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In the early days of French Canada, a young girl falls in love with a bold adventurous fur trader who periodically visits her small settlement. Her family warns her that Alain Dulac is a no-good rogue, but she disregards their warnings -- along with the rumour that Alain and his fellow traders are secretly loups garous: werewolves...

This short story is a prequel to the novel The House of the Wolf.

Walking with Wolves

Madeleine stood very still, her eyes on the wolf.

He was not a stone's throw away from her, watching her as intently as she was watching him. The seconds dragged on. Madeleine couldn't run, or utter a sound. She stood paralyzed, her heart thudding hard against her ribs. Oh, she had been warned before not to wander in the forest alone, especially when the sun was going down. She'd been cautioned a dozen times at least, and now -- now that it was too late -- she wished she'd paid heed to her parents' warnings. She could not shout for help. Around her lay nothing but trees, a primal immensity of virgin forest. Her settlement could not even be seen from here; it might not exist, nor the entire colony of New France for that matter. Coming to this remote glade had always given Madeleine a peculiar thrill, half fear and half pleasure, as though she had stepped back in time to that earlier age of unsettled wildness, and stood in it all alone.

Oh, how could she have been such a fool!

The wolf still had not moved. He was huge, nearly as big as a donkey, with fur so dark as to be almost black. There was about him an arrogant majesty that took her breath away, even in the midst of her fear. He studied her with his great golden eyes, his sharp ears angled forward, his black nose quivering as he drew in her scent. And now, slowly, he advanced upon her. Still she could not stir, but stood transfixed as he walked all around her, staring and snuffing. She waited for the snarl and flurry of his attack.

But the great beast merely nudged her arm with his muzzle, sniffed, then withdrew again. Madeleine stared at him in amazement. He wasn't going to hurt her, after all. Why, he was just like a dog -- a big dog! She expelled a long breath, her fear suddenly evaporating, and spoke to him softly, watching the way his ears pricked and swiveled to hold the sound of her voice.

"Madeleine! Madeleine!" The voices of her father and her brother Baptiste rang out suddenly through the trees behind her.

The wolf turned and made off -- not in fearful haste, but rather in a leisurely manner that suggested he did not care for the company of those approaching. In a moment he was gone, his black fur blending into the twilight under the trees.

"Where have you been, girl?" demanded her father, crashing through the underbrush. "You know we don't like you wandering so far in the woods after sundown."

"I didn't mean to go far, Papa. Honestly I didn't. Then I saw a wolf, and I didn't like to run from him, in case he chased me."

"What!" Baptiste exclaimed, stopping short. "You saw a wolf?"

"Yes, a big black one. But he didn't hurt me. He was quite friendly, almost like a dog."

"You're a terrible liar, Madeleine," said her younger brother frowning. "You never saw any wolf. Wolves are fierce. If you'd come across one he'd have eaten you up in an instant."

"I'm not a liar!" Madeleine protested, indignant.

"Well then, maybe you saw a fox or something, and thought it was a wolf."

"You think I'd not know a wolf from a fox!"

"That's enough now," said their father, coming between them. "This is the last time I'm warning you, Madeleine. Never go into the woods after dark!"

Madeleine looked down at the ground. "I promise."

They walked on to the settlement together in silence. Madeleine knew that she was in disgrace. But she loved the forest so, found its allure impossible to resist. She went to it whenever she could, wandering off the well-trodden tracks into the green inner groves, watching with interest the cautious comings and goings of the animals that lived there. She loved it in spring and in summer and even in the winter, when the boughs were bent under the weight and strange enchantment of the snow. But it was never more beautiful than now, with the frost painting it in brilliant colours: red, copper, orange, wine-purple. The autumn air was clear and cool in her nostrils, with a tang of dead leaves and moist earth. She had finally yielded to its enticements this evening, walking further and further into the trees and paying no attention to the gathering dusk.

