by SJB Gilmour
Sarah had no idea what to say. Mutely, she just wagged her tail and tried to nod, but it didn’t work very well. Having a tail certainly felt the strangest of all. It seemed that her spine just kept on going past her bottom and that was a most unusual sensation. Then her concern about her tail vanished as a flood of information filled her mind. In the space of a few breaths, she suddenly knew how to change form, how to speak in the manner of wolves and most impressive of all, she knew the amazing sense of freedom and joy that came with being a wolf.
‘Oh, wow,’ she panted. ‘You’re right Uncle! This is sooo cool!’
‘Has it come to you yet?’ he asked. ‘The knowledge?’
Sarah whined. ‘I think so.’ She sat down and concentrated very hard. Slowly at first, the image of her old self came into her mind and she flowed into that shape as she thought about it. In a few moments, she was sitting on the carpet in front of the giant mirror that Nathan the bookwyrm had made appear. She was back in her old school uniform, uncomfortable shoes and all.
‘Wait here for a moment, will you Sarah?’ Benjamin asked. He changed form, created another portal and disappeared through it. Moments later, he reappeared with Roberta and Robert in tow. The three adults were all quite excited. There was a lot of hugging and congratulations that Sarah found a little embarrassing. Mel, Angela and Nathan watched the odd family celebration with calm bemusement.
Finally, Benjamin turned to Angela. ‘I think we’ll be off to Wolfenvald for a while,’ he told her.
Just then, there was a flurry of blurred movement as Maddy the quickling flashed in and out of the library. She left behind a short note. Nathan looked at it with a disapproving expression.
‘Master McConnell, Sir,’ he said regretfully. ‘It seems there’s a mob of Pixies in the foyer.’
‘The Pixierazzi,’ Angela sighed, rolling her eyes. She nodded at Benjamin. ‘You go ahead,’ she told him. ‘We’ll take care of the press.’ She put her arm around Mel’s shoulders. ‘Come along Melanie,’ she said and led her to the grumpy elevator and out of the library.
Nathan seemed to be gloating a little. ‘There’ll be pixie mince all over the street!’ Then he nodded his big purple head at Benjamin. ‘Sir, you will document these events, won’t you? So little reliable data is actually written down about Golden Mane cubs. It would be a dreadful shame to let this opportunity pass by!’
‘Don’t worry, Nathan,’ Benjamin promised. ‘I’ll make plenty of notes.’ Then he turned to Sarah. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
Sarah wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to be ready for. By now, she was feeling more than a little drained. It’s not every day that a girl turns into a wolf!
‘Ready for what?’ she asked, absently cocking her head to one side. Then she straightened her head and nodded to herself determinedly. ‘Whatever it is, I guess I’m ready.’
‘Good!’ Roberta told her. She then led Sarah and her two uncles to the elevator that had just returned from delivering Mel and Angela back to the classroom.
Sarah noticed her aunt and uncles were in their wolf forms, so she made sure she padded alongside them on our paws instead of two feet.
Sarah and her uncles and aunt stepped out of the elevator and into the middle of a forest. Although it was the middle of the day, it was quite dark beneath all the trees. The giant pines and oaks reached hundreds of metres into the air and their branches and leaves blotted out much of the sunlight. Only here and there were little patches of light on the moist brown mulch that was the forest floor. Moss and the occasional toadstool covered most of the huge gnarled roots at the base of each tree. Some of the trunks were so wide she could imagine building a house inside each one of them!
The air about them was cool and still. Hardly a sound could be heard save for the gentle rustling of branches and leaves swaying in the breeze, high above. The forest seemed hauntingly familiar to Sarah but she couldn’t put her paw on why.
The elevator gave a disgruntled snort. ‘You used me to take you here? Of all the lazy, flea bitten…’ The doors slammed shut and it vanished.
‘Welcome to Wolfenvald, Sarah,’ Benjamin said quietly.
Sarah breathed in deeply, smelling the rich forest air. ‘Whoa,’ she breathed, looking about her in awe. ‘Where is this place?’
