Storm Wolf (35 page)

“No!” cried everyone at once, racing over to help Gosia up and retrieve the half of the belt that hung between her teeth.

“Ruined it! You’ve ruined it!” wailed Frau Berhta, struggling to stand again. She managed to push herself up using her cane, the half of the skin belt that she still grasped hanging limply from her fist. “You ruined my prize!” she shrieked, shaking her fist and the limp leather at Gosia. “Do you have any idea what you have destroyed?”

“Do you know what YOU have destroyed?” retorted Benedikt. “How many lives have you ruined, families torn apart with that hideous thing? You should go, get away from here before we destroy you as well!”

“Think a simple miner like you can harm me, do you?” Frau Berhta smirked. “You have no idea how I can defend myself, boy, or how I can still destroy you—or that troublemaking girl you have wed!” She dropped the remains of the belt and pulled something from her purse, shaking her fist, and whatever it contained, at Benedikt.

“You would never—” began Sybilla.

“I would never… what?” teased Frau Berhta. “I would never… what, girl?” She kissed the tip of whatever it was she grasped in her fist and whispered something.

“You will never stop me from trying to help my husband!”

Sybilla grabbed the half of the belt that Gosia had let fall from her mouth and tried to wrap it around Benedikt’s chest.

“It will do nothing, now,” Frau Berhta sneered, interrupting whatever she was whispering to the thing in her hand. “Your wolf friend has seen to that!” She spat at Gosia’s paws. “Your husband will sport a wolf’s tail for the rest of his days!” she continued, turning back to Sybilla and Benedikt.

Alexei remembered the sensation of the wolf tail sprouting from his backside and curling around his leg as that terrible transformation had swept over him, just before he… just before Grete and their children…

He leaned forward, gasping for breath, putting his head between his knees. “No, I cannot,” he told himself. “I cannot lose control!”

“Alexei, what is happening?” Beatrycze rushed to his side, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “What have you done to him, now? He has done nothing to you!” she demanded, glancing across at Fray Berhta.

“Nothing? I think not,” the witch retorted. “He stole my prize. Or if not he, then you did. How else would it have come to be here? Brought here and used to undo the transformations it worked earlier tonight?”

Alexei gasped for breath. He could feel his calves trembling, the muscles yearning to grow and stretch and become wolf limbs.

With no warning, the Gosia-wolf jumped to her feet and through the air toward Frau Berhta. The old woman swung her cane again but missed, Gosia’s front paws striking Frau Berhta’s shoulders and knocking the old woman down. The wolf tumbled past the old woman but scrambled onto her paws and turned back to the witch, closing her wolf fangs tightly around the old woman’s face.

Frau Berhta screamed and thrashed, striking Gosia’s shoulders with her cane. She beat the wolf’s other shoulder with her still closed fist, refusing to let go of whatever she held.

Everyone stood where they were, too shocked and surprised to respond.

There was an explosion of goose feathers. Gosia was flung aside, smashing through the fence and falling onto the road, lying on the ground as still as the corpse of Ferdynand. Something small sailed through the air and fell between Alexei’s feet. A great gray goose—the largest any of them had ever seen—fought its way out of Frau Berhta’s clothing, flapping its wings and honking. Hopping about in a circle, it saw the people staring at it and hissed angrily, its long neck stretching towards everyone as they cringed and turned their shoulders to protect themselves from the furious bird.

“Is that… a thumb?” Beatrycze asked in disgust, peering at the small thing that had fallen between Alexei’s feet.

The goose hissed and squawked at them and darted forward. Everyone cried out and stumbled away from the bird to avoid its vicious beak. It snatched up the thumb from the ground and swallowed it, stretching its long neck upward as it gulped several times to ingest the thumb. It turned and ran from the yard, spreading its wings and flying over the trees across the road, the last of the night’s moonlight glinting off its wings. Its honk rang out once and then it was gone.

