by Lee Savino
He slipped on the rocks and we fell into the waterfall. The rush of water made me throw my head back, breaking the kiss, but Siebold found his balance and steadied us away from the flow. He chased my lips with a growl. He kissed up the column of my neck, finding my pulse and sucking on it until my body clenched.
Mine, a voice howled in my head. It was a savage cry, feral and achingly lonely. Mine. Mine. Mine. It wasn’t Siebold, and it was. The dark monster living inside him, born of the curse and doomed to forever feel a hunger no hunt could satisfy.
I knew this monster, because one lived inside me as well. And as Siebold gripped me hard enough to bruise and claimed my lips again, she broke free.
The wind rushed around us, making goosebumps rise on our flesh. We didn’t notice. I surged against Siebold, digging my nails into his shoulders. He snarled and captured my mouth again. We danced and fought in each other’s arms on the edge of the waterfall, ignoring the crashing cold.
Eventually Siebold’s feet slipped again and we fell. We burst from the pool and sought each other again. The cold was gone, replaced by the boom boom boom of my heartbeat and the aching lust in my loins.
He was naked, I was ready, but I wouldn’t let him go long enough for me to guide him inside me. And he wouldn’t break the kiss. So I rocked against him, finding as much stimulation against his hard midriff as I could, while he kissed and kissed and kissed me like I was pure water and he was dying of thirst.
I don’t know what caught my attention first. The creaking branches? A hiss of steam? I opened my eyes as a mighty wind tore through the trees, whipping them until they tossed their leafy heads. All around us was chaos. Rocks overturned, tumbling into the pool. Tree limbs crashed to the ground, surrendered to the wind.
And the water around us was warm. Steam rose from the edges.
I jerked up out of the water as if it burned. Siebold grunted, but opened his eyes, and took in my wide-eyed shock.
Meadhan. You’re glowing.
I held out my hands. Sure enough, light danced along my wrists, haloing my brown skin.
My power was out of control. And I might never coax it back into hiding. It wouldn’t fit into the small dark corner of my heart. It’d grown too large.
I clutched my hair, calling my power back. Begging for control. By the time Siebold carried me out of the water and set me down, the wind had died. The light around my skin faded. But the broken branches and upturned rocks bore evidence of what my power had done.
I swallowed and flinched when Siebold turned from surveying the mess. But he didn’t look frightened. He pulled me close and brushed his lips over my forehead, then pulled back and cupped my face.
He saw me, saw what I could do, like no one else.
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” I whispered.
Neither have I.
12
Siebold
By unspoken agreement, we spoke not a word to each other as we returned to Meadhan’s home. I chopped more wood and built a spit while she skinned the buck and butchered it. She removed some entrails for her own preparation and I secured the rest of the carcass over the fire. The work left us bloody, but this time we washed separately in a nearby stream.
When I returned from cleaning up, I joined Meadhan by the fire. We stood shoulder to shoulder a long moment, tension crackling between us. She’d accepted my touch by the waterfall. My beast did not frighten her. If anything, I should fear her power. But any fear I would have was driven out of me by desire.
I reached down and took her hand. Her fingers slender and graceful, soft in a way that belied how strong she was. In the darkness of the night’s sky, her brown skin was radiant. When I turned her hand over, her palm was pale with a hint of white and pink. Her knuckles were darker where the skin creased. I kissed them and the heat of her skin shot through me, calling the beast. When she glanced up and met my eyes, I knew they shone gold.
“I should go,” she said on a shaky breath. “The meat will be a while. I need to...rest.”
She pulled her hand from my grip, picked up her skirts and practically ran, leaving me thoughtful.
I hunkered down and stretched my hand out towards the fire. The heat steadied me. The beast within should be snarling and slavering at its cage bars, but it too was silent. Steady. Patient. Ready to pounce.
