The previously cheerful house was cloaked in silence and grief. Even the wolves in the paintings had lowered their eyes and bodies in deference to a fallen kinsman.
Odin's breathing was shallow and his fur streaked with a fever sweat. When his eyes did open they were glazed and dull. Odin Varulf was dying.
No one ever said death by silver was quick and easy. Then again few had been around werewolves long enough to witness the full slow, painful, fever-racked death that such a dose of silver could produce. Those who were killed outright by a shot through the heart or a huge enough dose were the lucky ones. But there were too many of those who, like Odin, had been 'rescued' by their packmates before a fatal blow could be landed, or who were not hurt so bad initially that they could not escape, only to succumb to the slow, agonising torments of silver poisoning.
Skadi had hardly left her brother's side in the three days since Frey had carried his father home. Her face was drawn and tired, her eyes hollow and bloodshot with sorrow and her shoulders slumped in defeat. She was an adequate healer, but nothing she knew could halt this fatal process of fever and decline, though spirits knew she'd tried. The wound itself was clean, and looked as if, given time, it would heal. But the real problem was now in his blood and destroying his organs. She now prayed to every god and ancestor she knew to make his passage to the other world quick. To end his suffering.
Jeremy quietly entered the room and handed Skadi a steaming cup of tea. Since she'd spent all her time caring for her brother and Frey was wandering as if in a dream, he'd taken charge of his adoptive family.
'Skadi, dinner will be ready in a few minutes,' he whispered, his voice and spirits hushed by the almost palpable presence of Death in the room.
'I'm not hungry.'
'You must eat. Odin wouldn't want you following him so soon. At least drink that, I'll plate you up some food and you can have it if you want it later.'
The young woman nodded her assent and began sipping the scalding liquid almost automatically. It was hot and sweet, yet it did hardly anything to warm the chill running through her soul. Tucking the blankets around the shivering, sweating body of her brother, Skadi got up and followed Jeremy out into the living room where she sank wearily into one of the leather armchairs. Jeremy brought her a bowl of steaming meat broth and thick chunks of homemade buttered bread. She tucked in hungrily and was almost halfway through before she tasted what she was eating.
'This is good, Jeremy, how did you make this?'
'Muggles aren't completely useless, my dear,' he smiled, kissing her lightly on the forehead.
A door slammed and the sound of heavy feet reverberated across the floorboards. 'Frey…?'
The young werewolf was almost unrecognisable. His eyes, once so full of life and humour were lost and glazed and, much more worryingly, angry. There was a quality in him that could be the saving or the breaking of werewolfkind, and anger was the path to its destruction. His pale hair, seemingly paler with every full moon that passed, was wild and unkempt, and his clothes torn and frayed. His aunt knew better than to ask where he had been, she knew. Howling out his rage and grief to the winds, trying to outrun his pain in the forest, clawing his frustration on the bark of trees.
'Frey, there's some soup on the stove. It's good.' Skadi said hopefully.
'I'm not hungry,' the younger wolf grunted. Skadi knew he wouldn't be. There was blood on his shirt.
'Could you take some through to your father, please. He needs to eat.'
'Why…?'
Skadi almost thought he was going to challenge her. There was something about his posture that was threatening, even if he didn't mean it to be. But she once again she could read his thoughts. All the questions beginning with why. But the main one that kept coming through again and again, Why prolong the inevitable?
Suddenly he sighed and his body lost the menace it had so briefly gained, turning towards the kitchen and ladled out some of the hot broth into a bowl. As he turned to go up the corridor to his father's room, he heard his aunt whisper, 'It is hard for a boy to lose both his parents.'
His father was laying in the same position he had been for days, well, almost. His blankets were twisted and disturbed, telling the tale of his father's restless existence. He writhed almost constantly in feverish nightmares, calling out in one language and then another. Frey knew what his father had done weighed heavily upon his mind.
The black-feathered bolt, still stained in Odin's blood, rested upon the shelf, a grisly reminder to them all, as if they needed it.
Frey straightened his father's blankets and dampened his brow, already spiky with sweat. Sitting beside the weak, trembling body, he slowly and carefully began to spoon the broth into his muzzle, wiping away the liquid where he dribbled.
Talking to him all the time, Frey tried to soothe him from his constant nightmares. He spoke of all things and nothing, memories and nonsense stories his father had told him when he was small. When he had finally run out of things to say, he reached for a small wooden pipe and played. Played to soothe his father's spirits and his own.
