Free Night of the Wolf by Alice Borchardt Page A

duty. He felt an odd emotion, one so strange it took him a moment to identify it, then realized it was pity. He pitied her, trapped in the smelly house by night, while he was free to roam joyously in the moon glow beneath the multitudinous stars.
     
    Dryas awoke before dawn, still with the sense of being watched. She looked up at the stars. Her people had studied the skies for four thousand years. She knew that in a few moments the sun would be a glow on the eastern horizon. She threw aside the bearskin, rose, and began walking along the stream flowing through the mountain meadow. At its edge the land dropped off and the freshet fell straight down in a miniwaterfall into another granite basin, becoming a pool.
    It was as if something had set guards on it. Blackberries, raspberries, and dewberries twined in thorny profusion at the edges. The long, twisted vines were denuded of leaves, but bore a profusion of fruit—black, blue, orange-red, and the deep purple of an imperial gown.
    She remembered the girl’s words. “No one eats them. No one can force their way through the vines.”
    Dryas began to strip—her blouse, then the divided skirt, the breast binder, then the white linen loincloth.
    She swung out, clinging to the rocks leading down to the pool. The shock of water flow stiffened her muscles and pulled her hair loose, unbraiding it and sending it fan-wise down her back.
    The shock wasn’t one of cold, but heat. The water was warm. A warm spring must intrude into the mountain freshet somewhere close by. That also explained the fruit and the lush vegetation around the pool. It must be warm here winter and summer alike.
    Her fingers pushed through the moss as she climbed down. A few moments later she stood hip deep in the water, making a breakfast of the berries that glowed like jewels on thick black canes. She found herself reveling in their sweetness.
    The light grew around her, brighter and brighter until she could see the vines were only a thin, inner ring around the basin, though a cruel one. Beyond them, a grove of quince and rowan surrounded the water. The lush, yellow fruit of quince bent the still-green branches to the ground and the deep red rowanberries burned like scattered coals against the blue morning sky. Thickly grown with waterweed, the pond’s bottom seemed composed of silk velvet.
    The sweetness of the berries was as intoxicating as mead. It seemed she couldn’t get enough of them, picking and eating them as fast as she could. She stretched, reaching for a branch thickly covered with fruit so black it glowed blue. The weed under her feet was as slippery as it was soft.
    In a moment her mind was invaded by a vision of a woman with her face and hair smashing her skull into the rocky side of the pool. Her blood was a scarlet stain in the clear water until the falls from above carried it away and left her pale and drained, drifting down and down to the blue heart of the little reservoir, then vanishing into a pile of white bones.
    In panic she snatched at a thick strand of blackberry vine. The thorns bit, but she hung on and righted herself She realized she was breathing hard—gasping, really. She clung tightly to the rocky poolside, then let go of the vine and washed her hand. As in the vision, the blood was a scarlet stain, then, diluted by the crystal water, it vanished, leaving the thorn wounds, angry red and white rips in her skin.
    The light was bright now beyond the guardian vines, quince, and rowan. The open forest stretched out, long aisles of pale-barked beeches, the ground carpeted with their light, golden leaves.
    Dryas was beautiful. She hadn’t thought about that beauty in some years. But if she could trap the wolf with it, the smooth surfaces nature had given her would, at least, be of use to someone.
    At that moment, she felt eyes on her again. She stood straight, twisted her long black hair in her hands, and wrung out the water. Her upraised arms lifted her small breasts, perfect