The Black Wolf's Mark (5 page)

Chapter 12

Norton returns home and sees his mother and his female cousin in the living room waiting for news of the boy.

The young boy closes the door behind him and he walks quite annoyed in the direction of his mother and his female cousin.

“People in the village said Zidane leapt from a precipice, and most likely he won’t come out of it alive.”

Amarilis runs as she upholds her body against the wall and she locks herself in her bedroom.

The young woman walks in the direction of her single bed and holds the boy’s black shirt firmly.

“You cannot die! Do you hear me? You can’t!”

She brings the shirt up to her face and this soothes her despair while she inhales his smell.

Chapter 13

The following morning, people in the village continue the search around the abyss and also around the river. However, they don’t find any tracks regarding the boy and due to this they think the boy really didn’t survive that fall or the river waters.

Quite far from the village a boy opens his eyes and he sees a brown color before them . Then, he closes his dark eyes and opens them again soon after.

As he looks around him he sees the ceiling of a cave. His hands touch his own body and he realises he is completely nude.

“My clothes
?”

He asks at the same time as he stares at himself and a faraway voice answers, “Your clothes are
drying.”

Zidane glances to his left and sees an  old man with long grizzled hair and his extensive beard goes  down to his stomach and his clothes are as old as he is.

“I want to advise you that I found you with no shirt.”

“Who are
you?” Zidane asks impatiently. “Give back my clothes! I’m not used to being without them!”

The old man with the long beard catches an old mantle and throws it in the direction of the boy and Zidane holds firm
ly the rough fabrics and he makes a grimace.

“What’s this?”

“These are your provisional clothes.”

“Are you serious? Are you? I won’t cover my body with this! I just want my pants and my boots back!”

“And you’ll have them back − you just need to wait till they are entirely dry.”             

When the old man finally convinces Zidane to put the old mantle over his body, then the boy wraps the cloth round his wai
st and hides his private parts.

“How did you find me?” Zidane asks after some time.

“I was walking early in the morning around the forest and then I saw you were unconscious near the river’s edge.” He holds some red apples. “Are you hungry?”

“What
did you find?” Zidane sits on a seat that was sculptured of stone.

“Catch
this!”

The old man exclaims and throws a red apple in the direction of the boy and he holds it firmly with his hands. And Zidane gazes at the apple in his hands and that makes him remember a person.

“What does the flower look like?” Amarilis had asked him.

“The flower is red like an apple.”

“Apples are red?” she asked.

“Some
of them.”

And Zidane awakes from the memories of his past in the company of Amarilis, when he feels another apple reach his forehead.

“Ai! That hurts!” Zidane mutters as he stares at the old man.

“I gave you this apple to bite it and not to admire it as if it was a beautiful woman before you.”

The boy bites the apple and looks down at the ground.

“This red apple made me remember a person.”

“I bet you half a crown that this person is a woman.”

“Have you seen a man yet remembering another man?” Zidane
replies.

“Perhaps you could have remembered your father,” the old man deduces.

The boy gazes at the apple and confesses in an unhappy voice,“I didn’t know my father.”

“I
already knew that.” The old man says as he looks at the boy and Zidane raises his head, stares at the old man and asks him in surprise, “How did you already know that?”

“I knew when I saw the black wolf’s mark on your back.”

Chapter 14

Zidane is seated on the top of a rock beside the long bearded old man, and Zidane is dressed in black pants and also in his boots.

They are drinking an herbal tea that the old man prepared in a bottle gourd. They swallow this liquid through a straw that was made from a stalk of a plant.

“Have you never known what this mark on your back signifies?”  The old man asks him.

“Not until last night.” Zidane answers giving a cough, after he takes a huge gulp of the herbal tea.

“You’re a boy in luck!”

“Luck? Me?” His voice was ironic. “I have no family, I am being hunted like a savage animal because of this cursed mark, and the girl I love is sentenced to die before her twenty first birthday.”

“Perhaps you could be dead, without the knowledge of the  people and mainly this girl for whom you have strong feelings.”