Frey's gift had always been in his music. In his hands a simple reed pipe became a magical thing without any thought or effort. It had always been said that music soothes the savage beast, but it takes a savage beast to play with such peace and soul to make the old adage ring true.
Tears streamed down the werewolf's face as he poured all the words he could never say into his music. Let this be the sound to which his father breathed his last.
Finally played out, the pipe dropped from his lips and Frey's hauntingly golden eyes fluttered open. Deep within them was a morbid fascination, an idea born through musical contemplation.
If he was going to lose the only parent he had ever known he wanted to know why. And, more importantly, how. How did silver poison werewolves and not anyone else? He half-remembered some old story about silver being the lunar metal and therefore harmful to creatures of the moon – the werewolves.
He could feel Odin's feverish heartbeat and saw his glazed eyes flicker in the throes of some nightmare, but it was the arrow wound that interested him.
The bones of Odin's shoulder had been broken, shattered really, by the force of the bolt. The actual wound itself was clean on the surface, but there was something odd about its scent. At first he thought it was silver as there was something faintly metallic about it, but as he probed deeper it finally dawned on him what it was – deep in the wound something was festering. His father wasn't dying from silver poisoning, he was dying from blood poisoning, from infection.
The full implication of what this meant had yet to dawn on the young wolf, so overwhelmed was he by the immediate prospects. Unlike silver, infection was something that they could do something about. Infection could be cured. Infection didn't have to be fatal…
'Aunt Skadi!'
- - - - -
In his fevered mind Odin Varulf was tortured. Hisses of accusation followed him and eyes burning with hate glittered out of a swirling black mist. He could feel their words like burning barbs of revulsion in his head. He had become everything he had worked so hard to remove, and damned an innocent child with him. He deserved this fate.
He deserved this long, agonising death and he resigned himself to it.
'He's dying, he's dying…' he heard that voices mock and he knew that he was. There was no way back. Even if he knew the path he wouldn't be able to find it in this inky maelstrom.
He sighed and lay down, ready to let Death take him from this place.
'Not yet,' a voice howled through the sibilant whispers of the others. 'Not yet.'
Cutting through the churning blackness came a figure painful in its whiteness. The thick fog parted to let this creature through. Odin raised his tired eyes to see a wolf of epic proportions striding towards him, not on four feet but on two. It was this wolfs' voice he had heard.
'You are not ready yet. You still have tasks that need to be fulfilled.'
Odin sighed wearily, resigned to his fate and unwilling to let it go, 'My time is over.'
'Your tasks are not yet over. You claimed one as your own. You need to survive for your pack. I need you to survive.'
Odin looked up for the first time into the white wolf's golden eyes and saw the depth of compassion there that could only belong to one, 'Oh, Frey…'
'We need you. We need your guidance, your wisdom. You cannot die here. I will not let you die here.'
The white wolf that was Frey raised an immense paw to the sky, where miraculously a space had cleared to reveal the stars. His white paw grasped a point of light and pulled to draw a subtly curved blade that seemed made of the stars themselves.
'If the moon has cursed you, the Sword of the Gods will heal you. You shall not die!'
There was a hardness in his eyes that made Odin tremble. His son lunged hard and stabbed him straight in his wounded shoulder.
'Saiph!'
Through tear-blurred eyes, Odin watched as the starlit sword melted into his son's pure snow fur and the light of its magnificent blade shone through his eyes. The Sword of the Gods…
With a sigh he sank into a new sleep and knew his fate with absolute certainty. He would not die.
- - - - -
Remus screamed in pain as the bolt was pulled from his shoulder and a healing salve rubbed into the streaming wound it had caused.
'Scent it, Remus!' a voice commanded him.
The blood-stained bolt was brought up to his nose and he sniffed at it. Blood and… silver? He howled in grief, agony and betrayal. His pack had killed him.
'You will not die, Remus. Not here. Not now. The silver has entered you body and you will not die. Don't let false fate trick you into believing it. This is not what kills us, Remus. It was not a shot to kill. This is the same bolt that entered my father's flesh, and that of many around you. Let this myth be dispelled in your heart now. Silver does not kill any more that any other metal!'
Remus opened his eyes to see the Sword of the Gods standing above him, his namesake glittering brightly above him in the night sky as the pack raised its muzzles to their leader and howled out their loyalty.
