Because Edvin had been unable to do it himself, Alexei had hidden the wolf skin in the chest at the foot of the bed that his grandmother said Edvin had always hidden it in. As Alexei replaced it in the chest, he saw how beautiful it must have been when Edvin had first begun to use it and knew how much Edvin, as a young man, would have been able to sell it for on a market day. Alexei rubbed his cheek on it and closed it in the trunk. He always sat on that chest when he came to visit Edvin as he recovered from that last battle in the clouds.
Edvin never really regained his strength, even though he was able to eventually walk around the house a bit with a cane and sit on the porch on the warmer afternoons. But the snow and the cold came and he shivered. A fever came and suddenly took his wife, Alexei’s grandmother. It was shortly after Candlemas in February. Edvin was grief-stricken. When he developed a fever a month later, Alexei helped his older married sisters care for him, as their mother had died years before giving birth to their youngest brother.
One night Alexei sat with Edvin so that his sisters could go home to their husbands. Edvin slept fitfully, propped up half-sitting against his pillows to help him breathe a little more easily. Alexei wiped his grandfather’s head and face with cold water, but he was burning up. It was just after dawn that he whispered Alexei’s name with his parched, cracked lips and asked the boy to get the wolf skin from the trunk. Alexei placed it on the bed beside Edvin. The sick old man rested his hand atop it, eyes closed but a contented and peaceful look settling on his face. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Alexei. Alexei leaned in close to his lips to hear him.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked.
“Yes, I do.”
Edvin proceeded to tell Alexei the story of the wolf skin, pausing to catch his breath on occasion. Alexei had heard bits and pieces of the story before from his older siblings and cousins, but never the whole tale in order like this. With all the details.
Chapter 2: Metsatöll
Alexei
(Estonia, Midsummer 1889)
“But now there is no werewolf to protect the village any longer,” Edvin concluded. “And no cunning woman to make a new wolf skin.” He coughed and hacked and was unable to continue speaking for a few moments.
“It has served well,” he finally resumed. He gestured for the cup of cold tea at his bedside, which Alexei held and tilted against his dry lips. He sipped. “Someday, I suppose, the magic will either wear out or the wolf skin will fall apart and cease to even be recognizable as a pelt. Until then, someone must continue to use it, carefully now, to keep the villages here safe. I want you, Alyosha, to be that someone.”
Alexei was shocked. His grandfather had chosen him to succeed him as the werewolf to protect their village? Why? How had he come to that decision?
“Why me?” Alexei asked. “Why not my father?”
Edvin was quiet a moment before answering.
“You are the one of my grandsons that I see most like myself,” he explained. “Also, you are the youngest of my grandsons. Therefore you will be able to serve the villages longer than your father or any of your older brothers or your sisters’ husbands. I’m guessing that you will be the last werewolf to protect this area—perhaps the last werewolf in all of Estonia—unless there is a great change in the attitudes of our country people. There will be no more werewolves or cunning women in Estonia, I’m afraid. But even if people do not realize how important the werewolves are, that is no reason to leave them exposed to the dangers of the sky. If my successor must be the last werewolf, I want him to be in a position to serve as long as possible, and if I give the wolf skin to you, you will be in a position to protect our family and neighbors further into the future. One last bulwark against the storms.”
He repeated the cunning woman’s instructions for using the skin and her warnings against using it overmuch. He told Alexei to keep it someplace safe, where no one could find it and where even he would not be able to get to it easily. That would prevent Alexei using it more than was required.
“It is intoxicating, Alyosha,” he whispered in his grandson’s ear. “To know the freedom of the skies, to look down and see your village and your neighbors’ fields spread out below you like a great patchwork quilt… to know that you, and no one else, can protect and save them from disaster. These are powerful temptations, Alyosha. Promise me that you will resist them.”
“I will, Grandfather.” Alexei held his hand and looked into his eyes. Edvin’s fingers gripped his grandson’s, more tightly than Alexei could have imagined. He still had strength, somewhere deep within him, for one last effort. Alexei felt him searching his heart and soul, and trembled that his grandfather might find something there to prove him unworthy. “I promise.”
Finally his eyes released Alexei’s soul. “I believe you, Alyosha. One more reason that I want you to be the keeper of the wolf skin.” He seemed more exhausted than Alexei had seen him since he had come home that last time, bleeding, from the sky. His turned his face away from Alexei and slumped back against his pillows. “Take it,” he commanded. “Hide it. God keep you safe, Alyosha.”
Alexei picked up the great skin. It was old and worn. In spots, it was worn down nearly to the smooth leather. Tufts of fur drifted off it. If it had been a fur hat, it would have been discarded years ago. Some of the teeth were loose in its jaws and a few had fallen out over the years. It was no longer a beautiful thing, as Alexei imagined it must have been when it was new. As it was when his grandfather Edvin had first trapped the huge beast, killed, and then skinned it.
Alexei carried the worn pelt to his parents’ home. He still lived there, as did two of his elder brothers with their wives. Luckily, everyone else had either already gone out to the fields or to tend the cattle. Where could he hide the great pelt? Where would no one find it? Where would it even be difficult for him to get it?
