For Daylight and Dark

Alison and Martin first met in the churchyard on Candlemas. Martin's family, a prosperous band of tailors, had settled into the village only a few days before. By the start of Lent, the two young people were meeting in the forest when Alison should have been churning butter and Martin pressing seams. They kissed and grappled with an ear open for a goat bell or a peddler's whistle. Alison, fearing folk would say it was the wealth of Martin's family that took her fancy, told him "A silver ring will do for a simple girl like me," but no. Martin said only gold was worth the hand of sweet Alison.

So a band of gold winked on her fourth finger before the buds on the trees became leaves.

Alison's mother drank steadily and quietly through the wedding feast, by way of breathing freely again rather from any weakness in that direction. Alison had, within a twelvemonth, turned down Ivor the butcher's son, Alun the blacksmith's apprentice, and Peter who tended the squire's hounds. "The child said she must have love. And God knows where that will lead her..." The priest smiled at the couple and blessed them, to be fruitful and multiply. Alison's mother privately hoped they hadn't started multiplying already.

It was the late afternoon of a fine spring day when Martin opened the gate and found Alison kneeling among the strawberry plants. "Hullo, love. Why are you early, did papa sack you?" She grinned and chucked a snail against the garden wall.

"Ruthless girl."

"When you want strawberries this summer, you'll be glad I'm a ruthless girl." He smiled back at her with a look that flushed her red-gold, one shade darker than her hair. This day they were married two weeks -- since the new moon. Martin's mother suggested the date, saying it would bring them luck. But what did they need luck for? They were young, they were handsome, they had love and health and a partnership in the family shop...

"Why don't we go inside?" Martin said. Alison stood and shook out her skirts as they walked up the path. "I shan't forgive myself if I've stained this dress. The beautiful green poplin your uncle gave me!" The door closed, the shutters went down. Soon the sun came down as well.

"Let me go," Martin whispered in the dark. "What?" mumbled Alison, mostly asleep. "Let me go," whispered Martin again, only his voice sounded more hoarse and urgent. "What?" said Alison, awake now, winding her fingers more firmly around his upper arms. He grunted in surprise and struggled, but Alison wasn't going to let go until she knew what was happening. Although there was moonlight through the back window, her loose hair blinded them both. She tried to ask, "Are you having a bad dream?" She distinctly heard a growl then, and found hair in her hands, fur... She held limbs as hard and skinny as soup bones."Martin," she demanded fiercely, catching the gleam of teeth too long in a mouth too wide. "What are you doing?"

Hind paws scrabbled against her bare thighs. "Martin!" she cried as she struggled to keep her grip on the slick fur. In the moonlight, the pale canine eyes looked phosphorescent. "Martin, hold still!" The wolf made a desperate twist and flopped out of bed. Scrambling to his feet, he headed for the door. "Martin, wait!" In one large motion, Alison freed herself of the bedclothes and leapt. She caught the edge of an ear. The wolf yelped and pulled away, knocking his shoulder against the table. Pewter clattered. "Why didn't you tell me? Wait!" she howled as the wolf nosed through the unlatched door and was gone.

Alison had jumped to within one bound of the threshold before she thought better of it. She righted the table and picked up the fallen cups and plates. Then she pulled up the quilt and turned like a cat to settle in bed. The feather mattress was so plump and new that it did not have a proper hollow yet.

She was roused by a rustle of blankets, a draft of cold air, then his legs, bare and human again, clambering in beside her. She opened her eyes enough to see that it was dawn, then buried her face into his chest. He smelled piney and cool. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to worry you," he said in a low voice. "Go back to sleep."

So she did.

When she woke again, he had gone to work. She stretched, scratched, sat up and pulled on a shift. How she wished she'd known before! When she and her mother had listened to distant howling of a night, she would have said casually, "There's Martin calling me," and got up from bed to sit at the window waiting for him to pass by. She put on the last of yesterday's water to boil for tea. She imagined Martin's father spitting out shirt pins as prosperous jowls lengthened into slavering chops. Or better, his mild mother in the front pew suddenly dropping down on all fours during vespers. With her tea beside her, Alison sat down to fasten up her hair. She still handled the bone pins awkwardly and sometimes missed the slap of her braid down her back. As she finished her dressing by smoothing down the front of her skirts, all unbidden the memory of his fur gliding along her naked belly came and made her tremble.

