Storm Wolf

by Stephen Morris

  The nest of vipers closest to Timotej unraveled, the serpents abandoning their efforts to shepherd the storm and flicking their tongues toward the werewolf. They coiled themselves to attack, a few making preliminary lunges, further dissipating the herd of clouds they had worked so hard and long to assemble. The stream of snakes opposite them slowed in their migration but did not hasten to aid in the attack. Some caught the rainclouds in their own fangs, apparently thinking it more important to maintain their control of the storm than avenging the death of their fellow serpent shepherd.

  One spat seeds of fire at Timotej, and as those tumbled through the air, they stretched and sizzled, becoming lightning that streaked past him.

  Timotej howled again. “Where is Alexei? Does he not want to share this victory?” A snake snapped at Timotej’s legs, tearing a bit of the cloud river and unleashing a gush of rain.

  Timotej paced up and down the cloud river as it continued to disintegrate beneath his feet, glaring and snarling at the serpents aligned before him. Then, heeding an innate sense of timing or an instinct for battle, Timotej seized the throat of the viper and again locked his jaws in a death grip.

  The serpent writhed and shimmied, throwing its lower jaw against a volley of lightning tucked into a small grotto hidden amidst the folds of cloud. The lightning exploded, searing fur and causing everyone in the Little Town below to look up suddenly at the bolts, which scintillated and boomed their way across the morning. A tuft of burnt fur settled on the river after a while and floated downstream until caught by the rosebushes the river had engulfed.

  The lightning had cut the serpent’s throat as well as burning the wolf fur covering Timotej. The slash, as well as the wolf fangs, which continued to grip its windpipe, rendered the snake unable to breathe. The snake gasped and writhed for some time and then fell slowly atop the scorched haze. Timotej rode the crumbling snake towards the haze below and then jumped aside at the last minute, avoiding being crushed by the viper’s monstrous jaws and head.

  Exhausted but thrilled, Timotej looked about him. The other snakes, forked tongues still darting and whose palpable animosity was still knocking against the werewolf like massive waves at the shore, pulled away and concentrate on regathering the cloud herd, which had dispersed.

  “This is not so difficult!” crowed Timotej. “How could that silly boy, Alexei, have failed to divert the storm from Prague? It may take time, but I need only attack the serpents one by one. They will not attack en masse,” he theorized, “and when I am finished, the storm will not be able to hold together. Prague will be saved and my fame assured!” He looked out on the serpents gliding past, choosing one to pounce on. He yearned for the taste of the cloud serpents’ blood again.

  A new presence was suddenly unmistakable, though still camouflaged by the bluffs and cliffs of the wild, untamed clouds. Timotej sniffed the air, detecting the new arrival’s scent. He looked about for some clue as to its whereabouts. His ears listened intently for any sound that might give away the intruder’s location. He sniffed again and realized he could track the scent to its source. He stepped away from the long nests of serpents.

  Timotej now found himself making his way slowly, and with great effort, up a steep incline into the very heart of the storm attacking Prague. Clouds grew darker, denser, more heavily laden with the rain that they would soon be milked for.

  Lightning suddenly flashed past him, grazing his haunches. Thunder deafened him. Rain lashed his face, making it difficult to see. He forced himself to go on, ever forward. Ever upward. He gasped for breath.

  Then he knew that he had found the creator of the storm that was wreaking havoc on the Vltava river valley. A gigantic horse, brilliant white, with eight legs, moved slowly and majestically through the storm. It neighed, and the thunder was faint in comparison. The metalwork on its bridle flashed, and the lightning seemed dim. The horse shook its head, calm in the midst of the chaotic weather that surrounded it.

  On the horse, seemingly less material but all the more powerful for that quality, was a giant manlike figure of cloud and mist. Lightning flickered in the depths of the billows of the figure’s torso. Timotej’s keen wolf eyes could discern no meaningful details in the man’s figure other than it seemed to have one head with four faces: one looking forward, one looking behind it, and two on each side. One massive hand held the horse’s bridle lightly, carelessly, while the other rested on his right thigh.