“Grandfather keeps it in the chest at the foot of his bed,” Alexei thought, “but he has grown accustomed to both its power and its temptation over the years. He must be safe from its allurements by now. Besides, maybe he had hidden it when the cunning woman first gave it to him. Just as he urges me to do now. Maybe his warning is born of the experience of first having the skin in his possession and struggling against its call.”
Alexei looked around the principal room of the house. The stove in one corner, the great fireplace against one wall. Wooden chests and cabinets that Alexei’s father, Edvin’s son-in-law, had made stood against the walls. There were no hiding places. Except…
The rafters above supported the tile roof. Cobwebs stretched between some of the beams. There were, however, other planks stretching under the roof, resting on certain of the rafters, creating a kind of attic. Alexei’s family used it for storage and climbed a ladder to reach it on those rare occasions they needed to retrieve something or add to the trove kept there. Something big could be kept there unnoticed. Something as big as the skin.
Alexei got out the ladder from behind one of the tall cabinets, climbed to the rafters, and wedged the wolf pelt between the trunks in the back of the attic. It was difficult to leave the talisman there. His fingers were slow to release it, and as he descended the ladder, the corner where it was hidden held his eye. The skin seemed to call to his heart and ask not to be left in the dark, abandoned, after its years of faithful service. It deserved a better home than this, something more like the chest at the foot of Edvin’s bed, where it could be stored with dignity and grace. Alexei hurried down the ladder before he was unable to resist its siren call to retrieve it.
Alexei stood at the graveside and watched the earth cascade from the shovels onto Edvin’s casket, sobbing as he realized that his grandfather was truly gone and that he would never have the opportunity to sit and talk with him again. He finally walked back to his parents’ home. During the memorial meal for his grandfather, as Alexei struggled to serve the food and thank his fellow townsfolk for their prayers on Edvin’s behalf. Some small area of his mind was consoled knowing
that a part of Edvin was still with him in the wolf skin hidden in the attic. Alexei heard people asking each other who would be the werewolf now. No one knew what had become of the great wolf skin or who would be able to don it now that Edvin was dead. Would the fields be at the mercy of the storms again? Or was it time to lay aside those old superstitions? There was division and uncertainty in their voices, especially the younger people. Were there such things as werewolves? Did the town even need a werewolf now? Rather than fighting storms in the sky, it would be better, they said, to fight the imperial Russian plans to replace the old Estonian practices with Russian ones. “Better to fight for our homeland than for the crops,” they said to Alexei.
“Don’t you realize that my grandfather gave his life to protect that homeland, in his own way? If the storms destroyed us, there would be no homeland to defend against the Russians,” Alexei snapped back at them.
That night in bed, Alexei wept again inconsolably. He missed Edvin, more than he had realized he would. Edvin was his grandfather, the protector of their town. Could Alexei ever protect the townsfolk as he had protected them? With no gratitude? Alexei realized that even if he could live up to Edvin’s expectations of him, few if any would respect or thank him the way Edvin had been respected and thanked.
“He told me to hide the wolf skin but said nothing about keeping his decision to give it to me a secret. Perhaps it would be better if no one knew that I had it. But can I be strong enough to use it on my own, alone, with no one to care for my wounds—if I was hurt in the battles with the clouds—the way my grandmother cared for my grandfather?” Alexei asked himself as he wept.
That night he slept fitfully and dreamt confused, fitful dreams of himself, of the pelt, of great storms sweeping across the countryside. The next day, when everyone else was gone to tend the cows and other animals, Alexei brought the pelt down from the attic and hid it under his bed. He needed it to be close to him. He hoped that the pelt needed him as well.
The next night, as he wept again for his grandfather, he brought the wolf skin out and laid his head on the fur, using the great animal skin like a humble pillow. Would Edvin approve this use of the magical pelt? Alexei’s tears soaked the fur but the scent was strong. He breathed in the scent of the fur and smelled his grandfather. He smelled the fresh tilled earth of the farms in spring and the stinging, icy air of a cold but sunny winter day. He closed his eyes and felt the fur both soft and comforting as well as stiff and scratchy. He slept soundly this time, and saw his grandfather smile at him.
Alexei waited anxiously for a storm—any storm!—to come so that he could try the magic of the pelt. But he had promised to use it only when need was dire, when no other recourse remained. Would using it now—out of curiosity, out of grief, as a means to keeping his grandfather’s memory alive—betray the very trust that Edvin had placed in him? Might not this be the very using of it for his own benefit that Edvin had counseled against? What terrible thing might happen if Alexei disobeyed his instructions? Had Edvin known what might result from such a use of the pelt? Had the cunning woman herself even known? Since it was winter and Alexei’s family was in mourning, it was easy to be excused from what little farm work there was to be done. Using the pelt could be a simple thing and require no more than a moment or two.