She took two buckets down to the stream. Wading out into the swifter water to fill them, she spotted some tracks in the mud on the opposite bank. He must have stopped to drink on his way home. She saw in her mind the bullet-blunt head lower, heard the long pink tongue slicing the water with the tlock-tlock sound of a horse on cobblestones. Squatting down so that the hem of her hitched-up skirt dragged in the current, she examined which gaps in the foliage she might head for first. A quicker, lower self would brush through the wet undergrowth beside him, taking in air running with scent as a river runs with fish: deer, rabbit, bear, badger. Alison suspected that she was going to make a wonderful wolf. When she came back to the cottage with buckets swinging like bells, she picked up his wedding ring, which had slipped off in the changing, and put it on the table. She whistled as she set to work on last night's dishes.

Martin came home early again that day. They ate and were curled up in bed together before the last of the sunlight disappeared. Alison felt warm and fluttery in the pit of her stomach, something like she'd felt as their wedding guests filed out. Yet she sensed a reserve, a wariness in his caresses.

"Is there anything wrong, love?" she asked as she unlaced.

"Oh, no, no," he said. "It's only that I must take care... I'm not exactly myself these days..." He could not finish his thought as Alison brushed her bare shoulder under his jaw. "You know, love, the merest nip..." He cleared his throat, seeing how close the blue veins swirled and quivered under the paper-thin skin of her breast.

He resolutely placed her at arm's length. "Alison, do you repent your bargain with me now, knowing what I am? For if you do, I'll walk out the door and never bother you more."

"If you were to turn into the devil in my arms, I shouldn't repent," she said, arcing her fine neck under his nose. He kissed her with lips drawn gently shut.

"Well, you needn't fear me. In my own form, or the other. After all, I never savaged anyone I ever played with as a child, and I hope I've grown in wisdom as much as in body. I'd tear my own tail off sooner than hurt you."

Alison stopped slinking her skin under his mouth. It had not occurred to her that he wouldn't want her to be one of his own kind.

As he drew back the covers and walked over to the window without noticing her stillness, a scarlet curtain of hurt and anger descended over Alison. Through it, she heard her voice point out that such was hardly the case on their wedding night.

"But did I draw blood? No," he answered himself triumphantly, and opened the window. Alison started to say that perhaps another man had drawn her blood before they ever met, but then the moonlight came in, and Martin changed into something so beautiful it stung her eyes to look at him. She stepped towards him, hands open, but the wolf dodged away. He bumped against the door without opening it.

"Ha," said Alison. "I dropped the latch."

The wolf snuffled in confusion. She couldn't resist leaning over to pinch his nose, as damp and wriggly as a young toad. The wolf growled and bared his teeth. "Come on, then," Alison laughed. He closed his mouth sharply and looked around. They each spotted the open window at the same moment, but the wolf moved faster. He sprang up on a chair, and before she could kick it out from under him, he had landed heavily among the cabbages on the other side. "Selfish beast!" she shouted after him. She heard the garden gate bang open and shut.

She closed the shutters and unlatched the door. The she made up the fire and slid into the cool new sheets. Her dreams were thick with the forest and bloody bolts of cambric snickering around her feet.

"And what was all that about?" came hissing into her ear. Alison swatted at it before she realized it was Martin home again.

"All what?"

"Chasing me, locking me up, pretending you wanted me to bite you..."

"Who was pretending?"

"Ho," he said, furiously thrusting his legs into trousers. "Do you understand what happens if I break your skin?"

Alison sat up, pushing her hair back, and through her sleepiness tried to tell him her picture of them running and hunting together, but Martin was not listening.

"'Ha, I dropped the latch,' 'Ha, I dropped the latch." I didn't know I'd married the court jester." His fingers stuttered on the buttons of his shirt. "This isn't an easy time for me, you know. I suppose you think it's all galloping through the greenwood, hey nonny nonny, like some gypsy ballad. Well, I can tell you it is not. It's a dog's life, Alison. It's dirty and cold and wet and smelly, and I had hoped to get some understanding and sympathy from my wife..." He choked the laces of his boots into a knot. "Bring me some breakfast."

"I thought you'd have eaten already."

