STORY: Jemal & Kadriye by Blitz Salamander

((This story was first told around the Nomad campfire at Christmas 2008, on the day I was accepted into the familia))

The Anatolian Plateau, lying between the Mediterranian and the Black seas in what we now know as Turkey, is a place of extremes. Life is hard and people eak out an existence from farming livestock and doing their best to survive in an inhospitable envrionment, where love and loyalty go hand in hand with bravery and survival.

With lives dependant on their animals, potential predators are crushed as soon as they arise. But one the villagers of Komare in feared, proving a mighty force indeed, was a pack of wolves. Not only did they kill the animals, they took the best hunters, pregnant women and small children alike.

Our hero Jemal had lost his father to the wolves and had grown up watching his mother grieve, until she too was taken. Now a man himself, long nights he spent in the lowlands of the Taurus Mountains, crouched in waiting with his axe and his knives and a spear his father had crafted.

Listening to the howling of the pack from one side of the wastes to the other, he tracked their patterns for months, memorising their individual calls, giving them names, noting when new ones joined and others vanished - hopefully, he thought, killed by hunters like himself. He was certain his time would come.

Komare was safe in the deep winters endured by the Plateau, the snow so deep it languished at chest height for weeks at the peak of mid-winter. During this time Jemal forwent his lonely nocturnal vigils and spent more time with his community - and one girl in particular, in fact.

Kadriye reflected light and joy onto his dark brooding - her amber eyes held the deep-buried heat of the Earth in them, warming his heart. Her laugh vibrated on the strings of his heart long after they had said goodnight. But he knew, come the thaw, he would have to tear himself from her arms and the comfort they gave him, with the purpose of going after the pack that terrorised his people.

But this year, the thaw came early. In his sleep, Jamal heard the sound of water dripping, trickling, of ice sliding ... then at the howl of the wolves his eyes snapped open and his hand was on his axe. It was only then he realised Kadriye was not beside him.

Naked, he leapt from the bed and to the slightly open door. The sharp, clear nights of the previous weeks had given themselves over to fog, but the light from the full moon revealed strange forms seen in the erie white. Then someone screamed.

Jemal grabbed his spear from a nook by the door and charged into the night, but it was no good. By the time he had taken three paces the rest of the men were rushing from their homes too, armed and shouting, their rage all but drowning out the scrambling four-legged footfalls in the icy slush and the savage snuffles, growls and howls as the pack left with their screaming prize.

Panicking he was - but a hand as cold as the melting snow clutched at his heart and brought him back to reason. He returned to his home to dress hurriedly and collect his weapons. Just as he was leaving he paused and lifted up the dress Kadriye had worn the night before, when they had danced together, made their promises and jumped over the broom handle before their people. He lifted to to his face and breathed deep of her scent, then dropped it, picked up his warmest coat, and turned into the murderous night.

At the perimeter of the village stood the men and the older boys, weapons still in hand, frowning out into the night. Jemal stopped to say, "Which way?" and they pointed where they stared, some of the older men with tears on their cheeks, one of the teenagers openly weeping. Jemal set off into the night.

After only a few paces the moolight picked up the dark splash of blood in the sodden snow, which turned into a trail. Picking up speed he followed it, noting the skidding pawprints, hearing the distant sound of mass panting. Then a single scream and a snarl that echoed across the lowlands and into the valleys, enough to make the milk curdle and the old maids' hair go grey.

He found her blood-soaked nightdress just before the dawn broke across the Plateau. Until mid-morning he knelt in the wet ground, watching the blood melt into the earth, occasionally raising the garmet to his face. But the blood scent was too strong, he could not smell her sweetness here. So home he went.

The months that followed found him again sitting out long nights in the lowlands, listening to the wolves baying and calling to one another, watching the stars move like a clock across the sky, until the spring came.

Where Kadriye's blood had soaked the ground, a plant with green leaves grew, sprouting pinks buds and that promised to be crimson posies when they reached full bloom. Every day at dusk, when he walked into the wilderness, he stooped to run his fingers through its verdant fronds, then walked on.

Night after night he heard them, predicting where they roamed, knowing them now to be creatures of habit, wandering from village to village across the vista of the Plateau. There were new voices among them, one in particular with a keening ring to it that he learned to listen for. He gave this one the name of his lost love and imagined in the cruel, stark desolation of his spirit that she was mourning him.

Jemal used his knowledge of the pack for the first time on the evening of the birth of spring. And he was correct in predicting where they would strike - a nearby village. He had warned the community elders first and they had been ready, scaring the pack away with fire and noise.

Jemal lay in wait for them and as the last leggy beast tore past him in retreat, he let his spear fly. The animal squealed and came down, and Jemal was upon it in an instant, his gutting knife in his hand, ready to plunge it into the animal's throat.

The wolf was not like any he had seen before, and the shock stayed his arm as he poised above it. It was female, pinned to the ground by the flesh in its side by his father's weapon. As he watched the flesh seemed to ripple, the hair receded ... grubby flesh plumped out of the canine form and its limbs began to twist. It groaned, its jaw cracking, teeth bared, and a small voice he recognised spoke his name. He blinked and found himself looking at Kadriye.

As he raised his hand to plunge the blade in deep, she begged him to stop, and he did. Convinced it was an apparition, a trick of his grieving mind, still he could not kill it. He stood and wrenched the spear from her side - it was not a mortal wound. She wept real tears at the pain, and murmured that she loved him, and begged him to leave before she changed back and bit him, for she was a werewolf.

He knelt beside her and leaned in, sniffing her hair, and closed his eyes to the pain and the joy of knowing it was true. But she pushed him away. "We have no future like this," she whispered, and tried to crawl away, taking away his reason for being, his reason for vengeance, his love, with every movement.

"No, we don't, my love," he whispered, drawing her close to him. He kissed her lips then braced himself and dug his hand into the wound in her side until she howled and revealed the beast within her - then thrust his arm into her jaw and pressed her teeth into his flesh.

The following morning he stood at the perimeter of his village and watched the glow of the sun as it prepared to give the Plateau another day.

As the first rays appeared over the tips of the Taurus Mountains, he heard the soft footfalls of his new family as they arrived to claim him, and lifted his wounded love into his arms to carry her with them.

THE END

(c) Blitz Salamander 2009