Storm Wolf (13 page)

Spīdala sang something, very quietly. Little more than a whisper but with a melody. The few words Alexei thought he could make out were in Latvian. The song seemed to go on and repeat itself, the melody twisting in the air. He began to fall asleep, but each time he did so, the rumbling in his stomach would wake him.

Startled awake by the acute pangs in his stomach once again, this time Alexei heard something rustling in the straw nearby. Spīdala’s song seemed to have changed chords now and the melody hung in the air, beckoning and inviting. The straw rustled again and a large toad came hopping toward them. Alexei pulled his head up, fully awake now, to stare at the large wart-encrusted creature as it would hop, then pause, then hop twice and pause again. It finally hopped into Spīdala’s lap and peered at her face.

Spīdala stopped singing as she looked into the toad’s eyes. Gently she cupped her hands around it and lifted it to her cheek. She was whispering to it now and it seemed to nod, as if in understanding. It stretched itself towards her and kissed her on the cheek. Spīdala held her breath and then gently kissed the toad on its cheek before setting it gently back into the straw beside them. It hopped off towards the ladder leading down from the hayloft and disappeared between the bales of hay and straw.

Alexei cocked his head to one side, looking at Spīdala. “What did you just do?” he wanted to ask.

Spīdala seemed to know his thoughts. “I called the toad with the song my mother taught me,” she explained, “and then explained that I need it to find the nearest cow and steal as much milk from her udder as it can carry and bring it back here.”

Alexei continued to look at her quizzically.

“The kiss?” She blushed. “The kiss was the price of its theft of the milk. Everything has its cost, does it not,
vilkatis
? Wouldn’t the Master of Wolves agree?”

Alexei slowly wagged his great wolf head in agreement. Everything did have its cost, whether in terms of magic or otherwise. He had been learning the cost of everything since that day he had used the wolf magic to save his plow horses from the wolves and lost control of the werewolf transformation.

“Now all we need do is wait.” Spīdala leaned back against a bale of hay and closed her eyes. In a moment, Alexei lay his head in her lap again. Spīdala was soon asleep, he could tell from her gentle breathing, but his hunger refused to let him doze for more than a few moments at a time.

The shadows shifted in the hayloft. Alexei guessed it was sometime in the early afternoon now. Spīdala was slumped over, still asleep. He tried to not move, not wanting to jostle her or disturb her sleep. What nightmare did the Master of Wolves have planned for the coming night? Alexei tried not to think of that, but he wanted Spīdala to be as well-rested as possible when it came time to face the Master’s demands. Alexei kept hoping that Spīdala would find some way to free herself, at least, if not the both of them. But she could not do that if she were too tired to think.

As he lay there, trying not to move or wake Spīdala, he heard the straw rustle again near the top of the ladder and saw the toad emerge from beneath the straw scattered about the loft’s floorboards. Alexei wondered how the toad had climbed and descended that ladder. “That must be part of the magic,” he decided, watching the creature slowly move across the loft towards them. But now the toad seemed even larger than it had this morning when Spīdala had first called it with her mother’s song. It was at least twice as large, its skin stretched tight across its bulging sides and haunches.

The toad waddled and hopped, a strange combination of movements, slowly shifting its weight as it moved until it finally reached Spīdala’s feet. It sat there a moment and then croaked loudly, announcing its arrival. Spīdala stirred but did not wake. The toad croaked again.

Alexei raised his head and nudged her side with his muzzle. She stirred and then, noticing the toad, startled fully awake. She reached out as far as she could toward it, offering her palms to it as she had that morning, and the toad heaved itself into her hands. She lifted it to her lips again, whispering to it. It seemed again to understand and nodded. Spīdala turned to Alexei.

“Now,
vilkatis,
the toad has brought us the milk it has stolen from the farmer’s cows,” she explained. “If I was at home, as I was when my husband wanted the milk from the neighbor’s cows stolen, the toad would spit all the milk out into a bucket for me and it would be as fresh and delicious as if I had just taken it from the cow myself. But now, we have no bucket. So it must spit out all the milk it has brought us into your mouth.”

