Wolf Eve

He slept in the corner.

She did not vanish the next day or the day after, and it became clear she meant to be a long-term guest if not a permanent resident altogether. She brought home food twice a day but did no other work. Sometimes she followed him around as he worked about the chapel and observed. At idle moments he talked to her but could never quite decide if she understood him or not. Figuring she needed a name of some sort, he began calling her Eve.

When three days were up he sallied to explain to her that he would be absent but there was no telling if she understood. Tramping through the snow, Peter found himself suddenly yearning for the comparable warmth and talkativeness of Buchard's demeanor.

That day they were unusually busy: Many neighbors seemed to need tools for breaking ice and clearing snow repaired or replaced. The forge was a white-hot hell but the outdoors were frigid, and Peter felt tossed back and forth between extremes like some sinner out of Dante, doomed to never find solace. He remembered the pile of warm, comfortable furs laid out by the chapel hearth with envy. At the end of the day, as Peter prepared to head back into the forest, Buchard asked, "Eat well?"

Without thinking Peter said, "Yes, we did."

Buchard looked at him. Peter stammered. "That is to say...someone broke into the chapel while I was gone. Not someone, I mean, an animal. A wolf."

"A wolf?" Buchard said. "You fed it?"

"A little."

"What happened to it?"

"It was gone the next morning."

Buchard seemed lost in thought for a moment.

"Are there a lot of wolves in this country?" Peter said.

"Not so many," Buchard said. "It's not good if there's one now. Come inside."

Peter was surprised, but followed. Buchard's wife seemed not to be home, so he stirred up the fire himself. Buchard began to whittle in a careless fashion, and as he did he spoke without looking at Peter:

"In my grandfather's day there were many wolves," he said. "They stole our hunts and sometimes came right into our homes in the night to eat more. But the worst thing about the wolves was that they were not always wolves; sometimes they were men or women. A person may put on the skin of a wolf and become one, and in that way steal his neighbor's meat or even carry away his children, and so live through a season when he or she might otherwise starve instead. And when one becomes a wolf there is no way to tell which man or woman is really underneath.

"Once, my grandfather came on a huge wolf while hunting and wounded it in the neck. When he followed the trail of its blood it led to the charcoal burner's hut, and my grandfather saw that the charcoal burner had a bleeding wound just like the one he'd given the wolf. After my grandfather killed him he found the wolf skin and he threw it into the fire, but it jumped back out again. Three times my grandfather tried to burn the wolf skin and three times it jumped out, and in the end he had to hold it in with his spear, and it took all night to burn."

Peter saw the glow of the hearth embers in Buchard's eyes. "We killed the natural wolves so that no man or woman could become one of them ever again. It's a bad omen to see a wolf anymore. Don't tell anyone else that you saw one. It would not be safe for you."

The story troubled Peter all the way home.

Eve was waiting for him and—his greatest surprise of the day—it seemed she'd cooked. The meat (pheasant) was a bit overdone but he did not think to complain. She'd fed the fire while he was out too, he saw. When they finished he thanked her and then felt foolish for it.

They spent some time at the chapel door looking out at the forest together. The moonlight on the twisting, snow-covered beech trees was beautiful and eerie. Peter was warm so long as he stood close to Eve. Part of him had expected her to leave while he was out and he realized he was relieved she had not. He understood her presence to mean that she had made a decision to truly stay, for better or for ill.

They slept side by side that night, using one wolf skin as a mattress and the other as a blanket. Some form of modesty Peter had no name for forced him to try sleeping with clothes on, but Eve's unnatural heat made this impossible and he ended up naked as she. She slept with her back to him and the curve of one bare shoulder visible between the blanket and her hair (both the exact same shade). And how did Adam feel when he woke to find his Eve, naked and whole beside him one morning, he wondered again? Did he blush to think what they were meant to do together? Did he wonder at it?

Something of his old priestly oaths nagged at him still. True, he'd never paid much attention to those, but somehow this seemed different. Surely there would be a whole new class of sin in it? He recited the verses in his mind: "Cursed is he who lies with an animal. If any man lies with an animal, they must both be destroyed."

He tossed and turned all night.

When he woke in the morning he found her back pushed into him and his morning erection squeezed against the back of her thighs. He tensed, wondering how she might react; she pushed her back against him some more and their bodies rubbed together. Then she rolled over and lay facedown on pelts, her hips raised and legs parted. After a moment's hesitation Peter rolled over too, onto her, rubbing up against her thighs again. She was wet and receptive. He draped his body across hers and, shaking already, pushed inside.

