Werelord Thal: A Renaissance Werewolf Tale (30 page)

She drew courage from the warm sunny day.
Birds were singing and in the distance she could still hear
children playing. An empty hill was nothing to fear. Altea
continued up the half forgotten path toward the cottage where
Gretchen had lived.

“Oh!” she cried sadly when she saw the burnt
out rafters and blackened stucco walls. The thatch was all gone
except for some singed chunks on the ground. The fire had burnt
part of the big old tree that shaded the cottage. A wound of
blackened branches undercut the remaining green crown.

At the threshold she hesitated for a long
time. Ashes spilled out the charred door frame. Rain had left
little indentations across the ashes. Inside only black hunks
remained of Gretchen’s meager furnishings.

Looking over the sad ruin, Altea scolded
herself for her stupid adventure. Her nagging curiosity about
Gretchen’s witchcraft had compelled her to come out here. She had
wondered if she could find some magic relic. Mostly Altea had
needed to convince herself that Gretchen had indeed been evil as
everyone now claimed.

Altea was about to step over the threshold
when she noticed boot prints in the ashes. There were more tracks
throughout the cottage along with the paw prints of a small dog.
She supposed the neighbors had looted pots and pans, and she
expected to find nothing left of value.

Cautiously she stepped inside. The collapsed
roof left the cottage open to the sky. Altea recognized the
arrangement of charred furniture. The bench and table in front of
the single window. The chair in front of the hearth. The cot where
an old woman had curled up to sleep alone every night.

While growing up Altea had come here several
times a year with her mother. For every pregnancy her mother had
come to consult with Gretchen. She had sometimes traded for
medicinal herbs, especially for her young boys. Seeing the cottage
in ruin emphasized the loss of her mother. A nostalgic wave of pain
hit her. How she wished her mother was alive and everything was as
it had been.

Many times Altea had sat with her mother and
Gretchen and sipped tea that tasted like flowers. She had listened
to the women talk and learned about the mysteries of womanhood that
would be hers to experience someday.

Altea rushed out of the cottage. Her plan to
poke through Gretchen’s things struck her as nearly sacrilegious
now. Yet she lingered and went to the southern side of the
building. The herb garden was trampled and a few of the larger
bushes uprooted. Altea remembered when the spot had been lush and
blooming. Gretchen had crafted her medicines from her clever
harvesting. Although Altea was generally a healthy person, once she
had fallen ill with a bad cough and Gretchen had concocted a
relieving poultice for her chest. Altea had trouble reconciling the
helpfulness of that medicine with the witchcraft that Gretchen had
died for.

She rubbed her forehead, fighting her
confusion. Only now she understood that she had come to this place
to privately pay respects to a woman now officially reviled. She
owed it to her mother to give that condemned woman some passing
regard.

Altea kneeled and fingered a trampled
Valerian plant that was sending up some fresh shoots. She supposed
the Constable’s men had needed to destroy this place of witchery,
but the little sign of resilience cracked her control and tears
spilled down her cheeks. With her mother gone, she felt like the
little green shoots beside broken branches.

She cried. She missed her mother and missed
Gretchen too. The old woman had been there her whole life. She had
been so old as to seem undying, but now she was gone. If she were
here now she would pat Altea on the head and say something weird to
make her laugh.

Altea sobbed harder and grabbed a cloth out
of her basket to wipe her nose.

“Do you cry for the woman who lived
here?”

Altea screamed and jumped to her feet. Her
handkerchief fluttered to the ground. She whirled and looked upon a
man. A small brown and white dog was wagging at his heels.

Her next scream caught in her throat. Her
body shook with the urge to flee, but the strangeness of the man
trapped her curiosity. His striking eyes reached inside her. They
were bright, a little sad, very alert, and fixed on her with a
force she had never felt before. It was not the common lust of
crude men that was flung at women in the streets. This man was
beholding her.

“Did you know her?” the man asked.

