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The account of Lady Sabine
When I first meet him… he had an aura of power about him. I couldn’t explain it. When I met his eyes they were a pale yellow green, and he seemed able to sum up my mortal existence in the smallest of glances. It scared me and lured me in at the same time.
Maybe you master that after three hundred years. Not that I ever could have guessed his age at that moment.
I was barely sixteen. I was destined to marry the black smith’s son. A step up for the farmer’s daughter.
That night, I had run away. I wanted to be a fighter, a warrior, a knight. I wasn’t just going to be another of those apron and dress wearing women that bring the breadwinners dinner every night while a chase a dozen little ones.
I don’t know why I had so much fight in me. I don’t know why I couldn’t just be like everyone else and take life in the face because that’s what it allotted to me. I don’t know how I came to realize that life is my own fault, and that if I really wanted to do anything to it, I had better start fighting back.
I don’t know how far I really expected to get before I met some thing like him. I suppose in retrospect, I am very fortunate it was him. Other of his kind, other shimmers, even the vampires never would have been so … giving. If you can call it that.
He smiled at me, and I knew that he was something not quite human. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. His voice was low, deep as if it had to push its way into his mouth. I remember I backed up, I folded my arms across myself as if that should somehow shield me.
“Who are you?” I asked. Such a stupid question. His name would have done me no good. What I really should have asked was, What are you?
“I am called Elder,” he said. That’s when he changed and I saw before me a wolf.
Before I had time to wonder if I was faced against a shimmer, he lunged at me. I put my hands up by my face and neck, an impulsive and futile maneuver to protect myself. His jaws sank deep into the flesh under my arm pit.
I remember I screamed. I remember it burned. I remember that I thought I was going to die.
I remember how I laid on the forest floor and how the great hulking beast was near me- so much bigger than any other wolf. I remember how he looked down at me as if he was somehow laughing at me. I remember wondering when he would end it and kill me.
At last the sun came up. He left, and I continued laying on the forest floor. I heard his voice on the wind. He told me to go home… time would come quickly enough before the full moon.
I remember how I kept laying there wondering how I could die instead. I knew then what he was and what had bitten me. I had never thought I would run into a werewolf on a night which was not the full moon. Last night it had been the waning quarter, near the new moon. It would be near three weeks before it was full again.
The sun continued to shine down on me, and eventually climbed to the noon time. I got up where I lay in the dirt and debris of trees and looked at my shoulder. There was really quite a lot a of blood. I staggered up, my face feeling hot and my body feeling cold. I walked for some distance in the forest, not sure which way was back.
I heard some water and walked as I have seen drunken men stagger to the area. It was a creek- the kind that probably dried up late in the summer and early fall. I felt hot all over, and as if I starved for water. I fell into the creek, the water rushing over my skin like fire.
I turned face up, breathing the air, letting the water creep all over my skin, loosen the blood caked to my arm and clothes. I lay in that water for an eternity that slipped by in the space of minutes. Finally, I sat up, feeling considerably revived and washed my clothing free of the blood on it, until only a vague brown spot remained to tell of the throbbing, bruised, torn flesh beneath.
I felt so ill, like my insides were trying to adapt to something. I suppose they were: the poison of basic immortality.
I knew that I would have to go home. I felt so weak, and home wasn’t far. I didn’t know what I would tell them- anything but what was the truth. The village elder would have me burned. And I did know one thing… I didn’t want to burn and I didn’t really want to die.
I pulled myself from the spring and tied my skirts above my knees so that they didn’t drag the dirt and get muddy. I wanted to be half way presentable when I got home, or my father would never forgive me. My mother would be scandalized enough as it was.
I walked slowly… I felt like I could barely keep my gaze focused and my stomach seemed to be about the business of turning itself inside out. I wonder how I would explain my illness ad sweat ran down my already wet back. I paused as an idea came to me.
I didn’t like it… but I knew only one way to cover up what had happened to me. I gripped the knife I had stolen from my father and pulled it out, eyeing my calf. I hovered there for several minutes with the blade pointed toward it, and couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I reminded myself again that I must. I needed shelter until I could get a mastery of the venom that had been injected into me. If I could make it past the full moon without getting killed, I could live twenty-seven or so days in peace like it hadn’t happen.
At least that is what I told myself as I pressed the knife to my flesh. The minute it began to hurt I lost nerve and pulled the blade back. I felt even more dizzy, like I was going to faint.
I mustered my courage again and pressed hard again, but at the first small weal of blood up around the silver of the blade the dizziness overwhelmed me. I woke flat on my back in the weeds and grass, feeling like prickles were filling my body and like I ached all over. I managed to sit up and inspected the small trickle of blood on my calf and felt vaguely ashamed for fainting.
But I wasn’t done. I had one more to do. I felt sick all over and wondered if I could make myself do it. I shook terribly with the knife and stared hard my calf for several seconds. I trembled severely as I brought the knife back near my calf.
I spaced it an inch away and slowly pressed. I felt the sparkles of light immediately, even before I broke the skin.
