Storm Wolf (38 page)

She nodded and led Alexei from the study, bringing the tea tray, loaded with dill fronds. She hoped that Timotej knew what he was about to embark on.

She led Alexei downstairs, through the kitchen, into the small courtyard behind the house. There she indicated the large basin used for washing and vigorously swung the iron pump next to it. Water gushed into the great tub and she tore the dill into fragments floating on the surface.

“You heard the master.” She reached for the blanket, which the man clung to for a moment. It was bright daylight now and he seemed anxious, looking around him.

The maid guessed what was going through Alexei’s mind. “I will hold the blanket for you,” she offered gently. She held the hem of the fabric and Alexei gradually released his hold. She turned her face and heard the man step into the water, heard his gasp as the cold splashed up along his thighs, and then the splash as he submerged himself in the green-flecked water. Then his breath was expelled as he burst again up into the air. It would have been amusing if it were not so serious. She offered him the blanket as he stepped out onto dry ground again, specks of dill clinging to his glistening skin. 

“It will be noon soon enough. Come into the kitchen and have a bite to eat in the meantime.” She led him back into the kitchen, where she clattered about and assembled a small plate of bread and cheese and another pot of tea.

“Stay here. I’ll be back to fetch you as the master instructed.” The maid went off to dress herself and face the rest of the strange day, leaving Alexei wrapped in the sodden blanket, slowly eating. Other servants came and went, but she knew that no one spoke to him. Some likely feared him. Some pitied him. All were confused with wonderment. Like the maid, they had seen magic happen upstairs.

Near noon, dressed in her cap and dress, her hands in the pockets of her great apron, the maid returned. “It is time,” she said simply. Alexei gathered the blanket around him and followed her back to the study upstairs.

The study had been rearranged in Alexei’s absence. All the furniture had been pushed back along the walls and bookcases. The carpets were rolled up along the base of one bookcase. Timotej stood barefoot in the midst of the room, wearing a white robe similar to a nightshirt. He held the knife that the maid had used to cut the dill and holly, as well as a length of string. There were four burning candles set on a nearby table and an open book, which Timotej had evidently been consulting all morning. On a round wooden tray there was a pot of red paint and a brush, an ornate silver cup, and a short staff. A pewter bowl sat on a ceramic tile, chunks of charcoal burning lazily within it, set nearby as well.

“Stand there.” Timotej indicated a point in the middle of the floor. Alexei stepped to where he was directed, the soggy toga still wrapped around him. The blanket snagged on a crooked nail, leaning jauntily out of the floor surface, and Alexei straddled the rust-covered extrusion. Timotej curtly nodded to the maid, dismissing her. Despite his love of an audience at what she was sure would be his first successful act of ceremonial magic, he must have decided that his reputation would be better served by stressing his mysterious authority. Reluctantly, she left the room. The door latched behind her but, once away from Timotej’s gaze, she stopped and turned. Kneeling at the door, she peered through the keyhole, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was about to unfold. One or two of the other servants appeared in the hallway behind her.

Timotej tied one end of the string to the handle of the knife in his hand, then tied the other end to the nail between Alexei’s feet. Pulling the string taut, Timotej traced a wide circle with the knife point around himself and Alexei. Releasing the string from the nail, Timotej placed the knife and string on the table and took up the candles, one by one. Checking a small compass, he placed each candle on the floor along the circle he had scratched in the finish of the wood. The four candles, placed north-east-west-south, were dim in the sunlight that streamed through the window.

Timotej took the pot of paint and brush and squatted beside Alexei’s feet, brushing the paint in three widely spaced lines that formed a triangle. Standing with a grunt and a push, Timotej gave another instruction: “Make sure you stay inside that
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, Alexei. No matter what else happens, keep your feet within the triangle.” Alexei nodded. Timotej replaced the paint and brush on the table and picked up his knife again. Untangling and then removing the string, he then used the blade to retrace the triangle around Alexei’s feet, muttering, “I painted the outline of the triangle so you would make no mistake.” He reiterated his earlier warning: “Keep your feet within it.”

