Storm Wolf (42 page)

Alexei reached into his mind, searching for the wolf magic that had not touched him in the more than one hundred years his corpse had been in the river. There seemed to be nothing there. Had the wolf magic evaporated when he had jumped from the bridge into the river?

“Alexei, no!” barked Timotej. “That is madness! No one can fight Jarnvithja and win! If that were possible, don’t you think we would have already done so? Or that someone would have done so, long ago? Come back with me, back into the depths of the river near the Charles Bridge, where we can shelter in the arches beneath the bridge!”

Alexei searched within himself again. Surely the wolf magic that had been so out of control during his lifetime and caused him so much pain and destruction was still within him.

“No, Timotej.” Alexei never took his eyes from Jarnvithja. She spread out both hands as if to snatch him if he tried to swim past her.

Alexei felt a glimmer, a twitch of the wolf magic. But it was buried deep. And it was nothing more than a spark. Maybe that was all that was left of the destructive, transformative power? Could he stoke the power of the wolf magic somehow? He attempted to add his yearning and desire to the wolf magic. Would that kindle the spark? Nothing.

“Go ahead,” the troll urged Alexei. For a moment, Alexei thought her face was that of Frau Berhta. Her voice carried overtones similar to those of the Master of Wolves and the man-wolf in the Lithuanian forest. Not unlike Timotej at times. “Swim past me and gain your freedom. Or not.” She stretched and swept her talons through the current. Glittering sparks sizzled in the water as she gathered her power.

Alexei hovered in the water, gently moving his flippers about. Then he lunged at Jarnvithja, hoping at least that his lithe seal companion might be able to elude the troll’s grasp, and as he shot forward, the seal’s head and torso wavered and shimmered as they became the head and torso and forelegs of a great wolf.

The wolf, nearly as large as Jarnvithja, sank its fangs into the troll’s throat, and in attacking the troll, Alexei was attacking everyone and everything that had conspired to keep him trapped in his misery ever since the brutal slaying of his wife and children. Jarnvithja reached around and wrapped her claws in the long fur at the base of the wolf’s head, between his shoulders, and wrenched it off herself. She threw the wolf through the water.

“Alexei!” screamed Timotej. “This is madness! Stop!”

The wolf paid Timotej no heed, turning a somersault in the water and lunging at Jarnvithja again. This time his fangs sank deep into her shoulder. She reached for the base of his neck again with her other hand, but the wolf shook his head from side to side, his teeth locked around her shoulder. She was thrown off balance, and then he threw her across the river’s bed, great tendrils of dark blood curling in the water away from her ragged throat and torn shoulder, then carried away in the current.

Furious at the wolf, Jarnvithja attempted her own wild jump back from the bottom of the river, her cloak tangling about her as her wounds seemed to heal, the blood congealing and then ceasing to flow. The wolf jumped on her back, trying to get his jaws around the base of the troll’s neck. She reached back with both her hands, pulled the wolf off her shoulders, and threw him away from her, back towards the Charles Bridge.

Alexei’s wolf head struck a large boulder, and he hung there in the water, dazed. Jarnvithja strode toward him.

“This will be the last time you will try to escape from me!” she cried. “And you!” She turned and pointed at Timotej. “I will let you live only to tell the tale to any of the others who think again to escape my dominion that they have no chance to succeed!”

She clutched Alexei’s throat with both hands. He struggled against her as she throttled him. He tried to paddle backwards, but could not wrench himself free from her grasp.

“You will die here again, at the bottom of the river,” Jarnvithja gloated. She pressed her thumbs even more tightly against the wolf’s thick throat, and Alexei felt the muscles and tendons give way. The wolf gargled and thrashed but could not pull himself free.

But then Bara, the third seal who had been watching all this, darted out of the shadows of the river bottom and slapped her flipper against Jarnvithja’s cheek. Startled, she turned to the seal.

The seal slapped her again, across the face this time.