I awoke on my back again, the knife still in my hand. I looked at my leg, woozy feeling, but both marks were there. I wiped the knife on a hidden corner of my dress and felt rather ashamed. It wasn’t like I hadn’t had accidents before that I had been exposed to my blood. It wasn’t like I hadn’t participated in the slaughter of animals and been exposed to plenty of blood. What did inflicting a couple of drips have that was so powerful anyway?
I knew I had to make it look more aggravated, so I took a rock and smashed it into my calf. I yelped and clutched it as the pain vibrated up my leg. I hoped that would be sufficient.
I staggered some more toward home, I recognized where I was so I knew it wouldn’t be long. I felt like I needed to throw up, but there wasn’t anything left in my stomach to be removed. If an inside-out stomach can have anything in it.
I staggered to our fence line, where my little brother, several years younger than I, screamed to our father that he had seen me.
Not as much for dramatic effect as I would have liked, I collapsed right there.
The next few days were quite rocky. I told them I had been bitten by a snake, and from their commoner stand point, the puncture marks and bruising were evidence enough. The town’s midwife gave me a number of vile herbs to counteract the poison, which I threw up every time. However, I made as if they were working and seemed to get a little better.
Which in truth, either I got used to my condition, or things did start to get better, because I did start being able to move around without danger of breaking my head by falling down. But each day… I stared at the moon and felt the count down continuing. My eyes began to change… not only did I see well in the day light, but I also began to be able to see in the night. Smells became a point of interest as well, I had never realized the world was so full of so much stench. My sense of hearing became more acute… I found that I could pinpoint the smallest movements many feet away.
And I could only fear that it would get worse each night.
When I had first runaway, my family had become alarmed when I did not return that night, fearing for the worst… the worst being that I had run away, and slightly better being that I had been attacked and devoured by some savage beast. Having not run away and having only been bitten by a “snake” was perfectly repectable, and since I was recovering, plans for my marriage could commence.
I balked and fought against it and felt trapped. Nothing was going to end well, I could feel it. If I left, I would be too weak to fend off another encounter like the one I had with “Elder.” If I stayed I could very well end up married off… or transforming the next moon and trying to kill everyone in a blind rage.
As the days passed, I began to feel more and more oppressed by the impossible choices I had to make. I picked many fights with my mother, and my father told me that if I was any better, he would throw me out over my disrespectful behavior.
My little brother just did his best to stay out of all it.
The moon edged closer and closer. The few nights prior when it basically looked full… I felt such a powerful rage that I wanted to peel my skin off. The wound on my side which would not seem to heal… but oozed out small amounts of black crusty blood each day burned like it might sear and cauterize off the whole of my shoulder and side at that point. I couldn’t sleep nights and snuck out.
I seriously began to contemplate death as an option. If the rage was this powerful now… I would certainly become a most savage monster and kill then.
I was repulsed at the idea of blood and flesh in my mouth. I have never wholly gotten over this repulsion.
I almost hung myself in the barn, but I could not bring myself to do it.
So, the night before the full moon, I fled again. This time, I didn’t take any belongings with me, just the clothes I had on me and my cloak.
He was waiting for me in the forest. I tried to run from him, but he kept pace and didn’t lose a step or hardly a breath on the effort it took him. I realized this and began to walk, and glared at him. “What do you want from me?” I was startled by the amount of bite and growl in my own voice.
He laughed. “This is exactly what I wanted from you! You have so much fight!”
I glared at him. He smirked back. I don’t know if I have ever felt hateful rage quite like what I felt toward him that moment. I stopped and threw my arms wide and closed my eyes… defying him to do something.
He only chuckled. I stood there several more minutes, until I felt a fool, and I started walking again… I wanted to be as far into the middle of nowhere as I could get. I tried not to think about how if I could walk to wherever I was going, it would be no problem for a wolf to go back. “Aren’t you creatures supposed to eat humans?” I demanded at last, resolved that no amount of taunting was going to change his current course of action.
“You were very difficult not to eat,” he said in that horrible growly voice. The moon glinted in his eyes. “Your flesh was very sweet.”
That bothered me. He said it so seriously. It made me disturbed and ill at the same time. I ran again.
As if to taunt me, he changed to a wolf and followed me still. “You will adjust to human flesh- even elf and dwarf… it is for us to prey upon the humans.”
“I am not like you,” I puffed and my voice trembled. “I never will be! So get away from me!”
He only laughed, and I gave up running again. I was utterly lost now, and I only wanted to get more lost. Rage burned in my heart like it should have burnt it up and left a cinder long ago. I found myself wondering if hearts could burn permanent fires, and if they aught to be used in fire pits.
This made me ill and made me worry I was already becoming like the monster that trotted so casually at my side so I tried to think of something else.
I exhausted myself near dawn, and so after giving him a good glare, found a patch of soft flora and went to sleep. He told me that I would grow to love the outdoors just as a wolf does. I told him I hoped the gods would burn his worthless carcass over and over in hell. He only laughed at me.
I don’t know why he still finds me so amusing.
