Twilight of the Wolves Read online

  We listened and her words imprinted deep in all of us, though there are only Dacia and me left who knew Polina. She taught us and we promised to never forget and so, too, we remember the screams through the walls.

  The Alexandras return with flushed faces and smart Alexandra has tears in her eyes and throws her arms around me, silent and shaking while little Alexandra tells us where Lord Alexander touched her, what he said about her. I whisper away the humiliation and shame in Limpa, and Dacia winks that today is the first day of our lives. Alexandra nods, her face pressed against me, leaving wetspots on my breasts, and sniffles away the emotions with a quiet laugh, the kind that follow tears that no longer seem to matter.

  We clean the pans and Dacia calls him a bastard and descends into rapid speech cursing their whole race and the pride of the fat rapist bastards and the bastard way they force their bastard names upon all the bastards and orphans they make with their vile bastard cocks. She goes on about the evils of white men and I nod when meant to as she rambles on about the golden age before the Invasion when women ruled all this land and all was just and fair and equal.

  We finish cleaning the kitchen just as Lord Alexander’s dishes return, which we quickly scrub. I take a paring knife and slide it into the pocket stitched inside the folds of my smock.

  Master wants to see you, Auntie, little Alyc, dark but with iceblue eyes and palehair, appears dressed in the fashion of the Invaders, his voice high and comfortable in the tongue forced upon us. Alyc says it’s for his massage and there’s no need to change out of my cooking clothes.

  I wipe my hands, nod, and try to straighten my hair and my coarse smock, but one gets used to the itch.

  The plan was set into motion years ago, years even before the Generational War. They landed on our shores for the first time one hundred years ago. The records of that journey are widespread and taught to the invaded culture, pushed upon them.

  All the children born to Lord Alexander and even those born to slaves are instructed in Rocan history. The orphans of Drache, Glass, and Vulpe learn their place and how lucky they are to live in a land discovered by Roca. The instructor, tall and yellowhaired with square features and silver appendages, paces back and forth amongst our children. Severe and serious, striking those he feels don’t listen close enough or simply because he hates their face or manner or attitude. His voice is high and nasally as he pontificates, and there are many days I was forced to listen to him. I still am.

  The heroes landed their great steel and steam ships on the shore, he reads to them from a thick book called The Discovery of The Dream. His voice drops and rises to add emphasis but the tone and cadence are unchanged by the lashes he gives, Shocked at the enormous trees pushing against the stars, they believed to have crossed the ocean and landed in a dream. The sky so clear it seemed thousands of years away but also just beyond their fingertips, as if they could pull it down and take it. And since that first step upon this sand here, they were filled with hunger and lust for all that existed here. These explorers sent a team into the forest to wander east and report back all that they found. Heads high and shoulders straight, carrying their rifles, they entered the forest which was described like submerging into a new existence, as if the air thickened and became its own entity watching them, forcing them out and dictating their direction. The further they wandered, the more lost they became in the labyrinth of trees and the swirling echo of the forest. Each step forward closed their retreat and the trees cackled at their hopelessness. Animals large and frightening investigated or fled. An elk double the height of a man snorted at them, indifferent, and walked away. Too shocked by the sight, none of the adventurers even pulled their rifle into hand, only watching with mouths agape at the great beast. A forest god.

  On the shore that night they shivered in fear as the sky broke with the howls of wolves. Never before had they heard such a sound as wolves are only a distant myth in the lands across the ocean. No one slept and many called for them to turn back and leave this primitive land to the ancient gods of the world and the moons and the suns.

  Five days went by and none of the men who left had returned. The wolves, they thought and talked about the monsters of that monstrous wood. On the tenth day, one man returned, bleeding, delirious, dehydrated, starving, raving.

  They left immediately but on the journey home, after his recovery, he told the crew of all the many things he had seen.

  Upon returning home, their mission was seen as a failure and the captain lost his commissions, his standing. He became a common sailor again, eventually becoming a pirate. The crown shut it all down, barring all to the east as a bestial jungle unfit for humanity’s grace. The man who survived died from a knife wound to the chest a few years later but his diary was discovered after his Death. It was illustrated with the things he had seen and the harrowing ten-day journey into the heart of another world became a sensation. It was published in various pamphlet forms and spread throughout the kingdom. Children were reared on the tales of the world beyond the ocean. An entire generation raised on this story, on these pictures: a generation of explorers.

  The crown gave no commissions and so many of these men turned to piracy if only because it was the most cost-effective way to raise a boat and a crew. And so began an age of exploration. They crossed the ocean and entered our forested world. Thousands of them died, eaten by gods and demons. Thousands saw these gods and Ariel and there are even reports of Dreamers, the tiny horned creatures weaving all the universe through the Goddess, making her Dream our reality, dragons and the great wolves, the elk and even Ravens and Deathwalkers. They found the Kingdom of Glass, the Dragonlords of Drache, and the free people of Vulpe and all the various villagers living within the heart of the forest.