“You miserable, wretched creature!” the troll fumed at the seal, and Alexei felt her grip loosen for just an instant. He braced his paws against her and then pushed himself free, turning a somersault as he did so, and closed his jaws around her face, remembering how Gosia had closed her mouth around Frau Berhta’s face. Massive ropes of blood spilled into the river.

The wolf shook his head from side to side, his fangs and teeth ripping shards of flesh from Jarnvithja. Then, with a powerful thrust, he tore away what remained of her face and jumped over her shoulder towards the freedom beyond the edges of her dominion.

Timotej hurried after the other two, leaving the troll doubled over and clutching at her face, howling into the current.

Immediately, Alexei braced himself for the sharp pricks of the invisible barbs along the filaments of the magical net stretched across the river. He felt them, and then…

Myska turned a somersault. Having come to the net, she had let the river carry her forward and past the magic barrier, slipping into the depths of the river on the other side, free and unharmed. Bara rolled over onto her back and barked in welcome.

Alexei shouted with joy within Myska. The seal had passed through the net and he, within the seal, had passed through the net as well. He was free! For the first time in more than a hundred years, he was free of the troll!

Myska and Alexei saw Gaston playing in the water beside them as well, having also slipped through the dangerous net. “Timotej?” asked Alexei. “Are you there?”

“Escaped! We escaped!” cried Timotej from within Gaston. “We came through the net! Free of Jarnvithja! At last!” Timotej’s voice trembled as if he were about to burst into tears of relief. “Now we can go far from here and never hear that dreadful troll again!”

“No. No, we cannot,” answered Alexei quietly. “There is something wrong, dreadfully wrong happening here. Here in Prague. You know that as well as I do. You’ve smelled the foul magic in the water as clearly as I have these past few days. We cannot simply run away and let Jarnvithja and whoever she is working with destroy the city. We are finally in a position to oppose her. Surely we must turn and fight, not keep running away?”

“Turn and fight!” screamed Timotej. “Are you mad? Have all these years trapped in this river destroyed any sense you had left in you? We cannot stay here. She will only find a way to trap us again. I cannot be trapped here again!”

“It was madness that drove us both to our deaths in the river,” Alexei told Timotej. “It is not madness but sanity that demands we turn and fight her that enslaved us—and so many others—for so long.”

“But we cannot win against her!” argued Timotej. “She is too strong! That foul magic in the river has only made her stronger! There is no fighting her… Only escape!” Gaston’s head jerked suddenly, gesturing over his shoulder away from Prague. The seal yelped. Bara swam in circles around Gaston, seemingly unsure of how to help him.

“There may be no winning against her, but that does not mean that there is no fighting her!” insisted Alexei. “That much we can do. That much I must do.”

Alexei felt an odd sensation ripple through Myska’s muscles and internal organs. She shivered and the breath caught in her throat. She struggled to keep paddling against the current. Then...

Alexei materialized on the riverbank, his hair hanging limp and damp across his forehead and heavy drops of river water cascading down his face.

“We can fight her, Timotej!” called Alexei from the shore. “We must!”

“Must? The only ‘must’ I know is that we must flee. Now! While we can!” Timotej shouted back from within Gaston. “She may already be on her way to recapture us and strengthen the net against the living as well, stopping even these seals from passing safely through it again! Now, Alexei! We must flee now!” Again Timotej wrenched Gaston’s face away from the other seals and towards the north. Gaston yelped again in pain.

“No! Timotej, wait!” Alexei shivered on the riverbank, wet and cold. He saw Gaston turn a somersault in the water and catapult forward, driven by the drowned man within him.

Myska and Bara, perplexed and not quite understanding what was happening, peered after Gaston.

“I will not wait to be recaptured by Jarnvithja!” Even as his body surged ahead in the river, Gaston turned his head to peer back over his shoulder at the other two seals. Understanding the pleading look in his eyes, the two seals dashed forward, struggling to catch up with Gaston, who now darted below the waves.

