by Jason Graff
A
bout The White Wolf’s Secret
In the land of the count, a boy will fall in love and become much more than a man.
In this fantasy romance for all ages, a boy catches a glimpse of the beautiful Fifika as he flees with his family from danger. The clan travels with haste to the lands of a mysterious benefactor. There in the Carpathians, the hillsides are filled with enchanted beasts.
Tragedy strikes Fifika’s family, and the count invites her and the boy into his castle to learn. The boy, now almost a man, falls deeply in love under Fifika’s tutelage. When he finally learns the secret of the white wolf that seems to watch over Fifika, he must choose between his family and the only life he knows and the uncertain dangers of life with his love in the mountainous lands with a very different kind of family.
Blending magic, romance, and poetry, The White Wolf’s Secret is a classic shapeshifter coming-of-age tale for fantasy fans of any age.
C
hapter One
A group of farmers from a village some distance from where we had set up camp paid us a visit. The afternoon was pale and cloudless, and their heavy breaths were visible in the late winter afternoon. Their pasty skin and tiny, menacing eyes marked them as the very sort that made trouble for us in hamlets and villages throughout those lands, where all those who dare cross imaginary borders were held with suspicion, contempt even. I had just reached the age that allowed me to observe such exchanges from a distance without Papa shooing me away as though I were a pest.
Those smelly Jofrankian pig farmers mixed their insults with threats. In their guttural language, which was hardly fit for apes of the jungle, they went so far as to accuse us, as a group, of stealing some of their pigs. Since we were forbidden from eating such filthy swine by common holy law as well as common clean sense, we found this suggestion nearly as absurd and ugly-sounding as the language in which it was delivered.
When we had first crossed over into Jofranka, Papa had bemoaned that the language there soiled one’s tongue. He likely knew well that the day would come when he would have to contort his mouth into the odd shapes required to speak so absurdly. One of the requirements to become an elder of our kumpania was to know useful phrases for all the people whose lands we were to cross.
As the farmers grew louder, Papa and the other elders attempted to reason with them. The simpletons we met in those farming villages always proved unusually difficult to reason with. Facts never satisfied them, no matter how clear and truthfully presented. Wherever we went, we were always accused of stealing or tricking ignorant villagers out of things. If all that we were accused of were true, we could hardly have moved so swiftly, for the spoils of our chicanery would’ve weighed down the entire caravan.
That day, the leader of our kumpania, Boval, who it was said reproduced the Jofrankian tongue better than its native speakers, made that very argument quite admirably. He told them we were only stopping to rest on our way east and would soon decamp, for we had been contracted by a person of eminence who made his home in the Carpathians. The farmers left our site, with some obvious reluctance, muttering what could’ve only been cruel threats under their breath.
We went back to preparing our vardos to depart early the next morning. A vardo set up for living and one that was ready for travel were two different vehicles entirely. I helped Papa ring the tires with metal so that they would last the journey. The wood we burned in the stove had to be moved and secured to the outside rack so that it did not come loose along the way. Everything inside the vardo also needed to be tied down, for there was no telling how rough the roads we were to travel would be.
Sometime deep in the night, the farmers returned. They made their way well into our camp before anyone had the chance to raise an alarm. They were drunk and shouting, words escaping from their mouths in slippery slurs. They promised us the inferno if we did not pack up and leave that instant. So, despite the hour and darkness, we attempted to make our final preparations, making sure all was secure and ready for the long road ahead. The men did most of the work while the womenfolk hid their faces and cursed the Jofranka to each other. I guess we were not fast enough, because one of the swine-handlers soon set fire to a tree. The harsh orange glow, black billows of smoke, and crackling flames sent our camp into a panic.
The fire began to spread across the dry grass and leap into the trees. Roaring away and threatening to engulf the entire campsite, it seemed more a beast than a force of nature. Confusion and chaos rode high on the screams and yells from everywhere around us. The worried, heavy breaths of the horses produced clouds of white that were soon consumed by the smoky air. Papa finished preparing our vardo as quickly as he could. I heard him moving above us, locking the roof trap and sealing up the chimney, then climbing down and quickly closing the shutters.
Mama and I were now in the dark. The rush and terror of the fire raged just outside the door, growling truly like some terrible hellhound. We held each other. I was embarrassed for Mama at how much she whimpered. I heard Papa yelling to the family next to us to hurry, that the fire was coming.
He called out to our horse in a tone so loud and angry that, even as I tried to pull away from her, it intensified the sense of danger gripping Mama there in the dark of the vardo. Our steed proved every bit as heroic as its master and sped away across the rutted and burning field at a furious gallop. All at once, I heard the fire grow distant, roaring lower and then stamped into silence by the steady beat of thundering hooves against the ground.
Mama and I were thrown like dice about the wagon as we attempted to make the kitchen more secure. When we came to a sudden stop, a stewpot overturned and landed on her head, blinding her, and she screamed as though she’d been cast into eternal darkness. As she careened into the jars of preserved fruits that were kept on the back wall, I tried not to laugh, holding my hand close to my mouth to muffle my snickering. Meanwhile from outside, I heard Papa speaking softly. Once I had helped Mama get the pot off and lay down to rest, I unlatched the door of the wagon and opened it slowly so that Papa would not hear its creaking.
