Storm Wolf Read online

  A little girl, not quite five years old, lived down the road from Vakarė’s family and saw an opportunity to play as her mother fretted over the last preparations for the Kūčios supper. As her mother stood at the stove, stirring and tasting and stirring again, with her back to the kitchen, the little girl took the hand of her three-year-old brother and darted out the half-open door into the farmyard.

  “We’ll play hide-and-seek!” she whispered excitedly to her brother, who stumbled to keep up with his big sister. “Mother and everyone will be so happy to have a game to play before dinner. You and I will hide together and then they will come to seek us. Shall we? Yes?” Her eyes sparkled in anticipation of her parents’ delight at the chance to escape the hectic preparations for the dinner inside the house.

  Her brother nodded, not quite understanding his sister’s plan but sharing her excitement. She led him across the farmyard toward the barn and slipped inside.

  A dark shadow shifted beside the door as the little girl stood there, pausing for her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. She heard the cows chewing in their stalls and the pigs happily munching on the food her father must have just given them. Chickens scratched in the straw on the floor, looking for seeds to eat.

  “Happy Christmas, my child,” the shadow spoke. “What brings you to the barn on this busy Christmas Eve?”

  “My brother and I are going to play hide-and-seek!” the girl explained to the shadow. She wrinkled her nose. Something smelled different in the barn. Was it the shadow man? He smelled… funny. Dirty, maybe? There was a bitter tang in the air. Unwashed? She wasn’t sure.

  “We are going to play hide-and-seek,” she repeated, “and our family will come to seek us when they realize we are hiding.”

  “Hide-and-seek? What an excellent idea!” the shadow man congratulated her.

  She beamed proudly up at the darkness. Her brother tugged at her arm, wanting to dart behind one of the bales of hay or into a stall with a cow and begin playing the game.

  “What an excellent idea!” the man repeated. “But won’t the barn be one of the first places your family comes to look for you?” he asked. “The barn will be a very easy place to find you. They will want more of a challenge, don’t you think?” He paused. Then he clapped his hands.

  “I know just the place!” he promised her. “Come with me and I will show you an excellent place to hide. Your family will be so proud that you did not hide in such a simple place as the barn but were so smart as to hide in this other place!”

  He reached out his hand. “Come with me, yes? I will show you the most wonderful place to hide!” He nodded and turned to the door, beginning to walk away. His hand still reached out for hers.

  “Yes!” she decided, pulling her little brother away from the stalls and bales of hay. She put her hand in that of the great shadow man, who was so much bigger than she had realized. She looked up at him and he glanced down at her and they both smiled as he led the children out of the farmyard and into the gathering dusk.

  At Vakarė’s farm, the whole household came together and gathered around the table. Even after Vakarė and her son, Aušrinė and the children, Alexei, and even the maid and the cook all took their places, there was still an extra plate set on the table with a candle burning beside it.

  “For our ancestors,” whispered Grandmother Vakarė into Alexei’s ear. “The whole family gathers for Christmas supper, the living and the dead,” she explained. He nodded. It was all so different and yet so similar to the many Christmas Eve dinners he had spent with his family in Estonia, while his family had been whole and intact. Loss stabbed him through the heart, knowing that he could never spend such a holiday with them again.

  As the dinner went on, the mood gradually became less solemn and more light-hearted. Conversation—mostly in Lithuanian but in some Russian, and what was in Lithuanian, Vakarė would translate into Russian for Alexei—ebbed and flowed as the twelve courses of the Kūčios supper were set out and enjoyed with gusto.

  At one point little Edita pulled a straw from under the tablecloth and held it up for everyone to see, exclaiming something in Lithuanian and laughing.

  “Not yet! Not yet, Edita!” laughed her brother Dovydas. “We pull the straws out after dinner!”

  “But I want to see the future now, not after dinner!” insisted Edita, holding her straw tightly in her fist. “See? It’s a long one. And it’s fat!” She waved the straw at him. “The next year will be a very good one for me! So there!” Everyone around the table laughed with her.