At night the forest was another place altogether, a mass of shifting shadows and mysterious sounds. Her parents had told her eerie stories of it, tales spun out of shadows on winter evenings by the fire. There were savage beasts in it, they said, and Natives with bows and arrows, and other things that did not belong to the daylight world at all: the impish lutins who would mischief you if they caught you alone, and the feux-follets that glimmered like ghostly lanterns through the night, luring unwary travelers off safe paths towards pits and precipices. Worst of all was the werewolf, the loup garou: for though he prowled the forest of nights in his wolf-shape, howling with his ancient hunger, by day he wore a human form -- might even be your own neighbour. . .

There were dark and nameless terrors, too, that only the Natives knew about. This was an alien forest, not altogether reconciled to its newer inhabitants: at sundown it seemed to grow larger, dark and immense as the night itself, full of rustlings like conspiratorial whispers. Now as Madeleine and her father and brother picked their way slowly through the dusky wood, its shadows and murmurs made them draw a little closer to one another. When a voice hailed them suddenly from its depths, they all three jumped violently.

"Ah, mes amis! Good evening to you!"

Madeleine and her brother turned to stare at the group of tall, rugged-looking men strolling easily through the underbrush. They looked like, surely they must be – "Coureurs de bois!" said Baptiste excitedly. Madeleine too gazed for all she was worth: the coureurs, after all, were famous throughout New France. Paddling the rivers of the wilderness in their birch bark canoes, the fearless fur-traders braved all the dangers of the wild to obtain beaver-pelts for the big markets in Montréal, purchasing them from the Natives in exchange for ornaments of silver. They were incomparable woodsmen too, rivaling even the Natives in woodcraft, living a glamourous life of risk and adventure. But most of the habitants in the settlements now frowned upon the coureurs de bois, and said they were irresponsible rovers who lured young men away from farming. Many traded without a license, and they were wild and often drunk when they visited the villages, singing their rollicking ballads all night long and brawling playfully with each other and with the Natives who often accompanied them. When sober they carried themselves like princes, looking at the habitants with pitying disdain.

Madeleine felt her heartbeats speed up at the sight of the leader, a man she had often seen before, watching him surreptitiously when he was not looking her way. He was in his early twenties, tall but not heavy of build, with several days' growth of brown beard upon his chin and laughing, light-brown eyes. He wore a red shirt, open at the neck, and trousers of deerskin with a red sash for a belt. This was Alain Dulac, whose exploits were legendary even among the coureurs.

"Well met, friend," he greeted her father amiably. "And you would be --?"

"Jean-Paul Cadieux," replied her father guardedly.

"Cadieux!" said Dulac. "Then this lovely young demoiselle would be your daughter. The little Wild Girl I've heard so much about." The merry brown eyes twinkled at Madeleine. "You like the forest, hein?"

"Oh yes," she exclaimed, forgetting her shyness. "I go to it whenever I can."

"So do I. I'm more often in the woods than within doors. The forest is my home, you might say. Have you ever lain out all night, Madeleine, with the stars for a ceiling? I have."

"Aren't you afraid of the Natives?" asked Baptiste, wanting to be noticed too. "There are so many hereabouts, and not all of them are friendly."

"The Natives?" Alain threw back his head and laughed. "No, the Natives and I understand one another. I don't meddle with them, and they don't meddle with me."

He was magnificent, thought Madeleine. The kind of man who feared nothing at all. To be able to speak with him, after watching him so often from a distance, filled her with delight.

"And you, Madeleine?" Dulac pressed. "Is it true what they say-- that you're not really your father's daughter?"

Madeleine, who was thinking at that moment how much she would like to touch the soft-looking fringe of beard on his jaw, blushed in confusion and dropped her eyes. It was left to Jean-Paul to tell the tale, and he relinquished it with seeming reluctance. "It is sixteen years ago, now, that I went out with my brother and some other men of the settlement to hunt in the forest..."

Madeleine listened absently as they marched on together through the woods: it was a tale she had heard often before, and she preferred to give her attention to Alain.

