Storm Wolf Page 5

  The scent of blood hung in the air as well. No one seemed to notice it. It was distant, perhaps a bear that had killed another animal in self-defense, or even a cub that had been scratched as it played with other cubs. No, perhaps not a cub with an accidental scratch. There was the sharp scent of death in the mix of that perfume that floated in the air. Maybe a deer that a hunter had shot but been unable to recover. It could have been anything. But it hung in the air and made Alexei’s mouth water. Blood. Death. His nose quivered with excitement and he had to catch himself from drooling.

  Alexei hoped that it would go no further than that. A quivering nose and salivating mouth. Then, far in the distance, he heard the baying of a wolf. Once. Then again. One man’s head, then another lifted as his shoulders paused in the rhythmic swinging of their scythes.

  Alexei knew the baying came from his throat but the others hadn’t realized that yet. “Maybe I can get away. Maybe no one will see…” he hoped.

  He dropped the bundle of wheat he was gathering and hurried toward the edge of the field. But it was too late. As he reached another group of men working on the edge of the field, his head was thrown back with an uncontrollable wrench, and a long, piercing cry bellowed from the depths of his soul. Even with his eyes tightly shut, he could see the transformation happening before his friends, neighbors, and relatives. He could feel cartilage snapping, sockets popping, tendons stretching and rippling in new configurations, bristles of fur piercing his skin like a hundred thousand pins pushing up from below the surface. Unable to maintain his balance, he dropped down onto all fours and howled again and again. He swung his head and licked his lips.

  “I need to cross myself,” Alexei told himself, attempting to sit up on his hind legs so as to free a front paw for the liberating gesture. But try as he might, he could not make his wolf legs obey his human mind. That had never happened before. He panicked. The wolf nature overpowered him and would not allow him to make the sign that would bring him back into human form.

  The men standing in front of Alexei stared in horror and cried out in shock. Some ran while others lifted their scythes. Of those who lifted their scythes, most simply stood their ground, while one or two stepped toward the great wolf.

  “Do they really think that approaching such a creature, even with a weapon as great as a scythe, is safe?” Alexei could still form human thoughts and words even if he could not make his body obey him. He struggled to keep quiet and almost choked on the fearsome howl that finally burst from his throat. Unable to stop his hind legs from propelling him forward, he hurled himself toward his neighbors. Jaws snapping, driven wild by the twin scents of blood and fear, Alexei attacked.

  Men scattered. Scythes fell to the ground. One sliced a great gouge across the wolf’s left hip. In less than a moment, the wolf was standing over the mangled corpses of two villagers, blood dripping from his lips and pieces of flesh caught between his teeth. Others, wounded but not dead, cried in anguish as they covered their eyes, expecting the fearsome teeth to close on them again. The wolf howled and sprang into the air, the rampage just beginning.

  Alexei hunted down his neighbors as they ran into the forest or back to their homes. Some were lucky enough to dash inside their homes before the wolf could reach them. Alexei’s human personality vanished entirely as he circled the air above one home, smoke curling from the chimney. He waited for someone to open the door and look out, intending to swoop down from his perch upon whoever first dared to see if the nightmarish wolf had finally gone…

  When Alexei awoke, he was lying in a muddy road leading away from the village. He was drenched with sticky, drying blood and rancid sweat, the ground beneath him muddy from the moisture of his body. But he was human. Every muscle ached as he slowly struggled to sit up and remember who he was and how he had come to be lying in the road. Slowly the horrible memories returned to him, at least in part. He never did recall what happened after he began circling that cottage, but he heard later from his wife Grete of the carnage visited upon the family that lived there. Parts of the roof had been torn off, tiles and thatch exploding as the werewolf attacked the entire household, killing nearly everyone inside.

  Even as he sat in the road, naked and bloody, cut and bruised, Alexei licked one of the nicks along his knuckles. The blood, a comingling of his own and his neighbors, had the most exquisite taste he had ever experienced. Alexei shuddered and wept as uncontrollably as he had earlier been unable to stop himself from leaping at the throats of his friends and neighbors.

  “Will anyone ever trust me again? Can I trust myself?” He shuddered. “How can I blame them if they attempt to kill me as I killed so many of them?”

  Alexei made his way home and his wife, afraid that he was among the dead, burst into tears of relief as he stumbled through the door. She washed his wounds, telling him as she did as much of the story of what had happened as she was able. As Alexei listened, he realized that the men who had actually seen the transformation were dead, and all the survivors of the afternoon assumed that he had been among those attacked by the great werewolf from the sky. No one would hold him responsible because no one knew that it was his fault.

  “But,” he wondered, “is that a good thing?”

  The next afternoon, one of his sisters—who had seemed suspicious of his account of the wolf attack against the plow horses—came to speak with him.

  “Alexei, I wanted to tell you that Grandfather spoke to me before he died as well.”

  His stomach twisted within him. “What did he say?” he finally asked her.

  “He told me what to do if there were ever any strange attacks from wolves. He also said that you might need to know this someday, and that he had told you a little of it, but that I should be ready, at a moment’s notice—if need be—to use the old ways to drive strange wolves away from the village.”

