Storm Wolf Read online

  The old man thrust his hips up toward the old woman, roaring something that Alexei could not understand. The old woman atop him slapped his face and screamed. Neither seemed to be enjoying their lovemaking, but both seemed trapped in the bed, unable to do anything else. She slapped the old man again and forced her hips down toward his. They cried out in ecstasy and fury, thunder echoing their cries all the way down through the clouds to the farmers below. Lightning writhed like snakes in the blankets, trying to escape the unhappy couple in the bed.

  Alexei stood there, staring at the pair, trying to understand everything he was seeing.

  “Is this the All-Father and the All-Mother?” he wondered. “The pair who made the world in the beginning? How can I kill them to stop the storm? Is it even possible to simply distract them? Will the storm stop then? What can I do?”

  Then the old woman roared again and arched her back and flung her hands down behind her, rocking back and forth, causing the whole sky to tremble. Lightning tumbled from the cloud sheets and rain cascaded out between the sheets as well, nearly washing Alexei from the sky. The old man turned his head and seemingly noticed Alexei watching them. He said something, the sky rumbling, and reached toward Alexei. The old woman, still shuddering, turned to look in his direction as well and Alexei suddenly felt pinned by both their gazes.

  “No,” Alexei muttered. “No, this cannot be…” The old woman leaned over and reached out, scooping him up in her palm and bringing him close to her face. A foul stench washed over him, making him cough and choke and gag. Her breath was the smell of rotting corpses in the summer, of rotting reeds in the mud of the marshes in the spring, the rotting meat of dead animals left in the woods by hunters or bears.

  Alexei shuddered, struggling to slip out of her grasp. But then she opened her mouth and swallowed him whole.

  He tumbled down through the darkness. More hideous winds met him, smells of things he could not identify but that he knew were dead and rotting within the old woman. He felt the slime and mud of her throat as she swallowed him and felt her windpipe closing around him as he was drawn down toward her stomach.

  “No! This is not the All-Mother!” he shouted in his mind, wolf roars bursting from his mouth. “She is the Lady of the Dead… she is Death itself!”

  He reached out with his paws to stop sliding down further. His claws scraped her windpipe. He could hear her rumblings of complaint and could feel her shift her weight, beginning again to rock back and forth atop the old man.

  “I have to get out!” Alexei demanded. He could not let himself slip into her stomach and be trapped in the gullet of Death with all those things that he could smell. In the darkness he could no longer tell which way was up or which was down. He just knew he had to get out.

  He dug with his claws and nipped with his teeth. The cloud body around him had substance similar to a human body yet different. He dug more strongly, stopping his inexorable sliding toward Death’s stomach, and pale threads of the now familiar gray blood of the storm creatures seeped in around him. He nipped harder, pulling bits of flesh from Death’s windpipe. He heard her cough, far away. He felt her shudder as she patted her chest.

  Her hips rocked again and he felt himself fall again, ever closer to her stomach. He scraped at her windpipe, tugging with his teeth, even ripping bits of her flesh out. More gray blood seeped in around him, making his prison both slicker in his descent to her stomach and easier to wriggle about in. He wedged a forelimb out of her windpipe, feeling it lodge beside what might be her lung. He could feel the inhalation and deflation of something. Then he tore a larger hole in her windpipe and was able to get his other forelimb out. A bit more work, and his head was halfway through the bloody hole he had torn.

  Her hip rocking intensified. She coughed and swallowed, and Alexei felt himself slip back toward her stomach.

  “Does she know what’s going on?” he wondered, struggling to keep himself wedged out between her lungs. The blood was getting in his eyes, covering his paws and claws, making it harder to tear away at the cloud flesh in front of him.

  She coughed again and he was engulfed by a wave of filth from below.

  “I must get out,” he wheezed. “Now!”

  Alexei braced his hind legs against the back of her windpipe, held his breath, and pushed himself forward.

  Nothing. He was stuck in the bloody mucus of her windpipe.

