Hungry Like the Wolf

Humans, Aethra thought
as she plodded along the forest road,
never understood the problems
of being an elf. Elves shouldn’t plod,
for one thing, but for some reason
humans couldn’t fathom them moving
with anything but grace.

However, as a female elf undertaking a long journey on foot,
plodding was to be expected.
Under the weight of the massive rack
with which all females of her species were endowed,
her back had been aching for hours
and she wasn’t even a quarter of the way home.

The moon was rising.
She should find a tree to rest.
Up amid the canopy, surrounded by leaves,
she could recuperate.
These trees, though,
were too small, too fragile.
She’d have to continue into the deep woods
to find a suitable place to bed down for the night.

Then she heard the howl.
Not too close, but not far enough.

Glancing behind her,
she lengthened her strides.
Why o why hadn’t she simply stayed an extra night
at the inn? Instead of setting out in mid-afternoon
and hoping to make the five-hour trek by nightfall,
she could have left at dawn
and proceeded at a pace better suited
to someone with such burdensome breasts.

The howl sounded again.

A tree. She needed a tree
Now. Surely, amid these spindly newborn birches
and adolescent maples,
she could find an old oak or a stolid beech
in which to take refuge.

She quickened her pace as she veered off the road
into the woods. Oak, she prayed.
Father Oak, help me.

But all around her
she saw only
the young birch and willow,
too thin to bear her weight.

Don’t panic, she told herself.
Just keep going. You’ll find a tree.

Really? asked the part of her brain
that she wished would shut up right now.

If the wolves picked up her scent,
they’d find her an easy target.
Her breasts, never easy to maneuver
at the best of times, were now a dead weight.
Literally. An encumbrance that would,
she decided with cynical resignation,
probably prove her downfall. And yet
if ever anyone found her skeletonized remains,
the bones would bear no signs
of ever having belonged to an elf
whose enormous breasts had gotten her killed.

She laughed out loud then,
with a nervous pitch that made the nearby trees quake
as if a cold wind had touched their branches.

The howl hadn’t sounded again.
She took heart from that fact.

Through the leaves, the light of the full moon
silvered all that she saw. If she hadn’t feared for her life,
the scene would have held her spellbound with wonder.

Then she heard the warbling of a brook.
Following her ears, she found it quickly
and stepped into its fast-flowing water.
If she was lucky, it would keep the wolves
off her scent. She walked onwards,
the water eddying about her feet
as the moon rose higher in the sky.

How late must it be now?
The welcome coolness of the brook had,
for a while, made her forget the ache in her back
and the sweat trickling between her breasts,
but now more than ever
she was feeling her exhaustion.

The brook widened then, deepening into a little pool,
and she knelt down to rinse the perspiration and dirt
from her exhausted body.
Around her, the water sang,
songs of rain and storm and flood and drought,
that at another time
she would have paused to learn.

I see them, said the alder suddenly.

They have left the road, said the hazel.

Climb me, said the birch with an urgency
that brought tears to her eyes.

She turned towards its rough white trunk.
“No, my friend.
You would bend,
and then you would break.
Save your strength; grow strong.”

Climb us, said the maple. Climb us,
and we will keep you safe
as your people have kept us safe
from the axes and sawmills.

“Friend maple,” she said, swallowing her tears.
“You cannot bear my weight.
This I know, for I have lived long
and seen better trees than you
topple under the weight of a lesser woman.
I will go on, and if I survive, I vow
that I will return to this grove
to give my thanks to you
for your great generosity.”

Watch out, shouted the linden,
too late.

She whirled around in time to see
the wolf pack’s eyes gleaming red and yellow
in the darkness. Then she went down
in a maelstrom of fur,
her great breasts precluding her
from much of a fight
though she gnashed her teeth
and kicked and punched and screamed
as they wrestled her to the ground.

The largest of the wolves pinned her into the moss,
its maw slavering over her breasts
and its claws digging into her arms
whenever she tried to move.

Beneath that mass of fur and muscle
she turned her head in time
to see some of its companions straighten
and stand up on two legs
as they faded back into the shadows.

She couldn’t quite stifle her gaps.

Not just wolves,
but werewolves.