“Alexei.” His grandmother spoke as clearly and distinctly as he had ever heard her, though he could not see her. “You must go. Leave this place. The townsfolk will not know how to destroy the werewolf and will only bring further destruction upon themselves. You must find your deliverance elsewhere.”
His grandfather’s voice joined hers. “Go now, Alexei. Go, and take the wolf skin with you. It is too dangerous to let it fall into someone else’s unsuspecting hands. Take it with you and flee.”
“Where?” he pleaded in the midst of his sobbing. “Where can I go now?”
“Go south. Go west. For that matter, go north or east. Go anywhere, so long as it is not here,” his grandfather told him. “South to the summer and the water or west toward the sunset and the autumn. The dawn rises in the east—a new life can dawn for you there as well, perhaps. North? The snows and barren land mean that there will be few if any other folk to be harmed when the transformation overcomes you. But when I was a boy, the old people said that compassion could be found in the south and judgment in the west. If you go in that direction, when you reach the right place, you may find a way to heal the wolf magic.”
“Go now,” his grandmother added. “Hurry.”
With difficulty, Alexei set down the body of his son. He stumbled inside the house, averting his eyes from the bloody havoc he had caused. He retrieved the wolf skin from its hiding place, thinking it might be useful in whatever place he found himself, and gathered the few coins he and Grete had saved and hidden under the bed. Would he need clothing? He gathered a shirt and trousers and placed these, with the skin and the coins, into a sheet that was less torn than most and tied the bundle shut.
Afraid that the transformation might sweep across him again at any moment, Alexei wanted to get away as soon as possible. Although what new havoc he might cause could surely be not as terrible as that which lay strewn about him, he dared not wait to discover what new atrocity might be visited on the townsfolk.
Alexei hurried behind the house and washed quickly in the ice-cold water from the stream there. The cold water cut through the fog of his mind the way the wolf fur burst through his flesh. He splashed and poured handfuls of water over himself as if the wolf magic could be rinsed away with the blood of Grete and their children. He scrubbed the caked and dried stains from his skin as well as he could without taking any longer than he dared.
Finally, he stood on the grass again and shook a flurry of droplets from his hair. If he was seen leaving his home or walking down the village streets, questions would be raised, time wasted, the truth discovered. The very thing that Alexei’s grandparents urged him to avoid would be inescapable. There was only one choice, it seemed.
Trembling, Alexei removed the skin from the bundle on the ground before him. He knelt on his hands and knees, taking the knot of sheeting in his human teeth before flinging the pelt across his back.
As the werewolf, he lifted himself above the village. Carrying his knapsack in his teeth, Alexei circled the town once before trotting away. He cast one last look on his home, the place where he had grown up, where his family had lived and farmed for generations, where he’d cherished Grete and their children.
Running across the tops of the trees and then through the lower clouds, Alexei turned away from everything he knew.
Chapter 3: Vilkatis
Alexei
(Latvia, late autumn 1889)
Which way had his grandfather said to go? It took Alexei a moment to recall. Edvin had said to simply flee, to go anywhere. Going north would mean the snow and cold would be almost unbearable but there would be few, if any, other people to be harmed when the wolf magic overcame him. But the very lack of people to be harmed meant that there would be almost no chance of finding anyone who knew how to heal the wolf magic. So Alexei went south.
Toward the warmer weather. Towards people. People who might be harmed but also people who might know how to help him. He ran like he had never run before, almost dropping his sheet-satchel from his panting jaws. After several hours, he was in territory that he did not recognize and decided he should not use the skin more than absolutely necessary lest the magic take any more dire turns. He descended along the edge of a remote trail and removed the skin, thankful that he was able to at least still do that. His humanity, had not yet been completely overcome by the savagery of the werewolf. He dressed in the clothing he had brought and wrapped the skin in the sheet, slinging it over his shoulder.
Alexei walked, mostly away from main roads at first. As the transformation did not come over him, after a few days he dared to join the throngs on the principal routes. He was frugal, spending as few of his coins as he could. He slept in the woods or in barns and ate little, often trading a day’s labor for a meal. It was summer. Days were clear and evenings warm. Work was to be had in the fields he passed and, luckily, few asked questions.
He knew that thieves and other dishonest men lurked along the roads and in the woods he was traveling through. Thieves would easily kill for a few coins or even for a few good clothes. Most men would not dare to travel alone through such territory. Alexei passed groups of travelers who invited him to join them, but more fearful of their safety at the jaws of the werewolf than his own at the hands of thieves, he always declined. He knew that if set upon in the woods, he would be more than able to defend himself. Alexei suspected that fear could trigger the transformation if there was not time to use the pelt.
As he traveled, Alexei found himself in regions that spoke languages he did not understand, although his Estonian peasant knowledge of German seemed enough to make himself understood in most places. The little Russian he knew also helped him be understood. He spoke little with his fellow travelers and farm workers, but he did learn that he had passed into a collection of provinces of the Russian Empire, territories known as Livonia or Latvija by the peasants and farmers who had long lived under Swedish or German as well as Russian rule. Many spoke of the “Jaunlatvieši,” the “Young Latvians,” who urged the people to reject the German and Russian of the nobility in favor of the traditional language and customs of the Latvian peasants.
