Joe looked up. "You could do that?"

"I could," his father said. "She would have liked it."

"Did you-?"

"I was with her at the end," his father said. "She'd forgiven me, by then."

Joe tasted a story he'd never know, and let it go. "Fine," he said to his father. "Take me."

That was the night Joe found out what it meant to be his father's son.

They flew some way as crows at the beginning of the journey, but crows weren't fast or strong enough for an ocean crossing. They turned into smoke for part of that, then caught a lift on the wings of a military airplane.

Flying in the cold, thin altitudes, half disintegrated into smoke, Joe felt the wind blow through the pain. Pure, freezing numbness overcame him, and finally, he thought he understood what his father always felt.

Freedom. He could have flown forever, and never had to touch his pain or memories again.

At the end, well past midnight on a dark, cold Ohio night, they shifted back into human shape to jimmy open the window of the funeral home and crawl inside to the room where Joe's mother was laid out for viewing.

Joe touched her cold fingers and tried not to cry in front of his father.

"She was the prettiest girl in Kravarsko," his father said. "She wasn't afraid of anything or anyone. Not even me."

"She turned us into a team," Joe said. He looked down into his mother's face, calm beneath the layers of paint, and for the first time in over a year, he felt a clear point of resolution form underneath the brittle shell of numbness and the swirling, scattered layers of pain that had been hidden underneath. "She's the reason we all take care of each other."

"Well. That." His father cleared his throat. "I heard about your brothers and what happened. So. I guess there isn't going to be a band, after all. No more plans of Hollywood."

"Hollywood?" Joe almost laughed as he looked up from his mother to his father's fierce golden eyes. "You still don't get it, do you?"

"I didn't cause your brother's death," Joe's father said. "But it's been some time since then. I thought you might be ready to move on." He took a breath. "I thought you might be ready to come with me, now. Now that you know what it's like."

At that moment, Joe glimpsed something he'd never expected to see on his father's face. It was fear, pure and simple . . . and there was something else mixed in.

Loneliness.

Flying high above the ground, you could always feel free. Now that Joe had tasted that freedom, he felt the difference himself, standing thick and heavy on the ground, weighted down by human concerns, all the cares and sorrows that his father would never know.

But that wasn't enough.

"I'm sorry," Joe said, speaking to his father gently for the first time since they'd met. "It's too late for me now. It's not your fault. But I need to get back to my unit. I've got responsibilities."

"But-"

"There might not be a band," Joe said. "But my brothers and I are still a team." He hesitated and drew a breath, releasing the anger he'd carried with him for so long. "You could come and stay with us sometime. Anytime, really. I-"

Before he'd even stopped speaking, his father shook his head. The golden gaze shuttered, but not before Joe glimpsed the raw pain hidden behind the fierceness.

"Too late," his father said, and it sounded like the harsh cawing of a bird that knows it's lost all hope. "Too late."

Three of them came back from the war: Joe, without a saxophone, Karl, without a hand, and Niko, whose goofy lopsided grin had turned into a mask of sorrow. They gathered in their mother's house and huddled together, waiting for inspiration.

Ivan had always been the one with the big ideas. Ivan was gone. But the brothers were still a team.

Joe was cleaning out the attic one hot and dusty afternoon when he found his father's final message to him. Buried underneath the rubble of twenty years, he glimpsed the corner of a shining black leather case.

At first, he didn't know what it was. Then he lifted away the piles of old clothing that had covered it and saw its sleek rectangular lines, and his breath caught in his throat.

He undid the clasps and swung the case open.

A perfect, golden saxophone lay inside, gleaming and new.

Joe stared at it a long moment, caught between sharp, prickling emotions.

Finally, he reached out and picked up the saxophone. It fit perfectly into his hands.

As he lifted it out of the case, a black feather slipped out of the bell of the instrument and fluttered onto Joe's knee.

Joe let out a huff of breath that could have been either a laugh or a sob. A box of fresh reeds sat tucked in the case. He took one out and moistened it, even as tears blurred his vision. He fitted the mouthpiece onto the of the sax and closed his eyes as he lifted it to his lips. He could already hear the wailing tune that wanted to be born.

Within a year, that tune would make his name in the nightclubs of Youngstown and Cleveland.

Five years from then, every jazz fan in the country would know the names of Blue Joe and his backup band-Niko on drums, grinning the loopy, lopsided, visionary grin of a man who's touched despair and been reborn into hope; and Karl, playing the keyboard like a demon with only one hand, worshipped by jazz fans everywhere for the uniqueness of his vision.

But at that moment, as Joe accepted his father's gift, he only knew one thing: Maybe it wasn't too late after all.

THE WERE-WIZARD OF OZ.

LAVIE TIDHAR.

EXT. EMERALD CITY-DAY Emerald City. A dark and dangerous place. City blocks tower above mean streets and open sewers. The sky is the colour of blood. There are winged monkeys circling slowly in the air, searching for prey. Under a broken street lamp stands OZ, smoking a cigarette, his fedora pulled low over his eyes. His face is in shadow.

OZ:.

Emerald City.

OZ:.

Shit.

OZ lifts his face. The light of a passing car illuminates them. He is unshaved, and his eyes are red.

OZ:.

It's always dusk in the Emerald City.

OZ:.

Even in the middle of the day.

Oz is thirteen, just entering puberty, when he begins to discover the changes to his body.