"I need to get the taste out of my mouth!" he roared. Mutely, Alison got up and began to slap the copper bottoms of the pots around the stove. He swiveled back to look at her. "It's raw meat, Alison, did you ever think of that?" Alison prepared to announce she had previously not much call to think of these things, but before she got the words out he was off again. "I have an upset stomach for days after. Three days a month with no sleep at all, and if it's raining, I get wet through. I've lost count of the agues I've had... I don't stay out all night for pleasure, you know. A wolf's belly isn't an easy thing fill. Nothing just stands there waiting for you to slit it open. And it's hilly country around here," he said with a grave nod. "Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

Alison placed a bowl of porridge in front of him and sat down. "I understand," she said steadily. "I understand that you don't want me to be a part of your real life."

"Real life? Have you heard a single word I've said?"

Alison's steadiness began to leak out of the corner of her compressed lips. "I understand that I'm good enough to wash your clothes and bake your bread and carry your babes, good enough to wake at this ungodly hour to fetch your breakfast." She paused a moment. The word "ungodly" had woken the pigeons in the cote behind the house. In the silence, their wing beats and flurried calls sounded clear. "What I also understand is that I'm not good enough to be your partner -- your real partner in life. What do you think, that I wouldn't be good at it? I'm a herder's girl, man, I know the woods around here like my own hand. Would it embarrass you to have your wife hunt better than you?"

"That's not the point at all," said Martin, his anger and peevishness ebbing away. "What do you want from me? You're not serious about wishing..."

"Martin, I love you. I want to be with you in everything, is that such a crime?"

"But sweetling! The danger, the horror, the inconvenience!"

"Pish. It can't be any worse than butchering a pig. And as for danger, there's danger in childbed, and I risk that every time I lie with you."

"Try to understand, Alison..."

"I tell you I understand! You don't want me with you. You don't want to share your freedom and beauty in the forest with me. That's clear enough, that's as clear as water! When it came time for Lord Lycanthrope to marry, he put on a sheepskin suit to court in, eh? Thought he'd lay paws on a simple peasant girl he could fool. I know. You thought you could keep it from me, thought you could have your nights away with me blissfully snoring like a sow! That's why you didn't tell me beforehand. How stupid you must have thought me, and what a terrible surprise to find I'm not."

"Now, sweet, I know I didn't play fair with you to start..."

"Or perhaps you thought if I found out, you could frighten me into quiet. I guess it shocked you when I had the sense to hold onto your filthy pelt!" Alison stood now, her red-gold hair prickling every which way.

"Now, sweetest," said Martin, getting to his feet as well. "The reason I didn't tell you what I am before we married was that I was afraid. I'd never seen a girl I wanted a tenth as much as you. If you'd turned from me in terror or disgust, my life should have ended. I thought maybe I could bring it up... gradually."

"Gradually?"

Realizing the essential daftness of what he was saying, Martin changed his tack to sidling up behind to embrace her, but she struck his chest and put a chair between them.

"Honestly, love, I couldn't think any better then. My head was reeling, it all happened so fast. What would you have done in my place?"

"I should have been honest from the first day, the first hour. No true love can be built on duplicity."

"That sounds like something from a book. It's not as easy as that in real life..."

"Of course," Alison returned stiffly. "Lying always seems easiest to a liar. Not that I blame you, your whole life must have been horribly warped..."

"How am I a liar? Did you ever say to me, 'Martin, love, before we're married I need to know, do you change into anything at the full of the moon?' and I reply, 'No, sweet, of course not'? How can you call me a liar? I may have neglected to tell you something -- something significant -- but that's not the same as being a liar." He paced around the room, pulling back the chair angrily. "What do you mean by calling me a liar? No man ever got away with calling me a liar."

"Go on, you great brute." Her hair and eyes crackled like a cat. "Tell me what you do to men who call you a liar. D'you rip their throats out? Carve their bellies open?"

"You've gone just about far enough, mistress. I didn't ask to be this way."

"And I don't ask you to be any other way. I think it's lovely and exciting! I don't want to nag at you or chain you. I only want to share with you, share all things with you. Didn't I marry you for better and worse? Didn't I marry you for daylight and dark?" She would have let him embrace her now, but he turned away, grumbling, "I'll hear no more of this nonsense. Put it out of your head, if you've got one."

That night, she said nothing. He came home only in time to swallow a few mouthfuls of stew before the moon rose. Neither of them spoke of the words that had passed between them when he returned. The moon trickled out and died. Alison's godmother began weaving an osier cradle "just in case." Martin's older brother, who had gone through three wives before he found one that didn't run for the priest at the first bloody paw print on the sheets, assured him that he was really quite lucky, and that the worst was over. Martin hoped so.

