Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  We wound our way through surface streets, passing small towns; Ballard assured me we would get to Prague, eventually. I didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t lead us astray, yet.

  We drove to Verona, when the trek got really hard. The sweeping countryside gave way to hills––craggy, dramatic, out-of-nowhere. The scree threatening landslides.

  “It’s only going to get worse,” he said.

  The Dolomites were northeast. At the town of Giazza, on the Monti Lessini plateau, I saw a spectacular view. Mountain ranges filled with trees, and snow, there in the distance. The Alps were directly before us. The roadways began becoming perilous. A picture-postcard, Giazza was snowed under. We passed vineyards, dead or dying, when my Gambalunga started having fits. We decided to give it a rest, the Gambalunga, not the trip, to see what we could see. Some soul saver. We slept until evening in motel rooms.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” said Ballard, “for it is the end of our comfort, when it goes. Soon we will have to leave the road behind us––any food will come either from our packs, or the cunningless game misfortunate enough to wander into our traps.”

  He showed me the map––the “place of trees,” the Stromovka, as he called it, the deep swaths of forest surrounding Prague. The Czech Republic lay in the heart of Central Europe. Our path lead right through it.

  “That is our route we are taking,” he said.

  “There are no roads,” I noticed.

  He readjusted his pack. “Not to worry,” he said.

  And to think, I told myself, if I had just taken the Eurorail, I could practically be there by now. Prague was beginning to feel like a million miles away. But then I remembered about my status as an illegal alien and shut my mouth. Ballard had to see what was wrong with my Gambalunga first. I moved our stuff into our rooms; a fast, laborious trip. I plopped on my bed in the unknown room. Ballard popped his head in. “I topped the oil off,” he said. “Your Gambalunga should be okay. It’s just old. See you tonight.” He was anxious to get his shut-eye. I shut and locked my door and then fetched out my diary. I had decided to make use of my time by creating a travelogue, an ongoing narrative account of my Roman exodus, and our journey to parts unknown. My pen whizzed across the page. The elastic catch-all on the exterior of my bag was becoming satisfyingly full of coke-bottle caps and other souvenirs. I could hear Ballard snoring through the paper-thin walls. When his head hit pillow, he went right out.

  “Something is wrong,” I wrote. “It’s like the Spring is late. It’s nearly March. It shouldn’t be this cold. Maybe it just stays extra cold extra long, where we’re going.” I pulled out my guidebook, something I had not been obliged to do for a very long time. There was a section on Northern Italy. Apparently I could expect more freezing cold, because the guidebook assured me Central Europe did that. I shook my head. What had I gotten myself into? At least it wasn’t December. I couldn’t explain it... Even though the weather was supposed to be cold, this felt wrong... Unnatural...

  I put my book away. Lennox and his eyes were coming out of the darkness after me: they were feral, hungry-looking. Before I knew it, I was awake.

  Central Europe seemed like the Dark Ages to me, when I looked at it on the map. I knew it was silly Western superstition––but that was where Transylvania was at. Ballard’s map showed Europe’s major rail routes, like a crisscrossing web of interconnected pathways. Still, when I looked at the map, all roads seemed to lead to Paris, not Rome; mildly off-putting

  “You always do that,” said Ballard. We were eating our way through strawberry landslides. The waitress seemed to think we were both crazy, sitting outside in the cold. But Ballard and I had become supernaturally acclimated: He with his radiator-like heat, and me my throbbing mark. “Grimace...” he said.

  I had slapped it. I made a noncommittal noise.

  “Sometimes it hurts,” I said.

  “Your mark, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  Paris would have to wait. I couldn’t go there until I knew Wicca... Even though it was where Lennox was from...

  There was nothing on the map about finding the actual Districts of Magic. Almost as though they were off the beaten path, or worse, hidden. How did one enter an unseen world?

  By going there? Trying to find it? I told myself.

  “I think we have to stumble our way upon it,” said Ballard, who didn’t know either. He wiped his hands on a napkin and we paid up.

