Wolf Eve

She allowed Peter to accompany her hunting and he finally saw how she caught prey, lying in wait for so many hours so perfectly still that she seemed a part of the landscape until some unwary creature wandered too close and then she would snatch it up with her bare hands and break its neck or bite out its throat before it could make a sound. It was a startling display.

Once, he tried to show her how to set snares but she became upset, so he stopped.

Only one thing really troubled him: Now and then, once in a week or once every few weeks but never less than once in a month, she would leave at night, taking one of the wolf skins with her, and she would be gone until morning and sometimes well into the next night.

On those nights he heard baying and howling out in the darkest parts of the forest and he shivered, and had bad dreams, and woke with no feeling of rest. Whenever she came back from these forays she clung to him a little longer than usual and made love in a hard way that left bruises. But she never offered any accounting of where she went, or why.

Spring came. The ice broke. The forest turned more green and even its long shadows took on a lively quality. It was in the spring when Eve surprised Peter by speaking. All at once she showed an extensive vocabulary, and he couldn’t decide if she'd learned language from listening to him or if she could have talked all along but chose not to. Neither would have surprised him.

She still didn’t say much, of course. Her answer to most questions was still silence. But one day, when Peter summoned the courage to ask who she really was and where she came from, she took him by the hand and led him into the forest.

The dark brambles closed behind them and the disquieting stillness of the trees grew more profound. Where Eve walked (barefoot, as always, though the soles of her feet were ever smooth and unblemished) she left no tracks, and Peter imagined his own steps must be the only human presence in this place in a generation.

They came to a clearing with a hole in the ground, lined by rocks, and Eve pointed into its smothering black depths. "I came from there," she said.

Peter peered in. "It's an old well.”

"Most of the time. But some nights it's a passage to another world."

She sat over the mouth of the well, looking down. Peter could see nothing below.

"I used to like to come to this world to explore," she said. "But I went too far and I hurt my leg and I couldn't find my way back." She regarded him with half-veiled eyes. "That was the night I found you."

Peter tugged his lower lip, thinking. "What do you mean ‘another world?’"

Eve shrugged. "It's a place much like this one, only not entirely. There are only two seasons there, summer and winter, and the summers are longer and hotter and the winters colder and darker. The trees and the mountains and everything are much older and much larger than they are here.

“And there are no men or women there: only wolves."

Peter tried to imagine such a place lurking in the depths of the old well. It didn’t seem natural. "Can you go back?" he said.

"Not now." Eve stood. "Maybe one night."

Peter was bewildered. He wanted to ask more, but that’s all she told him. That night when they made love they faced each other, and she didn’t resist or complain when he kissed her mouth. She even kissed him back in a clumsy, uncertain way, and brushed the hair away from his face. When his beard tickled her naked breasts she laughed, something he had never heard her do before, and rather than bite them he kissed them as tenderly as he could while writhing underneath him.

Eve opened her legs and drew him into her and then twined her limbs around his neck. The fire in her, usually so hot it seemed he might burn up if she embraced him too hard, now seemed a gentle, comforting glow that nestled between them.

She kissed his lips again and again—tiny, uncertain kisses, like a child—as he entered her and they rocked back and forth underneath the eaves of the old chapel. Her body was thin and muscular, like always, but her skin was soft and the curves of her hips and thighs seemed more pronounced. Peter wondered if she was changing from her time here or if he'd just never noticed such things before.

They looked eye-to-eye and he fixated on the strange flecks of gold in her yellow irises as their coupling became faster and hotter. Her lips parted and her tongue slid across her teeth in an expression he'd come to recognize and he bucked his hips faster and faster.

Little grunts and groans of satisfaction punctuated each movement, and Peter heard a sound like a low growl—but it wasn't coming from her? It was his own sound, he realized; he felt the vibrations of it deep in his chest, humming through him. It was not a sound like anything he'd ever heard a human being make.

And then she bit him on the collarbone, as hard as she could without quite drawing blood, and Peter's orgasm pushed out of him all at once. They fell over onto each other and stayed like that for hours, her body coiled around his, his cock still inside of her, though spent.