"... We'd heard reports of a pack of wolves with a litter of cubs, and we knew that we had to kill them before they went after our livestock. It didn't take us long to find them, the grown wolves lying with the cubs before their den: we took them by surprise and shot them all. Then I heard a rustling noise from inside the den! Another cub, or so I thought, and I went up to it with my gun at the ready. The rustling sounds came closer and closer, but I did not shoot yet -- and it is a mercy that I did not. For out of the den came, not a wolf-cub, but a human child! It was a little girl with dark hair and blue eyes, barely old enough to stand upright, and all naked. My friends and I congratulated one another on having saved this poor babe from a horrible fate, for it was clear that the beasts must have carried her alive to their lair in order to devour her. But when we carried her away with us she began to wail, as an infant does when it is taken from its mother. Then I realized the truth: this child must have been raised by the wolves in their den!

"I could scarcely believe it at first, but Père Joseph agreed with me, and told me that such things had been known to happen before. He believed that Madeleine's good angel intervened for her, instructing the wild wolves to care for the child until such time as members of her own race should deliver her."

"And nothing was ever discovered of her own family," said Dulac. It was a statement rather than a question.

"Nothing. I think they must have been travelers passing through the woods, who were set upon by Natives or wild animals and killed. No one ever came to our settlement inquiring after a lost child, and though we asked far and wide, sending messages to other settlements, no one in the region knew of one. So Père Joseph asked if we would take in little Madeleine, as we came to call her."

"What an extraordinary tale!" Dulac looked at Madeleine. "So that is why you aren't afraid of the forest. You came from there yourself!"

"Yes -- and do you know, I saw a wolf in there this very evening, and he was almost friendly --" Madeleine began eagerly.

Her father turned to her and Baptiste with a curt, "Come, now -- home!"

Madeleine had to obey. But she was very aware of Alain Dulac's eyes upon her as she walked unwillingly away.

Ville Ste. Marie was perhaps the smallest and humblest settlement in all New France. It had a single dirt road where pigs and chickens roamed and gossips gathered, and a little wooden church that stood in the centre of the few houses, protectively, like a hen in the midst of her brood. The dwellings were all of wood, any chinks in their walls crudely stopped with clay, their roofs slanting steeply so that the heavy snow would slide off in winter time. The fields that ran down to the river's edge were long, narrow strips of land, the original fields granted by the Seigneur having been divided up many times among the heirs of each family. Madeleine's home was no different from any of the others. There were only three rooms in the house, a stove in each one for heating. All the furnishings were of wood and very plain.

As she sat beside the window now, looking at her reflection in the panes, Madeleine told herself over and over not to be foolish. Of course Alain did not really find her attractive. She was not at all pretty, Madeleine: her long hair was black and tangled and her skin browned by the sun. Visitors to the settlement often took her for a Native before they noticed her deep-blue eyes. No one had made her an offer of marriage, though she was all of seventeen. Men's eyes did not linger on Madeleine, and the woman looked askance at her: Cadieux's wild daughter from the woods.

It was just as well, she told herself defiantly. Her heart had always been heavy at the thought of being married -- of having to spend more time withindoors, and not being able to go off to the woods all by herself. The forest was calling to her now as she sat here, staring into the night beyond the reflection of the hearth-fire. The shadows of her parents and siblings passed to and fro in the window, insubstantial as ghosts next to the reality of sky and trees and distant hills. She liked this window best, because from it one could see no houses at all.

Presently a bell rang clearly through the dusk, and her parents and little siblings -- Baptiste and Marie-Claire -- all set down what they were doing in answer to its summons. It was the bell of L'Eglise de Notre Dame, calling them to vespers. Her mother, Céleste, gathered them all together, and the family set off through the evening for the little wooden church.

As they drew near they noticed Alain Dulac and his companions perching at their ease on a fence and singing snatches of woodland songs.

"You should be in church," Céleste rebuked them.

"What? Go indoors, on a night like this?" Dulac retorted. He pointed toward the northern sky, where the auroras glimmered like many-coloured curtains waving in a wind. "See! The heavens themselves dance to our music!" His companions burst into song again.

"Come along," ordered Jean-Paul roughly, noticing that Baptiste too was gazing at the men in open admiration. "You coureurs, if you want to make yourselves useful you'd join us in the hunt tomorrow, and help us kill that wolf."

"Why, what terrible crime has this wolf committed?" asked Alain, amused.