The shop closed early on the first night of the next full moon. When Martin came home, a pleasant supper of chicken and new potatoes waited. They cleared up and washed the dishes together. Alison sat by the hearth and took up her mending. So intent was she on adjusting her darning egg properly that she did not seem to see Martin undress, nor hear the groan contracted into a growl. Clicking claws and wagging tail, he departed.

When Alison heard the door close, she dropped stocking and egg and grabbed her cloak.

Outside, it was not so easy to move as she'd imagined. To step off the path in the dark was to be drowned in undergrowth. "It will be better on four legs," she told herself. She tried to follow the rustles that could be Martin, but her own noise, pushing through shrubs and battling pine saplings that tried to rob her of her cloak, blocked out most other sounds. She stopped and tried sniffing. Surely she could smell her own husband, wherever and whatever he was. A howl broke forth from the north; Alison turned and pressed hopefully on.

She stumbled and came down on hard dirt. When she looked up, she saw half a dozen animals grouped in the clearing before her. The largest (papa? Or uncle Peter?) was worrying a heifer's carcass. She tried to think whose farm they were near. Red eyes focused on her.

"Hello," said Alison, getting to her feet and dusting off her hands. "A bit clumsy, eh? I'd nearly given up on finding you. I'm Alison." She smiled. "Martin's wife," she clarified as the closest three continued to advance on her. She stumbled back a few paces in spite of herself.

Then a different wolf, all at once brighter and darker than the rest, charged into the clearing. The others scattered backwards. The new one took a mouthful of Alison's skirt and pulled. She slapped at him. When he released her dress to bark at her, she sat down hard. Suddenly she was afraid of them, the dark and the blood reek in the air, and wanted nothing more than to be at home with the door barred. "I'll go back quietly, Martin, but I don't know the way." The wolf gave a nod and turned. Alison clutched up her skirts above her knees and jogged along as quick as she might so that he need not circle back for her. The night erupted with barking, but nothing followed them.

Martin left her at the garden gate. She went in, still trembling at the knees a trifle. She climbed into a long nightdress. Her hand rested on the bar to slide it into place, but no, it was too cruel to lock the door against Martin. She got into bed and waited for sleep. The whitewashed ceiling looked back at her without blinking. She rose and brewed herself a cup of coltsfoot, which her mother had always given her when she had a fever. This time the tea tasted bitter. She poured it out the window.

She'd had a chance to brood over the punctures in her skirt by the time he returned. It didn't help matters that his first words in human form were, "God help the man who marries a girl raised in a sheepfold! Don't you have the sense God gave your mother's goats?"

"Look," she said. "You've torn my embroidery here."

"To the devil with your embroidery! Were you trying to get yourself butchered?"

"A night of discoveries," Alison murmured, stroking the torn fabric and ripped needlework in her lap. "Your family wishes to murder me."

"You fool!" He shook her shoulders until she dug her nails into his hands. "Those weren't my family! Those were wild animals, not my kind! In another minute, you would have been lying beside that dead heifer! It's not a fairy story out there, where the pure in heart have the strength of ten and true love overcomes all evil... Hunger..." He stopped abruptly, seeing the marks on his hands, and sat down. Alison watched him think.

"Sweetest, forgive me for shaking and shouting at you. It was an ugly thing to do." Alison kept her watch. "I was afraid."

He scooched closer and took her hand. "Can we speak calmly now? What is it that we're arguing about? A curse. A curse that runs in the blood, my blood in this case. Nothing you or I can do about it, I'll take it to my grave. Now I've brought you enough trouble by making you my wife, a partner in this terrible destiny. How can you seek more? Can't you imagine how awful I would feel, bringing my curse upon you, the brightest and most beautiful thing that's shone on my life?" He waited for her to reply, or to move. She did neither.

"I'll have trouble with those others tonight," he said thoughtfully, his attention shifting. "They don't like us. We hunt the same things they do. Bears aren't too happy to see us move into a neighborhood either. Wild things are the most difficult prey, but if too many domestic animals or folk disappear in one area, the whole village turns out with torches and cudgels. Why, I've had bullets pass so close I could hear the silver sing."

Alison disengaged her hands and walked to the stove. She measured water into a shallow pan.

"That's why we had to leave the last place. We didn't spread our hunting territories out as far as we should have. I think we have a good system here, though. Mama and Papa can't get around so well anymore, so they have the closest section." He began to cut imaginary boundaries into the wood of the table. Alison poured out oats and put a pinch of salt into the water.

