Storm Wolf (23 page)

“
Vilkolakis
! It is sunset! Time to get up!” Javinė insisted. “You must go hunting for the monster!” He shook Alexei’s shoulder, and when Alexei swatted at him, he shook Alexei even more roughly and kicked the sole of his foot for good measure. Alexei grumbled and rolled over. A moment later he sat up.

The barn was swathed with shadows. He could hear the animals below in their stalls and the hens wandering about the floor of the barn before finding a place to settle down for the night. Although sunset came early on these winter days, the animals were all preparing to slumber through the darkness until Dovydas and his father or maybe Amalija came at dawn to milk and feed them.

Alexei rubbed his eyes again and ran his fingers through his hair. He struggled to sort out his thoughts and clear away the remnants of the nightmares that troubled his sleep. As he moved his arms, he winced and grimaced as his pains and bruises all awakened as well.

“Has there been any news?” he asked Javinė, pushing himself onto his feet.

The sprite shook his head. “None that I have heard tell of,” he reported. “All seems quiet. Normally, on Epiphany Eve, the children play games and run through the street and every household eats a festive meal—but without meat—much like on Christmas Eve. But the women would have to have been cooking since New Year and I don’t think they have been. I’ve not smelt the good smells these last few days that I normally do—not even from our own farmhouse. I think it will be a very quiet Epiphany Eve this year.”

“Just as New Year’s was,” Alexei agreed.

“Yes.” The sprite shook his head. “Most years, on Epiphany morning everyone goes to church and then there is a parade of the Three Kings through the neighborhood and the men dressed as the kings use consecrated chalk to mark K, M, and B—the initials of the three kings Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar—on the barn doors as well as on the houses.”

Alexei nodded. He remembered hearing that some villages in Estonia had kept that custom.

“Most years everyone thinks it is just a game and sings and jokes as the kings go from farm to farm,” Javinė went on. “They don’t really believe that the kings will protect the farms marked with their initials during the coming year. But this year?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I think they might take it much more seriously.”

“You might well be right,” Alexei told the sprite. “But that will only keep the monster away from the houses and barns marked with the chalk… and even then it might be too late. It won’t bring back the children he has stolen or stop him from making the stolen children into his apprentices.”

“I was not suggesting that we put all our trust in the chalk marks tomorrow morning!” snorted Javinė. “How daft might you think I am? I was simply saying that many folks might be taking the old customs more seriously now. Customs like marking the kings’ initials on the barns… or leaving out a meal for the barn sprites from time to time.” He looked over his shoulder into the barn below.

Alexei smiled as he hobbled past the sprite towards the ladder to the floor below.

“Just help me climb down this ladder, Javinė,” he asked the sprite, “and after all this business is done, I will do everything I can to remind the farmers to leave meals for the barn sprites.”

Alexei crept about the streets that night, sniffing and searching for the scent of the monster wolf. He wasn’t sure if he was looking for the great wolf or for the man with greasy hair and yellow teeth that he had seen at the church, but he hunted for both scents in all the farmyards that he could. He heard the night patrol a few times, the men talking loudly and apparently telling jokes because there were occasional bursts of laughter from the patrolmen. Alexei thought he also heard the men drinking and imagined a jug being passed from man to man.

“Anything to bolster your courage on a cold winter night, heh?” Alexei chuckled to himself. But he did not begrudge the men their drinks to either help keep them warm or to bolster their courage while hunting the same monster he was tracking. He wouldn’t have minded a sip from that jug himself.

He thought he caught a hint of the greasy-haired man’s scent a few times, but it never led to the man. There was one farmyard where the scent of the monster wolf tickled Alexei’s nose, but that did not lead him any further than the barnyard either.

He was sure that the man-wolf must be out hunting that night. He needed three more children to make into his apprentices, and he had only tonight and tomorrow to kidnap them.

