The Ultimate Werewolf

by Byron Preiss (ed)

  As they sat by the fire, the moon rose: nearly three-quarters full, a lopsided shape hanging above the ridge. In the distance, a wolf yapped and then howled. The single voice was joined by a chorus of wailing. Nadya listened.

  Jem touched her shoulder, feeling her warmth through the flannel shirt. "Come to bed," he said awkwardly.

  On the bed of cedar boughs, Jem put his arms around her. She came to him, surprising him with her willingness. She unbuttoned his shirt and he felt her small cool hands against his skin. In the distance, the wolves yapped and howled. She shivered then, pressing closer to him.

  "Ah, now." He was suddenly tender, knowing that her talk was partly bravado: she was not as fearless as she had seemed. "You're safe with me. Don't worry."

  He caught a glimpse of her face in the moonlight: a flash of grinning teeth, a glitter of dark eyes reflecting the moonlight. "I'm not worried," she said. "Not worried at all."

  Her body was pressed against his and the tension within him was concentrated now. He could feel the fabric of his trousers rub against his penis when she shifted her body. Through her shirt, he could feel the warmth of her breasts.

  His fingers fumbled with the buttons of her shirt. She made a soft mewling sound that merged with the distant howling of the wolves. There was rough wool against his skin, warm breasts beneath his hands, the scent of cedar and woodsmoke, the distant howling of wolves. The wolf howls merged with Nadya's breathy cries as he pushed himself into her body and exhausted himself inside her. He fell asleep, holding her in his arms.

  In the morning, he woke to find she had slipped from the bed without disturbing him. She stood by the burned-out fire, her head cocked to one side as if she were listening. Jem could hear nothing. In the dawn light, she looked as insubstantial as the white mist that curled between the trees. She could blow away with the breeze, he thought, disappear with the morning sun. "Nadya," he said, seized with the sudden fear that she would vanish.

  She shifted her gaze to him, her eyes intent.

  "What are you listening to?" he asked.

  "The forest."

  "Come back to bed and warm yourself."

  She returned to him. When he kissed her, she took his ear between w her teeth, growling softly.

  "Crazy Wolf," he said. "Be careful with that ear." She nipped it sharply and let loose a laugh that echoed from the trees.

  His cabin was a single-room building, constructed of yellow fir logs. He ! v had carefully filled the gaps between the logs with clay from the nearby ! „ stream, packing the clay tightly to keep out the winds of the coming j, winter. A clapboard roof kept off the rain. The floor was hard-packed dirt.

  The windows were closed with wooden shutters, and he hurried to t open them and let in light and air. There was a stone hearth and a t chimney to let the smoke out. For furniture, he had a single stool, constructed of roughly hewn fir, and a narrow bed platform piled with I; buffalo robes.

  Looking at the bleak interior, Jem said quickly, "I'll build you a table first. And another stool. And a bed—we'll need a proper bed."

  He glanced at Nadya's face, but she was not looking at the dark j? interior. She stood at the window, looking away into the trees. "Just as ^ you said," she said. "A lovely place."

  Within a week, he had built a table and a bench and two chairs and a ^ bed of cedar wood. Nadya worked by his side. Together, they harvested ^ the Indian corn that he had planted last spring and put it to store for the winter.

  ▼▼▼

  On the third day, she started out in the morning with her rifle and returned with three summer-fattened grouse. If she had asked, he would have told her not to go hunting, but she did not ask. And when he mildly suggested that perhaps it would be better if he went hunting, she gave him a long considering look.

  "I don't think so," she said in a cool tone. Her eyes looked greener 11 than they had before, or perhaps they were simply reflecting the ever- r green boughs overhead. He studied her face, considered the grouse, ( and decided not to raise the subject again.

  They had been in the cabin for just under a week when he woke j alone in their new bed. The cabin's wooden door was unlatched and the c night breeze had blown it partway open. Moonlight shone through the t

  opening, painting the dirt floor with silver. Beside him, the blankets were cold, no trace of warmth where Nadya had been.