  Timotej thought the figure looked like something he’d seen in one of his occult handbooks, but couldn’t place him. The figure looked with disdain at the small, comparatively tiny werewolf that stood before him. “You think to stop me?” he asked.

  “I will stop all who bring the storms against Prague,” answered Timotej with pride and disdain. “I will stop you, whoever you may be!”

  The man seemed to chuckle quietly. “I see you do not recognize me—the god Svetovit!—returning to this hilltop where I once reigned.” The horse and rider continued their slow but steady progress toward the city below. “Do as you like.”

  Timotej leapt into the midst of the horse’s legs, nipping at the hocks above the hooves. He closed his fangs for an instant on one and then jumped to another. The horse, unused to such an attack, jumped and skittered across the clouds, nearly throwing Svetovit. The god clutched his knees more tightly around his great steed’s barrel chest as Timotej continued to duck and weave between the clattering hooves. Timotej’s balance and agility even amazed himself. “Greater and more powerful than even I anticipated!” he congratulated himself. “It will be an easy task to overthrow the cocky cloud giant,” Timotej assured himself.

  The werewolf leapt from between the rear legs of the horse and gasped for breath. The horse continued to dance as its rider attempted to calm it.

  Timotej swept up behind the giant, nipping at the horse’s shins and the base of its tail. The backward-looking face of Svetovit saw the werewolf and, with only his knees and the tug of the harness, began to turn the horse around. Timotej jumped across the horse’s hindquarters and bit deep into Svetovit’s knuckle.

  The giant roared in pain and fury, shaking the werewolf loose. Another lightning bolt flashed from the god’s open hand and seared the werewolf’s back. Timotej howled in pain as the horse reared back, ready to trample the attacker.

  Timotej flew to one side, narrowly missing the sharp hooves aimed at his head. He and the horse wheeled about, each facing the other. The horse pawed the storm, releasing a volley of thunderheads onto Hradčany below. Then…

  Did what happened next happen because of the great age of the wolf magic that Timotej had donned in his study that morning? Was the oil from the roots of the sweet flag blossom, which granted wisdom and strategic skill in fighting the powers of the storms, finally wearing thin in the hide of the wolf skin? Or did the cinquefoil tea, which bestowed protection on the werewolf, give way at last in the dried and cracking leather? Or was it because Timotej was using the wolf magic to serve only himself and his own honor and glory with no real concern for his fellow Praguers in the valley below?

  For whichever reason, the werewolf leapt towards the old god’s throat, thinking to end the combat in a single bite by ripping out the Adam’s apple below the giant’s forward-facing chin. Snarling, Timotej hurtled upwards, fangs bared.

  With a single gesture, Svetovit’s right hand rose from his thigh and across his chest. He swept his open palm back across the horse’s mane. The old god swatted away the werewolf as easily as a grown man swats away a bothersome fly.

  Timotej tumbled head over heel, cascading through the storm. Wolf bones crunched and broke, shattered by impact against the outcroppings of cloud. Unable to stop himself, his paws scrabbled at the other clouds he passed and tore holes that exposed the sunlight but quickly closed again behind him. Like a mountain climber who slips on loose pebbles and sends showers of them rippling down a hillside, he scattered fragments of lightning and thunder in his wake.

  The werewolf fell past t
he writhing serpents. He plummeted through the lower reaches of the rain clouds. Picking up speed as he fell, he knew without putting it into words that he was descending to disaster. Unable to think, Timotej let loose one prolonged, agonized howl of desperation that echoed across Hradčany.

  People were making their way slowly up the hill towards the Strahov Monastery to take refuge with their wagons of household goods. Hearing the strange howl, they looked back towards the castle above. A sizzling fireball burst through the clouds and cascaded from the heights of heaven, as if the cannons of the hrad were firing as well as those at Vyšehrad. The fireball crashed through the trees of what had been palatial parks and courtyards but were now the banks of the ever-rising river. It tumbled into the water, sizzling and steaming as it sank, even as the fiery trail it left behind hovered in the sky for several moments before fading. Another torrent of rain cascaded down the hills and into the river, which crept ever closer to the height of the stone bridge and its saintly, silent stone guardians.

