Storm Wolf (28 page)

“Sybilla!” Beatrycze turned on her sister. “How could you be so careless? Don’t you know what the consequences could be on Monday? You could lose your position!”

“What do I care if I lose my position now?” Sybilla wanted to know. “I will be losing my position in a few weeks, in any case!” She took a sip of beer from the mug Benedikt had gotten from the barkeeper.

“That may be so,” Beatrycze agreed, “but Zygmunt or Benedikt could also lose their positions because of your behavior! How would we pay for your wedding then? How would you eat afterwards? How would I eat? You cannot be so selfish or thoughtless, Sybilla!”

Sybilla took Benedikt’s mug of beer and drank it down in front of her sister. “You fuss so, Beatrycze! I may lose my position, but Frau Berhta would never be able to take out her fury with me by having Zygmunt or Benedikt dismissed from the mine! If she had all the men dismissed who answered back to her tonight or are related to a woman who answered her back… why, there would be no one left to work in the mine! Then how would Frau Berhta and her family afford to maintain their fine house and fancy airs? Tell me that! Besides, she was inside the house. How would she know who threw what at her door?” Sybilla wiped the foam from her upper lip with the back of her hand.

“She could have been peering out one of the windows,” Beatrycze reminded her.

“Bah!” Benedikt spoke up. “She was too frightened to stand near a window and risk something being thrown through the window and smashing the glass. She is a coward, as all the Germans are. It is we—the hardworking Poles and Bohemians here—who are the brave men to descend every day into the tunnels of the mine! Not those German overseers!”

Sybilla shook her head and pulled Benedikt away from Beatrycze and Alexei. She and Benedikt melted into the crowd of drinkers. Beatrycze stood staring after them and then shook her head.

Alexei fetched two mugs of beer from the bar and offered one to Beatrycze. She smiled and took it, sipping at the foam atop it.

“Thank you,” she said. “Sybilla has never cared much for what other people think or considered the consequences her actions might bring.”

Drinking songs erupted around them. The angry mood of the crowd seemed to be shifting now that they were inside the tavern, drinking and taunting each other again now. The Polish tunes and words were even louder than the clinking of the mugs of beer or the thuds of the empty mugs against the bar as men demanded more beer to drown their aches and woes in.

Alexei touched his mug to hers and raised it to his lips. “It seems to me that Sybilla is not the only sister of Zygmunt who cares little for what others might think.”

Beatrycze raised one eyebrow at him. “Is that so?” she asked, a small smirk twisting her mouth.

“It seems to me that most people in Silesia would not look kindly on someone who lured wolves into their town or village,” Alexei went on, emboldened by the beer. “They might become angry and drive away a family known to harbor sympathetic thoughts for such animals that kill men, women, children. And yet… and yet you feed a pair of wolves outside your door each morning.”

Beatrycze stared at him and then hastily raised her mug of beer, looking into its depths as she drank.

Alexei leaned in closer to reduce the likelihood of anyone else in the loud tavern overhearing him. “I have seen you, Beatrycze. Your kindness to those wolves made me dare to think you might not drive me away if you found me drinking water from your yard. And I have seen you set aside food in the evening, after supper, that you take into the yard as Zygmunt and I set out for the mine in the morning, and I have seen the wolves slip from the shadows of the forest to eat the food you leave for them.”

Beatrycze continued to drink, seeming to ignore his strange tale.

Alexei stepped back and drank from his own mug.

“Such foolishness!” Beatrycze muttered, her mug empty now. “You cannot always believe what your own eyes think they see, friend Alexei. Remember that!” She gave him back the mug and darted out the door of the tavern.

The women in the tavern soon all found their way to the door. Alexei saw Sybilla snatch a quick kiss from Benedikt and then grab her friend Otylia by the arm. The two women sauntered out. Renia hurried from Zygmunt’s side, joining the flow of ladies back to their homes while the men stayed at the tavern. Soon the drinking songs become rougher and hoarser, the mugs being set down for refilling more frequently.