The way his voice drops several octaves unexpectedly, becomes a growl that makes guests' hair stand on their arms. The way the moon pulls and stretches at his limbs, curves his spine, makes hair grow everywhere.

Learning to shave is embarrassing, the blades break and finally he has to go with a barber's razor, and when he cuts himself the bleeding stops in seconds, the wounds heal-too quickly. At school the kids make fun of hairy boy until he growls and shows them nails like claws and then they stop and after that they mostly keep away from him.

Puberty is confusing, he gets a hard-on every other second, it seems, he has hormones raging through him and on full moon nights he wakes up and doesn't know where he is, and he is naked, and covered in feathers and blood.

Oz lives in a small town where nothing much is going on, somewhere in those featureless plains of a sometimes-Americaland. Mostly, Oz goes to the movies. Alone. He sits close to the screen, in the first or second row where no one else likes to sit, and he watches movies in the dark. There's the smell of popcorn and years of spilled Coca Cola on unwashed carpets. There's the smell of wet hair, and a hint of blood. Kids make out in the back row and the attendant goes around with a torchlight and the smell of grass on his clothes.

Everyone leaves Oz well alone. Which suits him fine.

He watches horror movies and romantic comedies and family dramas, fantasies and sci fi and adventure serials. He watches sequels and prequels and the things that come in the middle. He watches Wolf with Jack Nicholson, which is kinda boring (but Michelle Pfeiffer makes him hard), and Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox (an 80s classic, but he secretly prefers Doc Hollywood), and An American Werewolf in London, but to be honest, even though he won't admit it, he prefers romantic comedies. He loves Four Weddings and a Funeral. He just wishes there was someone like him in it. Nodoes romantic comedies about werewolves.

Because that's what he is, he is beginning to realize. He can no longer deny the changes. When he takes on the wolf shape he feels alive, free, strong. He loves to run, for miles and miles, snapping at the wind, scenting for prey. He loves the taste of fear in a chicken's heart when it's taken. He toys with it, listening to its heart beat, smelling its fear before jaws close shut with a snap over the creature's thin neck.

He does okay at school and he does better on the football field but it's not enough, and besides people are beginning to talk. There's mention of pitchforks, not as an agricultural tool but as an instrument of maiming. Nolikes a teenage werewolf. Especially not the fathers or uncles of teenage daughters.

EXT. EMERALD CITY-DAY OZ stands outside a bar. The sign, in flashing neon light, says, SHIFTER'S CORNER. He growls softly to himself and goes inside.

INT. SHIFTER'S CORNER BAR-DAY The bar is dark, the lighting red. The counter is long and made of hard wood, scarred by cigarettes and fights. The few drinkers turn to look at OZ, then turn back, quickly. Behind the bar is a solitary figure. OZ walks forward, sits on a stool.

OZ:.

Gimme a Jack on the rocks, Billy.

The bartender lifts his head and we get a good look at him. His face is very long and very pale. So are his fingers. His entire seems stretched, devoid of blood. There are bandages trailing from his arms, his neck. He stares at OZ, not moving.

OZ:.

What's the matter, Billy? Missing your mummy?

The bartender's impassive face nevertheless registers a look of fleeting pain. Silently, he points at a sign on the wall. It says: NO MUMMY JOKES. OZ shrugs.

OZ:.

Just gimme the drink, Billy. I'm good for it.

OZ slaps some money on the counter. The bartender nods and reaches under the counter for a glass. He makes OZ a drink and pushes it towards him.

OZ:.

I'm looking for a girl, Billy. A missing girl. Goes by the name of Dorothy.

The bartender shrugs. OZ takes a sip from his drink and lights up another cigarette. He stares at the bartender meditatively.

OZ:.

In this city, we're all lost.

OZ:.

Right, Billy?

The bartender shrugs again.

He loves detective movies and noir and Casablanca most of all. He loves Bogie. Werewolf in a Women's Prison makes him wake up at night, sweating, with the sheets all damp.

There's this girl at school . . .

She lives with her uncle and aunt. They have a farm. It's not a very successful one. They grow tobacco, but the season's been hard. Her name's Dorothy. She's hard, she has the eyes of someone who knows what poverty is like, and hardship. Her parents are dead. They say her uncle beats her up. For all that, Oz thinks she's radiant. When she smiles-if he can somehow make her smile-it transforms her completely, the way he is transformed. He wants to be her full moon. He wants to watch her when she changes.

They meet secretly. Oz's parents don't approve of farmer trash and her uncle doesn't approve of Oz, or any other boys for that matter. They make plans.

Scram. Leave this town. Disappear. Across the vast featureless plains, towards the coast, east or west it almost doesn't matter, only it does. There is only one place for dreamers, one place that is a magnet, drawing you inexorably towards it.

The city.

The city.

Where everything is possible, and dreams come true.

EXT. THE EMERALD CITY PROJECTS-DAY There are people sitting outside on stairs, not doing anything. Smoking, talking. Listening to the game on the radio. Boys stand at street corners, dealing. Cars go past slowly. Were-girls in short skirts and hairy legs wait, hopefully.

OZ comes striding into the frame.

WERE-GIRL:.

Hey, Corn-fed! Wanna have a good time?

OZ doesn't break stride.

OZ:.

No, thanks, fur-ball.

WERE-GIRL:.

Fucking were-rat.

OZ goes to a group of boys. They are all half-transformed, and growl when they see him.