Soon, I promised it, and turned my thoughts to our prey. Meadhan acted cold towards me, but she had not cast me out, even though she had the power to do so. She also welcomed me, in her own prickly way. And when she was warm towards me, she was more than warm. Her blood ran hot, searing me from the inside out.
I smirked into the fire, remembering. A part of her wanted me. But it might take longer to seduce my little witch. The last emotion I scented on her was fear. And it was not me she feared, but her own desire.
13
Meadhan
I stretched out on my bed, determined to calm myself. After a minute I flopped over one way, then the other.
My bed was too hard. My hut was too cold. My body, too warm.
This was Siebold’s fault.
I should curse him, and turn him into a toad. But whenever I tried to still my thoughts as my mother taught me, the memory of our bodies entwined sent simmering waves washing through my limbs.
Now my blankets, my skirts, my very skin were too hot. I leapt up and grabbed a scrap of cloth, dunked it in the bucket and wrung it out. I wiped down my neck, my throat, my chest. My breasts felt different, swollen. Ripe fruit, ready for a hot mouth to nibble and suck and devour.
“This isn’t happening to me,” I muttered and lay back down. Yesterday morn I’d been fully in control of my flesh and my powers. One warrior couldn’t destroy my hard-earned calm.
I relaxed on my bed, the cloth a cool weight covering my eyes. I steeled my mind and began the breathing exercises my mother taught me.
“Oi, leggo! Help!”
A horrible sound disturbed my meditation. I snatched the cloth off my face and sprang off the bed. In a single bound, I crossed the room and raced out the door.
Outside my garden gate, the huge blond wolf tussled with a ragged bundle. Once I was closer, I made out the dirty-faced boy, the source of the frightened shouting.
“Siebold, let him go,” I motioned. The wolf opened its jaws and the boy tumbled back into the dirt. I recognized him then.
“Dafydd? What are you doing here?” By the looks of him, he hadn't visited Mistress Donna and gotten his promised meal. His eyes were sunken into his face, and he stared at the roasting buck.
“Came to see where the witch lived,” the boy muttered.
I kept my face expressionless, though inwardly I flinched when he called me the witch. Siebold rumbled. The boy glanced at the wolf, flashing the whites of his eyes.
“It’s all right. He won’t hurt you.” I picked up my skirts and swept between them. “I won’t allow it.”
“It’s a wolf,” said Dafydd.
“Yes.” I gathered my calm in a fist and tried not to wonder why the day I woke with a warrior in my bed I had three more sets of visitors. “How’s your leg?”
The boy shrugged and lifted his healed leg for my inspection. “Better.”
I stayed where I was, between the boy and the wolf. “Good.”
“I know you did something.” He stood, dusting off his hands. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
A fact I was grateful for, but no telling how long it would last. “Where do you live, Dafydd?”
“In the forest. Behind the midden.”
That explained the smell.
“Folks don’t bother me there,” he added, kicking a stick into the fire. He couldn’t stop looking at the roasting deer, though he kept darting nervous glances at the wolf. “Is he tame?”
We both looked at Siebold, who cocked his head at me. Challenging me to answer.
“No,” I said firmly. “You can never tame a wild beast. But he is mine. As long as he is here,” I amended. “As long as he stays, he
is mine.” I held out my hand and Siebold trotted over, rubbing his head against my palm. I hid my surprise, and turned my attention back to the boy.
He was too skinny. But he was almost as tall as me. Give him more food and he’d shoot up like a weed. Maybe even be taller than one of Donna’s sons.
“Would you like some meat, Dafydd?”
The boy swallowed and nodded.
“I’ll slice some off for you. But first you must wash.” I went to fetch the water myself, dipping a bucket into the large barrel I kept to catch the rain. I added a few sprigs of lavender and hyssop. It wouldn’t do much, but might help a little with the fleas.
Dafydd eyed the bucket as if it was full of dung. “Priest says washing is evil. It lets the demons in.”