Not knowing any of the Polish drinking songs, several of the Bohemian men sat together in a corner of the tavern. Alexei saw Benedikt and Ctirad among them. He slowly made his way through the crowd toward the Bohemian men. Some were singing a song in Czech, some were arguing with each other, some were talking and laughing. As he neared them, Alexei raised his mug in a toast; Benedikt, Ctirad, and several of the men raised their mugs to him in return. Many of the faces were familiar to Alexei from his days in the mine, but he had spoken to few of them.

Alexei managed to squeeze into a space on a bench between Benedikt and another man.

“Filip!” the much younger, fair-haired man introduced himself, taking Alexei’s free hand and shaking it vigorously. “I hear that you are called Alexei and come from Estonia, friend.” Filip spoke much better German than Alexei, who struggled to hear him as the carousing and arguing and joking in Polish and Czech overwhelmed his ears.

“Yes,” Alexei agreed. Both men clinked their mugs together and drank.

Benedikt said something that Alexei couldn’t quite hear over the other voices and then turned to speak in Czech to another man. Alexei turned his attention back to Filip.

“This beer is swill,” Filip told him. He lifted his mug and drank, nonetheless. “Compared to the beer back home. Bohemian beer is the best in the world. How does this compare to the beer in Estonia?”

“It is not so bad,” Alexei insisted. “Maybe not what I was used to drinking in Estonia, but not bad. Besides, the singing and jokes should make up for anything lacking in the beer.” He gestured with his mug to the men around them.

“Maybe so. What tales and songs do you hear in the taverns of Estonia?” Filip wanted to know.

Alexei grinned, recalling the nights he had spent drinking among his friends back in Estonia. “Ah, my friend Filip, in Estonia we sing about… We sing about a bird that lays three eggs that become the sun, the moon, and the earth. We sing about the land, the deer, the wine!” Both men laughed.

“We sing likewise,” Filip agreed. “As you can hear, our Bohemian drinking songs far surpass the Polish drinking songs.” Lifting his mug to his lips again, he nodded at a group of men singing in Polish. “What tales do you tell?”

“What tales?” Alexei repeated the question, unsure that he had  understood correctly and growing uncomfortable with young Filip’s insistence that everything Bohemian was the best. “We tell tales about… about a young maiden who weds a star, about a mighty ox who cannot be slain by even the greatest heroes, about Mother Twilight and her spinning wheel.”

Filip nodded. “We tell tales about Vodník who lives in the streams and ponds and who drowns his victims to keep their souls. Or the troll who lives under the Charles Bridge in Prague and who rules the dead whose bodies are in the river. We tell about the devils that lurk among the crops and the trees. We tell tales about the witches that steal naughty children at noontime and twilight.”

Alexei drank from his mug, thinking about the stories he had both heard and told. He wanted to win this contest with Filip by reporting an Estonian tale that he was sure the Bohemian miner had not heard the like of. “We tell tales about the men who become wolves and fly through the air to drive away the storms that would destroy the crops.”

“Men who become wolves who fly?” Filip exclaimed, apparently impressed for once by something that was not Bohemian. “Now that would be an amazing sight. Or an amazing tale.” He looked at Alexei expectantly over the rim of his mug. “How would a man become such a wolf?”

“They are very old tales and many of the details have been forgotten, I fear.” Alexei was worried that he had perhaps said too much already. It had been a mistake to try to impress Filip. Would his grandfather pay him a spectral visit in the night, chiding him for disclosing such things? But the beer in his mug made it difficult to stop talking. “As I recall, he puts on a wolf pelt that has been steeped with magic salves,” Alexei told his drinking partner.

“And how would a man come by such a pelt?” Filip nudged Alexei in the ribs. “Perhaps some beautiful young enchantress or nymph would seduce him and share such a secret? There must be new tales to tell of such men as new pelts are made and shared among the farmers, yes?”

