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THE WOLF ROAD
I live at the base of the mountains, at the foot of the sky.
Above me streams the Wolf Road.
According to legend, this is the path wolves take when they travel between worlds, it is their spirit highway.
Snow had been falling for days - the longest snowfall in living memory. Every few hours there was a fresh flurry, and the pass to the village had become blocked. The girl ran out of firewood yesterday, and food a week ago. She could barely muster the strength to push the heavy door open and step out broom-wielding to sweep her path, but sweep she must or she would be entombed in the cottage. She was already enwombed, hiding from the chill bite of the outside.
Yet once she was out, the whites and darks were beautiful. The skies had cleared, jewel-like, and spectra glinted off the stalactites hanging from pines. Drops of pure light chimed notelessly in the tiniest lick of a breeze.
At night she curled into her threadbare blankets, wary of sleeping when the dark crept and surrounded. If sleep took her, death might too. Death was not so far behind, after all, in this stark coldness.
That evening she heard a noise at the door, which she had left open for the view. Well, it could have been a knock, it could have been Father Time, telling her her hour had come, it could have been the march of the trees; trunks and branches having reached her to subsume her little poor hut and enliven the logs and planks, to take them back. She might be nymphed in the caress of wood. She had left a candle in the window in the event that any of these visitors paid a call.
Further wrapping herself in her shawl and scarf and all the other tatters she wore, she approached the doorway.
A young man stood there.
"I am traveling," he said, "And I wondered if I might have a place to rest for the night to shelter from the weather?"
It was not warmer inside than out. He was immediately frowning. He stepped past her to glance around.
"You have no fire," he remarked, seeing the empty cavity below her mantel, behind her hearth.
"I have no firewood," she said. "The snow is too deep, the forest too dark, the wood that is nearby is too wet, and I fear to go further into the trees. You are more than welcome to spend the night here, and you are more than welcome to share everything I have, but I am afraid I do not have very much."
"Wait," he said, and turned his back, leaving.
She waited, huddling, which was all that occupied her for days, and he was half an hour. He returned laden with an armful of dry wood, enough for several days. He shook snow from his hair, he put the wood down and turned to her with narrow amber eyes, lashes jetblack with the sparkle of flakes on them.
"Have you anything to cook?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Gather some snow in a pot, half enough to fill it, and build a fire," he instructed her.
He left again, and she did as he told her. She sorted the wood according to size, selected dry twigs and built a little cone, a little volcano. She struck a match and poked it in to the base, blowing gently, and flames erupted like lava over the top. One or two logs later and the hungry little fire crackled and danced, eating up oxygen and breathing out warmth.
The girl fixed the pot handle to the bar above the flames and the pot was hanging, the snow liquifying. The room was warm enough to remove her scarf.
He came back, tall and filling the doorway, ducking his head to pass beneath the lintel. In his hand was a limp rabbit, broken-necked and unmarked.
"How did you do that?" she asked him.
"An old hunting method. It's quick and merciful. And there is no trail of blood for predators to follow," he answered.
"Predators? There are wolves hereabouts," she answered. "I hear their music."
"You call their voices music," he said, smiling for the first time. Teeth like snow.
"Where is your skinning knife? While you prepare this I will find us other ingredients for soup," he said. "You could keep the pelt for a hat, your hair looks cold."
Cold hair? He left for a third time, and she carried the soft creature to the table, finding her knife in the drawer. It was very sharp, and quickly the rabbit was jointed, pelt put away so that she could get to scraping it when she had the time. The room was now warm enough to remove her shawl.
On his third return, he emptied the pockets of his coat, and out tumbled spider mushrooms, forest onion, pepperberry and purple beans, nutapples and sweet garlic, a spike of rosemary and several fat tubers.
"This should liven things up," he said, and she laughed in delight. She didn't eat like this in the season of plenty, never mind in the bleak midwinter.
