Twilight of the Wolves (14 page)

He sat on the ground with the somber faces circled round, watching him, some with tears in their eyes—My boy went to Luca to make a living and now I may never see him again, one wailed—their lips small and grim on their faces. The large fire burned behind the concave crowd of villagers congregated to investigate the outsiders. Past the fire were the homes of the villagers and past that the forest cast shadows. The suns rose together in the east and made their slow travel across the sky. She nursed the child, her face pleasant and round with plump cheeks and a thick ruddy neck, What is your name, stranger?

I am Sao.

Welcome, Sao. I am Mira and this is Hun, my partner—he waved, smiling—These others—some smiled, some stared indifferently—are, well, they can tell you their own names, huh. This girl is hungry! What is her name?

I do not know.

Well, that won’t do! We’ll have to think of one for you, won’t we, uh? She bobbed the child and spoke in lilting song.

Breakfast carried on and the village’s delicate ecosystem shifted to accommodate the newcomers. The converted choreography of the village, men and women bowed in and out to do their day’s work, and children came to stare at the child and the pale stranger with the curious marks upon his cheeks. Sao smiled and played with the boys and girls who pulled on his hair, laughing, singing, calling him Auntie.

They tended the fire and maintained a meter-high flame adding more and more wood to it.

Why do you keep the fire even during this summer heat?

A short woman with wide hips and a thin face cleared her throat, Don’t all do as this? These days of the dualsun—she pointed to the rising stars—when they mate in the sky as a single bright flame, The Season of Fire, uh? We purge the last year away in fire for the Red and Blue gods. Uh, never heard of such, uh?

Sao shook his head.

Hun returned from the fire wiping the sweat from his face, Where are you from?

Far to the south and west.

Several voices grunted at once. Mira fed the child—She’s a hungry one! You weren’t kidding!—smiling and halfdancing, humming a melodic and repetitive tune.

Auntie, a girl with crimson hair and almond skin grabbed Sao’s hand and leaned heavily on his shoulder, Is it true you don’t know about the gods of Light? her face so close that her breath was on his face.

He set his bowl of millet down beside him, I have never heard.

She laughed and dropped into his lap, kicking her legs, Auntie! Mum, did you hear what he said?

A thick woman with sagging breasts nodded and smiled with scant yellowed teeth. The girl rolled out of his lap and ran with the other two and three year olds, circling Sao and the other, always returning to his orbit and running hands through his hair, against the fabric of the blue vest he still wore.

I would be honored if someone would inform me about these gods.

Hun snorted and rolled his eyes and a few men and women did not acknowledge the words but sat around the fire drinking a clear liquid in small sips. An old woman with rotting teeth cleared her nose and spit, and waddled over to Sao, squatting on her haunches. I will tell you, she said, her eyes small on a round face canyoned by age: Before there was the world there was an egg. From this egg emerged a great tortoise. The tortoise swam through spacetime from edge to edge and through the fabrics of realities layered one after the other through the many planes. It discovered a great eagle flying alone through spacetime. The tortoise asked the eagle how she flies through eternity to which the eagle asked how the tortoise swims where one is meant to fly. The eagle soared away and the tortoise swam in the opposite direction. They continued in directly opposite ways but converged again a thousand thousand years later. All alone in the vast emptiness of spacetime, the tortoise asked the eagle if it would do the tortoise a favor to which the eagle obliged. What would you have me do, said the eagle, and the tortoise said, Take me in your talons and show me what it is to fly. The eagle laughed but took the tortoise and flew through the infinite. After a thousand thousand years the eagle let go of the tortoise and laid a red egg. Seeing this the tortoise laid two eggs, one blue and one green. The red egg hatched and out came the seven moons and a red dragon. From the blue egg hatched a blue dragon and the green egg did not hatch. The red and blue dragon coupled
and mated and the red dragon gave birth to three suns, one red, one blue, and one purple. The eagle and tortoise were pleased and eagle asked if tortoise would show it what it meant to swim through eternity and so tortoise and eagle swam away. The green egg that did not hatch became the world and it circled the three suns and the dragons watched over their children. The red sun and blue sun grew closer and closer and fell in love but the purple sun became jealous. It grew a face and teeth and legs and wings and a tail and became a dragon. The purple dragon ate its parents, the red and blue dragon, and chased its sister suns through spacetime until they became lost and could no longer see one another. The purple dragon raped the red sun and it bore its offspring which descended to earth as the dragons who would become human. After a thousand years the blue sun found its sister and swallowed the purple dragon, and the red and blue suns embraced and promised to never lose one another again. And so twice every year the suns come together to remind one another of their promise.