"It is not what he has done, but what he will do to our livestock if we do not stop him," retorted Jean-Paul.

Alain roared with laughter. "So! He is to be executed without trial, for something he hasn't yet done? Poor fellow!" Jean-Paul turned from him in disgust.

They reached the church door and joined the other villagers inside. As she knelt in the pew Madeleine lifted her gaze to the carved figure of the Virgin, robed in blue with the infant Christ in the crook of her arm. They gazed down at her wisely, the mother who was a virgin and the child who was not a child, and for an instant she felt there might be some hope for her, a power she might appeal to. Please don't let me have to marry, don't take my freedom away. . . she prayed. But then the wooden figures were eclipsed in her view by the tall frame of the priest, as he took his place in the sanctuary. Kindly old Père Joseph had died last winter, and this new priest, Père Antoine, had a stern face and a voice that was harsh and resonant with authority. When the time for the sermon came he glared out upon the congregation from the pulpit.

"My children, evil times are upon us, with the coming of these wolves that would invade our settlement and fill us all with fear." Heads in the congregation nodded gravely. "But beware, good people," Antoine continued, "of that worse evil that lurks within, not without! Beware the wolf who comes to raven the flock of the Lord! For from the fangs of that foe there can be no deliverance, when once your hearts have been corrupted and placed under his sway! Cast out evil, therefore, and beware the wolf that seeks, not your life, but your soul; the wolf whose name is Satan!"

A silence fell over the villagers. Shadows seemed to lurk all around them inside the dim church, lit only by stove and candles: furtive shades moved beyond the reach of the light. And when they rose at the service's end, the shadows arose with them and followed them out into the night, making them walk closer together than before, and speak only in whispers.

And suddenly, without warning, those shadows of fear seemed to come to malevolent life: slinking shapes appeared all around them, moving just beyond the light of their lamps. Everywhere they turned there were eyes gleaming in the dark, star-like clusters of pale luminous orbs. An entire pack of wolves stood all about them on the road!

Women and children screamed; men cursed and wished for the weapons they had left behind in their houses. The coureurs were long since gone from their fence. There was no one to help them.

Only Madeleine felt no fear. As if in a dream or a trance, she found herself walking forward -- found she was not at all afraid. Her empty hands were held out before her. People were shouting behind her, but she paid them no heed. Her eyes were on the wolves. . . in particular, on an immense black one who sat on his haunches at the head of the pack, with the calm assurance of a leader. As she approached he rose to all fours, coming forward to meet her.

"Please," she found herself saying. "Please go away -- you must all go away." The shadow-shapes milled to and fro. The big black wolf gazed at her thoughtfully, his massive head thrust forward, his eyes intent. She looked past the lamplight reflected in those eyes, to the depths where a more than lupine intelligence seemed to gleam.

"Go," she said again. "They'll hunt you, kill you all. You must leave this place!"

The wolf looked long at her. Then he turned, as he had done in the wood, and made off unhurriedly into the dark. The other wolves followed him.

A strange forbidding silence had descended. Madeleine turned to see the villagers all staring at her; and when she walked toward them they retreated, as if in fear.

"Come, Madeleine," said Céleste at last in a low uncertain voice, taking her daughter by the hand. "Let us go home."

Madeleine could feel all those eyes at her back as she turned to obey. They chilled her as the eyes of the wolves had not.

Next morning Madeleine noticed the sidelong glances, the conversations that ceased abruptly whenever she approached. She saw the way the matrons snatched their children out of her path with quick, hissed warnings. And she was aware of something beyond all these things; an atmosphere of steadily increasing tension, like that before the onset of a storm. Whispers followed her everywhere she went.

". . . and the big wolf in front, did you see? He was black as coal! The Devil always appears as a black animal, so my mother told me. . ."

"No, no, he was a loup garou! The men went into the forest today, along with the coureurs, to hunt this wolf pack -- but they found nothing there! And why do you think that was?"

"What are you saying?"

"This Dulac man and his followers: they are the wolves! They were nowhere to be seen last night when the wolf-pack attacked; today they reappear, and suddenly there are no wolves! Can it be coincidence? They are werewolves, every one of them; and now they have Jean-Paul's girl under their spell. . ."

