The Talisman

about half of his herd was standing, looking around with expressions of bland surprise, as if to ask where the grass had gone. They really did look like some strange cross between cows and sheep, Jack saw, and wondered what you would call such a crossbreed. The only word to come immediately to mind was creeps – or perhaps, he thought, the singular would be more proper in this case, as in Here’s Wolf taking care of his flock of creep. Oh yeah. Right here and now .
    The goofystick came down on Jack’s head again. He sat down and began to giggle, his hands crisscrossed over his mouth to stifle the sounds.
    Even the biggest creep stood no more than four feet high. Their fur was woolly, but of a muddy shade that was similar to Wolf’s eyes – at least, when Wolf’s eyes weren’t blazing like Halloween jack-o’-lanterns. Their heads were topped with short, squiggly horns that looked good for absolutely nothing. Wolf herded them back out of the road. They went obediently, with no sign of fear. If a cow or a sheep on my side of the jump got a whiff of that guy, Jack thought, it’d kill itself trying to get out of his way .
    But Jack liked Wolf – liked him on sight, just as he had feared and disliked Elroy on sight. And that contrast was particularly apt, because the comparison between the two was undeniable. Except that Elroy had been goatish while Wolf was . . . well, wolfish.
    Jack walked slowly toward where Wolf had set his herd to graze. He remembered tiptoeing down the stinking back hall of the Oatley Tap toward the fire-door, sensing Elroy somewhere near, smelling him, perhaps, as a cow on the other side would undoubtedly smell Wolf. He remembered the way Elroy’s hands had begun to twist and thicken, the way his neck had swelled, the way his teeth had become a mouthful of blackening fangs.
    ‘Wolf?’
    Wolf turned and looked at him, smiling. His eyes flared a bright orange and looked for a moment both savage and intelligent. Then the glow faded and they were only that muddy, perpetually puzzled hazel again.
    ‘Are you . . . sort of a werewolf?’
    ‘Sure am,’ Wolf said, smiling. ‘You pounded that nail, Jack. Wolf!’
    Jack sat down on a rock, looking at Wolf thoughtfully. He believed it would be impossible for him to be further surprised than he had already been, but Wolf managed the trick quite nicely.
    ‘How’s your father, Jack?’ he asked, in that casual, by-the-way tone reserved for enquiring after the relatives of others. ‘How’s Phil doing these days? Wolf!’
    4
    Jack made a queerly apt cross-association: he felt as if all the wind had been knocked out of his mind. For a moment it just sat there in his head, not a thought in it, like a radio station broadcasting nothing but a carrier wave. Then he saw Wolf’s change. The expression of happiness and childish curiosity was replaced by one of sorrow. Jack saw that Wolf’s nostrils were flaring rapidly.
    ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? Wolf! I’m sorry, Jack. God pound me! I’m stupid! Stupid! ’ Wolf crashed a hand into his forehead and this time he really did howl. It was a sound that chilled Jack’s blood. The herd of creep looked around uneasily.
    ‘That’s all right,’ Jack said. He heard his voice more in his ears than in his head, as if someone else had spoken. ‘But . . . how did you know?’
    ‘Your smell changed,’ Wolf said simply. ‘I knew he was dead because it was in your smell. Poor Phil! What a good guy! Tell you that right here and now, Jack! Your father was a good guy! Wolf!’
    ‘Yes,’ Jack said, ‘he was. But how did you know him? And how did you know he was my father?’
    Wolf looked at Jack as though he had asked a question so simple it barely needed answering. ‘I remember his smell, of course. Wolfs remember all smells. You smell just like him.’
    Whack! The goofystick came down on his head again. Jack felt an urge to just roll back and forth on the tough, springy turf, holding his gut and howling. People had told him he had his father’s eyes and his father’s mouth, even his father’s knack for quick-sketching, but never before had he been told that he smelled like his father. Yet he supposed the idea had a certain crazy logic, at that.
    ‘How did you know him?’ Jack asked again.
    Wolf looked at a loss. ‘He came with the other one,’ he said at last. ‘The one from Orris. I was just little. The other one was bad. The other one stole some of us. Your father didn’t know,’ he added