Storm Wolf (26 page)

“Stop crying! Listen to me! If we hurry and walk together, we can get away through the forest and back home!” she told the others. “But we have to stop screaming so that he—HE—doesn’t notice and come after us again! Can we do that?”

There was a sudden quiet as all but the youngest children stopped shouting. Then even the youngest, still whimpering, nodded in agreement with the others. Amailija led them out the door, showing them how to gather and hold the lengths of chain in their hands to reduce the clanking sounds as they walked. They began to slip out the door onto the porch.

Dovydas, following his sister, saw a glint of bronze amid the smashed remnants of the table and chair on the floor. It was the pyx the man had been holding. The consecrated hosts were scattered on the floor around it.

“Stop, Amailija!” he hissed. “Wait!”

He knelt down, pulling the two children linked to him on either side down as well. They gathered up the scattered hosts and put them back into the pyx. Dovydas kept one host in his hand, however, as he stowed the pyx holding the rest in one of his pockets.

“What’s that for?” Amalija wanted to know.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But it’s important.”

Amalija shook her head and the twelve children began to slip out of the house again.

The porch sighed and creaked beneath them. But the two wolves, circling and snarling at each other, seemed not to notice them. Amalija led the children between the trees and away from the house in a direction that she hoped led toward home, but she really wasn’t sure what direction home was. She really just wanted to get away from the house first.

There was a sudden roar from the wolves. The children froze.

One wolf had leaped onto the back of the other and had his great jaws closed around the other’s throat. Blood was spurting and the injured wolf was panting and thrashing about, gurgling sounds coming from his throat.

Dovydas stepped forward and held aloft the consecrated host he had kept ahold of. Unsure of how he knew it, he called “Slogutis!” and knew, without anyone having told him, that he had called the greasy-haired man by his name.

As soon as Dovydas cried out, the monster’s attention flickered from the other wolf toward Dovydas. Dovydas called out the same word again and the monster’s jaws seemed to go slack, allowing the other wolf to turn and throw the monster off his back. The great monster wolf struck a tree and lay stunned.

Dovydas marched up to the stunned wolf, pulling the other children along with him despite their cries as they pulled against him. They wanted to be nowhere near the monster wolf. But Dovydas, certain of what had to be done, marched insistently up to their captor and tormentor and pressed the consecrated host against the great beast’s forehead.

The fur singed and smoked, an acrid stench curling into the air. The other wolf, appearing injured or weak from loss of blood, could only stand where he was and watch.

The monster stirred and whimpered, seemingly coming back to consciousness. Dovydas kept pressing the host against the monster wolf’s forehead. The younger children screamed and pulled away. The older ones, realizing what they were watching, grabbed hold of them to keep them still.

Dovydas repeated whatever it was he had told the wolf. The wolf’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a low snarl, then the wolf was gone and the greasy-haired man was there, naked and cringing before Dovydas. Dovydas kept the host pressed against the man’s brow, his lip still pulled back in a snarl.

The man moved as if to leap up and was thrown back against the tree, his cries of rage dying in his throat as he realized what was happening.

Dovydas pressed the communion wafer even more forcefully against the man’s greasy forehead. The paper-thin host broke and dissolved in the sweaty moisture of both Dovydas’ hand and the man’s forehead. Dovydas snatched his hand away from the man and tumbled back, pulling the other captive children with him.

“Run!” he cried.

The man stood and screamed at Dovydas. But even as he stepped away from the tree to recapture the escaping children, the remnants of the host smeared across his forehead burst into brilliant flame and engulfed the man-wolf with the greasy hair and yellow teeth. The man-wolf screamed in the fire and then collapsed onto the ground and flared white-hot in the night. Dovydas glanced back and thought he saw the man’s skeleton crumple into a pile of bones in the midst of the brilliant fire. Both the scream and the light were cut off, sudden quiet and darkness engulfing the clearing.

A few wisps of ashes drifted away under the trees.

The children, heeding Dovydas’ warning, had kept running into the trees until the house was far behind them. Finally stopping to catch their breath, Amalija asked him, “It’s that cap, isn’t it? That’s how you knew what to do, to destroy that—that beast. Isn’t it?” She pointed to the cap atop his head.

He nodded, too winded to talk yet.