You never really forget certain things, he thought. There were memories to draw on: fresh-faced farmer's daughters who had needed private tutelage; widows, still in their black veils, who came for comfort and solace; young couples seeking advice upon finding that their new marriage was not what they had expected; even certain holy novices who had turned out to be interested in more than just the body of Christ.

But this was different than all that. Eve's body felt different, for one thing: hotter, sleeker, stronger. She was not frail and soft like the pampered wives. The farm girls had always had a certain wiry strength, but that was strength that yielded to him, their firm little legs wrapping around his waist and pulling him in tight while their arms twined around his neck until he found himself quite ensnared and with no obvious means of escape except for one, a certain route that if, if traveled long and vigorously enough, would tame this particular beast...

But this was hard and violent; Eve pushed up and down beneath him and after only a minute or two he was red-faced and sweating from exertion. Finishing fast seemed a necessity, though he could not say why, and he so he pumped in and out like a man in a fit. Eve was quiet the entire time but she twisted under him and her fingers dug into the pelts. More than anything else it reminded Peter not of sleeping with any other woman but of the moments he used to spend alone at night, masturbating in a fit of guilt, trying to exorcise his urges.

Yes, being with Eve was very much like being alone, except of course that when alone he did not have such hot, supple flesh to touch, or such sleek haunches to feel, or such tight, wet confines squeezing around his prick. When he ejaculated it was a sharp spike of feeling and then a release and in the seconds after he felt light-headed and almost drunk, though it passed shortly.

Eve broke away from him. Startled, Peter caught her hand and she rounded on him and again he experienced a few brief seconds where he feared for his life. But then she laid her head over his, and in fact laid her entire body over his own, and they slept like that for a while more, and the weight of her leaning on him was comforting.

She would not accept a kiss from him and did not seem to understand the gesture, but now and then she would bite him (an experience that made his heart stop, though it was never hard enough to break the skin, and indeed always turned out to be an entirely tender gesture). Later, when he tried making love to her face to face, she did not seem to understand, and although he eventually coerced her into trying it she again seemed amused, as if he'd gone out of his way to help her with something that she was perfectly capable of doing for herself, and was merely humoring him.

The only expression of affection he seemed to be able to interest her in was attention to her breasts. They were small, pale, and pert, and when he rubbed his thumbs over her nipples she rolled her head in ecstasy. Once, in the heat of the moment, he bit them, and this finally seemed a language she could understand, and she grew even more excitable than usual. They spent long nights stretched out on the fur pelts by the fire, learning one another's bodies.

Winter came and went. The snow fell and the winds howled and Peter worked the forge and Eve hunted and they spent time with one another in comfortable, natural silence. He got her in the habit of wearing clothes (though they did not fit well, since Buchard's wife sewed them believing they were meant for Peter), as her constant nudity still made him uncomfortable. She allowed Peter to accompany her hunting and he finally 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 about her: 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 seemed to know a very extensive vocabulary and he could not 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 did not 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," he said.

"Most of the time. Some nights, though, 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 before the byway closed." She regarded him with half-veiled eyes. "That was the night I found you."

Peter tugged his lower lip, thinking. "What do you mean by 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 did not seem natural. "Can you go back?" he said.

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

Peter was bewildered. He wanted to ask her again: Who are you? What are you? What created you? Are you a thing of God? Are you a creature of nature or of the devil or something in between? Do you love me? Are you a woman, or an animal, or nothing there's a word for?

But she would tell him nothing more, though that night when they made love they faced each other, and she did not 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, and she writhed 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 did not really sleep when her eyes closed and that there were whole worlds behind them that she was awake in still, though they were places that he knew he could never go.

***

Summer came, and with it came the wolves. 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 dog in the face and it yelped and 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 know that I'm here. They hate me."

"Why?"

"They know that I don't come 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," Eve said.

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 did not understand.

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

Peter was bewildered still, but he asked no more. 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," Buchard said.

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

"Bad times," Buchard said again, and that was all he would say.

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 a year," he said, and Peter realized it was true. "You do good work. You take care of yourself. But the other people still don't want you here. We don't like outsiders in this place. We are stubborn and do not like to bend. 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 in a place on the other side of the forest. She had a husband, but he is 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 you will 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. We cannot know what they may do. 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 is all."

Something about Buchard's demeanor, perhaps the set of his shoulders or the way his bruised knuckles sat on the table, suggested it would be a very bad idea for Peter not to accept this proposal. Even so, he cast about for some excuse.

"I would have to meet her before agreeing to anything," he 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."

"Yes, well...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. She would not keep still. "The snows will come soon," she said. She was watching and listening for something out there. When he took her in his arms he did not 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 did not feel the same. She was like a woman made of snow, pale and beautiful.