Watching the scene in the study unfold as best she could through the keyhole, the maid was both annoyed and curious. “He breaks the circle too often,” she thought, losing track of the many times Timotej reached across the edge of the circle he had inscribed on the floor to fetch items from the table. Although she had never seen her aunt perform such a ceremony, there were certain basic practices that seemed obvious to the maid, feeling her feet grow numb as she squatted there. The men behind her, growing more curious themselves, drew near and attempted to peer around her through the keyhole.

Alexei could sense a powerful charge building in the room. Something was clearly about to happen. “I hope this is finally what you sent me here to find,” he whispered to his grandparents.

Timotej cast a spoonful of something onto the charcoal, sending a cloud of fragrant smoke hissing into the air. Taking up the knife again, he approached Alexei and, lifting a lock of his wet hair, cut it away—with some difficulty, causing Alexei to jerk his head back with a small cry and glare at the aristocrat. Separating the hair into two thin strands, Timotej cast one onto the charcoal, and the odor of burning hair slowly mingled with the fragrant smoke that still burst in intermittent clouds from the pewter bowl.

Bringing the ornate cup to Alexei next, Timotej directed him: “Drink this.” Alexei took a hesitant sip of the liquid in the cup. Discovering it was spiced wine, fruity and pungent, he finished it quickly. Timotej took back the cup and then brought the staff from the tray.

The wine had rushed to Alexei’s head, causing him to feel slightly dizzy. Timotej, both hands raised over his head, circled Alexei. The staff, in one hand, swatted Alexei’s backside. Between his shoulder blades. Along his shoulders. Across his chest. Across his stomach. In the back of his knees. Not painful, but hard enough to get his attention. Certainly hard enough to cause a brawl, if Timotej had dared to do such a thing in a tavern.

All the while, Alexei could hear Timotej muttering strange names and phrases under his breath. Names of powerful angels or spirits, Alexei supposed. Angels powerful enough to drive the wolf magic from him, even as Timotej beat it from him.

Continuing his muttering and whispering, Timotej cut a small length from the twine on the table and retrieved the remaining strands of Alexei’s hair. Lodging the staff in a pocket of the white robe, he brought the twine and hair to Alexei. He tied the end of the hair to the end of the twine and gave the small knot to Alexei. As Alexei watched, Timotej braided the hair and string, tying a knot every few passes of the hair around the string.

Something changed in the air. Power surged around Timotej and Alexei. Although neither Timotej’s robe nor Alexei’s blanket stirred, what felt like a great wind rushed about in the magic circle. Alexei, careful to keep his feet within the triangle, felt buffeted by both the wind around him and the wine within him. The wind seemed to be twisting and circling about the men in the center, becoming quicker, more forceful as the braiding of hair and string neared its conclusion. With a triumphant exclamation, in a single motion Timotej tied the final knot of the ligature and struck Alexei across the back of the knees one last time. Striding across the floor, he dropped the braid into the cup and then tipped the cup, with its remaining drops of wine and the braid, onto the charcoal, adding another spoonful of the incense. He turned back as Alexei felt himself surrounded by tendrils of smoke.

“The hair should have been cut before the triangle was etched,” the maid commented crossly to the servant men behind her. The men were unsure what she was referring to. The maid watched a bit, then criticized another step in Timotej’s performance of the exorcism. “The hair ought to have all been either burnt or braided, not both.”

Alexei seemed to be growing more unsteady on his feet, whether from the effects of the wine or the power twisting itself around him, the maid was unsure. One of the serving men, knowing how little Alexei had been given to eat that morning, nudged his companion’s ribs with his elbow and both smiled.

The smoke curled more tightly about Alexei’s legs. Alexei showed increasing signs of discomfort, then pain as the seemingly fragile, immaterial ropes wrapped ever tighter. He cringed, bending double and pounding his ears with his fists.

