For Lupercalia

[smokingboot]

Once there was a village on the edge of a wood, ruled by a chieftain from his keep. To him fell a greater warrior's ordinance to go fight in a far away war, leaving his son to carry out the duties of the land; to keep peace among the folk, punish bandits, and pursue the wild wolves roaming the countryside. His father had doubts.

'I cannot make out what you are for,' said he to his son, 'for you neither fight nor think nor craft nor carouse. You have not enough in you even to bring me grandchildren. Still, you are all I have, and it behoves you to make safe your inheritance.'

Even as he rode away the chieftain was shouting back instructions; and sure enough, just as he predicted, the boy neglected every one of them until the word began to spread that he was a coward. He could not have such a rumour reach his father so to prove his blood he decided to hunt. On horseback he travelled into the forest, where he spotted a great she-wolf heavy with milk. Slipping off his horse, he followed her, thinking to find her lair and finish mother and cubs together but she caught wind of him, turned, and attacked with a bite so deep in his thigh he knew he would bleed out fast should he stay. Stumbling backwards he bound the wound tight though he was faint, threw himself onto his horse and somehow returned wondering why the wolf did not pursue, why she had not devoured him when she could.

At the keep, his father's servants ministered to the bite, sewing and smoothing thick pastes of garlic and aconite flowers along the stitches. Despite their best efforts, the young man felt fever gathering and his teeth grew long in his mouth. 'This is lockjaw, perhaps even the rage,' he said, and forbade his servants to attend him further, for he would not harm them nor send disease to ravage the villagers who had trusted him. He bade them lock his door and they obeyed.

His body began to flex and spasm, and a burning entered his mind. Through the casement cracks he could just make out the blue-white moonlight and opened the window. It was too small for him to climb through so he felt safe from temptation, and with the air cool on his brow he closed his eyes. When he opened them again the she-wolf was growling at the edge of his bed though he could not tell if her body was real or a dream, and he would have been very afraid were he not certain that death was upon him with or without attendant apparition.

He raised his hands.
'Why have you come Mistress Wolf? Are you here to see me die?'
The wolf gazed at him out of her yellow eyes, then looked down at the aconite flowers sewn into his stitches.
'Very well,' he said, thinking he understood, 'I only ask that you leave the villagers and the servants here be. They are all terrified and I have failed them. Quickly, lady, if you please.' And he began to pluck away the petals deftly, for he thought that the moment they were all gone, she would end his agony.
Instead, she just stood watching, twitching her ears. Then he heard a voice, soft and low as that of a woman.
'You do not need to die,' He looked at her in astonishment, and she continued. 'I can cure your body, but your body is my price.'
The boy had no clue what she meant.
'How am I helped if you take my body when you cure it?'
'I will give you mine in exchange.'
'A wolf's body for a human body?'
'One is strong, the other is dying. You cannot stay as you are, and I have many magics.'
Because he could see no other way the boy agreed. He lay back on the bed and the great beast came and lay alongside him, singing a strange song;

'I who make wolf of me
I shall make man of you
I shall make man of me
I shall make wolf of you
I shall make both free
I shall make paths through
They shall not know me
They shall not find you.'

When he woke, there was no pain, no fever, only strength and a fierce joy running through him. His limbs crooked in a way he didn't understand, and the world was full of fragrance and new music. Before him stood a young human male with a faint smile on its face and a leg wound healing fast, but he couldn't care for any of that. The wild wood was calling and his cares vanished as he leapt out of the window towards the dawn.

The she-wolf stretched and moved through her new body and when she was ready, knocked on the door demanding with a human voice to be let out for all was well. The servants obeyed and were astonished to see their master's son standing up, healed and healthy. They did not understand why he was so eager to ride again nor why his horse was at first so nervous of its rider but they obeyed, and the she-wolf rode away to her lair where she gathered up her two cubs.

At first they feared their mothers new shape but she wove her new magic around them til they appeared more like the human body she wore. Their ears grew small and their snouts short, their tails disappeared and they stood on their hind legs. As they grew used to their changing forms and senses, she rode with them towards the war with its noise and stink, and at length she found the edge of the battlefield where the old man strode among his warriors.

He was astonished to see his feckless son and even more so when the boy presented him with two grandchildren, supposedly kept secret for years before. When the chieftain asked the reason for this visit, the answer was one of pride and prowess and the old man smiled. Sure enough in the days following, his seeming son demonstrated a never before suspected gift for violence, and courage enough to impress barbarian blood before shedding it. Plentiful were the accolades, shields, swords, lands, titles, all tumbling to the feet of the Chieftain's family!

Sometimes the Chieftain felt a disquiet when he looked at his kin, those faces staring back at him with strange smiling expressions. But he told himself it was nothing; that the children were not savage things but kindling warriors, that his son had not changed beyond recognition, only grown, and if he had never before noticed the boy's eyes to have that light-as-amber tint, it was because he had been too busy to look.

With such allies the war was swift to end and the chieftain's folk came home enriched. Alas, the Chieftain did not rejoice in his family's glory for long; he died on the first night of their return by ways his relatives never described. They buried him swiftly,and in his name guarded their lands with such merciless ferocity that neither thief nor warband dared stray across their borders, the villagers learned to tremble at the thought of wrongdoing, and the old chieftain's servants grew very quiet indeed.

In the meantime, a human-eyed wolf loped joyful through the greenwood. It died unseen, an old beast in the middle of a song to the moon, having long ago forgotten that it ever had a name.