I woke from deep slumber
on a small mound of scattering straw, my nose full of the odor of wet hound fur,
and I did not yet remember what had passed to bring me there. The hovel was
morning dark, but I could hear the old woman humming about the cook fire. She
smelled of ancient moss, bone berry and ash, her sun-withered face lit by the
glow of flames. Though I did not know her, I recognized the scent of
friendship.
I rose, stretched, and
felt a deep, yearning thrum that spread from my belly to my legs. I had four of
them, it seemed, their color the rust of lichen, ending in large dirt-caked
paws and claws like slivers of black moon. I felt my ears twitch in response to
the dawn noises beyond the mud walls, the scurrying of creatures who rise with
the light and feel the thrum in their own bodies.
“Out
with yeh, then,” the old woman said cheerily, and I sprinted through the open
door. Outside, I stood beside the hovel atop a green knoll, pointed my nose into
the breeze and drew in the damp scent of things new and green, wild blossoms
about to burst from branches, and tiny purple petals of saxifrage spreading
across the land. I heard the wind whip through the feathers of goshawks and
buzzards, the beetles and worms trundling dirt, the polecats and pine martens snuggling
down in their daytime beds, and farther on, the conies—oh, the conies—foraging
in the meadow.
I circled the hovel twice,
pressing my nose between the boulders as I went, chewing a crunchy bit of fallen
bark, snuffling soft grasses, and protecting everything with my own rich odor.
All the while I listened as the conies drew closer, and when it was time, I hunkered
to the ground and crept toward them silently, careful to keep my shadow to
myself. I could see one now, a plump, gray cony rising to sniff the air, its whiskers
atwitter. Quick, quick, before it caught scent of me, I lunged, trapping it
with my paws, wrapping my jaws around its tender neck and cracking down. The cony
went limp in my mouth, and though I was hungry and could taste its flesh, some intuition
kept me from tearing it apart. Instead, I drew myself tall and trotted back to
the hovel, the cony’s fur tickling my nose. Inside the dark, smoke-filled room
I dropped the still animal at the old woman’s feet, sat beside it and waited
patiently.
“Good
girl,” the old woman said, her voice the creak of a broad-branched oak swaying
in a sharp wind. “I knew you’d be a blessing to us.” She tossed a hunk of
barley bread. I caught it in the air and swallowed it whole.
“Now,
what shall we call you?” she asked. “You must have some name.”
A rumble bubbled in the
back of my throat as I tried to speak, and I let out two blunt barks.
“Gisal,
you say?” the old woman asked. “Very well, Gisal.”
I barked again.
“Oh,
folks around here are far too frightened to speak my name aloud, but you may
call me Wrach,” she smiled wide, and her golden eyes disappeared inside the deep
lines of her brown face.
A whine leapt from my
throat as I jumped so that I was nearly as tall as the old woman, pressed my
forepaws against her woolen smock, and licked her nose.
“Careful
there,” she laughed, grasping the table for support. “I’m old and delicate, heh.
You’ll knock me on my bog.”
With that, I dropped to
my feet and dashed outdoors again, eager to continue the hunt. I brought Wrach four
conies that morning. The old woman skinned them all, and I made quick work of
the scraps dropped to the dirt floor while she salted the meat for keeping.
In the afternoon, I found
my way to a stream at the bottom of the knoll where I drank deep gulps of cold,
clear water, hunted slow worms sunning themselves in thin strips of light, and caught
a large brown trout hovering in the shallows. This I carried in my mouth, live
and writhing, up the hill to the hovel where I dropped it on the floor and
watched it flop about until the old woman scooped it up and chopped off its
head with one swoop of her knife.
We ate the trout for tea.
I tried to explain that I would eat the fish raw, but Wrach insisted on roasting
it on a stick over the cook fire. She pulled out the bones with her fingers and
gave me half of the tender flesh as well as the skin. It crackled between my teeth
in a satisfying way. After tea, she buried the fish head in the herb garden
while I watched.
“Don’t
even think about digging this up,” she said sternly, and I didn’t.
The next three days were the
same. I woke in the morning, hunted conies in the meadow and in the afternoon
fished trout from the stream, always carrying my quarry back to the old woman. I
slept on a fresh pile of straw each night. On the fourth day I woke and smelled
change. The cook fire was cold, and Wrach was outside in the dark packing a
traveling cart with salted meat, cony pelts, herbs, and small bottles of something
liquid—gold, blood red, and swampy green—that clinked and twinkled in the torchlight.
She pulled a smaller vial from a box, deep pearled blue, and the sight of it in
her knobbed hand, the gesture of her tucking it inside her wool tunic, was tied
to a memory that floated up, made me queasy, and quickly disappeared again.
Wrach covered the lot with cloth and tied it with a hempen rope.
“Bore Da, Gisal,” the old woman said when she spotted me.
“We’re off to Aber. You’ll stay close, won’t yeh, warn me of robbers and tithingmen?
Not that they’re like to trouble us.”
As Wrach pushed the heavy
cart slowly down the winding path through the wood, I darted between the trees
at the edge of the forest, scattering partridges from the brush, barking back
at nattering squirrel—until she called me to her side.
“I’ve a tale to tell you, enaid,” she whispered, but I
can’t be shouting for the valley to hear.
I drew in close.
There once was a nobleman who owed a great debt to Thrist,
the wolf queen. The nobleman was known throughout the kingdom for his huntsmanship,
and in particular he was known for his skill in tracking wolves. He wore a thick
coat sewn from his most coveted wolf hides. One day in search of a new challenge
he set out alone through the wood on his fastest horse until he found himself
in unfamiliar territory, and soon enough he spotted a large wolf in a clearing.
This was the most magnificent wolf the nobleman had ever seen, with fur the gray
of storm clouds, a strong white muzzle, and eyes that glared glacier blue as if
daring the huntsman to chase, and that’s just what he did.
The nobleman spurred his horse
into a full gallop as the wolf sprinted into the forest. They raced for hours
it seemed between the dense trees, leaping over streams and boulders, all the
time the wolf slipping in and out of his sight. It was thrilling—what a tale
the huntsman would tell when he returned home with his prize!
That’s when it happened. The
woods ended abruptly at the edge of a great cliff. The wolf leapt across the divide,
but the horse sensed his rider’s alarm and hesitation and lurched to a halt. The
huntsman pitched forward, flew from his steed, and hit the ground with such
force that he rolled over the cliff’s edge and fell to what he thought surely would
be his death.
He did not die. Instead,
he landed with a hard thud on a small precipice that jutted out from the cliff.
It was a miracle, really, and as the huntsman stood carefully and dusted his
wolf coat, he congratulated himself on his good fortune. He was battered,
perhaps. The bruises would bloom blue on his pale skin, but he was alive. He marveled a long while at the long drop below, and
it was only when his horse whinnied that he looked back at the place from where
he’d fallen. The cliff face was bare and smooth. There were no holds, no
branches, nothing he could climb. He was trapped, and no one knew he was there.
Except the wolf. She gazed
at him from the other side of the divide, and there was knowing in her eyes.
“Can you help me?” he shouted ridiculously, desperate,
breathless.
And the wolf he’d been pursuing all day, intent on killing, stood tall on hindlegs, and all at once became a woman.
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