The Wolf Age

by James Enge

  Liudhleeo stepped forward, took his shoulder, and made an obscene suggestion about Wuinlendhono.

  "Certainly," he said, "since you ask. Anything to oblige."

  "Hrutnefdhu thought it best not to come," she added, in a low voice. "He hopes you understand."

  "I do-though I'd be glad to see him here."

  Morlock was close enough to hear this exchange, and he looked with some surprise at Liudhleeo, at Rokhlenu, and back at Liudhleeo. Then he shrugged.

  Rokhlenu felt a sudden pang of doubt-did Morlock fully understand the life-mating ritual? Surely it couldn't be that different among neverwolves. Anyway, there was no time for a lesson now.

  Liudhleeo stood aside, and Morlock grabbed Rokhlenu's shoulder. "I don't know any of the traditional remarks on a day like this," he observed.

  Rokhlenu silently thanked the ghosts for this.

  "I'll say this instead," Morlock continued. "We are one blood. Your blood is my blood. It will be avenged."

  Rokhlenu belatedly realized that Morlock was talking about his father and brothers. His grief, never distant, returned in a great crashing wave. But this was real. It mattered, unlike the traditional obscene compliments. He met Morlock's eye. "I told you not to bring a present, you rat-bastard."

  Morlock half smiled and shrugged. "I won't do it again," he promised, and stood back.

  There were more encounters, more jokes and songs about the act of mating. But soon enough, Yaarirruuiu said, "Friends, the sun is setting. We must get our chief to his new home."

  They roared and cheered and barked. Rokhlenu picked up a bundle of his clothes, and the twenty irredeemables who were accompanying him into Wuinlendhono's household picked up boxes of wealth and weapons and their own belongings. He walked before them, and they followed singing false and not really flattering stories about his sexual adventures or misadventures.

  The walk to Wuinlendhono's lair-tower (still supported by cables, but on a firmer foundation than before thanks to Morlock and Hlupnafenglu) was not long, thank ghost. He pounded on the door and demanded entry.

  The door was immediately opened by a snow-pale, anxious-looking Wuinlendhono. She wore a loose white wedding shirt, not so different than his own, except that the hem was lower, sweeping the floor. "My intended, you and yours enter my house and remain here forever," she said rapidly, and kissed his ear. She added in a whisper, "Ghost, I thought you were never coming. It's almost sunset."

  "Plenty of time," he breathed, half stunned by the mix of her natural scent and her wedding scent. He noted with interest that she seemed more nervous than he was.

  She took him by the hand and led him into the great audience chamber of the lair-tower. The dais had been moved so that moonlight would fall on it as soon as dark touched the sky after sunset. Around the audience chamber were scattered tables with bowls of food and water and fuming smoke. There were many low couches, and on some of them the councilors, allies, and friends who were Wuinlendhono's wedding party. They were already eating, drinking, smoking.

  "My intended, disport yourselves with your friends and mine," Wuinlendhono said, in a loud formal voice. "I await your intention at the mating couch." She added in a low voice, "I give you a hundred breaths. If you're not on the dais by then, I'm coming after you and nailing you wherever you happen to be. One hundred breaths. And I'm breathing pretty fast, stalwart."

  He watched her stride sinuously away from him and he took a deep breath. Ninety-nine more, and then ...

  His irredeemables were dumping the boxes with traditional informality about the room. This was just part of the tradition, meant to give the place a moved-in look. All the significant wealth and property (boxes of gold and such) had been brought over early in the day and secured.

  Liudhleeo had Morlock over at one of the tables and was fussing over him with bowls of food and water. No doubt she would continue her epic quest to get into his pants tonight: mating ceremonies were famous for promoting spontaneous couplings. She tried to give him a bowl of smoke and he waved it off-and that reminded Rokhlenu of something.

  He grabbed a jar sitting at a nearby table and ran over to Morlock and Liudhleeo. He took the bowl of water from Morlock's hand and dumped the contents back in the serving bowl. Morlock looked at him, his eyebrows lifting in surprise and amusement.

