The Wolf at My Door

by Luc Reid

We’ve gotten into a kind of rhythm, the wolf and I. I go sit outside the back door in an old kitchen chair, watching the dark shadows of the trees shiver in the wind when the moon shows them out. After a while–sometimes right away, sometimes not for hours–she comes up quietly and curls up a few feet away, watching the trees with me, and the stars beyond, and the moon setting. I sometimes fall asleep and wake up chilled and full to the brim with starlight, but if she begins nodding off she gets up and trots back into the darkness, to some hidden place she has there.

For a week or so I was sick and couldn’t stay outside for the coughing, so I left the door wide open and hoped she’d come inside. Several times that week she sat just outside the door, waiting for me. Sometimes she’d even come up and look in, and then she’d see me, and seem to be satisfied, and turn and go. She wouldn’t come into the house, though, not even when I shambled out of bed one still afternoon and took the front door right off the hinges to show her I wouldn’t close it on her. Maybe wolves never come indoors. Maybe they do, but just not at first.

I’ll keep leaving it open, just in case.

Beginnings

by Rudi Dornemann

You step through the door…

…and…

…the city blazes silver in the blinding noon.

You stand in the shade of an underpass but can feel the city, warm as glowing coals.

A monorail hushes by overhead, a little breeze in its wake.

The city sleeps by day, gathering energy, and you have nine hours until it wakes…

…or…

…you slide down the gravel bank and catch yourself just above the waterline.

The ice-covered lake booms.

To your left, the mills are sharp-edged shadows in the twilight. Their vast, hushed buzz has all the little hairs on your arms standing on end.

Under a charcoal evening sky, lights glint among the far dark hills and the farther mountains.

Skaters are approaching, a line of them, moving fast across the ice…

….or…

…you stand beneath painted cliffs, dry heat electric on the back of your neck. You turn to face the towers.

Looks like a busy day, with much coming and going between the aeries.

Standing with the petroglyphs, you feel abstract, an outsider looking out over the flow of lives from a distance that’s more than physical.

Out the corner of your eye, however, you see a path. Winding upward, it can take you among the towers, and the towers will bring you to the aeries…

…or…

…you realize you’re sinking into the earth, the heat all over you like a thousand sweaty palms.

You step onto the roots of a tree for better footing, and cheese-like smell rises from the mud.

Is that the splash of dragons, off among the reeds?

A butterfly gnaws on your leg. A flower buzzes in your ear. You wonder if this was the best destination.

But then the serpents begin to sing, and you forget the rest…

…or…

…you stand in the monkey’s palm, looking out over a plain of earthbound constellations. A sea of signs stretches to the horizon.

The flinty wind on your face. A sound of slow-dripping water.

From this low rise, you look out beyond the monkey, trying to make out the other designs. The chalk lines hold the light, glow amid the evening-faded world. You look out beyond the plain’s cairns and rock mounds, farther than its farthest pyramids.

Early stars stare back at you.

A door opens in the rocky hill to your right, a rectangle of butter-yellow light.

A silhouette beckons.

Apparently, you were expected…