The Lupine Curse: A Tale of Netherway

Afterwards Fenris and Deidre sat together by the edge of the cliff. Deidre was on a boulder sunken into the grass, wearing today’s clean linens, which were just as ragged as the others.

“How are you two fairing?” Boran asked, his broad shoulders casting shade down on them.

Deidre was silent, trying to enjoy the simple pleasure of a quiet afternoon, while Fenris was drawing lines in the dirt with his dagger. “I don’t know,” he admitted, feeling numb. The worst emotions always subside to that, he found.

Boran scratched his head. “I don’t know either,” he sighed. “But Fenris, I’ve been meaning to speak to you and … well, you can’t—” His tone implied too much, and he was met with an accusing stare. The man sighed again.

“So I risk my hide for this village and you come to me, concerned with crops? Is a day’s rest too much to ask? We all saw you cut off the head of that beast—”

“—Fenris—”

“but it was me who got the creature to its knees. I was the one who pushed the dagger— ”

“—Fenris—”

The boy would’ve stood up if he didn’t feel so sick and exhausted. “Just listen! I was the one who saved Deidre. Not you, and not Rikter. I was willing to die last night for this little scrap of land. So leave me be, for one day, to my gods and my glory,” he said mockingly of himself, wearing only rags and a frown.

Deidre was embarrassed of his outburst, but said nothing, aware that she owed Fenris silent support, at the very least.

Boran softened his tone. “This isn’t about that at all, lad. You earned yourself reprieve enough, but I’m not a god, I can’t give you what’s earned. Deidre keeps herself useful healing the sick.” He offered a thankful nod in her direction, but she kept her gaze past the river, hiding her blush. “But lad, I don’t know what to do with you. You’ve got to find something you can do ’round here … and there’s plenty of work to go around. Else we can’t keep you n’longer.”

Hearing his own words again in his head, he felt embarrassed, too. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I didn’t mean anything by that. I’ll keep myself busy. Just need some time. Just today, a’right?”

“That’s my boy,” he said, flashing him a smile and tossing his hair.

When he walked away, Deidre looked at Fenris. He was gnawing his lip. “Told you,” she said with a playful smirk.

Fenris chuckled, but only to appease her. Something in his side hurt. He returned to drawing lines in the dirt and brooding.

Later that afternoon there was a drizzle so weak and short-lived no one noticed it during Katherine’s passing rites. She was wrapped in a tan cloth and let off the cliff as gently as gravity would allow. The other man’s body, or what was left of it, was put in a sack and thrown off afterward.

“Our thanks,” Boran said after Deidre said a prayer. She quickly became the village’s priestess. For what god specifically, they couldn’t agree, only that she had a touch with the divine that they didn’t.

They all stopped their labor that afternoon for a meal in the center of the village. Fresh memories humbled them all to silence. Rikter’s youngest son, Timothy, and the rest of the children still had not awoken or left their cottages. He hadn’t the heart to tell his son that his mother was gone.

“Thank the gods no one else was hurt,” Boran murmured. Grunts and silent nods were offered in agreement. A few were sitting on logs cut down for seats, others on boulders or simply standing.

The burly head of the village settled into the soft ground beside the fire. Gray embers already dusted the earth around the blazing wood, while some of the ashes drifted toward the sky. Boran picked up a nearby stick and prodded the fiery stack of logs. The tower crumbled, and the flames danced on the unburnt firewood. He picked up a dried leaf and stared at the old veins spread across its surface. He crushed it in his palm, and hearing the sound of it crunching, an overwhelming nostalgia and pain came over him. Over and over again, he felt the fibers breaking, tearing, and crumbling to pieces. The cold wind picked up, and made him shiver, even though he was only inches by the fire.

“It is times like these when someone with a lute is just as comforting as a warm fire like this,” he heard himself say, though he felt distant from his voice, already pulled back by memories.

Rikter was seated across from Boran, stirring the contents of an autumn stew with squash and rabbit; raw fish and corn were set on spits, stuck in the ground and hanging over the flames. Droplets of fat were dripping down steadily, dropping off and sizzling in the fire, while the air was filled with the sweet scents of squash. Everybody was famished, and looking at the food greedily, but Rikter had set out to cook more than enough for them all.

Boran scratched the side of his head and stared into the flames, forgetting his surroundings for a moment, until Rikter nudged him silently with a hot bowl of stew, and then called to the rest of them to take a helping.

