The wolf began to gnaw at the ropes that held my hands and feet. It was not long before they parted under his sharp teeth. Taking the leg of my trouser in those same teeth, he guided me to the wall, where I discovered the hole he had dug to get in. It took some work to enlarge the hole enough for me to wriggle through it. By the time we were done, I was hot and sweaty and filthy. But I was also free!
The wolf whined and tugged at my trouser leg again. Obviously he wanted to get away from the village as quickly as possible. But I would not go until we had freed Wandis, too.
As it turned out, the wolves were ahead of me. A familiar voice whispered to me from nearby. Only the soft growl of warning from the wolf at my side kept me from crying out her name. I moved forward to embrace her, but two huge wolves stepped between us, barring my way.
“Don’t be foolish!” I hissed angrily.
They bared their fangs. The sound that rumbled in their throats was too soft to wake those sleeping in the house. Nevertheless, the menace it contained was genuine.
The wolf that freed me had been joined by another of the beasts. They tugged at my clothing again, even as the ones beside Wandis started to pull her away from me. She looked back once as they led her into the darkness. That was my last sight of her, for the wolves beside me began herding me, just as insistently, in the opposite direction.
It was a clear night. The sky was drunk with stars and a half-moon hung low on the horizon, silvering the trees, the village, the wolves. It was darker when we entered the forest, and I had to concentrate to keep from stumbling over the great tree roots that erupted from the ground at odd intervals. I bumbled and crashed along, but the wolves seemed to make no sound at all.
Finally we came to a small cave. The wolves led me inside, then settled themselves in front of the entrance. Obviously, I was supposed to stay here. It seemed I had only traded one prison for another.
But why?
I was kept in the cave for two weeks, guarded by the pair of wolves that had brought me there.
As soon as I saw them in the daylight I was able to tell them apart. One had a wild eye, blue and strange, that seemed to look into another world. The other was marked by a ragged ear, which I assumed had been earned in some youthful battle.
Several other wolves came to the area during this time. Usually they brought small game for me to eat, though sometimes I got the feeling they were coming simply to look me over. I felt that I was on display.
Wild Eye and Ragged Ear escorted me to a nearby stream whenever I wanted to drink. Once, convinced that they would not hurt me, I tried to run away. But they set up a howling, and before long the woods around me were thick with wolves. I was herded back to my cave like a lamb being herded by a shepherd.
The mystery finally ended on All Hallows’ Eve, when Wild Eye woke me from a sound sleep by nudging at my face.
“What do you want?” I asked crankily.
He took my arm and pulled on it.
“For heaven’s sakes,” I said. “It’s the middle of the night!”
This didn’t seem to make any difference. Realizing I wouldn’t get any sleep anyway, I decided it was easiest just to follow him. Ragged Ear joined us at the entrance to the cave. Walking on either side of me, the two wolves led me deeper into the forest.
It was an eerie journey. The bright moon cast a glow over the trees that made the woodland seem entirely different than during the day. A cool breeze rustled through the leaves, heavy with the rich scent of the forest. To our left I could hear a tiny brook tinkling its way over polished stones. The silent wolves pressed against my legs.
After a time we came to another cave. A darkhaired man sat in front of it—the same man I had seen kissing my mother so many years ago. He was lean, and though there were deep lines in his face, I could see that he had once been very handsome. On closer inspection I noticed that the hair that had seemed so black was shot through with silver. His eyes were deep set, and dark as the night.
Wild Eye and Ragged Ear moved to his side.
The man stood and embraced me. “Welcome,” he said. “I am glad to see you, my son.”
How could I respond to this? I was glad, for my heart had reached out to this man even in those brief glimpses of him that I had had so long ago. But I also felt great anger that he had not been with me while I was growing up. I wanted to hit him. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to say all that, but didn’t know how.
“Where were you?” I whispered at last.
“Here,” he said. “Where I belong.”
“You belonged with us,” I answered.
He shook his head sadly. “No man can do all the things he ought,” he said. He returned to his seat. The wolves stayed at his side. “It is always choices,” he said, resting a hand on Wild Eye’s head. “I doubt any man is ever sure he has made the right one. But once you have made it, you have to live by it.”
He said these last words fiercely, as if he thought them very important.
“This was your choice?” I asked. “To live in the forest instead of with your family?”
“To be where I was most needed,” he answered.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will,” he whispered. “Soon enough, you will.”
Other wolves were gathering around the edge of the area where we sat. Their yellow-green eyes gleamed at me out of the night. A cub, small and fuzzy, came to nip at my father’s foot. He poked the cub with his toe, and it rolled over to have its belly scratched. My father obliged, but only briefly. The cub’s mother came and picked it up by the scruff of its neck, then carried it back to the circle that was forming around us.
“What do they want?” I asked, somewhat nervously.
“They are here to pay homage,” said my father.
My puzzlement must have showed in my face. “I am their leader,” he added, as if that explained everything.