  Chapter 8: Sutekskäija

  Alexei

  (Prague, August 2002)

  Alexei blinked. The seal had come out of nowhere and was now hovering in the water a few inches from his face, peering into the man’s eyes with a friendly curiosity. The animal tilted his head as if to ask, “I’ve never seen one of your kind in the water like this. What are you doing here?”

  Alexei smiled back at the animal from the rocky bottom of the river where he was sitting. Timotej, who had never been far from Alexei’s side since his death in the river in September 1890 shortly after Alexei’s suicidal leap from the Charles Bridge, glared suspiciously at the seal from behind the large rocks he was crouching behind.

  The cold water along the bottom of this stretch of the river always moved more slowly than the warmer current above, and the seal was able to remain in place with only a gentle effort to paddle with his flippers. Another seal came up from behind and paused to look at Alexei. A third seal darted past, turned a somersault in the water, and came back to join the others in a flurry of bubbles and froth.

  “What am I doing here?” thought Alexei in reply to the first seal’s unvoiced question. “I am avoiding Jarnvithja, if I can!”

  The seal turned his head again, continuing to eye the man with curiosity. A one-word question seemed to form in its eyes: “Jarnvithja?”

  Alexei fall back in shock. The seal’s thoughts had penetrated his mind, as his had evidently penetrated the seal’s. “This has never happened before!” Alexei’s mind exclaimed. “Not with any of the fish that have swum past in the river during these past hundred…no, more than a hundred… these past hundred and ten and more years! Why can I hear your thoughts but not theirs?”

  The seals all smiled as they paddled to remain in place, the one behind the others turning another somersault. Alexei thought he could hear them laughing.

  Alexei joined in the laughter.

  “What are you doing out here?” Timotej demanded, creeping from behind the rocks and boulders. “Who are you talking with?”

  Alexei gestured toward the seals. “Who am I talking with? Who am I talking with?” he imitated Timotej’s suspicious demand. “All you do is complain and whine and nag me, Timotej! You never have a kind word for anyone—not while you were living and certainly not since Svetovit cast you into the river. Who am I speaking with? Why, these seals! I’m talking with… Do you have names?” He turned back to the animals, who had all begun to cavort in the water as a way to remain near the man as the current gently tugged and pushed them. “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

  They paused in their playing. A torrent of images cascaded through Alexei’s thoughts, but he was able to single out a name for each of the seals.

  “Myska,” one seal answered him.

  “Bara,” answered another.

  “Gaston,” announced the third. “You?” he seemed to ask, whirling about and darting over to Timotej, who backed away and waved his hands to keep the seal from his face.

  “Where did you come from?” Timotej repeated Alexei’s question, but much more curtly.

  Gaston looked back at the other seals and then answered. Alexei saw an image of the river breaching an enclosure that had held them at a zoo. Could that taint of new magic he had recently sensed in the river be responsible?

  Gaston flipped another headstand and made a figure eight.

  “Where are you going?” asked Timotej, eyeing the seals with suspicion.

  Alexei saw an image in Myska’s eyes. It was the seal enclosure, but with Alexei and Timotej there, as if Myska was asking about their home.

  Alexei, who had been watching Gaston’s antics with a delight he had not experienced since long before his death, felt the much more familiar despair course through him again. “No, this is not our home. There are many, many folk—both men and women—here in the river. But this is home for none of us and none of us are living. We are all the dead, the dead who died in the river or whose bodies were dropped into its waters after dying. We are trapped here, unable to escape Jarnvithja. Trapped against our will and unable to escape.”

  Myska turned a slow and languid dance in the water but never took her eyes from his.

  A wave of incomprehension from the seal called Bara hit Alexei, and apparently also assaulted Timotej.

  “Dead? You seals do not understand what is ‘dead’?” scoffed Timotej. “I thought you were intelligent animals! You must be almost as foolish as fish, not to know what dead is! Dead is what awaits all creatures. To be dead and trapped in darkness, alone and trapped in servitude to a devil woman like the troll Jarnvithja! That is the fate of all who live!”

