Twilight of the Wolves

by Edward J. Rathke

  He opened his eyes and the barrier solidified and all turned to shadow and dust, an ephemeral landscape full of distant stars. Whole and pulsing, Sao stood beside the wolfgirl and she clung to him but felt no skin and saw that she was nothing but clouds of ephemera and sensation swirling around a brilliant star and so she wrapped around him and he wore her as new clothes to cover his naked essence sustaining all of them within that plane between worlds. The shadow flickered in and out, without light and without substance, he became a shade, grey and weak, like a leaf without color or life left to it. The waves from Sao pushed him away as he struggled to stay afloat and exist beside them but she felt his essence bound to hers, clinging to hers, clawing after her, drowning, but not caring, he would swallow galaxies if he had to, if only it meant to touch her hand again.

  Speaking but only in ripples that vibrated seismically through the existence he forged, Sao asked what next but then pushed forward, stepping and swimming and flying all at once and together, floating through the ether of spacetime past the many stars. He held the stone before him and traced its scent as if it were a path through the forest, the evershifting galactic dust swirling round, the constellations beaming, the dying stars flashing by. The wolfgirl held her breath as universes came into being, as others collapsed and imploded in brilliant shades of colors she could not name, in sensations she could not understand, not without her body. Slipping through his pores, she burrowed inside of him and he let her. She felt his resistance, his uneasy sickness at feeling her so deep there, but he relaxed and she traced the web of his memories and swam through his black-blood, lying in the hammock of his lungs, and then she found his heart, beating against itself, a dizzying torrent, a grand tempest of his wolfheart which he fought with every breath, with every continued beat, but there was nothing human there. Without hands, she stroked the pulse and calmed its fury. Without lips, she kissed his wolfheart. Without a mouth, she whispered, urging it to become whole, to calm its fury, to accept his godhood and be the demon he chose to be, not the one the humans believed he would be. Coiling round it, she cooled its surface and the blood boiled into a thick steam she swam through and inhaled, her only thought being that she was now him and he was now her, that this was how she chose to live the rest of her life, deep within his heart. But then she saw the shimmering nebula further inside, deep within him, near his bowels. The wolfgirl misted down into the glittering blackness of eternity where all the space within him grew immense and dimensionless and she felt only the cool still water of an endless ocean. The vast void capsized her and disequilibrium set in as she watched herself in moving images but from without, rolling flashes of her own life, of the child she was. She watched herself in the arms of a dying woman surrounded by flames being held close to the eyes she saw through. Her own first steps and first words, the laughter of Hreao and the comfort of Faoi, where the taste and scent of milk returned to her, the images connecting to the memories within her particled existence within Sao. Over and over, she saw herself sleeping, lying with Faoi, while Faoi and Sao spoke and she felt his fear, his anxiety, his overwhelming affection and love, and his pain, his loneliness, but mostly his uncertainty that clouded every moment of his life since he saved hers. The uncertainty of not knowing if saving her destroyed everything she was, everything she could have been, and if separating her from the humans, making her a wolf, the daughter of a demon, was his greatest regret or his greatest achievement. The wolfgirl wept without eyes and without tears and the love inside her bloomed and flowered and proliferated, coloring all the void within him, glowing, incandescent and burning with twilight. Without a mouth she poured her words into the expanse of Sao’s life and memories. Without a heart she bled all her blood into him and made peace out of their memories. Emptying all of them inside him, dumping it into the forever ocean, tying their lives together, their memories melding, becoming one, showing him that he not only saved her but made her better. Better than human and better than wolf. He made her whole and he made the days bright with the light of their dualsuns and the nights luminescent with the eighth moon that was him, her great wolf, her Moon, her life and her light: her everything. The reason she continued to breathe and the reason she’d take him to Yi, so that he can be human again, if that’s what he needed. To make him happy, to make him whole. She would take him even to Laska, to years dead and gone and too far past. She would eradicate the limitations of spacetime, burn down all the histories of the world, all its memories, if only to make him whole.

