It looked like a pig, if pigs came in salt-and-pepper gray with black manes. But it was also strangely narrow, despite being twice the size of Copper.
The giant javelina pawed at the ground and dipped its head to Selena.
Copper yawned, got to her feet, and strolled over to the javelina without any apparent concern. She gave the beast a good sniff, wagged her tail, then went back to her spot by the fire.
Selena realized that her mouth was dangling open and shut it again with a snap.
“Father Aguirre?” she croaked, her mouth suddenly dry despite all the water she’d drunk.
The javelina nodded its head up and down and snorted.
Half of Selena said,Oh, of course,and the other half was screaming that this was insanity and hallucination and she had really cracked this time because this was impossible, there’d been drugs in the fried eggs, there was no other explanation. But that half sounded like Walter, and Walter wouldn’t have survived ten minutes out here, so Selena shoved it away and focused on a much more pressing issue.
“Oh my god,” she said, “you were eating bacon!”
The giant javelina cocked its head to one side and snorted. Selena could swear that it was a laugh.
“Javelina ain’t pigs,” said Grandma Billy. “It ain’t cannibalism. They’re somethin’ else that just came out looking like pigs. There’s a fancy term for it.”
“Convergent evolution,” said Selena, reaching back to a college biology class and finding the words waiting.
“Sure, if you say so. Anyway, nobody makes bacon out of javelina. They got no fat on them. You want the hams.”
The javelina snorted explosively and prodded Grandma with his nose. “I’m talkin’ in general,” she grumbled at him. “Ain’t nobody gonna eatyourhams. You got no ass, Father, no matter what species you’re being.”
He turned small, dark eyes on Selena, and whatever species he was being, the long-suffering expression was pure Aguirre.
With a shake of his head, the javelina trotted back to the other side of the truck and a moment later, Father Aguirre stood up and began pulling his clothes on.
“Gonna take care of more business ...” Grandma Billy said, getting to her feet.
“You take care of that business over that way,” Father Aguirre said. “There will be no ogling.”
“You take all the fun out of being a dirty old woman, Padre.” Grandma Billy shook her head. “You’ll be old someday, just you wait, and anything you drink will go right through you.” She ambled off into the dark again.
“And you can justdothat?” said Selena. It took her a minute, because there were absolutely no scripts for discovering that your friend could become a two-hundred-pound peccary. “Turn into an animal? Whenever you want?”
“More or less.” Father Aguirre came around the truck, buttoning up his shirt. “It takes effort. I have siblings who could do it as easy as breathing, but they were born in that shape, and when they become human, they’re only about yea big.” He held up his hand to indicate someone the height of a child. “Conservation of mass seems to apply to spirits too. And I can’t be too far from the desert either.”
He sat back down by the fire. Selena was still trying to imagine being a were-pig.Were-not-pig. Were-convergent-evolution-pig.She heard a wild giggle forming in her throat and shoved her hand into her mouth to stop it.Walter would ...Her thoughts stopped there, because Walter would already have dropped dead of shock weeks ago. She was in a world where Walter no longer applied. “Don’t you worry?” she asked. “That, like, the government will find out and put you in a lab or something?”
One corner of the priest’s mouth crooked up. “I used to,” he admitted. “But as I said, I can’t be too far from the desert. I didn’t change all the years I was at seminary. I think if anyone tried to put me in a lab, I wouldn’t be able to change, even if I wanted to. Which I have decided is for the best.” He nodded firmly, as if convincing himself. “No matter how much I might wish to know what exactly happens and what it would look like if I was in an MRI tube, it’s not worth it if the wider world became aware of the existence of people like me.”
“Arethere more people like you?”
“I don’t know of any other javelina. There are three women I know who can become deer, and I met one, many years ago, who claimed that she could become a snake. I had no reason to doubt her.”
Selena stared into the coals that were all that remained of the fire. “So, werewolves ... were they ...?”
“Mostly people with porphyria, I expect. Though I do wonder about the Beast of Gévaudan.” At her look of noncomprehension, he waved his hand. “Never mind. I’ll loan you a book when we get back to Quartz Creek. It’s interesting reading.”
“Huh.” Selena reached out and rubbed Copper’s back. The dog groaned and stretched.Copper still likes him.
And anyway, this was Father Aguirre, who sometimes drank one too many glasses of wine at the community dinner and would sing hymnsvery earnestlyand everybody smiled and sang along because, well, it wasFather Aguirre.
And he was risking the paint job of the truck that he clearly loved to help her.Also we might all die, but I think for him the paint job is the important bit.
There was a script for this sort of thing, as it turned out. “Thank you for showing me,” Selena said. “I know that couldn’t be easy.”
