“Ha,” I said awkwardly. “Here.” I handed her a furred cloak, and passed another to Henry before putting on my own.
“The stars will soon be gone,” said Henry, peering out at the cloudy sky above the lake.
We each carried a rucksack and shouldered a coil of knotted rope. We lit two more lanterns.
I looked once more at Polidori’s map. “This way,” I said, venturing into the Sturmwald on a narrow path.
Among the tall trees, what little starlight remained was all but blocked. Though we each held a lantern, we could see no more than a few feet before us. We staggered on uphill. Sheathed in my belt was a dagger taken from our armory. It made me feel safer.
The sound of wind was building, and all around us in the undergrowth I heard animal noises. A distant pair of eyes flashed in the glare of our lanterns, and then was gone. They were not small eyes.
“Victor,” Henry said tightly, “there is an animal.”
“I saw it too,” said Elizabeth, and added hopefully, “perhaps a deer.”
“It’s long gone,” I said. “Nothing will come near the light.”
I said no more, but I sensed that the three of us were not alone. Some other presence kept pace with us, traveling on padded feet, its eyes capable of parting the night as easily as a curtain.
The trees grew taller. The wind moaned. The path narrowed, then seemed to disappear altogether. I paused to look again at the map.
“We should have reached a clearing by now,” I muttered.
“We’re lost, then,” said Henry.
“These lanterns are useless,” I said. “I feel trapped in their glare.”
I also felt vulnerable. Everything could see me, and I could see nothing. I envied the animals their dark vision. From my pocket I took the vial I had mixed earlier.
“Is that Polidori’s potion?” said Henry uneasily.
“The vision of the wolf,” I said, setting down my lantern. I pulled out the stopper, tilted my head, and tapped the vial. A thick drop welled out and hit my cheek. I tried again, and this time the liquid hit me squarely in the eye. I fought the urge to blink it away, and moved to my other eye. The next drop hit home.
“Is it working?” Elizabeth asked.
“It stings,” I said, and then suddenly the stinging became a searing pain. Instinctively I clenched my eyes shut. My fists flew up to scrub at them. What if I’d made the potion improperly? What if I were blinded? Fear broke free in me.
“Get me the water flask, Henry!” I cried.
“Here, here!” I heard him shout.
“I cannot see!” I bellowed.
“Give me the flask!” I heard Elizabeth tell him, and I felt her firm hand on my arm. “Stay still, Victor! Tip your head back. I will douse your eyes. Open them wide!”
I opened them wide—and abruptly the stinging stopped.
“Wait!” I said, and pulled roughly away from her. I blinked and stared about me.
The forest seemed eerily illuminated, the trunks painted silver, the earth beneath my feet glowing. Between the trees, amid the undergrowth, I caught sight of tiny animals, shrews and moles, going about their nighttime hunting.
Swarms of newly hatched mosquitoes scudded like clouds above the grass. From the base of a tree, a mouse tentatively lifted its head out from its nest, and higher up, an owl’s head swiveled, listening, predatory.
“Victor,” Elizabeth was saying. “Victor, are you all right?”
I realized I had not spoken a word for several seconds, had been looking all about me, drinking in the night with my eyes.
“Vision of the wolf,” I murmured. “It works. It works!”
I turned toward Elizabeth, and her lantern’s light sent a piercing pain through my eyes.
“It is too bright for me,” I said, whirling away.
“Give me some,” said Elizabeth, setting down her lantern.
“It’s very painful at first,” I warned her.
“I want the vision too!”
“Very well. Come close.” I tipped her head back—and her lovely pale throat seemed to flash in the night. I tapped a drop into each of her hazel eyes.
“Ah!” she cried out, her hands flying to her face, just as mine had. “Water! Please, Victor, please!”
“No,” I said, and held her firmly as she struggled against me, whimpering. Then she opened her eyes and grew still. She drew away from me.
“I see you as though it were merely twilight,” she said.
“Yes.”
