Of Wolf and Man

She moved beside the man and gently ran her hand down his forehead. His eyes opened and he looked up at her. In his eyes she could see pain at first, then incredible happiness. Finally she once again saw pain, though this time it was of a different sort.

"I told you never to seek me out," he said to her, his teeth clenched.

"The hunters will be here soon, we must get you away!" She hissed, ignoring him.

"Let them come, I don't care anymore."

The maiden shrank back and looked at him, the man that come to mean so much to her. The man who had turned her life around and had taught her everything about who she was. She looked at him and a great sadness began to grow in her heart. Then she shook her head defiantly and said, "No!"

The man opened his eyes in surprise and looked at her.

"I said no! I'm not going to let you do this to me!"

Surprise and confusion again on the man's face. He took a breath then went into a fit of wracking coughs. Before he could mount and defense, the maiden moved and knelt straddling his back. She reached down and grabbed the feathered end of the arrow. Clenching her teeth, she snapped the feathered end off. The man gasped in pain and tried to get her off of him, but he was to weak from loss of blood. The maiden the grabbed the head of the arrow and, in one smooth motion, jerked it all the way through his chest.

The man's face turned white as he felt the arrow pull through him. He struggled to breath, the air hissing out the hole in his chest. The maiden knew from stories that this was a very bad wound, and that he would probably drown in his own blood, but she was unwilling to let him lay down and accept that. She grabbed hold of him by the shoulders and began to pull him out of the cave. The man helped what little he could, but the agony of the wound and his shortness of breath handicapped him greatly.

Finally the maiden had pulled him free of the cave. The stallion neighed in anger at what had happened to its master, and moved over beside them. The stallion knelt down to help the maiden put the man on its back. Then the maiden mounted the horse as well. The horse turned and moved off as quickly as it dated, heading back down the path and from there directly into the forest keep the hunters from following them.

"You risked everything to help me, " the man said. "Why?"

The maiden sat beside him, feeding him from a bowl of stew she had made. They were far from the forest and her home village now, up on the side of a mountain looking across the valley that she had never left in her entire life.

"Because you risked everything to help me," she answered finally.

"But I am a monster!" He said. "Look at me! No normal man could survive a wound such as I had, yet it is healing well and quickly on me."

The maiden nodded and fed him another spoonful of stew.

"I am cursed to walk the land as a wolf on certain nights, and what I do on those nights I rarely know! I am a murderer and a killer, and by helping me escape, you can never go back to your people!"

The maiden put the bowl down and stared into the man's eyes. In spite of the anger there, she saw all of the same things she had seen before in them. "If those were truly my people, then I would have been helping them hunt you. If those were truly my people, you would never have helped me in the first place," she stopped and smiled through the tears that began to grow in her eyes. "If I were like those people, I wouldn't be able to see beyond your curse. I wouldn't be able to feel the love I feel for you."

The man stared up at her but said nothing. The anger fled almost instantly from his eyes. He sighed deeply and said, "but look at me, you can never have me, for I am cursed to walk the land forever. What kind of man is it who hunts on four legs?"

The maiden smiled again and said, "What kind of man is it? It is the man I have fallen in love with. You have done nothing but good by me, and I would forgive you anything were it otherwise. But if you wish to be with me, you must forgive yourself."

The man turned and looked across the top of the valley, lost in thought. "I am a man who dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed he was a man who dreamed of something better."

Knowing he expected no answer, the maiden merely listened.

"I fell in love once," he began, "long, long ago. We were out hunting for our children, and we came across the lair of a great cat. She insisted that we should keep looking, for she could hear the lynx's kittens within. It being a very hard winter, I figured that the lynx den was an excellent option, for not only would we remove competition form the food chain, but we would also be able to provide for ourselves and our young.

"I think it was her mothering instincts that made it so difficult for her to agree with me, but in the end, she could not refuse me anything. As well I could refuse her nothing, but I was so intent on this idea that it seemed perfection to me. We crept into the lair found that the lynx had left her kittens unguarded. We made quick work of them, something to this day I am not proud of, but yet something that was not uncommon and indeed necessary in nature. She held the body of a baby lynx in her mouth and turned to leave the den.

"Still inside, I heard the roar of the mother. I turned and rushed out, but not in time to save her. The mother lynx had already killed her. In a frenzy, I attacked, ripping the surprised lynx apart before it could fully bring itself to attack me. Afterwards, I wandered for days, not eating, sleeping only when I passed out from exhaustion.

"I hated myself, you see. I had let my pride get in the way and I had killed the one thing that had mattered more to me then anything else in my now miserable life. I cursed myself and I wanted to die."

The man turned to look at the maiden and smiled weakly. "Somehow, that next day, I awoke to the world and felt strange. I was cold. I struggled to my feet and I realized that I had changed. I had become a man. This put a great amount of fear in me! I again ran myself to the point of exhaustion, but I would not die. I could not die. I gradually learned to take control of my human body. I learned how to make it work and how to speak. At first the new power thrilled me, and I reveled in it, thinking that perhaps I was meant for something great. But always there was the pain of what had happened. And always was there the blame I put upon myself.

"When I changed back on that first full moon, I thought it all a dream, but when that moon was over, I returned to the form of a human. It was so confusing and so frightening in the beginning. But now I am so used to it that I often forget which one I am."

"Which one is that?" The maiden asked softly, taking his hand in hers.

The man looked at her in surprise. He brought his eyes back into focus and smiled bitterly. "I tell a great story. Most, maybe all, wolves are not as intelligent as I claim to have been. Perhaps there is more to me then I will ever know. Perhaps one day I will find out. Right now, I really do not care."

The man smiled again after another moment of thought. "Which one am I? Why, I don't know anymore. Which one do you want me to be?"

The maiden brushed away a tear from her cheek and said, "I don't care, I love you in spite of it!"

The man smiled and brought his other hand up to clasp the girls. He lay his head back down and closed his eyes. "Thank you," he whispered.

The maiden gasped as she saw the wound in his rapidly pucker and begin to heal before her very eyes. The hole closed quickly and the flesh knit itself back together. Then redness faded from it. Finally all that was left was pink, unblemished skin. The final stage of the healing was when a soft breeze came up and picked up all the silver wolf fur around the wound and sent it floating away in the wind.

"What?…….Are you?…….."

The man opened his eyes and smiled sadly at her. "I'm sorry."

The woman watched as the man curled up into a ball. He mind refused to accept what her eyes told her was happening. She saw the muscles shift and move under his skin. Heard the bones grate and pop as they reshaped and rearranged themselves. Then the silver fur popped through his skin and soon he was covered with it. Finally, her mouth open in shock and tears running freely down her cheeks, the wolf stood up and shook himself as though he was trying to rid himself of the last of his humanity.

The wolf sat down and looked into the maiden's eyes, matching her confused gaze with a penetrating one of his own. The maiden's hand came up slowly, her brain barely functioning. The hand moved towards the wolf's head, but fell short when her strength deserted her. The wolf moved forward and gently licked the trails of tears on her cheeks. The maiden's arms went around the wolf, and she clung to him as though he was a rope keeping her from falling over a cliff.

Never again did the wolf become a man. Never again did he leave the side of the woman. Late at night when the maiden was sleeping the wolf would sing to the moon and tell it his sorrows. Late at night when the wolf thought her asleep and has howling mournfully at the moon, the maiden would let the tears flow as she reflected on the things she had seen and felt.