  The water rose and the stars were all projected and she felt his elation and the vibrations of his words, his dualvoice that she had learnt to love. His voice and theirs, the wolves that made them real were caught and lived on within his words, speaking alongside him, comforting her and him.

  The wolfgirl, reluctantly, drifted back through his pores and became his cloak once more.

  We are close, said the grey shadow, There.

  And in the distance was a burning coal, pulsing and beating, a percussive light shaking spacetime around them. It was full of fury and a sick scent of fire and flesh and decay. A sweet fecundity coursed beneath it and then there, the scent, the one they searched her whole life for: lunar flowers. Sao’s body expanded, glowing bright, immense, intense, incinerating the viscous air, the construction of this hole between planes burnt and bubbled, effervescent and wailing, and sublimated away, Sao’s eyes were two supernovae birthing endless stars and the constellations appeared in his eyes as he took on new shape and dimension, his body transforming at a physical level. Every bit of him became a new him and he burst with darkness and the only aspect visible were his eyes but the wolfgirl held on through the tempest beating violently against them and she took the grey shadow in her hand and lashed it to her star so it would no longer be lost and alone but a part of their plural singularity. And when the blackness dimmed and the change was complete he was a wolf with four legs and nine tails and fur so black he disappeared into the impenetrable darkness of this void within spacetime.

  And then he howled and all of Yiyuyan shook and cowered. He lunged forward and ripped spacetime apart with his teeth, the viscera of existence flowing into his mouth and dripping from his jaws, covering the wolfgirl’s dust and her star and her fluttering shadow flapping in the blustering vortex of the rending of reality. Sao burst through darker than black and howled again, the Yi, their redskin and metal appendages frozen, their graphic marks twisting and shining, their mouths agape, their eyes impossibly open. The wolfgirl’s body appeared to her and her shadow thickened, became real once more, and Sao, her wolf, her Moon, her darkstar, her everything, was a wolf. He howled again and the Yi rose in tumultuous ecstasy, some beating their heads against the stone of their land, an intense insanity taking them up and turning them inside out as they beat their heads against the rocks and the stone into dust and died wailing and smiling and they ripped one another apart, a confused orgy of sex and violence and adulations, all of their tiny metal city bursting in pillars of steam and alight for the first time in centuries, and then the lunar flowers sang.

  They sang and the madness cooled but their smiles remained, lungs ran ragged, panting, their hearts bursting and some died from the bliss of this moment, the moment they had waited their whole existence for. Their whole civilisation because of this moment.

  But the lunar flowers.

  They sang. And the wolfgirl believed it was for her. For her and her Moon. Even for her shadow. She hugged her wolfgod, crying, muttering, This is how it begins, Sao. This is the rest of our lives. We made it. We’re free. We’re home.

  And the lunar flowers sang and the Yi waited, watching, surging in numbers, their energy thick in the thin air.

  And the lunar flowers sang and she danced.

  She danced.

  Night comes now and the house is still. The anticipation so thick in the air it becomes pulp and we choke on it. No one speaks but we exchange meaningful looks, take one another’s hands, squeeze, call each other Sister.

>   Lord Alexander takes his dinner alone at the table and while we prepare Alexi dances into the kitchen and bows deeply, The master asks for the fair Maiden Wolf.

  My hand stops halfway through an onion and the smile I wasn’t aware of fades and the blood falls from my face.

  Alexi laughs, Auntie, don’t worry. It’s nothing. The bastard fool thinks he’s dying. He’s been going on for months about his regrets that he never filled your womb with a child. He loves you, Auntie, Alexi bursts into laughter and wipes his eyes theatrically as I flush and wither, feeling a child again. He won’t even notice the knife in your skirt till it’s so deep down his throat that he’s digesting it, so gone and oblivious is he. He’s even prepared a dress for you! He believes you love him! That this favoring of you has turned you towards him. Alexi claps his hands and stomps his feet.

  Still and afraid though too old for it, Alexi’s face becomes curiously sinister. There is a fury in him the way there would one day be in Alyc if he were raised by the monster. The fury from a decade of such moments as Alyc experienced today, walking a tightrope between son and slave, loved and despised, favored and ignored. Bitter and angry, but too clever to cry out, he has made his life of duplicity, made himself indispensable even as he shows his disdain for Roca and his father, wearing a mask of smiles and empty threats for the father he hates, the father he’s planned to kill for as long as he’s had the words to understand such a concept.