"Our dinner will take at least an hour. Perhaps we should get acquainted. My name is Jacob," he said, and took off the great black coat. She thought perhaps he wouldn't be as big inside it, that it was an illusion, but no, he was still the size of a bear. The room had heated, and he took off a jacket he was wearing underneath, and stood in a shirt and trousers.
"I am Isobel," she answered. "I don't know how to thank you for what you have provided."
"There is no need to thank me. I think we're about even. You have offered me a roof over my head and a place to spend the night."
He sat at her little table, long legs stretched out on front of him and started to tell stories.
"I am younger than I look, and older than I seem," he began. "I've climbed the sea and sailed the mountains. It's many nights since I've slept in a house, and many nights since I've sat before a fire. Your home is a palace of comfort and luxury."
Bella smiled shyly, and answered, "It's not much, really," while chopping and dicing and slicing and plopping things through the veil of steam into bubbling water.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I go where the road takes me. I have no fixed destination. Not a geographical one, anyway. I'll know when I get there."
"How will you know?" she asked.
"My heart will tell me," he answered.
Isobel remembered the blackberry brandy she had under her bed. Now seemed as good a time as any to take it out. She went beyond the floor-to-ceiling tapestry curtain at one end of the cottage, and got the bottle, covered in its dusty mantle.
"Would you like a drink?" she asked.
"You are generous. Yes, thank you," Jacob answered.
Isobel had little tin cups and she poured a dram into each. "To visitors," she toasted.
"To hosts," he returned.
She had taken off her cardigan whilst in her bed chamber, and was now in her embroidered white blouse and long woolen skirt.
As the stew cooked he continued his traveller's tales, and then invited her to speak. Isobel had never traveled anywhere but she was a keen observer of her own surroundings, and she told him of seasons and colors and happenings. She described the way the creek sang, and how the trees nodded and whispered, and she spoke of treasures, blue speckled eggs with a tiny baby inside waiting until the light was right, of the dappled red haunches of fawns, of the amber glinting eyes of the wolves and the silver gifts of the moon on clear nights when she walked to the water to catch ripples and cloud tendrils in her hands.
"You have seen as much as I have," Jacob said. "Or I think perhaps more, for all the miles of my journeys. There is richness here, and in your words."
Tender, juicy rabbit with wild herbs and vegetables was ready for the sampling then, and she brought two steaming bowls to the table.
"This is very good," Jacob mumbled, speaking around the food as it threatened to spill. His smile would cause a mess on her table, with rabbit and vegetables both bidding for freedom until he shut his mouth.
Good it was indeed. They ate until sated, and pushed their plates back and pushed their chairs back to make more room for their stomachs and they leaned back and happily and talked some more.
The splendid meal made her tired then, and she was already tired from the rigors of the shivering she had done all day.
"I think it is time for me to retire now. Please excuse me, I am exhausted. I thank you once again for acting as providore. I will fetch you a blanket and pillow, and you may sleep before the hearth," Isobel murmured.
She only had two blankets and to give one up would mean she might be cold in the night, but there would be residual heat from the fire and she couldn't let her guest sleep uncovered. She handed a blanket over without a moment's hesitation or begrudging.
"I have no need of this," he smiled as she offered him the thin, threadbare thing. "I have my warm coat, and more flesh on my bones than you. And I shall bask in the fire's glow. Keep your blanket."
She nodded shyly.
His face took on a more serious look.
"Isobel, tonight, you must not look around your curtain. Stay in your bed until the morning, promise me."
"Of course," she returned. Why would she get up from her bed once she was in it?
She blew out the window candle and retired to her little alcove.
Once behind her heavy curtain she pulled her cotton blouse and woolen skirt over her head and stood wraithlike in her chemise before clambering onto the high bed.
Sleep came easy with a full belly and after a few mouthfuls of blackberry liquor. Sleep came easy after such an evening of companionship and conviviality. Dreams came of mountains and seas and journeys and adventures, of ways to catch rabbits, and how to find spider berries and ginger beans under snowdrifts as high as the back of an ox. Despite the stranger a curtain away Isobel slept like a lamb.