"Usually I hunt with John. Two of us can bring down larger things, so it works out better even splitting every kill. I like to hunt with cousin Lina -- there's a girl who knows a thing or two about tracking -- but she generally runs alone."

Alison stirred with a wooden ladle to keep the porridge from becoming lumpy.

Martin was surprised to find that he enjoyed talking. In the family, they only spoke of the immediate practicality of these things, and naturally he had never before known anyone outside to tell what he felt and saw.

"I like to hunt alone sometimes too. It's a special feeling, just you against whatever it is you're chasing. You get to love it, I've heard human hunters say the same thing. When the blood is in your mouth, it's like a deep, salty kiss."

Alison spooned some cream into Martin's breakfast bowl. The young man sat back in his chair, focusing past the woman, through the open window where the trees were every minute growing more definite and individual in the expanding light. "Summer nights are best, for the smells stand out stronger. You don't have so much time, but you can move faster. Snow bogs you down." Alison dished out the porridge and placed the bowl in front of him. "Thank you, love." She sat down opposite him, elbows on the table, fists propping up her chin.

"When I was a boy -- you know how melancholy you can be at thirteen or fourteen -- I hated what we were. Wrote poetry about how sad and awful and cruel life was, especially to me." He smiled, slightly to the left of Alison. "It was dreadful stuff. I thought I'd never marry because I couldn't stand to see my children face this as well. Not that I think this life is nasty or wrong or anything. I mean, we're all predators, life feeds on life. But not everyone's got the strength of character for it. Some get unnerved, can't remember who they are when they come back. You have to have certain inner resources. You have to be able to think on your feet. You have to plan and wait, then thrust like a knife." He slashed the air with his spoon. "Hesitation is fatal. Inattention is fatal. Many fall by the wayside."

Alison made a rude noise with her lips. Martin flung down his bowl and left the house.

"Well," said she, scooping up the gray mess with a cloth. "I can't depend on my husband to be sensible in this. I am cast to my own devices."

In the afternoon she tied on her shawl and went to visit her sister Helena. Helena had been something of a scholar in her youth, a useful attribute for the wife of an apothecary. At the prospect of a hearty gossip, Helena locked the shop door and put on the kettle.

"...And when there's children, they'll be of his kind, and I know they'll always be talking at the dinner table about the best way to bring down a wounded ox, while I'm trying to get the children to eat their yams. It'll be one long nightmare. But every time I try to talk with him reasonably, he starts in with how savage and difficult and unladylike the whole business is, until I get so angry that I start spitting bile back at him. Honestly, if I have to listen to one more Sermon on the Hunt, I don't know what I'll do to him! I thought if you knew anything to help..."

Helena got down from her stool and said sagely, "I wager old Trigastronomes has something to recommend." She pulled out a volume bound in olive cloth, the shop's reference work. After thumbing pages a moment, she stopped. "He claims it's only a legendary formula, but I daresay he has to say that to keep the church off his back. Let's see -- aconite, belladonna, cinquefoil, the fat of a suckling child..."

"Helena, no!"

"I don't know how you expect to be able to function as a werewolf if the idea of fat from a suckling child makes you queasy," Helena observed. "But I suppose it's no great matter in the recipe itself, it's likely just a binding agent. We'll try lard instead."

The resulting paste looked and smelled like sheep dip left too long in the sun. Alison, as Martin had said, was raised with her mother's goats and didn't care.

"Now, it says to strip naked somewhere out of doors where the moon can get to you. You rub the stuff all over and say, 'haere, haere...'"

"Not Latin too! Write it down, or I'll never remember it."

"Be sure to tell me how it turns out!" was Helena's parting call. Alison trotted home with a whistle on her lips.

She went out into the garden a little after sunset and picked a spot among the potato vines along the back wall. She stripped quickly, glad their house was set at the rear edge of town. She wondered if Martin would be home early or late that evening. She guessed late. He had been pretty nettled that she wasn't spellbound by his oratory. But what a bucket of swill! As if you had to attend a foreign university to run around howling at the moon... She placed the parchment that had the incantation written on it under her toes, so that it wouldn't get stained by the ointment. She had left a note next to a cold supper, saying she was spending the night with her mother. What a surprise he'd have when he found her galloping along beside him!