The still-roaring fire now at our back looked little more than the flicker from a bright torch. On the side of the road, I could make out Papa’s shadow. He was offering his hand to what appeared to be a young girl. From what light the distant fire offered, I could just make out her luxuriant, curly black hair. It was tied up in the back by a gold ribbon. When she looked up, her dark green eyes flashed something at me that I was not yet ready to receive. That flash, that fleeting second, seemed to go on for hours inside of me, the force of it squeezing hold of me and depriving me of air. Finally, I shut the door, pure in what I felt but also knowing, somehow, that I was not yet ready to meet the destiny of that sudden desire. Before I could get hold of or even spend a moment contemplating the dervish now whirling inside of me, Mama moaned for water, so I filled an oaken bucket for her.
Miraculously, no one in our kumpania had been killed or even badly injured during the escape. Some laundry had to be left behind, some trinkets burned up, but nothing anyone would miss; our kind has never set as great store in the owning of foolish objects, as does the rest of the world. The next morning, I asked Papa what had become of the girl he had helped, and he would only say that her mother had doubled back in her family’s wagon and pulled the girl up with her into the driver’s box. She called the girl Fifika, he said. Fifika, I repeated. I knew nothing more about her, and already the mere mention of her name swelled my heart.
For centuries, since our history has been recorded, my people have been hunted, despised, and chased from lands all over the Eurasian continent. We are the eternal refugees, at home only with the freedom of movement which our status bestows upon us. Pap
a always said that the villagers and shopkeepers, the farmers and shepherds, and all the rest that came to our camp to demand our exodus and pelted even our women with rocks, suffered from the green poison of jealousy. We Szgany need only our wagons and tents to make our home anywhere we like. Those tied to land, tied to their houses and objects, are doomed to the life of a helpless serf, forever serving masters not of their choosing. They think their pointless toils and sacrifices entitle them to things no one can really “possess,” to use a term the English are especially fond of. And yet, they persist in their folly, in their unhappy ways, and so must make things hard on all who cross their path. The fact that we could move on whenever we liked made them want to speed us on our way so they could continue with their foolish belief that they had some control over their lives and the earth on which they depended, and, indeed, over all that is mysterious and eternal. I am sorry — I do not mean to speak so forcefully but people need to understand how our people have been treated.
We continued our journey to the Carpathians at a quickened pace. Whenever we stopped to rest and eat, I would wander from fire to fire, wagon to wagon, looking for the one called Fifika. The shy boy in me kept from asking if anyone in our kumpania knew her. Once or twice, I thought I saw a fireside glow lighting her face, and such excitement filled my body that I thought I would burst. But then I’d approach and find the space where I thought I’d seen her empty. At the time, I figured it was my lovesick heart playing tricks on me, for the shadows and what moved among them was still a mystery.
In the marshy valleys of the Carpathian Mountains, our travels were set to the springtime melt. Rushing water and birds returning home filled the air of day, and the nervous barking of the camp dogs came on at night. Wolves were said to prowl the hillsides and every mountain pass but did not make their presence known yet, at least not to me. The feeling that we were in an entirely different world began to take hold long before we were anywhere near the magnificent castle of the count, our benefactor. The first indication that we had made it to his lands was when we met his go-betweens. The five of them were dressed in multicolored sheepskin vests over dingy white linen shirts. Their trousers, baggy at the hips and tucked into their boots, were belted by large swathes of leather. They looked like brothers in the way they arranged their faces. Each had long, scraggily hair and thick mustaches hiding their mouths as a hare hides in a bush. I did not hear what was said when they met the head of our caravan but saw them motion for us to follow them.
Soon, we were ascending a steep mountain pass so narrow it barely accommodated our vardos. One peek from a window over the edge at the sheer cliff face that spilled down into a deep, mist-covered valley was enough for me. The pounding hooves echoing from that deep abyss chilled the blood in my bones. From the window of the other side, the Carpathians glowered like black gods made of rock. That was when I caught my first glimpse of the white wolf. She was little more than speck, watching as we entered her habitat. I was not even sure of what it was that I was seeing at first. She was little more than movement to me, a light speck gliding over the dark cliff face.
It was there at nightfall in that forbidding land that she and the other wolves decided to first make themselves heard. They howled their love songs into the moonlight. I had never heard them so close before and took strange comfort from the music they made. For, like us, they too are hunted and chased from their homes by those who believe some piece of land to be theirs alone.
Mama was frightened, so I sat near her, allowing her to hold my hand so that she might feel some comfort by pretending to assuage the fears of her son, rather than her own. To me, the pigmen and their torches whom we’d left behind in Jofranka were much more fearsome beasts than the wolves harmonizing on the cliff sides. Their music, combined with the rocking of the vardo, soon had me sleeping peacefully.