“Too many children and too short a time,” he muttered. “He must be out here, dodging me and the night patrol. We are all three probably chasing each other up and down the streets and around the farms.” He shivered. There was nothing left to do at this point but go back to the barn and attempt to make a plan with Javinė.

“But what can we do?” Alexei grumbled in despair. “I cannot go out searching in the daylight because the townsfolk will all set on me to kill me. But the monster will be desperate to complete his collection of children and might make a mistake in his desperation.”

Alexei reluctantly trudged back towards Vakarė’s farm.

Amalija made her way into the barn before the sun rose that morning. The chickens were ruffling their feathers to greet the morning and strutting around the barn, pecking at seeds they found scattered among the straw. She pulled the milking stool and pail into the first stall and greeted the cow there.

The cow greeted her softly in return and Amalija began to squeeze the cow’s milk into the pail between her knees.

“Amalija.”

She heard a voice whisper her name.

“Amalija.” It was a man’s voice. She was sure of that. A grown man’s voice, not a boy whose voice was beginning to change or whose cheeks were beginning to grow fuzzy. A man. He sounded like a strong man, confident and powerful.

Amalija shivered. Who would be whispering to her? Why not come straight into the barn and speak with her? If he wanted his visit to be secret, coming into the barn was better than calling her out into the farmyard where anyone might look out a window and see them.

She shook her shoulders and kept milking the cow.

Was it a suitor? Someone she knew in the town who was interested in stealing a kiss in the dark? Or was it a stranger, someone who wanted to steal more than just a kiss? Maybe the barn was not a good place to be in the morning alone. If it was a stranger, would anyone in the house hear her if she screamed for help?

She paused as she milked. Maybe if the man whispering her name did not hear the milk hissing into the pail he would think she had gone into the hayloft where she couldn’t hear him and he would go away.

“Amalija.” The whisper came again. Even more clearly than before. Was the man in the barn already? She had assumed he was outside, in the farmyard, but maybe he had already come into the barn and was just outside the stall where she was milking the cow. Had he come even closer now? Was he standing in the entrance to the stall? She held her breath and peered over her shoulder.

Alexei trudged along the muddy lanes in the darkness before dawn. He was nearly back to Vakarė’s farm. What plan could he and Javinė possibly develop to stop the man-wolf before it was too late?

“
Vilkolakis
! Come! Now!” Alexei heard Javinė’s voice scream in his mind with rage and terror. “He is here! In my barn! He is here!”

Alexei came running into the barnyard. He heard crashing and screams coming from the farmhouse. Javinė was standing in the open doors of the barn, waving his arms and pointing wildly at the house.

“I was able to confuse him!” the sprite was shouting in Alexei’s thoughts from across the yard. “I confused and distracted him so that Amalija could escape! But he’s in the house now! He’s gone after Amalija!”

Alexei dashed into the house as a window shattered above him. Another crash met his ears as he paused just inside the door.

The parlor was a shambles. Furniture, fabric torn and wood broken, was strewn about. Curtains hung in shreds over the windows or were scattered like rags. He heard screaming from rooms upstairs and in the kitchen. There was a crash and Adomas came tumbling down the stairs, blood smeared across his ear and cheek. He lay at the bottom of the stairs, still for a moment, but then quietly moaned as he grimaced in pain. There was another crash as more glass shattered upstairs.

Alexei climbed over Adomas’ tangled limbs and pulled himself up the stairs. He could make out the voices now—it was Amalija and little Edita screaming incoherently while Dovydas was yelling “Stop! Let go of her!” There was a roar and a crash as if something heavy had been flung across the room.

Alexei threw himself from the top of the staircase into the bedroom where the fight was going on. Dovydas was climbing back up from the floor. Feathers and blankets were everywhere as torn pillows lay on the floor. The children’s beds had been pushed and shoved about, and the curtains swayed alongside a broken window above Dovydas. Dovydas threw himself at the back of the greasy-haired man, who held both Amalija and Edita by their wrists. The two girls were struggling against him, kicking and screaming, trying to pull themselves free from his grip. The man dropped Edita’s wrist for an instant and then snatched her up, clutching her small, struggling form under his arm.