As on the first night Peter again entertained the idea that she didn’t really sleep when her eyes closed, and that there were whole worlds behind them. But he knew they were places that he could never go.

***

The wolves arrived with the summer.

Peter felt them before he saw them; coming through the forest one day he detected a presence and when he turned he saw three creeping wolves, two males and a bitch, snaking out of the underbrush.

Realizing they'd been spotted, they bared their fangs and snarled, and Peter, without thinking, grabbed a stone and threw it at as hard as he could. The rock struck the nearest in the face and it yelped as all three retreated, but only as far as the relative safety of the thicket.

They followed him halfway to the chapel, their eyes full of hate. He slammed the door behind him and waited for his pulse to stop racing.

When he told Eve about them she said, "I know. I've heard them calling. They hate me.”

"Why?"

"I’m not from this place. That’s all the reason they need. I'd hoped they might stay away for longer, but..."

And she shrugged, a gesture of his that she'd only just begun to imitate.

"I was told there were no natural wolves in this place anymore," Peter said.

"Maybe there aren't.”

The sun was going down and they sat, arms around each other, in the chapel doorway, enjoying the last of the light. "You're always so warm," Peter said.

"It's the fire you made for me."

Peter frowned; he didn’t understand.

"The first night I came here I'd have died if you hadn't built a fire," Eve said. "Now I keep it in me always."

That was one of the nights Eve left, taking the wolf skin with her, and Peter heard a great baying and howling in the dark, and the cries of more than one wolf. And as always he was scared for her, and his dreams were full of violence and fear.

Buchard, too, noted the return of the wolves to the forest. His neighbors were afraid to hunt alone anymore, and those with livestock found their numbers dwindling. "Bad times are coming," he said.

"There will always be a few wolves about," said Peter. "I'm sure they'll move on."

"Bad times," Buchard said again.

When autumn came on and the wolves had not departed, Peter had to set out for the chapel a bit earlier each day for fear of being caught alone at night. Buchard advised him to carry a spear but he always refused, thinking of how Eve might react to such a thing.

The villagers began hunting not just for food but for the pack, though distaste and superstition still kept them far from the chapel, and thus from Eve. Still, Peter worried. One day, as autumn drew to an end, Buchard sat him down to talk.

"You've lived here more than a year," he said, and Peter realized it was true. "You do good work. You take care of yourself. But the other people like outsiders in this place. It's our way."

Buchard's wife was busy with a pot of some kind of stew over the fire.

"I have a sister," Buchard said, and it was such a seemingly abrupt change of topic that Peter felt dazed by it. "She lives on the other side of the forest. She had a husband, but he’s dead. She'll come to live here soon."

Buchard considered him for a moment, his jaw working back and forth on nothing at all, as it often did.

"She's one of us. The other people here all know it. If you marry her then you’ll be one of us. No one will be able to argue. You could have a house here with the others. You could belong."

He paused again. "Her name is Maren. She's not old. She has no children. And she'll need a husband."

Buchard seemed to feel that was all that needed to be said. Peter groped for a reaction. "Couldn't I keep living where I am?" he said.

"Maybe," Buchard said. "But maybe not. The people here do not like anyone staying in that place. But if you marry Maren, then there is no maybe. Marriage is easy here; we don't need one of your priests. Just live in the same house and that’s all."

"I would have to meet her before agreeing to anything…" Peter said.

Buchard obviously considered this a wasteful luxury but seemed ready to accept it as part and parcel of Peter being an outsider with strange ways. "She'll come soon," he said. "You can meet her then."

"I'll look forward to it."

Buchard's wife sat a bowl of stew in front of Peter. "A man should have a wife," she said. Again, there was no argument to be had.

Peter said nothing of the news to Eve that night, but she seemed agitated all on her own. She left the chapel several times, though she always returned a minute later. "The snows will come soon," she said. She was watching and listening for something out there.

