"Outcast Savior" by Amanda Jean Timmerman

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“Get ‘im!  He went that way!”  Eon catapulted over a low hedge, running the moment he was again on the ground.

“Hurry up, you club-footed morons, follow me!”  His feet pounded as he ran from the shouter:  thump-thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump-thump, again and again.

“Blast it!  Now where did that varmint go?”  Eon had ducked expertly into a hollow among some tree roots.  Panting as quietly as he could, the fugitive glanced out at his pursuers.  There were about six of them, all men armed with wooden staves and flashing scythes.  They had given him quite a scare, though he had known deep down that they             would never catch him; they were no match for his speed, not to mention his superior knowledge of the forest in which he now hid.  All around him Eon felt the heartbeat of the forest, from the swaying of the trees in the wind to the crawling of the insects at his feet.  He heard the movement of disturbed deer deeper in the trees; smelt their fear.  That herd no more liked this angry mob than Eon did himself.  The scent of the sweaty men was all wrong; it had no place in the forest.

“Blasted demon!  We’ll never catch ’im in here.”  The speaker was redheaded and dark-eyed; that he was solidly built goes without saying.  He appeared to be the leader of the little group.  “If yer listenin’, creature, know that the next time we catch you in the village will be the last.  This is yer only warnin’.”

Eon sighed as the crowd began to dissipate, each participant muttering under his breath.  He had not meant to cause any trouble, or even to be noticed.  Perhaps that was too much to ask for someone like him.  Slowly the youth exited his haven, shaking his shaggy white fur to rid himself of any small stowaways.  His four thick-padded paws struck the soft brown earth with a dull despondence, matching the deep sadness displayed by his drooping head and tail.  The great white wolf shook himself again, but the constricting feeling in his chest remained.  He was a verto-lupus, a creature stuck between two forms; though he could appear a man or a wolf, he was not truly either.  Moving even slower than before, Eon slunk toward his home. 

He had only wanted to have a closer look at her, perhaps to speak to her, or learn her name; she was so beautiful.  Though the daughter of the stout red-haired man, Eon’s secret love was slender and blond—the fairest maiden in the village—and she knew it.  Her air was of proud beauty and haughty grace.  Thinking of her now, Eon morphed into the form of a very tall young man, possibly fifteen.  He was lean and muscled, with tan skin and snow-white hair.  Dark eyebrows accentuated pale silver eyes.  His steps grew lighter as his mind drifted toward his love.

How lovely the sunlight looked as it filtered down between the leaves and flitted on the ground.  So what if this one attempt had failed?  Eon would find a hat to hide his hair and try again.  Damp, cool air revitalized the youth’s senses.  Once more he was a hunter, powerful and fearless.  He did not fear the village men while he was here; he drew strength from the thick trees all around him.  Deftly he wove his way brush and undergrowth, as easily on two feet as on four.  He was now within ten feet of the deer, but they did not stir; Eon’s scent belonged here in this colorful collage of concordant aromas.  Becoming again a wolf, he stealthily circled the deer, focusing in on one strong buck in particular.  The world centered on that buck; nothing else mattered.  One, two—

“Eon!”  A harsh call broke the teen’s concentration and startled the deer away.  This cry had issued from the mouth of a ferocious black wolf, twice the size of most similar creatures.  It was Arcania, Eon’s mother and the alpha-female of the verto-lupines.  “What are you doing?”  Arcania glanced in the direction of the frightened deer and smirked.  “You weren’t planning on hunting them, were you?”  Her smirk became a wolf’s grin.  “Deer are pups’ prey.  Humans are more my taste.”

Biting back a snarl, Eon instead shook his head and stalked past his mother toward their den.  “Since you’re so hungry,” she caught back up with him, “why don’t we go on a real hunt tonight?  Say, when the moon reaches its zenith?”  With two powerful strides Arcania had passed him.  Suddenly she turned, cutting off her son.  “And this time you won’t get out of it by breaking a leg.”  That said, the black wolf bounded away.

Eon grimaced.  In truth, he could never have brought himself to eat a human.  Perhaps that did make him weak; after all, everyone else in the pack ate them.  But whether or not his scruples made him weak, Eon would stick to them.

Eon’s verto-lupine pack only actually hunted men once or twice a year.  The previous year had been the first time Eon was old enough to participate.  Just before moonrise, the boy had picked a fight with one of the older teens in the pack.  Eon had never stood a chance.  Of course he had also sustained some injuries, like the broken leg pointed out by Arcania, and these injuries had kept him from the hunt.  Eon had since rectified his standing in the pack by winning another fight with the same rival.  That ruse would not work a second time.

The sunlight was now daunting, the trees formidable; even the fair-haired village girl had lost her charm in Eon’s mind.  Again he shifted into human-form, this time out of grief.  What if she was hurt, or worse, killed—what if he was the one to kill her?  When Eon hunted, instinct took over, and in that primeval haze, who knew what could happen?