“Can you lead us home, Dovydas? Can you find the way through the trees with that cap?”

He stood and looked around. “Yes, I think I can,” he answered. “Yes, I can. And then… and then, I think that I am supposed to leave the cap in the barn. The cap wants me to leave it in the barn.”

Edita held up her wrists, displaying the shackles and the chains that still linked the twelve children together. “What about these, Dovydas? What about these?”

“I’m sure any of the blacksmiths in town can remove the chains and shackles, Edita,” Dovydas promised.

“What about that other wolf, Dovydas?” Amalija asked him. “Should we go back? Should we try to help him? Should we…?”

Dovydas shook his head.

“That other wolf needs time to recover, Amalija, but he will be fine. He needs… he needs to keep traveling somewhere,” Dovydas told her. “That other wolf? That was Alexei, Amalija, and he needs to keep going somewhere to find what he is looking for.”

Chapter 5:
Wilkolak

Alexei

(Poland, late spring 1890)

Beatrycze set the bowl of porridge and a mug of tea on the table in front of the man she had met in her yard. He was gaunt and his clothes were tatters. He carried a large bundle that he seemed afraid to let out of his sight. He had been drinking from the trough of water in her yard, and though he had startled her when she stepped out the door into the mid-April dawn to feed the hens and tend her small collection of goats, he had seemed just as startled, but not dangerous. She had told him to come inside for some porridge and bread. He had seemed wary but then delighted to accept her offer.

“Where am I now?” he asked her in broken German.

“You are in Silesia,” Beatrycze told him, in her own broken German. “We have always been Polish speaking people in Silesia, but the rulers? They come and go. We became a province of the German Empire almost twenty years ago, but most of us in this region are Polish speakers, forced to adapt to the ways and language of the Germans. Our men are miners and farmhands and weavers; here, in this village, so close to many of the big iron and coal mines, the men are all miners. We women tend the homes and animals and children while our fathers and brothers and husbands go down every morning to hack away at the ribbons of coal and iron in the earth.” She paused and then asked him, “Can I ask where you are from, friend?”

“Me? I… I come from Estonia,” he answered her, staring into his bowl of porridge as he spoke. “I had to flee from my home and I set out to go south and west. I have come through Latvia and Lithuania and have followed the paths in the forests or along the edges of the fields into… you say this province is called Silesia?”

Beatrycze nodded. She pointed to the scars around the man’s throat.

He noticed her gesture but slowly chewed another mouthful of bread before he answered. “I came to a small town in Lithuania. A… a man had stolen twelve children from their homes, intending… intending to do terrible things. I tracked him to his lair and was able to save the children, but the… man? He injured my throat. I was able to rest in his hovel for a time and heal my wounds, regain my strength. I took some of the clothes I found and set out again. Many of the townsfolk thought I was responsible for stealing the children and… even if the children had spoken up for me, I don’t think there was a future for me in that town. So I began my journey again.”

“Are you going to anyplace in particular?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

Beatrycze considered the man sitting across from her. He struck her as an honest man, though shy. Careful. He was clearly reluctant to tell her much about his past. Something he was ashamed of? Someone he was still afraid of? But surely, whatever it was that scared or shamed him was far back in Estonia. Here, in Silesia, he would be safe.

“Do you need a place to stay? Food to eat?” she asked.

He nodded. “I do not ask for charity. I can work. I had a farm back home in Estonia. I have worked as a farmhand as I have made my way south and west. Is there work here that I can do in exchange for a place to sleep and food to eat?”

“I am called Beatrycze,” she formally introduced herself. “My sister Sybilla and I live here with our brother Zygmunt, now that our parents have died. Zygmunt is at work already in the mine, and Sybilla works as a charwoman in the house of one of the wealthy German families who own the mines. Most of the wealthy Germans live further south, in Lower Silesia, but there are a small number here to oversee the mines because they do not trust us Poles. I spend the days here, tending our home and our few goats and chickens. If you need work, I am certain that Zygmunt can help you get work in the mines. And you will be welcome to stay here with the three of us.” She smiled at him.

The man looked at her directly for the first time since she had met him. “My name is Alexei,” he introduced himself. “I will be grateful to you and your family if you can help me. I will be happy to pay you for your kindness from any coins I can earn.”