  He waited for a moment. Perhaps she had stepped out to relieve herself in the woods, not wanting to wake him. He tossed back the blankets and went to the doorway. The full moon was setting and the first light of dawn touched the eastern sky with pink. The trees were wreathed in ghostly mist that drifted in the breeze. "Nadya," he called. "Nadya." In the corral, the horses pricked their ears and watched him.

  The night air chilled him and he pulled a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around him, his mind still muddled with sleep. For a moment, he wondered if she had been a dream from the start. Then he saw her shirt and trousers hanging neatly on the peg beside the door. Real enough.

  The moon set, and the first light of the sun sparkled on the grass of the meadow. He called again, his voice echoing across the valley. For the space of a heartbeat, he listened to the forest, waiting.

  She ran from the shelter of the trees, naked and barefoot. She was laughing and breathless. He reached out and embraced her, wrapping her in the blanket.

  "Where were you?" he demanded. "Where did you go?"

  "Call of nature." Her eyes were bright with amusement. "Oh, it's a wonderful morning." She pressed herself against him and he embraced her automatically. Her skin was cool beneath his hands.

  "You must have heard me calling. Why didn't you come back? You're so cold."

  She shook her head, her eyes on his face. "I didn't hear." She wet her lips, looking up at him. "I know a way to get warm again."

  She led him back to bed where she warmed him and he warmed her. He could not stay angry with her for long.

  When he woke again, later in the morning, she was tending the fire and heating water for coffee. Her hair was neatly braided once again, not hanging loose as it had been the night before.

  That day, he chopped wood for their winter fire. He felt the axe in his hand, the smooth wooden shaft rubbing against his palm. This, he thought, is real. The sharp sound of metal striking wood. The echo returning from across the valley. This is real. The fog and the darkness of the night—that is not real. That is to be forgotten.

  He watched Nadya that day and the next day and the day after. Each evening, just before the light faded, she would pause in the midst of her chores. She would set down the water bucket, stop stirring the kettle, let the fire burn unattended. For a long moment she would stand on the edge of the yard where the meadowland gave way to tall trees, and she* j would stare into the gathering darkness. Then, without a word, she u would continue her work.

  Sometimes, he listened too, struggling to hear what had caught her n attention. But he could never hear anything unusual. Once, he asked her what she heard. She had smiled and shrugged and dismissed the v question. "Nothing. Just listening to the birds." I

  At night, Nadya sat by the fire. Sometimes, she wrote in a small, ||f leatherbound book. She said that her mother had given it to her. Jem | n watched her write, scribbles of dark ink on white paper. He had never learned to read; that skill had not been particularly useful around the i fort. But watching her now, he wished he could read. He watched her * pen move across the page and he knew that she was writing secrets. When he asked her what she wrote, she shook her head. "Nothing 1 important."

  As the weeks passed, Jem noticed that Nadya was growing restless. ' When the wolf pack that roamed through the area howled, she would go to the window and listen. She tossed in her sleep and muttering in a language that he did not understand. When he asked her what was 1 troubling her, she shook her head and said nothing.

  Late summer had turned to fall when he woke again to an empty bed. : He threw off the blankets and went to the door to stand in
the cold crisp air. The first snow had fallen in the night; a thin white powder , clung to the ground. By the light of the full moon, he saw Nadya's footprints in the snow: bare feet crossing the yard and entering the forest. He called once, but got no answer.

  He dressed quickly, took his rifle and a lantern, and followed the trail of her footprints. Just before the trail entered the shelter of the trees, the footprints changed. The delicate prints of his wife's bare feet disappeared. The trail continued unbroken but the prints were those of a wolf.

  Jem squatted in the snow, examining the prints. Woman. Then wolf. He shook his head, chilled and frightened. He held the lantern high, its yellow light casting a circle on the snow.

  He followed the trail of the wolf into the shelter of the trees, where the snow lay in patches. The fir trees blocked the moonlight. He held his lantern high, and it cast a circle of yellow light on the forest floor. He cast about, checking for footprints in each patch of snow. He found a few scratches where the wolf had pawed aside the pine needles to sniff at a rodent burrow beneath a fallen log. After that, just a hundred yards

  into the forest, he lost the trail. He could not follow th(i-track by the uncertain light of the lantern and the moon.

