Authors: Alice Borchardt
When he was finished, he turned wolf again and marked the den. He marked in a way humans don’t understand, the way wolves mark traps.
This is a place of death. Stay away!
Wolves don’t grieve. What he had done showed respect for what she had done and been. No more.
Then he left to join the rest under an overhang where they’d found shelter from the storm.
She is young, Blaze thought disapprovingly as she rode up to Mir’s hut.
Too young to be what she purports to be.
“You are?” he asked.
“Dryas,” she answered. She was mounted on a beautiful blood bay mare. She wore a leather overblouse and a dark, divided skirt that hung almost to her ankles. It was thickly embroidered with gold at the hem. The long brown mantle that covered her shoulders was clasped at her breast by a broach formed of poppy flowers and leaves.
“Did you come through the Roman lines?” Blaze asked. “They patrol the countryside of Gaul everywhere.”
“I wasn’t far away,” she answered. “Most of the ruling men seem to be gone, but a few of their women remain. Some retain power. They wanted my advice on how to survive now that the Roman conquest is complete.” She dismounted, keeping the reins in her hands.
“The answer is, we can’t,” Blaze snapped. “Our only hope is to continue—”
“Oh my, yes,” she said irritably, “and tempt these demons to slaughter and mutilate the remainder of our menfolk and sell more of our women into slavery, a slavery that is only a slower kind of death. Don’t be fools, I told them. Preserve what you can, make any accommodation you must, but live. Teach our traditions to your sons and daughters. The old world is finished. A new has begun, and who knows where it will lead?”
Blaze fixed her with an icy stare. “That is what I would expect of a woman’s counsel. No more. No less. But I didn’t invite you here for a lesson in politics.”
She pulled off her leather cap. A coil of long black hair fell from under it and spread fan-wise down her back, crackling a little with electricity. “I wouldn’t expect you to ask. You
men
have done so wonderfully well up to now. At least half the people in this wretched realm are dead or carried away as slaves. The rest, their lives shattered, scramble for survival among the ruins of all they once held dear. And you, Arch Druid of Gaul, send letters to me asking that I dispatch one of my women—and you dare to specify an attractive one—to play the whore with a . . . a . . . wolf What nonsense have you connived at?”
Blaze’s face went scarlet with fury. He stepped toward her. To do what he had no idea; he’d never struck a woman in his life. But her words scalded the deepest part of his being, the place in his soul where his people’s agony was his own.
She dropped the cap and the horse’s reins and shrugged the mantle aside. She wore a sword. In less than a second, it flashed in the sun. “Back off,” she whispered between bared teeth. “One more step, I take your hand. Another and it will be your head.”
Mir, who had been standing by quietly, just as quietly stepped between them. “For shame,” he said. “For shame,” he repeated, looking at Dryas. “He is unarmed, and I so old a child could overpower me. And it is cruel to berate a brave man over things perhaps no one could change. My girl, outstanding member of your order that you may be, there is a truth that age teaches. We do all we can, but sometimes fate takes us by the throat and we are helpless.”
Dryas stepped back and sheathed her sword. “Forgive me, my father,” she said respectfully to Mir. “I have been long in the saddle. What I have seen here sickens me.”
At this moment, the girl Mir called his wife stepped through the door and looked at Dryas.
“Oh,” Dryas whispered, taking in the vacant stare and the hideously scarred face. “In the name of all good spirits, you didn’t tell me you had this kind of problem.”
Mir stepped aside. “Do what you can,” he said. “I know that those of your order can often ease the despair of those driven beyond reason by private grief, and sometimes even reclaim the lost. Help her if you can.”
The girl drifted toward Dryas, who took her by the hand and led her into the forest.
Blaze was sitting at the table, having some wine, when Mir entered. “How did you find Dryas?” he asked.
“Very like the men,” Mir answered, taking the seat across from him. “It’s disappointing. Somehow one expects more from women. I can’t think why. But we turn to them when we have exhausted our strength and our solutions, as if they don’t share the same weakness and faults we do. As if they might bring a new eye and finally loose the leashings of our Gordian knots without a sword. But I do believe she will help my ‘wife.’ It is the first time I’ve ever seen the child show trust to anyone.”