  “What were the old ways he spoke of?”

  “He said to scatter blueberries at the doorways of the houses and cottages and that we must hang rue or mistletoe over each of the windows.”

  Alexei swallowed. Why had his grandfather Edvin kept that knowledge from him? Did he think that if the wolf magic overcame him that he would be reluctant to tell anyone else in the village how to protect themselves? “Perhaps he suspected that I might need to be saved myself,” Alexei thought. “I might not be in a position to tell anyone how to wield the magic that would deliver all of us.”

  Alexei nodded. He swallowed. His sister stood and left. He had been warned.

  In the weeks to come, a mood of fear swept through the town like water that boils over the edge of an overheated soup kettle. But as Alexei’s sister quietly went from house to house and spoke of the old ways and how to protect the homes and families, the confusion and terror slowly subsided into a quiet wariness. Time passed, and there were no more attacks. No one seemed suspicious of Alexei, and there was a sense that the town and the outlying farms needed to band together in order to keep the strange nightmare creature at bay.

  At first, only a few families scattered blueberries before their doors and a handful of windows sported a sprig of rue hanging over the windows. But gradually the blueberries appeared before the doors of all the houses and rue—shortly followed by mistletoe—could be seen on all the windowsills, or hanging over the windows of the smaller cottages. Even the entranceways to the barns began to sport the blue spots, mashed into the earth by the men and animals coming and going.

  Alexei wasn’t sure if he resented his grandfather’s apparent suspicion of him or respected his grandfather’s forethought to protect the village by selecting a werewolf to continue his work but also his sister as a “semi-cunning woman” to keep alive minimal knowledge of the old ways required if the werewolf got loose and turned on the townsfolk.

  The blueberries seemed decorative at the beginning. Then they became a mess as people trod on them and mashed them underfoot. Alexei’s wife Grete scattered them at their doorway as well, and he dared not object, afraid that he wou
ld draw unwanted attention and suspicion. But the small berries felt like hot knives piercing his feet, even through the thickest soles of his most sturdy boots. It was agony to walk over them, and he tried to avoid them as much as possible. He would steel himself to enter his own house and found excuses to not enter the homes of his neighbors and relatives.

  The rue and mistletoe were difficult to bear as well. Though with virtually no scent to ordinary folk, Alexei could detect a stench wafting from the evergreens that was even more unbearable than the pain in his feet from the blueberries. The stench of the rue differed from that of the mistletoe, but both were hideous. Either the berries alone or the green sprigs alone would have proven effective at keeping werewolves from the houses, but together, the streets and barnyards became almost unlivable for him. He would try to cover up his gagging on the stench of the rue by pretending to cough. He developed a limp to cover the pain in his feet from the berries. His home, together with the homes of his childhood friends, became intolerable torture chambers. At least, once he entered his own house, he could put his feet up, although he could not escape the assault on his nose and lungs by the magical fragrance of the cuttings from the forest. The effort to simply live a “normal” life was exhausting. Alexei wasn’t sure how long he could maintain the subterfuge.

  One evening, Alexei sat with his feet up and their baby girl in his lap. He tickled her and she cooed gently, flapping her arms with delight. Their two older children, both boys, came up behind him and startled their sister, who shrieked first in surprise and then in mock outrage at her brothers’ behavior. Alexei made faces at them all, holding the baby snugly with one arm while he reached out to snatch the boys by their collars. He half-tumbled from his chair, wrestling one boy to the floor as his fingers found his father’s ribs and tickled Alexei as he had been tickling the baby. The other boy immediately began to tickle his brother, and all of them—Alexei, his sons, and the baby—were all chortling and laughing in a tangle of arms and legs on the floor.

  Grete came into the room to discover furniture pushed aside and her family gasping for breath, each crying out “enough!” even as they continued to tickle and torment the others. Grete scooped up the baby, kissing the little girl on the cheek as the infant reached toward her father and brothers, who continued to roll about on the floor.

  “Whatever shall we do with them?” Grete asked her daughter in a conspiratorial whisper. “Whatever shall we do with these big brutes?” The baby clapped her hands.

  That night, half-asleep in bed, Alexei wished that he could spend all his time playing with the children. He pulled himself closer to Grete as she drifted off to sleep and he was happy. Happy as he had forgotten he could be. The next day he realized that he had forgotten, for at least one evening, the nightmare that his life had otherwise become.

  Alexei took to spending more and more time away from the village proper and from working with others in the fields.

  “You know, don’t you, that everyone else in the village thinks you are so brave to go out alone?” his wife Grete told him. “They say that perhaps—based on your experience with the wolves that attacked you while you were out plowing in the fields—you are going out to hunt down the greater, stranger wolf that attacked you. That attacked you and everyone else.”

  It all felt like such a lie. But a necessary one. How else would he survive? He tried not to think about the coming winter.

