Storm Wolf (32 page)

“I do agree, Frau Berhta,” she said at last. “It was a kind and decent thing for you to come to my wedding feast to offer your apologies.”

Alexei heard nearly everyone in the tavern catch their breath. He suspected that few had ever spoken to Frau Berhta in this way, in public, before.

“Oh, no, child,” Frau Berhta chided Sybilla. “I did not come to apologize, for I have nothing to apologize for. I came so that you might apologize to me, an old and unjustly maligned woman, and start your married life out properly with no animosity and a healthy respect for your elders. Your betters.”

The mug of beer flew from Sybilla’s hand toward Fray Berhta before she even seemed to consciously throw it. It smashed on the floor, splashing beer on the hem of Frau Berhta’s dress and shoes.

“Me? Apologize to you?” roared Sybilla, shaking with fury. She leaned forward, resting her knuckles on the tabletop. “How dare you… on my wedding day… come here and expect me to apologize to you, when you… you were the one—!”

Benedikt rested his hand on his bride’s shoulder and gently pulled her back. “Frau Berhta,” he began, clearly struggling to think of something to say.

“He’s afraid the old woman will demand that all the men here be fired,” Alexei realized. “She’ll want the men to choose between her and the bride at her own wedding.”

“Get out!” Sybilla wrenched her shoulder out from under her new husband’s hand. “Get out!” she demanded again.

“Of course I will go,” Frau Berhta answered, so sweetly that it sent shivers down Alexei’s spine. “I was never one to stay where I was not welcome. I simply came to offer you a chance to make your peace with me, child. If you do not choose to begin your new life properly, well then. What can an old woman do about that?” She turned and made her way back towards the door, dragging her twisted foot behind her. “I thought that you Poles and Silesians would have greater expectations of yourselves… and of each other.” She cast her eyes over the wedding guests. “I had thought that the girl would behave properly, if only because it was expected of her by the rest of you. But I can see that I was mistaken. I was foolish to expect good German manners from a rabble such as this.”

She stepped out the door and another mug of beer came sailing through the air, smashing against the door as it swung closed.

Frau Berhta paused outside the tavern. She heard the mug smash against the door behind her and then the guests all break out into a confused thunder, all talking together at once. Musicians struck up a tune to distract the guests and restore the festive mood. She slowly made her way across the square to the church.

“It will be quite some time before they come out,” she calculated to herself. “Shall I wait here?” Her old bones would be much more comfortable at home. There was no denying that. She thought a moment.

“There’s little chance anyone will find it,” she decided. “And even less chance that anyone will take it somewhere. It will be safe. I can return later to fetch it.” She headed off towards her own front door.

The wedding festivities gradually resumed. Frau Berhta’s appearance and Sybilla’s outburst seemed to be forgotten as the guests began to eat and drink again, singing and even getting up to push back some of the chairs and tables to make room for dancing. Eventually Sybilla sat down again and laughed about “the crazy old woman who expected me to apologize to her!”

Alexei observed that Benedikt also seemed to relax between the toasts and the ribald jokes. At least Frau Berhta had not demanded that the miners all leave the wedding if they wished to keep their jobs. Alexei feared that there would be other repercussions of the argument between the old woman and Sybilla, but those could be faced another day. The worst had passed, at least for now.

Finally Benedikt took Sybilla’s hand and stood. A cheer went up.

“My friends,” Benedikt announced, “as much as I would like to stay and continue drinking with you, I am afraid that my bride and I are tired and that the time has come for us to bid you a good night!”

“Tired? I don’t doubt it! But you’ll be even more tired in the morning!”

“A good night? I should hope so!”

“With any luck you’ll be inviting us back to celebrate your first child’s baptism—nine months from tonight!”

The air was filled with double entendres and good-natured jokes about the first night the newlyweds were about to spend together.

Zygmunt and Ctirad stood as well, with Otylia and Renia, to escort the newlyweds out of the tavern. It was still too crowded to make all abreast, so the three couples made their way through the guests in single file, embracing and kissing well-wishers as they passed them.

Alexei stood from his seat by the door, pushing the door ajar so the newlyweds could make their way out more easily.

Sybilla, her hand nestled in the crook of Benedikt’s arm, leaned over to kiss Alexei on the cheek.

“Thank you, friend Alexei,” she whispered. “I know how much you helped Beatrycze earlier, organizing the serving of the food. I am so glad that you’ve made your way to our house!”

Alexei nodded, smiling and drunk, unable to think of a suitable reply.

Benedikt and Sybilla, arm in arm, stepped out the tavern door, and as the door began to swing shut behind them, Alexei saw the newlyweds fall forward onto their hands and knees in the form of wolves.

Turning from greeting other friends, Ctirad and Otylia reached out and pushed the door open again. Laughing and joking about the newlyweds’ first night, they stepped out, and Alexei saw them also tumble down the steps in the form of wolves.

Before he could think to say something or stop them, Zygmunt and Renia had also stepped out the tavern door, and Alexei saw them become wolves as well.

The other guests began to come forward, all intending to escort the newlyweds to their bed and then stand in the street to serenade them until nearly dawn. Alexei pushed his way past the first of them and out the door, slamming the door shut behind him and leaning against it, hoping to prevent anyone else from coming out.

As he stepped over the threshold, though, he felt the familiar popping and stretching of ligaments and tendons. Cartilage cracked. He felt the sharp points of claws push out through his hands that were becoming paws and saw the fur sprout all along his arms. His wedding clothes tore and ripped, falling beside him to join the other tattered garments lying there.

The six wolves, a rainbow of silvers and grays, shades of blacks and browns, but all with bright blue eyes, all stood together in the square between the tavern and the church, staring about themselves in confusion and fright. Seeing Alexei standing up against the door but slowly becoming a wolf himself, one of the smaller ones howled in anguish.