The verto-lupine den was just entering Eon’s line-of-sight.  A pair of rocky, cliff-like hills filled with dark caves housed the pack.  The large clearing was quite unlike the surrounding forest.  Not a touch of green was to be seen within the ring of trees.  More noticeable still was the sharp, pungent odor that seemed to emanate from the dens.  All around the caves the verto-lupines walked, some on two legs and some on four.  Coats of varying degrees of brown and gray blended smoothly into the rock faces. 

Looking at the inhabitants of the den-hill, Eon could easily put names to their familiar faces.  He knew all of them, and yet there was not a single one he could call a friend.  Eon wondered if any of the verto-lupines had friends; he had certainly never heard of any who did.  He only knew the word “friend” from listening to the occasional hunters who dared enter the forest.  Eon shook his head.  Life was not meant to be like this; the verto-lupines had to be wrong.  If only I could go live in the human village, he thought.  But he knew that he could never be a part of that tight-knit community.  He was too easily recognized.

Harsh laughter caught his attention.  By one of the nearer cave mouths, a group of young pack members huddled around a dark central figure.  Occasionally one of them would glance Eon’s way and smirk.  They were laughing at the color of his hair, the boy knew.  In the world of the verto-lupines, the darker the fur of a pack-member, the higher the respect he received.  This way of thinking put Eon right on the bottom.  Through a break in the knot of teenagers, he caught a glimpse of their ringleader; it was his sister.  Panatra was a cunning black she-wolf, similar to Arcania.  Her bloodlust, however, surpassed even her mother’s.

“Eon,” she called.  “We heard you were hunting deer, but it appears you have not eaten; did their speed prove too much for your wiles?”  Panatra’s comment drew several snickers from her supporters, who stopped short when Eon smoothly transitioned into wolf’s form and bared his teeth.

“I don’t suppose any of you would care to put me to the test?”  Eon met each of the mockers’ eyes, staring them down until, one by one, they all looked away.  They knew the truth of his skills as a hunter.  At last he turned his eyes to Panatra.  She did not avert her gaze.  They stood thus for what seemed like an age, black versus white, staring into each other’s eyes.

It was Panatra who broke the silence.  “Last time we went on a real hunt, I caught a little girl; the small ones taste so much better.”  Her mouth twisted into a cruel smile and her eyes glinted evilly.  “I hope you are looking forward to tonight as much as I am.”  Twisting past her brother, Panatra whispered viciously, “Break a leg.”

The other wolves followed her, looking ironically like sheep.  Eon remained exactly where he was, still staring straight ahead.

►▼◄

As it drew nearer to evening, the verto-lupines grew more and more restless.  Already they could taste the human flesh on their tongues.  Eon only grew more anxious.  He had made up his mind; he would run when the attack began and the other pack-members saw everything through red mist.  They would not miss him until after the hunt was over.  By that time, Eon planned to be well on his way to…well, he did not really know where he would be headed, but he would be far away from here.  Still, he could not help but feel sorry for the townsfolk who would be attacked.

When brilliant shades of magenta and fuchsia marked the arrival of sunset, most of the pack began to pace, pant, and lick their chops; by the time the moon had risen, all of them were wild-eyed.  At last the long-awaited moment had arrived.  Arcania stepped to the top of the higher of the two hills, a pale but muscled woman with a thick mane of matted black hair that had never seen a comb.  Her howl split the night sky; the sound made all the more gruesome because it issued from a woman’s lips.  The rest of the pack, all in wolven form, joined in her cry, raising their voices to the silver moon.  Eon alone was silent, lifting only his eyes to the distant moon.

The hunt had begun.  The verto-lupines streamed through the dark forest, a liquid darkness in the trees.  To human ears, the sound they made would have been almost imperceptible, but Eon, somewhere toward the back of the group, could have counted the exact number of pack members on the raid by the sound of their footsteps alone. 

Eon, however, was not counting the others.  His mind was with the villagers; his fair-haired love, the baker’s chubby wife, the hunter’s son, still too young to have whiskers—even the stout redhead with the scythe—how many of them would live to see the dawn?  He could not wait any longer or he would be unable to leave.  Quietly he dropped to the back of the hunting party.  From there he veered sharply to the right, picking up speed with every loping stride and bound.  In a few hours, he would be beyond the reach of the verto-lupine pack.  Running was the right choice.  What good could he have done for the human villagers anyway?  And besides, the baker’s wife, she had thrown a rolling pin at him.  The hunter’s son, he had shouted insults and obscenities at him.  The redheaded scythe-bearer, he had tried to kill him.  None of them cared for him in the least.  He could leave them to die. 

Or maybe he could not.

Suddenly he straightened out his path, traveling again in the direction of the village.  Eon raced through the black forest, dodging easily between trees, bushes, and vines.  If the other verto-lupines were fast, Eon’s speed was beyond description.  Within moments he had passed Arcania, who ran in the front of the pack.  Not a single one of the other wolves turned to look at him, so intent were they on their target.  The huddled houses came into view even more quickly than Eon had expected; he did not know what he would do when he got there, for he had had no time to formulate a plan.  Desperately, the young wolf-boy circled the town, grabbing some clothes off a clothesline beside one of the thatch-roofed homes. 