  "You don't want that swill," said Rokhlenu. "Try this!" He cracked open the jar, poured a stream of purplish red wine into the bowl, and proudly handed it to Morlock.

  He had been planning this for some time, ever since Morlock told him about drinking and bartenders. If Morlock didn't like smoking bloom, if he wanted wine to celebrate, Rokhlenu reasoned, why not get him some wine? It hadn't been easy, but he had done it, and the effect was all he could have hoped for.

  Morlock's eyebrows raised even farther, his eyes widened, his mouth parted slightly. He was completely stunned.

  "Is it the good kind?" Rokhlenu asked. "There were a couple of different colors. I got this from a gang of road robbers who dragged it back from Semendar without looking inside. There are crates of the stuff, as much as you could want."

  "It's fine," Morlock said faintly.

  "You're sure?" Rokhlenu asked.

  "Morlock," Liudhleeo said out of the side of her mouth, "drink it. He's got some business to attend to."

  Morlock put the bowl to his lips and drank a sip, then a larger mouthful.

  "Excellent," he said, lowering the bowl. "Thanks, old friend. I know you mean well."

  Rokhlenu laughed, punched him in the arm, and turned away. He had lost count of the breaths that had passed-and then he realized he didn't care. He walked, with as much dignity as he could, to the dais and mounted the steps. Wuinlendhono was watching him with her night-dark starless eyes. He found he had to step very slowly and carefully, lest he trip and fall-the worst of omens for a mating.

  As he climbed the stairs, the room grew silent. By the time he reached the top, no one was speaking.

  Wuinlendhono took his hands and they stood for a moment, wordless, staring into each other's eyes.

  She shook his hands loose and said, in the dark contralto lightning she used as a voice, "I take you and all you are and all you own as mine."

  He replied, in his clearest singing-while-speaking voice, "I take you and all you are and all you own as mine."

  She undid the fastenings of her shirt, and it fell to the floor. She stood proudly naked in the red light of evening.

  One of the knots in his fastenings would not come undone. He'd have cursed the one who had tied it, except it was himself, distracted by love and grief, only a short time ago.

  Wuinlendhono smiled and brushed his hands aside, deftly undoing the knot. His shirt fell away, and he now stood as naked as she.

  She ascended the couch on the dais and, never breaking eye contact, went down on all fours.

  He climbed onto the couch behind her. She turned her head to watch him over her shoulder. Her eyes were wide, excited. She was panting slightly.

  He mounted her from behind. As he entered her, her eyes half closed and she gasped. She writhed in pleasure, and the sinuous motion sent muscles rippling all down her glorious back.

  Union with her was silken ecstasy. The world was afire with the day's last light. He wanted to drive into her until he came, but he could not; he must not yet.

  She moved again and moaned.

  "Be still," he said to her.

  "Can't," she whispered.

  "You must," he said, and put his hands on her back to keep her still. That was a mistake, perhaps: it sent soft streams of sensory fire up his fingers. He sank his fingers deeper in her soft firm skin, because he could, because they belonged to each other now. He almost started to move his hips.

  "You're right," she whispered. "I'll be still."

  Somehow that helped. He waited, adrift in a fog of pleasure-that-was and the agony of pleasure self-denied.

  The room waited, silent, as sunlight died. The room grew dim, then dark. No lamps
were lit.

  Blue light appeared in the windows: the eyes of the moons were opening with the departure of the sun's light. The light grew stronger, bluer, more bitter, more intoxicating. Rokhlenu looked through the window straight into the face of Trumpeter and knew that this was the moment.

  He yielded to the moment of transformation, and Wuinlendhono did the same. His shadow rose up and towered over him; hers did the same. The two shadows passed through each other, mingling as their bodies mingled, transforming them as they coupled; day shape with night shape and female with male they were bonded in an endless instant of transformation and sexual union.

  Their screams gave way to ecstatic howls; they lay, still joined, in the night shape.

  Slowly, hungrily, intently, patiently, Rokhlenu began to grind into his mate as she rocked back against him. They were mated now.