With them all gathered in a tight circle around the fire, the setting sun set the trees ablaze with color. Boran had a fatherly look to his eyes as he gazed at each one of their tired, pensive faces. Could I have protected them all? he asked himself. If more nightmares would come … will I be strong enough to stand my ground, and become a shield for each one of them? Boran cared for them more than they could ever realize, and although some of them felt the bonds of friends and neighbors, he knew that they were his family.

The silence was thick, but was broken by a gentle note that came from James’ lute. Boran closed his eyes in relief. The silence was making him uneasy. The memories were starting to cloud his thoughts so much, he thought he might just blurt out nonsense.

“Something on your mind, my friend?” Rikter asked, dipping a handful of bread into his bowl.

The rest of them looked at the two, silent, chewing quietly. It would seem like a silly question, to ask that of someone who just witnessed death hours before, but to Crowshead villagers, tragedy was in their blood. Smiles prevailed, almost always.

“Yes …” Boran said, looking back at him. Suddenly, a grin came out on his features, and the fire glinted into an adventure that brewed in his eyes. “Have I ever told you all about my friend Nevron?”

Fenris looked curiously at the others’ faces to see if they had, because he certainly had not. Deidre glanced at him, and they shook their heads in unison.

Everyone said “no” in their own way. Even the music of the lute stopped. Then Boran tossed James a inquisitive glance, “Know any music fit for a true adventure, lad? Are all your tunes so slow and quiet?”

James chuckled to himself, then repositioned his fingers around the string. “Is that a request, or a challenge?”

“You tell me.”

His fingers started an expert prance on the strings as his other hand strummed the lute vivaciously.

“Now that’s a song for heroes!” Boran exclaimed, clapping with enthusiasm at the first bar of notes. “Well, my friends, you haven’t heard much from me and my past,” he said with a thoughtful air. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you all are the most trusting lot in Netherway. I came here years ago with nothing but memories and an armful of clothes to keep me going. Now here I am, gathering us all around a fire!”

“Don’t get cocky, now. The food brought them here,” Rikter joked, and the rest of them joined in for a bit of laughter.

Boran snorted, tore off a bit of fish, then said, “Ah well, me, or food—regardless. It’s been a wonderfully strange life here, in this little corner of the world, this Crowshead.”

He stopped for a moment to reflect. Without knowing, they all followed suit, as James’ tune led them all down a deep, rhythmic trail that went deeper, into a realm between fantasy and reality, fate and destiny, calamity and peace.

Somewhere in the forests bordering their home, a murder of crows were calling out to one another.

“I think, however, it is time that you come to know just how I came here, and why. Last night gave me the good reason to do so, in any case … and this afternoon, it was taking every bit of me not to just say it all at once.”

When he said that, his eyes stuck to Fenris, who shared with him a brief, solemn gaze.

“So, what’s the story? Who is this Nevron?” a Moon-elf named Mikel asked, excitement building up. His long ears bobbed as he devoured a halve of a squash in one bite.

“Well, my friends, there was once an elf, like you, Mikel, by the name of Nevron Illumina. He was one of the sharpest of his kind, and the most humble, at that. He, like myself, was the head of a village. Only his village was old, ancient, and bathed in rich history. That village was called Elfwood, and I was one of his closest friends, living there alongside him, trusted him with all my heart. Though that isn’t saying much, for everyone knew Nev, and those that knew him adored him.

“Elfwood used to be strictly filled with Moon-elves like him, but overtime, he was one of only a handful of ’em. Couldn’t say no, you see, to good folks. That was his problem: so open to new folks. It could be said he did half of the work of the village by himself, in half of the time it normally took. He hunted, he healed the sick, he tamed the grey wolves and shadowcats around our village, using only the words of a sacred language remembered by only the Illumina family—a tongue passed down for centuries!” Boran gestured with his hands, the wide span of time, and traded glances of awe and wonder with everyone as he smiled wickedly. “He was brave! He was sensitive! He laughed when we needed it, and cried with us when even that was not enough. His magic, you would have given half your life to see just a minute of it! Deidre, especially!”

Deidre sat up straight, her eyes wide with imagination. Even Fenris was leaning in closer to hear better.

What a wonder it was, after all the madness, to hear a story so lifelike and yet so fantastical, so close, they could practically touch it.