Alexei jerked his head back, ready to gag at the thought of the toad spitting into his mouth.

“Just as you have seen the
pūķis
vomit out the grain and goods it has stolen,” Spīdala told him. “Just like that.”

Despite his hunger, Alexei nearly vomited himself in revulsion.

Spīdala could see his disgust. She shook her head and leaned towards him, whispering into his ear as she had to the toad. “I am sorry,
vilkatis
, but there is no other way, is there? Close your eyes and try not to think of it. Imagine that it is a milkmaid, squeezing the milk from the cow directly into your mouth. Is that not a better picture in your mind?”

Alexei considered that and then slowly nodded his agreement. Spīdala smiled at him and nodded as well. She brought the toad up and held it in front of Alexei’s face. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth.

He felt the milk squirt into his mouth and dribble over his tongue. It was the freshest, most delicious milk he had ever tasted! He lapped it up as it spurted into his mouth, ran across his teeth, spilling out over his lips. He swallowed and swallowed, great buckets worth of milk spewing into his mouth as if he was kneeling alongside a milkmaid during the evening milking, just as Spīdala had promised. He kept drinking the spurting milk until his stomach could hold no more and the squirting gradually subsided, one last spurt splashing into his closed eye.

He heard Spīdala heave a sigh of relief as she set the toad back down into the straw. Alexei opened one eye and saw the toad, now even leaner and thinner than it had been in the morning, hop quickly away and disappear into the straw of the hayloft. He closed his eye and dropped his head gently back into Spīdala’s lap.

“Is that better now,
vilkatis
?” she asked, rubbing him behind his ears. “Is your hunger satisfied now, at least for a bit?”

Alexei smiled, his lips curling back across the great fangs in his mouth, and nodded happily. He felt full and content, the happiest he had been since leaving his home in Estonia so many weeks ago. His stomach rumbled again, this time with contentment rather than hunger.

Alexei and Spīdala fell asleep in the hayloft for what remained of the afternoon.

That night the Master came to fetch them much later than usual. Long past dusk, he stood in the doorway of the barn and whistled. Spīdala and Alexei, having come down from the hayloft as the sun was setting, emerged from one of the empty stalls, where they had been waiting for the Master’s arrival.

The Master pulled a loaf and a piece of cheese from his satchel and threw them into the loose straw scattered across the floor of the barn. “Eat, child,” he told Spīdala. “Then we shall be on our way.” Spīdala stooped and caught up the bread and cheese before the Master could change his mind and rescind his offer.

“Shall I save the first bites to feed the
pūķis
?” she asked, settling onto a milking stool. Saving the first bites of her meals had become expected, as the
pūķis
had to be fed now each time she created it from the Master’s pipe smoke.

“No, child,” the Master told her. “Tonight we do not need to feed the
pūķis.
You may eat it all, even the first bites.”

Spīdala began to chew on the cheese she had been given. Alexei settled down beside her, one eye on the Master. Still full from the milk that Spīdala had managed to conjure for him that afternoon, he did not trust the Master to not know of it somehow and punish either himself or Spīdala because of it. But the Master just settled himself against the wall of the barn, as he usually did, to wait for Spīdala to finish her meal.

Spīdala stood finally, brushing the crumbs of bread and cheese from her lap.

“Come,
vilkatis
,” the Master crooned.

The hair on Alexei’s neck stood erect, the syrupy tone in the Master’s voice raising alarms. What could the Master be wanting? He never pretended to be kind. The sweetness dripping from the Master’s words had to be a trick or a trap. Alexei stood and growled quietly, the deep rumble in his throat an odd contrast with his emaciated frame.

“Come,
vilkatis
,” the Master repeated, gesturing with his crutch toward the barn doors. “Do not be so suspicious of me. Tonight you might just find me in a kindly mood to set either you or the girl free and let you go your own way. Maybe the both of you. Or neither. We shall see how kindly I might be disposed to you after our errand is completed.”

