THE TRIAL OF A LOUP-GAROU
(Excerpt from novel with working title Shape Changer)
by
James Lee
Copyright 2010

 

Hours later, Jean lay beside the smoldering remains of his small fire.  The magic stones had done their mysterious work.  It took several tries, but he had managed to discover using dry grass and twigs for kindling, then adding a few larger pieces of wood gathered quickly from the forest floor.  Next time he would try making a larger fire.

He wiped his greasy mouth with the back of his hand.  He lay back and gazed straight up at what he could see of the sky.  He drifted in unformed thoughts a while.  Then he belched and grasped the wooden jar he had at his side as he decided to go for a leisurely walk.

Before much time had passed, he reached a much larger clearing.  A stream paused to widen out to a sparkling pond before gurgling along its merry journey to the sea.  The sun neared the horizon.  The small pond captured its hues and twinkled like red and gold crystal.  Beyond the pond stretched a lush sheep pasture.  He liked this place.

Jean undressed and stashed his dismal clothing in some nearby bushes.  He opened the jar.  One little smear on his forehead and each arm and leg, the dark lord had said.  He would enjoy immersing himself in the cool water while waiting for whatever the unguent would do.  The edge of the sun touched the skyline.  He felt an itchy, pricking sensation from his scalp to his feet.  The Lord of the Forest hadn’t mentioned anything about this.  He soon lost all thought of the pond.

Then he felt his insides changing, his body breaking down and rebuilding into another thing.  He writhed in fear at the sensations from the stretching and snapping of his own sinews and bones.  Panic struck.  “My lord, my lord,” he tried to shout, “show me what to do!”  No words came out.  The words he tried to say sounded more like the terrified yelp of an animal caught in a snare with its leg cleaved in twain.

Jean gradually began to dismiss the pain.  It was, after all, inconsequential to the discovery of its purpose.  The dark lord most certainly had something in store for him beyond the physical agony.  The crying out settled into moans of discomfort.  The promise of adventure trumped the fear of the unknown.  Excitement, both the bright and the dark of it, slowly smothered all else.  He decided to wait for a frame of reference.  His body would tell him what to do and what he had become.

Jean bounded off into the forest.  He followed a scent that struck him as both alien and familiar.  Although new to the natural companions he sensed awaiting him, he somehow knew he would belong upon reaching them.  Their scent grew stronger.  He knew happiness for the first time in his life, and he hadn’t the slightest idea why.  At long last, Jean Broceliande, bastard son of a priest, knew he actually belonged somewhere.  His hunger at rest for now, he loped joyously along the aromatic trail, reveling in the novelty of freedom.  He stopped to raise his arms toward the heavens and shout in celebration.  His arms didn’t function the way he wanted them to, and his victory cry sounded more like a howl, but that was just fine.

Then he encountered the poacher.

Jean stopped instantly, hunkered down, and sniffed the air.  The man had set his snares upwind.  His nose told him more about the poacher than his eyes.  The raised hair on his hackles pricked a warning.  Human.  Danger.  Flee.  The other side of his nature, now the less dominant one, assured him of no need to run from his own kind.  Simultaneously, in a dim niche of Jean’s mind, a mental picture flashed a view of the meal he had prepared with the sticks and magic stones.  Hoping the man would not see him, Jean, still crouching, slowly backed away.

The man did see him.

“By all that’s holy, it’s the biggest one I ever seen, and missing a tail of all strange things,” muttered the human while reaching for his crossbow leaning against the tree next to him.

Jean had surely changed, but he still recognized a crossbow when he saw one.  He had to make the man drop the weapon before fleeing from the threat, or the bolt would strike its mark.  Drawing back his lip to show his teeth, Jean snarled and leapt at the lethal human.  The crossbow slipped from the poacher’s hands as he nervously tried to nock the bolt in place.  Certain of his own death, the man sank to his knees making the sign of the cross and mumbling an “Our Father.”  Jean spun in a sharp turn and sped away from the human.  Loping full speed through the snapping undergrowth and his long tongue flapping between his jaws, he panted more from panic than exertion.  He ran deeper into the count’s forest.