“Do you believe that?” I left him with the bucket and picked up my long knife and whetstone. I sharpened the blade with long strokes.
“Dunno. Got no reason not to.”
“Do you believe everything the priest says is true?”
“He’s my da.”
“Then why doesn’t he take care of you?”
“Priests can’t have sons.” The boy said it bravely, but a little quaver in his chin told me how many times he’d been reviled and cast out. How he clung to the quirk of human law and birth that left him hungry and neglected most of his life.
“Where is your mother?”
“Got sick and dead. Fever. She tole me who my da was, but Father Gerald won’t take me in.”
Father Gerald should die, I thought savagely, running my knife along the whetstone.
“If you were my boy, I’d claim you. I’d give you a bed to sleep in and feed you often so you would grow. But you’d have to wash first.” I looked pointedly at the bucket. Then I went to the buck and started carving the first choice bits of burnt flesh. Siebold the wolf came to stand beside me, large and silent.
The boy joined us soon after, still dripping. From the look of it, he’d plunged his whole head in the water.
“Priest says I got demons in me anyway, ‘cause I’m a bastard,” he said cheerfully, and accepted a strip of meat.
I fed him slowly, watching him for any signs of hunger sickness. For a while he ate quickly and neatly, his eyes fixed on the next scrap. When his cheeks flushed with color and his chewing slowed, I had him sip some mead, my own brew, and sit a while while I carved off a large hank.
I forgot Siebold was hovering close until he darted in and snapped up the bone I was cleaving, dancing away before I could catch him.
“He’s quick,” Dafydd observed.
“Yes. And he knows he needn’t steal.” I put my hand on my hip, resisting the urge to lecture Siebold. I would not be the madwoman talking to a wolf like he was a man. No need to add to the stories of my strangeness. “None go hungry at my hearth.”
I went to carve more meat and saw Dafydd eyeing the roast again, even though he’d edged back to a rock closer to the forest than to the fire.
“You are welcome here anytime, Dafydd.” The boy might hold my secret forever, or be my downfall, but I could not let him starve. “We don’t always eat so well but--”
Siebold barked. I sighed.
“As long as I have the wolf, we will have meat. The wolf is a good hunter.”
Another bark.
“The best hunter,” I threw up my hands. The wolf snuffed in contentment and went back to gnawing his bone. My exasperation with Siebold died when I caught a smile hovering in the corner of Dafydd’s mouth.
The rest of the afternoon, we lounged by the fire and ate like kings. The boy’s belly grew round, but he never refused a fresh scrap of meat. But he wouldn’t move closer to the fire, even when I coaxed him and offered him a blanket, in hopes he would fall asleep and spend the night. But he refused.
It didn’t surprise me, though inwardly I mourned. All children deserve love and care. But the boy was half feral. Not unlike the wolf. Or me.
Sometime between twilight and dark, Dafydd slipped away. I cleaned up, banking the fire and carrying the bucket back to the garden. I dropped more herbs into the water barrel. If Dafydd returned, perhaps I could get him to wash again.
“He’ll be back,” a deep voice startled me. Siebold the man stepped out from behind the hut.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Bad enough Dafydd saw you as the wolf. He can’t see that I have a man.”
I grabbed his arm and marched him to my door. Bulging with muscle as he was, it shouldn’t have been so easy to drag Siebold into my hut. I suspected it wouldn’t be so easy to drag him somewhere he didn’t want to go.
He dipped his head to enter my home. When he straightened, the space shrank. He was wearing the loincloth, but the sight of his bare body made my mouth dry and my body hungry all over again. He dwarfed me, and for a moment I imagined his long, lean, hard muscled body stretched over me. Naked. All that golden skin...
I put a hand to my neck to hide my flush. “I should not allow you in.”
With a grin, he shut the door. I’m already inside. He didn’t mean my hut. He stepped towards me, ducking to avoid a bundle of herbs.
“Oh no,” I pointed to the far corner. “You sleep over there.”