“No!” Alexei shouted. “I cannot let this happen!” He always lost control of himself and killed when the wolf magic transformed him. He could not allow that to happen now. But even as he fell forward onto his front paws, he was struck by the possibility that there was some hope, however slight. He was changing more slowly than the other six had; could his own wolf magic, trapped inside him and subjecting him to unexpected and unwanted transformations, overcome what was evidently Frau Berhta’s wolf magic?

Falling onto his paws, he quickly turned in a circle, wedging his massive shoulder against the door. People inside the tavern were pushing and shoving, clamoring to get out and follow the newlyweds.

Alexei, leaning against the door as heavily as he could, peered down at the threshold of the tavern door. The source of the magic had to be there! Even in the dark, he knew that she must have left it stretched out along the threshold when she had left the tavern… That must be why she had not demanded all the miners leave with her. She had known that there would be few miners left in the village after they’d all stepped over the tavern’s threshold.

There! He saw it! The wide belt of leather that Beatrycze had described as having transformed Ferdynand and Gosia! He snapped it up with his teeth and leaped away from the door.

Guests came spilling out the door, falling and tangling themselves together. The six wolves in the square saw what was happening and all began howling and yelping, pairs of wolves running off in different directions.

The leather strip—where was the buckle, if it was a belt? Alexei wondered—sailed over his shoulder as he leaped off the tavern porch into the side road. Glancing back over his shoulder in an attempt to watch where the other wolves were running, the leather strip snapped back over his broad shoulders, whipping around his back and wrapping itself back around his chest.

As he landed, his cheek crashed into the road and his face tumbled into the dirt. He skinned and dirtied his knees. He was a man again, Frau Berhta’s strip of leather wrapped around his body. He stared at himself in amazement and then scrambled to his feet and trotted into the darkness as the wedding guests argued about who had been unable to open the tavern door and then made their way towards the house where they expected to find Benedikt climbing into bed with Sybilla.

Naked and alone, Alexei made his way back to the house at the edge of the village as quickly as he could.

Exhausted, filled with worry and fright, Beatrycze stepped into her house. Dawn was still hours away.

Alexei, in his work clothes, was sitting at the table with a mug of tea. A single lantern illuminated the room. He looked up from his tea as she entered, and gestured for her to sit at the table.

She pulled out a chair and he rose, going to the stove and pouring a mugful of tea for her from the kettle. He placed it before her and sat beside her.

“What happened, Alexei?” she wanted to know. “It was you that tried to block the door of the tavern, wasn’t it? No one could get out behind my sister and Benedikt, and then all of a sudden the door gave way and then no one could find them. Or my brother and Renia, or Ctirad and Otylia. Everyone went to the house where Benedikt and Sybilla were supposed to spend their wedding night, but no one was there. All the guests waited awhile, thinking that somehow we had arrived there first, but Benedikt and Sybilla and the others never arrived. Finally everyone grumbled and complained about what a strange wedding it had been—Frau Berhta’s strange toast and Sybilla’s argument with her, the tavern door getting wedged shut somehow, the missing newlyweds—and began to go home.

“I didn’t know what to think,” she told him. “But I was afraid that what I had seen happen to Ferdynand and Gosia had happened again to Sybilla and Benedikt, Zygmunt and the rest. Is that what happened, Alexei? Have they been transformed into wolves as well? But if they were, how is it that you are here and that you were not transformed? How did you stop that?”

Alexei stared into his cup of tea before answering her. “Yes, I am afraid that Sybilla and the rest were all transformed into wolves,” Alexei admitted. “I saw it happen as they stepped over the tavern’s threshold, so I pushed myself out after them and tried to stop anyone else from coming out and being transformed as well. But, of course, the transformation came over me as well. As it had all the others. But I knew what to look for because of what you told me about your cousin. I saw the belt stretched out along the tavern threshold, and so I snatched it up with my teeth and jumped away from the door because I couldn’t keep it shut any longer.

“But as I jumped, the belt wrapped itself around me and I became a man again. As you can see. The others—the others who are wolves—all ran off in different directions,” he concluded. “But I came here. And I brought the belt with me.” He pulled the coiled leather from his traveling pouch and set it on the table.

“But this is no ordinary belt,” he continued. “I’ve had a chance to examine it here and—”

“Not an ordinary belt?” Beatrycze exclaimed. “I could have told you that much!”

“No, I mean more than that,” Alexei resumed. “In fact, it is not a belt at all. It is, as you can see if you look at it yourself, simply a strip of skin that has been tanned or pickled. Not a belt at all. But it is like no leather that I have ever seen before. It has a much finer, softer grain than even the best leather. I suspect that it is not pig’s skin or calf’s skin at all. I think that it must be a strip of some other kind of skin, and that it can transform whoever steps over it into a wolf. But if it is wrapped around such a person, they can become human again.”

Beatrycze reached towards the coiled leather but then stopped, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Some other kind of skin?” she repeated his words. “How disgusting. Keep it away from me, Alexei.” She shuddered and half-turned away so she could not see it. Alexei slipped it back into his pouch.

“But you see what this means, don’t you, Beatrycze?” he insisted. “It means we have the means to change Ferdynand and Gosia and Sybilla and Zygmunt and the others back into people again.” He paused. “But it also means that Frau Berhta will come looking for it, and we may not have long to find everyone again and change them back into humans before she discovers who has it and comes to take it back. We need to call Ferdynand, Zygmunt, and the others as soon as possible and change them back into human form before Frau Berhta comes knocking on your door.”

“How can we do that?” Beatrycze wanted to know. “Can you call out to them… with your thoughts, as you spoke to Ferdynand and Gosia before?”