24 | Psychopomp Magazine
panes of moon cast over the ceiling and breathed the hot stink of pelts.
Leaving turned to left later that spring. She kicked him out of their truck on a country road. The wolf pack was only growing. There was no room for him in the cab.
“I know you can get past this,” he called across the seat to her. He was an artist and an optimist, a believer in intention. Once, the wife had loved this about him. Now she didn’t look at him. Her hands were on the wheel, and white.
“There are literally wolves literally tearing me to shreds,” she said, her voice measured and low. “This isn’t a frame of mind.”
“Everything’s a frame of mind,” he said. The alpha female snapped her teeth at him, and he stumbled back from the window. His (ex?)wife stared at the hood ornament, silent.
“I just need some time,” she said at last. He watched the tail lights disappear over the hill, was startled by the wave of hate rising in his chest. How could she be so selfish? he thought. The only thing they had left was time.
He stood a long while, head bowed. The world was still beautiful outside of his aching heart. For the first time in days, he felt he could breathe. And he hated himself for that, too.
She wasn’t in her right mind, he decided. He would make her a gift: a small and simple thing. Something that said, Look, there is beauty everywhere and in every tiny thing. He imagined her caving, smiling. The wolves peeling off one by one like desiccated scabs.
The air was ripe with the true goodness of wood, the wet shine of promise. He turned from the road and began to walk into the forest.
III.
It was the tree-woman’s third autumn. She had been nervous at first, before she had become tree enough to forget what nervousness was. The pressure of fall foliage! It took immense concentration. She learned the art, slowly, learned to wait through winter into the pleasurable shock of spring. Once, the tree-woman would have been proud of her adaptability. But now she was mostly just tree.