‘Wolfenvald,’ sighed Roberta. She smiled at Robert, who was looking about at the trees dreamily. Without a further word, they changed form and scampered up to the nearest tree. Then, without the slightest bit of embarrassment, they both sniffed about several times then peed on the tree. Then they bolted off into the forest.
‘They’ll be back in a little while, Sarah,’ Benjamin told her, changing into his silver and black werewolf form. ‘This world is sacred to all Folk of Were and this forest is just one of the many that are the domain of wolves. Wereeagles prefer the high mountains and the werecats occupy the jungles and the savannahs. This range has a particularly special meaning to your aunt and uncle. They were married here.’ He too then went and peed on another tree.
‘Where is “here”?’ Sarah asked again. The scent of her aunt and uncles’ pee was very strong in her nose but strangely not offensive. She realised it was quite a normal thing. It was just like everyone’s voice is different, so too is their scent. Then just as she realised the scent of a wolf is a normal thing to smell, the urge she felt to do the same was also normal. Something deep within her, something as basic as hunger or even the need to breathe, made her do it. She went to each spot just marked by her aunt and uncles and squirted a quick shot of pee.
Benjamin rolled over onto his back and rubbed himself against the thick moist mulch on the ground, kicking his legs in the air. Then he straightened up with bits of pine mulch clinging to his silver and black coat. He shook himself vigorously then turned to Sarah as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
‘This world is fairly similar to Earth, actually,’ he explained. ‘We’re on the northern continent that pretty much circles the planet. The southern continents are made up of a few large land masses about the size of Australia and of course we have north and south poles.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’s pretty sparsely populated. Most werewolves here live as wolves, though some prefer their human form and live in the southern continents where it’s warmer. Only wolves range this far north.’ He grinned. ‘There are no cars, no roads and no cities, here Sarah. Just forests. Some of them, like this one, span the globe.’
He looked around at the surrounding forest. ‘For large groups, there’s a static portal between a spot near here and a forest in the Carpathian Mountains on Earth,’ he went on. ‘That portal is guarded by a pack of Black Coat werewolves and sometimes a wereeagle and a pride or two of werecats. No human can get to it. We can usually manage to portal small groups by ourselves, but larger packs need to use the fixed portal or an elevator.’
Sarah gave a start. It was in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania where her parents disappeared. Naturally, her eagerness to know more about her parents’ disappearance came to the fore.
‘Could you have brought us here that way?’ she asked eagerly.
Benjamin shrugged and shook his head so that his ears flapped. ‘Probably, but it’d be difficult. I’d rather not try that unless I absolutely have to. Portals are very hard to maintain. It takes a lot of power to create one and even more to keep it stable.’
Sarah was sure he wasn’t telling her everything but then, she was still much too polite to press him further. He had promised to tell her everything one day and she knew Benjamin always kept his promises.
‘You’ll be able to yourself soon enough, cub,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Golden Manes are usually very powerful.’
Sarah felt confused. She had only just learned about portals and was not used to using them at all. It seemed easy for Angela and Benjamin to make portals to some places, but hard for them to get to others.
‘It’s complicated,’ he agreed. ‘I’m sure Angela will explain it all to you sooner or later. For
now, the simplest explanation is that short distance portals are easy to forge, especially if they only have to carry one or two people. The greater the distance, the more difficult it is to create the portal. The more people it has to carry makes it even harder.
‘Sarah,’ he said quietly in a tone that was more serious than she had ever heard him use before, ‘it’s very important that you remember this place. If ever you’re in trouble so bad that simply running away won’t help, come here.’
Sarah swallowed. The worst trouble she had ever been in was when Mandy Kelly and her gang had been picking on her. She certainly wasn’t about to run away from Mandy Kelly and she wondered just how bad something could get if she did have to run away. Running away wasn’t something Sarah ever wanted to do.
‘At the very least, get to the portal in the Carpathians,’ Benjamin told her. ‘It is protected on all sides by a huge gorge, hundreds of metres deep. It it’s pretty hard to get to on two feet or without using a portal or elevator. To my knowledge, no mortal has ever set foot through that portal without permission, and I know,’ he said again looking about at the trees of this forest, ‘that no mortal has ever been here. This forest protects werewolves as it protects itself.’ He turned to Sarah seriously. ‘Remember, if ever you’re in danger or trouble, Sarah, just come here and you’ll have sanctuary, even if the rest of the universe is against you. No-one, not even gods themselves, can harm you here.’
