Running with the Pack Part 16

"Did he ask anything in return?"

"No, Baba. He said I might have more if I came into the smithy, but I had other work. What's wrong? Are you angry with me?"

She sighed. "Not with you, child." After another moment's scrutiny, she took hold of his chin. "You are not quite a boy anymore."

The gesture surprised Anrin, for Baba had never been particularly affectionate with him, though she was never unkind either. He did not resist as she turned his face from side to side. "Such thick dark hair, such deep eyes . . . so like your mother. You've grown beautiful, Anrin, did you know that?"

Anrin shook his head. "The moon is beautiful, Baba. The forest is beautiful. I am neither."

"No, you're the same," she said. "Just as wild, and just as strange-but innocent, at least for now." She sighed almost to herself. "So many things out there would devour that innocence if they could."

"Things . . . in the forest, Baba?" Anrin frowned.

She smiled a little sadly and let him go. "Yes, child. In the forest. Now get to bed."

All through the next day, Anrin pondered the conversation with Old Baba. Should he have refused the smith's gift? Baba had denied being angry with him, but if not him then whom? The smith, perhaps . . . but why?

He had come to no conclusion by the time he finished bringing water to fill the leatherman's curing-cistern, and climbing trees to gather winter nuts for the trapper's wife. At sunset he wandered back to Baba's, intending to climb the hill again. But when the old woman's cottage came into view, the door was open with a familiar man's silhouette blocking the light from within. Voices drifted to him, sharp and angry on the chilly wind.

"-a fair price," the smith was saying. All but shouting, and Anrin saw that his nearby hand gripped the doorjamb so tightly that the wood groaned. "I'm generous even to offer. It's time the boy earned his keep!"

"Not like that," Baba's voice snapped from within. Anrin had never heard her so angry. "And you'll not take him either, not while I still have lungs that can shout and hands that can wield a pitchfork. Now get out!" And her gnarled hand shoved against his chest; when he stumbled back the door slammed in his face.

The peculiar flutter in Anrin's belly returned fourfold. He stepped off the dirt path that led to Baba's farm and crouched in the bushes. A moment later the smith pa.s.sed by, muttering imprecations and swinging his great clenched fists. When he was gone, Anrin climbed out of the bushes. He considered going to the house to talk to Baba, but already the day had been too strange; he wanted no more of it. He went to the hill, climbed up, and sat there too troubled to find any of his usual comfort in the night.

"Anrin," Baba called after a while, and silently he went down to her.

Her lips were still tight with anger, though she said nothing of the smith's visit and he did not ask. Instead she took him by the shoulder and steered him toward the barn as they walked. "Before you go to work in the morning, Anrin, I want to talk to you. Not now, of course; you've had a long day."

"Yes, Baba," he said uneasily. He suspected she meant to speak of the smith. He would be able to ask her all the questions in his mind at last, he realized, but he was no longer certain he wanted to know the answers.

"Sleep well tonight, Anrin-and be sure to lock the barn door behind you."

Anrin blinked, for he had never locked the barn in all his years of sleeping there.

"Mind me, child," she said, pushing him into the barn. "Bolt it fast, and open it for no one before dawn."

He turned to her on the threshold, all the small disturbances of the past three days welling up inside him. He wanted to somehow vomit the strange feelings forth, expel them from his heart before they could poison him any further, but he could think of no way to do so.

She stood watching him, perhaps getting some inkling of his thoughts from his face; her own was softer than usual. She put a hand on his shoulder and he almost flinched as one more disturbance jarred him, for she had to reach up to touch him. Unnoticed, unmarked, he had grown taller than her.

"In case of wolves, child," Baba said. "Lock the door in case of wolves."

It was a lie, he sensed, but also a gift. Until morning, the lie would give him the comfort he needed.

He nodded and she let him go, turning to go back to her cottage. He watched until she was inside, then closed and locked the barn door.

Beyond them and unseen by either, a shadow crouched at the edge of the forest, only a few yards beyond Anrin's hill.

Late in the night Anrin heard the barn door rattle. He woke right away, for he had slept lightly, his dreams turbulent and incomprehensible. Quickly he climbed down from the barn loft and went to the door. "Is that you, Baba?"