That is beautiful, Sao said.

The old woman smiled, And that’s why the fire must burn for all of summer, as sacrifice to the gods above for protecting the sky and freeing the world from the jaws of dragons.

What do you sacrifice?

She laughed, a hoarse and sour noise, which softened her face and made it more pleasant though dirty, Oh, this and that. Sometimes a rabbit if we’re lucky. Truth, uh? Life is a struggle and excess mounts to mostly shit! She cackled and hobbled back to the fire.

The suns wandered directly above them and the fire burned. The men who tended it were drunk and loud but ignored Sao and the crowd of children. The villagers loitered and wandered back and forth, not working but not sitting idle. Mira carried the child with her back and forth, talking with Hun and the men, with the other women, laughing and singing.

A young woman with shallow eyes and limbs as thin and frail as sticks sat beside Sao. Her breasts were small with large black pointed nipples and her hair curled slightly about her face. Smiling she said, I’m Onca.

I am Sao, he picked up his forgotten millet and pushed it around with his wooden spoon.

She ran her small hands through his hair, eyes wide and mouth open, It’s so soft, she pulled it to her face, smelling it, rubbing her cheeks. Uh, never have I touched hair like this. You are a special man, Sao.

He smiled but did not look at her.

Braiding his hair she sang without words and the young girls returned with flowers they dressed and tied into his braids. Onca leaned closer and closer until her breasts pressed against the skin of his arms, You’re on fire, Sao. What does that mean, uh? Sao?

Star, he smiled at her.

She inhaled sharply, her eyes grown, Your eyes! Uh! You have the most beautiful eyes! How did they come to you, uh?

Sao smiled and looked down, pushed the millet round the bowl, the flowers covering his head.

Leaning close, nose almost touching his, Onca’s eyebrows curled, Sister Sao, what is upon the cheeks there, uh?

Sao looked at the bowl of millet in his hands and ate, It is the mark of the wolf.

She gasped and lurched back to her elbows, the others turned to him as he finished the bowl and set it down and did not meet their gaze.

Onca was on her feet pointing at him, He is marked by wolves! Slowly the men began to rise and the women stepped away, the children stopped where they were, watching the angry faces of their families and the placid expression of the stranger. Onca stepped back on her skinny legs, He’s a demon! A wolf! By nightfall they’ll be howling within earshot, uh?

A man ran into a home and returned with a rifle and Sao’s
vision narrowed on it. His heartbeats came in rapid succession but he did not move, his anatomy calculating the aberrant gusts of spacetime.

You’re cursed! a new voice rose, breaking through the silence. He’s cursed, uh, and bringing it to us! The wolves’ll be here, uh, warrant they will!

Sao heard the rifle click and he rose, I will not let any harm come to this village as long as the child is here, as long as hearts yet beat.

Hun’s frown was deep and he tugged at the ends of his long stringy moustache, Uh, he’s a demon, his voice was soft but harsh as the cleave of an axe. The child is a spawn, a seed of evil. He plants it here and nurtures it to eat us all alive from inside out. That’s why it’s nameless and hungry, because it needs the blood of humans to live—his voice rose with each word—Take it back! Mira, put it down or throw it to the flames!

Mira’s face grew from anxious to frightened to despair. Hun ripped the child crying from her hands and ran to the fire. Mira’s expression, complex, emotional geometry, she rubbed her empty hands and hugged herself.

Hun shouted, his words and movements slurred, We have our sacrifice! The demon’s child! This wolfspawn!

A wind boomed through the villagers knocking them clear and they turned to see Hun’s headless body fall from Sao’s hand with the crying child in his other.

