Storm Wolf Read online

  STORM WOLF

  By

  Stephen Morris

  Storm Wolf is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Michael Morris

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9847731-0-7

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Elliot Kreloff

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my editor, Marta Tanrikulu, for not only superbly editing my novels but for being the first one to suggest that Alexei, who was at that time a member of the supporting cast in the Come Hell or High Water trilogy, deserved a book of his own instead.

  I would also like to thank Kevin O’Connor, whose Culture and Customs of the Baltic States was an invaluable resource. I used many traditional sources while researching Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Bohemia and the werewolf folklore of each culture but I would also like to thank the authors and contributors to articles and essays online about folklore and mythology in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania as well as the authors and contributors to essays and sources about werewolves in all their various names and guises.

  As always, I would like to thank my partner Elliot Kreloff for his patience and understanding when I disappeared into the library bookshelves or the mists of Baltic mythology and for designing both the interior and the cover of Storm Wolf.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Libahunt

  Chapter 2: Metsatöll

  Chapter 3: Vilkatis

  Chapter 4: Vilkolakis

  Chapter 5: Wilkolak

  Chapter 6: Vlkodlak

  Chapter 7: Kouzelnik

  Chapter 8: Sutekskäija

  Chapter 9: Epilogue

  Chapter 1: Libahunt

  Edvin

  (Estonia, Winter 1815)

  The wolf, its thick silver-gray fur bristling and standing up along its neck, stood its ground, snarling as the humans approached. Edvin and his father drew their hunting knives and the wolf fought to free itself from the clanking trap, even as it knew that it was doomed.

  Edvin and his father stood before the trapped animal. Edvin heard a quiet whisper. “You’ve seen this done before, Edvin. You helped skin the wolves last year and have been practicing the kill all summer.” His father paused. Edvin’s eyes locked with the wolf’s squinting eyes. “Why don’t you kill this first one of this season?” The boy glanced at the older man out of the corner of his eyes and slowly nodded.

  Edvin was able to slip up through the quietly crunching snow to the wolf from behind as it continued to glower at Edvin’s father—yellow eyes glinting, upper lip curled back, and snarl rumbling in the back of its throat, free legs poised and ready to leap at whoever would attack first. When Edvin leapt onto its back and held on with his left hand, the wolf twisted through the air, jaws snapping at the teen. Edvin wedged his knife into the wolf’s throat and pulled the knife back towards him, ripping the muscles, tendons, and arteries in ragged, jerky motions.

  Blood sprayed out in great bursts as the animal’s heart pumped vigorously in its breast. Edvin held on, terrified of the still snapping jaws and knowing that the only safe place was on the giant’s furry back. It seemed to be forever before the monster gradually slowed its writhing and abandoned its attempts to bite Edvin’s young head off, before the shower of blood was reduced to a trickle, before the beast slumped down onto its haunches and then finally collapsed in the now bright-red snow. The iron trap lay still and silent.

  Edvin pushed himself up from the carcass, panting. His breath hovered in frosty clouds before his face. He looked across the corpse at his father. His father grinned broadly before coming around behind and clapping him on the back. They surveyed the carnage before them.

  Dead, the wolf seemed even larger than it had when it was alive and standing before them, crouching and ready to attack. It seemed the largest wolf Edvin had ever seen. As big as, or even bigger than, the wolf Fenrir that the old stories said would devour the sun at the end of days. Together, Edvin and his father hoisted the wolf onto their nearby sled and brought the creature back to their house on the edge of the vast forests of Estonia. Edvin was given the honor of skinning this, his first kill. He was careful to keep the gray pelt with its tawny streaks intact, rather than cutting it into easier-to-handle smaller strips. Then the whole family undertook the job of butchering the meat to be smoked, dried, or eaten that evening. There was enough to feed them for at least a month.