She ducked her fingers into the salve without any more ado. The paste was cold and grey, and the garden getting chillier and darker by the minute. Alison consoled herself with the thought that before long she would be wearing the warmest coat she ever owned, and in the meantime, the ointment seemed to be a tolerable insect repellant as well.

Then she heard Martin's voice. "Alison!" She saw a light come on in the window. She ducked behind a bean trellis. He would be reading the note now, gnawing on the heel of bread beside. But no, the door opened and light spilled into the garden. "Alison?"

When his eyes reached her, she felt as if she'd been caught in a dark, heavy rain. She waited for him to explode. He walked toward her. She wanted to tell him not to step on the kale, but her tongue stuck stiff and numb in her mouth. Martin reached her. He took her by the hand and led her into the house. "He doesn't want to beat me where passersby could see," she thought. Inside, he took down a square of linen from the nail by the stove and began to rub her clean.

"For pity's sake, Alison," he murmured. "What did you think you were doing?"

She did not reply. She saw that her note had fallen face down on the floor beside the bed. It had probably blown down with the first breeze through the window. If she had shut the window...

"Aconite and that claptrap? I could have told you that was nonsense. The changing travels in the blood. That's that."

"I don't believe you," she said through clenched, chattering teeth, although she did. When she felt less cold and thought it safe to loosen her jaw, she asked, "Why did you come home early? I didn't think you'd want to see me before you changed."

"I was sorry for the way I left this morning. And ashamed." He said nothing more and continued to wipe her as carefully as a woman with her first grandchild. She watched his brown hands move over her body. His hands were the first thing she'd fallen in love with, coming out so smooth and warm from clean linen cuffs. He had already removed his ring. The band of skin that the gold usually hid was pale as a scar. Then she noticed his hands weren't moving anymore. They were holding her breasts, the thumbs moving softly over her nipples. Color welled up her body till she stood pink from sole to scalp. If she'd had on even a petticoat, it shouldn't have been so embarrassing. He kissed the nape of her neck, where hair warmed tenderness, his hands still moving with tailor's skill. She tried to say his name -- Martin, no -- but instead a little meow of desire escaped her. He pulled her down. The linen square somehow got pushed under the table.

She tried to get out other words -- oh please, Martin, don't, I can't, the floor -- without any luck. Sounds came out of her that weren't words. Then a knot inside her wrenched free, and his name came forth clear as a cowbell.

"Yes, my Alison, yes, my love."

Even as he said this, he turned over, the moon already pulling him away like the tide. She hated him for changing, for still being Martin enough to look back at her, hairless and still greasy from the sham ointment, lying with the grain of the floorboards imprinted on her buttocks. She hid her face. The wolf paused. With a questioning whine, he thrust his nose under her arm to lick the salt water slipping down her face.

"Just go!" she screamed. The wolf backed away stiff-legged until he reached the threshold. There he turned and vanished.

She cried until the muscles of her stomach ached, and her throat felt as if she'd swallowed an apple whole. Then she sat up, knuckling her eyes clean, crumpled the note and threw it into the fire. She took her sewing basket from beside the hearth and crawled into bed with her torn skirt. It seemed a good sign that the pattern of curling vines would be easy to repair. "What will I do next? What can I do next?" she thought each time her needle pierced the cloth. "I can't live like this."

The wolf padded in and dropped something on the floor. The air was beginning to lighten. Alison had not slept.

"What's that?"

The answer was delayed only a few seconds. The sun put its head up over the horizon. Martin, naked and panting, said, "It's a present."

"It's a dead animal, Martin."

"It's fox. Good red foxskin. And plenty more of it running around out there." The words tumbled eagerly out of his mouth, as if they had been waiting all night for a tongue able to speak them. "When I get enough together, we'll take them to a furrier. You should have something nice, something warm. It was stupid of me not to have thought of it sooner." He smiled, shuffling a little like a boy.

Alison picked up the bloody tatter of pelt by the tail, walked to the front window and pitched it into the melon patch. Without a word, she walked past him and ladled out a bowl of gruel. He pulled on clothes and ate without looking up. The silence was so complete that even the fire didn't dare pop.

Finally he risked a glance at her. "Fur?" she snarled. "Do you think I've been crying my eyes out because I'm jealous of your hide?" She picked up a bucket and slammed through the door.