Dryas entered just then. She carried her mantle and was freshly washed. She, too, took a seat at the table. “I suppose I should be flattered to be compared to a man, but I can’t say that I am, and I have no solutions for your problems. And you, Mir, as for your wife, there’s little enough I can do for her, trust or no. The damage is already done. I left her a few medicines that will ease her pain and even one that will permanently end it, if she so chooses; and I listened to her tale.”
Mir’s head jerked up in surprise. “She spoke!”
“To me, yes,” Dryas said. “We are known to each other. I met her family; they were a great one. She may be the last remaining living member. The Romans killed or enslaved the rest.”
“Then she’s not mad?” Mir asked.
“Oh, yes, she is,” Dryas said. “But she is lucid about certain things sometimes. She can grow most of the simples I left her in the garden. She tends it, does she not?”
“Yes.” Mir nodded.
“By the way,” Dryas asked, “what is her name?”
“I don’t remember.” Mir avoided her gaze.
“Good,” Dryas said. “Continue not to remember. It’s just as well. Now, if you please, give me some of that wine and tell me about the wolf, in that order.”
Mir and Blaze stared at each other. They both looked uncomfortable. Dryas sighed and reached for a cup and the jug herself
“I believe you are the senior,” Mir said guilelessly to Blaze.
“And I believe you are the best acquainted with the problem,” Blaze returned smoothly.
Dryas poured herself some wine. “While you are each trying to get the other to precede you through the door, I believe I’ll have a drink.”
After the mother of the pack died, the winter did not go well. The oldest female, she who knows always where to go to find prey, failed. She died in the grayness; the stony hardness of midwinter. She lay down to sleep in the snow with the rest and did not awaken in the morning. He was deprived of her counsel as well.
The virgin females fought with escalating fury for the position of pack mother. The most promising two inflicted such dreadful injuries on each other that both died, leaving a third the winner by default. This greatly cut the pack’s hunting ability since they had been the swiftest and most dangerous killers. Their loss taxed all his cunning and ability.
In the spring he was, of course, at the disposal of the winning female. She was a rangy, nervous bitch, very jealous of her prerogatives as pack mother. She constantly harassed the remaining females. This led to endless squabbling and ill temper among the younger pack members.
Despite his feeling of coldness toward her, he would have accommodated her desires. She had, after all, earned the mother right. This was what pack law demanded of him—that he meet her graciously as a mate and then assist in rearing her offspring.
But to his mild surprise, she showed no interest in him at all and took up with two males who were all that remained of the pack destroyed by the Romans. This was also her right, that she choose her own partners if she wished. He might have asserted himself more strongly. Other leaders would have, but he was more relieved than otherwise at her decision and left her alone.
She returned from her forays, finally satisfied, pregnant, and much calmer than when she left, and he found himself pleased not to be bothered about her needs. And besides, he had already met the strawberry-blond woman at the pool.
The woman came from the small village of herdsmen and farmers, down the slope and to the pond to refresh herself in the cool water, bathe, and dress her thick, reddish blond hair. She was wide hipped; her breasts were large, upright with only a slight droop. The nipples jutted invitingly. Her skin was very fair, and he noticed she kept to the shade. That skin didn’t tan; it probably burned. She was covered head to toe with freckles.
He grew accustomed to seeing her each day as he dozed on the flat rock overlooking the waterfall. He thought she looked delectable, but not in the manner of food. Usually she left when the sun was high in the sky. The pool, even at midsummer, could become very cool in the afternoon when the sun’s rays no longer shone on it and the forest shadow crept in.
He found the change difficult and sometimes impossible by day. By the time he felt the long evening shadows pull at his flesh and he could sense a bridge forming between his world and the human’s, she was gone.
Just as well,
he thought. A few times he was tempted to slink after her when she returned to the rath where she lived. Once or twice he even entertained the fantasy of entering the circular, thatched dwelling by night. He wasn’t blind in even the deepest darkness. He knew her scents. They were in certain ways more real to him than the way she looked.