Alexei went back and forth in his mind. Did he dare to use it? Did he dare not use it, to test it, to reencounter his grandfather in its massive folds? Alexei was unable to resist the call of the pelt and took it, a day or two later, into the fields by himself. He stood, staring up into the clear winter sky. He took a deep breath and stripped off his clothes. It was cold, but not unbearable. Alexei unfolded the great piece of fur and wrapped it about himself as Edvin had described: the leather against his back, the head over his shoulder, the hind legs pulled across his knees. He looked into the sky again.
“Am I ready? Can I control what is about to happen?” Alexei closed his eyes and licked his dry lips. He held his breath.
Nothing happened. Alexei had never seen the transformation when Edvin had used the pelt but had expected it to be sudden, instantaneous with his throwing the pelt across his naked back. Was the skin too old? Would the magic work only for Edvin? Would the transformation even happen without a storm nearby? Maybe his grandfather—and the cunning woman—had also been wrong about using the pelt too often.
But then it hit him. The transformation struck and overtook Alexei, his limbs stretching as muscles grew, filling the space within the great animal skin. The skin tightened around him, like he imagined a baby’s swaddling blanket must feel as a mother tightly wrapped the fabric around her newborn. In fact, he realized that he had become a newborn.
“A newborn werewolf,” he thought. The wolf’s face slipped over his as he twisted his neck in order to see clearly, like a child adjusting his face to see out the eyes of a mask. Alexei cried out in surprise and excitement, but heard only a wolf’s frightful baying in his ears. His tongue ran along teeth that felt suddenly razor sharp and almost sliced open the great tongue that now lolled about his lower jaw. Great handfuls of saliva dripped onto the earth.
New scents assailed his nose. Brighter, stronger, more intense than he had ever experienced in this field before. Scents that told stories as detailed as paintings or the epic folksongs Alexei and his friends and their grandparents sang during long winter nights. A hungry rabbit had come this way yesterday. Families of field mice were burrowed into the earth a few yards from his feet. Bears slept in a den hidden in the forest along the edge of the field, and he could tell where sheep had grazed nearby last summer.
He could also smell a new breeze building its strength a few miles away, over the top of the forest spruces and pines. Fresh rain had fallen the previous week a few miles away and light snow was falling a few miles in the other direction. The cows in the next village were chewing their cud and steamy clouds of warm breath hung in the air before their nostrils. The warm straw around them had a distinctive fragrance, as did the refuse about their feet that needed shoveling. The draught horses, with their typical black stripe along their spines, in their stalls near the cows, exuded the rich horse scent of healthy workers. Alexei breathed deeply and he sang, the wolf baying echoing across the empty fields.
He hadn’t realized that he was standing on all fours now, but felt impelled to spring forward and then—suddenly he was loping through the air and running above the fields, above the forest, toward that light snow drifting from the sky a few miles away. He could smell it, as clearly as he had been able to smell his grandmother’s cooking pot on the fire and he could tell—by the aroma—exactly where the snow clouds were, just as he would have been able to track the location of his grandmother’s stewpot simply by its delicious scent.
There was no danger, no need to rush or hurry toward the snow. He ran along the tops of the pine trees. Now higher, now lower, now faster, now more slowly. The pine needles tickled his paws as he grazed the tops of the trees and the fresh pine scent tickled his nostrils. He danced with the wind and saw the world laid out beneath him.
“Grandfather was right!” he bayed. It was intoxicating to see the world below and feel the freedom of the sky above.
Alexei ran through the air, looking down on villages and hamlets that would have taken hours or even days to reach by road or forest path. It was easy to feel lost up there in the sky, since all the landmarks were different, but each time he realized that he was lost he was able to reorient himself and find his way back to an area he recognized. He lost track of the hours in the sky that first time he used the wolf skin. Eventually, he found his way back to the field where he had left his clothes and descended to the earth as the sun was descending.
His paws touched the ground and he skidded to a halt. He felt like a little boy again, playing in the snow for the first time. If anyone had been watching, they would have thought this great wolf had gone insane! He laughed, rolling along the furrows left from the previous year’s plowing.
W
hen he finally came to a stop, he loped over to where his clothes were and suddenly realized that he had no idea how to take off the wolf pelt. Panic gripped his stomach.
“Will I be trapped in this wolf shape forever? How can I regain my human form? There is no cunning woman to ask, even if I could have made her understand my wolf speech,” he worried.
Alexei sat up on his haunches, hoping the wolf skin would open like a coat if he scratched at where the buttons would run down the front of a jacket or the clasp of a belt would be located. He prodded the fur gently with a paw. Nothing. Struggling to maintain his balance, he used both front paws and scratched more fervently, harder. Then with real desperation. The claws protruding from the wolf toes tore at the skin beneath the fur. He could feel the talons slicing the skin and the blood oozing out and matting the fur. Tears welled up in his eyes. Pain and fear mingled in his chest. His paws scrabbled again at the fur on his chest. More pain. More blood. Exhausted, he collapsed on the earth. If wolves could cry, Alexei would have been sobbing at that moment.
Storm Wolf Page 2