There was a moment's silence from beyond. "It's not Baba, lad," came the smith's voice. "Open the door."

In Anrin's belly the little flutter rose to a steady beat, spreading foreboding through his soul like night-breezes through trees. "You have work for me, sir? So late?"

The smith laughed. "Work? Yes, lad, work. Now let me in."

"Old Baba told me not to."

"As you like," the smith said, but Anrin saw from the shadows under the door that the smith's feet did not move away. Instead the door began to rattle again, and Anrin remembered that the smith carried his tools with him always.

In the back of Anrin's mind, the night breezes rose to a sharp, cold gust.

There was a horse door at the back of the barn. Anrin went there and pushed aside the pickle-barrel that blocked it. If anyone had asked, he could not have told them why he fled. All he could think of was the smith's wide smile, and the sound of groaning wood, and the fear in Old Baba's eyes. These indistinct thoughts lent him strength as he wrestled the heavy, half-rusted latch open.

And then Anrin was free of the barn, running blindly into the bitter night. At his back he heard the smith's curse; the squeal of wood and metal; the querulous voice of Baba from within her cottage calling, "Who's there?" Into the forest, the night breezes whispered, and into the forest he ran.

When the boy fell, too weary and cold to run any further, the shadow closed in.

Anrin awoke in dim smoky warmth and looked about. A fire flickered at his feet; the roof of a cave loomed overhead. He turned and found that his head had been resting on the flank of a great forest wolf. Silently it watched him, with eyes like the winter sun.

Anrin caught his breath and whispered, "Beautiful."

Something changed in the wolf's golden eyes. After a moment, the wolf changed as well, becoming a man.

"You do not fear me," the wolf said.

"Should I?"

"Perhaps. You were nearly meat when I found you in the forest. I might eat you yet." The wolf rose from his sprawl and stretched from fingers to toes. Anrin stared in fascination. The wolf's body was broad and muscled, sleek and powerful, a model of the manhood that Anrin might one day himself attain. He stared also because had never seen a grown man unclothed before, and because Old Baba was not there to tell him to look away.

The wolf noticed Anrin's gaze and lowered his arms. "Do you still find me beautiful?"

"Yes."

The wolf smiled, flashing canines like knives. "Good." He crouched, leaning close to sniff at Anrin. "You are not like other men. They fear the forest and all things beyond their control. They are like two-legged, hairless sheep."

Anrin considered his lifetime among the villagers and found that he agreed. "Perhaps it is because I am a wh.o.r.e's son."

"What is a 'wh.o.r.e'?"

"I have never been certain. The villagers call my mother that when they think I cannot hear them. Old Baba tells me only that my mother was too curious and too free, straying too often from propriety. I don't see how that could be so terrible, since now it seems they want me to be like her."

"Yes," the wolf said. "That is the way of things." He leaned closer, sniffing at Anrin's hair, then his ear, then down the curve of Anrin's neck. Anrin remained submissive when the wolf took hold of his shoulders and pressed him back on the packed earth. He knew that animals often inspected one another on first meeting, checking for health and strength. As a guest in the wolf's den, he wanted to be polite.

"You are on the brink of a change," the wolf said, tugging Anrin's shirt open with his teeth. He sniffed at Anrin's chest, lapped in pa.s.sing at one of Anrin's nipples. "You have felt it coming for some time now, I think. I have seen you sitting on the hilltop watching for it."

Anrin shivered at the brush of the wolf's nose against his skin. "I have been watching for nothing. Just the moon and the trees."

"In your head, perhaps. But your body has been watching for what will come. It has grown and made itself ready. Are you?"

"I don't know," Anrin said. This troubled him for reasons he could not name.

The wolf sat up on his haunches, straddling him now. Anrin saw that the wolf's skin was heavily furred with down. The wolf reached down to stroke Anrin's chest and Anrin felt the caress of fur on the wolf's palms as well. The sensation stirred yet another strange feeling within Anrin-something powerful for which he had no name. It was like the spike of fear that had shot through him when the smith came, and yet somehow entirely different.