Soon he detected a presence that struck him as both strange and familiar.  He lifted his nose almost vertically and sniffed.  He sensed no immediate danger.  He picked up a scent riding the gentle breeze: the arrival of challenge mixed with welcome.

His hearing nearly as acute as his sense of smell, Jean heard a low-pitched, throaty growl in the distance.  He tracked it through the brush and close-set trees.  Before long he peered from behind an ancient oak to stare at the pack.  They stood expectantly in their own small clearing, not unlike Jean’s recently claimed home base.  Two males and three females.  All but the dominant male had their tails drooped downward.  Jean cautiously stepped around the big tree, now in the open, surprising himself with his own lack of fear among the predators.

The big male in command, his tail high and proud, rumbled a challenge.

Jean’s lifelong fear of wolves had suddenly become nothing more than a meaningless and stupid tradition.  All those lurid tales passed down from one generation of humans to the next no longer had any significance to him.  He did not sense a confrontation with a sinister monster emerging from a hell mouth.  He witnessed gentle and beautiful forest dwellers filled with strength and power in confident restraint.  They instantly showed him that the forest had truly become his home.

Jean sensed that the pack feared him, though.  So why did they not flee, or attack?  The leader curled his lip and rumbled again.  The male held his ground, yet he showed no interest in doing more than that.  Jean though of Papa on one of those rare occasions when a stranger came to the door.  The leader did not retreat or advance.  His haunting amber eyes fixed on Jean (or, rather, what Jean had become); he waited to determine what the loner approaching his pack would do.

Jean tentatively stepped, advanced.  The leader crouched to spring.  His hackles went up, but his ears remained erect.  Somehow, Jean could read the message, and he knew the primordial ritual as though it was etched in his soul.  If he chose to remain alone, he could leave for his own little patch of the forest, and that would be the end of it.  If chose to stay here, he would have to earn acceptance.  This would involve demonstrating worthiness while simultaneously showing submission to the leader.  Jean had long had his fill of groveling, but if he chose not to submit, he would have to challenge the big male standing at the head of his pack.  Jean instinctively knew that in his new role in life, anything other than a mock fight in this situation was extremely rare.  But unintended injuries could occur, and occasionally true violence did flare up.  Jean had a considerable advantage in size, but the leader had far more experience.  He had no idea how he knew all this.  The strange insight must have come with the change of form.

The beautiful black and tan female with the white tip on her tail whimpered and looked at Jean.  She rolled onto her back.  The leader snarled at her.  Ignoring the lord of the pack, she crawled over to Jean’s side with her belly dragging the ground.

Jean decided to leave without being driven off.  He slowly walked past the leader, not challenging but not submitting.  He didn’t know what to do about the bitch following him.  At the edge of clearing claimed by the pack, the female paused a long moment to look at the only family she had ever known.  The pack looked at her with profound sadness.  Jean’s she-wolf companion leaned her head back, closing her eyes and pointing her snout at the sky.

A long, mournful howl soared into the night.

The pair made its way back to Jean’s forest home.  The she-wolf curled up peacefully.  Jean urinated on both sides outside the den.  He did the same at widely spaced intervals among the trees surrounding the small clearing.  Looking very pleased, the female wagged her tail happily and entered the den.  Jean listened to the rustlings coming from inside the tiny shelter.  It sounded like she engaged herself in getting settled.  It made him picture a busy bride moving into her new husband’s cottage in the countryside.

Jean lay down on the ground by the entrance to the den.  He sank into a dreamless sleep of long-delayed peace.  He awoke as light feebly slithered downward from the branches and leaves.  He felt the change begin again.  This time it felt pricklier and far more laborious than the one at sunset.

