Children of the Wolves

by Jessica Starre

  Jelena caught another glimpse of the torn body and turned away, pressing one palm against the tightness in her chest and one against the nausea in her belly. The trader had charmed her and told her lies about his pastself and accepted her. He had liked her just as she was, not caring what she might have been or what she might become. To have met a death like this —

  “Wolves,” the sentry said again. “We heard them sneaking around tonight.” The other sentry nodded in agreement. He gave Jelena a glance; he had heard her welcoming howl. Then he met Michael’s steady gaze and refrained from accusing her.

  “Not wolves,” Jelena said, struggling for breath. “They didn’t do this.” She wrapped her arms around her trembling body. The wolves would never do this … would they? What did she really know about the creatures on the other side of the fence? She had never been on the other side of the fence. Her instinct told her the wolves would not harm the people. Not the trader, anyway, who had sense enough not to threaten or provoke a wild animal. But instinct wasn’t knowledge, and as she glanced at the faces of the people surrounding her, her shoulders slumped and she knew they would never listen to her.

  Michael crouched near the trader’s body, his arms crossed over one bent knee. He reached forward and moved one of the man’s arms, as if to make sure he saw the entire graphic spectacle, the gaping wounds, the flesh torn away, as if he must commit it to memory. Jelena turned away and closed her eyes. The image of the trader’s suffering was already seared into her mind’s eye. She would never forget it.

  The physician knelt next to Michael, who stood to make way for him. Jelena knew the trader was dead but somehow she had hoped that the physician would prove her wrong. She had never seen a miracle but she wasn’t unwilling to believe in them. She watched, eyes stinging. The physician conducted a brief examination. That he didn’t even try to revive the trader or bind his wounds made the grief tear at her throat.

  Within a few minutes, a silent crowd had gathered, staring aghast at the dead man on the ground. All laughter and merriment fled. The people kept a respectful distance, and they had pain, not curiosity, in their eyes. It was their pain Michael addressed when the physician got to his feet and shook his head.

  “This is the Way,” Michael said. “Death follows life. The cycle of celebration and sorrow. Today we weep over the loss of a loved one who has gone beyond self to the world we may not know.”

  The assembled villagers bowed their heads at his words. Then curiosity overcame pain and someone asked, “What happened?”

  “Wolves,” Michael said.

  Someone made a shocked sound of dismay, but none seemed to question what Michael said. Jelena drew her breath to protest but Michael turned his river-blue gaze to meet hers. Their eyes locked. The challenge in his eyes was determined and stubborn. Why did he want to blame the wolves for this attack? They had not done it. Her jaw tightened but Jelena turned away first. What difference did it make? When had anyone ever heard her voice?

  The crowd began to move, some of the villagers stepping forward to pick up the trader and carry him to the infirmary where he would await the rites, the weavers to prepare the shroud he would be burned in, the potters to throw the urn he would be buried in, the others to curl sleepless in their beds and remember the kindnesses of their best friend.

  For a long time, Jelena stood in the courtyard and wondered what — and who — would be next.

  • • •

  “It wasn’t wolves,” Jelena said as she walked up the porch steps, she and Michael alone for the first time in hours. To Jelena it felt like days.

  “What do you want me to say?” Michael asked. The fatigue and strain of the evening was evident in his tone, still patient but tightly controlled, verging on quarrelsome.

  Jelena shook her head impatiently. She didn’t want him to say words that she supplied him with. Why did he try to put her off that way? Why couldn’t he have this conversation with her? Was it because he didn’t take her seriously enough? She was still newlyborn, despite all the years that had passed. She would never be someone he took seriously. He would never imagine her as his equal, his partner. It would simply never occur to him. The knowledge sliced at her heart. She took a deep, trembling breath; he must never know what she wished. She could not bear it if he found out her secret. He would pity her for it.

  The floor creaked beneath their feet as they entered the main hall. Matilda, the night-keeper, scurried by, saying hurriedly to them as she passed, “The fourth hour of night, already.” She had a strained expression on her face as she headed out the door to alert the sentries.

  Night-keeper and day-keeper were tasks the unawakened performed admirably and the people wanted their unawakened to feel valued. They had all heard stories that other tribes — out there beyond the protection of the trees — exiled their unawakened. How long could the unawakened last beyond the range of the gathering fire? They condemned the unawakened to death. How much more compassionate were the people.

  “We can’t go on like this, Michael.” Jelena meant we in myriad meanings, but mostly she meant you and I.

  “What choice have we?” he asked as he pushed open the slatted door that led to their quarters. Like the hanging half doors the desert tribes used, the Wudu-faesten’s slatted doors offered privacy while allowing cooler, circulating air to reach them. Jelena and Michael often kept the door open this time of year, to tempt any stray breeze into the space. Some of the other newlyborn and their protectors argued over this — door open or closed — but Michael and Jelena never had.

  They never argued over anything, except the fact that she was unawakened and thought he should leave her to perform more important tasks. Even then it couldn’t really be called arguing. Jelena likened it to trying to persuade the Stone Mountains to listen to her side of the story. One might hear the echo of one’s own words, but the mountains stood there, impenetrable and unmoving.

