The Wolf With the Silver Blue Hands

by Eric Ellert

  "I have to help my sister."

  He stopped playing. "No."

  Faudron came closer, the soggy roof threatening to buckle under her feet each time she missed a beam.

  "What's in it for me?" Kau asked, twitching at the sound of gurgling water rising around the building.

  Faudron pulled out her cellphone. "I can call our boat. You and them," she said, pointing to the wolves in the trees.

  He smiled and opened his shirt; a bright yellow box like a smoke alarm stuck out from his chest.

  "Ah, hell."

  "Yes, I was fairly well-taken care of in the city neath the sea, though I couldn't stay, of course."

  "You killed them."

  "Yes. Not after thanking them for the fine medical treatment, but yes. I killed them. I think I killed all of them." He played a few notes of La vie en Rose. "At least I tried to."

  Faudron cursed this town. She'd end up drowning with this nasty creature, with no one to talk to in her last moments and her sister still across the reservoir, joining the numbers on top of the cars. She remembered the yellow footprints along the yellow line so long ago, some kids stepping forward and crying, some kids stepping back and crying. She remembered what had been done to them. It could still be done, maybe. She prayed.

  Kau listened for her to speak, clearly intrigued.

  "Make me into a werewolf."

  Kau thought about it for a moment and scanned the horizon as if looking for the door. "Done."

  Faudron stuck her hand out but he lunged for her throat.

  Somehow Faudron managed to raise the cellphone and struck the pacemaker in Kau's chest. It fell of and shorted out with a spark on the roof. Kau fell back against the wall. "That shortens my time."

  Faudron backed to the edge of the roof and was just about to jump into the water, sure he would leap once more for spite. She felt strange and when she looked down she had claws like fingers and long, werewolf hands.

  Kau leapt at her anyway.

  Faudron was sure he'd knock them both into the water. She leapt.

  She was in the air, going higher and higher and she looked at the moon above and the water below and her shadow and she had wings, bigger than birds', better than bats', long, grey-blue fur flapping in the wind with each movement as she flew higher and higher.

  Faudron wrapped her speckled, furry wings around her better to see them. She fell and had to open them as fast as she could and flap to keep from hitting the water, terrified of burning like the other wolves. She misjudged the distance and her feet dragged along the water. She pulled up and pulled them in to get a look, but her boots had protected her.

  Moren called her name, the sound bouncing off the clouds and filling her ears as if it came from all directions. She heard it again and followed.

  Faudron flew over the reservoir gaining altitude, heading towards the forsaken highway and the voice. She flew into the clouds and soared for a moment above in the clear, starry sky.

  The sound of engines filled the air and drones buzzed her, the turbulence causing her to tumble back into the clouds. Predators followed, flying in a circular pattern, ready to let loose and turn everything that had not drowned to fire.

  Below her, the clock in town struck midnight; she had so very little time.

  When Faudron flew to the highway, she could not believe the crowd. Perhaps three-hundred werewolves lined the highway. She looked for Moren but couldn't find her then saw her below the highway, standing amidst the broken cars. She swooped towards her but Mrs. C drew a rifle from her car and fired.

  The shot struck Faudron in the wing and she fell to earth, hitting the ground so hard she was sure she'd broken all her bones. The werewolves had scattered when they saw her fall and now stalked her. Without thinking she leapt in the air and fell off the edge of the highway, favoring the wing with the snapped spar, but slowing her fall enough to land on the car next to Moren's. She fell on her side and rolled onto the hood.

  Moren jumped to Faudron's car and leaned over her.

  "I'm all right," Faudron said.

  Moren stood, furious and was about to leap at the crowd above.

  "You haven't made your first kill?" Faudron asked. "Tell me you haven't, then don't; you'll be just like them. You'll never leave here, ever."

  ***

  Moren growled, leapt to the highway in one jump and landed on the edge, wanting the hunt to begin.

  The werewolves growled and edged closer as if they could push her off the ledge.

  All she had to do was pass a paw in front of her face, claws down and they stopped. "What is the law? The wolves shall obey midnight, which is passed and I am your midnight and now, the queen of the wolves of men."

