Werewolf

Humanity has always held the conception that freedom is the choice to make our own decisions, our own mistakes. Wolves know a different truth; they know that true freedom is to be of one mind with the pack. Without responsibility and burden of individual mistakes. Wolves never need to question what they are or the morality of their actions, they live by instinct and their pack lives with them.

When I was human this knowledge drove me to abondon my old life and to embrace the life of the pack and the more time that passes the more I find such philosophical thoughts receding. So rarely now do I think of anything other than the hunt and the feel of the ground beneath me, and the air through my fur as I race through these woods I call home. My memories stand clear in my head but they are strange things, real and solid but disconnected from me as if I'm seeing into the memories of someone else because I cannot find any emotions for them.

I realise I am in a melancholy mood tonight and opening my eyes give up on sleep and move to the water to shake off the cobwebs of my old life. It is only in the quiet of the evening that I ever find myself regressing and sometimes, still, human dreams will haunt me instead of the pack dream, of prey and an endless wood. I lap up the water and tilt my head toward the sky. This action disturbs me it is too human for my liking. Wolves never feel the need to look up, what's in the sky that they could want. Only humanity tries to exceed its grasp by reaching for the stars. A part of me notices that it is a full moon and the same part finds irony in this scene, a wolf considering his humanity by the light of the moon contrary to so much folklore.

Suddenly my nose catches a strange scent in the air, it is metallic, it is human and it does not belong in my woods. Instinct makes me wary and I freeze alert, ready to call out to my brothers and sisters to rise up and fight but I can see nothing and hear nothing. The trickle of the water obstructs my ears so I slink away from it still searching for hunters. However non jump out at me as I half expect and my confidence growing I draw inexorably closer to the semll that is both offending and enchanting.

Finally my eyes spot the source of my fixation. A white handkerchief with a dark smudge at its centre is caught upon the branches of a tree that bears repeated gouges in its trunk, where once I marked the passing of the days. I scrabble up the tree but the bark tears off unable to support my weight as I try to climb and I fall to the ground where I whimper and snarl in frustration. I don't know why but I want this handkerchief for all that it is a symbol of I life I have given up.
Behind me my pack mates stir and I hear a warning growl from the alpha male, I know if I continue to disturb him the next thing I feel will be his teeth. I hesitate for a moment but the pull of that smell is too much and I reach again for the handkerchief. It's easy this time I don't even need to climb the tree and with minimal effort my hands untangle it from the branches. Crouching I bend to inspect it and then  remember that wolves don't have fingers and that they can't stand as easily as I just did on two legs. Suprised I realised that for the first time in so long I am human. The pain of all the death and destruction I had seen in my old life is suddenly present again but it has faded from the blazing intensity it once was to a dull ache and as I glance around the forest I feel disatisfied.

The pack whimpers as I stare at my own hands, normally they would pounce on a lone intruder but this is beyond their understanding. Where moments before a brother sat now there is only a naked man, and I assume I still smell something akin to a wolf adding to the confusion that will feed their fear. I turn to my family, my throat straining to make the calming sounds of a wolf but a human voice box is not capable of such and all that emerges is a strange croak.

My leader howls in fear and every last wolf wakens and backs away from me. With a last brave defiant snarl they turn tail and race into the darkness, leaving me alone in the den. I stare after them with a feeling of intense loneliness that only a wolf can know but the fluttering of the handkerchief in my fingers draws my attention away from their retreating forms. This lonely animal life does not seem enough anymore though only minutes ago I professed to be content, my emotions are of a complexitiy and range that I have not felt in so long and it scares me as much as I scared my pack. The handkerchief seems to offer promise along with its intoxicating scent.
Without the colour-blind eyes of a wolf I notice now that the dark spot is a red rose embroidered beautifully upon the cloth. The smell is so faint now I can barely detect it with my inferior nose so I lift the delicate thing to my face and breathe in. I have never smelt anything so good before, what a wolf finds disgusting a man can easily love. It is the scent of a woman I am sure of it and a sudden longing to be once more with my own kind fills me.

It was so many years ago when I gave up on human society. War in the Soviet Union had ripped my life apart and left me with no one to care for, so I had deserted from the Red Army and fled into the forests of Eastern Russia. I think I was hoping for the oblivion of death, so that I could forget the faces of the men I killed and the comrades who's bodies I had looted. However instead of peace I had discovered that for some more lurks beneath our human facade than could reasonably be believed. Something in the forest had called out to a part of me long kept buried and a wolf had emerged from within my soul. At first my other nature, perhaps my true nature had scared me but all I had to do was remember the world of destruction and poverty I had left and I was driven back into the forest. Seeking this time not to die but to live.