  "Nadya!" he called. "Nadya!" The trees swallowed his voice, giving nothing back.

  He returned to the cabin to wait. He built up the fire, and sat on the wooden bench where he and Nadya sometimes sat together by the fire. He watched the fire burn and listened to the wind whispering through the chinks between the logs of the cabin. He did not know what the wind was trying to say.

  The first light of dawn was shining in the cracks around the door when he heard Nadya's footsteps outside. She hesitated in the doorway, watching him warily. Snow had frosted her black hair with white.

  "You must be cold," he said after a moment. "Come to the fire and warm yourself." He gave her the blanket from his lap, and she pulled it around her shoulders, still watching him steadily as she stood by the fire.

  Her eyes changed color with the light. Now, in the firelight, they looked golden, like the eyes of an animal. He looked away, leaning forward to poke at the fire and make it burn brighter.

  "Perhaps I'd best leave," she said. He looked up from the fire and she looked away to stare at the flames. She seemed very young just then. The firelight caught on the taut skin over her cheekbones, and she looked strangely beautiful, but not entirely human. As if the bones beneath the skin had a different shape from human bones.

  "Where would you go?"

  She shrugged, a quick jerk of her bare shoulders beneath the blanket. "I'll live alone. It would be better."

  "Why is that?"

  She turned to face him again, and her beauty shifted, fleeing with the movement of her head. Her face seemed flat and plain. "You saw the tracks," she said. Then she turned back to the fire.

  "The Indians tell of medicine men who turn into animals. Birds. Wolves." He kept his voice low and even, as if he were talking about the weather. "I've heard tell of it. A medicine man puts on a wolf skin, dances like a wolf. And he becomes the wolf." He looked up from the fire to meet her eyes. "They see no harm in it. It's a sign of great power."

  "Where my father came from, they tell of people who become wolves." Her voice matched his—soft and steady. He could barely hear her over the crackling of the fire. "They don't need skins. At certain times of the moon, the wolf comes to them and they become the wolf.

  It's not something they choose. It comes, whether they will have it or not." She was watching him now, her eyes never wavering. "I take after my father." She wet her lips delicately, like a nervous hound. The melting snow glistened on her hair and cheeks.

  "What happened to your father?"

  "Killed by a hunter."

  "Your mother?"

  "Caught in a trap and killed by a trapper who checked his line before dawn. I've been traveling alone since then." She pulled the blanket tighter around her, keeping her eyes on the fire. "You were lonely and I was lonely, too." She shrugged again.

  Jem nodded. He rubbed his hands together, trying to warm them.

  "I'll go today," she said.

  "Sit down and get warm," he said.

  "I warned you, Jem. You got more than you bargained for."

  "I got what I bargained for," he said. He held out a hand. "Sit down and warm yourself."

  She took his hand and sat beside him on the bench. He rubbed her hands to warm her, and put another log on the fire.

  ▼▼▼

  Winter came, and the nights were long. The first snow melted, and the stock grazed in the meadows. When snow fell again, they carried fodder to the cattle. They lived on wild game and Indian corn. On cold clear days, Jem split rails for fences. Nadya helped with the fences. She was surprisingly strong for her size. Together they built a shelter for the milk cow and the calf that Jem hoped she would bear in spring.

  The full moon came, and he woke as Nadya left the bed and slipped away in the darkness. He heard the rustle of her clothing, the soft padding of her bare feet on the dirt floor. The wooden door creaked when she pulled it open and cold wind that blew in brought a flurry of snowflakes, dancing in the moonlight. The door creaked again as she pulled it closed behind her. He lay awake in the darkness, listening to the howling of distant wolves. In the morning, she came home.

  Each month, Nadya grew restless with the waxing moon. She would leave during the day, telling Jem she was going hunting. She would return late in the afternoon, when the sun was just setting, carrying a freshly killed hare and complaining that game was scarce.