  From here on out, the path, according to the map, would be one long winding, vertical road, up into the snowy-filled Alps.

  * * *

  They were beautiful, those Alps. The narrow roads filled with sharp, hairpin turns. I felt revitalized after the long rest. Perhaps it was all the talk of Ballard’s People, but I thought I saw one––a real, live werewolf––there, on the periphery of my vision. We were out of the Boot, headed East, leaving Italy––zigging and zagging our way up, past drifts of snow banks. Headlamps of passing cars preceded curious faces, as they passed us by. I fetched out my hoodie. It felt thin against the onslaught of wind, but what the H? The Alps were crazy––huge plummeting drops, with other, perilous, points. Soon the roads were empty. What I thought I saw was a giant, shaggy grey wolf. When I looked again, it was gone. It was just Ballard and I. Hypothermia was beginning to set in. “I need to stop,” I said. My non-Wiccan fingertips felt like ice cubes. They were about to fall off. We had to battle on. There was no stopping. We had to get through here––the Alps were killing Ballard and I. The maps hadn’t prepared us for this.

  The border crossing was coming up. Soon we would be in Austria. But something was with us. A second traveler.

  I caught glimpses of it, here and there––hallucinations. I didn’t know what to think.

  A pair of eyes, always on the outskirts... They would seem to melt away, when I looked, and then come back.

  We had to get out of the Alps. I didn’t like stopping for the night here. And Ballard seemed uncomfortable. We were aware of the Hunter, even though we could not see him. “I think he’s out there,” said Ballard. I shivered, remembering the vision I had seen: Of it killing the two gravediggers. They had been burying it. Why?

  The air was slick with moisture––my knobby black tires grabbing the asphalt, the Gambalunga humming along. It left me feeling terribly exposed.

  Still, I felt something powerful and ancient and primal stirring within me; my own get-up-and-go. It would be morning soon. The Grey Wolf couldn’t hide from us, then. I didn’t know what Ballard’s reaction to it would be, when and if he saw it. “I can’t explain it, but I felt as though something was watching us,” he said. Maybe it was a member of one of Ballard’s teams of riders. They were patrolling the northern border. Lost, astray, rogue. It, the Grey Wolf, had disappeared and we were briefly alone.

  It flashed through my mind, the vision I had seen, Ballard and I, racing through the trees; it was like we were after something––or something was after us... But there had been a third person... And he, or she, was with us––and we were together––and we were headed––... somewhere.

  We were through the Alps, into Slovenia, in a region of karst––beautiful, exotic fissures of limestone; the snow so bad here we had to fit snow chains on our tires. That explained the clinking sound I had heard coming from Ballard’s pack. He was full of wonders.

  We made a light supper of shellfish paella. Our days and nights were starting to get themselves un-confused––soon the light would come. That just left the problem of first watch. Ballard was getting feelings. “Might as well stay up,” he said. “I want to figure out what they mean.” Because it was out there––we both could feel it. What would we do if the grey wolf actually attacked us?

  That night I had visions of eyes and a dark-filled voice saying Come––Be with us. The vision changed. I saw him. Lenoir! It must’ve been. As he spoke, things unbidden crept into my imagination. I heard clashing, rapiers whipping magically through the air––I saw wizards and witches,
engaged in combat, meeting in heaths, to settle some ancient grudge. And there was also a fire-blade, blacker than the rest; and it could not be beat.

  He was entering upon a heath, Lenoir, the wicked weapon in his hand, where others were fighting. But as he passed they died, slain by his comrades, spread like an infection. And there was also a stone circle. Come––Be with us.

  Nobody fought with swords anymore. Who would? It was very much an anachronism. My mind rebelled against it.

  I could hear the tongues of scorching fire, clinking hammers, the hiss of steel. But no faces. Ballard nudged me. I woke shouting. The face of the hunter, coming out of the darkness. It was time to leave, he said. Clink-clink, clink-clink, clink-clink. He had a strange look on his face, Ballard, and had stayed up the night.

