I am Wolf (The Wolfboy Chronicles) (12 page)

I turned my head and as I did I laid my eyes upon
another painting in the room. My heart started beating faster as I stared at
it. I walked closer and felt a slight breeze push me even closer.

The picture was of a beautiful young girl. One I had
seen before. She had the most gorgeous emerald eyes, just like the Queen. That
was when it hit me. That was when I remembered where I had seen eyes similar to
the Queen’s before.

“Catalina?” I asked recognizing the young girl even if
I had seen her as a teenager.

The Queen froze and stared at me. “You have met my
daughter?”

“I have,” I said startled, almost stuttering the
words. “I met her just ... the other day ... in the forest, she was running, I
tried to help her ... but ...”

“But what?” the Queen asked.

“She was taken away from me and I haven’t seen her
since. I keep thinking about her and dreaming of her.”

The Queen drew in a deep breath. “We have been looking
for her,” she said heavily. Her eyes were teary. “Where did you see her?”

“In the forest, near my hometown just outside of
Bucharest. She was trying to escape the soldiers. I helped her get to a barn
where we spent the night but the following morning they found us. They took her
and drove away with her. I’m afraid I don’t know where to.”

The Queen looked pensively at me. Then she exhaled.
“So you don’t know where she is now?”

I shook my head feeling somehow guilty that I couldn’t
help them, that I hadn’t been able to protect Catalina and bring her to her
family, to her people.

The Queen was in tears now. Soon after she turned her
head and left the room in a hurry. Servants came to help me get to my chambers
where I would spend the night.

I was taken aback by this sudden turn of events. Could
the Queen be right? Was there really a reason I was there, was I supposed to
help them find Catalina?

I didn’t know. But as I went to bed that night in the
castle of light I felt for the first time a little hopeful about the future. I
was determined to help them find Catalina and after that I wanted badly to meet
this Caspian. I wanted to know all there was to know about his people. Our
people. My people.

I
didn’t turn into
the
wolf that night. I figured it was because I had already satisfied the beast by
feasting earlier that night or maybe it was because there was no darkness in
this place, no sunset, no night since lights were constantly shining. I didn’t
even see the sky, the stars or the moon because of the bright lights. I missed
the great outdoors and sensed the wolf in me missed the hunt, the chase for the
kill.

My sleep was uneasy and disrupted. Once I sensed the
rest of the town was awake I rang the bell and asked to see the Queen
immediately.
 

I was shown into a large room where she was sitting at
the end of a long table discussing what seemed to be urgent matters to her
advisors who filled the room with concerned faces.

The Queen’s face seemed torn and strained with
sadness. She sighed heavily when she saw me and tried to smile.

“Come on in, Sami the Human Wolf,” she said. “I have
been expecting you. Your news about my daughter has kept me up all night. I
have asked my advisors to figure out how to bring Catalina back to us. We can’t
operate much in your realm, we only have two openings a year to go there. The
next opening of the portal is not even close. We cannot enter your world
without going through the portal.” The Queen sighed. “I sense my daughter is in
great danger. I sensed it already a couple of days ago, but didn’t react to it.
Now I blame myself.”

“You shouldn’t,” I said and approached her. Someone
brought what looked like a chair for me to sit in next to the Queen. It felt
like sitting on a floating balloon.

“Times are tough out there in that world where
Catalina is. It’s hard for most people to get by. There is a terrible war going
on.”

There was a gasp in the room and faces were turned to
look at me.

“You haven’t heard about the war?” I asked.

The Queen shook her head. “We have not. We don’t live
in that world of yours and we hardly ever visit it.”

“Well it’s terrible. People are killing each other,
some are being persecuted for being of a certain origin or race.”

The Queen nodded pensively. “Things have always been
bad in your world,” she said. “Through time there have been many wars and
diseases threatening to kill you. It is a very dangerous place.” She looked at
her people in the room. “We must not be struck by panic or fear. We knew it was
dangerous to begin with.” The people in the room nodded and continued their
work.

“So if you don’t mind me asking, what is Catalina
doing there?” I asked.

The Queen smiled, strained. “Well she is going through
the change.”

“The change? I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. Let me explain. When a
Wind-Princess is born she is nothing but a gust of wind. Through hundreds of
years she grows stronger and eventually she becomes a child, then later almost
a grown-up. When she reaches what we call ‘the difficult’ years, just before
entering adulthood, we send her to your world in order to grow up. That’s what
we call ‘the change.’ ”

“But how? Catalina had a body like my human body.
Yours is completely different,” I asked.

“Once in your world we take the human form. It’s not
something we enjoy, but it is nevertheless necessary. We can choose to live all
of our lives in your world if we like. We live longer than normal humans,
thousands of years longer, so that eventually poses some problems, but if we
wanted to we could stay and have the fragile human flesh but that also means
risking getting killed by a disease or something else. We know Catalina as
Elanorneth - that is her birth name when she is with our people. Catalina is
the name her human family has chosen to give her.”

“Her human family?” I asked confused.