  The night before January's full moon, the wolves came closer to the cabin than they ever had beforeniWadya sat at the firaJ, her book in her lap, and listened to their howls. "I'd best check on the stock," Jem said.

  "I'll do it," Nadya said quickly, and she pulled on her coat and slipped out the door. Jem stood in the doorway and watched her cross the yard to the cattle shed. Snow was falling gently, the flakes catching the moonlight. Nadya paused, halfway across the yard, listening to something that Jem couldn't hear. She glanced back at him and gestured impatiently. "Close the door, Jem. Stay warm. I'll be back in a moment." She returned in a few minutes, snowflakes melting on her jacket and her hair. Her cheeks were bright and she came to him for warmth. They made love in the big bed that smelled of cedar.

  The next morning, when he went out to the cattleshed, he found wolftracks. Only one wolf. A large male, he guessed from the prints. Nadya's footprints had been filled by the falling snow, but the wolf prints were fresh. The animal had lingered after the snow stopped falling. In the shelter of a bush not far from the corral, he found a place where the animal had rested, flattening the grass and leaving a few tufts of white fur caught on twigs.

  He said nothing to Nadya. He spent the day splitting rails for the fence, hard physical labor that left him little time to think. That evening, Nadya stood by the cabin door at sunset, staring out into the forest.

  "Looking for something?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "Just restless."

  That night, he woke to the open door, creaking in the wind. The latch had not caught. Jem slipped from bed, shivering in the cold. He dressed quickly, pulling on his trousers, stiff fingers lacing stiff leather boots.

  In the moonlight, the split rail fence was a zigzag line of gray on the white snow, like a pencil line on white paper. The Douglas firs were black against the moonlight sky. He found her tracks under the trees and followed. His breath made silver clouds in the moonlight. A hundred yards into the trees, Nadya's pawprints were joined by the prints of a larger wolf. There was a mess of prints where the big male had approached and Nadya had retreated, where he had circled her and then she had circled him. Then the two sets of prints continued, with the male leading and Nadya following.

  In the moonlight, the trail was clearly visible. Jem followed. He did not think about following. He tried not to think at all. His mind was cold and clear, like the icicles that hung from
the trees, catching the moonlight and shattering it into bright and meaningless patterns. His mind was filled with bright and meaningless patterns.

  About a mile from the cabin, the trail veered suddenly to the west. The distance between pawprints changed: the wolves had slowed their pace, stalking toward a dense stand of fir trees. Thirty yards farther on, the distance between pawprints had changed again, marking the place where both wolves had broken into a run.

  Not far away, there was sign of deer: hoofprints in the snow, droppings, a flattened area where one animal had lain. Three deer by the look of it. Two had run west and the third had split off, running northwest with both wolves in pursuit.

  Jem saw a splash of blood in the snow. A little farther on, another splash. He could imagine the big wolf tearing at the deer's flanks, ripping at its belly. He tried to imagine another wolf, a smaller wolf, doing the same—but the image of Nadya's face kept intruding.

  More blood and a great confusion of tracks where the deer had tried to stand its ground, wheeling to face one wolf while the other harried it from behind. Then the deer had run again, leaving bloody hoofprints in the snow.

  In a clearing, the animal had fallen. Jem stopped at the edge of the clearing, within the shelter of the trees. The wolves had caught his scent and had stopped feeding. The belly of the deer had been ripped open: blood steamed in the cold air.

  The two wolves stood by the carcass of the deer, watching him with golden eyes: a big white dog wolf and a pale gray bitch. The bitch was large, almost as big as the male. Her head and muzzle were splashed with fresh blood.

  Jem held his rifle ready, watching the two of them. He was not thinking clearly. He kept remembering a trapper who had found his Indian wife in bed with another man.

  The male lowered his head and growled, his ruff bristling. Jem felt the trigger against his finger before he realized that he had lifted the rifle. He was aiming at the big male. The bitch—he could not think of her as Nadya—whimpered low in her throat, a complex sound that seemed close to human speech. She glanced at the male and then back at Jem. She barked once, a high yelp, then whimpered again.