The Black Wolf's Mark (7 page)

Chapter 20

277th full moon night

05:55 pm

“Do I really need to spend a night in this place?”

Zidane questions the moment he walks into an iron cage for the first time.

“I didn’t construct this cage for nothing. I took months constructing this for your protection.”

The old man closes the cage door and passes a bulky chain around it and he also utilizes a padlock to lock the chain from end to end.

Zidane stares at the cage ceiling and also at his sides and that makes him feel imprisoned like a ferine animal.

Murad puts his hands on the cage chains, fixing his eyes on the boy’s face and informs him, “This night you’ll be completing your 277 full moons.”

However, Zidane stares at the old man quite scared about what is to come.

“And you already know what’ll happen to you this night.”

The ancient man turns and walks forward, but before leaves he says, “I’ll sleep on the outside of the cavern. It’ll be safer for me.”

10:00 pm

The full moon appears in the sky and Zidane is seated on the cage floor. He gazes at the full moon through a small opening on the cavern wall.

Until that moment, he feels nothing abnormal in his body.

However, he looks fatigued after being seated in that cage for hours.

00:00 pm

The young boy begins to feel that his body is changing slowly. When he stares at his hand, he sees a big quantity of dark hairs dominating his ruddy skin.

And his body widens and increases successively until his body is the shape of a black wolf.

His eyes are yellow and his claws look enormous, not to mention his teeth that have become pointed and huge.

The black wolf begins to shake the cage intensely and his roar at the cavern awakes Murad who is lying.

“THE BLACK WOLF!” he exclaims as he is staring at the full moon in the sky.

The ferine animal walks in the cage from side to side and he leaps several times against the cage barriers.

Murad enters the cavern and he is holding a torch with flames and when he stares at the black creature that is inside the cage his lips tremble in great fear and then he exclaims,

“OH MY GOD!

The black wolf sees the old man and the flaming torch and that makes him more annoyed. Then the wolf rattles the cage strongly and the old man runs outside the cavern and hides behind a tree.

The wolf howls at the full moon and at this moment Amarilis opens her white eyes.  She looks startled and raises her head and exclaims in an audible voice,

“THE BEAST AWAKENS!”

***

Every full moon night, Zidane is sentenced to go into that cage and spend his night there.

This way he ensures his safety and also the people’s safety.

When the full moon’s phase finishes, he spends his nights out of the cage and he resumes his normal life.

Chapter 21

The afternoon breeze is agreeable and Zidane decides to go for a walk by the forest surroundings, after he has completed his last night of the full moon for that month, imprisoned in that horrible cage.

He feels he needs to breathe and feels better when he has his liberty. He tries to get this as he walks by the mountains and the river borders, and he gazes at the green of the trees.

When he walks back to the forest, he hears footsteps coming after him.

Then he stops walking, but he is not able to glance back because he feels threatened.  Has someone discovered him there?

Nevertheless, he changes his mind and glances over his shoulder. As soon as he does he hears the sound of somebody stumbling over stones and falling to the ground.

“Amarilis! He exclaims and runs in the direction of the girl that is seated on the ground after her rough fall.

He stretches his arms and lifts her with great care.

“I didn’t feel the stone before me,” she lets him know.

“You shouldn’t come here alone.”

“I needed to find you.”

Her hands touch his chest.

“Don’t look for me anymore and I’ll not look for you anymore.”

He separates from the girl and walks forward; however, she walks after him with some difficulty.

“Why? Are you with another female dancer?”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” he orders, walking in front as he touches some brushwood with his hands.

“Then what's wrong with you? Didn’t you enjoy my kiss?”

She stops walking and he turns and walks back to her.

When he stops before her, he lifts up his arm and she can see it is swathed with a white cloth and he shouts at her,
“I’m wounded!”

“Wounded?” She asks panic-stricken.

He raises his arms up and says with all the words,

“I AM TRANFORMED INTO A MONSTER!”

Amarilis has the vision of a black wolf and then she realizes what he is trying to say her.

He lowers his arms and continues talking.

“I don’t know if you know that yesterday was the ultimate night of the full moon during the month, and I spent that night, among others, imprisoned in a cage like a horrifying animal. I was able to wound myself. Imagine other people, or you.”

“You aren’t able to wound me, I feel it.”

He shakes his head and says, “I wouldn’t pay to see it.”

The young boy turns his back and orders to her,
“Be gone! Forget me!”

“No!” She takes steps in the direction of the boy.

“Don’t ask me that! I’ll never forget you.”

The youth turns back and walks quickly to the girl and his hands hold her arms firmly and he shakes her roughly.

“I never told you this but I feel ill every time I am with you. You make me feel as if I am the worst person on the planet, the most unhappy man in the world, that’s why I can’t live in the company of people and can’t love a woman like you.” 

Then he looks at the ground as he feels defeated.

“All this is because I carry the
black wolf’s mark
.”

Amarilis speaks louder as she is about to cry.