For a moment we just stared at each other with our wolf eyes. She looked different somehow. Perhaps it was the fur of her collar around her throat, but she was like some lithe animal.
“Henry,” I said, shielding my face from his lantern, “will you take some?”
“I will not,” he replied, and I could almost smell his fear as he beheld us warily, as though we were somehow changed.
“Put out the lanterns, then,” Elizabeth told him. Was her voice lower, almost hoarse, or was I imagining it?
“I think it wise to keep mine lit,” Henry said. “It will keep any animals at bay.”
“Very well,” I muttered, though I had no fear of other animals now. “Walk behind, so we are not blinded.”
“There is the clearing,” said Elizabeth, pointing.
Before, we might have walked right past it, but now it was obvious. I hurried through the trees and undergrowth and emerged before a vast heap of bones. I tilted my head to one side, trying to make sense of it. The hair lifted on the back of my neck. Elizabeth crouched beside me, breathing quietly. A moment later Henry’s lantern suddenly blazed off the bones, and he gave a cry.
It was hard to tell what animals the bones came from, since most were splintered and broken.
“What kind of creature could have done this?” Henry gasped.
My eyes saw some larger bones. Instinctively I sniffed. A rabbit? A wild dog? I could not tell.
“They are mostly very small,” said Elizabeth decisively.
I gave a low growl as one of the bones twitched—and I had a terrible image of the entire pile assembling itself into some monstrous specter that would consume us. But almost at once I could see several small animals moving among the bones, feeding on the last of their meat and marrow.
Elizabeth chuckled softly, looking up into the glowering sky.
“Birds,” she said. “They have made this heap. Don’t you remember your father telling us about the lammergeier? How it drops its prey onto rocks to break the bones so it can more easily get at the marrow?”
“I must have missed that lesson,” said Henry. “What is a lammergeier?”
“Bearded vulture,” I murmured. “The locals call them tree griffins. They’re quite large.”
“Ah, excellent,” said Henry. “This adventure grows more enjoyable by the second.”
“Which way now?” Elizabeth asked me. A heat came off her that I found strangely distracting.
I pulled out my map. “From here there is a trail that should take us right to the tree.”
She was already walking with a hunched intensity. I followed.
“Wait for me, please,” said Henry. “This does not look like a path!”
“It’s just overgrown,” I said gruffly. With my wolf’s eyes I could see it like a silvery river running deeper into the forest.
I loped behind Elizabeth, scarcely aware of the steep climb.
“You’re going too quickly,” I heard Henry say. “I’ll lose you in the darkness!”
Reluctantly I slowed down. The smells of the forest were keener somehow, and I caught myself swinging my head from side to side, tasting the air, peering among the trees. My earlier feeling of being followed was more intense and—
There. A distant pair of eyes met my own as we kept pace through the Sturmwald. Perhaps it was a wolf. I was not afraid. Somehow I felt we were kin right now, prowling in the night.
Elizabeth found the tree. On the immense trunk the X mark was still faintly
visible. I looked up. The first branches were very high, maybe more than fifty feet up. We set down our gear at the base. I took the light rope, which I had weighted at one end as a hurling line.
Standing back from the trunk, I heaved toward the branches. The line paid out perfectly from its coil, but then fell back. Again I threw, with all my might. I squinted, trying to follow its ascent, but not even my wolf eyes could penetrate the high gloom of the tree.
My line was still paying out.
“I think you’ve done it!” said Elizabeth.
“There is the weighted end!” Henry cried.
Exactly as I’d hoped, it had looped over a branch and was pulling the rope up even as it fell earthward. It hit the ground at our feet.
We tied the light line to a stouter climbing rope, and we fed it up and over the branch and back to earth.
“It’s a good sixty feet,” said Henry as we tied the rope’s end securely around the trunk. I gave it a good tug and then jumped up onto it. It held firm.
“Henry, will you climb?” I asked him.
“I would, normally, yes, if it weren’t for my intense fear of heights.”