  He tried again.

  Nothing. The blood and bits of flesh were getting into his snout, making it difficult to breathe. He nipped and tore at the hole he had made and braced his back legs for one last attempt.

  He thought of Grete, back in their home. He thought of their new baby. If he were trapped and died here, his family would never know what had happened. Grete would think he had run off. Abandoned her. Most of the villagers would shun her after that. Her life depended on his escape as much as his own did.

  Death rocked more forcefully. He could hear her cry in rage and passion and pain.

  Maybe he could use her rocking on her hips?

  “I must escape!” Flexing his haunches to match the rhythm of her hips, he roared and jumped.

  Alexei burst out of Lady Death just below her sternum. Blood and cloud flesh exploded around him. He tumbled into the roaring wind and onto the chest and beard of the old man.

  Lightning burst around them and old Lady Death, her windpipe punctured and her torso torn open, looked down at him and her cloud body faded away.

  As she faded, the clouds around them dispersed. The old man unraveled and the bed on which he was lying dissolved. Lightning flickered and was gone. In a matter of moments, the terrible storm that had raged around the lovemaking of Lady Death and her consort was gone. The sky was gray and filled with clouds, but the clouds were impotent now.

  Alexei wheezed and gasped, trying to catch enough air into his lungs, and then slowly trotted the long way back down through the clouds that remained to Grete and their village.

  “Grandfather, you would be proud!” Alexei smiled. He had not betrayed his grandfather Edvin’s trust.

  It was a bad winter that season, followed by a worse spring. Tremendous blizzards came, one after the other, almost one a week throughout the winter months, and then drenching rains in the spring that were intent on causing floods and attempting to wash away the villagers’ homes. Alexei had to don the skin many times. He did not always find Lady Death at the heart of the storms, but there was always a giant, a serpent, a hag, or some monstrous entity at the heart of each storm. Alexei learned to destroy each sort of storm monster and the storm would disperse each time.

  Everyone had known his grandfather Edvin had been the village werewolf, but because he had hinted that Alexei should keep his ownership of the skin secret, he thought it best to say nothing about his role in driving away the storms, even to his beloved Grete. It pained him to go out in the storms, lying to her to explain his absences. But she grew used to it and stopped asking where Alexei was going when the sky grew dark.

  “Perhaps she has reasoned out the truth,” Alexei muttered under his breath. He didn’t know and was afraid to ask.

  By the time the summer brought good weather, it was late for planting, but the villagers tried to make the most of the growing season and hoped they would have enough food in the autumn and next winter. During that early summer period, Alexei was plowing his field with his sturdy pair of draught horses on a warm afternoon, bright and sunny. Unusually warm for early summer and, because of the terrible weather in the winter and spring, it seemed even warmer than it probably was. Alexei stripped off his shirt and sang as he followed the horses pulling the plow in lines up and down the field. The plow bumped along and wobbled as it cut through muddy earth and dense clumps of sod that needed to be broken up if the crops he intended to plant were to have even a mediocre chance of success. The scent of wet earth filled the air, and even with his human nose, trained to be more sensitive now that he had the experience of the werewolf’s, he could detect trace
s and hints of last year’s crops in it.

  Alexei stopped short as he was midway through plowing one of the furrows. He stopped singing and stood silent, watchful. He was sure he had heard the distant baying of a wolf in the forest on the far edge of the field.

  “In broad daylight?” He peered at the trees. “Unlikely.”

  He waited, but the stealthy wolf seemed as intent on remaining hidden as Alexei was on discovering its whereabouts. After a few moments of silent watching, he snapped the reins connecting the horses to the plow and followed the path of the furrows again. Had he imagined the wolf cry in the distance? He picked up the melody he had hastily dropped, but sang more quietly, the better to hear if there truly was a wolf joining in the song.