  Rokhlenu found that his grief was not gone. If anything, he was even more aware of his loss, of his beloved dead. And he grieved for Wuinlendhono and their love. They were mortal; they would die; their love would be forgotten as if it never had been.

  But this was their hour, and all the ages of nothingness to come could not wash away this one glorious moment of being and becoming. If this was life, and he felt it was, it was worth even the price of death to feel this way.

  Morlock was drinking slowly and he was not yet drunk. But he had begun to drink on purpose, not merely to be polite, and that meant that most of the man he thought of as himself was gone.

  It was as if there were two Morlocks. Drunk Morlock was careless, selfish, lazy, stupid, cruel-everything that Morlock hated about himself, everything he rejected. It was like the werewolves, with their day shape and night shape.

  Not-drunk Morlock was still holding the reins. But drunk Morlock was slowly getting a grip on them.

  This internal struggle numbed the shock he felt when he noticed Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono consummating their bond by having sex in the presence of the wedding party. In any case, it was no skin off his walrus: different lands had different customs.

  Rather more worrisome to him was the way partners were beginning to pair off and nuzzle each other on couches. Apparently the ceremonial union of the couple was accompanied by more informal unions among the wedding party. Looking back on weddings he had attended over the centuries, he realized that things were not so different here-just more open.

  When the pair mating on the dais assumed their night shapes, and a tide of moonlit transformations spread across the room, the coupling began in earnest, many pairs eschewing the couches and tumbling about on the floor. There were wolves, semiwolves, and a few unfortunates in their day shape, apparently unable to make the transition. Morlock thought this-and nearly laughed aloud. Werewolf notions seemed to be soaking into his skin. If he stayed among the werewolves much longer, at the next wedding he might actually join in. That was an amusing thought, and this time he did laugh.

  He looked around for the wine jar: time to grab it and make his escape. He found it. He also found that Liudhleeo was still standing beside him in her day shape. Her eyes were half closed; she was smiling at him with shy eagerness.

  "I'd've thought you'd've switched shadows by now," he said, waving his wine bowl vaguely at the rest of the room.

  She looked hurt, then sly. "Is that what you'd prefer? Some never-wolves like it-coupling with a partner in the night shape."

  "They're not as never-wolfy as I am. I've never coupled with someone who was not a never-wolf." Morlock covertly tried to count up the number of negatives in that sentence, was unsure of his total, and added hastily, "I have only ever coupled with never-wolves. If you see what I mean. It's worked out pretty well for me so far," he said wryly, thinking of his ex-wife. There was a little wine left in his bowl, so he emptied it.

  "There are none like that here," Liudhleeo replied. "If there were, she'd be a slave or meat. You aren't only because of who you are. I'm not the only female in the room who finds that fascinating. Or your scent fascinating."

  "I never argue about matters of taste-or, in this case, smell."

  She laughed too much and took his arm. He impatiently shook her off.

  "Why are you being so cruel to me?" Liudhleeo asked, not as if she really minded.

  "I don't know what's going on," said Morlock, "but I can't believe you look on me with favor."

  Liudhleeo was amused. "Why not? You smell so wonderful, like blood and burning bone with a hint of poisonous leaves. And you're perfectly dangerous. Ghost, when you glare at me like that I just melt. And maybe you're not as beautiful as my sweet Hrutnefdhu, but nobody is, and anyway a female doesn't have to look at her partner during sex...." She paused, horrified by a thought that struck her. "Unless. Unless they do it ... face-to-face. Do you do it that way, Morlock?"

  "Sometimes. It doesn't matter."

  "Doesn't matter? It bites me what males think matters. Not even monkeys do it that way, you know, face-to-face. It seems so depraved. Soft wet mouths and soft wet bellies pressing against each other. It seems so nasty. So nasty. Oh. Oh. Oh, ghost. You have to do that for me. I know you don't care about me. I know you don't care about anybody, but you can't leave me after putting that idea in my head."

  "Now I see why Hrutnefdhu didn't attend," Morlock said. "Did you ask him to stay home?"