“Gretchen,” she sputtered, finding herself
barely able to speak. Her mind raced for her next action. She
worried that running away would be an invitation to chase. As long
as he stayed back, perhaps she could walk away. Slowly she squatted
and picked up her handkerchief.

“Gretchen,” the man whispered. He looked down
as if forgetting Altea. She edged away a step. He did not seem to
notice so she started walking away.

“Miss,” he called.

Altea did not turn back. She did not want to
look at him again. If she did that she might not be able to stop
looking at him.

“I’m Thal. Thal Lesky!” he called.

Altea kept walking. Then the little dog
trotted up next to her. She looked down before she could stop
herself. The canine’s perky ears popped up as if begging her to
please listen to his friend.

“She was my mother!” he called.

Altea faltered and then stopped. The pain
that had cracked through his voice had been too much for her to
ignore. The vibration of his agony still resonated in her
chest.

Slowly she looked back. He was still standing
where she had left him on the edge of the herb garden.

“Hello, Miss,” he said.

His voice warmed Altea. Its rich sound seemed
distinct from other men. His courteous greeting loosened her knot
of fear. She studied him. An auburn goatee set off his attractive
face. He took off his hat. His reddish brown hair glinted in the
sun. It was wavy and a little unruly. It gleamed with luxuriant
health. His strong lean chest was exposed by his shirt hanging open
on the warm day. The smooth lines of his pectorals scattered her
thoughts. Willfully she resisted the distraction of his
masculinity. Her eyes widened when she noticed the pistol angled
inside his belt.

She looked back at his face as if she could
not believe that he had beguiled her at all, and then Altea saw it!
Gretchen’s strong nose and high brow. Old age and wrinkles had not
obscured Gretchen’s features entirely, and Altea recognized the
kinship in Thal.

“What did you say your name was?” Altea
said.

“Thal Lesky,” he said.

She stared at him, trying to convince herself
that he did not look like Gretchen.

“The woman who lived here was my mother,”
Thal said. Looking over the ruins, he whispered, “I remember the
place well now.”

Altea shook her head. Thal was her age.
“You’re too young. You can’t be her son,” she said.

Her statement confused him. He touched his
cheek as if to confirm that his skin was young and smooth.

“She was an old woman. The oldest woman I
knew,” Altea said.

He looked around as if the truth were closing
in on him, and Altea began to wonder if he was stricken with
delusions. Gretchen had never mentioned having children, but Altea
had never asked her either.

“I have to go,” she announced and started
walking away again.

The man shook off his confusion and followed.
“Please wait. How did you know Gretchen? What were you doing
here?”

She walked faster.

“What happened to her?!” Thal demanded.

Again Altea pitied his agony. If he was some
long lost son of Gretchen’s and just returned to Prague, then he
would be baffled and alarmed.

She turned around. He stopped a few paces
away. His terrible anticipation for her answer pained her.

“I’m so sorry. She has died,” Altea made
herself say. Her generic words entirely avoided the true horror of
her demise.

His hat slid from his hand. Fury and grief
rippled across his face, transforming it with savage intensity.
Altea’s instincts quaked with warning. The immensity of his
emotions bulged against the cage of his self control. She wanted to
run away, but to leave after giving him such awful news was
intolerably rude.

Blinking his eyes and looking away, Thal
said, “She died of old age?”

Obviously he wished for her fate to be so
normal, and Altea wanted to lie to him, but her hesitation made him
suspicious. Slowly his eyes turned on her with the promise that he
always knew truth from falsehood.

“I’m so sorry,” Altea whispered.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

She struggled to find the words. Her wit that
was normally so quick-footed was stuck in mud.

“Where is she buried?” Thal pressed.

“She’s not,” Altea confessed.

“Everyone is buried,” he argued.

“Not witches! Her ashes were dumped in the
river,” Altea moaned.

“She did not die in this place,” Thal said
and pointed back at the burned out cottage.

Altea realized that he thought she meant that
Gretchen had died in the house fire. “A witch. Everyone said she
was a witch. The Court condemned her and she was killed in the
square,” Altea said quietly.