Martin did not work well in the shop that day. Basting shirts was his task, and it seemed he had only to look at a thread for it to tangle. Seeing his midday bread and sausage untouched, Martin's mother felt his forehead and asked if maybe he'd got a poisoned rabbit last night. "I wouldn't put it past some of these villagers to think up some such chicanery. I know I heard someone complaining about missing livestock last week." For Martin's mother, all of life's ills could be traced to unwholesome game; John grinned and mimed menacing bunny ears behind her back. Martin's father shushed her. As soon as she'd passed out of the room, he told Martin, "Go home and take care of it, whatever it is."

But Alison was not there. He walked around the garden waiting for her. Unassailed by snails, the strawberries had put out their first fruit, still greenish white and hard. He walked down to the stream to see if she was drawing water or washing clothes. She wasn't. He saw old prints of her feet scattered along the mud of the bank like tile. He climbed back up to the house.

As the afternoon lengthened and he sat without anything to do but look around the room that bore in every corner some mark of her diligence or fancy, he began to fear that she'd remembered what he said about repenting her bargain. If he did, could he really walk out and never bother her more? He tried to imagine sleeping without her bony limbs tucked close beside him, on a pillow lacking the lemongrass savor of her hair. He squeezed his eyes tightly to press out the image of desert that he'd conjured. Martin opened her cedar trunk at the foot of the bed. Her spare dresses, her linen and underskirts lay there, folded crisply. He closed the trunk with care and walked to her mother's house.

No, Alison's mother said, without inviting him in. Alison wasn't there. But surely he knew by now that she was a willful creature, of more strength than sense, and if she fancied herself wronged on some trifle or other, she'd fly off. She'd be home when she cooled. Martin thanked her and asked if there was anything he might do for her, kindling to chop or such? "No, dear." Alison's mother fluttered her fingers and closed the door. Martin toiled back to the empty house.

Alison came in an hour before sunset.

"Where have you been?"

"Tanner in the next village," she answered, unwinding her shawl from over her head, not quite looking at him. He waited, wishing she'd talk, scream, heave a stone at him, anything. She put her basket on the table and sat down.

"Martin," she said. "This is the last time I'll ask this..."

"No, love, I can't."

Alison nodded, still not meeting his eyes. "I didn't expect another answer. Now here's something else I'll ask, and it will decide if you and I are to continue as man and wife."

He waited with every hair alert.

She took a rawhide collar out of the basket. He averted his eyes. "For the love of God, Alison," he said, his voice creaking with embarrassment. "Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"You always... leave our wedding ring behind." When he would not take the collar from her, she dropped it on the table. He looked at the tightly lashed circlet between them. "Oh, sweetest," he said sadly, opening his arms, and then she couldn't help but stumble into his lap. Tears slid down the side of her narrow nose.

"Sweet," he said. "Don't you know wolves take one mate for life?"

"Yes," she burst. "They take other wolves."

He held her as she cried and choked, pulling at the fabric of his shirt. When she slowed into gurgles and hiccoughs, he picked her up and put her on the bed.

"I know it's stupid, but what am I to do? I love you, I love living with you. But I feel as though you shed me with your skin." He hushed at her, but she could not stop. "Can't you see? When I hear you talk about blood as a salty kiss, my heart breaks. Every kiss you have, I want to share in. I smell the forest on you when you come home. I sit here in this little room when you're gone, and I think. I think, is he losing a paw in a trap right now? Or has a stag put an antler into his ribs? Or is he just running, running with joy in the dark and the wild?" She gulped down air like a fish caught on a line.

"And our children, they'll be out there too. All my life I'll be the different one. When you take them out to teach them of their world, I'll be alone still, but with more worries and pains in my heart. There'll be some bitch of their own kind, some cousin Lina, who will seem more like their mother than me. I don't know anything about your life, and I won't know anything about their lives. When one of them cries to me, at thirteen or fourteen, about how cruel and terrible her life is, what will I be able to say? What will I say?" Tears overpowered her words as he silently kissed her hair, her face, her neck, her hands. "I'll be in the midst of everyone I love, but I'll be alone."

He continued to touch Alison softly as the weight of her sleepless night began to eclipse her tears. She stuttered and wheezed a few more minutes, then her breath subsided into the level rasp of slumber.

Martin looked into her face, still blotchy and pale from weeping. He loved her, oh how he loved her -- as much as she loved him. For when he lifted up her hem and nipped her ankle so that a little pearl of blood formed, it was done so gently that Alison only turned and sighed without waking up.

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