throw me to the wolves

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Drip.

Drop.

Drip.

Drop.

The floors were covered in lush, red silk, with dazzling metal spires rising far above my eyes, settled in stone.

Blood pooled under my legs, and I realised that the silk was soaked in it.

Sticky. 

In front of me lays a wolf. I flinch back, still remembering the bloody, sharp-toothed wolf that had dismembered me, but this wolf is white and she not monstrous.

She is still and her eyes are wise and I tense up before sharply relaxing.

And I don’t know.

I felt that I could trust her, and maybe that made the difference. Because I could tell she wasn’t just a mindless beast, but something more. 

I calmed myself, and took a moment to look around, observing the little details I had missed. I looked at what I was wearing.

Silver earrings that resembled dreamcatchers, chipped pink nail polish. Short hair, from years ago, above my ear, fluffy and inexplicably boyish. A blue leaf necklace and long green gauze over a white dress.  Pale pink scars peeking out from my thighs, just above my kneecaps.

Anklets. Real silver, not aluminum. They were discoloured, just as they were in my past life.  

The perfect amalgamation of everything I was. Daughter, friend, beloved, American, Indian, atheist, Muslim, ambiguous, funny, depressed, hurting, happy, alive-

Identities are important, and we don’t put a lot of stock into them until we lose them, in death or growing up. Identities are transient but they’re also so rigid. We thrive within our molds, we make them our own.

And I was no longer myself.

I leaned forward and pressed my face into the wolf’s next, anticipating the smell of wet dog, instead only smelling something rich and herby.

“…'m not supposed to be here.” The wolf’s fur moved softly under my breath.

“Send me back?” To where I didn’t know. I was dead, wasn’t I?   But I wasn’t supposed to be here, where ever I was.

Dead woman walking. I snorted.

“I’m in the wrong place-“

The wolf made this odd humming, growling noise, I let out a choked giggle, my tears matted her fur.

“Send me home?” I mumbled. “Please?”

“But where would you go?” Came the voice, echoing in the expanses of the room. I startled, but then pressed even closer into her fur.  I wasn’t above suffocation by wolf.

“Back.” I said, blunt in a way that only the exhausted could be. The exhausted and the dead.

“I did not bring you here. The wolves do not tamper with time.” And I giggled, because I was talking to a wolf in my head about how I didn’t want to live in a world that wasn’t mine.

“But why am I here? I’m nothing extraordinary!” And that was true in every bone, I wasn’t extraordinary, hell, I strived to be the best ordinary person I could be. I was the normal amount of traumatised, and I had to clue what I was doing here.

“The fates have brought you here, and you are a wolf. That is how it is.” I shook my head.

“Fuck fate, I was dying in an alley because someone stabbed me. How does that correlate to…whatever this is? And who am I, right now?”

I was wearing someone else’s bones, small and fragile. If I had stolen their identity, I reserved the right to mourn them and my own stupid luck.

“You haven’t stolen anyone’s body.” The wolf did this sound, and I realised she was sighing. As if she was tired of this situation. Welcome to the club, wolfie. I am a hundred percent done with this bullshit.

“Remus Lupin has died. His soul has left for the Endless Beyond, and you stole nothing.” I felt my heart stutter.

Why was that name so familiar? I wracked my brain for a second as I approached a horror-filled conclusion.

Wait. Remus Lupin. Werewolf McWerewolf? Teddy’s father? Harry’s ineffectual uncle? Marauder? I-

“Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn-“ My voice wavered up and down, like a dying whale or lemming, and could feel the amusement radiating from the wolf. I growled into her fur as I my wailing lowered in pitch til I was just whimpering.

“Werewolf McWerewolf,” I whimpered to her.

The wolf let me have my hysterics for a moment before snapped her jaw and I quieted.

“So I’m Remus now. And I’ve just been attacked by Greyback, which sets me up for a life of misery, poverty, and self-loathing.” I sighed.

“I actually, to a degree, think it would be better to kill me off. Remus complicates the plot.” The wolf tilted her head.

“Plot? You speak of fate’s machinations so casually.” I snorted.

“I refuse to believe J. K. Rowling accidentally tapped into divine wavelengths that inspired her story.” The wolf just looked confused, so I shook my head. “Let’s just say I have some idea of ‘my’ life, and how it will go. It’s not pretty.”

“You’re not allowed to die, cub. Kill yourself after you play your role, perhaps, but wolves do not commit suicide.” I almost laughed at this, because the original Remus might’ve not picked up his wand for that purpose, but it was a close thing. I can see self-harm a mile away, an avid purveyor of it myself in the past.

“You don’t understand, wolf-“

“Lupa.”

“Okay, you don’t understand Lupa, because we’re talking genocide. Murder. Remus’s bones rearranging themselves into a different form. Me being dangerous, and at times being used as a weapon. Never being influential enough to change a lot.”