A young runner in damp, wrinkled clothes and an old hat soon went racing through the village, shouting loudly his message of impending doom. 

“Run!  To arms!  The verto-lupines are coming!  They will devour you all!  Flee for your lives!”  All around, the sleeping villagers tumbled out of bed and lit their candles.  Eon did not understand why he was doing this; they were too slow—the verto-lupines would catch them anyway.  But he had to try.  Men began to appear in doors and windows, wives and children crowding behind their men.

“Follow me, there isn’t much time!”  At last the frightened people began to really move.  They ran after Eon as he moved toward a different part of the forest.  He kept his speed down to what was, for him, a careful jog; any faster and the humans could not have kept up.  Desperately the young leader tried to remember the location of a certain cave he had seen before.  By now the horde had given up the ability of stealth; even the humans could hear their mad howling and baying.  Eon was sure they had heard his shouted warning, but that was a problem he would have to deal with later, if he was still alive.

Stumbling over a low dirt hillock, Eon sighted his cave.  As he directed his followers inside, he searched them for any weapons; they had none.  When the last of them, the redheaded man, was entering, Eon whispered harshly, “Keep them inside and quiet—I’m going back for weapons.”  The large man nodded solemnly, and Eon was off.  Crossing the hillock, he morphed once more into a wolf.  It took only a few seconds for him to return to the village going full speed.  Judging by the sound made by the pack, he did not have much time.  He ran straight for the little armory.  A moment later he was out and running, several spears clutched in his mouth.

Returning to the cave as a boy (having retrieved his clothes from where they had fallen), he slipped nimbly through the deceptively thin entrance and into the large interior chamber, spears in hand.  The cavern was filled with men and women.  Eon pointed out a few men (mostly the ones who had chased him that very morning) and told them to take spears and guard the mouth.  He himself stood in front, a wooden spear in his hands.  Two of the others stood behind him, extending their spears to either side of his.  The rest stood ready to help or replace them at a moment’s notice.

The verto-lupines had arrived.  Arcania stopped short upon seeing her son in the front ranks of her enemies, but some of her followers were too excited, and two of them ran blindly into the outstretched spears.  Arcania took on her human form. 

“My own son?  How can you stand there and kill one of your pack-mates for them?”  The front two villagers-cum-soldiers turned to stare at their leader.

“Stand your ground,” Eon commanded the men.  To Arcania he simply said, “We can stand here all night.  How many pack-members would you send to their deaths?”

Snarling, the alpha-female tried to stare down her son.  She could not; his silver orbs overpowered her black ones.  With a sharp turn, Arcania walked away.  The others could do nothing but follow.  Eon had won.

►▼◄

Dawn was on the horizon.  It colored the foreboding gray sky with just the slightest touch of hopeful gold.  Eon and the others had stood guard all night against the return of the pack, but not a single one had come.  The villagers were safe now.  The red-haired man, who had been at Eon’s right, spoke to the boy softly outside the cave.

“It was a brave thing ye did tonight, but ye can’t stay.  We can never trust ye, bein’ what ye are.  You must leave.  Surely ye know that?”  Eon smiled, but it did not reach his tired eyes.  Yes, he had known he would have to leave, but that did not assuage the hurt he felt at the man’s words.

“Yes, I will leave.  Just answer me one question first:  what have I ever done not to be trusted?  I have never attacked you, I have denied my pack, I have clearly saved your lives this night; when will it be enough?”

The redhead frowned.  “I never said ye’d done anything; I said it was what ye are.  Truthfully, boy, it will never be enough.  Yer kind is evil, and that is enough to condemn ye.  It’s like bein’ the son of a murderer; everyone expects ye to follow in ‘is footsteps.”  He lifted his chin stubbornly.  “I brung my daughter here to get a fresh start after ‘er mother…died.”  For a moment the stout man hesitated, reluctant to continue.  “She killed ‘erself.  The ‘ole village shunned our family.  It shames me t’ say that even after that, I cannot give ye a chance.  I’m sorry to say that ye will probably never get a chance t’ start o’er.”

Eon nodded quietly and turned away.  The villagers were beginning to get restless.  He could hear them start to whisper among themselves.

“Go ‘long, get out of here, you demon,” someone was yelling.  It was the blond-haired girl.  “That’s right, you just keep on walkin’.  And don’t come—”

“Hush Stephanie.”  Stephanie.  So that was her name.  But it did not matter now.  Eon pulled off his hat as he crossed the hillock.  She hated him, and there was nothing he could do about it.  He strode quickly through the village and toward the woods on the far side, pointed away from the den he had inhabited all his life.  He still held the hat in his hand.  As he reached the line of trees, Eon turned back and hurled the hat to the ground.  A young white wolf raced away—the savior of the town he fled.