  “But, still,” her father Adomas told her, smiling as he winked at Alexei next to his wife Aušrinė, who was also translating all this for him. “Even the future must wait its turn until after we have finished eating the Kūčios supper! But we can take steps before the Kūčios is finished to make the future a good one, can we not? How do we keep bad things from our doorstep in the coming year? Can any of you tell our guest how we manage that?”

  “Yes, father!” exclaimed Amalija and Dovydas together. They turned to Alexei.

  “We invite guests who have nowhere else to go!” announced little Edita. Alexei blushed.

  “We can also tell stories about bad things that we don’t want to have happen in the coming year,” Amailija hurriedly told Alexei to spare him his embarrassment.

  “Yes! We tell stories about wolves to keep them away from us and the farm animals for the coming year!” Dovydas added, laughing, but all three children began talking at once, each telling a different tale about a wolf coming into the fields and attacking animals or neighbors years ago.

  Vakarė did her best to keep up with the children’s stories, translating them for Alexei as the stories about wolves became more and more extravagant.

  “Remember the one about the great wolf that come out of the woods and was nearly as big as a horse?” Amalija finally tried to outdo her brother’s stories about horrible encounters with terrible wolves. “It was nearly a hundred years ago, wasn’t it, Grandmother?” She turned to Vakarė to attest to the veracity of the story.

  “Yes, yes it was,” Vakarė agreed with her eldest granddaughter. “The wolf was almost as big as a horse, it was. It was a terrible beast.”

  “It killed half the village, didn’t it?” Even little Edita seemed to have heard at least part of the tale before.

  “It did not kill half the village,” Dovydas insisted, not wanting his sisters’ wolf story to outshine his.

  “It was a terrible wolf,” agreed the farmer Adomas. “It killed many village folk that winter, though I am not sure that it was half the village, even then.”

  “But it was the most terrible wolf to ever attack the village, wasn’t it, Grandmother?” Amalija turned to Vakarė again for support.

  “Yes, my child,” Vakarė agreed again. “It was the most terrible wolf to attack the town for as long as anyone could remember. I was but a little girl then and I saw it once, in the night across the fields.”

  “And you remember the lamp that was lit at the crossroads to keep it away, don’t you, Grandmother? It was too big and too strong for any hunter to stop it! It was only by magic that the wolf was finally driven off and kept away, wasn’t it?” Amalija wanted Vakarė to confirm that her story was more horrific than Dovydas’ had been.

  Vakarė nodded, trying to both answer Amalija and translate for Alexei. “There was a special lantern lit at the crossroads near the forest to keep the terrible wolf away. The promise was that the great wolf would never be able to come back so long as the lantern kept burning. And that lantern has been kept trim and lit for nearly one hundred years now, it has.”

  “So no one has seen that most terrible of all the wolves since? Isn’t that right, Grandmother?” Edita shook her straw again. “So we are safe and my future will be the best one of all! Isn’t that right, Grandmother?” Everyone at the table laughed again.

  But Alexei, thinking about the lantern he had accidently extinguished at the crossroads, did not laugh.

>   Alexei fretted all through the midnight Shepherds’ Mass that he attended with Vakarė and her family. The lantern that he had seen hanging before the crucifix at the crossroads was the one that had been lit to keep the great wolf away from the town. He was certain of that. But he had extinguished it, albeit by accident, and a young woman had been attacked by a wolf on a farm near the edge of town.

  “I know it cannot be a coincidence,” he told himself as the priest sang the Gospel about the shepherds in the field being told by the angels that a Savior had been born that night in the city of David. “Someone in the town must tend the lantern. It could not have still been alight when I saw it if no one was tending it. But it may be some days before anyone goes to tend it again. It must be rekindled before anyone else is hurt.” But he did not want to draw attention to himself or announce that he was the one who had extinguished the lantern. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts about the lantern that he did not notice the worried exchanges of greetings between the neighbors or understand the words in Lithuanian that told about the two missing children from the farm up the road from Vakarė’s.