Alexei dared to lift his head, his stomach queasy but the trembling of the incipient transformation fading. Beatrycze clutched him, crying. Sybilla and Benedikt embraced each other as well, weeping and laughing as Benedikt’s great tail swished about behind him. Zygmunt and the others stood staring up into the night.

“Where did she go?” Otylia spoke aloud what everyone was asking themselves.

“Back to her grand home, no doubt, to brood and plot some other vengeance against good and honest folk,” Renia grumbled.

“No, I think she will not be seen here again. At least, not for a good long while. Not in our lifetimes, I suspect.” Zygmunt finally turned his face away from the sky and started back to the house. “I doubt that she would risk facing the tale we would tell and the accusations we would lodge against her. Even if folk did not believe us, they would be happy to have a reason to drive her from the town.”

The first streaks of dawn touched the sky shortly after everyone sat down around the table in the house, clutching mugs of hot tea that Beatrycze provided. Before the curious could begin arriving, looking to see if the newlyweds had reappeared, Zygmunt went back outside with Ctirad and Benedikt to dig graves for the wolf bodies of Ferdynand and Gosia. Alexei gathered the birch bark from around the house.

“You should probably keep a few of these, in any case,” he said to Beatrycze, placing some on the table. “In case she tries to return. You should hang one above the doors and each of the windows. And the hearth.”

“What about the rest?” Beatrycze asked.

“They should be buried. With the pieces of that—that belt?—of Frau Berhta’s that tore in half,” Alexei suggested. “To prevent anyone from attempting to reunite the halves.”

The four women sitting around the table—Beatrycze, Sybilla, Otylia, and Renia—all shuddered at once.

“That horrid thing!”

“Yes, bury it!”

“Destroy it!”

“Where no one will ever find them again!”

Alexei joined the men digging the graves in the yard, explaining his plan to them. “The birch bark should poison any of the black magic that might remain in the belt,” he explained. “And since birch bark is said to protect against witchcraft, it should also prevent anyone from ever finding the belt pieces again.”

“Probably the best thing to do with them,” Zygmunt agreed, wiping the sweat from his face.

Alexei gathered the two pieces of Frau Berhta’s belt and placed them with the birch bark in his pouch.

“I will bury them in the woods,” Alexei told them. “So that none of you know where they are and cannot accidently tell someone how to find them. That way we can also prevent anyone from digging them up and attempting to use them again.” He wished that burying them would counter his own wolf magic, but doubted that.

Benedikt offered the shovel he was using to Alexei. Dressed now, his clothes hung awkwardly on him since he was trying to hide his tail inside his pants.

“I only wish we had been able to have a few more minutes to finish the transformation,” he sighed. “But, on the whole, if I had to choose: I would rather be a man with a tail than a wolf!”

The men all laughed as they returned to work. Smiling, Alexei took his pouch and the shovel out into the woods.

When the curious did begin to arrive in the yard later that morning, they found the newlyweds and the rest of the bridal party all there, preparing the food for the second wedding supper to be held that afternoon. Benedikt explained that he and Sybilla had gone to another house for their first night together, arranged by Ctirad and Zygmunt, away from all the townsfolk singing and joking outside their windows. Although they were disappointed to have missed the chance to tease the newlyweds on their first night, the townsfolk seemed to believe the tale.

The next morning, Alexei found Beatrycze standing in the yard, looking at the unmarked graves of Ferdynand and Gosia. Hearing his step behind her, she turned and wiped a tear from her eye.

“Thank you, Alexei,” she said. “In all the commotion yesterday, I am not sure any of us ever actually told you how grateful I am—we all are—that you discovered the secret of Frau Berhta’s belt and were able to change everyone, or mostly everyone, back into their human forms.” She turned to gaze on the two graves again.

“You said that you would stay until you had found a way to help Ferdynand and Gosia,” she continued. “You have done that now. They are at peace, and my brother and sister, with her new husband, and the others are all human again—even if my brother-in-law does have a very impressive tail now!” They both laughed. “But does that mean that you will be on your way again?”