  Moren scanned the crowd. As each one caught her eye, they got down low like common dogs in obeisance, all but Mrs. C.

  She smiled, reached into her car, pulled out a bucket of water and tossed it at Moren, drenching her.

  The other werewolves howled, snapped at the air, ready for the changing when Moren burned, but nothing happened. Moren laughed, shook the harmless water from her fur and held up her blue hand. "Will you accept the laws of God and men, your answer now."

  The Mrs. C. spit.

  Moren jumped on top of her car and struck her so hard she fell. "What did you imagine and imagine and imagine when you imagined and you were young?"

  "This."

  They were so bad, they didn't even know they were bad.

  "They'll kill your sister," Mrs. C. said. "They will find a way."

  "Wolves, become men." They changed in an instant. "Become men and remember what this creature has done to you."

  Three hundred neighbors shook themselves off and stared at Mrs. C., finally remembering the night and the young ones they had hunted as she beat the brush and forced them into the night woods.

  "What do you gain?" Mrs. C. asked Moren, the angry townspeople pressing closer around her.

  "My sister."

  Mrs. C. tried to get into her car but Moren held the door. "I should give you what you want. It's what you deserve."

  Moren was about to bite her, but let her go and whistled. In a moment the others were all werewolves again, looking confused then Moren clapped her hands and one of the werewolves pulled the car door back with its teeth, flattening it against the side of the car like an elbow bent backward.

  "You'd better try to go," Moren whispered.

  Bells went off in the town below. Helicopter lights pierced the clouds then came closer and landed behind the car. The werewolves scattered.

  The helicopter's rotors kept spinning as if it had only come to visit the earth briefly. Two soldiers hopped out. Splinter got out and looked at all the horrible people running down the lost highway then he turned to Moren and hurried over. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

  Moren closed her eyes and returned to normal.

  Her clothing was torn up. She'd have to remember to be more careful, she thought as she held her shirt together. "I don't suppose we could walk out the front gate now?"

  "Where would you go?"

  She hugged him. "What about her?"

  "She'll hang. Found her husband's body floating by the entrance."

  "Oh, no," Moren said, feeling a rumble Splinter could not feel. "Go, get in the helicopter."

  Everything happened at once; a dozen Nord-wolves who'd gotten off the island came to the lower-portion of the highway.

  Mrs. C got in her car, but it wouldn't start. Smoke came from the helicopter's engines, its rotors stopped moving and all the people, including the Nords turned back and forth from Werewolves to people, then stayed as werewolves.

  "Did you do that?" Splinter asked.

  "No, it's their nature by now. Inside."

  The mechanical dogs sloshed through the water in the flooded-town, headlights where their eyes should be, scanning back and forth, up and down. Some of them swam and when they came to dry ground, they bounded toward the highway. One of them grabbed one of the Nordic wolves
of men and pulled him into the silvery water that had risen up the lower portion of the highway and the wolf burned.

  The other wolves scattered, trying to make it into the woods.

  Predators dove from the sky.

  Moren nodded to Splinter, turned into a werewolf, and jumped of the ledge.

  She landed on a Toyota, denting-in the roof. "Can you fly big sister?"

  "I think so."

  ***

  Faudron put her arms around Moren and leapt into the air but could only fly eight feet off the ground. As they followed the reservoir road, Nord wolves growled at them. One leapt and Faudron had just-enough strength to fly above it as if they'd fallen into nightmare together and shared the flying dream.

  Branches smacked into their faces as they flew. When they came to the fence, Faudron headed toward the cut above the roadway in the center of the dam.

  "No," Moren said, pointing at the portion of fence Mrs. Rochambeau had said to avoid. "There, there, there."

  Faudron tried to cover Moren's head with her hand as they approached it, flapped her wings faster and dove right at the fence.

  They burst through, tumbled down a snowy hill and landed at the bottom, neither of them werewolves any longer.

  "Moren, how did you?"

  Moren laughed, laying in the snow, her old self again. She made a snow angel and pointed at the sky. "The moon is missing."