Alexei also saw large numbers of men working with great beams of steel and ties of wood, building what they called “dzelzceļš” through the countryside. They claimed that creatures known as “dzelzs zirgi” or “iron horses” would travel along the tracks they were building and that these iron horses would be powered by steam and coal, able to travel at incredible speeds and carry both men and goods far distances. Men urged him to stay and work with them as they laid these tracks across the Latvian countryside, but he did not dare stay too long in any one place, both because he was afraid of what he might do if the wolf transformation overcame him and because he needed to keep moving—headed anywhere—in his search for anyone who might know the old practices and be able to free him from the wolf magic that had driven him to kill his beloved Grete and their children. So Alexei kept walking south and also a bit to the west, stopping to work when he needed a meal or a few coins and always asking if there were any of the wise folk or cunning women, whom he learned they called “burtnicks” or “viltīgs sievietes” in the district.
Alexei had been walking south and west for almost a month when Svētā Jēkaba diena came, the day when the reaping of the crops begins and the farmers need all the extra help they could hire to get the harvest in by late September. So he found himself in the fields of one of the local landowners, swinging a scythe with teams of men, all singing harvest songs as they trudged up and down the furrows. When Alexei’s hands chafed or blistered from the wooden handle of the scythe, he would trade places with one of the men who followed along and gathered up the wheat or straw into bundles to be loaded onto the heavy wagons and taken to the barns.
It was in one of the barns that the extra workers were allowed to sleep and leave their satchels of belongings during the day. Alexei hid his bundle of clothing and the pelt there as best he could, hoping that no one would find it and accidently open the pe
lt and be trapped in the nightmare that his own life had become.
The reaping, a time for most of the men to sing and enjoy their working together in the fields, were days of sorrow for Alexei. He recalled the days of early spring at home and the planting of the seeds on the farms of his village in Estonia. His neighbors and he had ploughed and planted in such hopes of a rich harvest, and then he had used the wolf pelt to save his plow horses from the wolves coming from the forests. He had become a killer who slaughtered not only his neighbors, but even his own family. While the other men sang, Alexei wanted to weep.
It was at supper one dusk during the reaping that Alexei sat with a handful of the men working to bring in the harvest. On this night, the men he sat with were mainly local, but there were a few extra workers like himself. They were joking with one another over their bowls of stew and mugs of beer as Alexei sat slightly apart from the rest. One of the younger men made a joke, insulting another man, who took his fistful of bread and threw it into the jokester’s face. Laughter erupted around the circle of men as everyone began to make jokes at his neighbor’s expense. More fistfuls of bread flew through the air and two men leaped at each other, grappling one another in a good-natured wrestling match. The laughter turned to cheers, goading both wrestlers on.
That’s when Alexei felt the first few drops of rain. He looked up into the sky.
The last gleams of sunset were streaking the western horizon through heavy clouds moving in across the sky from the east. A few more drops of rain splashed into his bowl of stew.
Alexei smiled. He would not have been able to catch raindrops with his stew if he had been trying to. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and pushed himself up from the ground to go refill his bowl of stew.
The wrestlers and their cheering comrades had not noticed the handful of droplets that had fallen. Their bowls of half-eaten stew lay forgotten on the ground, and the chunks of bread were scattered inside the ring of cheering men, much of the bread being ground into crumbs by the wrestlers. An evening breeze stirred and the harvest, still waiting to be reaped half a field away, rustled quietly.
Alexei reached the cook’s encampment in the midst of the many circles of men eating their suppers at this end of the field. Many were leaving their stew and trotting over to join the onlookers at the wrestling match. Even those who stayed seated cheered on the wrestlers, although it was impossible to see through the growing crowd of onlookers what exactly was happening. Another few drops of rain splattered the ground near Alexei’s feet.
The man overseeing the cauldron of stew took Alexei’s bowl to refill it, grunting and jerking his head to one side to indicate that Alexei should help himself to another chunk of bread. Alexei did and took his refilled bowl from the cook, turning back towards the wrestlers.
Lightning tore open the sky. Thunder roared, silencing the cheering crowd surrounding the wrestlers. Sheets of rain plummeted from the sky, churning the ground into mud in only a few moments. The men scattered and shouted to one another, struggling to gather up the bowls and mugs and cooking equipment or to get the scythes out of the unexpected storm. Some of the men simply ran for the barns, more concerned to get themselves out of the downpour than to properly care for the equipment needed for the harvest.
Lightning tore another hole in the sky and the barns trembled in the thunder. Alexei looked across the field. It was too dark now to see much, but in the momentary brilliance of the lightning he could see the wheat and other crops waiting to be harvested being quickly beaten down by the force of the rain.
A driving wind rose up, turning the rain into sharp needles that were driven into the men’s faces as well as into the crops waiting in the fields around them. Men’s voices shouting were commingled with the wild neighing of the horses tethered nearby, as they had been waiting to be taken back to their stables and tended. One, evidently terrified by the lightning, reared up and shrieked at the sky and then broke loose from the others, running across the field in an attempt to escape the storm, but its hooves, trampling the crops, would only add to the destruction of the harvest.
