Storm Wolf Read online

  The words were quiet and Alexei could not understand even the ones he could make out. A few he thought he recognized from having heard other farmhands speaking to each other, so he guessed she must be singing in Latvian. But what the words were, he had no idea.

  The smell of the Master’s pipe grew stronger. The tobacco smoke seemed caught in the melody, slinking and slipping and twisting in the air like a snake. But Alexei caught another scent in the air as well, a scent growing stronger as the song went on. It was the sickly smell of magic being twisted and perverted to do something that it had never been meant to be used for. That smell, twisting in the air with the scent of the tobacco smoke, nauseated Alexei. He swallowed, trying not to vomit what little he had eaten with Spīdala earlier that night, but kept his eyes on it, mesmerized by the smoke serpent’s movement.

  The tobacco smoke undulated in the air above them as it grew thicker and longer, more smoke coming from the Master’s pipe than Alexei had thought one pipe of tobacco could ever produce. The smoke serpent curled about above them, and Alexei tilted his head back so he could watch it coalesce, until Spīdala’s hand, still clutching his ear, touched the fur between his shoulders. Spīdala bent her own head back to see the smoke serpent and reached toward it with her free hand.

  Sparks of brilliant scarlet popped within the smoke serpent all along its length, and with each tiny burst of color, the serpent’s undulations paused and the color seeped into the silver-white cords of smoke. Gradually the scarlet suffused the entire smoke serpent, and it hung suspended above them, its serpentine form complete at last. Its head clasped its tail in its mouth, and Alexei could clearly see the scarlet scales that sheathed its now still form.

  Spīdala kept singing her quiet song another moment, and then her words stopped, her voice stilled.

  The serpent opened its mouth and the tail slipped from between its now visible fangs. Raging flames shot from its throat and plumes of smoke twisted up from its nostrils. Spīdala pointed to the ground at her feet, and the great length of its body unfurled behind it as it slithered down until it hovered before Spīdala.

  The dragon’s forked tongue flicked in and out between its fangs as it tasted Spīdala’s breath. Its eyes glittered like deep red jewels and its nostrils quivered as occasional wisps of smoke still curled up into the night. Alexei thought the beast was peering into Spīdala’s eyes as if waiting for instructions of some kind. Would it attack Spīdala? He was not sure if he should fear the dragon that she had called forth from the Master’s pipe smoke, but he felt his muscles tensing as he involuntarily prepared himself to leap into the air to fight the dragon. The beast appeared a wild thing, not a tame one, and he was ready to protect Spīdala if need be.

  “Pūķis,” Spīdala addressed it, and it seemed to recognize its name. Its great serpentlike head nodded to acknowledge Spīdala.

  Spīdala began to sing again, a new melody that rang harsh and domineering in Alexei’s ears as she pointed to the roof of the house. The dragon hung there, continuing to peer into Spīdala’s face and tasting her breath with quick laps of its tongue. Then it inclined its great head and seemed again to nod in acknowledgement of its creator before crawling back up into the air, its body curling around them above their heads.

  Fire burst from its mouth again and Spīdala continued to sing. Alexei saw that the Master was still calmly smoking his pipe, only now the wisps of tobacco smoke simply hung in the air around his shoulders as he kept puffing away at the pipe’s stem clenched between his teeth.

  Fire flickered along the edges of the dragon’s tongue, and then the pūķis was gone, flowing into the house under the eaves as if it were again smoke crawling through the cracks between the rough boards that made the walls and rafters.

  Spīdala continued to sing, her one hand still stretched out toward the house as the other continued to clutch Alexei’s ear. He wondered if she might send the dragon against the Master when it returned. Would the dragon be able to free them from the Master of Wolves?

  Spīdala kept singing quietly for what seemed most of the night. Alexei wanted to lie down on the ground beside her, but she continued to hold his ear and he was afraid that if he moved, it would disturb the spell, and he was reluctant to discover what the Master might do to the girl as a consequence. So he continued to stand beside his friend, watching the dark and silent house.