I swallowed. “How can you be their leader?” I asked.
He smiled, a sad, wise kind of smile. “You know the answer,” he said, “but you have tried to pretend that you were wrong. Now the time for games, for hiding, is over. Now you have to examine the truth.”
A terrible thought had struck me when I first saw him sitting there. I had pushed it firmly aside. Now my father was forcing me to let it come forward again.
“You’re one of them!” I whispered.
He nodded serenely. “I am one of them.”
I stumbled over the questions that sprang into my mind. “I don’t understand,” I said at last.
“They need me,” he said simply. “The pack always needs a man to keep it together, to make difficult decisions when times are hard.”
I remembered the winter when the wolves invaded our town. “That was you in the henhouse!” I accused.
He nodded.
“Why did you kill my chicken?” I cried, remembering my childish grief and feeling doubly betrayed that it was my own father who had caused it.
He laughed, a short bark that bordered on contempt. “You sound as though you have never eaten a chicken yourself,” he said.
He was right, of course, and I blushed at my question. Yet he went on to answer it.
“I protected you,” he said. “As I tried to protect everyone in the village.” He sighed. “I brought the pack only because we were starving. Afterward, I wondered if it had been a mistake. I do not know. As for your hen—I thought you might as well learn early on that you were going to have to give up things you loved for the wolves.”
Something in his words disturbed me. “What do you mean, give up things for the wolves?”
He leaned against Ragged Ear. Suddenly he looked old, and tired. “My time is almost up,” he said. “The pack will need a new leader soon.”
I recoiled from him in horror. “You want me to become a werewolf!” I cried.
He nodded. His dark eyes were locked on mine.
I was appalled. My own father was asking me to become one of the creatures of t
he night our priest had warned us about.
“It’s evil!” I hissed.
My father’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I am not evil,” he snapped. “I made a choice a long time ago, a choice I have lived by, and honored—which is more than most men do. If that does not fit your little priest’s petty idea of morality, it is no concern of mine.” He spat on the ground in front of him, dismissing the priest. “You know you do not belong in that village. Do you want to try to become like them? Or do you have the courage to reach for your true destiny?”
I pressed my hands against my head, as if that could keep out these frightening thoughts. It was true. I wasn’t like the others. I had always known I didn’t really belong there.
But did I belong here?
I looked at the pack that had assembled around us. These are my father’s people, I thought. They love him. He fits here. He . . . belongs.
I remembered how it hurt to know I was not truly a part of my village, to feel that invisible wall against me. I wanted to belong, too. I wanted to fit in as he did.
But was this the place?
“Tell me more about it,” I whispered at last.
He gave me a wolfish grin.
Hours later I sat in front of my cave, hoping the morning sun might somehow dissipate the chill that seemed to have settled into my soul. My father and I had talked long into the night. I understood better now how much he had given up to become the leader of the pack, and what he had gained. I understood, too, what I must give up to follow his path.
My shape was the first thing. If I agreed to his request, I would become a man only five times a year: on All Hallow’s Eve, and on the nights of the solstices and the equinoxes. These were the nights my father had slipped into the village to visit my mother. It occurred to me that she must have loved him very much, to be so lonely for him.
My human shape was not the only price.
“I am young, for a man,” my father had told me. “But my body has aged as though it were a wolf’s. My time is short. I must pass the burden soon, or the pack will be left without a leader.”
“And if I refuse?” I had asked.
He had shrugged and looked away, the only sign of his agitation the way his fingers worked in the scalp of the wolf he had been stroking. “I cannot force you.”
But he could entice me. And he did, talking of the joy he felt when he ran through the forest with the pack at his side, and the richness he found in their community. Yet he did not hide the darker side of their life, and he told me, too, what it was like to catch a smaller animal and kill it in your jaws, and feel its warm blood trickling down your throat.
But mostly he spoke of the wolves and his deep love for them. He cared for them as if they were his children, making decisions, settling squabbles, keeping the pack away from the world of men where they would be hunted and killed.
I could tell he had been a good leader, wiser and far more compassionate than the village elders who had sentenced Wandis and me to death.
It was to be our only talk. He would not assume his human shape again for another month and a half, when the winter solstice came. And, one way or another, he would be dead before then.
I picked up a stick and threw it at Wild Eye, who was sitting several feet away. He blinked at me, as if he thought it an astonishing thing to do. But he didn’t move. I hated him, hated all of them, for taking my father away from me. His life had been shortened by his wolfhood. Now he was like a candle whose wick was guttering in the last bits of wax. Even worse, he had made it clear that the effort of passing his power, which was what he wanted more than anything else in the world, would make this the last thing he would ever do. If I accepted it, he would die in giving it to me.
I thought of Wandis, led to some distant village by the wolves. Did she wonder what had become of me? What if I did this thing, and then came to her as a man on the first night of winter, to tell her what I had become? Would she still care for me? Would she wait for me, as my mother had waited for my father? Or would she draw away with the same horror that I was still trying to fight down in myself?