The bitch whimpered.  Jean stared into the den with squinty, sleepy eyes at his new companion.  She had grown very restless and agitated, afraid to come out.  It seemed Jean’s scent had changed from her perspective, as though it struck her as both the same and different, the different activating a terrifying alarm.  She poked her head out of the opening with a very confused and frightened expression.  She peered at him in a mute request for some sort of explanation.

He stood and stretched.  Naked in the early morning chill, he shivered and thought about his clothing.  The she-wolf nervously crawled out into the clearing.  She tentatively sniffed at him, leaping skittishly away a couple of times before calming.

Jean felt filthy, inside and out.  He thought of the little pond he had discovered yesterday.  He remembered leaving his clothing and the precious jar there.  What if someone should find it?  He bolted from the clearing in a panic.  Startled and again frightened, Jean’s new acquaintance trotted along behind him as though seeking his protection and leadership.

As he approached the wide spot of the brook overlooking the idyllic sheep pasture, he heard music.  He listened, absorbed, to the sad, lonely ballad from a female voice humming with the unsure playing of a musical instrument.  The closer to the pond he got, the louder the music became.

The she-wolf stopped several times to cock her head and try to discern the strange plucking sound.  Had she not felt increasingly secure with Jean, she would have fled instantly.  Fortunately, they were upwind of the music’s source.  The scent would have spooked her faster than anything else.  She did not pursue the sound of the bleating sheep in the meadow, either.  Sheep meant the presence of humans and should only be risked in the face of starvation.

Jean checked the bushes growing at the water’s edge.  No jar.  No clothing.  The she-wolf slapped her front paws into the water, shoved in her head, and came up with a fish in her powerful maw.  Instead of devouring it, she happily bounded over to Jean and dropped the flopping breakfast at his feet.

Hungry or not, Jean had better things on his mind.  How would his master react if the jar got lost?  Versipellis did not call himself Lord of the Forest without justification.  Jean suspected the imposing man had shown only a very small sample of his powers.

The she-wolf snapped her prize back in her jaws and returned to Jean’s side as he searched for his possessions.  Suddenly a breathless shriek interrupted the music.  His canine companion fled.  Jean jerked his head in the direction of the alarm.

Within a stone’s throw stood a fair young woman of about his own age.  Her wavy chestnut tresses tumbled well past her sturdy yet feminine shoulders.  Her pinkish lips were formed like cloud puffs.  Small and somewhat slim, yet she had a most womanly form in the eyes of the young man.  Dressed in rags nearly as tattered as his (if he could find them), but much cleaner, the girl gripped a shepherd’s staff in one hand and the neck of a lute in the other.  Her fear gave way to embarrassed amusement now that she decided she had nothing to fear from the young man or the beast scampering off into the brush.  Her cheeks flushed almost as red as fresh blood.  She dropped the staff to cover her face and giggle.

“What do you laugh at, shepherdess?” he challenged indignantly.  People had laughed at him as far back as he could remember, and he would have no more of it.  No mere human could defy his value any longer, including this wench—regardless of her comeliness.  

Her big tan eyes peeked between her fingers, and she pointed out, “You are quite naked, you know.  You really should cover yourself.”

Blushing himself now, Jean stepped into the pond and walked out into the water until the level lapped at his waist.  He had already acclimated to solitude enough not to pay any attention to exposing himself, now that the initial shock of the situation had passed.

“You can bring your hand down, shepherdess.”

“Do stop calling me that,” she admonished while leaning her lute against a tree.  “My name is Marguerite Grenier.”  She strolled over to the opposite bank of the little pond and sat down to chat with the strange young man.

He dove into the water and surfaced near where she sat.  With a laugh, he backed off enough for the depth to keep his vital parts covered.

“And what is your name?” Marguerite asked.

“Loup-garou!” he snarled raising his hands like claws.

“Your… your hands,” she said with a hint of a gasp.

Jean looked at his hands.  Why hadn’t he noticed before?  The two middle fingers were exactly the same length.  His nails had become tougher, longer, and much more pointed and sharp.  To distract himself as much as the young shepherdess, he laughed and raised his arms again.  “Loup-garou!”

