And the moon. Oh, the moon!
The wolf’s eye saw it differently. An endlessly fascinating silver hole in the night, sometimes edged with bright blue, sometimes crimson, sometimes a hue that was beyond description. The moonlight fell in silver spears, lighting the forest like a cathedral. It was the most beautiful glow Mikhail had ever seen, and in that awesome beauty the wolves—even three-legged Franco—gathered on high rocks and sang. The songs were paeans of mingled joy and sadness: We are alive, the songs said, and we wish to live forever. But life is a passing thing, as the moon passes across the sky, and all the eyes of wolves and men must grow dim, and close.
But we’ll sing, while there’s such a light as this!
Mikhail ran for the thrill of running. Sometimes, when he returned to human form after hours spent on four legs, he had trouble balancing on two. They were weak, white stalks, and you couldn’t get them to go fast enough. Speed was what entranced Mikhail; the ability of movement, of cutting left and right and having a tail that acted like a rudder keeping your balance in turns. Wiktor said he was becoming too enraptured with his wolf’s body, and neglecting his studies. It wasn’t only the changing of shape that made the miracle, Wiktor told him; it was the brain in the wolf’s skull that could follow a scent of an injured stag on the wind and recite Shakespeare at the same time.
He burst through the underbrush and found a pond in a hollow rimmed with rocks. The fragrance of the cool water on such a hot, dusty day was a beckoning perfume. There were still some things a human boy could do better than a wolf, and one of them was swimming. He rolled in the soft grass for the mighty pleasure of it. Then he lay on his side, panting, and let the change come over him. How this worked exactly was still a mystery to him: it began by imagining himself as a boy, just as he imagined himself a wolf when he desired to change in the other direction. The more complete and detailed he saw himself in his mind’s eye, the faster and smoother the change. It was a matter of concentration, of training the mind. Of course there were problems; sometimes an arm or leg refused to obey, and once his head had balked. All this led to much merriment for the other members of the pack, but considerable discomfort for Mikhail. But with practice he was getting better. As Wiktor told him, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Mikhail leaped into the water, and it closed over his head. He came up spouting, and then he arched his white body and dove into the depths. As he stroked along the rocky bottom, he remembered how and where he’d first learned to swim: as a child, under the tutelage of his mother, in a huge indoor pool in St. Petersburg. Had that been him, really? A pampered, shy youth who wore shirts with high starched collars and took piano lessons? That seemed like a foreign world now, and all the people who had inhabited it had almost faded away. Nothing was real, except this life and the forest.
He shot up to the surface, and as he shook the water from his hair he heard her laugh.
Startled, he looked around and saw her. She was sitting on a rock, her long hair the color of spun gold in the sunlight. Alekza was as naked as he, but her body was infinitely more interesting. “Oh look!” she said teasingly. “What a minnow I’ve found!”
Mikhail treaded water. “What are you doing out here?”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Swimming,” he answered. “What does it look like?”
“It looks silly. Cool, but silly.”
She couldn’t swim, he thought. Had she followed him from the white palace? “It is cool,” he told her. “Especially after you run.” He could tell that Alekza had been running; her body was moist with a fine sheen of sweat.
Alekza carefully eased down on the rock, reached forward, and cupped a hand into the water. She lifted it to her mouth and lapped it like an animal, then poured the rest of it over the golden down between her thighs. “Oh yes,” she said, and smiled at him. “It is cool, isn’t it?”
Mikhail was beginning to feel much warmer. He swam away from her, but it was a small pond. He swam in circles, pretending that he didn’t even notice as she stretched out against the rock and offered her body to the sun. And, of course, to his gaze. He averted his face. What was wrong with him? Lately, through the spring and now into the summer, Alekza had been much on his mind. Her blond hair, her ice-blue eyes when she was in her human form, her blond fur and proud tail when she was wolfen. The mystery between her thighs pulled at him. He’d had dreams … no, no, those were indecent.
“You have a beautiful back,” she told him. Her voice was soft; there was something pliable in it. “It looks so strong.”
He swam a little faster. Maybe to make the muscles of his back tense, maybe not.
“When you come out,” Alekza said, “I’ll dry you off.”
Mikhail’s penis had already guessed at how that was to be accomplished and grown hard as the rock Alekza perched on. He kept swimming as Alekza sunned herself and waited.
He could stay in the pond until she got tired and went back home, he thought. She was an animal: that’s what Renati said about her. But, as Mikhail’s swimming began to slow and his heart pounded with an unknown passion, he knew his time with Alekza would be soon, if not today. She wanted him, wanted what he had. And he was curious; there were lessons Wiktor could not teach. Alekza was waiting, and the sun was hot. Its glare off the water made him feel dizzy. He made two more circles, turning the situation over in his mind. A vital part of him had already made its decision.
He pulled himself out of the water, feeling a mixture of longing and fear as he watched Alekza stand up, her breasts drawing tight as she looked at what he offered, she came down off the rock, and he stood in the grass and waited.