"Others can smell your body's readiness as I can," the wolf said, his eyes gleaming in the dim light. "They will steal the change from you if you do not lay claim to it yourself. That is inevitable."

"But . . . I don't want to change," Anrin said. "Why can't I remain as I am?"

The wolf's hands paused. "Because innocence never lasts." Abruptly the wolf rose and went over to crouch by the fire, apparently losing interest. "But perhaps you are not yet ready."

Anrin sat up and pulled his shirt closed, his hair tumbling disheveled about his face and shoulders. The wolf spoke in riddles, and yet Anrin thought he understood. The answers he wanted were here, if he could only grasp them. If only he dared.

"What should I do?" he asked the wolf.

"That is for you to say-for now," the wolf said. "If you want to return to your village, follow the sun east. Take the bearskin in the corner since you have so little fur of your own."

So Anrin rose, wrapped himself in the bearskin, and went to the thick oiled-hide curtain which served as the cave's door. He paused at the threshold, but the wolf did not turn from the fire, and so Anrin stepped out into the light.

"When you grow tired of playing sheep," the wolf called as the flap closed behind him, "come back to me."

With his mind full of thoughts he had never pondered before, Anrin returned to the village.

But the smell of death was on the wind as Anrin stepped out of the trees.

It came from the barn, where the half-hinged door swayed like a drunkard in the noontime breeze. The creak of the hinge stuttered now and again as the door stopped against something lying across the threshold. A pitchfork, its tines dark and red at the tips. Beyond that lay Old Baba.

After gazing down at her body for a very long while, Anrin left the cottage and went back into the woods.

The sun had just set when Anrin found the wolf's den again. The wolf crouched beside the fire as if he had not moved since Anrin left. Anrin walked up to him and stopped, his fists clenched at his sides.

"Old Baba taught me there are secrets in the forest," Anrin said.

"That has ever been true," the wolf agreed.

"She told me there are things in the forest that eat fools like me."

"There are indeed," the wolf replied.

"Make me one of them," said Anrin, and the wolf turned to him and smiled.

When the wolf stood, Anrin saw that his body was different: still as muscular and powerful as before, but this time a part of the wolf had grown and now stood forth from his body unsupported. It was not the first time Anrin had seen such a thing-for his own body had done the same at times-but now at last he understood the why of the phenomenon, and what it implied for the immediate future. And this understanding in turn clarified the past: the smith's offer of the strawberry, and Old Baba's anger, and even the circ.u.mstances of Anrin's birth. Both the villagers and the wolf had been right all along: some things were inevitable, natural. Blood always told.

"You are still beautiful," he told the wolf.

"As are you," said the wolf, who then took Anrin's hand and laid him down on the bearskin and tore his clothing away. He caressed Anrin again with his down-furred palms, and licked Anrin with a long pink tongue, and finally lifted Anrin's legs up and back, bracing them both to proceed.

"You're certain?" the wolf asked. The smoke-hole was above them; a shaft of moonlight shone into Anrin's eyes. In silhouette only the wolf's teeth were visible.

"Of course not," Anrin whispered, shivering with ten thousand fears and desires. "But you must continue anyhow."

At this, the wolf smiled. That smile grew as his mouth opened impossibly wide, the canines flashing. He leaned down and Anrin trembled as those teeth touched the skin of his shoulder, then pressed, warning of what was to come.

Then the teeth pierced Anrin's flesh, hard, burning like fire. In the same moment something else pierced him, just as hard but larger, just as painful but stranger, and Anrin cried out as his body was invaded twice over. The wolf growled and worked his jaws around the wounds, as if to make absolutely certain that the wolf-essence would pa.s.s properly. His teeth slid out, then in again-a little deeper, a little harder. And again. And again. And between Anrin's thighs, the wolf's hips mirrored his jaws.

And then Anrin was writhing as the change began somewhere deep within him, in his belly, in his veins, spreading outward like fire and consuming every part of him. Somewhere amid the searing waves the pain became pleasure and fear turned to savage delight. And as the wolf tore free to turn his bloodied face up to the moonlight, so too Anrin arched with him, and clawed him back down, and howled over and over for more.

