The Child: Episode 18
The boy and his wolf
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Harlan turned from the sideboard, two glasses, each a third full of amber liquid in his hands. He smiled at me with his usual affable smile. Ever the mild professor.
The boy sat up on the floor between us, his gaze traveling between me and Harlan. He seemed as confused as I felt.
“The house is protected. The boy’s wolf cannot harm you within these walls, but once you are outside the wards I placed here? Well, then you are at their mercy.” Harlan held out a glass of Talisker. “Drink,” he said.
I hesitated, then took the glass from him. My earlier craving for alcohol had left me, but I needed to buy myself time. A million questions swirled in my head. Nothing made sense. I was beginning to believe Harlan had gone quite mad.
Or maybe the madness was mine.
I perched on the edge of the couch and took a swig of the whisky. The liquid lit a fire in my throat and belly. “What’s this about, Harlan. What the hell is going on?”
Harlan took a seat opposite me in one of the deep leather armchairs he’d imported from Germany at considerable expense. I’d often admired the deep tones and the ingrained scent of leather and wondered how a mere college professor could afford such luxuries from abroad. Harlan had always had a taste for the finer things.
He twitched at his trousers’ legs, adjusting the sharp creases. It was a familiar gesture, one he used when faced with a student who was struggling to get a decent life/study balance going, or grasp a complicated language concept.
Harlan was about to go into lecture mode.
“The boy has travelled a long way to be with us, Mark. A long way. From an ancient place that can no longer sustain itself in our modern world.” Harlan took a sip of his whisky, savoring it before continuing. “The boy was… chosen by his people to carry the secrets of their race. When he underwent the ceremony required to have that map placed into his skin, the pain of it caused his soul to separate in two. All humans have a wild side and a human side. His being split into its components. In his case — a boy and a wolf.”
I struggled to understand. “Like spirit animals, some sort of guide?”
“No.” Harlan waggled a finger at me. “Spirit guides are usually another being; an ancient ancestor, for example, who advises or aids us but is separate from us. The wolf is more an ‘Other Self’. The wilder side of the boy. To withstand the pain of the tattoo burned into his skin, he grew the wolf. To give himself strength. The wolf is his projection of the part of himself that he needed to survive his ordeal.”
“That sounds barbaric.” I glanced over at the boy. He’d pulled himself into the other armchair, legs drawn up to his chest, skinny arms wrapped around his denim-clad knees.
He glared at me, but there was no wolf in his gaze. He was pale, his skin still glistened with sweat.
“He doesn’t look too well,” I noted.
“I’ve protected my house with wards, spells that keep out his wolf. There is much the boy does not understand yet. He traveled all this way on instinct, but I needed to protect myself from the wolf in him until I could be sure he would let me work with his map.” Harlan paused, frowning at the child in the armchair. “But separating them weakens them. Eventually, they will sicken, maybe even die. It’s how his people controlled him and others like him, by threatening to keep them apart from each other.”
I rubbed my forehead with my hand, my head aching from trying to pick through what he was telling me. Intrigued, despite my current situation, I took another gulp of whisky. “So, these people forced the child to become split in this way. Then they use the connection to control him?”
Harlan nodded, watching me closely through narrowed eyes. “Yes. This ability to split the self into separate beings is an inherited trait, contained only in this one bloodline. It makes one incredibly powerful.”
“So, only a few have this… ability?”
He nodded again, clearly pleased with my grasp of the facts. His silence invited my questions. It was a technique I knew well from his classes.
I turned the many questions I had over in my mind. The map? The boy’s abandonment at the side of a road? Harlan’s complete lack of surprise that the boy was in my care? I settled on the simplest one. “Who are these people?”
“Ah, the Galindians. They have been my fascination for years. An obsession almost.” Harlan raised his glass in my direction as if saluting me. “Your ancestors, in fact.”
I stared at him. “My ancestors came from Europe…”
“Yes. The part of the world once known as Prussia.” He smiled as if bestowing a gift on me.
I sat back and took another sip of the whisky. My tongue was thick and sour from it.
My family tree was the reason I’d moved to Middlebury. My ancestors had settled in the town some 300 years ago. One of them had even founded the old library at Middlebury College. But I’d never found a convincing link back to the Old World for their origins.
I’d involved Harlan in my efforts to trace my family history early in our friendship. He’d seemed as fascinated as I had been with the mystery of my European antecedents, occasionally turning up snippets of information towards my search. This was the first time he’d mentioned Prussia in relation to my family.
This time, when I opened my mouth to ask more questions, Harlan raised a hand to forestall me. “Enough for now, Mark. You’re my back-up plan, not my first choice. So, now we’ll discover if I’ve chosen well.”
My head buzzed, my vision blurred. I leant back against the couch and tried to speak, but I couldn’t form the words I wanted. My tongue was a slab of nerveless meat in my mouth, the sounds I tried to make nonsensical grunts.
“Don’t fight it, Mark,” Harlan said. “You’ll be out for a few hours, I’m afraid, but you won’t miss the best part of your transfiguration.”
The glass of whisky tilted and slipped from my hand. I tried to catch it as it fell, but my body wouldn’t move fast enough. The glass hit the rug soundlessly, bounced once, then lay on its side. The dregs of whisky soaked into the weave.
Harlan put something in my drink.
The thought formed slow as treacle sliding off a spoon. The couch folded its cushions around me as my vision darkened and I slipped into drugged unconsciousness.
CONTINUE THE STORY
The Child is an interactive puzzle fiction story. If you’ve stumbled onto this episode without reading the beginning, you can start at Episode One here.