Often, after bathing, she took her ease in one of the few sunny spots not choked by undergrowth or shadowed by ancient trees. The big granite rock was buried, but enough of it thrust into the water to create a platform a few feet above the lake. The top was too bare to sustain growth, but it was thickly carpeted with pine and fir needles. It got sun three or four hours a day. The radiant light would peer down, deep down, into the lake’s clear water, flashing on pike, trout, and the occasional small sturgeon that would come and go like ghosts in the gloom.
All year, except during the darkest months, wild flowers surrounded the pine-needle carpet. Mother of thyme would rise from beneath the snow and twine with blue-flowered bergamot mint. Violets bloomed in the springtime, white, deepest purple, yellow. Later in summer wild carrots, the yellow composite daisies, sunflowers, and dandelions lit up the thickening grass. Harebells peered from the shelter of tall pines, hiding their drooping beauty in the shade of tile-barked trunks and thick, clustered needles.
All unknowing she left her mark on the fallen brown needles. For instance, he knew that desire rose in her, answering the moon queen’s magnetism at least three times a week. He didn’t know where she expressed that desire since she came to the lake alone. Her skin had a flowerlike scent. It took him a while to understand the smell wasn’t just satiny flesh, but the oil of roses she anointed herself with after her bath. The smell at her armpits in the heat was mildly oniony—sweet, wild onions wrapped in clay and caramelized by a fire. When she was gone, he drifted down to drink in her complex perfume and sometimes roll on the pine carpet near the trees.
Of course, one day, perhaps accidentally, perhaps inevitably, she remained too long. She came rather late in the afternoon. The water was in shadow, but the trees on the slopes and the little clearing were suffused with golden light. She took a quick swim. The water was icy, and she retreated quickly to shore to rest in her usual spot, and let the late-afternoon sun warm her chilled body.
She stretched out on her perch. The wolf could also feel her languor, the relaxation as the deep heat flowed through her and the fiery light shone orange through her eyelids. He was a bit surprised when the fingers of her right hand sought her groin. It took him a few seconds to comprehend what she was doing. Then he understood and watched avidly.
She had some swelling and moisture that brightened the red-gold hairs on her vulva. They shone gilt blond in the sun. Her lips parted slightly. He could see the tip of her tongue between them. Finally, her back arched. The expression of deep concentration became a quiet smile. She heaved a deep breath as the first wave broke over her, then a second gasp and a soft “Oh” as the one following caught her up in its greater intensity. Her hips began to pound as if she entertained an invisible lover. Her belly muscles tightened as her hips closed on the dream penis. Then she sighed deeply, reminding him strangely of the mother of the pack. She relaxed bonelessly, sighed again with pleasure and satisfaction, then slept.
The wolf rose to his feet. His decision was made. He was cursed, and yet delight coursed like pure fire in his veins. He remembered the glade. He and the wolves knew more of the Lady who dwelt there than humans did, because they had sometimes seen her shadow walking there. No one had ever seen her face and lived. A few caught sight of her in the pool when they stooped to drink. No one, brute or human, ever turned to stare directly at what gazed down into the water over their shoulder. But he knew he had just seen one of her images mirrored in a human face.
She awakened, a bit alarmed to see that it was late, the sun long behind the mountain and lighting only the rocky slopes above the tree line. She rose quickly, wrapped herself in her mantle, ready to hurry up the well-beaten path between the trees. When she lifted her head, her breath caught in her throat.
He was standing only a few feet away. Naked, but clothed in profound beauty. She had married, she had taken lovers, and she was something of a maven where looks were concerned; he was the most magnificent specimen she’d ever seen. Frank, open desire burned in his eyes: a question, a plea, a promise, an urgency, and last but not least, a command.
“Well, well, well,” Dryas chuckled, “he certainly wasted no time taking you down a peg.”
“Thank you for reminding me,” Blaze said sourly.
“What do you want me to do about him?” she asked.
“Kill him,” Mir said.
Dryas burst out laughing. She leaped to her feet, then kicked the chair across the room. It clattered across the ramshackle hut and crashed into the wall.