Excerpt
Once Upon a Time . . .
It's late, drawing past midnight when she hears the pad-pad-pad of feet—no, paws. She's travelled long, only made camp an hour or so earlier. Now Selke thinks she should have kept on a while longer. The horse, unhitched from the wagon, but hobbled and not too far from her, whinnies nervously.
She knows him for what he is as soon as she sees him though she's unsure why.
Drawn to her fire, no doubt, by the smell of the meat that's in the between-stage: still raw, not quite cooked, but warming, warming, warming, blood running again, fat dripping, all from the from the action of the flames.
He's leaner than a hunting hound, skin greyer than a corpsewight—and he's alive, not like those revenants that haunt graveyards and lonely places—hair a cinder-storm of knots and dirt. Naked but for a scrap of filthy fabric around his hips. Eyes amber, and there's the promise of death in them.
He's hesitant, however, as if he hasn't quite decided which shape to take. As if there's something more pressing than his desire for food. His sort, when they wander, don't do so in the daylight, they find dark places to hole up and await the safety of night.
She wonders how long he's been awake, looks without looking at the striations in his muscles. The longer they sleep, the harder the body gets, until sometimes they don't wake at all. She's never seen one before, not in all her born days, of which there have been so very many (centuries, in fact), though she recognises him from the descriptions she's read. For all her learning, stolen and inherent, she doesn't know how they come to be—never found that secret in any book. Just the knowledge of what they are. All of which doesn't mean no one knows said secret, or no one's written it down, just that she's not yet found the right tome.
He's swaying now, just a little, as if trying to decide one way or another: man or wolf, man or wolf. She carries a knife—of course she does—but it's not in her pocket as it usually is. No, oh no, it's over there on the step of the little painted caravan she took from the Singing Vine Vineyard all those months ago (its owners apparently deceased in some scuffle on the road, and the mistress of the vineyard happy enough for her to have possession of the small home). A risk, she thinks; jumping for the weapon would be foolhardy and she always calculates her odds. So, a different tack.
"Good evening," she asks equably. "You've travelled far, I think."
He looks at her, head tilted like he's trying to decode her meaning—translate the words. His mouth opens—my, what big teeth you have! Startlingly white for his overall air of grubbiness—and a growl issues forth. He clears his throat, tries again. "Yes."
The voice is rough, disused, near-forgotten.
"You're welcome to share my fire, my meal," she offers as if she hadn't seen what he is, what he might do. Says it as if this is a normal encounter, two friends well-met on the road, companions to pass the dark hours. It's spring—when it hasn't seemed to be spring for so very long, such years—and perhaps that's what's woken him, brought him forth. Perhaps he was on the cusp of sleeping forever, grown entirely petrified. Stone wolf, she thinks, and wishes she could examine him more closely, with tweezers and scalpel, pin his skin back, open him up—that sort, so rare! (Some commentators have compared them with trolls yet established no relation.) But that's unlikely to happen.