“Meadhan,” he murmured. He took my hand, turned it palm up and kissed it. I felt the brush of his lips all the way to my cunny.
“Why were you cursed?” I blurted. His face went blank. The light flickered in his eyes and died. Something inside me died too, but now I was curious. “What matter of man were you to seek out a witch and accept that sort of spell?”
He turned away and crouched near the fire, striking a flint to light it. He held his hand over the small flame, nurturing it until it grew.
When his voice came it was almost too low for me to hear. “I was a warrior. The witch promised our king power. She would use her magic to turn us into great warriors. Only the best were chosen.”
“You were chosen.”
“Yes.”
I sat on the bed and tucked my skirts around me. Now that Siebold wasn’t standing close, I was left chilled. “Spells like that have a way of turning on the recipient,” I said to fill the silence. “Magic always comes with a price.”
“We knew it would. It did not matter. I would become bigger, stronger, faster. Nothing else mattered.” He passed a hand over his face. “I did not know it would bar me from Valhalla.”
“How do you mean?”
He raised his head and his eyes blazed brighter than the fire. “We cannot die. The beast rages within us. We are all powerful. Berserkers.”
I licked my lips, my heart pounding as if I was in the presence of a monster. “Surely there is a way to die.”
“The Alpha might will it. A Berserker can kill a Berserker. But I was not granted a quick death. They cast me out of the pack. They were my brothers, and I betrayed them.”
I remained quiet.
“I betrayed them,” Siebold repeated. In my mind, a fierce cry echoed, haunting as a wolf’s and full of despair. It died away and for long moments there was only the crackling of the fire. A question was on the tip of my tongue when Siebold continued.
“There was a warrior I followed. A leader. He left us and sought out a priest. He even changed his name.” His brow furrowed, and he crouched closer to the fire as if he could discern his own memories from the flames.
“Samuel,” he said at last. “He changed his name to Samuel. I do not remember what he was called before.”
Siebold turned and held out his hand, tipping it one way and then the other as if it was a level on a fulcrum. “There is a balance among a band of warriors. Our violence is tempered by discipline. By leadership. The leaders contain and direct us.” He dropped his hand. “But Samuel left us. That was when the madness took hold.”
‘You blame him for your madness?”
“No. He did what he needed to do. Another warrior saved him. But it was too late for me.”
“Too late?”
He tilted his head. “I thought
it was. Until I met you.”
14
Siebold
My little witch sat on her bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She bowed her head, her brow furrowed as she weighed my words. “Why me?”
I shrugged. I could answer her, but not in words. How could I explain the weight of the curse, the pain, the constant darkness pressing over me like a cloud of flies? Her scent entered my world and pierced the veil. Because of her I could see the sun. But before the sun came in, she was my only light.
How could I explain this when I did not understand it myself?
“I don’t know. It was that way with the Alphas of the pack. They found a woman and she soothed their beast. I cannot remember why.” The years of running with a pack were all a blur. There was a sense of brotherhood, of oneness, even though I hovered on the outskirts. And then everything was severed. They cast me out to wander alone.
Meadhan pursed her lips, her brow furrowing further. “I could help you remember.”
“No,” I snapped. “Let those memories lie.” The beast rose in me and I fought it. It did not want to remember.
Meadhan searched my face, and seemed to understand. “You chose madness over your memories.”
“I’ve done much evil.”
Slowly, she leaned down and dipped her fingers in the water jug, then rose and flicked the water over my face. I blinked.
“I absolve you,” she said in her husky voice. “I forgive you for what you’ve done.”
15
Meadhan
The creaking floor was my only warning. The jug shattered at my feet, but I barely noticed because I was flat on my back, gazing up into feral eyes.
Siebold shifted his bulk over me, pinning me with his body, his gaze.
“You think you can absolve me,” he snarled. His voice was twisted, monstrous. The beast off its chain.
“I can,” I answered steadily. “And I did.”