  Bara looked at Timotej uncomprehendingly, and then all three seals turned to Alexei.

  Alexei realized it would be impossible to describe death or what it meant to be dead to the seals. “Jarnvithja is the troll who rules those trapped in the river; she commands us to do her bidding. We cannot rest without her permission; we must obey her every order without question.”

  A memory of zookeepers throwing fish to the seals and an audience applauding their tricks made its way from Myska to Alexei at last. She seemed to have difficulty understanding how different the existence of the dead in the river was from the life the seals had led in the zoo. Alexei described the seal’s memory to Timotej.

  “She is not a zookeeper! She does not feed those who obey!” Timotej growled.

  Alexei shook his head. “No one comes to laugh and applaud to see us do her bidding.”

  An image of the seals’ escape from the zoo arose in Gaston’s mind as he was performing a pirouette.

  “We cannot swim away,” snarled Timotej. “Why must you persist in such foolish questions?”

  “We cannot,” Alexei repeated in a more gentle tone. “She has spread nets of power across the river that mark the northern and southernmost reaches of her authority. None of those within her territory can escape.”

  Again, incomprehension appeared in Myska’s eyes, but this anxiety was also creeping into her thoughts. Alexei saw the fear and glimpsed a memory of zookeepers sweeping the water of the seals’ home with nets.

  “No, the nets do not trap fish,” Alexei reassured her. “The cords of these nets are very tight and very strong, but they are drawn only against the dead. Living creatures may pass freely along the entire extent of the river. Only the dead are constrained by Jarnvithja to remain in this portion of the river.”

  Myska brushed her nose against Alexei’s. He felt sympathy radiating from the seal.

  Sympathy also arose in Bara’s thoughts, even as she was rolling over backwards and aiming to swim back into the main current of the river.

  Alexei felt a question from Myska probe his mind. He saw her imagining the men swimming alongside the seals further down the river and seemed to be inviting the men to join them. She also turned as if to swim away.

  Gaston shot around them in a circle so quickly that he was a blur in the water.

&n
bsp; “Wait! Do not go! Not yet!” Alexei reached out toward Myska. “I thought of an idea! Perhaps there is a way…” Myska turned back to him.

  “Help me… by looking into my eyes.” Alexei reached out and placed each of his palms along the seal’s face. He gazed into the seal’s eyes, calming himself as if taking deep, slow breaths and reaching for the seal’s mind with wordless, inarticulate thoughts.

  She gazed back into Alexei’s eyes, curious as to what the man wanted.

  Myska jerked back, startled, when she seemed to realize what was happening.

  “No!” shrieked Timotej, watching Alexei vanish into Myska, who then flipped head over tail and rapidly swam away into the depths of the river. “You cannot do that! Come back, Alexei! Do not leave me alone here in this wretched river!” He leapt at Gaston, roughly grabbing the male seal’s flippers and pressing his face into the seal’s.

  Alexei heard a demand from Timotej. “Let me in! Let me in, Gaston!” Then Timotej’s thoughts gave way to weeping. “Let me… in! Take me… away from here!”

  The pleas were replaced by relief as Gaston followed Myska.

  The seals darted quickly through the water, bearing the presence of the dead men within them. Alexei, looking out through Myska’s eyes, could see the river bed streaking past, and when the seal came to the surface to breathe, he saw areas along the riverbank he did not recognize. They passed others of the dead, he was certain, lurking beneath the waves, but the seals were quick enough to swim past them without any of them realizing that Alexei and Timotej were hidden within.

  Myska dove beneath the water, nearly touching the river bottom with her snout. The other two seals were nearby and Alexei could hear Timotej sniveling within Gaston.

  “We are coming near the place,” Alexei said, sensing that the seal recognized it from Alexei’s memory. The seal’s eyes could see nothing in the water ahead of them, but Alexei could see the invisible ropes of power barbed with razor-sharp thorns stretched across the river to catch any of the dead who dared try to escape the troll Jarnvithja.