  * * *

  Austria was one long rolling hillside of dairy farms and fat cows––leastways, that’s how it appeared to me. I missed Rome; I missed the heartbeat of the city. Soon we would be in Slovakia; from thence, the Czech Republic. My travelogue was filled with names like souslik, gyr falcon, Grey Wolf.

  Near Bratislava we got lost in a hornbeam forest. I saw kingcups and peach-leaved bell-flowers. Ballard kept repeating phrases: “Put him off! Gotta get lost! Lose him!” He was more manic than a maniac. Nothing could convince him against the route we had taken.

  I completely understood! Hadn’t I listened to that same mysterious voice, which was the voice of premonition?

  Because, despite our rudderless wanderings, I knew Ballard and I were destined to meet up with a third member of our pack; who, for some reason, I had always imagined to be Lia. But she couldn’t shift anymore, could she? Then who had been the other wolf I had seen in my dreams of this moment?

  We crossed in secret from Slovakia, to the Czech Republic, and walked our bikes across. The ground was covered in trumpetcreeper and snapdragons, not to mention mounds of sneezeweed. I still wore my Harm None ring. It was on the index finger of my right hand.

  More of the Prague viburnums––fitting since we were almost there. I wondered who would come for us, if we managed to traipse into Prague. Surely, not the Dark Order.

  I don’t know why, but I was thinking about Vittoria, and her role in this. And about Ballard’s proposition that I should make her feel welcome somehow.

  It was four days since we had left Rome; four days of traveling through swamps and peat bogs, rock quarries, and over mountain tops; and now we had a new obstacle; the omnipresent twilight under dark forests, which made seeing where I was going impossible: I nearly crashed a million times. The crackling twigs and other detritus littered the floor––and so endless.

  One felt compelled towards drastic lashings-out. Trees were everywhere. It was silent under their canopies, which stretched on forever. I was not used to feeling so stifled. In truth, it was like being back at St. Martley’s. But worse. Here there was no end in sight. It was just tree after tree.

  A happy and flickering fire jumped at the roots of a Silver Linden, under which we made our camp. Ballard and I fashioned walking sticks. We had marched our way through so much smelly swampland my boots squished with the stuff. They were off, now, drying by the fire. Prague was only about a hundred miles away, he said. If Ballard and I didn’t get out of the forest soon, we would have to turn cannibal. I didn’t fancy muzzleburgers. “What makes you think you would win?” said Ballard, somewhat indignantly.

  The paella was gone.

  A twig snapped. My heart rate spiked uncomfortably. I felt the adrenaline flow through my veins––but that could’ve been Dark Magic; the aether was inside all of us, remember, I said to myself. Every witch and wizard, whether we wanted it or not. Ballard stiffened.

  I was too busy fashioning my walking stick. I decided to make the point extra sharp, like a spear. That way if any wild boar were in the Stromovka, I wouldn’t have to eat Ballard.

  Ballard got to his feet and went to have a look around. I could hear him striding through the trees, trying to scare off whatever was after us.

  Not even the stars could penetrate to where we were at; it was impressively dark.

  I gripped my walking stick. The flames crackled; their embers shooting into the air. It was silent for miles around. Ballard put on another log. The fire caught and spit. “Goodnight,” he said. He crawled into his sleeping bag. I was left staring at the flames, not really seeing them.

  Isn’t it funny? I thought. Here I am, all the way out here...

  Hours passed, Ballard snoring softly beside me. It happened rather fast. One minute, I was warming my hands by the fire, admiring the firelight glinting off my ring, the next the whole length of my right arm began glowing with silver-bright magic.

  It appeared like moonlight, under the trees, glowing soulfully there on the extreme edge of my vision. The four paws of the grey wolf standing resolutely. My orchid woke up and began twisting towards it––reaching for the wolf.

  It dipped its head to me, as if smelling. Ballard turned gently in his sleep. “Can’t stop now! I will be Risky!” he said, incoherently

  Ballard sat up and the grey wolf vanished.