“What do you understand about my life? −And also about this mark on my back?” he asks as he looks annoyed at the old man.

The wise old man answers him with a rude gaze like one who has lived more time than him.

“I know much more than you can imagine.”

“Upon
my soul! Then you start telling me all that you know!”

“Are you sure that you’re ready to hear the entire truth?”

“Start! I’m ready to hear it.”

The old man stands up, walks to the boy and stops behind him and his hand touches the engraving on the left side of his lung and the old man starts saying, “You have the black wolf’s mark.”

“That is nothing new − the entire village yelled this in my ears last night.”

“You were marked as soon as you were born.”

“And who marked me with a hot iron?”

“Likely an elder of any village,” he explains.

“And why did he do this to me?”

“It’s because you’re the seventh male
son from the one family.”

Zidane gazes at the mountains in front of him and he tries to imagine his family, his six brothers he has never seen.

“You carry the black wolf’s curse.”

The old man’s fingers go through the numbers on the boy’s ruddy skin.

“When you have finally concluded 277 full moons, the beast that is within you, it’ll awaken and you’ll be a black wolf.”

Zidane’s eyes become full with tears while he assimilates the entire truth in his brain.

“That means I’ll be transformed into a wolf.”

“Exactly
, a black wolf.”

Again Zidane remembers Amarilis, as she spoke the words - “FIRE! WOLF!”

“She always knew about my fate! She saw this,” he says in a loud voice.

“Her? Who are you talking about?”

Zidane lifts his head and gazes at the cloudy sky and he also gazes at the endless mountains.

“What should I do now?”

“You should withdraw from people
− soon you’ll be an extremely dangerous creature. Or people will kill you, or you’ll kill them with no piety − you weren’t born to live in civilization,” he confesses.

“Where will I live?” he asks as he glances at everything around him.

“You’ll live with me here− I’ll know to work with your curse.  You just need to trust me.”

Chapter 15

A month later             

Amarilis is in her bedroom still holding the boy’s dark shirt.  She brings this piece of clothing to her nose and her eyes close at the same time as she deeply absorbs the boy’s smell.

She still has hope he is alive at some place, even if it is very far from her. Her hands go down in the direction of her breasts, still holding the dark fabrics, where she presses the piece of clothing against her chest and prays in silence for everything to be well with him.

And at that moment she has a vision of the boy, where he is on the top of a mountain, carrying some fire wood, and she feels that this vision is real.

Then a smile appears on her afflicted face while she exclaims in a low voice,

“He is alive! He is alive!”

Chapter 16

“Murad, I already guarded all the firewood.”

Zidane reports to him, as soon as he enters into the cave. He is replete with sweat and his dark shirt is wound round his head.

“Your food is on the table,” the old man advises and sits at a rock table.

The boy gazes at his aluminum plate and sees a strange food, however, he doesn’t protest and then he sits at his place before the table.

“What are you preparing with those steel bars?”

Zidane questions as he glances at the cavern corner and sees several steel pieces on the ground.

“When your time comes, you’ll know what I’m preparing.”

***

In the late afternoon, Zidane sits on the top of a rock at the top of a mountain, and he looks at the orange sky as the sun is setting on the horizon.

He leans his right elbow on his knee and his fingers are holding a small stone.

His right hand swings several times while he thinks of his past, his present and also his future.

And once more he feels alone before a gigantic silent mountain.

At the same time he feels the lack of a family he never had but he wishes to have, he also feels the lack of friends and a female companion.

Within him there is an enormous desire to be in love and be loved by a special woman that opens her arms and receives him like the one and only man of her life and her eternity.

Then, the small stone is shot out of his hand and reaches the firm land. At that moment he realises that this’ll never be possible.

First −because he is sentenced to live away from people and this includes women.

Second – the woman he desires at that moment doesn’t have much time to live.

And his countenance wrinkles at his anguished feelings that supply him every day, every second, and every instant.

Then he thinks it would have been better if he hadn’t come to this world and not to have experienced the bitter sensations in his atrocious life.