She took his hand, guided him into the shade, and there he lay down on a bed of moss. She knelt beside him. Alekza was beautiful, though up close Mikhail could see that lines had deepened around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. The wolf’s life was hard, and Alekza was no longer a maiden. But her ice-blue eyes promised pleasures beyond his dreams, and she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. He had a lot to learn about the art of love; his first lesson had begun.
Alekza made good her promise to dry him off, using her tongue. She began at the south and crawled ever so slowly northward, licking dry his legs, slowly lapping the water that beaded on his shivering skin.
She came to his blood-gorged center, and there she displayed the true quality of an animal: the love of fresh meat. Alekza engulfed him, as Mikhail moaned and sank his fingers into her hair. Like an animal also, she was fond of using her teeth, and she bit and licked up and down as pressure rapidly built in his loins. He heard a roaring in his head, and luminous streaks leaped through his brain like summer lightning. Alekza’s warm mouth held him, her fingers squeezing at the base of his testicles. He felt his body convulse, a movement that was beyond his control, and for a number of seconds his muscles tensed as if they were about to rip through the flesh. The lightning in his brain danced, striking his nerves and flaming them. He groaned: a bestial sound.
Alekza released her grip on him and watched the seed fountain from Mikhail’s body. He convulsed a second time, and delivered another hot white explosion. She smiled, proud of her power over this young flesh; then, as Mikhail’s banner began to droop, she continued her journey of the tongue across his stomach, over his chest, and playing circles around and around on his skin. Goose bumps seethed in the wake of her passage. Mikhail began to harden again, and as his mind cleared from its initial delirium he realized now that there was more to be learned than the monks had ever dreamed.
Their mouths met, and lingered. Alekza bit at his tongue and lips, she grasped his hands and placed them on her breasts, and then she sat astride his thighs and eased herself down on him. They were connected, a pulse clenched within moist heat. Alekza’s hips began a slow rhythm that gradually increased in power and intensity, her eyes staring into his and her face and breasts glistening with sweat. Mikhail was a fast student; he rocked deeper into her, meeting her movements, and
as their thrusts became harder and more urgent, Alekza threw back her head, her golden hair cascading around her shoulders, and cried out with joy.
He felt her shudder, her eyes closed and her lips making soft moaning noises. She offered her breasts to his kisses, her hips moving in tight, hard circles, and then Mikhail was overcome by that uncontrollable convulsion again. As his muscles tensed and the blood roared through his veins, a bounty of his essence exploded into Alekza’s warm wetness. He felt stretched, his bones throbbing with swampy heat. The sky might have crashed down on his face like blue glass, and he wouldn’t have cared. He drifted in an unknown land, but one thing he was certain of: he liked this place, very much. And he wanted to go back again as soon as he could manage the journey.
He was ready again faster than he would have thought. Body to body, he and Alekza rolled over the bed of moss, out of the shade and into the sunlight. Now she was underneath him, her legs up over his hips, and she laughed at his eagerness as he plunged deep again. This was better than swimming; he couldn’t find the bottom of Alekza’s pond. The sun beat down on them, its heat making their flesh wet and melding them together. It burned away the last vestiges of Mikhail’s shyness, as well, and he met her thrusts with steady power. Her thighs were pressed against his sides, her mouth urging at his tongue, his back arching as he stroked in her depths.
As their bodies moved again through tension toward release, it happened without warning. Blond hair scurried over Alekza’s stomach, over her thighs and arms. She gasped, her eyes dazed with pleasure, and Mikhail caught her wild, pungent odor. That smell triggered the wolf in him, and black hair rippled over his back, underneath her clenching fingers. Alekza contorted and began to change, her gritted teeth lengthening into fangs, her beautiful face taking on another form of beauty. Mikhail, still embraced within her, let himself go, too; black hair emerged over his shoulders, his arms, buttocks, and legs. Their bodies writhed in a mingling of passion and pain, and they turned and angled so the body that was becoming a black wolf was mounting the emergent blond wolf from behind. And in the instant before the change became complete, Mikhail shuddered as his seed entered Alekza. The pleasure overwhelmed him, and he threw back his head and howled. Alekza joined his singing, their voices combining in harmony, breaking apart and combining again: another kind of lovemaking.
Mikhail pulled out of her. The spirit was still willing, but the black-haired testicles were drained. Alekza rolled in the grass, then jumped up and ran in circles, snapping at her tail. Mikhail tried to run, too, but his legs gave way and he lay in the sun with his tongue hanging out. Alekza nuzzled him, rolled him over, and licked his belly. He basked in the attention, his eyes heavy-lidded, and he thought that there would never be another day like this one.
As the sun began to sink and the sky turned red, Alekza picked up the scent of a rabbit in the breeze. She and Mikhail started following it, racing each other through the woods to see who could track down the rabbit first, and as they ran they bounded back and forth over each other, happy as any lovers on earth.
2
THIS WAS A GOLDEN time. As autumn passed into winter, Mikhail’s continued dalliances with Alekza resulted in the swelling of her belly. Wiktor demanded more and more of Mikhail’s time as the days shortened and the frost bloomed; the lessons had advanced, and now involved higher mathematics, theories of civilization, religion, and philosophy. But Mikhail, amazingly even to himself, found his mind craving knowledge just as his body craved Alekza. A double doorway had been opened: one to the mysteries of sex, one to the questions of life. Mikhail sat without fidgeting as Wiktor pushed him to think; and not only to think, but to make up his own mind about things. In their discussion of religion, Wiktor raised a question that had no answer: “What is the lycanthrope, in the eye of God? A cursed beast, or a child of miracle?”