  Faudron stood, fell on the snow, broke her fall with a hand and got up again. "How long ago is this?"

  Moren shook her head.

  Faudron looked around. Down in a valley at the bottom of the hill on which they stood, lay a silvery flying craft, with a dull metal hull. Before it huddled three people over a campfire.

  She couldn't believe it, Rau, her mother and her father, but before she could shout or wave the earth shook.

  High above them, the moon appeared, towed by a number of glowing, Nordic flying craft. Rocks slid down the hill. Rau and the others kicked out the fire and slipped inside the flying craft, but the earth shook again and it slipped down the hill like a sled then turned over and over before it disappeared from view, a snowy avalanche behind it.

  Faudron turned into a werewolf and screamed in her fury. The monsters had tricked her, all the monsters, including Splinter. She leapt into the air.

  Moren leapt after her, suddenly with wings herself and chased after Faudron, Faudron always just out of reach. Higher and higher they flew until Faudron couldn't breathe in the thin air and they tumbled towards earth.

  Eventually, Faudron's wings grabbed at the thicker air and she could breath. They made a tumble landing, Faudron bruised, nothing broken.

  Moren shook her head as Faudron tried to leap at the air again and in a moment all the colors drained from the sky and she was human again.

  "Moren, what did you just do to me?"

  "Nothing. Nothing at all." She helped her up. "What do we do?"

  "Find them. Then we take the moon from the frogs."

  "Why would you want the moon?" Moren asked.

  "To turn it off. To take it back because they have it, to break it because they want it, to crack it in half because they brought it, to take back our time because history is written and holy no matter how bad it is."

  They pulled their torn jackets tight against the damp wind and a sky that promised snow. Strange creatures looked at them from the tree-line, with big, amphibious eyes, and long legs like tiger-frogs.

  Moren made a scratch at the air and they ran off. "Do you hear that?"

  "No." But Faudron listened harder and a few moments later she heard the tinkle of an out of tune piano playing a few notes of La vie En rose.

  They followed the sound for a mile until they saw a light at the very top of the hill. When they got closer, they saw the fence and when the came close-enough to touch it, they saw Mrs. Rochambeau's house, tall and stately, the clapboards painted snowy white. The smell of dinner poured from a window and all the windows were intact and lit.

  Faudron wished she had a weapon, feeling a trap. She followed Moren through a hole they found in the fence, down a path and to the front door of the house.

  They stood their dumbly for a few minutes. Up above them the very stars were out of place, reflecting the different era. Higher still the moon shown bright with cities scattered about its surface and if Faudron was right, it actually spun.

  The door opened. A young girl dressed in a costume from the eighteenth century poked her head out and beckoned them in.

  They followed, the warmth of the fireplace in the next room called them over and they warmed themselves in front of it.

  The girl appeared a few moments later with a tray of food. She sat in a stuffed-chair far across the room, poured herself a bottle of Birch beer on ice and poured Gin into it. "Welcome to the Back Beyond. I used to be Mrs. Rochambeau, or will be, but I think not. I think I like it right here, just such as it is, just as I am."

  "And who are you now?" Moren asked.

  "Ms. Rochambeau, I suppose, but not quite yet."

  "I'd like to find Rau," Faudron said.

  "And our parents," Moren added.

  "If they want to be found. First there is somebody I want you to meet." She rang a little bell at the side of her chair.

  The far door opened and Blue stood there, dressed in a black and blue frock coat as busy as wallpaper, looking human and whole. He looked at all of them. Faudron wasn't quite sure he recognized any of them, then he held his hand out. "Moren, a word alone, please."

  Moren nodded, crossed the room and took his hand.

  They ran together through a well-gardened field with tall oaks on either side of the path in its center, so thick their boughs met at the top.

  When they stopped, Blue spoke as if no time had passed since they'd last met. "You see Moren, it's all different now. The werewolves are outside, and here in our garden we keep them out."

  "But what about the others; what do we do?"

  When the sun rises, we'll find them. But I have to warn you, now they are wild, and they might not know you."

  "Oh."

  (End)