In the night, though, something awakened her and she sat bolt upright. Quite forgetting the warning she had been issued with so recently, Isobel pulled the screening fabric to one side and stepped past the veil, out onto the stone-flagged floor.
There was no sight of her guest, but stretched out in the dull red glow of the fading fire was a wolf, raven-shanked, ribs rising and falling, breathing and alive.
At her gasp, it raised its great shaggy head and regarded her. It stood, and was enormous. Raising itself onto hind legs, it was even bigger. She shrank back, not knowing where on earth she might run to, but it started to waver at the edges and turn smoky.
"Isobel," a voice said. "Blink."
At the blink Jacob stood before her, and the wolf was gone.
Isobel wasn't timid, she couldn't be - a girl who lived alone. Isobel wasn't afraid on mooned nights when she heard the baying of the silver and shadowed lupine creatures calling to one another, she couldn't be - she shared the forest with them.
But in the locality there was a story that if a wolf should ever cross your threshold you would be dead by morning.
"Who are you?" she asked Jacob.
"A traveler, a wanderer, a seeker," he answered.
"What are you?" she asked.
"A man and a wolf," he said.
"Are you going to hurt me?" she asked.
"No. I grew weary of my own company and I saw your candle; I saw your open door. I longed to speak with someone and so I came in and found you. I mean you no harm."
Isobel was very serious, considering the implication of the old story. She looked through the door at the stars.
"Do the same stars shine everywhere?" she asked him.
"They do, but they look different from different places. Mountaintops bring them closer," he answered. "Sometimes they stream in colors. Sometimes they march across the firmament like a flock of birds in formation, or they swim lazily and spread like ripples."
"I would like to see that," Isobel said, looking about her humble dwelling. Everything was so familiar it was written on the back of her eyelids. If she were blind she would have no trouble negotiating her life. There was nothing else to know in this place.
"I will die overnight," she told him, suddenly convinced.
"Why would you? From the cold?" he asked, his glance sweeping her attire. "Have my coat."
"No, I will die of having stayed here," she said simply. "Unless..."
"Unless?"
"Would you take me with you when you go?" she asked.
Golden eyes looked into hers and flickered. He nodded.
"I will take you," he answered simply. "I will take you everywhere. We can hunt together and eat together. You can describe things to me and I will see them anew. By night we will watch the stars and by day we will travel."
"I will be a slow walker," she warned him.
"You need never walk. You can ride on my back. I am strong enough," he said. "For now, sleep, and we may leave in the morning."
"How will we know where to go? Which road will we follow?"
"We will take the wolf road."
"The wolf road," she breathed. She fancied she could see the beginnings of it amongst the trees.
"I want to sleep here before the fire, and turn my face to the sky," she told him. She lay on the rug before the hearth, while Jacob fetched her pillow.
"Do you know, for so long I had thought I was seeking a place. I begin to see that that wasn't so," he told her. "I believe I was seeking a feeling. And here it is. You have given it to me. It is company and friendship, and maybe more. Who knows? Now, don't be afraid - we will both be warmer this way," and he changed even as she watched him, smoothly and seamlessly becoming the wolf. He lay at her side.
Isobel crossed her hands on her breast and smiled, recognizing that she wanted the same things he did, though she hadn't known it before he said it. She'd barely had occasion to smile during this hard winter, but now tonight, warm, happy, well-fed and looking forward to the morrow, she thought that she might smile forever.
A week later, there having been no fresh snow in the interim, some folk from the village climbed their way through the valley to Isobel's cottage.
The door was open, and a bottle of blackberry brandy sat on her table, with two cups beside it, one of those being full. Two empty bowls stood alongside. The cooking pot, clean and also empty, hung over the bare fireplace. Two pillows lay on the rug before the hearth, though the blankets were on the bed.
Isobel's warm clothes lay draped about the room, leaving her in her chemise. She was smiling.