I looked at my hands and tried to imagine them as paws.
I shivered, and stood up.
At once Wild Eye and Ragged Ear were at my side.
“Not supposed to let me go anywhere, are you?” I asked.
They stared at me.
I wondered what it would be like to be able to talk to them as my father could. I realized he was part of a whole world I was unaware of, a mysterious world of night and secrets. I was curious about it. I wished I could run with the pack for a night before I made my decision.
Another wolf came limping along the path. Though it was the first time I had seen him in this shape since I was five, I knew it was my father.
He made a motion with his head that I took as a command, then turned and headed back down the path. I rose to follow him. My guards made no move to stop me. When we had gone a way, my father dropped back to walk beside me. I looked at him and shivered. It was strange to see that dark, four-legged shape and know my father was inside it. And stranger still to think of inhabiting such a shape myself.
Passing through the quiet forest, we came at last to a rocky hillside where nearly two dozen wolves were gathered. Some were playing. Others lay dozing in the warm morning. Now and then their legs would twitch, and I knew that they were running in their sleep.
After a while I thought I understood why my father had brought me here. These were his people, the responsibility he wanted to pass on to me. He stepped into the clearing, and the others were instantly alert. I could sense their love for him. He came back and took my hand softly between his jaws, then drew me in beside him. He was introducing me.
The wolves crowded around us. I felt myself overwhelmed by their warmth, their musky odor.
“All right,” I whispered. “I’ll do it.”
I opened my eyes. My father’s naked body lay beside me, quiet and empty, but human once again.
I was still human, too.
Half relieved, half disappointed, I began to wonder if something had gone wrong. Then the moon slipped over the horizon and began pouring fire into my veins.
I cried out in agony. For all we had talked, my father had not warned me of the terror of the transformation, not spoken of the fear and the pain that strike as your skin begins to stretch, your bones wrench themselves into new shapes, and your teeth curve into deadly fangs.
I fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
And yet even in my pain, part of me watched in fascination as thick tufts of hair sprouted on my hands, my fingers curled into paws, and my nails thickened into strong, black claws. I began to rip at the clothing that seemed to bind me like a rope, shredding it in my torment.
As abruptly as it began, the change was complete. I stood on all fours, trembling with the wonder and the horror of what I had just experienced. Then I tipped back my head. Staring at the moon, I howled for the loss of my father, whom I had never had a chance to love.
Almost instantly Wild Eye and Ragged Ear detached themselves from the darkness and came to stand at my shoulders.
“Run with us,” said Wild Eye, and I was not surprised when I understood him. “Run with us. It is good for sorrow.”
I stretched my legs and headed into the night with them, and then stopped, almost dizzy with sensation. It was as if I had been blind and suddenly found that I could see. Except it was not only my eyes that were keener now, but my nose and my ears as well. I could hear the voles rustling in the soil beneath me, and smell where the weasel had passed an hour before. Stranger still was finding a man-scent and then recognizing it as my own, the path I had followed the day before. What a shock, to discover I had possessed such a rich and distinctive odor, and been so unaware of it.
But the biggest surprise was yet to come, as one by one the pack reached out to greet me.
“Welcome!” cried each voice in my head. “Welcome, welcome, and thrice welcome!”
I knew, too, that I had found my community at last.
I am a wolf, and I will never be alone again.
Tonight is the night of the winter solstice. I have spent my precious time as a man writing all this down, while it is still fresh within me. When I have finished, I will also write a letter to Wandis. Because it is too soon for me to leave the pack, I will ask Wild Eye to carry it to her, tied around his neck.
But three months from now I will travel myself to the village where the wolves took her. And on the night of the equinox, when the change has come over me and I am a man once more, I will go to her, to learn her answer.
I think if anyone can accept this, it will be she.
I hope I am right.
After all, someday I too will need a son to whom I can pass the pack.
A Blaze of Glory
It was a house full of white bread and death. Silence grew beneath the chairs like balls of dust. Nothing was out of order, nothing seemed to breathe.
In the center of it sat an old woman, waiting to die.
That she had been full of life at one time I well knew, for she was my grandmother, and I had seen her eyes flash with a fire that seemed stolen from the stars; heard her laugh in the night with a clear joy that easily banished my terror when I was upstairs, lonely and moon-frightened.
Now that was gone, the fire and the clarity drowned in the muddy depths of an unyielding old age that, glacierlike, had crept across her and locked her in a grip of ice. Loss lay like dust in every room of the house: loss of husband; loss of friends; loss of strength, of sharpness of sight, keenness of ear, delicacy of touch. Loss, most of all, of memories, the most recent going first, so that if I entered the house and greeted her, then went to the kitchen to make her some tea, she would cry out in surprise when I re-entered the room five minutes later.
Odds Are Good Page 9