When he took her in his arms he didn’t feel the fire inside her anymore; though he knew it had not gone out, it was as if it had retreated, moving further into her to protect itself. Now she was cool, and though she lay face to face with him and encouraged him to kiss her small breasts and run his fingers through her hair and exert himself over and in her body for as long as he wanted she didn’t feel the same. She was like a woman made of snow, pale and beautiful.

As he lay his head down on her thighs and kissed her there she trembled and put her hand on top of his head and even gasped when his tongue touched her bare, sensitive skin, but he knew that he had only half her attention. The rest of her was already out there where the snows would soon be falling. But the kiss she gave him reassured him that it was not because she wanted it so.

She left in the night. The sounds of howling rang all through the forest. She didn’t come back the next day, or the next, but Peter was certain she wasn’t dead, for he recognized one howl from all the others at night.

When next he came to Buchard's he found the forge dark and empty. Neither Buchard nor his wife were at home. Instead a woman with chestnut hair was minding the house. She seemed to be expecting him. When he came in she took his coat and his stick and sat him at the table.

The little house was full of a warm, achingly familiar scent, and Peter realized it was the smell of baking bread. His stomach growled.

"Where’s Buchard?" he said.

"Away for a day, maybe two," said the woman. "I'm watching things while he's gone."

"You're Maren?"

"Yes."

She was making the bread straight on the hot embers of the fire and she plucked it out in several large pieces before setting it on a plate before him. He hesitated before eating it, but it was clear she expected him to, and the scent was too much to resist; he took a bite. "It's good," he said. She nodded. "Aren't you having any?"

"It's for you," she said.

As Peter ate she quizzed him and seemed satisfied with his short answers.

"You were a priest of the Christ god they hung from a tree?"

"Once. Not anymore."

"You can work metal; build a house; get food?"

"Yes."

"Children?"

"Priests weren't supposed to have children. I could have them now if I wanted to."

She nodded, as if accepting something. The bread was gone. She took him by the hand and brought him to the fire. A rug he didn’t recognize was laid out in front of it. She must have brought it with her. She knelt on the rug and gestured that he should too, and then she kissed his hand. She seemed to be waiting for something but Peter didn’t know what. The room was very hot and uncomfortable all of a sudden. When she went to kiss him on the mouth he turned away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This is...a kind of mistake. I understand the position you're in, but we shouldn't do this."

Maren blinked. "But we already have."

"Have what?"

She gestured to the rug. "You ate; you knelt; it's done."

Horror dawned in Peter's mind. "My God! I didn't know—I had no idea!"

Maren shrugged. "It's done now," she said again.

"Well...let's not tell anyone this happened. No one has to know." The woman's countenance grew unmistakably angry and Peter leapt to correct himself. "But not because there's anything wrong with you," he said.

"Then why?"

Peter's tongue clove to his mouth. What could he say? "There are reasons," was all he managed.

"Is it because you were one of the strange priests?"

"Yes, that's it."

"But you aren’t anymore. If you were, the people would hate you and drive you out." She seemed to be pondering her words even as she was speaking. "So if I told them you refused me because of this, you would have difficulty. You would even be in danger."

Peter's blood froze. Her tone was not quite threatening, but it was close.

When she gestured to the rug he found himself kneeling again, and when she clamored up onto him he didn’t resist. A log on the fire popped and sparks burst forth; Peter flinched.

Maren's kisses were hard, and so was her touch. When Eve was rough it was because she was not thinking of anything, but Peter knew that Maren was hard very much because she meant to be.

But she was beautiful, in a quiet way, and she reminded him of certain wives he'd known in the past. And she is a widow after all, he thought, like in the old days. He traced the line of her back and found the curve pleasing. He thought of Eve again but pushed the memory away; it would do him no good now.

Maren wriggled out of her clothes in short order and then laid him out, stripping his garments away and running her fingers across his naked chest. The rug was thin and the floor hard. The orange light from the fire accented the curve of Maren's breasts and she took his hands and put them there. The feel of warm human flesh was pleasing.

She kissed the tips of his fingers one by one and then she slid down the front of him and, to his surprise, swallowed him up into her mouth all in one go. He was so startled he sat up a bit but she pushed him down again.