“Will this world’s situation improve with your lack of existence?”

“No, but it won’t get any worse.” And this was probably true, Remus didn’t stop Severus from being bullied, didn’t get a choice in being used as a weapon, didn’t help Harry when he was under the Dursley’s thumb. Didn’t help Sirius when he was spiralling, took way too long to be with Tonks (and that sent my stomach rolling, a little. Would I also have to be with a girl years my junior?) and he was dead and unable to raise his son.

Most of this was not his fault, and I understand that. But Remus was passive, and in trying to hide his wolfish, predatory nature, he came off flaky, unreliable. Not good enough, not strong enough, not trying hard enough.

He means well, but not well enough. 

And I understood being passive in his shit show of a life! I really, truly empathized. He was shunned, driven out, betrayed by those he loved in death or in prison, Dumbledore would’ve never let him keep Harry, and yet…

And yet he should’ve done more.

“And you still question why you were chosen for this?” Lupa’s raspy growl brought me back to the silky hall, and I stilled.

“It was just a story, you know? A fairytale, with messages about equality and human nature and the author was a bit of a dick but it was my mother’s favourite story and I fell in love with it.”

“But Remus is a side character? If I was Harry, or even Ron or Draco...maybe Hermione. If I was Dumbledore or Snape or Sirius.” I could really mess things up then, I mused. I could turn the wizarding world on its head, run the streets red with Voldemort’s blood.

If he bleeds. At this point, he’s more caricature, more classical villain than real.

“But you are not any of them. You are Remus.”

“But I’m not! I’m just Samirah-“

“Samirah of the wolves, calm yourself.” I flinched, hard. It felt like I was being rebuked, and I didn’t like it.

“I don’t want this,” I whisper to her. “I’ve only ever wanted to be happy.” It was my mother’s dearest dream for me, to be happy. Even my name, hell, meant jovial, because my mother had suffered for years to have me and even then, all she’d wanted was for me to be happy.

But life doesn’t work that way.

But death should. I wanted to dissolve, to enter the afterlife. I wanted to be the norm, not the exception, because being more is the road to infinite unhappiness, and I didn’t want to rock the boat because I was tired and I didn’t want to play this game.

Let. Me. Die. 

There’s this gaping chasm in me that calls to go home, but I am dead, rotting in a morgue by now. 

I can see my brother’s pale face, the angry look in Aasia’s eyes, the terrible loss in Drew’s. I can see my plants being given to Aileen, who will take care of them and cry as she does, Grace holding her tight. My father standing in front of my mother’s grave as he yells at her for taking me too quickly, but he is too quick to rage.

My mother never wanted to live, that was true, but she tried to protect us. And she wasn’t the one to take me, someone else was, and at the end, my mother and I are the same. Dead so young by forces beyond our control. Her head and my heedlessness. So same and yet so different.

(Deaddeaddeaddeaddeaddeaddead-)

(Redonthestreets,redinthesheets,wriststornmetalflyingmother-)

(Don’tgo-)

(Pleasedon’t-)

(Dͩoͦn’ᴛⷮgoͦ-̄)

(Рⷬleͤaͣs͛eͤdͩoͦn’ᴛⷮ-̄)

Let me go. Please.

Let me go.

I swear, I will kill myself and fight my way back if you don’t let me go.  I do not speak it but it resounds through the room regardless, like a thunderous gale.

The wolf shifts, and knocks me to the ground. Air rushes out of my chest as she bares her teeth at me.

“Do not be a fool,” she snarls. “You have no choice. The boy became wolf-touched, and then you became the boy. And you will honour this life given to you by living.”

I lay in the pools of blood, on silk, and her teeth are dangerously close to my throat.

I’m shaking, her amber eyes cold. I have pushed her too far, and I am frightened.

“I am not a wolf,” I whisper. “I will never be what you want me to be.” I am to play Remus, but I am not him. I am not strong enough to be passive, to accept my lot. I will push and it will change everything.

“Then what are you? What will you be?” She asks, disgusted.

“I am an aardvark. Or a rattlesnake. A crow if pushed.” Her eyes are considering.

“We can work with that, but at the end, you will be more beast than girl.” I smiled, softly. She doesn’t understand, but then again, neither do I. We’re speaking of riddles and saying nothing and everything all at once. I will try but I will hate every moment of it

Maybe, by the end of it all, I’ll be more beast than girl. But perhaps being a beast would hurt less than being myself.

“When I die, where will I go? If I play my part, will you take me back?”

“The wolves did not bring you here.” A non-answer, an excuse.

“But would you try?” The wolf bares her teeth, and then nods.

“Should you accept fate’s whims and not needlessly endanger yourself, the wolves will try to send your soul to rest.” I nod in agreement. It’s the best deal I’ll get. I’ll be Remus, I’ll become him so well our bones mesh, but I’ll do better.

“I agree to your terms.”

“And the wolves to yours.”