“No!” he screamed. “Not now! Not here!” His face twisted in agony. “Not again!” He dropped the blanket to the floor.

His voice melted into the cries of a tremendous wolf. Fur rippled up his legs and across his back as his body stretched and grew. Long ears becoming pointed, teeth even longer and more sharply pointed, forepaws clawing the air for support, the wolf fell from upright to prone, howling and crying. It was impossible for so large a four-footed creature to fit within the triangle that Timotej had marked in paint and knife scratchings on the floor. His rear legs seemingly frozen in place, his great tail swept back and forth behind it, like a great watchdog warning an intruder that attack was moments away. But the portions of the body that fell outside the confines of the triangle were distinctly human.

Writhing as if in unbearable pain, Alexei’s voice shifted quickly from wolf cry to human to wolf again. Awkwardly splayed across the floor, apparently on his hands and knees, he pushed himself up again, and as he stood, his torso became that of a wolf again as it passed back within the boundaries of the magic triangle. Unable to maintain his balance as a wolf on his rear haunches in the triangle, the beast fell forward, sideways, and back. As a limb reached further than the paint, it was a human arm or leg; as it retracted to within the floor markings, it was a paw with claws extended. The animal’s head, rolling on his shoulders, passed in and out of the triangle, causing a human ear or nose or chin to be seen and vanish again in an instant.

The maid fell back from the door in shock. The men around her, hearing the tumult inside, wrenched the door open before realizing what they might encounter. What befell them was even more terrifying than the transformation they had witnessed in the predawn bedroom. But at least they had seen that calmer, more peaceful transformation. Timotej had simply fainted at the sight of the wolf in his bed and was now witnessing the shapeshifting for the first time. He looked caught in a nightmare, screaming in terror along with the cries of the werewolf.

The wolf lunged forward, jaws snapping at Timotej. Even as the face reached forward, became human, and retracted, becoming a wolf again, Timotej stumbled around the room. He knocked over the empty cup on the table and knocked both the knife and the staff to the floor. Aside from the windows, now blocked by the furniture he had ordered moved about the room, the only way out of the study was the open door, but the wolf stood between the magician and the only available escape route. The maid and the servants had halted at the door. She could hear footsteps, other servants coming running, as the wolf cries and human screaming came through the now-open door.

The wolf turned his attention to the triangle about his feet. With great cries, he pawed and scratched at the floor, tearing up splinters with his claws and snapping his great jaws at the floorboards he upended. Even as he doubled over on himself and struggled with the markings about him, the creature overflowed the magical geometry and continued to hover between man and beast, alternating fur and flesh, tooth and fang.

The man-wolf’s attention momentarily distracted, Timotej seized the opportunity to escape. Darting to one side, he kicked over one of the four candles and dashed for the door, knocking aside the maid and pushing his way through the growing numbers in the hallway. Timotej’s screams were now as loud as the werewolf’s roars, but they faded as he presumably sought refuge somewhere in the house.

Although Timotej had seemed unfettered by the magic circle and the magic triangle he had marked on the study floorboards, the werewolf was unmistakably confined. He continued his mad attempts to smash the wood at his feet and managed to break apart the triangle as Timotej made his way down the hallway.

Baying at the ceiling, the wolf leapt from the remains of the no-longer-magical emblem. The triangle broken, there was no longer any demarcation between wolf and human. The creature that burst into the larger circle was a complete werewolf. No signs of humanity protruded from the fur, no vestiges of human cries mingled with the thunderous howling.

The wolf stood there, shaking his head as if clearing it from distractions. Then, sniffing along the floor, he tested the strength of the circle around him. His nose nudged the rough incisions on the floor as he licked at them, oblivious to any splinters. Coming to the overturned candle, extinguished in the spilling of its own melted wax, he raised his head and howled again in triumph. The wolf jumped across the fallen candle towards the bright windows, but was thrown with tremendous force back across the room, where he crashed into the furniture there.