by Tim Westover
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A snarl in my ear wakens me. The hot, wet breath tickles the tiny hairs on my neck. Something slick drips onto the bottom of my ear.
And the snarl growls into my ear again. My hand is on my knife before I even think of removing the blindfold.
I lay still.
The breath leaves my neck and finds my cheek instead. The slickness drips onto my cheek and then my chin. The breath reeks of raw meat and dirty water.
I pull the knife free and grip it tightly.
The creature above me growls and presses one sharply clawed paw on my chest.
Instinct drives me as I throw my left arm around its neck without having to remove the blindfold. I twist and pull the thing with the matted fur to the ground beside me and raise my right arm, then I strike like a flash of lightning, driving the knife into the soft part of its chest.
The creature yelps and grabs my wrist with its teeth, wrenching the knife away. I hear it clink against some stones a few feet away as I rip the blindfold away to finally see what manner of beast I am battling.
A wolf. Large and brown, with a single stripe of black wrapping around its back and haunches. A she-wolf.
Regret clutches me, and I look around the forest, searching for cubs. How will Yowa make me a man when I am merely a cub that kills the mother of another?
I see no cubs, and I feel better. Perhaps the she-wolf is Yowa’s challenge, and I have passed. Perhaps I was not to receive a vision but to be tested, as others of the tribe have said of their quest. Perhaps my night is over, and I am free to return home and share the blood of this mighty beast with the other warriors I have become a part of.
The beast lets go of my wrist and cocks its head to face me. The brown eyes, large and wet and shining, lock on to mine, and it opens its maw and closes it again. Then again.
Then it snarls one last time, and the head slumps to the dirt and falls still.
I crawl the distance to retrieve the knife, then stand and throw back my shoulders to let the forest know I have become a man, a warrior. I have killed a she-beast while blind.
The leaves and branches crackle and break behind me.
I turn, legs bent and ready, arms at my side, knife in my hand again, my own claw.
Two red eyes stare at me from the darkness. Even with my eyes keen to the darkness, the figure that behind the shining eyes is dark enough to fade into the night air and remain unseen.
“Child Eyes,” comes a whisper to my left. “The Wolf Cub that kills its mother.”
I spin to where the voice came from, ignoring for the moment the wild red eyes. “What are you!” I yell. “I wasn’t afraid of the wolf, and I’m not afraid of you.”
“You had no reason to be afraid of the wolf,” the voice says.
I look up into the trees. The voice is high.
“Look for me and find me. You look to the Yowa, but I have prayed to her too, and she has given you to me, Cub.”
“I thought you a spirit, but you sound like a man. Who are you?”
“I am no spirit, but I am not a man either.”
“Then what are you?”
“I am what you came to the forest seeking, boy.”
I can hear the madness in the voice’s gritted words.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“That is good, Cub. Then you will die brave.”
I remember the red-eyed creature and glance to see if it is still watching. A boy fighting one man is a challenge of its own, but fighting one man while worrying about another enemy joining the battle is something that even my father’s training hasn’t prepared me for.
But the eyes are gone.
I smile.
“Then I will die with honor, Creature Who Is Not Man Nor Spirit.”
No response.
“Are you afraid?”
Still no answer.
“No.” The words come soft, low, and directly into my ear on a cool breath.
Before I can spin around, a hairy disjointed arm has my throat all but crushed. Claws rake across my stomach, and I yelp as they slash deep gashes into my skin. Blood flows freely across my abdomen.
“I will feast on your flesh, Cub.” The claws stop moving and instead begin to dig the gashes, cutting into muscle and gut. “And then I will gnaw the bones of your wolf-mother.”
The creature removes its claws from my gut and tosses me away. I hit the ground on my side and roll over onto my stomach. My guts threaten to spill to the ground.
“You taste like life,” the creature whispers.
Raising my head, I give my eyes a moment to react to the pain and take in the sight of my attacker. A tall beast, standing on two legs like a bear—no, dressed in the skin of a bear, down to the claws that it wears like a new set of hands. Beneath the bearskin, the creature is filthy—a dark lanky thing caked in dirt and what my nose tells me must be animal waste.
As it grins, I see teeth sharp and stained red.
“You smell like death.”
“I am death.”
I shake my head. “No. I know what you are. You used to be a man, but you are no longer. You are now a thing of evil, cursed by Yowa.”
The thing steps toward me, and I back away one step for each step it takes.
“You are frightened, Cub.”
My back bumps against a tree, and I realize I have nowhere else to go, that my stomach risks ripping open the longer I fail to wrap it in buckskin, that the evil thing before me will not give me that opportunity.
The creature steps over the corpse of the she-wolf and glances at it, sniffing the air. Then it stares at me and smiles. “Yowa has abandoned you, Cub. She has granted you to me. The spirit of Wendigo is not a curse but a blessing.”
It lifts its foot to take another step, and the she-wolf’s jaws open and snap shut around its ankle. The creature screams and stomps the ribs of the wolf, but it refuses to let go.
I step forward slowly and hold my knife in front of me to help the wolf-mother fight the beast. But instead of helping, I pitch to my knees and spit up blood, losing the knife in the fall. As I search for the blade, I see the eyes again. Bright and red. Larger than before. Flanked by four other pairs—smaller and farther away, but just as bright.
“Good-bye, Father,” I whisper. “I will wait for you in the land of the spirits of my ancestors.”
The eyes emerge from the shelter of the trees, and I behold the tallest creature I’ve ever seen. Taller than me sitting on my father’s shoulders and as wide as the base of the greatest pine in the forest. It stinks of dirty fur and stands slightly slumped over, its arms resting limply at its sides, not quite reaching its knees.
I bow my head and fall to the ground.
It stands quietly facing me while four others like it come into the clearing and stand beside it.
The thing held by the she-wolf stops fighting. “No, you can’t have him. He’s mine,” it hisses.
The largest of the hairy men walks forward and stands over me. Then it kneels and sniffs my chest.
The loathsome creature possessed by Wendigo tears itself free from the wolf’s jaws and leaps at the great beast-man over me.
My strength gives out, and I let darkness consume me.