  She wanted to tell him about the wolves and what they meant to her, and how much she wanted to be his lover, his partner, how desperately she longed to be free of the protection of the trees and to venture beyond the fence. But her words would only alarm him. She sighed. It was not just one secret she kept, was it?

  A curtain — thin netting in the summer, heavy brocade in the winter — separated her small sleeping alcove from the main room where he slept and where they dressed and had their private time. She had embroidered the sides and hem of the curtain with symbols that no one understood, thick black runes that persisted in her mind without meaning. She had transferred them to the curtain because she thought they might serve as some sort of talisman. That one day they would evoke a memory, true and important, and she would awaken then and take her rightful place in their society.

  In her mind, the runes were the source of power and fearlessness, although she didn’t know why. The thick embroidery made the netting hang in stiff folds that rustled when she touched it. But it elicited no memory, no matter how long she stared at it each night.

  As she pushed the curtain aside, she turned to Michael and said, “Good night,” then bowed to him as she did every night, formally and without thought. She slipped behind the curtain, which whispered into place, blocking him from view. If only she could draw a curtain in her mind as easily.

  Chapter Two

  The day-keeper knocked on the door and called the morning hour. Michael stirred on his pallet and stifled a moan. Glancing up at the narrow window set high in the wall above his bed, he saw a shaft of bright sunlight that confirmed the day-keeper’s words. Not that the day-keeper had ever been — or would ever be — wrong about the time. She wouldn’t dare. Didn’t Jelena realize how precarious the existence of the unawakened was? How desperately they tried to be accepted into the community, how callously the people treated them? Why did she want to choose that for herself, when he was willing to remain her protector for as long as it took?


  In his talks to the people on meeting day, he tried to explain how important it was to treat the unawakened well, to treat all the people well, but the prejudice persisted. The unawakened contributed nothing to the tribe; they gave nothing, they only took. That was the belief and he couldn’t eradicate it no matter how hard he tried. And Jelena wanted that for herself?

  He sat up cautiously, his head throbbing as if he’d drunk too much ale the previous night. The people had awakened both a brewmaster and a vintner some years past, but he hadn’t been drinking last night. He simply hadn’t gotten enough sleep, tossing restlessly as he tried to forget the trader’s ripped body and the people’s fear and Jelena’s anger over her wolves being accused of the attack; as he tried to devise ways to convince Jelena to accept that he would be — wanted to be — her protector for as long as needed. Forever, even. Forever would surely cause talk, but what was the use of being in a position of power if it couldn’t occasionally be used to one’s advantage?

  The curtain rattled as Jelena stepped into the main room from the alcove where she slept.

  “I’m not dressed,” Michael groaned, falling back against the pallet and grabbing the blanket up to his waist. In the hot summer months, he slept naked. In the first years, he had wondered if she ever noticed. Now he knew she did but what she thought about it she never said. He remembered the night she’d watched him from her alcove. He had stripped, then noticed a gap in the curtain; but he did nothing, he said nothing, he just stood there, letting her look, aware of the way she held her breath, her hand on the curtain to pull it closed, and yet she had not pulled it closed —

  “I’m not looking,” she responded. Unlike that other night. He sighed. Her remark was clear enough, but he rolled to his side anyway to hide the evidence of his arousal. She had already changed from the thin, short shift she always slept in during the summer months. She seemed to think it more modest than sleeping naked, but her sleeping naked would probably have tortured him less than the near-nakedness of the shift, tantalizing and teasing him with what was beneath. Now she wore the loose, lightweight trousers and tunic that she always wore on meeting day. She had pulled back her hair with the woven band she always wore on meeting day. She had already polished her boots as she always did … That she was so predictable did not in any way lessen his fascination with her.

  Unlike Michael, who watched intently, Jelena did indeed keep her eyes carefully averted as she moved to the table that held the china pitcher and basin — the cool water put there each evening by Basil or Clotilda or another of the unawakened. Jelena splashed her face and rinsed her hands, then lifted the hand towel from its iron hook and dried off. Michael had watched her embroider the towel herself as he stood with Charmaine and Rufus in the weaving room day after day. Her red dragons with glinting gold eyes danced across the hem. She said she created the dragons from memory, although there was no such thing as dragons. He hoped. He had never dared ask her, memory of what?

  She looked at the embroidered figures for a moment, as if they suggested something to her. He waited, holding himself still: even now he believed it might happen, and in the moments when her eyes lost focus and she contemplated visions he could not see, he held his breath, anxious and afraid but excited and hopeful. This might be the time when she would know, and once she knew —

  Jelena shook her head impatiently and hung the towel up on the hook to dry. Michael sighed and slipped off his pallet. He pulled on his trousers while her back was turned to him, glad for the loose fit of the clothing, then bent and pulled socks and boots on.

  She turned to look at him, waiting for him to finish dressing so they could go down to meeting together. Her cool gray eyes in her small oval face revealed nothing to him; Jelena had perfected a self-effacing watchfulness that he found unaccountably disturbing. He knew what she did, and he knew what she said, but he could rarely tell what she thought, and that was more important than anything else.

