Wiktor’s voice. Something final. It frightened him, as he’d not been frightened since the soldiers had come. “You have to leave here,” Wiktor said. “You’re a human being, and you belong in that world. Renati agrees with me. You’re staying here because of an old man who talks to ghosts.” He turned his head toward the black wolf, and Wiktor’s amber eyes glinted. “I don’t want you to stay here, Mikhail. Your life is waiting for you, out there. Do you understand?”
Mikhail didn’t move.
“I want you to go,” Wiktor said. “Today. I want you to go into that world as a man. As a miracle.” He stood up, and immediately Mikhail did, too. “If you don’t go into that world… of what use were the things I taught you?” White hair rippled over his shoulders, over his chest, stomach, and arms. His beard twined around his throat, and his face began to change. “I was a good teacher, wasn’t I?” he asked, his voice deepening toward a growl. “I love you, son,” he said. “Don’t fail me.”
His spine contorted. He came down on all fours, the white hairs scurrying over his frail body, and he blinked at the sun. His hind legs tensed, and Mikhail realized what he was about to do.
Mikhail leaped forward.
And so did the white wolf.
Wiktor went into the air, still changing. He fell, his body slowly twisting, toward the rocks at the chasm’s bottom.
Mikhail tried to shout; it came out as a high, anguished yelp, but what he’d tried to shout was: “Father!”
Wiktor made no sound. Mikhail looked away, his eyes squeezed shut, and did not see the white wolf reach the rocks.
A full moon rose. Mikhail crouched above the chasm and stared fixedly at it. Every so often he shivered, though the air was sultry. He tried to sing, but nothing would come out. The forest was a silent place, and Mikhail was alone.
Hunger, a beast that knew no sorrow, gnawed at his belly. The train tracks, he thought; his brain was sluggish, unused to thinking. The train tracks. The train might have hit something today. There might be meat on the rails.
He went through the forest to the ravine, down through the weeds and dense vines to the tracks. Dazedly he began to search along them but there was no scent of blood. He would go back to the cave, he decided; that was his home now. Maybe he could find a mouse or a rabbit on the way.
He heard a distant thunder.
He lifted his paw, touched a rail, and felt the vibration. In a moment the train would burst out of the western tunnel, and it would roar along the ravine and into the eastern tunnel. The red lamp on the last car would swing back and forth, back and forth. Mikhail stared at the place where Nikita had died. There were ghosts in his mind, and he heard them speaking. One of them whispered, Don’t fail me.
It came to him, very suddenly. He might beat the train, this time. If he really wanted to. He might beat the train by beginning the race as a wolf, and ending as a man.
And if he wasn’t fast enough… well, did it matter? This was a forest of ghosts; why not join them, and sing new songs?
The train was coming. Mikhail walked to the entrance of the western tunnel and sat down beside the rails. Fireflies glowed in the warm air, insects chirred, a soft breeze blew, and Mikhail’s muscles moved under his black- haired flesh.
Your life is waiting for you, out there, he thought. Don’t fail me.
He smelled the acrid odor of steam. A light glinted in the tunnel. The thunder grew into the growl of a beast.
And then, in a glare of light and a rain of red cinders, the train exploded from the tunnel and raced toward the east.
Mikhail got up-too slow! too slow! he thought-and ran. Already the engine was outpacing him, its iron wheels grinding less than three feet beside him. Faster! he told himself, and both sets of legs obeyed. He slung his body low, the train’s turbulence whipping at him. His legs pumped against the earth, his heart pounding. Faster. Faster still. He was gaining on the engine… was level with it… was passing it. Cinders burned his back and spun past his face. He kept going, could smell his hair being scorched. And then he was past the engine by six feet… eight feet… ten feet. Faster! Faster! Freed of the train’s wind, he surged forward, a body designed for speed and endurance. He could see the dark hole of the western tunnel. Not going to make it, he thought, but he cast that thought quickly aside before it hobbled him. He was past the engine by twenty feet, and then he began to change.
His skull and face started first, his four legs still hurtling him forward. The black hair on his shoulders and back retreated into the smoothing flesh. He felt pain at his backbone, the spine beginning to lengthen. His body was enveloped in agony, but still he kept running. His pace was slowing, his legs changing, losing their hair, his backbone straightening. The engine was gaining on him, and the eastern tunnel was in front of him. He staggered, caught his balance. Cinders hissed on the white flesh of his shoulders. His paws were changing, losing their traction as fingers and toes emerged. It was now or never.
Mikhail, half human and half wolf, lunged in front of the engine and leaped for the other side.
The headlamp’s glare caught him in midair, and seemed to freeze him there for a precious second. The eye of God, Mikhail thought. He felt the hot breath of the engine, heard its crushing wheels, the cowcatcher about to slam into him and rip him to shreds.
He ducked his head into his chest, his eyes closed and his body braced for impact. He hurtled head over heels through the headlamp’s glare, over the cowcatcher, and into the weeds. He landed on his back, the breath blasting from his lungs. The engine’s heat washed over him, a fierce wind ruffled his hair, and cinders bit his bare chest. He sat up in time to see the red lamp swinging back and forth as the last car went into the tunnel.
And the train was gone.
Every bone in his body felt as if it had been wrenched from its socket. His back and ribs were bruised. His legs were sore, and his feet were cut. But he was in one piece, and he had crossed the tracks.
He sat there for a while, breathing hard, sweat glistening on his body. He didn’t know if he could stand up or not; he couldn’t remember what walking on two legs felt like.
His throat moved. He tried to make words. They emerged, with an effort. “I’m alive,” he said, and the sound of his own voice-deeper than he remembered-was a shock.
Mikhail had never felt so naked. His first impulse was to change back, but he stopped himself. Maybe later, he thought. Not just yet. He lay in the weeds, gathering his strength and letting his mind wander. What lay beyond the forest? he wondered. What was out there, in that world that Wiktor said he belonged to? It must be a monstrous place, full of danger. It must be a wilderness where savagery knew no bounds. He was afraid of that world, afraid of what he would find in it… and afraid, as well, of what he might find in himself.
Your life is waiting for you, out there.
Mikhail sat up, and stared along the tracks that led west.
Don’t fail me.
England-Shakespeare’s land-lay in that direction. A civilized land, Wiktor had said.
Mikhail stood up. His knees buckled, and he went down again.
The second try was better. The third one got him up. He had forgotten he was so tall. He looked up at the full moon. It was the same moon, but not nearly so beautiful as in the wolf’s sight. Moonlight glinted on the rails, and if there were ghosts here, they were singing.
Mikhail took the first, tentative step. His legs were clumsy things. How had he ever walked on them before?
He would learn again. Wiktor had been right; there was no life for him here. But he loved this place, and leaving it would be hard. It was the world of his youth; another, more brutal world awaited.
Don’t fail me, he thought.
He took the second step. Then the third. He still had difficulty, but he was walking.
Mikhail Gallatinov went on, a naked, pale figure in the summer moonlight, and he entered the western tunnel on two legs, as a man.