  The skin was large enough for Edvin to wrap around himself three or four times, with the head—easily half again as large as his own—hanging over his left shoulder. The thing was huge, lush, and warm. It was beautiful. Edvin’s youngest sister wanted to add it to her wedding chest, but everyone else agreed that as Edvin’s first kill, it was his to do with as he pleased. He kept it on his bed but would, on occasion, wrap himself in it and play with the younger children, chasing them and catching them, pretending to devour them as they collapsed in giggles and laughter.

  It was five years later that the terrible storm had appeared on the horizon.

  Edvin’s marriage to his sweetheart in the village had been arranged for late in the summer of 1820. It was in the early summer, though, when the fields and gardens were full of the wheat and vegetables to feed the village during the coming year, that a tremendous storm appeared on the horizon, beyond the forest. As the massive thunderclouds slowly approached the village, they seemed to hang so low that they scraped the treetops. Ribbons of storm cloud streamed out behind them in the wind, and lightning flickered high in the sky. Deep within the clouds, thunder rumbled. Treetops tore rips and tears in the heavy, low-hanging thunderclouds and out came the howls of ghosts and devils.

  That was when Edvin took the wolf pelt to the local nõiatar, the village cunning woman. In Estonia, in the traditional village practice away from the German and Russian landowners, it was the responsibility of the libahunt or suteksäija—the vlkodlak, or man-wolf, as many who do not speak Estonian might call it—to drive the storms away from the farmlands and villages. The werewolves of Estonia had been known to fly into the storm clouds and fight the spirits there, the ghosts and devils that bring terrible storms and blizzards that destroy crops and homes. But there had been no werewolf in Edvin’s village for many years, and he knew someone had to defend the farmers against the storm everyone could see coming. Because he didn’t know how to make the werewolf, he took the pelt to the cunning woman—he knew that she would need that to work with, at least.

  The nõiatar took the pelt and rubbed it against her deeply lined face. The fur was thick and soft. Rarely had anyone killed such a large wolf, and keeping such a large pelt intact was even rarer. She studied Edvin. “Do you truly want to do this thing?” she finally asked him. “It is more dangerous than you know.”

  “I do,” he answered. “It is dangerous,” he agreed, daring to look her in the face. “But we will starve next winter otherwise. The storm coming looks more terrible than any we have seen since my father was a boy. It is the duty of the werewolf to fight the storms, and our village has no werewolf. We cannot expect the werewolf of another village to fight the storm for us, and there is no time to travel far to find one who will. I have the wolf skin, so I must use it to save my family and the village.” He pulled himself up, holding his head high, and thrust his shoulders back. “I am young. I am strong. I can fight such storms, but I cannot do it as a man. I must become the werewolf.”

  The cunning woman considered what he had said. “Yes, we need a werewolf to protect the village and it has been long… long since we have had one here. Yes, I can help you become the werewolf. But you mus
t be careful. It is said that the power of the wolf skin can be intoxicating and can make you as drunk as it makes you strong and able to fight the storms. You must not use it every time it rains, but only when there is a true äike, a thunderstorm that can destroy the crops or flood the küla. Our village. You must resist the temptation to use the wolf skin for your own advantage and use it only for the sake of the küla. It is not a power to wield for yourself and your own benefit, but only to protect others. Can you remember this?”

  “Yes,” Edvin answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I only want the wolf skin and its magic in order to protect the village. Or any village that needs our help. But you must do the magic now or it will soon be too late. The storm will be here any moment.”

  She held the wolf skin to her cheek once more and closed her eyes. A half-smile crossed her face. Then she opened her eyes, turned, and placed the pelt on the log bench next to the door of her cottage. She entered the cottage and reemerged with a tray of jars and bottles. She set these on the bench as well. The sky, already gray, became darker, and a chill breeze stirred around them. She looked at the sky and shook her head.

  “They will be here soon,” she muttered. “But they do not expect us to fight.” She looked at Edvin. “Help me lay the pelt flat on the ground.”

  They reached for the wolf skin and unfolded it, stretching it out flat. The fur was on the ground, in the dust that could easily become a sea of mud if the rain began in earnest. The leather of the creature’s skin itself was upwards, facing the sky. A drop of rain caressed Edvin’s cheek.