  Finally Alexei thought he saw a flicker in a window, as if someone were walking through the house holding a candle. The window near the eaves went dark again, but the fire flickered momentarily in the next window. And then the next. And then the dragon started to clamber out of the chimney, having apparently grown stubby legs to pull itself up with.

  Flames flitted from the dragon’s open jaws, the smoke curling from its nostrils, as it hoisted itself out of the chimney and crawled along the top of the roof. Its great body kept coming and coming and coming out of the chimney, and the beast wound its way around and around on the rooftop, its red eyes glinting in the night like coals on a hearth.

  Alexei pulled up one of his great paws to wipe his eyes. Was it the light or were the dragon’s scales now a deep, rich blue, the hue of early dawn or last dusk? He wiped his eyes again and was sure of it. The dragon, which had been scarlet when it entered the house, was now blue.

  The other difference, Alexei now realized, was that the dragon was much fatter than when it had slid into the house under the eaves. Its body was bulky and awkward, no longer the elegant length of scarlet-hued serpentine rope that it had been before. It was blue and fat, though he would not have known that it was any different from its previous state if he had not seen it before it creeped under the eaves. The dragon crawled along the roof, the claws of its new stubby legs clicking and scratching the tiles making up the house’s roof.

  Finally the last of its blue tail popped out of the chimney, causing a ripple to shimmy along the length of the dragon’s body. Leaving the rooftop behind it, the dragon made its way through the air toward Spīdala. Alexei was sure that the creature was grinning, its forked tongue darting from side to side as occasional wisps of flame escaped its lips.

  Spīdala stopped singing. The night was silent. No crickets chirped. No birds stirred or sang to greet the coming morning. Everything seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what the dragon would do next.

  The dragon stopped before Spīdala, its face hovering directly in front of hers. Its tongue continued to flick from side to side as if waiting for the invitation to lick Spīdala’s face. Alexei looked up at Spīdala’s face and saw the disgust written across it. He saw her look across the yard to the Master of Wolves and he saw the Master nod in acknowledgment as he pulled his leather satchel from the porch. He drew back the flap that kept it shut.

  Spīdala began to sing again and gestured toward the Master. The dragon turned and looked over its shoulder at the Master, its tongue continually flicking in and out, in and out of its jaws. It turned back to Spīdala, nodded, though Alexei was sure the smile was gone, and then twisted around and clumsily made its way through the air to the Master, trailing curls of fire and smoke behind it.

  Reaching the Master, the dragon hoisted itself into the air at an angle so that its mouth was over the Master’s open satchel and its body arched into the air behind it.

  Alexei saw the dragon’s midsection shake and quiver. He heard rumblings as might be heard from a man who had severely overeaten at a feast. Then the dragon began to regurgitate.

  The beast heaved and retched, smoke belching from its nostrils. It cried and groaned. Alexei wanted to look away but was fascinated. Was the dragon about to vomit fire and destroy the Master? Why was the Master sitting there so patiently, with his open satchel waiting? Did the Master want the dragon’s vomit for some reason? Where were the coins and the jewels and the valuables the Master had told Spīdala that he wanted?

  Then Alexei saw them. The dragon regurgitated handfuls of jewels and coins and pewter candlesticks into the Master’s waiting satchel. The satc
hel sat there, growing fat and heavy, but never full. Wave after wave of sickness shook the dragon, and handful after handful of valuables tumbled from its throat into the Master’s satchel.

  Alexei also realized that the blue scales near the dragon’s hindmost legs had begun to turn scarlet again, the deep majestic blue fading into the brilliant red that the dragon had displayed at first. As the heaving continued to rack the dragon’s body, the scales continued to change color, the scarlet creeping back along the length of the dragon’s tail towards its mouth. The wider girth of the dragon’s body and its stubby legs that Alexei had observed were gradually subsiding as well. By the time the dragon was done vomiting the household valuables it had consumed in the farmer’s house, its body was again a brilliant-scarlet length of rope.

  Spīdala kept singing, but the melody changed key and the words took on a melancholy air. The dragon made an obeisance to the Master and slid gracefully back to Spīdala, to whom it also made a reverence. Then it slid into the air and dissolved into clouds of tobacco smoke again, which hung in the air, the heavy smell again making Alexei’s wolf stomach turn over and want to dry heave, just as he had seen the dragon heave into the Master’s satchel.