C
hapter Two
I awoke in the morning to the echo of hammers on wood, as those not much older than I pounded stakes into the ground to mark the area of our new encampment. Indeed, I had planned to ask Papa to allow me to help with the hammering at our next stop. Looming over us, the count’s castle was so dark it seemed to have sprung from the very earth on which it sat. Its many spires reached liked needles into the heavens. Crowned by crumbling parapets, the fortress walls looked to have been assaulted by the winds and wear of time as much as by the bellicose hoards whose violent incursions into that land so splattered its history with blood.
An almighty shrieking soon replaced the heavy echoes of the hammers. At the edge of camp, where the land we had staked out gave way to a craggy cliff faces, a crowd had gathered. Many turned away from whatever was on view with faces white and eyes clamped shut as though holding back sickness. I pushed past them, daring to see it with my own eyes.
The five Slovaks who had led us the night before lay in a pool of blood-soaked mud around the blackened wood that had once been their fire. One no longer had a face, his eyes drooped from their sockets like pocket watches from an Englishman’s vest. Two others’ arms and legs had been taken. They lay with stumps splayed, their faces locked in terrible expressions of wide-eyed terror, and mouths still agape, frozen in a last gasp of life. Another’s scalp had been torn away, revealing the white bone of his skull. The last one, the one farthest from the horrible scene, was nothing more than a mangled pile of bones and innards, laying in a muddy pool that was neither red nor brown, but black. Stripped of most of its skin and inner tissue, it looked more like something that may have once been a body. Whatever curious brand of courage allows a young man to cast his eyes over the grizzliest details of the same scene which adults cannot bring themselves to look at held me there until I felt Papa’s hand covering my eyes. I swatted it away.
“Wolves did this,” he said, grabbing me by the wrist.
“We should flee,” the one we called Aberama said, turning his eyes from the scene. “This land isn’t safe. It is…”
“Please, please do not be alarmed, my friends.” A voice that was soft and yet commanding brought a hush to the crowd.
Taking my chance, I wriggled free of Papa’s hold and went closer to where the fire had been. There stood a figure in a long, red robe with a hood that hid most of his face. All that I could make of it was a thin, tapered nose between a set of eyes that twinkled like opals and the ends of a mustache that came to sharp points. With some effort, he lowered himself. With one knee on the ground, he placed his hand on one of the Slovak’s chests and slowly drew the stave from his belt. It was streaked with the crimson color of life. He ran his finger along the blade, then put that finger to his mouth and, to the gasps of some of the weaker members of our kumpania, tasted the blood.
“Wolf blood,” he announced. “These men have been on a hunt. They were told they would end this very way. They had been warned, many times.”
“Who is this wizard?” Aberama asked.
“I bid you welcome,” the stranger said, rising to his feet, towering over even the tallest of the men in the circle. “I am your humble employer, the boyar, who some call Szekley and others, Count Dracula.”
“Excuse me, dear Boyar,” Papa said. “But you have taken us off our guard. We heard those beasts braying all night, and some of our womenfolk were dismayed by the sight of these men in this…condition.”
“Do not fear the wolves,” the count said, running his hand over the carcass of some tiny beast that had long since cooled on the spit. “These men disturbed the balance of things in this land and were punished. Such is nature’s way in this part of the world. A hunt such as the one they likely engaged in last night is no game for men. Beasts do not survive here by playing gently at life and death. For them, there is much more at stake. You have nothing to fear from the wolves of this land, so long as they have nothing to fear from you.”
The count paused to smile, revealing a set of sharp, white teeth.
“But you must be hungry from your long journey. Please visit with me in my castle courtyard. I
will have my best meat and Tokay brought to you.”
Generous sort that we are, we have learned to accept such offers graciously. Each member of the kumpania appeared in the courtyard later that night dressed in their finest clothes. Those who found time to bathe had done so and those who had not fragranced themselves. We applauded the count when, after we had been seated, he appeared. With a wave of his hand, the candelabras in the table’s center as well as the high torches surrounding us leapt to glowing, revealing the magnificent feast which has been set before us.
The count proved a host worthy of his title, for venison, roasted goose, and chicken-blood sausages kept appearing on ornate golden trays. They were inscribed with strange symbols whose meaning I could not divine. Never did a servant make himself visible. The food seemed to somehow replenish itself as did, I suspect, the Tokay, whose taste I found strange. There was almost a metallic aftertaste that lingered on the back of my tongue long after the wine had been swallowed.
The torches and candles before us seemed to only grow brighter the later the hour grew. In the warmth of their glow, the castle’s façade looked more and more like a hearth burning full of fuel. The torchlight reached up the walls and flickered in the vast dark windows making them look like great candles. Nearest the top, a circular piece of glass gave back what appeared to be the reflection of a large, fiery eye, like that of some being looking down and with a kind of sad knowingness upon our celebration. My contemplation of that vision was soon shattered by some commotion nearby.
“She’s not yours,” Aberama roared drunkenly at Rye, a man much smaller but no less strapping than him. “Do not kid yourself. You know from whose seed she has grown.”
“Blood makes for poor glue in keeping a family together,” Rye exclaimed. “She is as different from you as a kitten from a lion.”