  Sound returned to the forest floor. I hadn’t heard it coming; I hadn’t heard it leaving. It was almost like the grey wolf hadn’t been here at all; and, looking to the place where it had stood, I thought I might have hallucinated it, entirely. Instead of hunting me, it had been like the grey wolf was standing guard over me.

  * * *

  We had come across a path, in the woods, and were riding it, Ballard with his compass in one hand, and his map in the other. Something about the total lack of anything––it made you want to get there; we spoke very little. Stromovka was everywhere. The place of trees.

  Still––all day I couldn’t stop thinking about the grey wolf; for some reason, now that I knew what it was, I couldn’t tell Ballard, who continued to be on edge. I couldn’t think why?

  Our motorcycles zipped up and down the hills, following the trail. Somebody had been here. I supposed it was like Faith, and that eventually we would all get to wherever we were headed. Small comfort, given there was no ending in sight.

  “I can’t take it anymore!” said Ballard. He swatted at his head. “Seeing things. I’m tired of it! And the trees!”

  For fourteen hours, we alternately rode and walked the forest floor. The last chugs of the Gambalunga sputtered and died. The gas was gone. In Ballard’s motorcycle as well.

  He crumpled, and then picked himself up. We put our heads down, walking our bikes two more hours, silently in the dark.

  “I’m spent. I can’t go anymore,” he said.

  A fire was kindled; we ate our frugal supper. Night, rich and thick, clotted our eyesight. The taste of beans was little more than a reprieve from starvation, there in Stromovka. We began finally to despair.

  “I’m dying,” said Ballard. “It’s over.”

  When, suddenly, my eyes popped open. The tingling in my fingertips was back––like premonition. I held a trinity of stars in my fingertips, one for each digit. The last thing I had seen was the moonlit grey wolf, which seemed to rush out at me, from my dreams, before fading away. But now my eyes were wide open, and there was something else out there.

  “Ballard... Ballard... Ballard...” I repeated in the dark. I felt myself calling to him three times. It was like I was all alone.

  I looked at the flickering flames of the fire, the tongues of which had been allowed to fade during the night. The sky was a dull leaden color, like lead in pencil. When I realized: sky! We were on the edge of an opening. “Ballard!” I shouted. Nobody answered. At least not who I thought would answer...

  He appeared. He appeared so suddenly and silently, at first I didn’t recognize him. His eyes were like electronic diamonds, shining from the dark––like a snake uncoiling itself, preparing to strike. He slithered from the trees.

  My Mark was blinding me with its sterling light. Is that what this is? I thought... A warning sign?

  The hunter stoo
d at the edge of the forest, sniffing as the grey wolf had done; instead of protecting me, however, the intent of the hunter could not be denied. He had come there to kill me. Ballard as well. Ballard.... I thought.

  “Your friend, where is he?” he said. His voice hissed and rasped like it hadn’t been used in a long time.

  I looked and saw his mark. He showed it off brazenly to me. Tribal, like twisting thorns. No Virtue was ever shaped like that. What was he?

  “I-I don’t know where he is,” I said. “He’s gone. He left.” I gulped, appreciating the truth of my words.

  I couldn’t keep the note of hysteria out of my voice; I was all alone. Still, there was no reason Ballard should die with me. If I was going to depart this life, it would be just me going. But where was Ballard, and what was he doing?

  “His motorcycle is still here,” said the hunter shrewdly. He threw his neck back and sniffed the air; I could hear the powerful inhalations of breath. “I cannot descry his scent. I have been tracking you four days––since Italy, when you foolishly crossed from the protection of Rome, all the way to me––time enough to lock him down. My Master will be most pleased.” He smiled maliciously. The glint in his eye was nothing next to his teeth: sharp points which sparkled in the gloom.

  I saw his beautiful, angelic face, before it turned menacing. Tentatively, I tried reading his mind.

  “That does not work on me, she-witch,” he hissed, his voice metallic. “I am Grigori. The last of my kind––as... are... you...”

  “W-What do you want?” I said. “Why are you trying to hurt me?”

  “Trying?” He shook his head. “As if you could stop me,” he said.