Her face was close to his. Her aroma was a scent of heaven. Less than six inches, and their lips would meet. “I thought we were talking about Skarpa,” Michael said.
“We were. Now we’re talking about you.” She held his gaze for a few seconds longer, and then she looked away and began to fold the maps. “Do you have a home?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t mean a house. I mean a home.” She looked at him again, her tawny eyes dark with questions. “A place where you belong. A home of the heart.”
He thought about it. “I’m not sure.” His heart belonged in the forest of Russia, a long way from his stone manse in Wales. “I think there is-or used to be-but I can’t go back to it. Who ever can, really?” She didn’t answer. “What about you?”
Chesna made sure the maps were folded crease to crease, and then slid them into a brown leather map case. “I have no home,” she said. “I love Germany, but it’s the love for a sick friend, who will soon die.” She stared out a window, at the trees and golden light. “I remember America. Those cities… they can take your breath away. And all that space, like a vast cathedral. You know, someone from California visited me before the war. He said he’d seen all my pictures. He asked me if I might like to go to Hollywood.” She smiled faintly, lost in a memory. “My face, he said, would be seen all over the world. He said I ought to come home, and work in the country where I was born. Of course, that was before the world changed.”
“It hasn’t changed enough for them to stop making motion pictures in Hollywood.”
“I’ve changed,” she said. “I’ve killed human beings. Some of them deserved a bullet, others were simply in the path of them. I have… seen terrible things. And sometimes… I wish that more than anything, I could go back, and be innocent again. But once your home of the heart is burned to ashes, who can build it back for you?”
For that question he had no answer. The sunlight shone through the window into her hair, making it glint like spun gold. His fingers ached to lose themselves in it. He reached out, started to touch her hair, and then she sighed and snapped the map case shut, and Michael closed his hand and drew it back.
“I’m sorry,” Chesna said. She took the map case to a hollowed-out book and slipped it into a shelf. “I didn’t mean to ramble on like that.”
“It’s all right.” He was feeling a little fatigued again. No sense pushing himself when it wasn’t necessary. “I’m going back to my room.”
She nodded. “You should rest while you can.” She motioned to the parlor’s shelves of books. “A lot of reading material in here, if you like. Dr. Stronberg has a nice collection of nonfiction and mythology.”
So this was the doctor’s house, Michael thought. “No, thank you. If you’ll excuse me?” She said of course, and Michael left the parlor.
Chesna was about to turn away from the shelves when a book spine’s faded title caught her eye. It was wedged between a tome on the Norse gods and another on the history of the Black Forest region, and its title was Völkerkunde von Deutschland: Folktales of Germany.
She wasn’t going to take that book from its shelf, open it, and look at its page of contents. She had more important things to do, like getting the winter clothing together and making sure they’d have enough food. She wasn’t going to touch that book.
But she did. She took it down, opened it, and scanned the contents.
And there it was. Right there, along with chapters on bridge trolls, eight-foot-tall woodsmen, and cave-dwelling goblins.
Das Werewulf.
Chesna shut the book so hard Dr. Stronberg heard the pop in his study and jumped in his chair. Utterly ridiculous! Chesna thought as she returned the volume to its slot. She strode to the doorway. But before she got there, her strides began to slow. And she stopped, about three feet from the door.
The nagging, gnawing question that would not be banished returned to her again: how had the baron-Michael-found his way to their camp through the black woods?
Such a thing was impossible. Wasn’t it?
She walked back to the bookshelves. Her hand found the volume and lingered there. If she read that chapter, she thought, would it be admitting that she might possibly believe it could be true? No, of course not! she decided. It was harmless curiosity, and only that. There were no such things as werewolves, just as there were no bridge trolls or phantom woodsmen.
What would it hurt, to read about a myth?
She took the book down.
3
Michael roamed the dark.
His hunting was better than the night before. He came into a clearing and faced a trio of deer-a stag and a pair of does. They bolted immediately, but one of the does was lame and could not shake the wolf that was rapidly gaining on her. Michael saw she was in pain; the lame leg had been broken, and grown back at a crooked angle. With a burst of speed he hurtled after her and brought her down. The struggle was over in a matter of seconds, and thus was nature served.
He ate her heart, a delicious meal. There was no savagery in this; it was the way of life and death. The stag and the remaining doe stood on a hilltop for a moment, watching the wolf feast, and then they vanished into the night. Michael ate his fill. It was a shame to waste the rest of the meat, so he dragged her beneath a dense stand of pines and sprayed a territorial circle around her, in case the farmer’s dog wandered this way. Tomorrow night she’d still be worthy.
The blood and juices energized him. He felt alive again, his muscles vibrant. But he had gore all over his muzzle and belly, and something had to be done about that before he returned to the open window. He loped through the forest, sniffing the air, and in a while he caught the scent of water. Soon he could hear the stream, rushing over rocks. He wallowed in the chilly water, rolling in it to get all the blood off. He licked his paws clean, making sure no blood remained on the nails. Then he lapped to quench his thirst, and started back to the house.
He changed in the woods and stood up on two white legs. He walked silently to the house, his feet cushioned on May grass, and slid through the window into his bedroom.
He smelled her at once. Cinnamon and leather. And there she was, edged in dark blue, sitting in a chair in the corner.
He could hear her heart pounding as he stood before her. Perhaps it was as loud as his own.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“An hour.” She was making a valiant effort to keep her voice steady. “Maybe a little longer.” This time her voice betrayed her.
“You waited all that time for me? I’m flattered.”
“I… thought I’d look in on you.” She cleared her throat, as if only incidentally getting around to the next question. “Michael, where have you been?”
“Just out. Walking. I didn’t want to use the front door. I thought I might wake everybody in the hou-”
“It’s past three in the morning,” Chesna interrupted. “Why are you naked?”
“I never wear clothes past midnight. It’s against my religion.”
She stood up. “Don’t try to be amusing! There’s nothing at all amusing about this! My God! Are you out of your mind, or am I? When I saw you gone… and the window open, I didn’t know what to think!”
Michael eased the window shut. “What did you think?”
“That… you’re a… I don’t know, it’s just too insane!”
He turned to face her. “That I’m a what?” he asked quietly.
Chesna started to say the word. It jammed in her throat. “How… did you find the camp that night?” she managed to say. “In the dark. In a forest that was totally unfamiliar. After you’d spent twelve days on starvation rations. How? Tell me, Michael. How?”