“I’ve never told anyone this either, but during my entire life, I have never known what it is to be happy, and I just discovered this in your arms.”

Zidane looks up at the sky and his look is dominated by tears, but his ears are attentive to Amarilis’s affable voice.

“I don’t have much time left in life –but what time I do have I wish to spend it living beside you, taking delight in every second of my life with you.”

“Don’t speak of this anymore!” he orders and kisses her lips and after that he hugs her strongly in fear of losing her to death.

***

Zidane is seated on the ground with his back leaning on a tree, and Amarilis is seated with her back to him and her head is lying over his left shoulder.

She holds his hand and the boy gazes at the horizon that is before him.

“I always knew I’ll be burned like my mother was, but my aunt and Norton always hid this from me.”

“Your male cousin told me your history.”

“Did you already know that?”

He nods his head in assent.

“I never cared about dying before I met you,” she says in a tender voice. “I thought they would do me the kindness of exterminating me from this world as soon as possible.”

Chapter 22

“See who I found lost in the forest,” Murad says in a loud voice as soon as he arrives at the cavern’s entrance. Zidane is lying on his stone bed with some old blankets below his body.

The boy turns his head and sees Murad standing beside a woman in a long black dress.

“Amarilis!” he exclaims and rises from his bed. “How did you get here?”

“I followed your smell,” she confesses.

“You are crazy! It’s already night!”

He walks in her direction.

“I am going to hunt and I will c
ome back tomorrow, late afternoon,” Murad tells them seeking a way to leave them alone.

Zidane holds the girl’s hands as soon as he sees Murad leaving the cavern.

“You need to go back to your village − your family must be looking for you.”

“They won’t come
after me,” she says frankly.

“Why
not? It’s not normal for a person like you walking alone in the forest during the night.”

“I made my last request to them.”

“Last request?”

“Yes, tomorrow midnight, I’ll be burned. And I requested from my aunt Lyra and Norton to let me be free like a bird this night, for me to have fun in my own way.”

“And did they agree to that madness?”

“Yes,
they did − because I told to them that my bigger danger is just my death tomorrow. It doesn't make sense for people to watch over a person that is sentenced to die on the following day.”

Zidane remains silent. Amarilis’s thoughts make sense and he makes a
grimace trying not to imagine his sweetheart’s death by fire.

She hugs him tightly as she feels that her last hours of life together with him are passing quickly with every second that ticks away.

“I want to spend my last night here, together with you – I want these hours to last forever.”

Zidane holds his lover’s hand with his own hands and gazes into her white eyes and asks her with great concern, “Do
you trust me?”

Her fingers pass lightly over the skin of the boy’s arms, at the same time as she dares to answer him in a timid voice, “Yes, I do.”

Zidane gazes intensely at Amarilis’s face while they are seated in the middle of his uncomfortable bed, both of them facing each other.

Amarilis feels her dress slide over her body, from top to bottom, and a cloth piece runs by her head and also through her arms.

Zidane throws the black dress on the ground and he gazes in tenderness at the girl’s image as she is free from her clothes, her long black hair is hiding her ample breasts.

She gazes straight ahead as she is feeling the strong presence of her lover, his hands surprise her more and more.

He gently moves his right hand over her left shoulder and places her long locks behind her shoulder. Amarilis feels another shiver as she feels him running his fingers over her breast, and then his mouth and also his hot tongue touches it. And at this moment she looks up and releases a small groan.

Then, Zidane’s hand holds her nape firmly and he brings her face to his and he kisses her deeply.

She embraces him and feels his body heat and this warmth makes her remember fire which she’ll be burned by the next day.

Her lips touch his shoulder and he receives a light bite over his full-blooded skin.

And they spend an entire night loving each other, exploring each other under the sweet sensations of pleasure from both and also under the bitter thoughts of this being their first and last night of love together.

***

The first sun rays cross over the cavern window and some rays arrive at Zidane’s serious and thoughtful face. He is seated on his bed, his back is leaning against the wall, and Amarilis is still asleep in his arms, like an angel or a defenseless child.

His fingers run gently over the ribs of his muse that is totally nude, and an old mantle covers her from the waist down.

Some minutes later she awakens from her deep sleep and her lips add several delicate kisses over the chest of her man. In his arms she feels protected and for some moments she also feels that nothing bad can happen to her, not even death.

“It’s already
daylight,” Zidane informs her in a melancholic voice.

His thoughts calculate bitterly the remaining hours they have left until Amarilis’s death.

The witch embraces him intensely, as if that was her last embrace and her voice is hoarse from crying.

“I−love−you.”

The girl’s tear trickles down to the boy’s chest while she tries to continue speaking. 

“Promise me you’ll never forget − me!
Even after my−death.”

The boy holds her nape firmly and brings her face to his and he says with determination, anger and a
ffliction, “I promise you that death will never separate us.”

His forehead touches hers and in that moment he says, “Trust me.”

After that he kisses the top of her head and embraces her tightly as if he was defending her from death at that moment.