Sarah looked around and began to understand. She changed from wolf to human and back again a few more times. Each time was much easier, and each time, her wolf form was a little more mature.
‘This place protects us?’ she asked.
Benjamin grinned. ‘This forest is quite particular about who it lets enter. It has its own defences against intruders.’
Suddenly, she knew why her aunt and uncles had reacted the way they did to the forest. The very air was alive in her lungs. She could hear the trees whispering softly to each other. Even the ground had a presence! Then something very marvellous indeed happened. The whole forest spoke to her.
‘Welcome, Sarah Kopernik! All Hail the Golden Mane!’ The voices of the forest seemed to come from everywhere and she felt them in her bones rather than heard them.
‘The prophecy begins,’ the forest murmured and was silent once more. Sarah looked back to Benjamin, only he wasn’t there. She sniffed carefully and found she could recognise his scent. She considered following him for a moment then she decided not to. Instead, she trotted off in another direction, confident that she could find her way back. A great sense of warmth and calm came over her as she bounded through the trees. For once she truly felt at home. The living forest around her was as much a part of her as her coat or paws or ears.
The longer she ran, the more she relished the form of the wolf. She could run and jump much further and faster than she’d ever dreamed of being able to do as a human. The forest seemed to rejoice with every step she took. Soon she was running as fast as she could, bounding over roots and ducking under the occasional fallen tree. After perhaps half an hour, she stopped to drink from a small creek that trickled away merrily, deep in the forest. Small ferns and shade-loving orchids grew among the rocks and moss beside the creek bank. The water was icy-cold and crystal clear. It had a sweet flavour of life that tingled on her tongue.
Then, as silently as they had disappeared, Roberta, Robert and Benjamin arrived at her side. Roberta and Robert also drank from the merry little creek. When they had drunk, they both bowed to the creek.
‘Thank you,’ they said simply.
‘You’re welcome, Wolves of the Brown,’ replied the creek distantly in a watery whisper.
‘Thank you,’ said Sarah, slightly abashed at not realising the little creek was as alive as the rest of the forest.
‘An honour indeed, Sarah Kopernik of the Golden Mane!’ replied the creek much more warmly. ‘To be the first to offer drink to the first Golden Mane for more than a thousand years is an honour I’ve never had before! Bless you, Sarah Kopernik!’ Then the creek was silent once more.
‘What did it mean, calling me Sarah Kopernik?’ Sarah asked them. ‘A tome in the library said the same thing to me this morning. And what’s this prophecy thing it’s talking about?’
‘Never mind about the prophecy right now, cub,’ Benjamin told her, wagging his tail. ‘It’s been a long time since a Golden Mane came along. This forest has probably just been waiting for you, that’s all.’
Sarah knew immediately that her uncle wasn’t telling her everything. Her temper began to rise. She was getting sick of people only telling her what they thought she was ready for instead of the whole truth.
‘Calm yourself, Golden Mane,’ came the voices of the forest. ‘Know that now and forever, should ever you need knowledge, if it is known in Wolfenvald, so too shall it be known to you. Know also that your guardians would not restrict your knowledge without good reason. It is the way of things that the young learn what they do in the right order.’
‘Well?’ she demanded. Though the voices were very calming, Sarah was feeling stubborn.
‘Calm down, Sarah,’ said Robert. ‘We changed Kopernik to Coppernick years ago to make it easier to move about on Earth. The forest doesn’t care about mortals and their prejudices, so it doesn’t see the need to follow suit.’
‘Your old Polish name is Kopernik,’ Roberta agreed. ‘One of your great-great-grandfathers was a Grey Coat called Mikolaj Kopernik, or Nicholas Copernicus as the English called him. It took him about five hundred years, but eventually, Mikolaj proved that the Earth is round and that the Sun is the centre of its solar system. He was very clever, but the mortals burned him at the stake in 1543. After that, we changed our name to make sure we weren’t persecuted the way he was.’