  The Master closed his satchel and swung the heavy bag back over his shoulder. He knocked his pipe against the porch railings and the cold ashes fell onto the ground before he slipped it back under his cloak. Taking hold of his crutch again, the Master limped toward Spīdala and Alexei.

  Spīdala stopped singing. The tobacco smoke had dispersed, leaving only the smells of sour magic and too much tobacco lingering in the air. A bird twittered somewhere nearby, and in a moment, a flock of birds was noisily greeting the fresh streaks of rosy light climbing up from the eastern horizon.

  “Take us back, vilkatis,” instructed the Master. He swatted at Alexei’s side with his crutch, and Alexei crouched down so that the Master and Spīdala could climb onto his back again. He climbed up into the air, feeling the new weight of all that the dragon had deposited in the Master’s satchel. Alexei had a hard time making his way back over the trees, carrying the stolen goods as well as the weight of the Master and the young woman. The Master kicked his ribs only once or twice, apparently content to go back more slowly than they had arrived. But the night was quickly fading and was gone by the time they arrived back at the barn where they had begun their excursion the night before.

  The farmhands were making their way into the fields as Spīdala and the Master climbed off Alexei’s back.

  “Go!” barked the Master, pointing into the barn and up toward the hayloft with his crutch. Then he turned and hobbled away, seeming to struggle only slightly under the weight of the goods in his satchel as he made his way into the shadows of the forest.

  Spīdala spat at the Master’s footprints. Then she and Alexei made their way into the hayloft to sleep away the morning.

  The Master of Wolves came again for Spīdala and Alexei two evenings later. They had been sleeping during the day in the hayloft and coming out at dusk each evening to find what berries they could in the forest and to drink from the farmyard well after all the farmhands were asleep. Once, Alexei had seen Spīdala pluck a stem or two of a frothy-budded herb and hide it in a pocket beneath her apron, but she never said what it was or why she had kept it. Each evening, as they walked, she told Alexei about her childhood, the songs and spells her mother had taught her, and the tales of the Latvian countryfolk her grandmother had told her each evening. Every story made him more hopeful that she might be the one able to free him from the wolf magic that had driven him from his home, but he could not think of how to express all he wanted so long as he was trapped in his wolf shape by the Master of Wolves.

  “But, then again,” he thought, “she overheard my conversation with the Master of Wolves. She saw me transform from wolf to man and back again. If she knew how to set me free, she would.” He was sure of that. He would do anything he could if he thought it would free her from the Master and he knew that she would do the same for him. They were both trapped by the wiles of the Master. At least for now.

  But as they prepared to set out into the forest that night, the Master hobbled out of the forest towards them.

  “Spīdala! Vilkatis! I’m so glad that I found you here.” The Master chortled as they stood in the doorway of the barn. “I have another errand for you both this evening! Are you ready?”

  “Do we have a choice?” Spīdala snapped at their captor. “Would it make a difference if I told you no, we are not ready for another errand?”

  The Master chuckled and shook his head. “No, I am afraid it would not truly make any difference to me,” he agreed. “The errand must be done, whether you are ready to do as I instruct or not.” He reached into his satchel and pulled out a smaller bag, which he gave to Spīdala. “However, I do have this for you before we set out.”

  Spīdala took the bag and peered into it, suspicious of what the Master might be handing her. She reached into the homespun sack and pulled out a small loaf and a chunk of cheese as well as a piece of sausage.

  “You must keep up your strength, Spīdala,” the Master instructed her. “Sit and eat—but save the first bite of the bread, cheese, and sausage for the pūķis that you must call again when we reach our destination.”

  “And what of the vilkatis? Is there no food for him?” Spīdala wanted to know.

  “Our friend here, my child the werewolf, knows what he has my permission to eat,” the Master reminded her with a sly wink of his one good eye. “He can eat whensoever he wishes. The choice is entirely up to him. In the meantime, he shall have nothing from my satchel.” He leaned against the wall of the barn. “Sit. Eat what I have brought you. Or not. It is no concern of mine. You are not hungry, perhaps? Then we can begin our errand all the sooner.”

