Storm Wolf (25 page)

Down here, in the forest and in the nighttime shadows, he was lost. If he had been able to don the wolf pelt and fly over the trees, he would have had some sense of where he was and how far he had come. But he had no idea of how far he had actually traveled or even how long he had been making his way through the forest.

An owl hooted somewhere in the night.

Then he heard it. Another sound, something besides his own rough gasps for air and the crunching snow beneath his boots. A small child was crying in the dark.

The tuft in the cap lurched to one side. Alexei cocked his head, hoping to catch the direction from which the sound of whimpering was coming. The tuft lurched again, tugging strongly to the side again, and nearly pulled Alexei off his feet. As he stumbled, trying not to fall, Alexei thought he heard something like a loud slap, and then the whimpering continued, but more quietly.

The tuft nearly pulled the cap from his grip. Alexei stumbled ahead in that direction and then he saw twin lights gleaming between the trees. He tried to make his way quietly, stealthily approaching what appeared to be a dilapidated cottage nestled between the trees. The twin lights seemed to be windows, through which he could see the light from the flickering hearth. It was hard to see details in the dark, but the roof seemed to be a patchwork of holes and shingles. The chimney on the side of the house seemed to be falling apart as well. There was a rusty cage alongside the chimney, full of dead leaves and drifted snow. The stench of the man-wolf filled Alexei’s mouth and he nearly gagged. He had found the lair.

The tuft in the cap was wild with apparent excitement at the proximity of the monster’s den. Alexei crouched behind a tree. His arm ached from keeping the great pelt wedged against his bruised ribs. He let the pelt drop quietly to the ground beside him. He peered through the trees at the tumbledown cottage.

“Is he there?” Alexei wanted to know. “Are the children still safe?” At least one seemed to be, otherwise whose crying had he heard? He needed to know more before simply bursting into the cottage. Leaving the pelt by the tree, he turned the cap over onto it as well. He could see the frantic movements of the tuft continue inside the overturned cap atop the pelt, slowly knocking the cap in the direction of the cottage.

Alexei crept to the cottage, aware of the gently crunching snow beneath his boots but hoping the man-wolf would be too concentrated on what was happening in the cottage to notice the sounds from the woods around the house. He could see now that one window was next to the door and that he would have to climb up the handful of stairs to the rotting planks of the porch to see inside it. There was another window, however, that he would be able to see into without climbing onto the porch.

He arrived at the house. Avoiding the porch, which he was sure would creak and sigh beneath him, he made his way to the other window. He stood up and peered through the dirty window.

Through the yellow grease stains and streaks of grime, Alexei could see a portion of the one room that seemed to comprise the interior of the house. He could see a handful of children, shackled one to the other, cowering before the large, greasy-haired man, who was standing with his back to the window. One of the smaller children was standing before the man, still crying.

Alexei’s heart froze. One of the boys looked as he imagined his son might have looked in a year or two, had he lived. Had Alexei not killed him. Alexei felt sick.

The man slapped the child’s face, snapping Alexei back into the present, and the child struggled to stop crying. One of the older boys shouted something in Lithuanian at the man, who stalked over to the boy and slapped his face as well.

“They seem to all still be children,” Alexei muttered to himself, trying to count the children he could see inside. “He hasn’t made any of them into his apprentices, yet.” But he knew that he would never be able to defeat the man inside the cottage unless he donned the great wolf pelt he had left beside the tree. He was turning to slink back to where he had left the pelt and cap when he saw the man lift something in his hand. Alexei paused to see what would happen next.

The man barked a few words in Lithuanian to the older boy he had slapped, and the boy, clearly struggling to not burst into tears, spat at the man. The man had pulled something out of his coat pocket. It was the bronze pyx he had stolen from the church. He opened it and held up one of the consecrated hosts. The boy struggled to stand up to the man, defiant, as if daring the man to strike him again.

The man growled something at the boy and then turned, showing the consecrated host to all the shackled children. He stepped forward, himself spat on the boy before him, and reached forward with the host as if to touch the boy’s forehead.

“No!” cried Alexei, bounding onto the sagging porch and throwing himself against the door of the house. There was no time to retrieve the pelt. The man was clearly about to begin making his prisoners into his apprentices, and Alexei could not let that happen to even one of the captive children.

The door stood surprisingly firm. Children started shouting inside. Alexei threw himself against it again. It still refused to yield. The wretched hovel was sturdier than it had appeared. He looked around for a weapon of some sort to break the door down. He could hear the children calling and shouting within the house, and the man seemed to roar something at them in response.

Alexei tried to pull loose one of the supports from the porch railing and it cracked in his grip. He needed the wolf pelt. He tumbled back down off the porch toward the trees. He stumbled back to where he had left the pelt and cap. Light from inside the house cut a thin swathe through the trees as someone opened the door Alexei had tried to break down. Knocking the cap aside, he tugged at the laces tied around the pelt to wrestle it free.

The low rumble of a man’s voice growled behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, Alexei saw the greasy-haired man standing a few feet away. The cap on the ground twisted in convulsions. The tuft leaped through the air from the cap towards the man-wolf. Alexei pulled the pelt free from the laces and threw it across his shoulders.

The transformation swept through Alexei. His muscles and tendons stretched and popped as his bones grew and twisted. His clothing tore and fell away. His pains and bruises faded as the wolf’s fur swaddled and covered him. A similar transformation swept across the greasy-haired man as he grinned in anticipation of his triumph. Two nearly pony-size wolves stood facing each other, snarling and drooling. Alexei snapped at the monster wolf, who growled and swatted a paw as if to strike Alexei’s snout.