‘That was just one of the reasons the Sorcerers’ Guild decided not to help the mortals any more,’ added Benjamin sadly. He looked up and sniffed the air a moment then leaped away as quick as anything. A few moments later, he returned carrying a fat rabbit in his jaws.
At first, Sarah was shocked. Then she felt her belly rumble. It had been an awfully long time since breakfast, and she’d had quite a day. She was very hungry! Suddenly the idea of munching on a freshly caught rabbit seemed like a wonderful idea. In fact, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. When she had eaten, she felt a rush of energy and felt warm all through her body.
After he had eaten, Benjamin drank from the creek. ‘My thanks,’ he said humbly.
‘You are most welcome, Silver Shroud,’ replied the creek respectfully.
‘What’s a Silver Shroud?’ Sarah asked curiously. She had asked him before, but his answer then had been a little vague. Now she wanted to know more.
‘There are many different orders of werewolves, Sarah. Your aunt and uncle here are Brown Coats, just like your parents. Old Mikolaj was a Grey. There are also Blacks, Reds and Whites. You’re a Golden Mane, just as we’d hoped,’ he told her proudly. Sarah felt embarrassed and knew that had she been in her human form, her face would be flaming red.
‘And I,’ Benjamin continued, ‘I’m from a different order. Rarer and cursed, I am a Silver Shroud. We’re the only pure werewolves alive who weren’t born as werewolves. Like all of my order, I was once a human.’
Sarah was alarmed. ‘You were bitten and didn’t become a lycanthrope?’ she asked him.
‘No, young cub,’ Benjamin laughed wryly. ‘It didn’t happen like that at all. I was made a werewolf many years ago when I saved the life of a werewolf sorcerer. I was just a mere mortal at the time, and I had no idea what was happening. An enchanted weapon meant to kill the werewolf struck me instead and the curse unravelled. The one who wielded the weapon was killed and his powers came to me.
‘The werewolf I saved saw that unless something was done immediately, I would have been doomed. She sacrificed her own power and life-force to save me and I became one of a very select order of werewolves called Silver Shrouds. There are only a few hundre
d of us.’ Benjamin sat back on his haunches sadly, his eyes a million miles away. ‘No other Silver Shroud exists that didn’t come to be through the death of another.’
‘What happened to the other werewolf?’ Sarah asked quietly, nuzzling her uncle affectionately. ‘I thought you said you saved her life.’
‘I did. But to save me, she sacrificed all her own power. Every last bit. It rendered her completely mortal.’ He looked about at the trees. ‘You hear the voices of Wolfenvald, Sarah? They’re not just trees. The soul of almost every werewolf that has ever lived and died comes here. That’s how we know Henryk and Jozefa aren’t dead. And, it’s how we know what happens to the wolves who sacrifice themselves to create Silver Shrouds. They’re not here either. When they die, they die a mortal death.’
He looked around at the trees and the creek sadly, the pain of distant memories clearly visible in his eyes. Touched by the story to her very fibres, Sarah whimpered sadly. Her aunt and uncle both whined in sympathy for their pack-mate.
‘Enough for now,’ Roberta said shortly. ‘It’s getting late and you still have to go home to have dinner. That little bit of rabbit won’t keep you going for long!’
And so the four wolves loped back to the spot in the forest where they had appeared. Without the elevator to transport them, Sarah wondered how they were going to get home. She looked at Benjamin curiously.
Benjamin led them to the largest pine tree Sarah had ever seen. Its trunk soared up hundreds of metres into the air. The roots that arched up out of the ground were metres high in places and rose like great barky walls. In the side of one moss-covered flat root, was a great shimmering portal. Benjamin wagged his tail and nodded at it.
‘This is the portal I told you about, Sarah. It goes straight to the Carpathians.’ With that, the great Silver Shroud werewolf then padded through it. Sarah rushed to follow him, with Robert and Roberta right behind her protectively. The four werewolves appeared in a small clearing in another forest. The portal behind them was glimmering in the side of a large boulder between two enormous (though nowhere near as huge as those of Wolfenvald) oak trees.