Alexei watched the seals disappear in the river. “Poor Gaston!” he muttered, cursing at the fearful Timotej, who had apparently taken Gaston captive. “But there is nothing I can do about that now.”

He turned his face back towards Prague. He could see green-black storm clouds seething over the castle on the bluff overlooking the river. Lightning flickered in the clouds’ dark folds, and Alexei guessed it was near the Charles Bridge in the center of the city. This was a storm like he had fought back home in Estonia. But it was more than that. Even at this distance he could see that the storm hid within it another presence, a jealous and vindictive presence more determined on destruction than any of the storms he had encountered while alive.

“But am I able to control the wolf magic any more now than I could before I died?” Alexei asked himself. Could he call on the wolf magic now that he had escaped the watery clutches of that prison? Could he use the magic to fight the presence in the storm clouds and not destroy innocent people? There was only one way to know.

Alexei trotted along the riverbank, back toward the castle and the congealing thunderclouds above it. He felt his feet leave the earth and run through the air, above the river, and then his shoulders grew too heavy, and he dropped forward and used his hands as well as his feet to propel himself forward. He expected to see his hands change into the forepaws of the wolf… But then a tremendous explosion of magical power burst from the clouds over the Charles Bridge and knocked Alexei from the sky.

Gradually, he realized that he was stretched out along a rooftop. Every muscle ached, either from the explosion or from his collision with the housetop. He struggled to stand and look around. Light shone in his eyes and he had to turn his head aside, stumbling to a halt. He could not see where he was going and stood upright again, reaching out with one hand toward the brightness and covering his eyes with the other.

“Alexei.” He heard his name. A voice. A woman’s voice. His breath caught and his heart leapt. Could he dare to hope? Afraid to hope but unable to not hope, he pulled his palm away from his eyes.

Four figures stood in the light, gowns and skirts and aprons fluttering in the air around them. Three he recognized—Spīdala, Vakarė, and Beatrycze, standing in a row and reaching out towards him—but the fourth, standing between Vakarė and Beatrycze, he had not seen since that terrible day back in Estonia when he had come back into his human self and discovered the carnage in his home.

Grete stood there, whole and sound and unharmed. She reached out to him with one hand and Alexei saw she held their newest baby in the crook of her other arm. Their other two children peered from around her legs and hips and then burst out stumbling towards him.

“Daddy!” they called happily. “Daddy!”

Alexei stood there, unable to move, and then stumbled forward, reaching down to catch them in his arms and pull them to him. “How… why?” He clutched them to himself and buried his face in their hair, kissing them and calling their names as they laughed and embraced him. He looked at Grete, not understanding what was happening.

“We’ve come to take you home.” Grete smiled at him. “You are free now—you were free of the wolf magic once you died and now you are free of your prison in the river.”

He clutched the children to him more tightly. “But… how can you… can you ever… forgive me?” The words caught in his throat. He turned his face away, tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt his face burn with shame and he choked on the grief he had caused his family.

Grete reached out and touched his shoulder. He dared to glance at her and then squeezed his eyes shut.

“I do forgive you,” she said quietly. “We all do.”

Alexei dared not believe what he was hearing.

“I was angry,” his wife went on. “At first. I confess. I was furious with you. But your grandfather Edvin explained what happened, how you had lost control of the wolf magic through no fault of your own but by simply trying to protect us—protect us from the storms and protect the horses from the hungry wolves. It was not really you that killed us, Alexei. It was the
libahunt
that you became. I forgive you. We all do,” she repeated.

Alexei wept with joy, clutching the children more tightly. Grete pulled his head onto her shoulder, and they stood there, Alexei shaking and weeping at being reunited with his family.

At last he pulled his tear-stained face from Greta’s shoulder and faced her again.

“But—the storm? Prague? We cannot just leave…”