Yet now this scent provoked me, tugging at the part of me that I had hidden inside the way the wolf once was. I closed my eyes letting my imagination run wild to think of the woman who might be missing this same handkerchief that carries her mark. For nameless reasons I want to meet her and like that I am a wolf once more. There had never been the painful transformation process that legend promised, all it took was a simple change in mindset, a desire to be one and not the other.
I leap and grab the handkerchief in my teeth before it can float away again and without any particular thought for my pack, so recently the center of my world, I follow the trail the scent has left in the air. Though faint it is easy to follow now I know it.

I lope through the forest aware that the pack follows me from a safe distance but no longer caring. The scent grows stronger and stronger and soon mingles in with the tang of other humans and their inventions. Though put off for a moment, my time as a wolf taught me to fear and loathe such things, I continue onwards. A glance at the sky shows that the moon still hangs full and promsing above me, telling me the night is not yet done. Finally I see the source of all the conflicting smells, underlieing all of which I catch a hint of the scent that so beguiles. It is a Roma Camp. Both my human and my wolf selves are confused as to what the gypsies and doing this deep in the forest but still I press forwards.
I can hear loud noises and the rhythmic beat of drums and tambourines, as well as the jubilant laughs and screams of many people.
Fear and habit makes my wolf form slink low to the ground as I move cautiously towards the noise. At my back the pack hangs on the outskirts of the gypsy camp emboldened to come this close to humans by my actions but afraid to proceed any more.
My eyes make out the party now, a crowd of people dance around a bonfire, swaying in time to the music's command. The smell of smoke covers everything dampening my senses and my frustration mounts as I am unable to pick out the one I seek. Snarling, albeit quietly, I circle around the party and then I catch her trail.

She smells like the euphoria of a successful hunt, like the cleanliness of fresh snow, like the beauty of the spring. She sits at a table moving her hands in odd ways that I cannot interpret from the ground. Occasionally someone will drift over to her and she will take their hand and make more cryptic movements. Retreating to the shadows I take on my human form and she blazes with new found colour in my eyesight. Amid a sea of greys and blacks and browns she wears a scarlet dress that matches the rose on her handkerchief. With my new height I see now what she does, she is reading Tarot cards. After the last inquiring mind leaves her she shuffles the cards and lays them out on the table one by one, I wonder if she can read anything about me in them.

Starting she seems to sense my presence in the darkness and she looks up. Her eyes meet mine but I'm sure all she will see of them is a glimmer in the blackness of the night. Standing she moves towards me her glorious dress rustling her scent intoxicating. I look down and find the handkerchief on the floor, I bend to pick it up and when I stand once more she is there beside me. Wordlessly I hand it to her, she should be afraid but she looks at me without surprise or fear and instead with longing.
The others at the party don't seem to notice her absence or spare us a glance. I can't understand it my eyes are all for her and I don't know how they can so loosely guard something so precious. I inhale her smell, and move closer but she raises a hand to stop me.
"Tell me your name?" Her voice is the soft sound of silk and flummoxed I don't know how to answer. My family named me Peter but that name no longer fits, I glance at the moon for inspiration.
"Romulus", I name myself remembering the ancient Roman legend. She nods at me.
"Have you chosen to return home now Romulus?" She smiles in amusement at her cryptic statement. "Is it time to found your city?" Her eyes pierce my soul and I am sure she knows all that I have been and all that I am. Like that I am lost in the beauty of her eyes, of her body but mostly of her scent. I don't answer her question instead I say with all earnesty.
"You smell so good." From a wolf this is an earnest mark of devotion but both man and wolf in me share in its sincerity.
I hear the wolves howl, as if they know they have just lost a comrade and I ignore them. I know I can never leave her again and never return to the hunt. She is perfect with her glossy black hair, that looks as soft as fur, and her beautiful skin, as pale as the moon. Wolves and their mates are inseperable till death and I drop to my knees and silently vow not to part from her even then.
She takes me by the hand and draws me away from the howling of the wolves and the screaming of her fellows and pulls me into a caravan as bright a red as her dress.

Twenty years later a young Roma boy steps into a caravan of peeling red paint, he is taking food to his sick aunt. The stench of blood and death greets him and he drops the tray carries as pure horror fill him. In the corner of the caravan a wolf crouches over the body of his aunt, it gorges itself. The boy sees the wolf turn towards him and in fear for his life he collapses and closes his eyes so that he won't have to see his own death. Pain is not forthcoming and instead he feels the wolf muzzle his face affectionatley, leaving a trail of blood on his cheek. Then in an instant it is gone and he is left alone. Still fearful he moves towards the bed and see's that his aunts heart is missing, eaten by the wolf. He cries for her and for his poor uncle who always said that so long as he had his wifes heart she would be with him even when they were parted. The boy pities him for now he has neither and then staggers out of the caravan and wonders where his uncle could be and how he is going to explain all he has seen.