They ran from the fire and into their thatched huts and Sao stood staring at his hand. Still, the wind blowing, flowers fluttering from his hair. Tears came and he covered his face in his hand, the blood painting him monstrous, the child screaming. Staggering away from the village, he turned back to see the faces peering at him through the small windows, then his gaze fell to his bloody hand. Slow steps away, the screams followed him into the forest and for many days after.

The child will die if you do nothing, her voice inside him, deep and sonorous, reverberating against his bones.

What’ll happen if she drinks your milk, the child cried in his arms and would not sleep.

She will live.

Sao continued to bounce and rock her in the carriage of his arms but the screams did not stop.

His voice gruff where hers was sonorous, assaulting Sao’s chest, If you do nothing, I will eat the human to end this misery.

Sao did not blink but continued to rock her.

She rolled onto her back, Come, wolfboy, the child must feed.

Sao stared at her face as she yawned. Crying, her body writhing and voice grown quiet and ragged, her face was red and contorted.

He watched Sao, the golden light of his eyes expanding and boring into Sao.

A crow cawed overhead and a leaf fell, the limb shaking from mammalian movement above. Insects chirped and buzzed around them in the absolute darkness beneath the thick canopy where no moonlight reached, only the songs of nightbirds and the rustling of leaves, of grass, of predators and prey in the night. The forest alive around them but kept at bay by the screams and the wolves and the flickering flame.

His fur bristled and he growled. Sao saw him staring past Sao and the Deathwalker stopped, white hands through the blackness. It waited, a shadow darker than the night.

The child must feed or the Crow will take her.

The child’s face cast in the dance and play of transient shades, the mouth open pouring forth incomprehensible demands and curses. Rising, he ran his hand through her fur and the child latched and sucked and drank and lived.

The child held his hand as they walked through the falling leaves. All around, the forest painted autumnal red, so bright
and vibrant, a fluttering snowfall of sunleaves. Slow with her tiny legs kicking forward in jerking movements. Smiling, he encouraged her in Limpa and Garasun. Falling, he caught her and lifted her into the air laughing with her, then setting her upon the female wolf’s back who accepted the child. The child smiled and clapped the wolf’s back, laughing.

Will you keep her, his voice bristling the nerves of his spine setting them to fire.

What would you have me do, Hreao?

Hreao pressed his great head to Sao’s chest, soft, The child will live.

But will she be whole?

The reverb of her voice tickled the child, She will not be you.

Sao put an arm on Hreao’s head and scratched behind his ear.

The child laughed and said Faoi over and over causing Hreao and Faoi to laugh while Sao smiled, watching the suns race across the sky through the scarlet forest.

Faoi huddled round the child keeping her warm in her thick white fur. Snow fell and Hreao pulled an elk back to their fire. Ripping meat from the kill, he placed it in the mouth of Faoi. Sao took his knife and cut small chunks from its neck, then pierced them with a stick, and cooked them over the fire. After they were cooked, the grease spitting from the small bits of meat, he chewed the meat into a paste and fed it to the child.

Hreao laughed, Only humans cook their meat and only you refuse to eat it. You are a fool, child.

Faoi yawned and snapped at the falling snow, What will you eat, child?

Cooking more meat, the snow melting before it reached him, he watched the meat bronze above the fire.

Hreao laughed, He will eat off the trees like a monkey! Fruits and nuts. Hreao’s jaws dripped blood and he passed the meat to Faoi then returned his starlit eyes to Sao, It would be better if you
accepted your fate. The world is a forest and we belong to her. She gives to us and we take only what she gives. It is the balance of Life. All must die but first we shall live. And you will never die. Not anymore. Not once you accept what you now are.

Sao chewed the meat and fed it to the child, then cut more and pierced it, sat, and cooked it, his mouth full of saliva.

Hreao ripped the flesh from the elk, laughing, harsh and deep, like a mountain collapsing.

Sao pushed Hreao’s great head away and sawed at the skin separating it from the flesh with his knife.

What now, child?

Sao continued to cut as the blood covered him from fingers to chest and he removed more and more of the elk’s skin. Hreao sat and laughed watching Sao through the night while Faoi closed her eyes, sleeping with the child, and Sao cut and cut until the hide was free. He hung it over the fire and threw more wood upon it.