He didn’t amuse her this time.  Her expression disclosed a puzzlement lying somewhere between inquisitiveness and primal fear.  She seemed both repelled and drawn to him.  Or had he simply become a matter of terror, holding her frozen to the bank of the pond?

“Where is your dog?  I did not mean to frighten it away.”

“It’s not my dog.  It is a she-wolf from what you call the count’s forest.”

“You keep company with a she-wolf?” she laughed.  The maid no longer seemed afraid of him—if she ever had been in the first place.

“And why not?  I do happen to be a loup-garou.”

“So you said.  Prove it to me.  Let me see you change into a howling monster of frightful dreams,” she teased fetchingly.  “Or must I wait till the moon is full?”

“Meet me here when the sun sets, and you will behold the mightiest loup-garou of all Christendom, more fearsome than the most awful of anyone’s dreams or tales.”

“Such nonsense, monsieur.  Next you would have me believe in the old legends of the black horseman.”

“You mean my Lord of the Forest, Versipellis?”  Jean surprised himself by his ability to pronounce the dark lord’s odd name for the first time.

“I must confess, Monsieur No-Name, talking with you helps use up the time while I tend the flock over there—but, lovely as it is, I cannot sit at this pond with you all day.  If you want to continue, put your clothes on and come along with me to the pasture.”

“I left them around here, but I don’t remember exactly where.  After all that happened last night, my memory betrays me.”

“I see some clothing right over there.”  She pointed at a bush.  Why hadn’t he seen that bush, practically tapping his shoulder?  His jar was still there too.  “Oh, what a lovely jar,” Marguerite continued.  “Is it yours as well?”

Jean nodded, growing a bit suspicious of her interest in the container.

“It looks so old, like the ones I saw dug up and destroyed at the parish with the other pagan…  May I hold it and look at it?”

“No!” he roared.  He scrambled out of the pond and sprinted to the jar.  He kept it within easy reach while he donned his clothing.  As he finished dressing, he again heard the sad and lonely music.  He wanted to rejoin Marguerite and apologize for his outburst, but the forest called with an urgency no other human could hear. 

He ran toward his den by the tiny clearing.

The bitch came out of the den to greet him.  She coughed up a portion of the fish she had stored in her throat.  Jean reached for the magic stones to start a fire, but cooked food had less appeal than before.  Why scar fresh meat with flames and give it that charred taste and unnatural heat?

At the instant he bit into the fish, a spear impaled his companion like a bird on an arrow, hurled with such force it went completely through her.  The bronze point and an added hand’s breadth of shaft protruded.  She yelped, then whimpered and trembled as she grew still while looking at Jean’s face like a parting apology.

A big boot stepped on her chest, audibly crushing the ribs as the gloved hand yanked the spear free.

“On your feet!”

Jean stood to face the man.  Versipellis brandished a charred bone from Jean’s meal of the day before, that other lifetime when he yet preferred his meat cooked.

“I told you not to eat of the unguent, did I not?”

“I just tasted it, just a tiny taste.  I didn’t really eat...”

“If you swallowed any of it at all, you ate of it.  Answer me truthfully, you foolish dolt, did you eat of the contents of that jar, even though I forbade it?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Do you know what you have done?  Have you no sense of consequences?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The unguent’s base is distilled from fat of wolf and human being.  It must be done the old way, from before the Latins, the Franks, the Saxons, those with no affinity for the belly of the earth, those who tremble not before the gods of thundering omnipotence.”

“Who?”

“Never defy our traditional masters, boy, those who reveal themselves as the naked power of nature itself, instead of hiding in puny statues or empty Roman litany.  Nowadays, no one offers respect to our mighty forebears, the ash and the elm.  No one pays homage to the all-seeing eye of all there is or ever will be.”

