away; he merely turned into the forest and disappeared, fading into the brush and shadows until he was lost to me. I stayed in the meadow for a long while, until Chance found me sleeping in the grass and woke me with his tongue across my face and then my breasts. His mouth moved down to my stomach and I laughed, grabbing his fur and pulling him down. I'd hoped he'd find me as the pack moved lower to hunt rabbits or possibly that fawn I'd seen previously, if it strayed too far from its mother.
My sleep had been dreamless and I was tired after the night before, but now I was awake and energetic and I played roughly with my mate. We wrestled and growled and chased each other through the clearing. Chance barking with a sound unlike any dog. I knew his speech and I returned it, my throat growing dry and sore from the effort, but I barely noticed and I lapped at the ground, where the grass was still wet with dew to slake my thirst. We didn't share thoughts or ideas, only emotions and base desires and pleasures. The language of wolves is far better suited to expressions of love than any human tongue. People think too hard and wish to say too much, when all they have to do is feel.
When Chance had me down, breathless and warm beneath his teeth, I growled my desire and it said everything and all at once. His jaws were around my throat, his sharp teeth working at the leather of my collar which he liked to chew sometimes, and I closed my eyes, feeling beneath him for his long fat cock as it had grown during our excited play. The flanged tip was dripping and I caressed it, stroking my mate to his full length and when he released me finally, I rolled over, presenting my sex to him. Chance licked my cunt for a minute and then mounted me, stabbing at my sex, and not finding it immediately, he got off me. It is the way of sex with wolves, and dogs as well, and often it will take three or four or even half-a-dozen mountings before they will be satisfied.
We made love finally, rutting in the clean grass, under the endless blue sky above us. My mate's cock filled me, his knot swelling inside my sex so that he could deliver his orgasm to mix with mine. It was beautiful and washed away my fears. I might have spent my entire life in that moment and been happy for it. The only thing lacking was a human to share it with, to share my life as I did with Chance. Both were necessary to me, I realized, my mate and my Master, two aspects of one ideal which could never be joined, because I could never be one or the other, human or canine. I was both and I was neither.
That was my revelation, which was a very large thought for someone as simple as I am. It was an understanding, I should say, and necessary to my heart. I'd been unhappy with my rejection by the pack, far more than I'd allowed myself to admit, just as I'd been rejected by the Indians on the reservation. The human's would accept me, but only on their terms. It was what Red Crow had been trying to explain to me perhaps; that what I am is neither good nor bad except as others perceive me. It hadn't been a question for me as I think I knew that instinctively. Now I had the expression of it and that was an odd comfort, a confirmation of my place in nature, but it changed nothing.
We slept for a little while after our mating, until it was time for me to return to the house and my brothers. Joe would be worried, his sons as well, and the other dogs would be agitated by my absence. Chance needed to hunt and eat and I would see him again soon enough. I made my way home deciding I'd return to the meadow the following day and begin a den for us there, digging into the rich earth and making us a place where I could stay for several days at a time. Like the den I'd made the previous winter, I'd make a place for my mate to rest with me. It was a nice thought and I was greatly cheered to have some small purpose at last. I'd been far too lazy for far too long, I thought.
White Cloud visited me often during the late summer and he was aware of my unhappiness and understood the cause of it, I think. The old Indian didn't speak with me, but he would look in on me and occasionally prepare something for me to eat or drink and his medicines calmed me somewhat. My brothers largely ignored him, as the man seemed more a part of nature than a real human. I wondered sometimes at his purpose and I had thoughts of trying to speak with him, but I was afraid he would think that foolish and unnecessary and I had no words for my thoughts in any case.
I'd made a den in the meadow and I'd spent much time there with Chance, but it was getting into autumn and the rains had come, falling cold from the northwest and the world was grey. We'd retreated into the forest as the pack came out of the mountains and into the hills, and I'd put myself to repairing our winter den and that was really the balm which I found most soothing, devoting myself to my mate and trying to forget that I was incomplete without a Master. I had a hole inside me.
And I dreamt often, finding myself awake in the small hours of the night, breathless and shaking. Chance would be with me, sleeping or perhaps awakened by my movements. He'd lift his head, checking the night air and nuzzle me gently, perhaps using his long tongue to comfort me back to sleep. It was always the same, those dreams, or near enough that the differences were blurred and meaningless. Always a crow, dripping blood and speaking words I couldn't understand. He'd fly and I'd chase, scenting the trail left by his scarlet tipped wings and I would lose him, the bird disappearing through the trees and I was desperate to follow. I had to keep up, to run faster, but I couldn't and the blood would dry to dust and blow away. Or sometimes in my dreams it would rain and the trail would be lost beneath my nose and searching eyes.
Joe was worried, his two sons as well, and I found myself avoiding them and becoming suspicious that my friend's intent was to keep me for himself somehow. The man wouldn't help me find a Master and I was unreasonable in my doubts, forgetting all he'd done for me and there was just a small part of my mind that realized what was happening. I was becoming wild, the way a pet will if she's left on her own in the wilderness. I needed to survive and the house no longer afforded me comfort, nor did my brothers it seemed, and I'd deny them my attentions for long periods, growling and snapping at one of them if he tried to arouse or even play with me.
Only Chance could comfort me then, him and the Indian medicine man, but White Cloud was no Master either and his magic only pushed the inevitable a few more days or weeks into the future. It was becoming harder to return to my home and finally a morning would come when I wouldn't leave the forest at all and I knew I couldn't survive the winter. My form was too frail for that, too weak and ill-suited and I wouldn't care by then. I'd sleep finally and no longer dream.