Her mouth was wet and warm. When she moved it up and down on him there was firm pressure that made him squirm, and his breath caught in his throat. She didn’t move her tongue much but the motion of her head was steady and constant and it drew a keen sensation out of Peter that coiled up tight inside of him, like a snare ready to snap tight.

She was not Eve, of course. She was not wild, mysterious, sensual, and complex. But she was a human woman who was warm and alive and wanted, in her own way at least, to please him, and when she came back up he found himself kissing her and being kissed back and letting the brown tangle of her hair fall around him as their naked forms pressed together and her legs parted for him.

She whispered against his lips, her breath hot on his mouth as she gyrated up and down on him, sliding her sweat-slicked body across his. Later he could not remember what she'd said, but it was more words in a human voice than he'd heard all at once in longer than he could remember, and the moans and whimpers she made when he put his hands on her to feel her warm, soft breasts or the slope and turn of her curves were honest and open in a way that made him remember better times he'd rather have forgotten.

Peter didn’t sleep that night, but Maren did, lying across his naked chest and hugging him. He was certain that, behind her eyes, there was real sleep and guileless dreams.

She expressed no desire to go back with him to the chapel the next day, and appeared content to let him go on his own. There seemed to be an unspoken assumption that he would presently build a new house, closer to the village, and that she would stay with Buchard until it was finished. She offered him no farewell or words of affection at his parting, but she did kiss him. It was a tender thing.

There was no sign of Eve at the chapel. Peter was unused to being alone during the day now, and he paced and fidgeted. He knew he ought to have been collecting wood for the winter; the snows were late, but the grim color of the sky told him they could not be far off, but for some reason he could not bear the idea of working now.

He thought of Maren, sitting by a fire of her own in her brother's house and waiting for him, and guilt ate at him. He tried to imagine where Eve might be but the possibilities were too horrifying.

His dreams that night were full of the howling of wolves—or was that a real noise somehow invading his dreams from outside?

He heard something else in his dreams too: the screams of someone in pain. He dreamed of blazing torches and flashing knives and fear. He woke soaked in sweat, feverish and weak.

When he opened the door the morning light hurt his eyes. It was a moment before he realized Buchard was there waiting for him. Peter squinted He tried to talk but his throat was sore. It took a few drinks of water before his mouth seemed to want to work.

"You’re ill," Buchard said to him.

"Yes," said Peter. He was sore all over. His body seemed marked and bruised, as if he'd been flailing in his sleep.

"You left Maren two days ago. You have been asleep all that time?"

Peter felt dizzy. "I must have been," he said. "I'm sorry. Is Maren—"

"She's hurt."

Peter was about to apologize again but Buchard went on: "I mean she was injured, badly. A wolf came into the house in the night and bit her."

And he gestured to one side of his face in a way that made Peter feel queasy.

The bottom dropped out of Peter's stomach. He wondered if it was perhaps a joke. Buchard would sooner throw himself off a cliff than tell a joke, and it was not even a little funny besides, but the other explanations seemed to make no sense. "Is she...will she be—?"

"She’ll live," said Buchard. "But now blood has been spilled." He sat on a stump. "She’s my sister. You understand what this means?"

"You must be very upset."

"She's my blood. There are things I can’t do now. You understand?"

Peter shook his head, slowly. "No. I don't think I do."

Buchard sighed. He stood and put a hand on Peter's shoulder. " Sometimes we do things we don't like. When you bring a wolf into your home, I must do things I don’t like.”

Peter's lips formed a denial, but he swallowed it. Buchard nodded.

"The people will come for you," he said. "They wanted to come a long time ago, but I stopped them. Now all I can do is warn you."

Peter shut the door. He looked around. For a moment he felt like gathering the entire chapel up, like a bundle he could carry under his arm. Then he felt like turning and running away, sprinting like a madman into the dark embrace of the forest and forgetting this place even existed.

Instead he sat, built a fire, stirred the embers, and waited. Outside, the snow was falling.

Around sundown there came a thump at the door. Peter rose, brandishing a flaming log which he thrust before him as he opened the door. But outside there was no angry mob; there was only Eve.