“Yes, see my dear Sami, once a young princess is going
through the change she gets a longing to see what else is out there, what she
is missing out on. She wants to explore the worlds. So in order for her to try
what it is like in your world we sent her to a family, a human family as a
changeling. We find a family that is about to give birth to a still-born child
and exchange our baby without them knowing it. Elanorneth’s body was blown into
a body of a still-born child. Once it was born and the doctors were working to
relive it, my people blew her body into that of the baby and it came alive. The
doctors called it a miracle. That’s how Elanorneth - or Catalina - was born
into your world. Once she was in the baby she became the baby and couldn’t
remember us or this world. Then we let her grow up there, not remembering who
she is, until her teenage years are over, then we bring her home and give her
the choice. Come here and be the princess and one day Queen and leave all her
human life and behavior or stay in the world that she has come to know. No one
ever chooses your world. They know they belong here. I did it back in the Dark
Ages. It wasn’t a difficult choice for me to return here.”

“What if she dies while she’s out there?” I asked,
fearing for Catalina’s life.

“Then we will have lost a princess,” the Queen
answered.

I didn’t have to think about it for long. The sense of responsibility,
the guilt for not being able to protect Catalina had overwhelmed me. It was
time for me to step up. I looked at the Queen.

“Let me do it,” I said. “I can walk between our two
worlds with no trouble.”

All voices in the room froze. The Queen looked at me.

“I’ll do it,” I repeated. “I’ll find her.”

The Queen smiled and grabbed my hand. “Thank you,” she
said. “Thank you so much.”

T
he Queen came to
my room while I
was packing my things into my sack. I was holding the book given to me by
Camelia. It glowed as I touched it. It made me pause. The Queen stared at me,
then approached. She reached out for the book in my hand.

“May I?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” I said and handed it to her. “I can’t read
it anyway. I don’t even recognize the letters.”

The Queen put her hand on top of it and stroked it a
couple of times. It didn’t glow at her touch, I noticed.

“Maybe you’re approaching it wrong,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re reading it as if it was one of the books from
your world.”

“And it’s not?”

The Queen laughed lightly. “I think you need to look
at it differently. You’re searching your own knowledge, but you’re looking for
the wrong things. Be open, read it with your heart, not with what you know.
Read it as the wolf.”

“But I can’t read it,” I said. “I have tried.”

“Then try again,” the Queen said and handed the book
back to me.

I sat on the fluffy bed and opened it again. The first
page glowed and almost blinded me. I looked at the strange letters but still
couldn’t make anything from them.

“Still nothing,” I said.

The Queen looked at it. “It is an ancient language,”
she said. “From the beginning of times. I have seen letters like those before.”

“So maybe you can read it?” I asked hopeful.

She shook her head. “No. I’m afraid not. It’s not my
people’s language.” She paused and looked at me. “It’s yours.”

I closed the book with a deep sigh. The Queen smiled.
“It’ll come to you. Give it time.”

I put the book in my sack and closed it, then I put on
my hat and stood up. The Queen floated to the window and looked out. It was
hard to see anything beyond the castle because of the bright lights.

“There is one thing I know about your species,” she
said. “One important thing I remembered last night when you had gone to bed.
One thing I think you should know.”

I lifted my head and looked at the stunning woman.
“And that is?”

She approached me again. “It was regarding the evil.
You asked me if there were evil among you.”

“And is there?”

“Some human wolves have been known to turn evil. You
have to be aware of the scent of human blood. It will make you turn into the
wolf and it’ll make the wolf in you crave human flesh. That’s why you need to
get away once you have killed a human. If you’re not careful it will make you
insane, unable to control your instinct to eat the flesh. Never, ever eat human
flesh. Once you’ve eaten human flesh it’ll destroy you, it’ll never be enough
for you to just eat other animals again. Never taste human blood or flesh no
matter how alluring it is. You’ll lose your mind and you can never stop, you
can never go back again.”

I stared at the Queen feeling my heart racing in my
chest. I realized how close I had been to eating that flesh on the dead soldier
at the train station. Then I thought about the killings I had committed and
everything froze inside of me. The soldiers, the young girl, even the man from
the village. They all had teeth-marks on them. Had I eaten from them? Was it
already too late? Had I devoured the human flesh and destroyed myself? Was I
going to be addicted to killing and eating humans? I wondered, speculated
desperately while the Queen continued to speak:

“Human flesh will make you a slave to it. Once you’ve
tried it you will have only eyes for that, constantly searching for where you
could get it next. It will make you kill just to eat, to satisfy the desire.
The desire will only grow stronger, the more you eat human flesh or drink human
blood the worse the craving for it gets. In the end you will lose your mind.
The desire will drive you insane.”

I sighed deeply in shame hoping the Queen would not
read my mind and know this about me. Was I already an addict? Would my wolf
begin to crave the human flesh anytime soon? Was I already among the evil
wolves out there? Was that why I had felt it so alluring to drink from those
soldiers and eat their flesh?

“Thank you for telling me this,” I said and took the
Queen’s hand. I kissed it on top. “I shall not let you down. I will find the
princess and bring her back.”