  The cunning woman took one of the largest jars and knelt next to the skin. She placed the jar next to her and scooped out a handful of old, foul-smelling grease. She began to rub it vigorously into the skin with her gnarled fingers. After a moment, she looked up at Edvin. “We don’t have all afternoon,” she snapped. “Help me.”

  Edvin immediately knelt down opposite her and reached for a handful of the grease, wrinkling his nose at the odor. They rubbed handful after handful of grease into the leather side of the wolf pelt as occasional drops splashed from the sky.

  “What is this grease from?” Edvin finally asked.

  “Do you think that you truly want to know?” The nõiatar didn’t even look up as she continued working the grease into the massive piece of leather between them.

  “Why? What is it?” Edvin thought about the stories he had heard of the ointments of the cunning woman, who also served as the village midwife. “Is it the fat of the stillborn babies that you’ve boiled together?”

  The woman continued to massage the fat into the leather without answering. After considering, Edvin muttered, “You’re right. I think perhaps I do not want to know.”

  Finally the nõiatar seemed satisfied that enough of the putrid fat had been worked into the skin. She covered that jar and put it aside, reaching for another one on her bench. She sprinkled what looked like dried, crushed leaves from it onto the skin. She stood and passed the jar to Edvin, indicating that he should do likewise on the portion of the skin that she could not reach.

  “Poplar tree leaves,” she replied to his unasked question. “For flight.”

  Next she took a cruet and poured out a thick, pale-yellow liquid that at least smelled sweeter than the grease. Edvin looked at her. “Oil from the roots of sweet flag, for bravery and wisdom, for strategy in driving off the storms,” she told him. The rain began to drum more persistently now, making small puddles in the wrinkles of the wolf skin.

  She knelt awkwardly again to massage the flower root extract into the leather, and Edvin did likewise. Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Hurry!” the nõiatar barked.

  As he continued to press the aromatic oil and ground poplar leaves into the grease-coated skin, the woman stood and took the last two bottles from the tray. She opened them, sniffed them each briefly as if to test them by their aroma, and poured out streams of liquid that seemed to contain a large quantity of crushed seeds. One was slightly green while the other was a pale red.

  “If you must know,” the cunning woman told him as he watched the two streams hit the skin, splash, and then soak into the now supple leather, “these are teas made from smallage—for spiritual power and strength—and cinquefoil—for protection.” She emptied the bottles and then replaced them on the tray. She stepped back and peered at the wolf skin.

  The leather looked hardly different than it had before. It certainly smelled differently now, though. Rancid grease and sweet herbs assaulted Edvin’s nostrils as he inhaled the fragrances that mingled on his precious wolf skin.

  “That will have to be enough,” the cunning woman said at last. “Now remove your clothes.”

  Edvin was startled and began to formulate a question.

  “The pelt must touch your own skin,” the nõiatar snapped at him, as if he were a fool to even question her instructions.

  He nodded. “Of course,” he muttered. Rain cascaded from the heavens now. He unbuttoned his shirt and folded it, placing it on the bench next to the tray with the jars and cruets. He sat on the bench to pull off his boots and then, taking a deep breath, removed his trousers and folded them, placing them on his shirt. The rain streaked down between his shoulder blades and between his chest muscles. The waterfall poured down between his buttocks as well. His hair, already plastered to his head, covered his forehead like a bedraggled pelt itself, and he pushed the hair back out of his eyes.

  He stood before her, blushing, but she seemed to ignore his embarrassment. He could feel her eyes, searching for any blemish on his skin and weighing both his moral integrity and physical worth as a man. Her eyes lingered especially uncomfortably on his groin, and she salaciously licked her parched lips. Finally, she reached down to pick up the animal skin. The dirt beneath it had indeed become mud and it sucked at the fur, reluctant to let it go. Edvin helped to lift the large and unwieldy pelt. A sudden bolt of lightning crackled between the massive fortresses of clouds, and thunder deafened the young man and old woman who stood there, holding the heavy, sodden animal skin between them.