  Now she stepped a pace back from him, her brows knitted in bafflement. "No," she said. "Of course not. But how do you suppose he'd feel if he were here, right now, with pairs coupling all over the floor and the room stinking of sex-"

  "-and his mate trying to couple with his old friend-"

  "Is that it? You don't understand. You really don't understand. It's not a betrayal."

  "And I never will understand."

  She bowed her head, defeated. "Do you want me to find you another female, then? Or a male, perhaps? There are other never-wolves in town."

  Morlock stared at her. "My love life, grim and empty though it may be, has never been soiled by the presence of a pimp."

  She stood back another pace, tears leaking from her eyes. She gave him a last reproachful look and fled.

  Morlock took his wine jar and a couple of still-sealed ones for backup. He made his way unsteadily out of the moonlit room, stepping carefully around (or, in one case, over) groups of werewolves in various stages of sexual congress.

  The air outside was clean, by contrast, but warm as a summer's night. He drank a jar of wine as he walked slowly across the outlier settlement, dropping the empty into a stretch of swamp showing next to a walkway. When he reached the lair-tower, he found that he couldn't face Hrutnefdhu (drunk Morlock was a coward, among his other vices), so he decided to sleep that night in his cave. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the wickerwork boat, finishing another jar of wine.

  The night was dark, though moonlit. The swamp water was darker and smelled bad. His mind was darker still and smelled worse.

  -SHELLEY, THE MASK OF ANARCHY

  rom then on, Morlock drank himself to sleep every night. Sometimes he slept in the lair-tower apartment with Hrutnefdhu and Liudhleeo, but he didn't like to. If it was him and Hrutnefdhu alone there, he was conscious of why Liudhleeo was absent. But when he woke up, and looked across the room to see them wrapped around each other, blissfully empty of thought as they slept, joined by something more powerful than sexual union, he felt strange, an intruder. Werewolves had no sense of privacy with those they considered old friends, but Morlock did. Besides, when he drank so much that he grew sick and felt the need to vomit (which was almost nightly now), the cave was more convenient.

  He was not yet drinking in the day, though. Morlock had been through this before, and he had a sense of fatalism about it. He knew that drunkenness would come to rule his life entirely and that he would be able to think of nothing else.

  Perhaps that wasn't so bad, this time. He was, after all, dying. The ghost sickness had progressed so far that he could pick up nothing with his left fingers: material objects passed through the m
isty flesh as if it were air. If he was dying, if this was the end of all his days, did it matter if he died a drunk? He would be no more alive if he died sober.

  But in the day he did not drink, not yet. He threw himself into projects and worked fiercely. He developed a wooden hand that he could wear over his ghostly hand like a glove. It was no good for fine work, of course, but it could bear weight, and the fingers could clamp shut for a grip, if need be.

  For two-handed work, he had Hlupnafenglu. The red werewolf was strikingly improved after the removal of his spike-but he knew nothing about his past. His memory had been almost entirely scrubbed by the madness induced by the electrum spike in his brain. He could speak Sunspeech and Moonspeech, but he didn't even know his real name, so everyone continued to call him Hlupnafenglu.

  He was intelligent and strong, though, with extremely deft hands. He fell into the role of Morlock's apprentice. The outliers could use many skills Morlock had, but he clearly would not be around forever to assist them, and he trusted Hlupnafenglu's character as well as his talent.

  Together they forged glass weapons and armor for the outlier fighters. They began the challenging task of shoring up the outliers' defenses. Once Wuinlendhono found out what they were doing, she had a crowd of citizens put at their disposal and the work went faster: new watchtowers, armed with catapults and crossbows, soon bristled along the settlement's verge.

  The days were hot; the work was hard. In the evenings, when his friends were sometimes smoking bowls of bloom, he would join them in a bowl of wine (which they always had ready, once they knew he would drink it). Sometimes they would play cards. Werewolves love to gamble, and they were all fond of the game he had invented called pookah or, as Hlupnafenglu always mispronounced it, poker. Later, while he could still walk, he would go back to his cave and drink himself unconscious.