  “It must have been a hard winter and spring for the wolves as well,” he muttered to his horses. “With so much snow and rain, it’s no wonder they’ve been driven so close to the village to find food—”

  A howl burst into the air, so loud and clear that it seemed right behind him, and he whirled around to face the source of it, to see if a wolf were circling the plow, distracting him so as to have a free moment to leap at one of the horses. Nothing. Then—

  He caught a movement right on the edge of his vision. A wolf’s tail. So there was a hunter circling him, and he had no weapon to drive it off. Perhaps if he confronted it, it would be startled long enough to take a step or two back, and Alexei could set the horses free to run for their lives…

  As he slid between the plow and the horses to release the harness, he saw the tail again from the corner of one eye. The wolf was drawing closer. There was no time. Alexei leapt around to face it, shouting at the top of his lungs in defiance and terror.

  The howling of the wolf pierced his hearing. Alexei saw his arms and hands stretch, elongate, the silver bristles of the wolf pelt bursting through his skin. His calf tendons grew taut, pulling him down, and he saw the thick, bushy tail between his own legs. His clothing tore and ripped as his body changed within the fabric. Alexei felt his nose lengthening into a snout and the lips curling back from his razor teeth in a snarl. Another howl burst from his throat and Alexei realized it had been himself that he had just heard.

  The horses panicked. They reared up on their hind legs and their prolonged horse screams rippled out of their throats and across the field. The plow behind him toppled and the horses pulled in opposite directions, desperate to escape the fearsome predator that had materialized. Alexei was in danger of being trampled by their hooves or caught in the tangled reins and harness. Either could mean death. He did the only thing that he could think of in that instant, leaping into the air and hovering before coming down outside the tangle of wooden plow, leather straps, and terrified horses.

  The plow snapped into several pieces, snagged on the clods of earth, and the horses continued screaming, unable to extricate themselves from each other or the weight of the plow.

  Human words formed in Alexei’s mind. “What can I do to save the horses from destroying themselves?”

  He leapt back into the air, thinking with part of his mind that he simply needed to get away from the horses so that they could perceive no immediate threat. With another part of his mind, he was trying to work out why this had happened at all. How had the transformation happened with no warning and without the wolf pelt?

  A new pitch of blind terror entered the voices of the horses screaming behind and beneath him. He turned in the air and saw a group of three wolves circling the horses. These must be the earthly, mortal wolves that had been lurking on the edge of the fields, now moving in to take advantage of the defenseless horses. One wolf dodged between the flailing hooves and nipped at the throat of one of his plow horses.

  Alexei could not abandon his faithful animals and fellow farm workers. He charged back into the midst of the attacking wolves.

  The battle with the three much smaller, ordinary wolves was quick but bloody. It was as vicious as any battle with the ghosts and devils in the clouds intent on destroying the towns and fields by unnatural weather. These three beasts were intent on destroying the horses, and Alexei was determined to protect them, as determined as he had ever been to defend his town against the storms driven by vengeful spirits. When it was over, there were two corpses of wolves, throats torn out, blood everywhere—even on the horses. One wolf had attempted to run back into the woods, its left hind leg badly injured. Alexei paused, considering whether to let it escape, and then jumped on its back. He locked his powerful jaws just below the smaller wolf’s shoulders and tore out a length of its spine. It collapsed and howled before Alexei silenced it by ripping its throat to shreds as well.

  Panting, he looked across the field at the horses. They still whinnied and pawed the ground nervously, but were calmer than they had been. Blood dripped from his teeth and his great tongue rolled across them, tasting the blood. Alexei smelled death in the air, and the combination of scents and tastes made a heady brew that sent shivers down his back. He had known the taste of spirits, as he had fought the specters in the air and smelled their fear as he drove them off, but this was a new and different kind of terror that tickled his nostrils. A new taste of a new kind of blood. Earthly blood. Earthly terror. Fearsome. Disgusting. Intoxicating.

