Storm Wolf (5 page)

“Perhaps she has reasoned out the truth,” Alexei muttered under his breath. He didn’t know and was afraid to ask.

By the time the summer brought good weather, it was late for planting, but the villagers tried to make the most of the growing season and hoped they would have enough food in the autumn and next winter. During that early summer period, Alexei was plowing his field with his sturdy pair of draught horses on a warm afternoon, bright and sunny. Unusually warm for early summer and, because of the terrible weather in the winter and spring, it seemed even warmer than it probably was. Alexei stripped off his shirt and sang as he followed the horses pulling the plow in lines up and down the field. The plow bumped along and wobbled as it cut through muddy earth and dense clumps of sod that needed to be broken up if the crops he intended to plant were to have even a mediocre chance of success. The scent of wet earth filled the air, and even with his human nose, trained to be more sensitive now that he had the experience of the werewolf’s, he could detect traces and hints of last year’s crops in it.

Alexei stopped short as he was midway through plowing one of the furrows. He stopped singing and stood silent, watchful. He was sure he had heard the distant baying of a wolf in the forest on the far edge of the field.

“In broad daylight?” He peered at the trees. “Unlikely.”

He waited, but the stealthy wolf seemed as intent on remaining hidden as Alexei was on discovering its whereabouts. After a few moments of silent watching, he snapped the reins connecting the horses to the plow and followed the path of the furrows again. Had he imagined the wolf cry in the distance? He picked up the melody he had hastily dropped, but sang more quietly, the better to hear if there truly was a wolf joining in the song.

“It must have been a hard winter and spring for the wolves as well,” he muttered to his horses. “With so much snow and rain, it’s no wonder they’ve been driven so close to the village to find food—”

A howl burst into the air, so loud and clear that it seemed right behind him, and he whirled around to face the source of it, to see if a wolf were circling the plow, distracting him so as to have a free moment to leap at one of the horses. Nothing. Then—

He caught a movement right on the edge of his vision. A wolf’s tail. So there was a hunter circling him, and he had no weapon to drive it off. Perhaps if he confronted it, it would be startled long enough to take a step or two back, and Alexei could set the horses free to run for their lives…

As he slid between the plow and the horses to release the harness, he saw the tail again from the corner of one eye. The wolf was drawing closer. There was no time. Alexei leapt around to face it, shouting at the top of his lungs in defiance and terror.

The howling of the wolf pierced his hearing. Alexei saw his arms and hands stretch, elongate, the silver bristles of the wolf pelt bursting through his skin. His calf tendons grew taut, pulling him down, and he saw the thick, bushy tail between his own legs. His clothing tore and ripped as his body changed within the fabric. Alexei felt his nose lengthening into a snout and the lips curling back from his razor teeth in a snarl. Another howl burst from his throat and Alexei realized it had been himself that he had just heard.

The horses panicked. They reared up on their hind legs and their prolonged horse screams rippled out of their throats and across the field. The plow behind him toppled and the horses pulled in opposite directions, desperate to escape the fearsome predator that had materialized. Alexei was in danger of being trampled by their hooves or caught in the tangled reins and harness. Either could mean death. He did the only thing that he could think of in that instant, leaping into the air and hovering before coming down outside the tangle of wooden plow, leather straps, and terrified horses.

The plow snapped into several pieces, snagged on the clods of earth, and the horses continued screaming, unable to extricate themselves from each other or the weight of the plow.

Human words formed in Alexei’s mind. “What can I do to save the horses from destroying themselves?”

He leapt back into the air, thinking with part of his mind that he simply needed to get away from the horses so that they could perceive no immediate threat. With another part of his mind, he was trying to work out why this had happened at all. How had the transformation happened with no warning and without the wolf pelt?

A new pitch of blind terror entered the voices of the horses screaming behind and beneath him. He turned in the air and saw a group of three wolves circling the horses. These must be the earthly, mortal wolves that had been lurking on the edge of the fields, now moving in to take advantage of the defenseless horses. One wolf dodged between the flailing hooves and nipped at the throat of one of his plow horses.

Alexei could not abandon his faithful animals and fellow farm workers. He charged back into the midst of the attacking wolves.

The battle with the three much smaller, ordinary wolves was quick but bloody. It was as vicious as any battle with the ghosts and devils in the clouds intent on destroying the towns and fields by unnatural weather. These three beasts were intent on destroying the horses, and Alexei was determined to protect them, as determined as he had ever been to defend his town against the storms driven by vengeful spirits. When it was over, there were two corpses of wolves, throats torn out, blood everywhere—even on the horses. One wolf had attempted to run back into the woods, its left hind leg badly injured. Alexei paused, considering whether to let it escape, and then jumped on its back. He locked his powerful jaws just below the smaller wolf’s shoulders and tore out a length of its spine. It collapsed and howled before Alexei silenced it by ripping its throat to shreds as well.