Alexei nodded. “Soon. I will earn a few more coins from working in the mine, but then I must be on my way.”

“We would be very happy if you chose to remain here. With us. I think, I hope, that you could be happy here.”

Alexei was silent a moment. “I think you are right. I could learn to be happy here. But I must be on my way. I have done things… I have done things, Beatrycze, for which I will mourn every day of my life. But I hope to find a way to insure that those things will never happen again.”

Beatrycze nodded, biting her lip. “I see,” she said at last. “Where will you be going?”

“To Prague,” Alexei answered without hesitation. “I must make my way to Prague.”

Chapter 6:
Vlkodlak

Alexei

(Prague, August 1890)

As he made his way south and then west toward Prague, Alexei listened to tales the travelers told and children recited during the times he shared simple meals with their families. He heard of trolls and witches, damsels and heroes. He heard more of Prague, the beautiful city of great magicians and wizards. South. West. When his grandfather Edvin had told him to leave home, Alexei decided that it must have been Prague that Edvin had meant for him to find. His grandfather had sent him to Prague, although Alexei had not heard of it until Filip told his stories in the miner’s tavern in Silesia. Alexei had come to Prague with the ancient skin of the wolf saturated with the magic of the old Estonian countryside, because there would be someone in modern-day Prague that would know what to do with it.

At last, someone told him that he had not only crossed into the Bohemian countryside but was on the road to Prague itself.

Alexei’s heart sang! Deliverance was not far off! He made his way to the city of magic and found a small inn on the edge of the city. He knew that no great magician would be interested in helping a simple Estonian beggar, so he used his coins, and the few more he had earned on his journey, to pay the innkeeper and buy new clothes. Washed and dressed, Alexei would not have recognized himself. Beholding his reflection in the cracked looking glass in his small room, he hoped he would catch the attention of one of the Czech magicians—a
nõiatar
—that drunken Filip had boasted about in the tavern in Silesia and that his own grandfather must have known would receive him. Alexei took up the wolf skin, which he had tied up in paper from a nearby butcher, and descended the stairs to speak with the innkeeper.

“I am looking for a
nõiatar
,” Alexei tried to explain. “Or a
nõid
, perhaps.”

The innkeeper looked at him as if he were mad. After several attempts, Alexei realized that he was looking for what the innkeeper spoke of as
kouzelnik
. He directed Alexei out into the street, where he spoke that same word and pointed Alexei down the street. At each corner, Alexei spoke the word:
kouzelnik.
Some folk did not understand or know of what or whom Alexei spoke, but many did.

Most people smiled at him, gently shaking their heads as they continued walking on their way. Some paused and then heartily laughed, guffawing at the man who was looking for a
kouzelnik
. Some pointed him down streets that turned into alleyways that went nowhere. Some pointed him down streets that quickly forked in several directions and no one could tell him which fork to take. Some refused to point him down any streets at all, still amused at his question or furious at his wasting their time.

As he walked along, Alexei kept staring up at the buildings and around him at the people. He had never seen such big buildings, such grand buildings, or so many people all in one place. Huge domes floated above churches. Tall spires soared toward the clouds. Shop after shop after shop lined each and every street he trudged along. His ideas of what a city was had been totally inadequate to prepare Alexei for all the sights and sounds, the crowds and dirt, the magnificence and wonder that was Prague.

One man pointed back up the street Alexei had just come down. He found himself crossing the massive stone bridge that linked the towns on either side of the river, feeling the watchful eyes of the stone saints atop the balustrades on either side of the bridge as he passed them. He walked toward the castle atop the bluff as it brooded over the river, trolley cars rumbling beside him. Trolley cars that rumbled along their tracks as if by magic, their whistles and bells startling him. He tried not to shudder or jump every time a trolley rang its bell or came past him. He knew that even in his new clothes he looked like a country peasant in the eyes of all the city folk, and that they would be more likely to tease and mock him if they thought he was an easily fooled bumpkin from the countryside. He needed their help, not their scorn. But it was hard to hide either his fascination with the city or his amazement at the sheer size of it all.