Trying to protect his eyes with one hand, Alexei peered into the sky. He took a deep breath and held it, savoring the fragrances in the air. A brief summer shower might have been expected anytime during the harvest and might have even been enjoyable to work through, but a storm like this, so sudden and so powerful, would not quickly pass and would leave terrible destruction in its wake. The unharvested crops would be destroyed and the coming winter would be a time of terrible hunger as a result. The survival of these men and their families during the coming winter depended on the success of this harvest. And the scents Alexei detected in the air… He smelled the presence of thunder dragons and wind hags, storm goblins and their misshapen daughters. A host of them, not just a few wrapping themselves in a mantle of storm clouds. It was an angry host trampling across the sky, intent on destroying the harvest below.
Alexei knew what he ought to do. He knew what he could do. But it would mean risking the safety of the men around him. He had been lucky since he had put the pelt away and been walking across the Latvian countryside. But using the pelt again now might mean killing the men who had been harvesting beside him as well as driving away the storm above them.
“How can I take that chance? Will their deaths be any less terrible if they are killed by starvation or by a werewolf’s jaws?” he asked himself.
Alexei glanced around. Chaos was everywhere. Men were running, shouting, grabbing what they could, trying to see through the darkness and the rain. Horses whinnied and shrieked. Barns groaned.
There was no one noticing him. He ran across the fields to the barn where he had been sleeping these last few nights. The wind had knocked over a kerosene lamp outside near the open doors of the barn, and a small fire was attempting to chew its way through the wooden doors, despite the onslaught of rain. Wind swirled through the interior, strewing straw and hay in elaborate patterns across the floor. Alexei tumbled into the barn and into the hayloft, making his way to his hidden bundle in one corner under the eaves. He wrenched it out of its hiding place, his few belongings spewing out around him. He clutched the great wolf pelt to himself, felt the fur caress his face.
“I owe it to the farmers who have taken me in during my walk across the countryside, who have been generous enough to share their summer bounty with me,” he said, telling himself in words what he already knew in his heart. “I cannot let them starve this winter because I am afraid of losing control of the magic again. Even if I do lose control of the magic and kill the men outside, at least their families will not starve.”
Alexei wrapped the pelt around his shoulders and made his way to the large hatch above the doors of the barn.
When Alexei woke, he was slumped against a tree trunk in a forest. It was dark, but the sky was clear above him, at least in the few small patches of sky visible through the heavy canopy of leaves and foliage. He could see stars in the night sky, but little of that light penetrated to the forest floor. The bark was rough against his wet, naked back, and it took him a few minutes to realize who and where he was. He was naked, sitting in the mud at the base of a large tree, with the wolf pelt twisted around his legs. He struggled to sit up. All his muscles ached. He saw bruises along his arms. A coppery scent filled his nostrils, and he reached up to wipe his lower face but stopped in horror as he saw his hands, covered with gore. He tentatively reached his tongue out to his lips and tasted blood there. He reached up with the crook of his right arm to dry it across his chin, and it came away with streaks of blood and clumps of hair.
“No…” He shuddered. “What have I done?”
“What have you done?” a deep voice rumbled. “You have eaten what was not yours to eat.”
He darted a glance around the dark forest. He could see clumps of ferns growing in the shadows and other plants or bushes scattered beneath the trees. He saw twisted shards of muscle and bone scattered amo
ng the plants. He saw some longer chunks of bone, tatters of meat still clinging to them in dark puddles. The scent of blood hung in the air, twisting in the night breezes. Alexei felt sick, guessing at what he had done.
“You have taken what was not yours to take.” The voice hung in the air, the rebuke ripping through Alexei’s soul.
Alexei drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs, beginning to rock and wail. “I… I only wanted to drive away the storm,” he managed to say between sobs. “How… how many did I kill?” In some corner of his mind he wondered who he was speaking with and how this man had escaped Alexei in his rampaging wolf form. “But the storm...” He wanted to know. “Are the crops safe?”
“Yes.” The voice paused. “You drove away the storm, vilkatis. The crops are safe and no one will starve this winter. You fought bravely and slew many of the thunder dragons. It will be many seasons before such an assembly of thunder dragons and storm goblins think to attack this region again. Many would thank you if they knew you were the one who had done that.”
That was some consolation. “You saw that? You know what I am?”
“Yes, I know that you are vilkatis, one of the old order of the wolf-men who drive the storms away that would devastate the farms and destroy the harvests,” the man he could not see explained. “It has been many long years since one of your kind has fought in the skies here. I saw your battle with the storm and I saw you come down from the torn clouds as the storm goblins who still lived ran from your terrible jaws. I saw you, wounded and exhausted, tumble from the skies and then stumble here into the forest and I saw what you did then. I know what you ate here among the trees.”
Alexei waited for the man to continue speaking but he heard nothing. The man had not answered Alexei’s other question. “But how many did I kill here in the forest?” He wondered who had even been in the forest. Had some of the farmhands run into the trees to escape the storm?
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