  He takes my hand and pulls me close into a waltz, Oh, dear Auntie, do you see, ladies? Our beautiful Auntie’s afraid of the big bad metal beast! He laughs and spins me slowly, careful of my tortured body and the smile comes unbidden to my lips and the heat rises higher and higher and the girls are laughing and Alexi touches me gracefully and with kindness, pretending my fat swollen waist is that of a supple girl he’s bedding, staring at my eyes and not the scars of my abuse or the fattening of my neck. He was born for this, to lead and to rule and he turns my blood cold but I follow him anyway, caught in his charisma, his indefatigable aura.

  He didn’t come for me. It was another, a man I called sister, but he took me anyway mumbling his apologies in the deep darkness of night, even as I bit and kicked him, clawed at his vicelike fingers. Awake, all of them, but none rushed to help. None even moved. Cowed, grateful it was not them, that at least tonight it would not be them screaming through the walls. Through all the abuse I gave him, he apologised but never let go, dragging me, kicking and screaming, through the long halls where I tore at paintings and kicked over statues, spit on the carpet, pissed myself, threw my foot into mirrors and through the wooden pegs ornamenting the staircase, knowing what waited for me at the top of them, in the dark of the night. He didn’t hurt me, not on purpose, the bruises and cuts were from my own thrashing though I wanted to hate him and never speak to him again. Kryzstof, a wiry Dragonlord only a few years older than me then but with the strength of dragonhood already in him.

  He opened the door and Lord Alexander stood before the bed, two glasses in hand. Restrained by Kryzstof, Lord Alexander handed me one that I slapped away, screaming, spitting at him, calling him every curse I knew in Limpa, Garasun, and wolf. For that, he slapped me with his meat hand and spoke in that grinding guttural language that was incomprehensible to me then, but the pain didn’t stop me, just made me rage harder and then he took the metal fist to my face and I stained the wall with the blood that flew from my mouth as it took me to the ground, my eyes unsteady and my balance gone. Roughly, he pulled me to my feet then made me sip the stinging amber liquid of his glass. His face stern, the jaw lined by close bristled hair all the way to the seam of where his skin met the metal of his cheek. He stared at me with his blue eyes, one made of glass and captured light, the other was born to him. Raising his organic hand again, I winced and he smiled, his expression turning soft, and he whispered more of his ugly words with that ugly flickering pinkish purple tongue. Stroking my cheek, grazing where it swelled already, he shook his head and tsked, his voice soft, almost pleading, stinking of liquor.

  Throwing his head back and draining the glass, he said something to Kryzstof who stood behind me who said something back which made Lord Alexander shout, his anger flaring and his face red. Brushing back his long yellow hair, he gestured Kryzstof towards me.

  A mumbled apology, begging me to be still, he removed my clothes while Lord Alexander stared, rubbing his stomach, his tongue flickering against his lips, swallowing. He waved Kryzstof away but when Kryzstof tried to leave he spoke again and Kryzstof stayed.

  My body rigid, cold, but I did not cry. Would not. Could not. I turned to stone and when he touched me I felt the hammer cracking against my surface, ringing in my ears, telling me this was the rest of my life and I lunged towards his throat but he caught my hand, took my throat in his metal hand and threw me into the wall once, twice, thrice, my head cracking and my legs going limp and far away, no longer touching the ground.

  He threw me to the bed, facedown. When I crawled away he laughed, short and hard, then grabbed my ankles, pulled me back and smacked the back of my head with his manhand, the machinehand cold and heavy on my waist. The sound of clothes falling and the slimy touch of his knees against the inside of my thighs, I writhed away and he punched me in the side, shouted, and the world was full of stars and black dots, my body contorting in pain and my breath gone, but I twisted, kept moving even as he laughed, his hand pulling my waist to him, his wet hairy limbs against me, and then I felt him inside me, large and painful, impossibly hot, forcing his way through my unwilling and unforgiving skin. The tears were inside me but I bit them down even as he tore at me, bit my hand to keep from screaming until I tasted blood and my skin was no longer mine but a thousand years away and I was deep within the womb of the world, feeling its heartbeat and the song of the trees and the howl of wolves but a part of me watched from the shadows, watched my heart break, my body used, covered in his sweat, his stench, watched myself splinter and fragment away just as the moon did so many centuries ago.