The winter was a rare animal: a comparatively mild few months in which there were only three blizzards and hunting was almost always easy. It passed, and spring came again, and the pack counted itself blessed. Renati came with news one morning in May: two travelers—a man and a woman—in a wagon on the forest road. Their horse would be good meat, and they might bring the travelers into the fold. Wiktor agreed; the pack, now numbering only five members, could stand some new blood.
It was done with military precision. Nikita and Mikhail stalked the wagon on either side of the road while Renati followed behind and Wiktor went ahead to choose the place of ambush. The signal was given: Wiktor’s strong voice, calling out as the wagon rumbled along beneath the dense pines. At once Nikita and Mikhail struck from both sides, leaping from the underbrush, and Renati bounded in from the rear. Wiktor jumped out of his hiding place, making the horse scream and leap in its traces. Mikhail saw the panic-stricken faces of the travelers; the man was bearded and thin, the woman dressed in a peasant’s sackcloth. Nikita went for the man, biting into the forearm and dragging him off the wagon. Mikhail started to strike for the woman’s shoulder, as Wiktor had instructed him, but he paused with his fangs bared and the saliva drooling. He remembered his own agony, and he couldn’t bear to put another human being through that torment. The woman screamed, her hands up before her face. And then Renati leaped up onto the wagon, sank her fangs into the woman’s shoulder, and knocked her to the ground. Wiktor sprang for the horse’s throat, hanging on as the horse began to run. The animal didn’t get very far before Wiktor brought it down, but Wiktor came out of the encounter covered with scrapes and ugly blue bruises.
In the depths of the white palace, the man died during his rite of passage. The woman survived, at least in body. Her mind, however, did not. She spent all her time huddled up in a corner, her back against the wall, sobbing and praying. No one could get her to speak anything but gibberish, not even to say her name or where she was from. She prayed night and day for death, until finally Wiktor gave her what she asked for, and put her out of her misery. On that day the pack hardly spoke to each other; Mikhail went running far away and back, and one word kept repeating itself over and over in his mind: monster.
Alekza gave birth, at the zenith of summer. Mikhail watched the infant emerge, and when Alekza asked eagerly, “Is it a boy? Is it a boy?” Renati mopped her brow and answered, “Yes. A fine, healthy son.”
The infant lived through its first week. Alekza named him Petyr, after an uncle she remembered from her childhood. Petyr had strong lungs, and Mikhail liked to sing along with him. Even Franco—whose heart had been softened as he learned to get about on three legs—was entranced by the child, but it was Wiktor who spent the most time near the newborn, watching with his amber eyes as Petyr suckled. Alekza giggled like a schoolgirl as she held the infant, but everyone knew what Wiktor was looking for: the first signs of the war between wolf and human in the child’s body. Either it would survive that war, and the body would make a truce between its natures, or it would not. Another week passed, then a month; Petyr still survived, still squalled and suckled.
Winds lashed the forest. A rainstorm was coming; the pack could smell its sweetness. But this was the night of the summer’s last train, on its way east to be caged until next season. Both Nikita and Mikhail had come to see the train as a living thing, as night after night they raced it along the tracks, beginning in human form and trying to cross in front of it as wolves before it roared into the eastern tunnel. They both were getting faster, but it seemed that the train was getting faster, too. Possibly a new engineer, Nikita had said. This man doesn’t know the meaning of brakes. Mikhail agreed; the train had begun to come out of the western tunnel like a hell-bent demon, racing to reach home before the dawn light turned its heart to iron. Twice Nikita had completed the change and almost made the leap that would carry him through the beam of the train’s cyclopean eye, but the train had picked up speed with a gout of black smoke and a rain of cinders and at the last second Nikita’s nerve had faltered. The red lamp on the train’s last car swung as if in mockery, and the light glowed in Nikita’s eyes until it faded
away in the long tunnel.
As the pines and oaks swayed on either side of the ravine and all the world seemed in tumultuous motion, Mikhail and Nikita waited in the dark for the summer’s last train. Both of them were naked, having run from the white palace as wolves. They sat on the edge of the tracks, near the western tunnel’s opening, and every so often Nikita would reach out and touch the rails, expecting to feel a trembling. “He’s late,” Nikita said. “He’ll be going faster than ever, trying to make up the time.”
Mikhail nodded thoughtfully and chewed on a weed. He looked up, watching the clouds move like plates of metal in the sky. Then he touched the rails; they were silent. “Maybe he broke down.”
“Maybe he did,” Nikita agreed. Then, frowning: “No, no! It’s the final run! They’ll get that train home tonight if they have to push it!” He tore up a clump of grass and, getting impatient, watched it fly before the wind. “The train will be here,” he said.
They were silent for a few moments, listening to the noise of the trees. Mikhail asked, “Do you think he’ll live?”