Free Storm Wolf by Stephen Morris

in favor of the traditional language and customs of the Latvian peasants.
    Alexei also saw large numbers of men working with great beams of steel and ties of wood, building what they called “ dzelzceļš ” through the countryside. They claimed that creatures known as “ dzelzs zirgi ” or “iron horses” would travel along the tracks they were building and that these iron horses would be powered by steam and coal, able to travel at incredible speeds and carry both men and goods far distances. Men urged him to stay and work with them as they laid these tracks across the Latvian countryside, but he did not dare stay too long in any one place, both because he was afraid of what he might do if the wolf transformation overcame him and because he needed to keep moving—headed anywhere—in his search for anyone who might know the old practices and be able to free him from the wolf magic that had driven him to kill his beloved Grete and their children. So Alexei kept walking south and also a bit to the west, stopping to work when he needed a meal or a few coins and always asking if there were any of the wise folk or cunning women, whom he learned they called “ burtnicks ” or “ viltīgs sievietes ” in the district.
    Alexei had been walking south and west for almost a month when Svētā Jēkaba diena came, the day when the reaping of the crops begins and the farmers need all the extra help they could hire to get the harvest in by late September. So he found himself in the fields of one of the local landowners, swinging a scythe with teams of men, all singing harvest songs as they trudged up and down the furrows. When Alexei’s hands chafed or blistered from the wooden handle of the scythe, he would trade places with one of the men who followed along and gathered up the wheat or straw into bundles to be loaded onto the heavy wagons and taken to the barns.
    It was in one of the barns that the extra workers were allowed to sleep and leave their satchels of belongings during the day. Alexei hid his bundle of clothing and the pelt there as best he could, hoping that no one would find it and accidently open the pelt and be trapped in the nightmare that his own life had become.
    The reaping, a time for most of the men to sing and enjoy their working together in the fields, were days of sorrow for Alexei. He recalled the days of early spring at home and the planting of the seeds on the farms of his village in Estonia. His neighbors and he had ploughed and planted in such hopes of a rich harvest, and then he had used the wolf pelt to save his plow horses from the wolves coming from the forests. He had become a killer who slaughtered not only his neighbors, but even his own family. While the other men sang, Alexei wanted to weep.
    It was at supper one dusk during the reaping that Alexei sat with a handful of the men working to bring in the harvest. On this night, the men he sat with were mainly local, but there were a few extra workers like himself. They were joking with one another over their bowls of stew and mugs of beer as Alexei sat slightly apart from the rest. One of the younger men made a joke, insulting another man, who took his fistful of bread and threw it into the jokester’s face. Laughter erupted around the circle of men as everyone began to make jokes at his neighbor’s expense. More fistfuls of bread flew through the air and two men leaped at each other, grappling one another in a good-natured wrestling match. The laughter turned to cheers, goading both wrestlers on.
    That’s when Alexei felt the first few drops of rain. He looked up into the sky.
    The last gleams of sunset were streaking the western horizon through heavy clouds moving in across the sky from the east. A few more drops of rain splashed into his bowl of stew.
    Alexei smiled. He would not have been able to catch raindrops with his stew if he had been trying to. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, pushing his hair out of his eyes,