  And when he had used me he barked orders and Kryzstof’s hands tried to reach me cowering and quivering in the corner where I felt shame for the first time. All the abuse on the long deadly road to Luca was another me, a me of transition, between my true self, the wolfgirl, and this spectre who ghosts even still through the house and life that is my prison. But that night I felt shame and a pain without name, not only in my body, where I was ripped and beaten, but deeper, where my wolfheart grew and all my memories lived. I was defiled and would never be clean again. I would never be me, would never be whole. And Kryzstof took me in his arms, his skin soft, his touch tender, and I was a brittle leaf, a remnant of fall caught in the blizzards of winter, dried out, dying.

  He carried me back to my bed shaking and weeping, begging forgiveness. And even as I wanted to hate him, even as all the world was drained of light, all the colors rotting off, all my life wasting away, my memories ravaged, I opened my heart to him and put my arms around him and gave myself to the tears refused to me for so long. And he, Polina, and the others held me that night and whispered a thousand promises and consolations that I never heard. Not then, and not any of the times after.

  The tears for all that I had lost. The tears for the next twenty years that I saw so clearly that night. The tears for a thousand more nights to come.

  And you, my lost Moon. My eternal wolf. Heart of my heart. You saw me and you see me but you did not see this that night. You promised me but then you went away.

  You left me.

  You promised me.

  The dress is too tight around my tumescence, my lumbering fat body. Used and old, wrinkled, and ready for the end. For the end of this humiliation, this debasement called life.

  He smiles, though, and waves me to sit. His coat is thick and dark blue and tight, his shirt puffy and white as a cloud, and his trousers short and hugging his skin.

  My dear, it’s so nice to finally sit with you. Oh, don’t mind them. Alexandra and Alexandra, get out. Take
it with you—he waves his hand at Alyc, already crying, staring at me and I feel more than see his arms reaching out for mine as Lord Alexander leans into me—Let them talk. It’s taken me twenty years, but I’m finally man enough to take you as you are and place you where you belong. At my side. Hm? Isn’t this better than chopping onions or whatever it is the savages do back behind that wall. Go ahead, eat. It’s elk, the meat of a god, I imagine—he laughed but I only poked the catmeat on the plate and smiled—the gods. Why do your people consider these beasts gods? I’ve never understood. What makes this elk a god and keeps me from being one, hm? Go on, speak. You’re free now.

  Free, the word pierces through the barrier twenty years thick and touches me at the root of my spine. Free, and I turn to his smile, to those barbaric bluesuns, my throat caught. Water, cooling the heat but doing nothing to the desert of my mouth, absorbed before relief strikes and I’m silent too long when he slams the table and asks me again why we think the beasts are gods. My voice, thick and clicking, the foreign words wrestling my tongue, Guard world. Keep it good. When gods leave world, go forest with. And with forest go planet. Life.

  He blinks then throws his head back laughing, When that forest is gone, man will truly live! he slaps the table laughing, his voice racked by age, That forest is the last obstacle. When we burn it down and your gods all die, you’ll understand all the things we do for you and you’ll no longer fight civilisation and progress. Imagine, trains crossing from city to city. New frontiers and new cities sprouting all over, wherever ore and things of value can be grown. We brought you peace and now we’ll bring you industry. The future. We can plant proper trees, ones for rubber, and proper crops, for tobacco, for coffee, for cocoa. Have you ever tasted chocolate, my dear? Oh, it’s delightful. You’d love it, but it’s hard to find in this brutal Lucan land. And wine! Not the gutrot your people drink, but true and proper wine! Bitter and strong. Your wine is too sweet and delicate. Fine for women, but not for a man.