“I never knew you had a fear of heights.”
Queasily he looked up into the tree. “Oh, yes.”
“It will inspire you! Think of the poetry you will write!”
“Ah. That is what imagination is for,” he said. “So I do not have to have unpleasant experiences.”
I glanced at Elizabeth. She smiled at me in a most self-satisfied way.
“Henry,” I said. “I am disappointed.”
“Victor, do not force him,” said Elizabeth. “It’s just as well to have someone on the ground in case something happens to us in the tree.”
“I will watch over you. From here,” said Henry.
“Excellent plan,” I said. “There may be bone-crunching predators to fend off. I’ll go first.”
I removed my cloak. Despite the wind, I was too hot, as though my own body were clad in fur. I began my climb, the knots in the rope giving good purchase for my hands and feet. I felt an unusual energy in my limbs, and before I knew it, I was at the branch—and a good thick one it was—and hauling myself onto it. I shuffled over toward the trunk to wait for Elizabeth.
Watching her climb, I was filled with admiration. She showed no sign of hesitation or fear and was scarcely out of breath as I helped her up onto the branch. As she panted softly, I felt a most powerful and savage pounding through my veins, and wondered if she too felt the same strange keening. I wanted to grab her by the hand and disappear into the forest. I was a wolf and she was my she-wolf, and the night belonged to us.
I tore my eyes from her and began to climb for the summit. Among the big limbs grew smaller ones that got in our way, and stabbed at my flesh. My hands were soon sticky with sap, my hair matted with needles and insects.
“How much higher?” Elizabeth asked, just below me.
“I feel the breeze,” I said. “We must be close.”
Then I spied, not far above my head, a thick wall of sticks and dried grasses, built out from the trunk. I pointed it out to Elizabeth.
“A nest,” she whispered.
It was a marvel of engineering: a huge cone shape, three feet deep, and at least six feet across at its top. I’d once seen a grand eagle’s nest on a sheer rock face of the Salève Mountain. This nest was bigger—and it blocked our way to the tree’s summit.
“Perhaps it’s abandoned,” I said, thinking we might climb right through it. But my answer came on a gust of wind—the rancid odor of fresh bird droppings and regurgitated meat, making me nearly gag.
From the ground Henry suddenly bellowed, “How are you? Have you reached the top?”
“Shush!” I called back to him.
Inside the nest something rustled.
“We can climb around. There, look,” Elizabeth said.
“Tricky,” I said. It would take us closer than I liked to the nest, and the branches were shorter and skinnier there. The wind had picked up, and it seemed to me the sky’s blackness had intensified, if that was possible. I saw the faraway lights of Geneva, and then they were blotted out as great sooty strands of cloud blew across—toward us.
“A storm’s coming,” Elizabeth said.
I nodded. “We’ve got to be quick.”
Hastily we climbed around the nest, giving it as wide a berth as possible. We were some distance from the trunk, and I missed its security. Out here on the skinnier branches there was much less to grip if we slipped. Below: a drop of a hundred feet.
A smattering of icy rain hit my face.
“Are you all right?” I whispered to Elizabeth. “Do you wish to go down?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Hurry now!”
We were level with the nest, and as we climbed past it, an unearthly squawk made me freeze. I looked down and saw a head emerging over the rim.
What I saw was not an eagle.
I thought: Griffin.
A large, angry eye flashed, and a long, fierce beak opened. Bristling from the creature’s lower jaw was some kind of dark crest. Its neck and shoulders were thick and gave the impression of immense strength. There was no color at night, and a wolf did not see in color anyway, not like humans. But I had the impression of bright, flaming orange fur cloaked with black feathers.
“The lammergeier,” I said.
Its wings opened and seemed to take forever to reach their full span. Eight feet, ten, I could not be sure. In the strengthening wind they billowed like feathered sails, then furled once more against the beast’s body. A blow from those wings could knock us from the tree.
With false confidence I said, “It cannot see in the dark, surely.”