  Back at the farmhouse after the Mass, Alexei hardly slept. But when the family rose in the morning to clear away the remains of the Kūčios supper from the night before—as Vakarė had explained to him as they dressed for the Mass on Christmas Eve, the table was left uncleared so that the departed members of the family could dine while the living members of the family were at church—he made excuses that he needed to go outside for a walk and smoke a pipe by himself.

  “Can I come with you?” little Edita cajoled him. “Please, Alexei? Please?”

  “Now, you know that you must go help your brother and sister to clear the Kūčios table,” her mother Aušrinė told her.

  “We understand,” the elderly Vakarė assured him. “Grief is a hard guest at Christmastime. You want to smoke a pipe and think of your wife and children. Take your time.” She pressed a pipe and tobacco into his hands and sent him out the door.

  It was not an untruth that Alexei had told, and Vakarė had surmised at least one reason for his walk that morning. He did want to remember Grete and their children, the laughter around last year’s Christmas table, and how happy they had been together before he had lost control of the wolf magic. He made his way slowly across the fields and down the road, slowly puffing on the pipe he had lit mostly for show and remembering his family, hoping that perhaps they had been able to share some of the remnants of the Kūčios food on Vakarė and Aušrinė’s table last night. That Grete and the children might have been able to forgive him somewhat for what he had done to them.

  When he arrived at the crossroads, the crucifix still stood there with its dark lantern. Alexei pulled a small vial of oil that he had prepared in the kitchen before anyone had risen that morning from his coat pocket, together with the tinder Vakarė had given him with the pipe. He filled the receptacle in the lantern with the oil and adjusted the wick. He struck the tinder and relit the wick. The small flame danced merrily within the lantern panes as Alexei closed the hatch of the lantern and began his walk back down the road, away from the woods.

  “That should last at least until the keeper of the lantern returns to check on it,” he told himself. “The town should be safe again.”

  It was the second night of the Christmas holiday and Audra could not sleep. She tossed and turned, her thoughts unable to stop racing with both fear and excitement. She was frightened for her friend Elžbieta, so badly injured by that wolf attack just before Christmas that she was still unable to speak of it. It was only the best of good luck that her father had been milking the cows in the barn and heard her screaming in the farmyard; his description of the wolf he had driven from Elžbieta’s fallen body had inspired nightmares in more than one young girl in the town.

  “It could have happened to anyone,” Audra told herself again for the hundredth time. “It could have been me in the morning darkness, gone out to tend the hens or milk the cows.” Audra’s family farm was near Elžbieta’s family farm and both were on the edge of the town. Close to the woods where the wolf must be hiding, licking its wounds.

  But Audra was excited as well as frightened. She was also engaged, as Elžbieta had been, and Audra’s betrothed had promised that they would be wed in late January, shortly after the wedding of Elžbieta and Andrius. But now that Elžbieta’s wedding seemed unlikely to take place as scheduled, it might be possible for Audra’s wedding to be moved up a week or two. Audra was anxious to move into her new house and begin her new life, even more so than Elžbieta had been.

  “Elžbieta loves her family,” Audra reminded herself. “But the sooner I can escape my mother’s sharp tongue, my father’s wandering hands, and my brothers’ unending demands for food and drink, the better off I will be!” The only daughter of a large family, she had been the one on whom all the expectations of service in the family had fallen, and she was tired. Tired of life with her family, tired of life on a farm, tired of life in the countryside.

  Audra’s husband-to-be, the youngest son of his family and the least likely to inherit much of the family farm, had promised that they would travel to Vilnius or another of the Lithuanian cities shortly after their marriage and that he would find work there. They would begin a family in the city, not the countryside, and they would find a way to help their beloved homeland Lithuania break free of the tsar’s heavy yoke.

  There was no way Audra would sleep tonight. She knew it. Finally she slid out from under the covers and put her bare feet on the cold floor. She shivered but then stood, wrapped a robe around her nightgown, and tiptoed out of her room and into the kitchen. She lit a candle from the embers in the stove and then added a small log. There was a warmth in the kitchen very soon, and she placed a teapot on the stove, readying a cup and teapot as the water heated.

