Storm Wolf (15 page)

Alexei was startled. He had clearly heard the old man’s voice, thin and scratchy, but the old man’s lips had not moved!

“You are a
vilkolakis
,” the old man repeated, this time as a statement and not a question, but again his lips did not move. “We can speak directly to each other,” the man said, again his lips not moving, evidently seeing Alexei’s perplexity. “One mind with the other. You are a
vilkolakis
and I am Javinė, what you might call a… a barn sprite, I think.”

“A… barn sprite?” Alexei asked. The old man stared at him and then tapped his forehead with a stubby finger.

“Speak with your thoughts.” Alexei heard the old man’s voice again. “Your thoughts I can understand. But your speech? Impossible!” The old man coughed and sputtered.

“A sprite?” Alexei repeated in his thoughts.

“Yes. A sprite,” the old man’s words formed in Alexei’s mind, exasperation coloring their tone. “Named Javinė.”

“And I… I am Alexei,” answered Alexei in his thoughts. The old man nodded.

“You are a newcomer to the household, Alexei,” answered Javinė. “A newcomer who is a
vilkolakis
but not the usual kind of
vilkolakis
that we used to encounter here in these parts. You are a different sort of
vilkolakis
, Alexei.” Javinė stepped closer and sniffed at Alexei. He snorted. “A
vilkolakis
who can fly? One of the werewolves from Estonia, heh? Well, well. That certainly is a change! Who would ever have thought that I should meet a
vilkolakis
from Estonia feeding the chickens here in my barn!”

“Your barn?” exclaimed Alexei. Then he caught himself and repeated the question in his thoughts. “Your barn? This barn belongs to Adomas and his family! It is not yours, little sprite—or whatever you call yourself, Javinė.”

“It is mine,” Javinė insisted shrilly. “I have looked over and protected this farm and this barn for Adomas’ father and grandfather and I will watch it for his son and grandson as well! It is mine and theirs—ours, together! I protect the farm and they leave me rye bread and salt and beer.” Javinė held his candle up to Alexei’s face.

“They cannot see me. But you can see me,
vilkolakis
. You can see me and we can speak, mind to mind. Because we each have one foot in this world and one foot in the Otherworld, the world where the gods and demons live,” Javinė explained. “But you are far from home,
vilkolakis
Alexei. Why are you here in my barn?”

“I… I had to flee from my village,” stammered Alexei in his thoughts. “I made my way south through Latvia and am now here. In Adomas’ barn.” He hurried to correct himself, seeing Javinė scowl and dodging the sprite’s foot as he tried to kick Alexei’s shin. “In your barn.”

“And what are you searching for?” squeaked Javinė, satisfied that Alexei had acknowledged that the barn was the sprite’s.

“My grandfather—my dead grandfather—told me to go south and west,” Alexei explained, watching the sprite stalk around him. “He told me that I could find a master of the old magic if I traveled south and west, and that this master of the old magic would… would give me what I need.” He was reluctant to tell the sprite too much of what had happened back home, his slaughter of his family, and how he needed to be freed from the wolf magic.

Javinė the sprite stood still and studied Alexei. “Very well,” he muttered at last, lowering his candle. “Keep your secrets. Keep searching. It’s not as if there are any masters of the old magic left in this vicinity, in any case.”

“Thank you. I think.” Alexei was wary and yet bemused by the temperamental old man.

Javinė turned away and stalked off. “Find me here in the barn if you need me,
vilkolakis
,” he grumbled. “You can find me here before dawn.” He blew out the candle in his hand and the barn was plunged back into darkness. “And I… if I need you for some reason,
vilkolakis
… I will find you.”

Elžbieta sat in the early morning dark of her room, brushing her hair and staring into the looking glass on the wall beside her bed. She could hear her father in the farmyard outside, opening the barn doors and fetching the pails that hung near the doors so he could milk the cows. A plough horse whinnied his morning greeting to her father, and her father called back a greeting to the horse.

Elžbieta smiled. Her younger sisters were still asleep in their beds in the other three corners of the room as she brushed her hair and imagined how her life would be changing shortly. She was engaged to be married in three short weeks to the son of a neighboring farmer and she would soon be brushing her hair in her new bedroom as a newly married woman with a farmer husband of her own. She loved her parents and her family, but she was excited to grow up, to wed, and move out of her parents’ home and into the home of her husband and his family. Soon after the wedding, she anticipated, she would probably also be expecting the first grandchild of both families. This coming Christmas was a happy time for Elžbieta, with momentous changes afoot.

She brushed her hair for another moment before going out to join her father in the morning chores in the barn and farmyard. Her mother was in the kitchen, she knew, kneading the family’s bread for the day. That would be her task in her new house with her new husband. She shivered in giddy anticipation.

A small noise startled Elžbieta. As if a pebble had been gently tossed against the window pane next to the looking glass. She paused as she set the brush down on the shelf below the looking glass, wondering if she had perhaps misheard. Then it came again. A small clink and rattle.

She stood still and held her breath.

“Elžbieta?”

She heard the quiet whisper of her name outside the window.

“Andrius?” she whispered back. Who else but her betrothed would be tossing pebbles at her window before dawn and whispering her name? She stepped to the window and, pulling the curtain aside with her fingertips, peered out.

She could see the farmyard below, and the moon still hung in the sky above. The dark silhouette of the barn filled most of her view, and the shadow of the barn only made the dark farmyard below more difficult to see if Andrius was hiding below.

“Come down!” The husky whisper hung in the air. “Meet me beside the barn!”

Elžbieta was thrilled at the prospect of an early morning clandestine meeting with her husband-to-be in the shadows. “But how did my father not hear him?” she wondered. Her father must be too busy, too far into the barn to notice the rattle of the pebbles against the windows or the furtive whispers.