“But, my friends, like all tales here for us lowly farmers in the Moonlands … a brief moment of darkness was all it took to overshadow the brightness of our lives. One day, Nevron came back from hunting. Although he was smiling as usual, he had a limp in his side, and it seemed as if some pain was sucking away at his usual energy.

“I will never forget that moment when I saw him come back from the forest, his bow in his hand, the sword in the other; he had not sheathed it yet, or even slung the bow across his back. He looked as if he was ready to turn around and defend himself from something at any moment.

“He relaxed after he embraced a few villagers, chatted over idle things, and dropped an armful of rabbits and squirrels that he had caught. The elf was a legend: he could hit a snail between the eyes. Often he would jump from a tree somewhere, slam an arrow into a deer, and before he touched the ground, hit a buck beside it in the same instant.”

Deidre’s eyes were closed. In the smoke and drifting ashes of the fire, the scenes were materializing, and they watched in awe, at the translation of Deidre’s perspective from Boran’s words.

Boran hardly glanced at it, lost in his own memories.

But the excitement in his face died a little. “Still, I asked him … because I had to: ‘Are you hurt, my friend?’ He looked back at me, a few others waitin’ for him to reply. And something happened … something …. something I thought I never thought I’d see in his eyes. It was dark, and sneaking, and felt like something made of ice grabbed at my spine. Nevron looked at me, dropped his smile, and said, ‘No.’ And as I turned my head to go back to tanning leather on a rack, he asked, ‘How dare you question me?’

“His hand even dropped his bow. The rest of the villagers backed up a step. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d say that elf would’a beat me to death right there. There was something different about him.

In the fire’s smoke, Deidre’s representations of Boran and Nevron stood facing each other, quivering in the flames, and the elf’s dark silhouette was reaching for an arrow.

“So I stood my ground, and stared at him; it was a look only friends such as us could endure. I told him: ‘Nev. Calm yourself, have a seat by the fire, and try to relax. You haven’t had much to eat, have you? I didn’t mean anything by it.’

“It was as if a storm passed over his eyes, and the sun came back. His eyes lit up, he smiled again, and apologized with a tight hug. But even as he went back to the fire to settle down, and eat a stew much like this one … I saw that same limp in his side.

“Now, as I said before, Nev wasn’t one for pride. Then again, he’d never been injured by any beast. Too fast, he was. So I brushed the thought away, thinking he didn’t want to be embarrassed ... the fool I was.” Boran sighed, and sat back down

“Lads and lasses, this is when my tale of adventure turns to nightmare. When paradise crumbles to a bleak life, harsh and bitter as winter, and darker than the earliest hours. A week later, that limp of Nevron’s turned him into a monster. And before any of us in Elfwood could react, there was a Cursed beast rampaging through the homes, tearing apart doors, smashing up the windows, and dragging out the poor folk inside just trying to sleep for the night.”

Deidre’s imagination erupted the fire; the heat blazed hotter, the flames grew taller, and from Boran’s words, her imagination created vivid scenes of Nevron rampaging through homes, grabbing villagers and tossing them aside. They all winced, but stared, transfixed, into the flames.

“Nev’s eyes were special …” Boran said after a long pause, waiting for that scene to fade. “You didn’t forget them. They were soft, yellow and gold. They glimmered with happiness, trust, and made us all feel a warmth like home.

“But … that night. Something soft and comforting in those eyes melted to the fierce gaze of an animal. A beast—no—a demon, no more. And as he tore apart every last one of us in Elfwood, as I watched him devour his closest friends with the hunger of death itself, I stood there, defenseless, unable to protect any of ’em …” For awhile, he stared down into his thick hands.

Rikter softly said: “Boran … why? Why tell us this now?”

He shook his head, silencing him. “Not finished yet.” His eyes were red, filled with pain. “So … as I stood there, standing amongst the wreckage of our old village, laden with tradition and filled with memories, filled with the purest sense of the word, ‘home,’ standing around the bodies of my family. That creature that was once Nev turned, and it stared at me with those eyes of melted and flamin’ gold. But something human remained in them. Something left of an elf. Just as he took a step toward me, and growled, I screamed his name: ‘Nevron! You damned fool!’ through tears. And he stopped. The beast in him froze, and for a moment, I saw him in those eyes; I saw remorse, and the deepest guilt. And before I could say ’nything else, the bastard ran away, and threw himself back into that forest where that beast first corrupted him.

“Cursed things. Good for nothing creatures of Siflos and all the gods of the damned.” Boran shook his head with shaking fists.