Beatrycze shook her head. “Everyone deserves a chance to start their lives again, if need be,” she told him. “We would be happy to give it to you. Many come to Silesia looking for work. Even here, in our small miners’ village, we have many young men from Bohemia. My sister, Sybilla, is betrothed to a young man from a small town in Bohemia, near Prague—Benedikt, he is called. How can my sister wed an honest, hard-working man who has come here, but we deny such a chance to you?”

Alexei sipped from his steaming mug of tea. “Thank you. I am grateful for this chance to… begin again, as you say.”

Alexei had hoped that if the woman—Beatrycze—found him drinking from the water trough in the yard, she might feel disposed to offer him charity. After all, as he had stood among the trees that marked the border between the forest and the village, he had seen her bring out two large pieces of meat to feed two wolves that had been patiently sitting in her yard. The wolves had taken the meat, dipped their heads as if in thanks, and then melted back into the forest as Alexei stepped onto the road.

“Anyone who feels so kindly disposed to a pair of wolves might take pity on a wandering man,” he had reasoned. And he had been right.

As the day wore on, Alexei helped Beatrycze with the chores of the household, even repairing a portion of the tumbled-down fencing around the yard that her brother Zygmunt had not had the time to repair yet. The wooden posts and planks were all prepared and piled in the small yard beside the coops for the hens and the pens for the goats. That evening, a group of young men came trudging along the dirt road toward the collection of houses that stretched alongside the road fading into the tall grass beyond Beatrycze’s yard, their faces and hands dark with soot. The men were quiet, each step an apparent struggle after their long day in the mine. Exhausted though they might have been, they did not seem unhappy. Only tired and dirty. A couple of the men coughed, still trying to clear the coal dust from their throats.

One of the young men peeled away from the group as the men dispersed into the various houses along the road. This man, taller than the others and with a broad smile under the soot covering his face, came to the fence Alexei was just finishing repairing.

Beatrycze came running from the house, Polish words tumbling from her lips. The man looked from Alexei to Beatrycze and back to Alexei again, his smile growing even broader.

“Thank you so much, friend!” The man reached out to grasp Alexei’s hand as he spoke in German. “My sister tells me that you are in need of work and a place to sleep?” He nodded at Beatrycze, who had come to stand beside the two men. “And you repaired the fence for us? You are most welcome!” He shook Alexei’s hand and Alexei felt a wave of relief wash over him that this man—evidently Zygmunt, the brother Beatrycze had spoken of—would not object to the offer Beatrycze had made.

Zygmunt washed and changed his clothing. As Zygmunt washed, Beatrycze put the final touches on the meal she had spent the afternoon preparing. They all sat down together around the same table where Alexei had sipped tea that morning, and Alexei ate the plain but hearty supper with his new hosts. During supper, Zygmunt told Alexei of the work in the mines.

“It is hard work, my friend,” Zygmunt admitted as he finished recounting the events of the past day in the tunnels deep in the earth. “I do not deny that. But it is good work and work that pays well. And it pays consistently, unlike the work on a farm that depends on the weather and whether the crops grow well. Although the days in the mine are long, so were the days on the farm when we were children.”

Beatrycze nodded in agreement. “The work here is not easy, but it feeds and clothes us. Better than the farm work did. That is why our father brought us to this village, to be near the mines, so he—and Zygmunt!—could find work here. But now, as I said, our parents have both died, and my brother and sister and I live here.”

“Until I find a wife and bring her here to live as well!” Zygmunt exclaimed, laughing and clapping Alexei on the back.

“Until my brother finds a wife.” Beatrycze laughed with him. “And I will move into my husband’s home when I wed, which may be sooner than my brother brings a wife home! But our sister Sybilla will wed before either of us, as she has already found a Bohemian man, as I told you, friend Alexei. She will move out from this—our family home—to live with her new husband in a few weeks’ time.”

At that moment, the door swung open and a young woman walked in.

“Sybilla!” cried Beatrycze and Zygmunt together. Polish words tumbled out of both their mouths as they explained to their sister who Alexei was and why he was sitting at their table and sharing their supper. Sybilla happily kissed Alexei on the cheeks in greeting.