“Yes! I will!” she whispered back and dropped the curtain back into place. She threw a shawl around her shoulders and hurried out of the room and down the stairs as quietly as she could, hoping to escape the notice of her mother.

As she stepped out of the house, the cold pierced her. A shawl was not enough to enable her to stand outside with Andrius for even a moment or two. “But I can’t go back inside to get my coat,” she worried. “Mother will certainly hear the door a second time and want to know why I was so foolish as to not put on my coat in the first place.” She scurried across the farmyard and darted alongside the barn. She could hear the milk squirting into the pail that must be between her father’s feet as he sat on the milking stool in the first stall.

Alongside the barn she paused, huddling in the shadows and pulling the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “Where are you, Andrius?” she whispered. She did not see him—or anyone—as she had expected to, leaning against this side of the barn away from the house. The other side of the barn was too exposed, too easily seen from the kitchen windows where her mother would inevitably look up from kneading the bread and see whoever might be standing there.

“Andrius!” Elžbieta hissed again, as loudly as she dared. “Where are you?” She glanced back along the barn.

“Andrius is not coming this morning, child,” a deep voice whispered into her ear. She felt hot, steaming breath caress her neck. “But I am here for you.” The smell of blood and raw meat assailed her nostrils as she whipped her head back to see a large man who had not been there before. He had yellow eyes under bushy eyebrows and several days of stubble on his chin. His greasy hair was disheveled and his jacket smelled unwashed. He grinned in a sickening leer, and she could see his teeth—most lumpy and misshapen, but a few long and pointed. The man wrapped an arm around her waist.

Elžbieta screamed.

That evening—after Alexei’s early morning encounter with the barn sprite and almost a week after his arrival—was the night before Christmas Eve. Dovydas announced at supper that he had heard from the other boys in the town that a young woman had been attacked that morning and badly mauled by a large wolf while in her family’s barnyard feeding the hens. Her father had heard her screams and come running and was able to beat the great wolf off with a shovel. But the young woman, recently engaged, was so badly injured that it was unknown if the wedding would be able to take place as planned.

Amalija shivered as Dovydas gleefully recounted the most gruesome details of the attack. Alexei smiled to himself, recognizing the pleasure that all boys have in relating such news to their sisters.

“Dovydas!” she chided him. “You talk like you were happy to hear about all this!”

“Well, Amalija.” He shrugged. “I am happy that it was on the other side of town and not here that the wolf decided to show his face this morning. Who knows? Otherwise, it might be you that people would be talking about.”

“Dovydas!” his mother Aušrinė scolded him. “You should never threaten your sisters with tales such as that! You never know what words coming out of your mouth might find their way into the truth!”

“It does seem to be the start of a harsh winter, though,” his father Adomas added. “It is not good that a wolf should be seen so soon, so close to the town. It is an especially bad sign that the wolf should feel driven to attack a person so early in the season.”

Alexei wondered if there was a Master of Wolves in Lithuania that had assigned the girl to the wolf as a winter meal and what might happen to her father in retaliation for saving his daughter. “I will have to ask Javinė about that the next time I see him,” Alexei thought.

The next night was Christmas Eve.
Kūčios
supper was a festive but solemn event. Every household in the town was preparing for the most important dinner of the year. Women had spent days cleaning the houses and preparing the meal. Men had been cleaning the barns and doing as much work in advance as they could so the only chores between Christmas and Epiphany would be feeding and tending the animals. Last-minute errands remained and gifts were brought stealthily from their hiding places so they could be shared later.

A little girl, not quite five years old, lived down the road from Vakarė’s family and saw an opportunity to play as her mother fretted over the last preparations for the
Kūčios
supper. As her mother stood at the stove, stirring and tasting and stirring again, with her back to the kitchen, the little girl took the hand of her three-year-old brother and darted out the half-open door into the farmyard.

“We’ll play hide-and-seek!” she whispered excitedly to her brother, who stumbled to keep up with his big sister. “Mother and everyone will be so happy to have a game to play before dinner. You and I will hide together and then they will come to seek us. Shall we? Yes?” Her eyes sparkled in anticipation of her parents’ delight at the chance to escape the hectic preparations for the dinner inside the house.

Her brother nodded, not quite understanding his sister’s plan but sharing her excitement. She led him across the farmyard toward the barn and slipped inside.

A dark shadow shifted beside the door as the little girl stood there, pausing for her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. She heard the cows chewing in their stalls and the pigs happily munching on the food her father must have just given them. Chickens scratched in the straw on the floor, looking for seeds to eat.

“Happy Christmas, my child,” the shadow spoke. “What brings you to the barn on this busy Christmas Eve?”

“My brother and I are going to play hide-and-seek!” the girl explained to the shadow. She wrinkled her nose. Something smelled different in the barn. Was it the shadow man? He smelled… funny. Dirty, maybe? There was a bitter tang in the air. Unwashed? She wasn’t sure.

“We are going to play hide-and-seek,” she repeated, “and our family will come to seek us when they realize we are hiding.”

“Hide-and-seek? What an excellent idea!” the shadow man congratulated her.

She beamed proudly up at the darkness. Her brother tugged at her arm, wanting to dart behind one of the bales of hay or into a stall with a cow and begin playing the game.

“What an excellent idea!” the man repeated. “But won’t the barn be one of the first places your family comes to look for you?” he asked. “The barn will be a very easy place to find you. They will want more of a challenge, don’t you think?” He paused. Then he clapped his hands.

“I know just the place!” he promised her. “Come with me and I will show you an excellent place to hide. Your family will be so proud that you did not hide in such a simple place as the barn but were so smart as to hide in this other place!”