Children of the Wolves (3 page)

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 time 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.

The smoke from the burning stung Michael's eyes. The plumes of flame rose high into the morning sky, the blistering heat of the fire making people step back and turn their faces away. He watched the smoke drift upward, a signal in the sky. A signal of what? To whom? He noticed Jelena kept her eyes averted from the smoke and the fire, and indeed from the entire ceremony. He wasn't sure why; it wasn't the first funeral she had attended, though he admitted the ceremony could be difficult to watch. But the others bore the sight stoically, silent tears glittering on their cheeks. Then he realized her eyes were on Viktor again, and his gut clenched.

Later, in their room, Michael took the vestments off, and, folding them carefully, stored them in the carved wooden trunk against the far wall. He shut the lid gently, though something in him felt like slamming it. There would be something satisfying in that. But there was something equally satisfying about not yielding to impulse, about exercising self control. He straightened his tunic and turned to Jelena with an inquiring look.

“I didn't know you and Viktor had developed a special friendship,” he said. The moment he said it, he wished he'd held his tongue. Self discipline was not exercised solely in not slamming lids or doors. It was also exercised in the choosing of words. Now was not the time for plain speaking. But surely she could see that the melancholy Viktor was hopeless? They could not survive in this new world by dreaming of the past and refusing to accept the lives they had now. And what could Viktor offer her in terms of companionship and affection? He focused inwardly, to the exclusion of all else. Jelena would surely regret an alliance with Viktor.

Jelena blushed and said, “We understand each other.”

Her cheeks flamed deeper red as he watched her; he had distressed and embarrassed her. Now he truly wanted to call back the words but he had set them out there and it wasn't possible to say “never mind” and pretend they hadn't been said.

He schooled himself to show no response to her admission, not wanting to distress her or influence her unduly. A protector held so much power in a newlyborn's life that it was easy, far too easy, for the newlyborn to yield to the protector's wishes, no matter what the newlyborn might want, no matter what might be best for the newlyborn. Which was why so many rules governed their relationship and why Michael must hold his tongue. How simple it would be to bend her will to his, and convince her it was what she wanted all along.

Or perhaps, considering it was Jelena, not so simple after all. Would it be so terrible if he tried? If he told her she must not think of Viktor that way, that Michael would go to the elders to oppose such a match? He might as well take her as a lover, then, and be done with it, and violate the oaths he had sworn and the vow had had made the day she was delivered into his care. Ultimately it would be the most dishonorable act he could perform. It sickened him how much he wanted to do it.

“Viktor and I don't spend much time together — you should know, you're constantly at my side,” Jelena protested. Michael couldn't tell what this statement meant. Did she think he accused her of an inappropriate relationship? Or was she trying to reassure him that she felt nothing for Viktor? Or was she implying that she hadn't spent enough time with Viktor to make a decision about him and wished she could spend more?