  Michael reached for his short tunic and slipped it over his head. She watched him constantly, as much as he watched her, though she was not his protector. She didn’t watch him the way some women did, laughing up in his face, coquettishly, striking sweet poses for him. It was not flirtatious, whatever it was she felt for him; it was not pretty and golden. It was raw and elemental and hungry. Sometimes he thought she hated him.

  When he had been newlyborn, Gerard had been his protector — Gerard, now dead six winters from breakbone fever. Gerard had remembered his own disorienting experiences as a newlyborn, and that had been a help. But Michael had awakened quickly and had taken his place in the community. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to go so long without awakening, as Jelena had. His personal experience accorded with the experiences of most of the other people in the tribe; they were newlyborn and they were protected, and they awakened and they found their calling. Once they became full members of the tribe, they usually partnered and sometimes created trueborn children. He had never partnered, and for that he must wait; a protector dared not divide his loyalty while he watched over a newlyborn.

  On those occasions when his self discipline flagged, he left Jelena temporarily in the care of another protector and chopped wood or rode one of the horses until he was too tired to think. She’d look up at his return, her hands working patiently at the embroidery. Penelope, wasn’t it, and Odysseus? A story from a long time ago, he remembered. Fragments only, no one ever remembered everything whole, only the most important parts, only what they had practiced over and over so that it did not have to be thought, it was so deeply embedded into the brain, it became an automatic memory, like muscles that knew how to walk. If you had to think about it you couldn’t do it.

  Today Michael buckled the long dagger onto his thigh because he would stand for most of the meeting. His helper, Samuel, a trueborn child of about twelve, would hold his bow and quiver, should Michael need it. A mere formality, a symbol, but active protectors always kept bow and arrow ready, practicing their archery patiently every day.

  Over his plainly woven dark tunic and trousers, Michael donned the vestments — white linen for summer — that Jelena had embroidered for him. Not red dragons as might be expected to flow from her needle but iconic designs in gold and silver and copper thread that caught the morning light and reflected it back. She had embroidered trees to reflect the forest that protected the people, and lilac bushes to signify the first born, and suns to represent the awakening, and entwined vines to symbolize partnership and stars to stand for the journey beyond the self. Well, and one small red dragon she had placed in an unobtrusive corner where he supposed she thought no one would notice. But he had noticed. He doubted anyone else ever would, even whoever wore the garments after he was gone.

  After he finished dressing, he reached for her hand, then checked himself. The movement was natural enough and not even the most rigid elder could say there was anything inappropriate about his holding her hand. But not when he was feeling as frustrated and denied as he was right now. She would sense his ambivalence through his touch, and she would misunderstand it, and he did not need that distraction now. Instead, he simply nodded to indicate he was ready, and she gave an answering nod and, not reaching for his hand either, turned and stepped from their room.

  The people did not gather at the meeting hall today. Instead, they gathered outside, in the courtyard in front of the main hall, in the stifling summer heat. Helpers added wood to the already towering gathering fire that for this day would become a funeral pyre. From where Michael stood, on the porch of the main hall, he could feel the blistering heat of the flames in the center of the courtyard.

  They had no undertaker and perhaps would never awaken one, so they did the best they could, the smith building a hot fire and making the flames leap with his bellows, the carpenter and his apprentices carrying the shrouded body on a wood pallet they would thrust into the flames after Michael had spoken the words and when the tim
e came.

  Viktor began to play his flute as Michael descended the steps from the main hall and entered the courtyard. Jelena, who had gone ahead, had chosen to stand near the musician, a fact Michael noted even as he concentrated on what he intended to say to the gathering.

  The notes, crystal clear in the hot, still morning, shimmered plaintively before dying away. As Michael waited for his time to speak, he saw how Jelena kept her attention on the musician’s face. As the last note dropped away, Viktor opened his eyes and looked directly at her. A moment of intense understanding seemed to leap between them. Viktor mourned the loss of something sacred and inexplicable, something of his pastself that he could never recover. The reckoning was always incomplete and imperfect but most of the other awakened learned to accept the ambiguities and to embrace the life they lived now. Only a few dwelled in the past the way Viktor did, sometimes chewing the wild mushrooms and medicinal herbs as if the phantom images they produced could somehow lead him home again. But the home he went looking for had passed out of existence time out of mind.

  Now Michael stepped forward. He spoke, as he often did, about the cycle of life and death, being newlyborn, reckoning with the pastself and going beyond self, and the nature of the world that nourished them but demanded life from them in return, and how this ended life would go on to nourish others. He didn’t know if it was true, but it felt true, and his experience in this life and in his pastlife told him it was true, and the people believed it to be true. Most of the people. Jelena doubted.

  The ritual demand and response completed, Michael said the blessing and invited everyone to live in peace and to follow the Way, even though he couldn’t tell them what the Way was. Then the carpenter and his assistant moved forward and consigned the trader’s body to the flames.