A deep, impenetrable silence blanketed over them all. The whimsical smiles quickly faded, everyone’s appetite left them, and the music stopped. There was only the dying embers popping, and the cawing of crows encircling a corpse in the distance.

Deidre opened her eyes, as if waking from a daze, and looked at Fenris with a look of confusion. He touched his forehead lightly against hers, and returned to looking at Boran and the others.

Her hand drifted to his by his leg, and held it.

Rikter cleared his throat. “You … idiot, you think we needed this?” It was the first time anyone had seen him raise his voice like that at Boran.

Boran could hardly hear him. He was staring at something. They all followed his gaze, passed the faltering flames, to Fenris.

When Fenris lifted his head up to return the stare that they all shared; everyone remembered Boran’s description of Nevron’s eyes when he first asked him about his limp. They saw it instantly. A reflection. And before anything could be said, they all knew just why Boran had told his tale.

“Lift up your shirt, Fenris,” Boran demanded, standing up.

His face flushed with rage, but then subsided as he remembered the story, and he clasped his mouth shut.

Deidre clutched his hand tighter.

“Lift it up,” he growled. Ruthless padded over from her spot near the fire, to sniff at Fenris’ stomach. He gently pushed her snout away, but she persisted, with a low growl, and sniffed more.

“Gods dammit. Fenrisulfr, If you don’t I will!”

Fenris stood up begrudgingly, but did nothing.

“Boran, just what do you think you’re doing?” Deidre interjected, letting go of his hand and gesturing with it instead. She was only one who hadn’t felt the same realization, or at least, hadn’t accepted it. “Do you really believe just because your friend was Cursed, that Fenris is?”

“I don’t think, Deidre, I know! I saw it in his eyes last night.”

“Keep your trap shut, hare,” James said.

“I’ll sew your mouth shut with mere spells, farmhand,” she spat back.

“Enough!” Boran commanded, raising his voice above theirs. “Now listen, all of you! Just because I wasn’t brave enough to force Nevron to show his wound to us all, to push back that demon that was already inside him, doesn’t mean I will let the same mistake happen again. I won’t have the blood of another village on my hand. Now, Fenris, I’ve told my story. Show us yours. It’s better this way.”

Everyone stared at Fenris, including Deidre, with fear-stricken eyes. Rikter’s mouth was hanging open, and Ruthless whined, trying to paw at Fenris’ stomach. Even the reddening sky seemed to bear its weight down on the boy. Suddenly the air felt very hot to him. “I don’t—” he started.

“Up with it, Fenris!”

Fenris pulled the remnants of his shirt up.

A low gasp went through the villagers. A few of them stood up from their logs or seats on the ground to step back, as if he was going to murder them all in that instant.

Boran sighed, and then screamed until all the cliffs had heard his rage. Fenris merely looked down at the nail in his stomach, then back up at all of them. “I didn’t mean to hide it. I only wanted to … I just ….” he shook his head. The fog in his thoughts was so thick. He didn’t feel like himself at all, anymore.

“We should toss ’im off the cliff with the other beast,” James offered.

“He’s no different from us, bastard! He’s just sick!” Deidre protested.

Rikter scolded his son, though afterwards his face bent down to the ground as if considering his son’s words.

Boran was clenching and unclenching his fists until they were red and sweat was at his palms. “We’re not doing that,” he said curtly. “But we can’t keep him here. He’s a danger to all of us. He’ll …” Boran rubbed his eyes. “He’ll kill us, Deidre. Just like Nev did.”

It was only a fragment of a thumbnail in his side; just deep enough to draw blood. It was all that the Curse needed, though.

Fenris was the one who seemed the least conflicted about it all, after only a few moments to face the reality. “I’ll leave,” he said. “It must have been affecting my mind. The way it made Nev hide it from you. It’s … already changing me.”

Boran’s eyes filled with pity. “But, Fenris, what if there’s time to find a way—”

“That’s folly and you know it. Just stop it. I’ll go. You don’t need another plague to worry about,” he grumbled as he rose and began walking towards his cottage. “It took a week for your friend to shift, did it? Well, I’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

“Wait! At least let us talk more about it. What are you doing now, lad?” Boran called after him, the murmurs and threats of the others surrounding his words, turning Fenris’ already embittered heart to a spiked, cold ice. He reached his cottage, stopped for a moment as if to turn and say something, but then reached for the handle.

He slammed the door behind him without another word.