  But winter came. As did storms. What of these winter storms? Protecting the town from them had been the reason his grandfather Edvin had given Alexei the wolf skin in the first place. Did he dare to use it now? When the storms did come, he was terrified of using the wolf skin, but was driven to use it on one occasion, when the brewing storm had seemed truly terrible. That time he used the skin, and there had been no problem with maintaining his focus on combating the storm and then freeing himself from the pelt afterwards. But there were other occasions, at least twice, when the scent of distant snow caught his attention and he felt sick. Alexei could feel the realignment of his muscles, the shrinking, warping, stretching of his bones. He retched on the hearth and ran outside. Behind the house, the fearsome magic did its work, but what followed after that remained hazy memories and suppositions. Afterwards, he would find himself miles from home and struggle to walk barefoot through the fields and forests until he reached familiar territory and the blueberries cut his feet again.

  When the weather was clear, he would work alone in certain of the fields or stalk the forests, and the transformation would sweep over him then as well. The first few times, he could sense the impending shapeshifting, detect the distant scents of blood and death, hear a faint wolf cry that was his own voice. Each time he would awake alone, naked, scratched or with blood smeared across his mouth, but with only spotty memories of where he had gone or what he had done while in the guise of the werewolf. The blood all seemed to come from small animals that he had hunted in the forest. Eventually, Alexei lost sense of himself before he could tell that the wolf magic was overtaking him. He would simply find himself awakening and could only guess at what havoc he might have wrought.

  But each time Alexei returned home, his renown as “the great wolf hunter” grew. His wounds were proof of his struggles and his lapses of memory were considered a testimony to the brutality of the struggles he had engaged in. Grete became more proud of his exploits while his sister became more distant. His sister seemed to be waiting, biding her time, and Alexei wondered what other weapons she might have received from their grandfather to use against the suteksäija when it came again.

  The frequency of the transformations would fade for a time, and Alexei dared to hope that life might be returning to normal. But then they would flare up again and he would consider eating blueberries or drinking rue tea.

  “Would that drive the magic from within me?” he wondered. “Or simply kill me?” He was afraid, thought himself too much of a coward to find out.

  Over the coming months, fear subsided in the area and the blueberries on the doorsteps were not renewed so frequently. Rue and mistletoe were allowed to fall off the windowsills and were not replaced. By early summer, life became more livable for him. His family was growing. At home with Grete and their three children, Alexei was happy.

  It was late June. His lonely walks had become much less frequent. Midsummer approached. The celebrations of the solstice were no longer the serious invocations of fertility that they had been but were simply an excuse for the children—and adults!—to stay up late, jump through the bonfire, drink heavily. Boys began courtships and girls would woo the boys they admired, just as Alexei and Grete had flirted with each other across the bonfire. Everyone in the village sang together around the bonfire late into the night. At last, only embers remained and dawn was not far off. Grete and Alexei collected their children, carrying the youngest, and stumbled home.

  As soon as they collapsed into their bed, they found ourselves in each other’s arms. Like youngsters on the first Midsummer after their wedding. Alexei’s lips found Grete’s throat and shoulders. Her hands explored his buttocks and pulled him in, closer and tighter to her. Alexei arched his back, so as to delve more deeply into her, his tongue still caressing her throat and shoulders. Her groin leapt up to meet his.

  Then the nightmare began.

  Alexei remembered that night but could not bring himself to put it into words. He remembered feeling the pins and needles of the wolf fur burst from his back. He recalled how the great tail grew behind him and swirled around Grete’s thighs, curling towards her waist. He saw his arms and hands become forelegs and paws, nails and claws extended. His leg muscles grew taut, pressing his furry stomach down onto his wife and forcing himself into her as she fought against him. He remembered how, even as he attempted to pull his face away, his nose narrowed and grew long. He struggled to not recall how the fangs materialized, already buried deep in Grete’s throat and shoulder, even as his tongue lapped up the blood in savage excitement.

  Th
e noises were confused. Snarls. Cries. She wept in pain and terror. He growled savage commands at her. Sheets ripped. She kicked, her legs flailing. One carved wooden bed leg gave way during the struggle and the heavy bed collapsed with a thud. She tried to scream but could only gargle on the blood that filled her torn throat.

  The baby, across the room, woke and cried for an instant before she was silenced forever. Blood spewed everywhere. Werewolfhood swept over Alexei, and he drowned in it…

  When he finally woke, Alexei was sitting naked on the doorstep of their home, covered in blood. He was rocking back and forth, back and forth, cradling the mangled body of their middle son on his lap. The corpse of the eldest was splayed out on the floor behind him. The blueberries, buried deep in the earth about his door, burned his buttocks but could not dislodge him. He heard wailing somewhere, and it was some time before he realized that the howls emanated from his own throat and that the salt he tasted came now from the tears that coursed down his face, rather than from the blood of others that had coursed down his throat.

  His family was destroyed. His life was over. It would only be a matter of time, perhaps moments, before someone came to the door and discovered the truth. There would be no way now to deny that he was the great werewolf, and his neighbors would all then unite to slay him.

  “Without the cunning woman or someone else that knows the old ways, would they be able to slay me in a manner that will also kill the werewolf?” he mused.

  As he sat there rocking, rocking, he finally lifted his eyes towards the clear summer morning. How long would he be forced to wait for someone to come discover him?