“It used to be that one of our old women would know the salves and herbs to use,” Alexei answered Filip. He hung his head as he continued, “But I think those old women are all dead now. The women of Estonia have all forgotten how to make such magical pelts, so there are no new pelts to put on or new tales to tell.”

Filip tossed his head back and roared with laughter. “Then the old women of Estonia had best pay a visit to the magicians and wizards of Prague, my friend! They still know all the old secrets and practice the magic of our Bohemian forefathers!” Filip kept laughing. “The old women of Estonia are sad enchantresses indeed if they have forgotten such important things as making wolf pelts that can transform men into flying wolves!”

“Prague?” asked Alexei. “The magicians of Prague might know of such wolf magic?”

“I am certain of it,” boasted Filip, his words slurring. “The magicians and wizards of beautiful Prague know all that there is to know about magic! They would put the old women of your Estonia to shame, my friend! To shame!” He lifted his mug again and frowned. It was empty.

Alexei’s heart was racing. “And where is Prague from here, my friend? Perhaps I should pay one of these magicians a visit and put them to the test… see if they do indeed put the old women of Estonia to shame, or if perhaps the old women of Estonia would shame them!” Both men laughed.

“Prague? It is slightly to the south of here and then west,” Filip said at last, pushing himself up to take his mug back to the bartender for another refilling.

South? Then west? Had arrogant Filip, boasting about his home, given him the answer he had been looking for? Had his grandfather meant for him to find the magicians of Prague all along? He lifted the mug and downed what was left in a long swallow.

Alexei pushed himself up from the bench to stagger after Filip through the crowd to the bartender. This news deserved a celebratory mug!

The next morning Alexei felt his head splitting, unsure how or when he had made his way from the tavern back to the home of Zygmunt, Sybilla, and Beatrycze. He was lying atop the pallet and blankets they had loaned him in the room where Zygmunt slept. In the darkness, he could hear Zygmunt snoring. At least he had no recollections of blood in the night. Only beer.

Now that he was awake, Alexei felt the urgent need to relieve himself. He swung his feet from the pallet onto the floor and breathed deeply for a few minutes to steady his swimming head before attempting to stand. His stomach quivered. He needed to get to the outhouse. Quickly. He stumbled across the room and into the parlor.

Although the sleeping quarters he shared with Zygmunt were dark, thanks to the heavy curtains on the windows, here in the parlor the first light of Sunday dawn was gently illuminating the room. He reached out to steady himself against the table and then lurched towards the door out into the yard.

Stepping onto the porch, he nearly tumbled over Beatrycze, who was bending over to set out a pot of the leftovers from dinner the night before. The two wolves that had been crouching at the edge of the steps, startled by Alexei, leaped to their feet and ran off across the yard and into the trees beyond.

Beatrycze jumped up, knocking over the food she had been setting out, and pushed Alexei away from her. He caught himself on the railing that surrounded the porch, all thought of getting to the latrine gone now.

“What are you doing out here ?” Beatrycze demanded, her voice a quiet hiss to avoid waking anyone else.

“What am I doing?” Alexei retorted. “I needed to relieve myself after all the beer last night.” He rubbed his aching temples. “What are you doing? Why are you feeding that pair of wolves?”

Beatrycze blushed, unable to deny in the morning light what Alexei had unwittingly interrupted.

“I feed those wolves so they will not need to kill to eat,” she said at last, looking away from Alexei as if ashamed to admit it. “They may need to kill from time to time, but I try to reduce their need—and certainly so they never become so hungry as to kill anyone from the village.” She looked into this eyes. “Especially over the winter. I could never forgive myself if they had been driven to kill someone when there was so little other food for them.”

Alexei tried to understand what she was telling him, even though the German words were perfectly clear. “You fed the wolves over the winter so they would not kill any of the miners or women from the village? Are you mad? The wolves would have simply left the area if there was nothing for them to eat in the woods.”

“No, these two wolves would not have left.” Beatrycze sighed. She sat down on the railing next to Alexei.

“How do you know what they would have done?” Alexei stared at her.