  Spīdala stood in a silent rage at the Master. “No,” she said at last, turning and settling down on a milk stool near one of the empty stalls. “I am hungry. I will eat before we set out on this… this errand of yours.” She bit off a piece of the sausage.

  “Save the first bite!” the Master barked at her and she spat the mouthful of sausage into the cloth bag she still held. Alexei trotted to her side and lay down on the ground beside her, grateful that she had thought to speak up for him and ask for a bite of food on his behalf. He was not surprised that the Master had denied her request, but he was grateful that she had made it all the same. “How can I ask her if she can free me from the wolf magic?” he asked himself again, watching her eat and glad that the Master had brought food for his friend, if not for him.

  Spīdala chewed in silence, consuming the rest of the sausage and then the bread and the cheese, careful always to spit the first bite of each back into the bag spread out on her lap like a small tablecloth, as if for a festive dinner. She seemed in no great hurry to finish her supper and be on their way to do the Master’s errand, but she was finished at last and stood, brushing the crumbs from her lap. Alexei stood as well and faced the Master.

  “We are ready,” Spīdala announced.

  “At last. I am glad to hear it,” the Master snarled, pushing himself away from the barn wall, resting his weight again on the crutch under his arm. He pointed to the ground before him. “Come here, vilkatis, so that you can carry Spīdala and myself to our destination.”

  Alexei slunk over to the Master, not wanting to carry the Master anywhere but afraid of how the Master might punish them if he refused. Spīdala followed him, clutching the cloth bag with the three bites of bread, sausage, and cheese within it.

  “After you, my child,” the Master said to Spīdala, making a grand display of his good manners, bowing before her and Alexei. Alexei lowered himself so that Spīdala could climb aboard his shoulders as she had before, and then the Master climbed atop Alexei behind her. Spīdala held his ears, as before, and the Master wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her back against his chest as he settled his crutch across her lap and then held it with there with his hands on each
of her hips.

  “You may climb above the forest now, vilkatis,” the Master instructed Alexei, and the great werewolf rose up and trotted into the air above the trees. Following the Master’s instructions, conveyed by short verbal directives and sharp kicks to his ribs, Alexei carried the Master and Spīdala into the night sky and across the forest towards the south.

  After what seemed an eternity, the Master pointed with one hand to a set of barns on an estate below. “There!” he directed Alexei. “That is our destination!” Alexei climbed down from the sky and knelt, allowing Spīdala and the Master to slide off him and stand on the ground before the barns.

  “Now call the pūķis again, child,” the Master instructed Spīdala. “And feed it the first bites of your supper or else he might be angry.” The Master hobbled to a fence along the edge of the barnyard and sat down on it, pulling his pipe and tobacco from the folds of his cloak and, striking his flint and setting the tobacco alight, beginning to puff away as he had before.

  Spīdala reached out to Alexei, who sat down on his haunches beside her. She wrapped one hand in the thick fur between his shoulders as she kept the bag with the bits of food in her other. She glared in the dark at the Master, the milky white of his blind eye almost the only visible part of him in the glow of his pipe. Alexei could hear him quietly puff away on the pipe, its stem clenched between his teeth, as the clouds of tobacco smoke and its scent drifted across the barnyard.

  “We do not have all night,” the Master said quietly, pulling the pipe from his teeth. “Call the pūķis, child. Or do you wish to see me angry?” Alexei could hear the quiet crunch of the Master’s teeth settling around the stem of the pipe again.

  Spīdala stood another moment, sullen and silent in the dark. Then Alexei heard the song begin, ever so quietly, just as she had sung it before. Again, the smoke gathered and the brilliant scarlet dragon emerged from its depths, crawling through the air to Spīdala. The flames and trails of smoke from its jaws and nostrils illuminated the barnyard in flashes. Alexei could see the hunger in the dragon’s eyes as its tongue darted out, this way and that, as it came to a stop just before Spīdala.