He had as little luck on this side of the river as he had on the other. People laughed at him on the streets. A few pointed him to the doors of specific houses, but when he knocked and spoke to the maids or serving men who opened them, the doors were slammed in his face. No one seemed to know where a real
kouzelnik
was to be found. He began to wonder if there was a single real
kouzelnik
left in Prague. He began to think he had come all this way on a fool’s errand, if Filip’s boasting in Silesia had been only that: empty boasting.

“If there is no
kouzelnik
in Prague, is there one anywhere?” he muttered in dejection, clutching a mug of beer and finding a seat on a bench in a tavern. He bit his lip to stop himself from crying. “If there is no
kouzelnik
, no
nõiatar
that can help me, even here in Prague, what hope is there that I will ever find a
nõiatar
that can free me from this wolf magic?” Men on either side of him, hearing him muttering in Estonian and seeing the mounting despair on his face, got up and moved away from him. No one wanted to be near the hopeless foreigner who might strike out in drunken fury. The singing and the conversations filled the air around Alexei as he realized the futility of his search. Cold darkness gripped his heart, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl away somewhere and hide from himself, hide from this amazing city in which he had placed all his hopes.

A man jostled Alexei’s elbow. Beer spilled down his shirt. The man said something to him, which Alexei didn’t understand, so simply nodded in sodden acknowledgement.

“What does it matter if all my beer spills down my shirt?” he demanded angrily, shrugging at the indifference of the world. “Without a
kouzelnik,
what does anything matter?” he asked of no one but himself, still not looking at the man at his elbow.

The man sat down beside him and said something again. More words that Alexei did not understand. But he recognized one. “
Kouzelnik
.”
The man said something about a
kouzelnik.
Alexei turned to look at the man.

He looked like a workman, a man near Alexei’s age and height and weight. A man who looked like a kinder, more thoughtful version of Filip, whose boasting of Prague’s magicians had given Alexei such hope. A man who had come to drink a beer with his friends in the evening after putting in a good day’s work in a shop or some business nearby.

“Do you know a
kouzelnik?
” Alexei asked, very careful to speak in German as clearly as he could. “A
hexenmeister?
Do you know where I can find such a man?”

The stranger smiled at Alexei. “I do know of such a
kouzelnik
,”
he answered, leaning in toward Alexei’s ear, also carefully and clearly speaking German but so as not to be overheard by anyone else. “I have heard of such a
hexenmeister
, a
kouzelnik
as we call them in Bohemian
,
perhaps the last one in all of Prague.”

Did Alexei dare hope that this man was not boasting like Filip had? “Where might I find him?” Alexei asked.

The man set down his beer and pulled a scrap of paper from a pocket. With a stub of pencil that he pulled from another pocket, he scrawled a few numbers and words on the paper. An address. He pressed it into Alexei’s palm.

“Ask at this address,” he told Alexei. “I have heard that the last
kouzelnik
in Prague lives there.”

The maid brought Timotej into the study to meet the strange visitor. He watched the man sitting there pause and take a deep breath. He watched the man take a sip from the cup in his lap of the tea that had probably grown cold. The man, though only in his early thirties, had a tired and careworn face. His forehead was etched with deep furrows and there were gray streaks in his otherwise dark, full head of hair. His eyes were blue, which struck Timotej as unusual but not totally unexpected, and sad. He was dressed in his country best, though the mud-spattered boots betrayed his having few shoes, and Timotej suspected that even the clothes had required the use of all the man’s savings. No doubt the man wanted to make a good impression on Timotej.

The man—named Alexei—had knocked on Timotej’s door that morning, asking for help. Help of a very specific and unusual sort. Timotej gestured for the man to sit in the leather chair next to the heavy velvet drapes framing the tall window. Timotej sat behind his great desk, taking notes as Alexei spoke.

“And so I have told you my story,” Alexei concluded.

