Page 35 of Old Secrets

As a wolf, Jake towered over my father. Unwilling to be left out of the party, I shifted as well, pleased I’d grown enough as a fox to be almost the match of my mate in size.

Between the three of us, we transformed the garden into a zoo.

My mother circled me, and she smiled. “Your conformity is perfect. Your chest is the right width, your legs are long without being brittle, and your ears are appropriately distanced. Good. It makes more sense now why they left you to die on your own. To their eyes, you would have been different. At birth, you were smaller than your littermates by half, and you showed your adulthood conformity—something the rest of the litter had not.” My mother crouched beside me, and she reached out, placing her hand on the top of my head. When I did not protest, she took a single tentative stroke. “Your fur is silkier than ours. Unlike us, your health has not suffered.”

Well, it had, but Jake had done wonders getting me back into shape and making sure I stayed there. To indicate he held some responsibility, I nuzzled my mate. Jake gave me a little nip and stretched out on the ground, resting his head on his paws. I joined him, snuggling into his plush coat.

A rather amused Amelia came over and crouched beside me. “If you don’t mind, we do have a lot of questions, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Amrita. He is Rabten. I know we did not have time to properly introduce ourselves. You are Amelia. You are a wolf?”

“I’m a wolf,” Amelia confirmed. “Is it normal for your women to be rather energetic towards their partners?”

Jake huffed his amusement, and I heaved a sigh and leveled a baleful glare at our friend.

“We are aggressive, yes. Before our imprisonment, our women outnumbered our men twenty to one, and there was fierce competition for a partner. The men can be quite reluctant, although once they decide they wish for a litter, it is our way for him to take control of the situation. When trying for a litter, we women instigate until our partner decides to accept our offer, after which it is his turn. He will do as he must until a litter is confirmed on the way. It is a rather lengthy process.”

Well, that explained a lot, and I expected it would take a great deal of creativity for us to counter my base instincts. Heaving a sigh, I turned my stare on Jake.

“It is normal for Karma to be quite docile sometimes, then?”

“Oh, yes. That’s quite normal. We are taught how to secure a litter from an early age, as there is nothing accidental about us bearing young. But if her partner has gotten her to be docile, then it’s a simple enough matter from there. Is she docile often?”

Amelia and Mellisa burst into laughter, and our psychologist said, “All Jake has to do to turn her into a rather happy puddle is to walk in the room nowadays. She went from rather aggressive to frighteningly pliable.”

“That will be her normal until she has a litter, after which she will be more of a neutral being until she is ready to have another litter, which is when she will become rather aggressive. There’s no harm in staying in your current state. I’ve done it for several decades with no issues.” My mother smirked. “If anything, the longer I stay in such a state, the higher the chances of a good, strong litter. Her father did not claim his reward for some eight months after I was ready for a litter. The number in the litter is dependent on numerous factors, but my average is three to five. Karma’s litter had seven, including the unborn child.”

Once again, my mother made an odd gesture, which concluded with her palm pressed to her chest.

“You mentioned there were issues with some of the other children?”

“Malnourishment and stress,” my mother confessed in an anguished voice. “I feel they knew, so the supplies we were sent could keep us alive, but it was insufficient to care for a growing litter. I do not know why Karma fared better than the rest.”

My father went to my mother, sat at her side, and leaned his shoulder against her leg.

Lifting her chin, she added, “Perhaps it is best if I tell this story within, where my child and her mate can ask their questions after they have a better understanding of who and what we are. It is a long tale, as old and tired as we are, but if you wish to understand Yamāntaka, you must also understand everything that came before the god they wish to become.”

We sat on the floor around a large table. With some help from Aiko, we learned how we were supposed to sit and shown how we might relieve some stress from our legs should we find the pose difficult to hold for long. I gave it twenty minutes at most before my knees filed their pink slips, but I decided I would stay as long as I could before surrendering to the inevitable.

My mother took a position at the head of the table, my father sat at the other end, and Aiko brought her a tray of sand, placing it before her with a low, long bow. Then she retreated, maintaining her bow and leaving my mother, my father, Jake, and me alone.

We picked a place in the middle on the same side so I could clutch Jake’s hand as needed.

“Before humans learned to stand on two feet, there was wildness and no gods,” my mother stated, and she held her hand over the tray. The sands shifted and took the form of tall, jagged mountains with streams flowing down the side. A few puffs of sand erupted from the top, and I realized she meant to portray a volcano rather than water. “Mountains were truly dangerous then. The ones that did not speak with lava rose and rocked as the ground shifted and settled.”

Grain by grain, the sand settled to form mountain peaks, and after a few moments, I recognized Mount Everest. “Before we had words, we had feelings, and this mountain we named Refuge. It has changed its name many times, becoming what you likely know as Everest. A deadly peak now, but once a place of salvation. Times have changed. She’s quite young, although she was fierce from her first breath. I remember when she first peeked out from the land and rose. The ground quaked, stones tore, and she emerged ready to stand sentinel over her forming land.”

My eyes widened. If I remembered correctly, if history as we knew it told the truth, and if science had not led us astray, for my mother to have witnessed Everest’s birth, she had to have been alive fifty million years ago.

I struggled to compute the number. “You mean it literally. You witnessed the rise of mankind?”

While she smiled, there was something sad about it, and her gaze fell upon Jake. “You are not the first wolf I have seen, but I will be honest, I believed humanity had wiped your kind out. Humans were never wise beings, destroying things solely because they could. Nothing has changed. Your kind predates mankind as well, although not by long—and your kind is why there are domesticated dogs. Your ancestors guided your mundane counterparts into forging alliances with humanity so that they might live long after those who came before you believed they would die.”

Well, at least I wouldn’t be the only one struggling with my mother’s claims. Worse, I believed her.

Something about her words rang of the truth, however terrible and difficult that truth was for me to believe.

Jake considered my father before asking, “Did you also witness Everest’s birth?”