  The nõiatar looked across the wolf pelt to Edvin. “You wrap the skin around you like a cloak or blanket,” she instructed him at last. “If we have worked enough of the magic into the skin, the transformation will follow of its own accord. After driving away the storm, you must return to the village and remove the skin. Then hide it. Put in a chest or trunk where no one else will find it. You yourself must be careful to only use it to protect the village, as I said. Take it from the trunk only when the greatest and most terrible storms threaten our crops or fields or bury our homes in the worst of the winter blizzards. Do you understand me?”

  Edvin took a deep breath. “Yes, I understand. I will hide it and keep it safe. No one will find it, and I will be the only one to ever use it.”

  “Then may God grant you strength—and save us,” said the woman, stepping up and pressing the leather against Edvin’s shoulders. He pulled the wolf’s head over his left shoulder and pulled the furry cloak around his torso, holding the edges tight in his right hand. He stepped away from the cunning woman and turned his face to the black sky. Rain poured down and another lightning flash blinded him.

  Edvin fought that storm bravely. He drove it away and the crops were only slightly damaged. Thanks to him—and the cunning woman—the village was able to eat the next winter. Word spread quickly that it was Edvin who had taken the responsibility to serve as the village werewolf, and people brought him gifts from their gardens and flocks throughout the next year. Since none of them would have survived if Edvin had not battled the storm, his neighbors were happy to share with him and his new bride.

  Other villages—which had also not had werewolves to protect them for many, many years—came to him and asked for his help when storms threatened them. He donned the wolf pelt several times in the coming years, but never more than once or twice a season. He was careful to never use it too much or too often. His only regret was that the beautiful pelt ha
d to be hidden away after each time he used it. He and his wife would have liked to display it on their wall or use it as a blanket on cold winter nights.

  Edvin never talked about what it was like to fight the storms. Some storms seemed to take much longer to drive away than others, and sometimes Edvin would be too exhausted after such a combat to tend his own garden or flocks and fields for days. Then his neighbors were glad to help and their children would climb up onto his lap and ask what it was like to fight the demons in the clouds. He would never really answer their questions, though, and sometimes a pained look would settle on his face so that his wife would shoo them away with her broom and tell them, “Let the werewolf sleep!” She and they would always laugh, though, as they scattered out the door or off the porch, and they would always be back, later that afternoon or the next day, for the fresh bread and cookies she baked for them.

  But the modern world reached even into Edvin’s village, and the surrounding areas and the old ways were dying throughout the countryside. No one from another town came to ask the cunning woman in Edvin’s village to make another wolf skin. Neither was there to be another cunning woman in Edvin’s village. The woman who had helped him become the werewolf found no one interested in learning the magic from her, and when she finally died, Edvin was the only one left in the village who knew anything about the old ways. People came asking his advice or help when they had trouble with their cattle or the seedlings were slow to develop or a fever gripped a child. He didn’t always know what to do, but he was closer than a doctor and folk trusted him because he had always protected them.

  Even when he was old, he continued to use the wolf skin and fight the storm clouds. But one autumn day—when his grandson Alexei must have been about fifteen or sixteen—Edvin came down from the sky bleeding and gasping for breath. Alexei and his cousins helped carry their grandfather into the house and lay him on the bed. “He has been wounded before,” their grandmother explained to Alexei as he helped her wash the deep gashes along Edvin’s ribs and arms. Even Edvin’s lips were puffy and bleeding, like Alexei’s young friends’ lips after a drunken brawl outside the tavern. “Really, more like deep scratches—but never like this. And his breathing….” Alexei’s grandmother looked anxiously into Edvin’s face as he wheezed and gasped in an erratic fashion, his eyes closed. She hardly left his side, sitting next to the bed holding his hand for the next three days and nights. That was when he woke and, though he was tired and his throat dry, his eyes sparkled again and a smile flickered around his lips. But that was the last time he used the pelt.