Beyond the lake, over the mountains, the clouds were illuminated from within by a brilliant stutter of lightning, and in that split second Elizabeth and I were etched against the sky. The bearded vulture shrieked.
“I believe it has seen us now,” I said.
“She will not leave her nest,” whispered Elizabeth. “Her instinct will be to protect, not attack.”
I was glad she’d been so attentive to my father’s lectures; I remembered nothing of the sort.
Reluctantly, slowly, we made our way toward the tree’s summit, not fifteen feet above the nest. I tried to ignore the vulture below, and scoured the bark for lichen.
“Here!” said Elizabeth.
On the southeast face was a small patch. Even with our wolves’ vision its glow was subtle. From my trousers I pulled the padded vial and a pair of tweezers and passed them to Elizabeth. Her nimble fingers went to work at once, scraping the lichen off the bark.
“Its grip is stubborn,” she muttered.
“Do you want me to try?” I asked, reaching for the tweezers.
“No!” she said fiercely.
More lightning, closer now, lit the sky. The rain came harder, and the treetop was rocking from the wind. We wrapped our legs about the trunk, holding on.
Another shriek pulled my gaze down. There was no longer just one head protruding from the nest, but two. And then—to my horror—three.
“Elizabeth,” I said, as calmly as I could manage, though I feared my voice broke.
“Yes?”
“Do you have enough?”
“Not yet.”
“Please hurry. There are three now.”
She glanced down, gasped, and then started scraping madly at the bark. “I did read,” she said, her voice shaky, “that the female will often choose two mates, and the three of them will share a nest and protect the young.”
One of the vultures hopped up onto the rim of its nest, head flicking from side to side. I unsnapped the sheath of my dagger.
Not a hundred yards away a jagged shaft of lightning struck a tree, and the tree exploded into flame.
“We must go!” I shouted.
“The vial is not full!” she shouted back.
“It’s good enough! Come on!”
She p
ushed the cork into the vial, and slipped the vial into a pocket of her breeches.
I led the way down, keeping as far from the nest as possible. The vulture on the rim watched us intently but did not move. We were exactly level with the nest. The branches were slick from the rain, and I was suddenly aware that I was squinting down to see them.
“Victor!” Elizabeth whispered in alarm. “My vision … !”
I looked toward her voice and was shocked that I could see her only as a shadow. I felt her hand touch my arm.
“It’s wearing off,” I said. “Quickly!”
But the vision left as swiftly as it had come. I was virtually blind, a wolf no more.
I heard Elizabeth shuffle closer toward me, then heard another sound. The billowing flap of a large bird’s wings. A terrible stench wafted over us.
A great flash of lightning illuminated the night, and there, burned into the sky for a split second, was a bearded vulture, leering at us from the branch above.
Then pitch black again, and with the deafening sound of thunder came a stabbing pain in my hand. I swore, and tore my hand free from the vulture’s beak—so quickly that I lost my balance. I flailed about and just managed to catch hold of another branch to stop me from tumbling out of the tree.
“Victor?” Elizabeth cried.
“Fine, I’m fine. Come lower!” I shouted.
Feeling my way, I made it down to the next branch, and then the next, and started working back toward the trunk. I could hear Elizabeth’s panting and knew she was close by.
The storm was directly overhead now. Great javelins of lightning came one after another, and I saw things only in ghastly rain-streaked frozen images:
The vulture overhead, tensed to hop lower.
Elizabeth’s face, looking in horror at something beneath us.
A second vulture, hunched two branches down, beak parted in a silent shriek, for nothing could be heard above the demonic thunder. The entire tree shook, and I clung to the drenched limbs in terror.
“Victor!” Elizabeth was shouting in my ear. “There is one below us!”
“I know!” I shouted back.
“They are trying to force us off the tree!”
“Come here! Put your back against the trunk.” I shifted to make space. I pulled my dagger from its sheath, then hooked my free arm tightly around a branch and hoped for more lightning.
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