  They journeyed in small numbers and conspicuously. Though their metal limbs brought many stares and gasps and cries of confusion, they were largely ignored or forgotten, but they wound their way deeper into this world. It was the initial defeats, the many who died, that made these explorers all the more determined to conquer this land of dreams and myths.

  They returned home and published their reports, shared their stories in taverns where the stories and sights expanded to unimaginable heights, much of which was believed to be only pirate talk, known for its embellishments and extravagant lies.

  The pamphlets circulated and finally the crown took notice and sent in intelligence to determine what was fact and what was fiction.

  If myths yet live, we must have them was the official declaration.

  Pirate explorers became government agents, ambassadors of the crown, fulfilling the dreams of their fathers for this process was slow and those young men who sought fame and fortune and legends in distant lands were old or dead and mostly forgotten, but their sons and grandsons took up the journey for them. And even still, the dreams of those first explorers are fulfilled by great men like Lord Alexander.

  They were sent to different areas and told to record everything and learn the languages, and so they did. They infiltrated everywhere, lost in the tumult of peasants and merchants and whores that filled this continent. Some even fell in love with the land of myths and dreams and never returned across the ocean to see the life they left behind. Merchants, accepted everywhere, accepted by everyone, no matter the color of the eyes and skin. Their exotic looks likely aided them as it spoke higher of their mystical wares. Though many of the Invaders deserted and integrated, many more did not and were rewarded handsomely for their information.

  As information piled, cracks became visible, and where there are cracks there are opportunities for those who have eyes to see. And they did. The king saw the vast disparities between classes and cultures and languages as a point of exploitation. He counted on the pride of the dragons, the hostility of the Garasun, and the shrewdness of the Vulpen.

  And so they sent in their rifles, the flames, and misinformation, the wick, and waited for these to ignite and see who would make the move.

  Surprisingly, t
hey all reacted against type. Vulpe attacked, Drache fortified, and Glass took advantage.

  But the heroes of conquest stood tall and superior to the savages lost in their own superstitions. Lord Alexander fortified the rebuilt Luca while Generals Elrik, Malloy, and Nihls surrounded Drache, Vulpe, and Glass respectively. After several weeks, all the kingdoms fell and we, the Rocan, became lords of the land that called to us across spacetime.

  When he finished, he asked for questions and no one spoke. I seethed, burning alive from the inside.

  Polina told us a different version. One of manipulation and coercion and cowardice. She taught us the disease of their iron contorting all of them by rusting their human heart until it became only an ironball stuck in their chest. The poison of violence and nothing is so violent as their ironballs. Poison to the gods but worse for humans, for even touching them, even knowing their power distorts the brain and turns all others as potential enemies, as people to be controlled by force.

  When the fighting began, they waited.

  When the time was right, the crown sent in the soldiers. Men twisted by metal into monsters, artificial gods, loathsome as the Yi.

  The wolfgirl walked beside her star, hand in hand, followed by her shadow. Sao’s skin burnt her hand but warmed every bit of her, from flesh to bone and deep into the nebulous center that housed everything that mattered, the depths of her memories, the dark still water waiting to hurricane.

  The shadow told them that the only way he knew to Yiyuyan was through the ether of spacetime and that they must encase themselves in a fixed bubble of infinity and then swim in it as far as they can and then they must rip through it when they feel and smell and hear the lunarstone’s sisters. He said that the way to Yiyuyan was through the map written within the lunarstone and if they followed where it led they would find there but the Yi were dangerous and he warned them over and over not to go.

  The wolfgirl had a plan and it was her choosing that led them there, her words that told Sao that the eunuch knew, her manipulation that made the eunuch tell him, for she knew the shadow belonged to her, loved her, would do anything for her.

  The eunuch watched her and she knew it was with desire and she wondered how a man who has lost his manhood could still have desire like that. When she asked Sao, he said nothing for a long while, and then said, Within him still beats the heart of a man.

  Sao said he didn’t know how to do that but the wolfgirl told her to feel all around. Even now we exist in a different plane while we’re within the forest, she said. You fight within yourself, Sao, but if you open up you’ll realise what we seek is all around and most of it comes strongest and brightest from you. Think of it like this, she began to draw figures in the dirt, Here is the forest and here is the bubble, the constructed spacetime. Now, here we are inside of this bubble walking within a different one of your creation. You don’t realise it because it’s yours, but do you remember how they felt? Hreao and Faoi—her voice faltered and even now after twenty years she cannot think of them with dry eyes—That energy pulsing from them as if a storm surrounded them and to stand beside them was to be sucked into their vortex. That is what you’ve become—his moons flashed violently and he closed his eyes and the girl’s heart fractured because she felt it through his skin, the change in his heart, the pain and the hollowness—Yes, even now, you’re expanding, exerting more force. If you can do this without even thinking or trying, imagine what you can do with some effort!

