It happened in the evening, in the fresh-fallen snow. I remember because my best friend Aedamar and I were making angels, and I thought about how I would be less cold in my fur than in my winter jacket. My mom says I’ll be able to change into a wolf whenever I want when I’m older, but since I’m only eleven I just change with our pack at the three days surrounding the full moon. Sometimes if I concentrate really hard, I can make my skin go from tan to a darker brown, like my hair and eyes, and my fur when I am a wolf. I can only do it for short periods of time, though, and it always makes my head hurt after.

Anyway, that night, when we were making our angels I kept trying to get Aedamar to stand up first. Everyone knows you ruin a snow angel by standing, so for a long time we were just lying there and trying to catch new snowflakes as they fell from the sky with our tongues.

That’s when Aedamar screamed.

Sometimes, when I am a wolf, I can hear things that I can’t when I am a human. This was one of those high-pitched sounds I thought I could only ever hear with my wolf ears. At the same time, though, I was hearing it with my human ears, and with my in-between-ears, which is what I call the extra hearing ability I get closer to the full moon. I was hearing her scream with all my ears at once. It hurt.

Rolling over and ruining my snow angel, I turned to Aedamar, panicked. “Aedamar?” I shouted, scrambling to her side as fast as I could.

Aedamar didn’t reply. She had gone all white and her eyes, which are usually blue, were a milky white, and she wasn’t moving, and her hair looked even redder, which I didn’t think was possible.

I knew what it was when I saw Aedamar’s eyes, because I’d never seen her have a fit like this before, and everyone knows stories about banshees screeching.

It was a Banshee’s Cry.

My satyr friend, Milos, told me once it’s what Banshees do when they’re sacrificing small animals. I didn’t believe him, and I wanted to ask her about it, but Aedamar had overheard Milos and gave him her Look. Nobody has talked about the Cry since. I wanted to look it up in the library one day, but I felt guilty, like I was going behind her back, so I never did.

After a few moments, Aedamar finally stopped screaming and sat up straight, leaving arm-prints next to her snow angel. Her eyes were blue again, and her face scrunched in confusion.

“I ruined my angel! I guess fell asleep,” she said with a little laugh. Then with a sudden shiver, she wrapped her arms around herself and saw my worried expression. “Joseph? What happened, Joseph?”

I want to be careful and gentle, but instead I blur tout, “I think you just made a Banshee’s Cry!”

Aedamar is my best friend, but we are not very alike. For one thing, she’s a banshee and they are all Irish, but I’m a werewolf. Mom says our pack came from way up north in Canada, but we’ve been living in America for at least three generations now. Aedamar is also a very calm and put-together person. She never says anything she doesn’t mean to say, her bedroom is always neat, and she never has even a hair out of place. I, on the other hand, am very impetuous. I always get into trouble and being able to find something in my room is a rare occurrence. Aedamar’s Nana Fiona says we complement each other. She is very polite though, like Aedamar, so I think what Nana Fiona means is that Aedamar keeps me out of trouble most of the time.

That’s why I tried to break the news to Aedamar easily. I knew she had been upset when Milos told that joke, but Aedamar never cries or gets visibly angry, so I thought she might not be happy that she’d just made the Cry.

I was right – Aedamar was not happy, but not for the reason that I thought.

Aedamar’s eyes widened and she grabbed my hands. “I did it?” she asked in a worried voice, just to make sure she had heard me properly. I nodded, and then Aedamar let go of my hands to push herself to her feet. Brushing the snow off of her pants and her winter coat, she grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet too, stomping all over my angel’s wings. “Come on, we have to go see my Nana Fiona,” she said, trying to hide her anxiousness. “We have to figure out who’s going to die!”

I started to follow Aedamar down the snowy sidewalk that wound through the park, but I was confused. “Why’s someone going to die?”

“That’s what Banshees do.” Aedamar was walking very quickly, and she cut through the snow to make a straight path instead of following the sidewalk. She didn’t look back when she answered my question. “Our Cry means someone important is going to die soon.”

That made me walk quicker.

Why hadn’t she told me?

Aedamar and Nana Fiona, and Aedamar’s Aunt Brigid lived across the street from the gates to the park, and Aedamar was clearly determined to get there as quickly as possible. We made it back to her house in record time, considering our bulky snow boots and the thick, white flakes that were still falling.

I stopped to kick off as much snow as I could on covered porch of Aedamar’s house, so I wouldn’t get any inside, but Aedamar pushed open the red door immediately and tramped into the house.

Aedamar’s whole house is very neat. They have a mudroom as soon as you get through the door, where they keep all of there shoes lined up by the wall. There’s a closet to the left where they keep extra jackets, but usually we just hang our jackets up on pegs by the door.

This time, Aedamar barreled through the mudroom, leaving wet snow tracks and almost tripping over her green slippers as she ran into her living room. I kicked off my shoes in the mudroom, to be polite, and then followed her in. I accidentally stepped on one of her snowtracks and my sock got wet.

Nana Fiona was sitting in her pink armchair when Aedamar went huffing in, and I could hear Brigid upstairs. Sniffing because of my runny nose, I ended up catching the scent of mashed potatoes and pulled pork wafting from the kitchen. I patted my stomach as it growled, trying to remind it I had just eaten a big snack before going outside.

“You’re a little early for dinner,” Nana Fiona said brightly, looking up from her crocheting. She was making a white blanket with a pattern that looked like a thick green braid running back and forth against the white. I think it was mostly done, because it was laid out on her lap and already started to pool on the ground by her feet.

“Nana Fiona, I just made a Banshee’s Cry,” Aedamar said in a rush. “What do I do?”

Nana Fiona looked very sad all of the sudden.

She put down her crocheting and set it to the side so she could stand up. Leaving her things on the armchair, Nana Fiona sat down on the blue couch right next to it and patted the seats next to her. I think Aedamar started to get impatient, which was weird.

Slowly, Nana Fiona said, “Come here and sit down, my loves.”

When we did, she wrapped her arms around both of us. “Now, a Banshee’s Cry is a very special thing,” Nana Fiona started to say. “It is an honor to have your death attended by a Banshee.”

“But how do I stop it?” Aedamar wanted to know.

“You don’t, love.”