She watched the man go cold, frozen by the
ugly monstrous truth.

“Who did that to her?” he asked with enormous
seriousness simmering with brutal intent.

Altea’s mouth fell open. How could anyone do
what had been done to Gretchen? That was the great question. It had
been boring through Altea’s guts since the execution. She knew who
had done it but would she ever understand how?

“Who did it?” Thal hissed.

Altea whirled away from him and ran. She ran
faster than she had ever run before. The little dog yipped at her
heels but then relented and fell behind. She sped down the hill and
rounded the bend. The city’s towers and chimneys and walls filled
her view and welcomed back its daughter that had dared to tread
beyond the walls.

Pistol ran back to Thal and whined.

“We’ll track her soon,” he whispered.

Woodenly he retrieved his hat from the dirt.
He brushed it off and put it back on. As the brim shaded his eyes
tears fell. He looked back at the cottage where he had last seen
his mother. After arriving in Prague yesterday, he had remembered
the place. The desolate ruin had punished him for taking so long to
get here. Perhaps he could have saved her.

He had spent the morning following a cold
trail that bore her scent. After losing it quite a distance from
the city he had come back to start over when he heard the young
woman in the house.

My mother was burned at the stake.

He shuddered. Captain Jan had threatened him
with the cleansing fire. Thal hated himself for not protecting her,
but he had been a wolf in the forest. He had chosen the forest and
left the world of men behind. Left his mother behind. The poignant
memory of their parting came back to him. Her smile had been sad. A
little snip of hair to remember him by had been all she asked.

But this world had come back for him. Had his
mother summoned him? Who else could have had the power except for
she who had born him?

He collapsed to his knees and clutched his
head. His mother was dead! Burned alive in front of a crowd. She
did not deserve that. Those who had done it would pay. This
certainty hardened inside his heart like hot bronze cooling inside
a mold. That was why he was here. She had called him back from the
forest for this terrible purpose. But why had she not used her
power to defend herself? Perhaps she could not. Thal could not
recall seeing her ever hurt anything. She had always made him
slaughter the rabbits and chickens.

He rocked from side to side groaning with
grief. His longing to see his mother would never be fulfilled. He
could not even visit her grave. Any answers she might have been
able to give him were out of reach just like her ashes in the
river. Not even bones could he find. Nothing.

Too long he had been gone. The years had
slipped away in the timeless forest. Thal looked up at the closest
tree. It was a marvelous oak with spreading branches and a shapely
crown. He had last looked upon that tree when it was little better
than a sapling. He had gripped its slender trunk and spun around it
at play. Now it was fat with the growth of many rings. He had been
gone for decades. That was why the young woman had said he was too
young to be Gretchen’s son. And Gretchen had apparently lived a
long time. Had she been happy all those years alone? He hoped so.
Obviously some people had cared for her. That young woman crying in
the garden was proof of that.

But why had this community turned on her so
drastically? She had always been called witch, but not everyone had
reviled her. Some people had valued her. And now that Thal was home
he remembered better his juvenile years spent with her in Prague.
His earlier years when they had been with his father remained a
foggy mess, but the gentle kindness of his mother came back to him
with clarity. She had raised him to be thoughtful and generous. She
had always insisted that he not fight with the other boys, even
when they attacked him. Flexing his hands, he understood now that
it was because he was stronger than them. He could have hurt them
or worse.

He was going to hurt people now. It would not
be the flaring violence of self defense as it had been with the
bandits. Nor would it be the hunt for food that was normal and
right. He would descend into that predatory state special to
mankind and do the dark work of revenge. His heart settled upon his
duty with an unquestioning lack of debate.

Thal stood up. He trembled from the strain of
his grief that was still far from expressed. He returned to the
cold trail that led down the back side of the hill away from the
city. He examined the traces of scent left by those who had pursued
his mother. The evidence of the chase was almost gone, washed away
by rain and time, but he still gathered a few scents that he could
hope to recognize again.