I slept a good portion of the day, feeling quite upset. I wanted to flay my own skin off with a dull knife. Fortunately, I didn’t have one on me. I settled for beating a tree trunk until my fists bled, which allayed the horrible rage in my chest for just a moment. I wandered aimlessly, and shredded plants that I could grasp in my hands.
My ghastly companion was no help- telling me how much I would love hunting and tasting human flesh. Telling me how irresistible it was. What better hunter for human kind, than ones who had once been human?
I tried to block him out as he told me how much more tender humans were to any wild game a wolf could have. Humans, especially women and children, don’t have to have near as much muscle to survive as a pathetic deer. Humans did not possess one tenth the perfection of the wild creatures, and not even as much as their lazy domesticated beasts did. He said that was why they had intelligence. Werewolves got the best of both worlds.
I hoped I tried to tear him apart when I transformed. He was the most loathsome creature or being I had ever encountered.
Night began to fall, but I saw as though it were day. I heard the horrible being walking beside me almost as well as I could smell him. I stopped and ravaged a tree with my fists until the fingers on my hands looked so mangled and bloody I doubted they could ever be recovered. My rage was burning me up… my body was flushed with it my heart labored to beat against it. I wanted to reach into my chest and pull out my heart and crush it… let it’s blood and flesh squirt between my fingers. I bit my arm until I bled. I screamed and I raved. As the dark progressed and the moon came nearing I was on the ground, beating my head against a rock and trying to scrape my own flesh off. If any living thing had come close enough to me, I do not doubt I would have flown at them and gone for their eyes, their throat- anything at all- whatever it took to ease the rage ravaging my soul.
However, the only being… Elder Taunter stayed well outside any reach I had.
Then the moon peeked over the mountain top. The rays fell over the trees I was near. I convulsed and I screamed as the moments slid by and I slowly slid into its light.
There was something refreshing… about the smell of my own blood. Something easing about it running over my damaged body and onto the ground. Something that was very good. The rays fell on me, and I was at last finally able to tear it free of my body in great gobby, bloody chunks as new flesh formed underneath it. I screamed pure exaltation at the relief utter pain brought to me.
I awoke the next morning human and pinned under his body. He was sleeping. His face reeked blood. Blood that I knew was not mine. I struggled futilely under him as he snored on, his big body not at all bothered by little wriggling human girl under it.
Or… was it human after all?
I felt disturbingly full. I could taste something meaty and sweet in my mouth. My stomach fell and I frantically wondered who I had killed.
Then my eyes fell on the grizzly eviscerated remains of something that I could make out pieces of ribcage. I nearly threw up there, but I shortly after noticed bits of deer hide on the trees. Still sickening… but at least I was no killer.
The wolf woke and peered down at me. “Stop that,” he said. “Your struggling is annoying and we both need rest.”
I glared at him. I hated him still. I wished he was the one whose pieces were littered among the trees near us. “You expect me to rest with you trying to crush my breath out of me?” I demanded. My voice sounded too growly for my own comfort.
“You were sleeping well enough before,” he said coolly, aloof. Not at all the beast that had egged me on hours earlier.
“Get off me,” I growled still louder.
He huffed, but let me wriggle out from under him. As I strove to move away from him, he caught me by my hair. I turned and glowered at him and wished I had something to cut it off with. He drug me back to his body by my hair, which at some point I had to give up fighting against and pinned me half sitting, half laying to his side with his great hulking stupid head.
I fidgeted, not entirely surrendering to this situation, and looked down at my hands. They were healed like I had done nothing to them. My flesh showed no signs of having been rent from my body and seemed perfectly whole. In fact, it looked more healthy than I had ever seen it before. As I thought about it, I felt rather well all over my body- as if something had infused me with warmer blood and strength.
Eventually, as my fidgets and tweaking of his hair failed to sufficiently annoy him, I became tired and fell asleep.
I have to say that the first few years were hardest. I couldn’t be rid of him… and the overpowering rage was hard to rationalize. Eventually I completely understood it, and that was the last time I had to tear my human self away to get to the wolf-self.
Within twenty five years… faster than any of the Elder’s minions to date, I had mastered everything about the shape… though I never developed the affinity for it the average wolf has.
I became the knight I always wanted to be…
He took me in that first year to his hide out… his home town which he had completely overrun with other werewolves. He intended to build an empire, he said. And it seemed to me that he had got disturbingly far with that goal. He has never told anyone what exactly the purpose of that empire would be, but most of his followers do not care.
He had me half convinced that I loved him for almost a century. But I got over that. I am the oldest of the werewolves besides himself… and he is rather disappointed that I didn’t embrace the shape or the dogma more thoroughly.
But in the end, I prefer to wander and to associate with humans… they are so much more dynamic that something that is going to live many thousands of years. And he can’t deny that I can’t be entirely wrong… after all, I am the second oldest werewolf there is.
I am not going to lie and say I don’t like being a werewolf.
I am not going to lie and say that I haven’t killed and eaten a few humans in my life time. I am not going to say that I don’t feel the temptation each month.
I am not going to lie and say that immortality is the best thing that ever happened to me.
 Paras_Serenity · Thu Apr 02, 2009 @ 06:01am · 0 Comments |
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