  “Soon. Very soon,” Audra promised herself. “We will marry sooner than we had planned, though I am sorry that it is because Elžbieta was so badly hurt. But then, after the wedding, we will escape to Vilnius and will never need to worry about wolves attacking women in the dark ever again!” Audra’s husband-to-be still had not said anything of his plans to his family and Audra had said nothing to hers. They both knew that each family would object strongly, and so the plans to run away to Vilnius and to join the fight to rid Lithuania of the tsar’s stranglehold remained their own secret.

  “Audra.”

  Audra whirled around, startled at hearing the voice whisper her name. Her father stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his hair and beard unkempt and the robe hanging about him askew. His bare feet curled and uncurled on the cold floor. He shuffled his way into the kitchen and took a seat at the table. He lifted the cup Audra had placed there.

  “Empty? How much longer until there is tea?” he demanded. His gruff voice cracked, his throat still not awake enough for speaking.

  “Not long, Papa,” Audra answered. “I just put the kettle on the stovetop.” She sighed. Her moment alone was not to be. She wished there was some way she could scurry back into her bed, but there was no way to get out of the kitchen now that her father was there.

  “Is the teapot ready?” he wanted to know, gesturing to the pot on the counter behind her.

  “Yes, Papa. The teapot is ready,” she told him. “All we need is to wait for the water to boil and then….”

  “Well, then, we have some time together before the tea is ready. Come sit on your old papa’s lap.” He pushed the chair back from the table and patted his lap with one hand.

  “No, Papa,” Audra quietly refused. “I’d rather stand right now. The kettle will boil in only a moment or two—”

  “Don’t refuse your old papa,” he insisted, patting his lap again. “Soon you’ll be a married woman, and with a husband always in the way….” He left the sentence unfinished, his words hanging in the air. He patted his lap again, more firmly. “Come sit on your old papa’s lap again, Audra. For old times’ sake.”

  “No, Papa
,” she told him again. “The water will boil and we don’t want the kettle to wake Mama or the boys and I want to fetch the hot water as soon as it whistles and…”

  “Audra. Girl. I am telling you. Come sit on your father’s lap.” He glared at her, spreading his legs further apart as if it make room for her. But she knew his real intention. He was not inviting her to relive some happy memory from her childhood long ago now that she stood on the brink of marriage and womanhood. No. She had become a woman long before now. He had seen to that.

  “Papa. Please. No.” Audra bit her lip, closed her eyes, and turned away. He would get what he wanted. He always did. But she always hoped it would end another way.

  “Audra! A good girl always does as she is told!” he barked. “Now, be a good girl!”

  A tear slid down her cheek. How many more times would this scene play itself out before her wedding and escape from this terrible prison?

  She slowly turned back to face him. “Papa. Please…” she began.

  There was a sudden crash of shattering glass and wrenching wood as the window behind Audra exploded inward and a huge wolf burst into the kitchen. Snarling and snapping jaws closed on Audra’s throat, tossing her from side to side before throwing her against the stove and knocking the kettle onto the floor, where the water splashed out.

  Audra’s father had begun to stand, calling for his sons, but the wolf turned on him next and ripped his robe to shreds, the massive jaws closing around the man’s arm. The wolf threw the man across the room as well, away from the stove, before turning back to the bloody figure of Audra.

  Snarling and growling still, the wolf tore at the girl’s body. It wrenched her limbs from side to side and tore at the torso beneath her robe and gown, spilling entrails across the kitchen floor. Blood spurted and mingled with the spilled water, creating a steaming pink puddle that seeped across the floorboards.

  Audra’s brothers, finally responding to the cries of their father and the sounds of breaking glass and furniture in the kitchen, tumbled into the room, not knowing what to expect. The wolf snarled and they stumbled back, away from the silent form of their sister and the loudly shouting form of their father.