Alexei felt his hackles still rising and the rumble in his throat grew stronger. The Master certainly had some trap in store for them, dangling their freedom like that. The Master would never allow them to go so easily, so simply. Whatever the errand he had in mind this evening, Alexei was certain it must be especially horrid if the Master felt inclined to lure him into it with such saccharine blandishments.

Still growling, Alexei circled around the Master and then darted out the doors of the barn. Outside, in the night, he heard an owl hoot somewhere and the flutter of its wings. Spīdala came to stand beside him and she mounted his shoulders as she had so often these past weeks. The Master climbed astride his haunches as well. Without waiting for instructions, Alexei trotted into the sky and then, directed by the Master’s much more gentle than usual instructions, carried them away to a small farm far to the east across the forests and swamps of the countryside. Dropping down into the farmyard, Alexei could see at once that this secluded farm, surrounded by dense woods, was much more humble than most of the farms and manors or estates that the Master had brought them to over these past weeks. This farm was not simply humble, it was poor.

Spīdala climbed down from Alexei’s back and the Master clambered off as well. They all stood in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night. Owls hooted. A bat flitted out from the open hatch above the barn doors. Small rodents scurried through the underbrush of the woods.

“Why have you brought us here?” Spīdala asked at last, breaking the silence. “What is this errand, these ‘great doings’ that you promised?”

“Come with me,” the Master urged, the syrupy-sweet tone again making Alexei’s hackles rise. The Master limped into the barn and Alexei was sure he heard a whimper deep in the recesses of the rough-hewn structure. Spīdala grasped one of his ears as if acknowledging the danger of the Master’s tone and his promise to possibly free them if he was pleased with the results of this errand.

“I do not trust him,
vilkatis
,” whispered Spīdala into his ear. “There is something afoot here that is more wicked than anything he has asked for yet.” She lifted her head and set her shoulders back to face whatever it was the Master was leading them to. Together they walked into the barn.

In the dark of the barn, it took Alexei a moment to see that the Master was standing near one of the empty cattle stalls. With trepidation, Alexei and Spīdala made their way as quietly as they could across the barn until they stood alongside the Master at the stall’s gate. The Master leaned on the closed gate of the stall and it creaked open in the dark. At the sound of the creaking stall gate, something large scrambled through the loose straw strewn about the stall and pressed itself against the back wall. The Master pulled out his pipe and struck his flint to light it. In the quick light of the sparks from the flint and the flicker of flame as the tobacco caught fire, Alexei saw that it was a man.

The man had straw in his hair and caught in his shirt and trousers as well. He was blinking in the small but sudden light of the tiny fire in the bowl of the Master’s pipe, attempting to rub his eyes as if he had just been awakened by the noise. Alexei saw that the man’s hands were tightly bound with the rough rope typically used on farms. Glancing down, he saw the man was barefoot and his ankles roughly bound together as well.

Spīdala gasped and the man looked up at her, trying to see past the glare of the burning tobacco. The Master puffed quietly away, the white smoke beginning to curl up from the pipe, and the fire subsided, the tobacco becoming a glowing coal in the dark.

“Please, mistress!” the man pleaded, looking at Spīdala. “I have done no harm! I was only trying to protect my family! I meant no harm!” Weeping wracked his frame and he collapsed in a huddle into a corner of the stall.

“What—?” the question caught in Spīdala’s throat. Alexei stood beside her and the three of them—Alexei, Spīdala, and the Master of Wolves—blocked the gate to the stall, making impossible any hope the man might have had of escape.

The Master continued to puff away before finally pulling the pipe from his teeth. “This farmer has killed one of my wolf children. Last spring, when I apportioned all the food for my forest sons and daughters for this season on St. George’s Day, I gave one wolf permission to eat this farmer. But when the wolf came to eat him, the farmer dared to fight back and slew the wolf instead. Such insubordination cannot be tolerated.” The Master spat out the words as if they were food that had spoiled.