Children cried and shouted inside the house, unsure of what was going on outside. No doubt they wondered if the person who had found them and tried to break into the house was coming to set them free or intended to terrify them further. Shackles and links of chain rattled and clanged against each other as the children struggled against them yet again.

The monster leaped at Alexei, snapping at his throat. Alexei ducked aside and skidded through the muddy snow, slipping as he attempted to turn and face the monster again. The monster slipped through the snow himself, striking his barrel chest against a tree. Roaring in fury, he flipped over and snarled at Alexei’s flailing form. Alexei stopped and righted himself, snarling at the monster in return.

The monster stalked Alexei in a circle, maneuvering through the trees to come up behind Alexei, but Alexei kept turning in a much smaller circle, keeping the monster always in his sight.

Without warning, the monster leaped through the air again, sailing just over Alexei’s back and sinking his teeth into Alexei’s shoulder. He pulled Alexei down and Alexei, yelping with pain, tore himself free from the monster’s jaws. Blood spurted. Alexei roared and darted into the air, circling around the monster from above.

The monster stared at him, momentarily stunned at Alexei’s ability to hover in the air. Then he heaped up at Alexei from below, snapping at Alexei’s vulnerable throat. Alexei staggered further up and backward. The monster leaped again, snapping his great jaws at Alexei’s exposed belly. Alexei knocked the monster aside and darted onto the monster’s back, locking his jaws around the base of the monster’s skull.

The monster reared on his back legs, roaring and thrashing about. Alexei’s jaws lost their grip and he was hurled across the small clearing, striking a tree and falling to the ground, stunned.

The monster roared again and hurled himself toward Alexei, twisting aside at the last instant to avoid striking the same tree.

Groggy, Alexei stood and shook himself. He was apparently evenly matched against the monster wolf, and the fight would continue until one of them tired and made a fatal mistake. He needed something to shift the odds in his favor.

The monster snarled at Alexei, beginning to circle him again.

Alexei noticed a spot of red in the snow, out of the corner of one eye. Was it his blood staining the ground? He backed away from the monster, toward the house. If he could use the house as an obstacle, he could plan a strategy to stop the monster.

Something on the ground felt different under his paw. He glanced down. The spot of red he had noticed was not blood. It was Javinė’s cap, tossed aside and trampled in the snow.

The sprite had said that Alexei might share some of the sprite’s abilities if he were to don the cap. Alexei snatched the cap up in his teeth. He could not wear it as a wolf, but maybe one of the children in the house could.

He continued backing towards the house, the monster wolf growling and following him through the trees. Then Alexei turned and ran toward the house, onto the porch, and through the door. The monster roared and ran after him.

The children screamed as the two wolves came crashing through the door together into the room. The monster wolf snapped and nipped at Alexei’s limbs. Alexei turned and twisted, momentarily trapped under the monster. He turned his head as best he could and threw the cap towards the terrified and screaming shackled children.

Now that he was no longer holding the cap between his teeth, Alexei could fight back. He sank his fangs into the foreleg of the monster. More blood spurted and the monster lunged at Alexei’s shoulders. The two wolves wrestled and rolled across the floor, knocking over a table and chair. They tumbled into the fireplace, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney and causing burning logs to roll across the floor. The stench of burnt wolf fur filled the room. The wolves tumbled across the hearth again, their fur singed and smoking.

Some of the children rubbed their eyes, which must have been irritated by the smoke and stench, causing further jangling of their chains. But one of the children, seeing the red cap on the floor, seemed to realize that the wolf who had thrown it towards them must have meant to help them in some way. Edita snatched the cap from the floor and, apparently not knowing what else to do with it, handed it to her sister Amalija. Amalija stared at it. Their brother Dovydas pushed them all aside as the wolves tumbled towards them. He grabbed the cap from Amalija and smashed it atop his own head.

The wolves untangled themselves from each other and stood, gasping for breath as they stared across the room at each other. Dovydas could not tell one wolf from the other. He had no idea which one had tossed the cap and was, presumably, a friend of the twelve captives. In fact, he was certain that one of the wolves was not only a friend of the captives but, without knowing how he was certain, that the friendly wolf was their former guest Alexei. He knew his knowledge was somehow related to the cap he was wearing but there was no time to puzzle it all out.

The wolves snarled and roared at each other again, leaping at each other’s throats and smashing through the dirty window back out into the forest.

Dovydas turned back to where the shackles were all bolted to the stone wall. With the other captive children all screaming and crying around him, he tugged and pushed his way to the wall. Pressing himself against the bolts holding the shackles, he whispered and bargained with the ironworks, begging the bolts to release them. In one part of his mind, he knew this was foolishness and folly. Iron bolts were not living things to be reasoned with. But with another part of his mind, which seemed clearer and brighter now that he was wearing this strange red cap, he knew that this was their best hope.

“Please!” he whispered to the bolts. “Let us go so we can return to our homes! Whatever that—that, man—wanted to do with us, he’s done before, hasn’t he? And it would have been something terrible, wouldn’t it? You’ve seen him do that before, haven’t you?” he asked the bolts. “You don’t want to see him do that again, do you? To us?”

He paused, daring to hope. The bolts trembled slightly.

“Please!” Dovydas repeated. “You don’t want that to happen again, do you?”

The bolts trembled again.

He could hear the wolves roaring and fighting outside.

“Now! Please!” he urged the bolts. “While they are fighting outside, we can get away while he is not watching us!’

The bolts wrenched themselves out of the wall and clattered to the floor.

Dovydas snatched up the chains linking the children together and shouted in victory. Edita and Amalija cheered. Some of the others noticed and began screaming in excitement. The cacophony was deafening and chaotic. Dovydas and his sisters began to pull the links that ran through the shackles around each child’s wrists. But the links were irregular sizes and would not slide free of the shackles. Amalija began to shout orders.