Madeleine stayed indoors for the rest of the day, her head bent over a pile of mending, half-afraid to meet the eyes of her own family members lest they, too, should be filled with fear and suspicion. When at last the evening came she slipped quietly out the back door and leaned against the wall of the house, shutting her eyes and breathing in the cool leaf-scented air.

"Madeleine?" said a voice.

She opened her eyes. "Alain!"

There he was, leaning over the wooden fence. "I've heard all about your exploits last night, ma petite. The girl who walks and talks with wolves!"

"I -- I don't know what came over me. Now everyone thinks I'm a witch. And they say you're a werewolf!"

He grinned. "You don't say!"

She noticed suddenly that he was carrying all his gear. "Alain -- you're not going away, are you?"

He raised a bushy brow. "You sound as though you were sorry."

A sudden shadow of doubt touched her mind, driving all her other worries away. "You have got a license to trade, haven't you?" she asked anxiously.

"A license, what's that?" he asked with a look of exaggerated innocence.

"Alain! You know how the King feels about controlling the fur trade -- the authorities have been told to execute anyone who goes off into the woods now without a license!"

"Indeed! And who are these gentlemen that I should do all they say? The King's only a man, after all -- a man who lives in another land, far away across the sea. What has he to do with me, or I with him? You and I, Madeleine, we're free spirits. We don't live by other people's rules."

Madeleine, despite herself, felt a fierce longing come over her at those words. "I wish I could be a coureur de bois," she said wistfully. "I'm sure I could hunt and paddle a canoe as well as anyone, and learn the ways of the woods. Instead I have to stop here at home and do the washing and mending and baking like -- like an old woman."

His eyes were fixed on hers, curiously intent. "Then come with me."

Madeleine felt she had not heard aright. "Come with you!"

"Come with me to the forest. See the wilderness, Madeleine -- with me."

"Oh, don't tease. I can't bear it!" She turned angrily away.

He vaulted the fence lightly, took her by the shoulders. "I mean it."

She whirled, staring up at him. "But I couldn't just go off with you. It would make a scandal, people would say we ought to be wed," she said feebly. "I'm in enough trouble as it is."

"Why, then we'll wed," said Alain carelessly.

"But I must have Papa's consent."

"Consent? Rubbish! Yours is the only consent that matters."

The light-brown eyes laughed and she looked away from him. Was he really only teasing after all? She pulled free of his hands and strode back towards the house. "Madeleine!" she heard Alain call after her. "My friends and I, we're going upriver. If you come after us, you'll find us in the woods farther up, around the bend."

"And what was all that shouting about?" demanded Céleste as Madeleine rushed indoors.

She stood there in the centre of the room, her chest heaving. "Maman, Alain Dulac -- he says he wants me to marry him!"

"Are you mad?" cried Céleste, throwing down the shirt she was mending. "He's thoroughly unsuitable, that one! He'll never give any wife of his a roof for her head and a home for her children. Most likely he means to abandon you in the woods once he's tired of you. Oh, he's handsome enough, but he's no good, no good at all."

Jean-Paul arose from where he had been sitting by the fire. "Madeleine will not be marrying anyone. I have been talking to Père Antoine, and we have both agreed that the best thing for Madeleine now is to send her upriver, to a convent in Montréal."

Madeleine stood dumbstruck for the space of a second, her mouth wide open. Then in three long strides she crossed the room to stand before her father. "I'll never go to a convent, Papa! Never!" she cried passionately.

"Madeleine!" exclaimed Céleste, scandalized. "How dare you talk to your father that way? He knows what's best for you. If no one in the settlement will have you for a wife, that's your own fault for behaving the way you do. Always running off to the woods -- after dark, too! There've been rumours that you have an Indian lover, who teaches you sorcery --"

"What!"

"How can you blame the gossips for making up such tales? If you'd only behaved like a respectable young woman. . ." She looked pointedly at the girl's long disheveled hair, in which a fallen leaf hung tangled.