Timotej blinked. Alexei had been directed by his deceased grandparents to leave his village, which had led to his meeting the miner Filip and then his journey to Prague, and providence—really, how else to explain it?—had brought him to Timotej’s own door.

When Alexei had completed his tale, Timotej sat in silence a moment before speaking. “Well. My. That was a story most people would not believe,” Timotej told him. “But you know that already, don’t you? Here you are, a man sitting in a chair and drinking tea on a sunny early August morning, talking about storm clouds full of ghosts and devils. But this is a fresh August morning in a fresh, modern world. After all, it is 1890,” Timotej went on. “Did you know that Charles Darwin’s
Origin of Species
was published only thirty years ago, and that it has sparked debates that still rage concerning God’s role in the creation of humanity? These debates have been fueled by Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings. Do you recognize his name?”

Alexei shook his head. He did not recognize Nietzsche’s name.

“In Paris,” Timotej continued, “the Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in the world, has opened to harsh criticism on aesthetic grounds. Electric lights are even being used in some places, and the Mahen Theatre in Brno, just south of here, is the first public building in the world to have been lit with Edison’s electric lamps. All in all, who in this modern age would believe your story, Alexei?”

Alexei felt his heart sink.

“But I believe it,” Timotej answered his own question.

Alexei felt his heart soar.

In fact, Timotej had hardly dared to trust his ears when the maid had brought word that there was a man at the door asking for Timotej’s help with what he had first called a
suteksäija
or, as the Bohemians called it, a
vlkodlak
or werewolf. As a member of the minor landed gentry with a fine house in the city and little else to occupy himself with, Timotej had made occult studies his hobby and had attempted some of the practices he had learned of, but without success. Now, here was a man who was in serious need of his assistance with supernatural creatures.

Having told his story, Alexei leaned back and closed his eyes, then glanced out the window at the sunny midmorning. He sighed, looking as if he had regained hope.

Timotej was thunderstruck by his own good fortune. Alexei, in his broken peasant German—the one language that he and Timotej shared, thanks to the Germanification efforts of Maria Theresa and the Habsburgs since 1740 and of the Austro-Hungarian Empire since 1867, which refused to acknowledge Bohemian or Czech parity with the Hungarians and Austrians—that was nevertheless sprinkled liberally with his native Estonian, had brought the first news of real magic to Timotej and all but laid himself at Timotej’s feet.

Timotej stared at the package next to Alexei. He had brought his wolf skin with him. It was within Timotej’s grasp. Real magic. Successful magic. What wonders might he be able to accomplish if Alexei were to give him the skin to use but once? Or twice? He could invite all the best of Prague society, both the believers and the scoffers, to witness the transformation. The power of the occult would be then be beyond dispute, and Timotej’s place, as harbinger of the occult renewal, would be assured.

Alexei began speaking again. “I have often thought of destroying the wolf skin,” he explained to Timotej. “Perhaps by fire. But I did not know if that might not trap me forever in the form of the werewolf. I need your help,
kouzelnik.
I have little to offer you, now that most of my coins are spent, but I can work. I will gladly offer whatever service I may, if you will but deliver me from the curse of the
suteksäija
transformations.” He stared at the cup in his hands. “Tell me what I must do and I will gladly do it. Perhaps then someday I can atone for what I have done, for killing so many… for killing my family.” He licked his lips and looked into Timotej’s eyes.

Free him from the
suteksäija
transformations? Could Timotej really manage that? Although he wanted the magic for himself, he had no real certainty that he could undo the effects of the magic on the Estonian. But he couldn’t admit that to the man in his study.

“Destroy it? Burn the pelt?” Timotej shook his head slowly. Deep within himself, in his heart of hearts, he knew immediately that burning the wolf skin was in fact probably the only reliable method for setting Alexei free from the transformations. Destroy the origin of those transformations, the pelt, and the transformations themselves would finally cease. Timotej was sure of it. But he could not bring himself to say those words, to let this thing of true magic slip from his fingers so soon, before he had even had a chance to try its power for himself.