“Alexei!” cried Amalija, seeing him at the door. The man turned and grinned at him, smiling with his broken yellow teeth. Shouting, Alexei threw himself at the man and was met by the man’s boot in his gut. He tumbled backward, unable to breathe.

The greasy-haired man shook Dovydas from his back and grabbed his wrist as well. Clutching all three struggling children, the man strode toward Alexei crumpled on the floor in the doorway. He kicked Alexei in the head as he pulled the children out and across the hall to their parents’ bedroom. As he blacked out, Alexei heard another window shatter and sounds as if the man were climbing through the window onto the roof with his screaming prizes.

Alexei gradually felt himself waking up. He pulled himself up from the floor, untangling his arms and legs. Everything hurt. Every movement was painful. It was difficult to breathe. He put a hand to his aching temple and it came away sticky with drying blood. But after his groggy self-examination, he decided that no bones seemed to be broken. He stumbled down the stairs and over Adomas, who was still lying in a groaning heap at the bottom. He heard something in the kitchen and limped across the parlor to the other room.

In the kitchen, the stench of the wolf’s scent was overwhelming, unlike the other rooms. Alexei guessed the man must have burst into the kitchen as a wolf, attacked, and then shifted back into a man before going through the rest of the house. The table and chairs had been reduced to sticks of kindling and scattered around the room. Dry goods with jars and bottles from the kitchen shelves had been thrown about. Even the stove was wrenched slightly out of place. The door to the yard stood open, wood splintered around the hinges as if the man-wolf had wrenched it open with great force.

Two women lay on the floor amid the rubble. Vakarė was in a twisted heap near the open door out into the yard, moaning slightly. Her daughter-in-law Aušrinė was beside the stove. Alexei picked his way across the floor, clutching his side, and reaching out to support himself against the walls. He reached Aušrinė and knelt down to examine her.

She was breathing, but unconscious. There was a streak of blood on the side of the dislocated stove and on the side of Aušrinė’s head. She moaned as Alexei’s fingers probed her bloody scalp. There was a laceration under her hair, but nothing seemed broken. She moaned again and tried to sit up. Alexei shushed her and helped her to sit against the wall before turning his attention to Vakarė.

He picked his way again across the rubble-strewn floor and knelt beside his elderly friend. She moaned again as he tried to straighten her limbs and torso, and he discovered that she was atop a great sticky puddle of drying blood. Her apron was soaked through with blood as well and her dress was torn open along her ribs. The blood was still seeping from a great ragged bite in her side. There was no way she would survive. He knew that. Alexei pulled her to his chest and rocked, whispering her name and biting his lip.

Vakarė opened her eyes and was unable to focus at first. Then she recognized Alexei and smiled weakly.

“So, you have returned my friend,” she whispered. “A bit late though, I am afraid.”

Alexei shook his head. “I am so sorry,” he told her. “I was out hunting the monster, otherwise I might have been able to stop this. I will do everything…”

Vakarė shook her head. “No, I think that if you had been here you would only have been hurt or killed as well. But I have remembered something and wanted to tell you. I did not know where to find you—”

“I was hiding in the barn,” Alexei told her. “I wanted to protect you from the townsfolk who were hunting for me.”

“Ah, yes.” Vakarė reached up, her fist tight. “But I wanted to tell you that I remembered something of what the wise women did when they kindled the lantern to keep the wolf from the town.” She opened her fist to reveal a small tuft of fur. “They burnt a tuft of the wolf’s fur that had been caught in a fencepost,” Vakarė told him. “And I was able to keep hold of this tuft of the wolf’s fur as it tore at me with his teeth and then threw me aside. You must burn it in the lantern to restore its protection of the town.”