"I won't go to a convent! I would die in a place like that, surrounded by walls!" She knew, deep down, that she was going too far, but her emotions had hold of her and they swept her along in their reckless flow.

Jean-Paul turned to her, really angry now. "You'll do as I tell you, or I'll take a birch rod to you as I did when you were six. It would do you good to be in a place where you must obey the rules."

Madeleine's face worked, but she made no reply: willful though she might be, there yet was something in her that was always quelled by authority. Dropping her eyes, she went silently to her corner by the window. Her inner resolve, however, had only hardened at her father's words. She could no longer stay here.

Behind her the voices of her family made a soft babble. "Tell me a story," Marie Claire implored her mother. "One about Ti-jean!" The children all loved to hear tales of this brave little hero and his magical adventures. Sometimes he fought against a witch, sometimes a giant or a fierce beast, but always the stories ended with him winning the hand of a beautiful princess. "Tell me about Ti-Jean and the Seven-Headed Dragon!"

But Céleste said, "I think I shall tell you a different story tonight, ma petite. This one is about a young girl named Blanche, and it has a warning in it for all little girls everywhere . . ."

Madeleine strove to shut her mother's voice out of her thoughts. What had Alain said? Something about the men going further upriver, if she wanted to follow them. She suppressed the little whisper of unease that arose in her at the thought. I'll go there when it gets dark -- I'll find my way through the woods to their camp. Alain may love me and he may not, but it's better than going to a convent. . .

Her mother was reaching the climax of the story. ". . . All the guests were assembled when there came a knock at the door; and in walked a handsome, bearded stranger with a fine beaver cloak and caribou moccasins. . ."

Madeleine knew this tale; it was an old one, that she'd heard many times. There were some in the settlement who would swear that it had actually happened: to a cousin of theirs, or a friend in another settlement, up the river. . .

". . .The fiddler played merrily as they danced the jig. Young Blanche was flattered that the handsome stranger wished only to dance with her. But when he offered her a jeweled locket in exchange for the simple cross she wore at her neck, she guessed the truth at last. It was the Devil himself! Quickly, she ran to her room for the holy water she kept there. . ."

Céleste raised her voice, and Madeleine knew that this particular story was aimed not at Marie-Claire but at her. Did Maman suspect the plan that was forming in her mind?

". . .and le Diable drove away raging, in his sleigh with the big black horse whose hooves left a trail of fire. So all young ladies must beware: one never knows if a comely suitor might not be Satan himself!"

Madeleine turned her gaze towards the window, watching the trees grow black against the sky, and closed her ears to her mother's voice.

She left when she was sure the others were sleeping, stealing out like a thief and closing the door very softly behind her. Once outside she was seized with misgivings. To leave her family, the security of home: was she mad? Wandering off into the woods was all very well, but she had always been comfortably aware that she could return to the settlement when she wished. To set off alone, into the wild world -- !

With an effort she thrust her fears aside. She would soon be sent away in any case: the choice, she reminded herself, was not between Alain and home, but between her freedom and the confines of the cloister. She blinked back angry tears, and set off through the night with a swift determined stride. A full moon hung above the trees, lighting her way. It was adventure that awaited her now, and the liberty for which she had always longed.

But once she got deeper into the forest she began to be afraid. It was so very dark, with the moonlight muted by the branches; so full of furtive sounds, of shadows that seemed to be stalking her . . .

Madeleine froze. No, it wasn't her imagination. There were shadows moving alongside her -- following her through the trees. She could hear the sound of their breathing, the sound of stealthy feet.

"Alain?" she called softly. There was no reply.

"Alain -- is that you? Don't play games with me, please!"

And then she came into a glade where the moon shone down upon her, and she saw her companions clearly.

Wolves! A dozen of them at least, walking silently behind and before and all about her. Their musky smell filled the air, their moonlit eyes glimmered through the screens of leaves. She halted, watching them in fear. Would they let her be, as they had done before? Or were they going to attack her?

And then some dream or fever seemed to seize her brain, for looking ahead of her she saw the familiar figure of Alain Dulac, coming towards her out of the depths of the forest. Walking right through the midst of the wolves, who let him pass unharmed. Her mouth moved, shaping his name.