Panting, he looked across the field at the horses. They still whinnied and pawed the ground nervously, but were calmer than they had been. Blood dripped from his teeth and his great tongue rolled across them, tasting the blood. Alexei smelled death in the air, and the combination of scents and tastes made a heady brew that sent shivers down his back. He had known the taste of spirits, as he had fought the specters in the air and smelled their fear as he drove them off, but this was a new and different kind of terror that tickled his nostrils. A new taste of a new kind of blood. Earthly blood. Earthly terror. Fearsome. Disgusting. Intoxicating.

Alexei shook his head slowly, to and fro, attempting to clear it and consider what to do next. Was this the intoxication his grandfather had warned of? He had spoken of the intoxication of flight, of power, of pride. He had never mentioned the drunkenness that comes with fear and death and blood. But Alexei was also worried that if he had not controlled his transformation into a werewolf, could he control his transformation back into a man?

Alexei forced himself back onto his rear legs and lifted his front paw to make the sign of the cross. Would it work? He saw blood on his paws. He licked it, feeling sick to his stomach even as he was relishing the taste.

“One last time,” he told himself. As the warm, salty redness caressed his taste buds, the wolf fur peeled away from his skin and vanished. There was no new pelt lying on the ground. The wolf fur melted into the air as his body within it returned to human stature and proportion. Alexei scuttled over to where the fragments of his clothing lay on the ground to cover himself as best he could.

“I can explain the whole incident by telling at least part of the truth: wolves attacked the horses and I had no choice—I drove them off,” Alexei told himself. The bloody cuts and scratches he had would testify to his courage to face the wolves, but would they explain his ability to kill three hungry attackers single-handedly? The taste of wolf blood lingered in his mouth. Tantalizing. Exquisite.

His grandfather came to him in his dreams that night. With his grandmother. They both looked younger than Alexei remembered them, but they were frightened. Edvin’s voice cracked with concern and worry.

“Did I not tell you not to use the wolf skin too often?” he demanded, like a father chastising a five-year-old.

“The winter was terrible. As was the spring,” Alexei stammered in self-defense.

They shook their heads. “As true as that is, you’ve used the magic of the wolf’s skin so often that it has soaked into your skin. Be careful, Alexei. You’ve worn the skin too often, and now you’ve used the magic for your own benefit, protecting your draught horses in the field this afternoon. That is a terrible and powerful combination. Either could unleash the magic of the wolf pelt without warning, and now you’ve done both.” Edvin sucked on his teeth. “I don’t know how to protect you, Alexei.”

“I’ll do what I can,” chimed in his grandmother. “But this is old and powerful magic, and I think the
nõiatar
wasn’t sure that even she could control it altogether when she gave it to your grandfather.”

“When I was young, our family and the villages around us were all serfs, tied to the land that had been ours but had become the property of the Germans, the Swedes, the Russians. I remember the celebrations when we were given our freedom in 1816, a year after I killed the great wolf and skinned it,” Edvin told his grandson. “Don’t let the wolf skin make you a serf again, bound to it rather than the land. It should serve you, not you serve it.”

Alexei woke, trembling and drenched with sweat. How could he protect himself from the encroaching power of the wolf skin that he had always been so careful to use only when it seemed truly necessary?

“Why was I so cursed by my efforts to do good, to follow Grandfather’s directions and live up to his expectations?” he demanded of the night air.

Alexei’s fear that the transformation would overtake him again faded in the coming weeks as life returned to normal. A few neighbors teased him about becoming “Alexei, the wolf killer,” like his grandfather Edvin. Grete never said anything, though she listened attentively to the tales. People remembered the story of his grandfather killing the great wolf in the trap, but everyone seemed to assume the skin had been lost when Edvin died. Even Alexei’s family seemed to have forgotten the magical powers of the skin and never asked him about it, though one sister did seem suspicious of his tale concerning the events of that afternoon in the field.

Life went on and crops grew. Children played and laughed and babies were born. Alexei’s own son was growing fast, the pride of his parents. Another was on the way. Midsummer came and went, as did Lammastide, and soon it was harvest season.

The men of the village were harvesting a field of wheat, working together so as to hasten the end of the work. Given the late start of the growing season, the farmers had let the crops grow as late into the autumn as they dared, but that meant they had less time than usual to accomplish the harvest. Scythes swung and whistled in the air. Bundles of wheat were tied up and piled together to be picked up in a wagon. Sweet scents rose and mingled in the air: fresh-mown wheat, sweat, and joy in anticipation of surviving the coming winter despite the ferocity of the last winter.

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.