Jean couldn’t figure out if Versipellis spoke in grief or rage.  All he knew was that he hardly understood a word of what the dark lord uttered.

“You have committed a great abomination, and you have defiled your fealty to me.  The thunder of the mighty may crush you to oozing pulp, you witless whelp!”

“My lord, what awful thing have I...”

“If one person breathes who witnessed your crime, superstition will carry the story to the village priest.  They will then hunt you down, Jean Broceliande, son of Pere Henri.  They will violate this ancient, sacred wood for the purpose of inflicting your mortal agony.”

“But why?’

“They shall lose their fear of the forest’s dark mysteries and their imagined perils within this sacred realm.  Dagda and I shall helplessly witness greed and ignorance slaying this beauty of uncounted centuries.”

“Who is Dagda, my lord?”

The great and terrible voice of Versipellis boomed painfully in Jean’s head.  “Dagda is the last of his kind, as I am the last of mine.”

Jean felt too confused to ask for further clarification.

“A very long time ago I sacrificed his mate on the Altar of the Stars.  Instead of pleasing Wotan with such a remarkable offering, I earn his fearsome curse.  You see, Dagda and his mate were the last pair, which I did not know at the time.  My ignorance did not appease the Great One’s wrath.  For as long as Dagda breathes, I am confined to this forest to live with his eternal grief.”

“Then why not just kill this Dagda?”

“As I killed your she-wolf?”

Jean surprised himself with an unexpected pang of grief.  He had known the female less than a full day, but she had behaved in what appeared to be total dedication.  And she had offered companionship.  Without the bitch who followed him home after abandoning her own pack, Jean had no one at all.

“I sense your heart, lad.  I had no desire to kill the beast.  I had no choice.  You do not realize it, but she left her pack to form a new one with you.  She chose to become your mate for life, or she would not have come here.  She had come into season as well.”

“How can you know that?”

“Her kind live out in the open, never to return to the den.  The exception to that is when the she-wolf prepares to give birth and take care of her whelps.  The young stay in the den until they are old enough to come out.  She brought you into this ancient cycle.  Can you not see that now?  She knew you not as a shape changer.  Only humans know of that, and then only in their stories and superstitious conclusions.  Your bitch saw you as an unusually large and tailless mate.”

“I do not...”

“Must I become even more simple for you?  She was making a nest in your den for her offspring, and you were to be the father.  Just stop and actually think for a moment.  Can you imagine the enormity of this abomination?”

“Sire, I would never...”

“Perhaps not in your present form, but after sunset...”

Jean switched the topic to avoid thinking of what could have come of his alliance with the she-wolf.  “Do you know how to kill this Dagda?”

“Yes, my lad, I do.  But the curse of Wotan prevents me.  Only commonplace people can kill him, but they do not know the way.”

“Teach me the way.  Let me serve you.”  Jean hoped he sounded more eager than he felt.  At the moment, his mind wrestled with where he should direct his terror.  The nasty, horrifying gods that frightened mighty Versipellis himself?  The rage of the Lord of the Forest?  The villagers?

The villagers would not dare poach this far into the count’s forest.  The dark lord’s dire warning about villagers coming after him had to be for a lesson only.  So this fear, at least, Jean could disregard.  For a different reason, he concluded he could also disregard the thundering gods.  He could do nothing about those supernatural forces, even if he could develop the slightest idea of who or what they were—so why spend time and effort uselessly?  Thus Jean mentally eliminated everything but Versipellis.  He must therefore now concentrate wholly on serving the Black Horseman, Lord of the Forest.

“What has you so deep in thought, lad?”

“How do I find Dagda?  Does he live in this forest?”

Versipellis nodded pensively.

“I should be able to kill this man for you.  I am young, big, and very stout, especially after the change when the sun goes away,” Jean proposed with a nervous little laugh.

Versipellis retained his grave expression.  He sighed deeply and said, “Did I refer to Dagda as a man?”  At that, the Lord of the Forest spurred his huge steed and disappeared into the trees.

 

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