  Alexei shook his head slowly, to and fro, attempting to clear it and consider what to do next. Was this the intoxication his grandfather had warned of? He had spoken of the intoxication of flight, of power, of pride. He had never mentioned the drunkenness that comes with fear and death and blood. But Alexei was also worried that if he had not controlled his transformation into a werewolf, could he control his transformation back into a man?

  Alexei forced himself back onto his rear legs and lifted his front paw to make the sign of the cross. Would it work? He saw blood on his paws. He licked it, feeling sick to his stomach even as he was relishing the taste.

  “One last time,” he told himself. As the warm, salty redness caressed his taste buds, the wolf fur peeled away from his skin and vanished. There was no new pelt lying on the ground. The wolf fur melted into the air as his body within it returned to human stature and proportion. Alexei scuttled over to where the fragments of his clothing lay on the ground to cover himself as best he could.

  “I can explain the whole incident by telling at least part of the truth: wolves attacked the horses and I had no choice—I drove them off,” Alexei told himself. The bloody cuts and scratches he had would testify to his courage to face the wolves, but would they explain his ability to kill three hungry attackers single-handedly? The taste of wolf blood lingered in his mouth. Tantalizing. Exquisite.

  His grandfather came to him in his dreams that night. With his grandmother. They both looked younger than Alexei remembered them, but they were frightened. Edvin’s voice cracked with concern and worry.

  “Did I not tell you not to use the wolf skin too often?” he demanded, like a father chastising a five-year-old.

  “The winter was terrible. As was the spring,” Alexei stammered in self-defense.

  They shook their heads. “As true as that is, you’ve used the magic of the wolf’s skin so often that it has soaked into your skin. Be careful, Alexei. You’ve worn the skin too often, and now you’ve used the magic for your own benefit, protecting your draught horses in the field this afternoon. That is a terrible and powerful combination. Either could unleash the magic of the wolf pelt without warning, and now you’ve done both.” Edvin sucked on his teeth. “I don’t know how to protect you, Alexei.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” chimed in his grandmother. “But this is old and powerful magic, and I think the nõiatar wasn’t sure that even she could control it altogether when she gave it to your grandfather.”

  “When I was young, our family and the villages around us were all serfs, tied to the land that had been ours but had become the property of the Germans, the Swedes, the Russians. I remember the celebrations when we were given our freedom in 1816, a year after I killed the great wolf and skinned i
t,” Edvin told his grandson. “Don’t let the wolf skin make you a serf again, bound to it rather than the land. It should serve you, not you serve it.”

  Alexei woke, trembling and drenched with sweat. How could he protect himself from the encroaching power of the wolf skin that he had always been so careful to use only when it seemed truly necessary?

  “Why was I so cursed by my efforts to do good, to follow Grandfather’s directions and live up to his expectations?” he demanded of the night air.

  Alexei’s fear that the transformation would overtake him again faded in the coming weeks as life returned to normal. A few neighbors teased him about becoming “Alexei, the wolf killer,” like his grandfather Edvin. Grete never said anything, though she listened attentively to the tales. People remembered the story of his grandfather killing the great wolf in the trap, but everyone seemed to assume the skin had been lost when Edvin died. Even Alexei’s family seemed to have forgotten the magical powers of the skin and never asked him about it, though one sister did seem suspicious of his tale concerning the events of that afternoon in the field.

  Life went on and crops grew. Children played and laughed and babies were born. Alexei’s own son was growing fast, the pride of his parents. Another was on the way. Midsummer came and went, as did Lammastide, and soon it was harvest season.

  The men of the village were harvesting a field of wheat, working together so as to hasten the end of the work. Given the late start of the growing season, the farmers had let the crops grow as late into the autumn as they dared, but that meant they had less time than usual to accomplish the harvest. Scythes swung and whistled in the air. Bundles of wheat were tied up and piled together to be picked up in a wagon. Sweet scents rose and mingled in the air: fresh-mown wheat, sweat, and joy in anticipation of surviving the coming winter despite the ferocity of the last winter.