"Yes, Madeleine," he said simply. "It is I."

She gave a choking cry compounded of relief and bewilderment. "Alain! I've run away -- I've come to be with you... but Alain, the wolves: how is it they don't attack you?"

"These are my friends." He smiled. "I too was raised among wolves -- these very wolves, in fact. This is my pack: we go everywhere together."

"You too!" Madeleine gasped. "But how incredible! You never told me -- "

"Madeleine! I think you do not understand, even now." He stood beneath the shadow of a tree, where the moonlight did not touch him; she could not see his face. "I walk freely among them I am one of them; because they know their own kin." And then he was gone, like a shadow when the moon is covered in cloud; and in his place there stood the great black wolf.

She cried out, and the wolf in its turn melted back into the man. He came towards her again, and she retreated in voiceless terror.

"I have sought you for years," he told her softly. "I know well the wolf-den from which you were taken." He drew nearer still. As before, when she had encountered him as a wolf in the wood, she was seized with a strange paralysis. He smiled again; white teeth flashed in the moonlight. "I am a werewolf, Madeleine. A loup garou. I and my friends have come for you!"

"No -- no!" she screamed.

And then she was running -- but wildly, hopelessly. The forest was so very dark, she could not see where she was going. Where were the lights of the settlement? Branches clawed her and caught at her clothes: she beat them back in panic, knowing all the while that she could never hope to outrun her pursuers.

Madeleine stumbled at last and fell her length on the ground. She lay there unmoving, like a deer run to earth, hearing the running paws and panting breaths of the wolves. She knew she must go with them, or be torn to pieces if she refused. . . Ah, why hadn't she listened to the warnings of Céleste and the priest -- ?

There were footsteps approaching, the footsteps of a man; and a hand was laid upon her hair, stroking it. She lay silent and unresisting.

"I will tell you a story, Madeleine," Alain's voice said in her ear. "A story of a group of men who came upon a wolf-den many years ago. Little did they know that these were no ordinary wolves: they were descended from loups garous, and so although they walked in wolf-shape they could also take on human forms whenever they wished to. How this is possible I cannot say. The time when wolves and men came together lies far back, at the beginning of the world. Those men who could transform themselves into wolves were viewed with fear and hatred by their fellow human beings, and had to flee their villages. They gave up attempting to live as men and fled deep into the forest, living wild and free in wolf-form. In time, their fellow men forgot all about them, save for a few hearthside tales.

"The human hunters believed that these loups garous were only animals. Before the wolf-family had a chance to take their human shapes and plead for mercy, they were shot dead - all but one: a she-wolf cub who had not yet left the den. She must have cowered in terror, this little one, not knowing what to do. She would not yet have learnt how to assume a human form. The men came closer and closer, and then in desperation she made her first attempt, in haste and without skill; reasoning that the human creatures would not harm one of their own kind, she became a human child. But a human infant is not so wide-awake and aware as is a wolf-cub. The little she-wolf lost her memory when she made the transformation, and when she was taken away by the men she soon forgot that she had ever had another life.

"We meant the villagers no harm. It was not their lives or their animals we sought, but you. Packs of loups garous have searched for you for years, up and down the river, in man-form and wolf-form, ever since news first spread of your family's destruction and your abduction by the men. You were never meant to live a human life, Madeleine: you were made to be free, like us."

While he spoke, she became aware of a subtle change in her surroundings - or was it in herself? A thousand scents, a myriad of sounds she had not noticed before overwhelmed Madeleine's nostrils, sang in her ears. She rose clumsily, and looking down at the ground she saw before her in the moonlight two grey furred forelegs, two wolf's paws. When she glanced up again the big black wolf stood where Alain had been, and as she watched he spun around and loped off through the trees.

She stood on her strong new legs, staring about her. She could see, now, where the lamps of the settlement glimmered yellow through the trees. A cry burst from her at the sight, long and forlorn; but the howl tapered off into silence, and was not repeated. Turning, she bounded away through the trees: awkwardly at first, then with a growing grace, while all around her in the forest rose the moon-music of the wolves.