In the morning Anrin slept, for it was the nature of wolves to shun the day. Toward evening he awoke hungry, and the wolf took him outside and taught him to read scents and to hunt for good, hot, fresh meat. When night fell the wolves ran together through the forest, traveling east to the edge of the village.

Old Baba had been wrong, Anrin understood now. The forest had its dangers, but so did the paths of men; in the end, it was simply a matter of choice. Sometimes it was better to charge roaring into the shadows than be dragged helpless and broken through the light.

He smiled to himself, wishing Old Baba could see him. What big teeth you have, she would have said.

All the better to eat men, Anrin would have replied.

Then with his packmate at his side, he slipped into the village to do just that.

ARE YOU A VAMPIRE OR A GOBLIN?.

GEOFFREY H. GOODWIN.

Once again, Yvette startled awake from the nightmare where she was devouring the twelve-year-old boy from down the street. And the day-old daffodils on her nightstand had turned rotten. She checked the small clock above the room's door. She'd been asleep for nineteen minutes.

The first few times, the recurring dream-and how it had the capacity to turn fresh-cut flowers into black lumps of rot in the waking world-freaked her out. The last few times, the dream was becoming a form of personal exploration. Yvette was uncertain whether this was good or not, but the transformation from freaky dream to prismatic memoir was worth noting.

She couldn't shake the belief that if she paid enough attention, was observant and clever enough, she would solve her mysterious recurring nightmare.

The Inst.i.tute let her stay for longer periods of time and she was grasping the basics of lucid dreaming. Yvette had accepted that controlling these bizarre dreams was the most important facet of her personalized treatment plan. She'd learned how to flip light switches, how to see colors that didn't exist in nature and, a new favorite, she was learning how to cut off the fingers of her right hand, one by one with pruning shears, to prove she was having a dream and that the evil visions-like the boy from down the street, and the fork, knife and dinner napkin-were not real.

Or these events were real, but not occurring the way they did in dreams. Her doctors stressed that she'd make a better decision if she mustered a few granules of serenity and inner peace. Her recurring nightmare got in the way of most forms of mustering.

Yvette was afraid she'd cut off her actual fingers but hoped that the Inst.i.tute wouldn't leave dangerous shears lying around. Over time, through astute observation, she concluded that pruning shears were rarely found lying around in the waking world's incarnation of the Inst.i.tute.

The cannibalistic dream didn't happen every night. That was the worst. Before proving that she really needed long-term professional help and thereby earning a free pa.s.s to stay in the Inst.i.tute whenever she wanted, Yvette had tried everything: stuffing her face, exercise regimes, dozing on the couch, drinking a gla.s.s of warm milk, drinking seven gla.s.ses of ice cold brandy. She'd called psychic hotlines, worn a glowing lightmask over her eyes that was supposed to stabilize her beta waves but was pure quackery, and she'd even tried sleeping every other night to see if that would make her tired enough that she wouldn't dream of eating the boy. It distressed her that she kept dreaming of chewing his flesh and couldn't control her nightmares.

She didn't know him at all well and sometimes couldn't even remember that his name was Timothy.

She was certain that she'd never been particularly drawn to blood-drinking or soul-slurping. So the phenomenon, until these minor breakthroughs, had remained quite a mystery.

The process, of healing or of "learning to embrace her true preponderance of selfhood" or whatever it was she was trying to do-whatever it was she was trying to accept now that she was finally chipping through her grungy patina of self-resignation-began when she consulted the family physician at her yearly checkup.

Yvette hadn't wanted to schedule a special appointment just to discuss her nightmare of devouring Timothy.

Dr. Burningheart squiggled several notes on his clipboard before eventually chuckling and saying, "I've known your parents for almost twenty-six years and we didn't want to pressure you or tell you before you were ready, but you're going to have to choose between being a vampire or a goblin."

Yvette hadn't liked the sound of either choice, but her dreams had cost her several jobs-including hostessing at a lovely supper club-so she asked, "Will that make the nightmare go away?"

"Probably not, but finding your true incarnation might help you learn to enjoy the nightmare . . . "