He led me through town and onto the highway, which went straight north. Since we were in Fargo, North Dakota, there was only one thing to the north.
“Liam, are you taking me to Canada?”
“You’re the one driving, so I think that means you’re taking me to Canada.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“We’re going to sneak into a foreign country?”
“We’re going to use the world’s longest undefended border to our advantage.” I shot him a panicked look. “Hey, it worked just fine for Pamela Anderson.”
“We don’t have passports. Or legitimate driver’s licenses.” We were going to get arrested. And what was in the back of the truck? Yes, a boat, but what else? Was there a dead body under the boat? Or an arsenal of weapons? Would I go to jail for murder or treason or terrorism?
“Breathe.” Liam’s voice interrupted my visions of handcuffs and mug shots. “I’ve got it covered.”
“And by ‘I’ve got it covered’ you mean…?”
“IDs. Passports. The works.”
I’m not sure exactly what “the works” entailed, but it turned out we didn’t really need them. At the border, Dudley Do-Right simply glanced at our IDs and asked us what we would be doing while in Canada. I wanted to answer, “Ingest as much maple syrup as humanly possible,” but Liam, whose new ID sported the name Sam Newman, told him we were camping before I got the chance.
I was only mildly surprised to discover Canada looks just like North Dakota. Even the road signs looked the same, except for the whole kilometers thing. I entertained myself by converting everything into miles while Liam channel surfed the radio, only stopping for the occasional Guns n Roses or weather report.
Just outside of Winnipeg I stopped at a Mac’s Convenient store. Liam filled a bag with trail mix and bottled water while I marveled at the way their Reese’s came in packages of three instead of two. An hour later, Liam directed me off the main road and into the wilderness, which is saying something when you’re talking about Canada.
We were only about 482 kilometers (or 300 miles) north of Fargo, but the air was much more frigid and a good inch of snow covered the ground. Liam, who was only wearing a lumberjack-worthy flannel, didn’t seem to notice as he began untying the tarp from the bed of the truck.
“Are all Shifters impervious to the cold, or are you just so badass the cold avoids you out of fear of being Chuck Norrised?” I asked, grabbing the tie-down closest to me.
Liam pulled back half the tarp to reveal part of a canoe and a sled of some sort. “All Shifters are more tolerant of colder temperatures because of our metabolism, but gray wolves are native to northern climates. We tend to carry some of our animal’s preferences for things like that in our human form.” Without taking off the rest of the tarp, he started sliding the canoe out. “Like you. You’re not cold, are you?”
“One, I can’t believe you completely ignored my awesome Chuck Norris reference, and two, I’m actually a little chilly, so nah!” I said, sticking my tongue out.
“I was kind enough to not point out that ‘Chuck Norris’ isn’t a verb and shouldn’t be used as one.” The act of dragging the canoe to the side of the truck closest to the water placed him just a few feet from me. He closed the distance by reaching out and grabbing the arm of the jacket I was wearing. “You’re standing around in temperatures hovering right around zero degrees Celsius in nothing more than some jeans, a t-shirt, and a thin cotton jacket without shivering or turning blue. You’re handling the cold just fine, Snowflake.” And then he stuck out his tongue and repeated my “Nah!”
I giggled and knew I wasn’t imagining the wolf-like cadence to the sound.
It didn’t take long to load the canoe with the sled and our few bags. I stayed at the water’s edge while Liam went to dispose of the truck, which I assumed meant just leaving it hidden somewhere, but revised my theory when I saw flames lick up towards the afternoon sky. Since there seemed to be more water than land in this part of Canada, I decided to only be mildly concerned he was going to burn down the entire country.
Jase, Talley and I got carted off to 4-H camp the summer we were ten, so I had a basic understanding of canoeing, but Liam was clearly the expert. He easily fell back into his role of Always in Charge Man, giving me an obnoxious amount of instruction as we made our way through the waters.
“This is beautiful,” I said once we finally settled on a rhythm. “It looks so different from home.”
A look of contentment settled onto Liam’s features, and I realized this was home for him. After years of being away, roaming all over the United States, he finally returned to the familiar land of his childhood.
“It’s really cool in the summer, but there are always tourists around then. It’s better now. I like the quiet.”
Later, as the sun began to slink towards the earth, I decided I wasn’t quite so sold on the whole silence thing. Not that there weren’t any noises - the water lapped at the boat and our paddles, birds screeched in the sky, and animals went about their normal, everyday lives in the woods - but it was nothing like the world I knew. No car engines. No music or TV or other background noise. Since I became a Shifter I had gotten used to all the various sounds and smells associated with humans, from the shuffling of their feet to the beating of their hearts. All that was absent, and I missed it. I felt isolated in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian future kind of way. It made me tense, as if I was going to have to fight to the death at any given moment.
I consider myself a fairly competent person - I can change the oil in my car, hook up pretty much any electrical piece of gadgetry I come across, and have decent skills when it comes to reading a road map, even without the aid of Google - but navigating water ways was completely unfamiliar to me. It wasn’t shocking, however, to discover Liam excelled at it. Just when I was about to mention how sundown was coming soon and I wasn’t really looking forward to Changing on a boat, he muttered, “There it is,” to himself and began steering us towards the shore.
We worked quickly and without conversation as we unloaded our supplies. Several of the bags were ones we found in the back of the truck. I tried to peek inside one to see what they contained, but Liam barked at me about how we were running out of time and could take inventory later. Once the boat was empty, Liam pushed it back into the water and let it float away.