Totoka River tomorrow will be kinder

Coelacanth and Amoxtli had been just shy of ten months old when the Hunter’s Moon had crimsoned the night sky above Vargas Island. Only when the moon filled with the blood of the fallen did Corten’s wolves feast upon the rich and fattened flesh of the creatures they considered distant cousins — the sea lions. Bathed in a sanguine glow, “We consume our past to perpetuate our future,” Kirynnae had said in her musical lilt, and the bartering for meat had begun. Corten’s wolves traded for their right to feed — no wolf was exempt. Kirynnae, Kailani, Sirimiri, Serein, and Brontide brought their stories and songs; Seelie, barred that, danced accompaniment to the marvels she heard; Oxtli brought his treasures; and those wolves more militaristically inclined demonstrated their physical prowess in grand shows of valor, strength, and speed.

On that fateful night — April 4th, 2015 on the human calendar — Brontide had traded a story for his share. “Th’legend o’ th’wendigo,” he had rumbled in his rasping bass-baritone brogue, a smile playing about his scarred lips as he regarded the tiny sheepwolves in his midst, “is a bi’ o’ a scary story, bu’ i’s somethin’ little wolves ough’a hear.”

The wendigo, Coelacanth had learned that night, was a wolf who feasted upon the flesh of his kindred — a crazed, power-hungry thing, he had grown to be a hulking, maned monstrosity, abnormally broad in shoulder and steely in muscle. His fangs, bloodied and yellowed, became elongated and serrated like a cat’s. Not lion, not bear, not wolf, but something in between, the wendigo was faster and stronger than all three — and constantly hungry. It was a story that had given Coelacanth nightmares — but many of her aunts’, uncles’, and grandmother’s stories possessed the power to walk her dreams. Somewhere in the world, Seelie was sure, there must be a wendigo or two — but not in her corner of it. Never in her corner of the world.

Marbas roused — not with the leonine grace his Siren had grown to expect from him, but with a virile fury and a roar that sent wings of inky hackles flaring to life along her graceful dancer’s spine. It was a wendigo’s roar she heard — the one that had haunted her dreams — and before she could fully process the consequence of her innocent overture, Marbas’ fangs clamped down on the juncture where her graceful, swanlike neck sloped gently into the swell of her breast.

And she — perfect little victim, pretty little rosebud — screamed without a sound.

Her fine-boned frame was shaken — once, twice — sending fissures of agony through her virginal flesh. She had never been touched so cruelly, her gentle and submissive nature requiring no correction from her betters, and she snapped with frantic desperation at Marbas’ muzzle, pushing hysterically at his larger frame at the helpless, suffocating sensation of being held fast. Not even the blurred knowledge that doing so caused her more pain could stop her; she was a crazed thing. She was back in the stainless steel kennel — she was pressed against the metal — she would never get out again. She would never get out. Stop! Stop! Her mind whirred wildly as she screamed again, the sound a harsh expulsion of breath that streamed in futile, hiccupping sobs from her trembling muzzle. Oxtli! Oxtli, help me!

The wendigo’s jaws tightened, and Coelacanth’s seablue eyes swam, glazed with tears and the beginning stages of shock. When he released her, she slipped bonelessly to the earth in a puddle of ink, feathers, and blood, her breath catching and jerking in her throat in a shallow, frenetic pant — get away! fly, you fool! — before skittering clumsily away, foundering in the water she had once danced upon, her eyes fixed and pupils dilated as they regarded Marbas. Every movement ached; there was no rush of adrenaline for Coelacanth, who had not expected such behavior from the boy who had promised once not to snap at her again. She staggered to her paws but found the effort wrung an alarming miasma from her; moaning without sound, she dragged herself a few feet away — she would go home to Amoxtli and sleep, and all would be well —

“I’m sorry.”

She wanted to go to him. The involuntary movement of her body at the sound of Marbas’ anguished voice was toward him, not away from him — but the pain that throbbed steadily through her neck and chest, rendering her even more useless to him than he had initially found her, told her that he was not to be trusted. Trembling with the effort, flattening her tufted ears against her slender skull, she coiled her body into a ball, blood streaming freely into the water that surrounded her — and she bared her teeth, growling at him, a faint, whisper-like flutter in her throat that was unlike her thrumming purr of pleasure and more akin to a snake’s threatening rattle.