She was the darker sister of the two, Alexei saw. Although her hair was tucked up under her maid’s cap, a few tendrils hung around her face. Her dark eyes sparkled as she smiled at Alexei. Alexei could not choose which was the prettier, he decided. One fair, one dark. Both lovely.

Sybilla took a seat at the table and joined the supper. As she ate the supper Beatrycze put before her, she spoke to Alexi in broken German as well.

“You will be going to the mine tomorrow with Zygmunt to ask for work, friend? Then you will have a chance to meet my intended, Benedikt! He and Zygmunt work on the same crew!” Sybilla seemed excited at the possibility that the three men would know each other as they toiled side by side under the earth. “We will be wed soon and then I will be a proper wife!”

“Yes, so I have heard from your brother and sister,” Alexei congratulated her. “You will be moving with your husband to a new home.”

“And I will no longer be eligible to serve as a maid for the German family that oversees the mine!” Sybilla exclaimed. “I love Benedikt; I will be happy to wed him, even though he is a Bohemian. I think that Poles and Bohemians are not that different from each other, friend Alexei. But the Germans? They are a foul and wicked people! Especially this German family here. And the mistress of the house, Pani Berhta, is the worst of the lot! She thinks that she was given the right to rule and govern us, just because she grew up speaking German and we did not. She is always telling the maids in the household what they have done wrong—not only in her house, but in our own as well. I have heard her say that the Poles and Bohemians are all dirty and not much better than animals—talk about animals! You should see her wizened old face, friend Alexei! She looks just like a wrinkled old goat—a hundred years old at least, and you should see the whiskers that sprout on her chin—or like a shriveled old plum! She hobbles around on a cane and a club foot—what we would call a goose-foot back home—and tells us Poles that we will lose our husbands to the German girls soon coming into Silesia because they are pretty and know how to spin properly, not like us Polish girls!” Sybilla spat into the corner by the hearth in her anger.

“Yes, the Germans are selfish and proud,” Zygmunt confessed to Alexei. “And many in the village, both men and women, feel as my sister Sybilla does. But in the past, such anger has gotten us nothing but more problems, so I try not to think of the Germans more than I must. Men speaking too loudly against the Germans or the German Empire have been turned out of their jobs in the mines, and I have no wish to be sent back to the countryside.” He shook his head, watching his sister Sybilla, who ignored him as she hungrily ate from the plate.

The next morning, before dawn, Zygmunt led Alexei to the paymaster’s office at the mine and arranged for Alexei to be hired and attached to the crew that Zygmunt led.

“I can train you in the ways of the miners,” Zygmunt explained to Alexei as they joined the long line of men descending into the dark tunnels. “Stay by my side and I will show you what you must do.” Another man came up to Zygmunt and greeted him. Zygmunt introduced him to Alexei.

“Alexei, this is Benedikt, the man my sister Sybilla will wed in a few weeks.” Alexei shook hands with Benedikt as Zygmunt briefly explained that Alexei was an Estonian farmer who had made his way into Silesia and was about to learn the miners’ trade.

Benedikt was tall and fair, much like Zygmunt and Beatrycze. He looked strong as well, a good match for the dark and headstrong Sybilla. The three men joked and laughed as they made their way down into the earth. Alexei felt like he had found two friends already.

Throughout the shift, Alexei met more of the men who toiled as members of Zygmunt’s crew. Alexei’s first tasks involved carrying away buckets of rubble as well as buckets of the coal the miners had been sent down to excavate. In the dark, Alexei lost all sense of time and was surprised when the men paused to eat. He and Zygmunt sat down with Benedikt and the others, unwrapping the bread and sausages that Beatrycze and Sybilla had packed for them.

Alexei’s muscles ached as the men ascended slowly to the surface of the earth at the end of the day. Carrying the buckets of rubble or coal away to empty and then return to fill them again had been simple work, but it felt good to be working again and not simply walking, walking. Walking. Always looking for somewhere that was south and west of Estonia, someplace where there was someone who might be able to help Alexei regain control of the wolf magic. Or rid himself of it. Work was honest. Work was good. Alexei looked forward to a hearty meal at his new friends’ table and then coming back to the mine again tomorrow. Life was better when he knew where he would eat and sleep and that there was work for him in the morning.