  The midnight star breathing twilight was full of crashing waves and shipwrecks against the broken lighthouse of his human heart, but the wolf within him howled, begging to be freed.

  He hurt so much and so deeply but he loved the wolfgirl and she loved him, intimately, dreaming of the day when he would touch her, not as a daughter or sister, but as a lover. She believed that if he opened himself to the wolf inside him he would take her, finally, and the wolves would come to them and she would leave her humanity behind.

  She took the lunarstone in her hand and clutched it, willing the life within it to heal her wolfdemon, her melancholic god.

  The lunarstone was the key. It would lead them to the lunar flowers, which would lead them to the future of the wolf. If she could take them or even one and begin a new garden, a place for the lunar flowers to grow, she could bring the wolves together and make them one wolf, whole and complete. The Wolf who swallowed the Moon, the great black wolf of eternity, infinite, father of all. She would bring Him back and the forest would live. No longer would the wolves cry, their howls breaking her heart. No longer would the forest wail, but instead sing in perfection, the way she remembered from her earliest days whilst riding on the back of a god through the heart of the world, feeling its pulse fill and complete her.

  The wolfgirl had only one desire in her heart: to heal him and make him whole. If she had to break the bounds of spacetime to do that, she would. If she had to bring all the wolves together again just to make his smile last, she’d do that, too. If she needed to become a wolf or eat the flesh of a thousand humans to make it all true, she would.

  Even if she had to give up the best parts of her, the wolf parts, and be human again, she would. Without blinking.

  She held onto his hand and forced the blood to redirect and flow with her life and she held onto all the memories she kept of him, and she pulled the bearskin around her, the clothes he made for her, and she still held the elkskin she had had since before memories existed within her. Gifts from him and she used them to cure the ailing, the wailing, the heartache.

  Stopping, she pulled him towards her and threw her arms around him and whispered, It’s not your fault. Slowly, his arms came around her and she felt the unsteadiness within and she said it again, It’s not your fault, her face buried on his chest, the tears rolling but not out of sadness. Out of everything, her very essence pouring out of her, her nebulous center rushing from her eyes. It’s not your fault, and his arms were around her waist and he was on his knees, his face pressed against her bare stomach, the bloody demon tears steaming from his face and she held onto his head, the softness of his wolf ears caressing her cheeks. His hair soft and white as snow but different than the fur. A furnace, he burnt alive, the air viscous and filling her lungs, connecting and binding them, not only to one another, but to the forest which was all the world.

  They remained so until the moons opened like tired eyelids and the suns fell away. The shadow watched, silent as always, and she smiled at him, knocking him off his feet to disappear into the shadows all around once again, though he was always only the width of a hair away.

  There you are. Come on, he taps his shoulder and lies on his stomach waiting for me, addressing me casually, in the familiar, diminutive.

  Lord Alexander’s nude corpulent body lies like a mountain on a beach, covered in thick and curly grey and white hair, once yellow and brown. The stink of Death pours from him and he farts as I approach, as if I am no one and nothing but an animal he deigns to let touch him. All of my bones ache and I hobble to the bed softer than any material should be and I’m brought back to childhood, brought to the back of a wolf and her impossibly soft fur that I dissolved into for years. Climbing, it takes two tries to hop and hoist myself up, the bones creaking. I straddle him and begin to knead the loose skin.

  Older than me but appearing younger, he was a young man when I was born and my home burnt to the ground. If nothing else, these barbarians age well. I rub my palms hard into his upper back, right below the right shoulderblade, where his skin fuses with steel lined by silver and touched by intricate gold patterns. The muscles here hurt him most, the disproportionate weight throwing his back out of sync. For all this time, I’ve been the hands working the tension from his back and the thought brings my left hand to the knife, its cool dispassionate steel against my finger. In a moment I could erase all the years I’ve been forced into this bed where he now forces other girls, younger, prettier, and won’t even look at me, only calls me to knead his pain away. I feel his warm
blood covering my hand and can taste his human heart but he groans and tells me to use both hands, that the pain’s bad today.

  I do.

  How long have you lived here?

  Lived not worked, not enslaved, not forced upon, but only lived. No name. Say my name. My real name. I press and pull his doughy flesh and feel the hard metal beneath and say, Eighty years, master.

  He laughs, the vibrations against the alloy within him, Eighteen, he says, not eighty. After all this time you’d think you’d learn to speak, my dear.

  My dear, the same words for his dogs, for the many girls and boys he takes from crying mothers into his bed. Blind, the fires burning, the blade on my hip pressing against my own skin and I will bleed if it will keep me calm. Working down his back, the once-strong contours now weak, the once smooth skin now loose and folded. He was once a man, I know. At least born so, but the metal poisons everything. The Invaders choose to kill all that is good inside them with this metal mutilation.