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The Wolf and the Mage is a short story that I initially wrote over ten years ago and became the inspiration to Vaenel and Aengal in Sykajume. I recently re-edited it slightly to tie directly into the Sirin Chronicles with the corresponding characters and locations – when I first wrote it, it was based in an entirely different world. Influencers for The Wolf and the Mage come from Fenrir in the Norse mythology and from stories and tales of Atlantis.
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Once there was a great wolf that stalked the shadows of the great Rannan Forest, his name unintelligible to the ears of man. Cast down from the heavens and cursed to stalk among the chapel pines and sentinel oaks for all eternity, the beast of darkness hunted any foolish enough to enter the secret depths of the forest, for his appetite was insatiable.
At the meeting of wooden boughs and stone buttresses, the shadow wolf made his den. A forsaken glade where crystal clear water cascaded into shallow pools of the phantom crystal where only the rare astralae plant grew, for nothing living dared to near such a place.
Then one day, the silence of his glade was disrupted by the sound of silver bells and bangles colliding together as the wind whispered through the leaves and carried the fragrance of geranium to him. His eyes searched through the dappled shadows, falling upon a young woman walking alone through the dusk. Her eyes looking straight into his soul and silenced the madness already wakening deep inside, though he feared the ravenous appetite that would surely come as the scent of her blood beneath delicate skin assailed his senses.
A powerful mage often walked alone through the deep forest chapels, especially at sunset when golden light set fire to the dust motes dancing within an idle breeze. She was a priestess in training at the Temple of Stars of Kata Jinja. Enchanted by this latest intruder to his secret world, the shadow beast watched her from afar as she came with each setting sun, foraging for the finest herbs, fruits and seeds, following the rush of water.
Their eyes met more than once, her soul-piercing deep into his own as though she were reaching out to him through a dream in the magic hour of twilight, a vision crossing different realities and different times. With pearlescent, shimmering skin and the piercing eyes of burning gold showing from beneath her mantle of indigo, he was reminded of the ethereal home of his kin, and the children sired from stars.
The power within the mage reverberated around her soul, her presence somehow silencing the wolf’s curse a little more each time she came into his presence. She was often gathering herbs for cleansing and healing the skin, the astringent smell often mingling with the intoxicating perfume of geranium that lingered on her skin.
The wolf, calmed by her presence, began to collect the astralae plants that grew in his glade and left them close by, howling softly through the twilight before melting back into the safe shadows of his forest. His keen ears would pick out the jingling music of her presence and his heart would beat erratically, urging him to turn back.
This vision was the life the mage never had and a great sadness came over him. His mournful howls slashing through the night as he rushed through the forlorn chapel of decaying forest, searching for the lost soul of the mage as his snarls and growls of frustration thundered from the ancient forest and made the mountains tremble. Why couldn’t he remember the truth about the mage?
He remembered the dream of her before his ruination and fall from the heavens. The youngest child of the Sykajume that looked to the stars every night, always finding him even as he hunted through the vast ocean of celestial matter. Was that before or after this dream? Night after night, the dream would come in some guise again and soothe the wolf’s soul, only to awaken to a bleak and vengeful dawn and the stagnation of death all around. All at once he had lived for thousands of years and none at all.
One night a different dream came to him. At last, he had somehow left Rannan Forest and was carefully moving through an overgrown garden of a castle courtyard that was as ancient as he sometimes felt, and collapsed in many places. As he stopped to lap at the cool water of a spring, his ears heard the rustling of someone approaching, and he felt something small collide with his flank as he turned. A young child, too pale for the harsh sun of the castle’s location, was nestling into his fur full of contentment, clutching tightly as though frightened he would vanish.
When he next opened his eyes, he was startled to find the mage had reached the glade. He stood as impulsive rage and defence overpowering the innate strength of the young woman and her control over his curse. He towered above her with his fangs bared, her scent consuming him and the madness threatening to consume him entirely.
The mage never quailed, simply standing resolutely before him with a curious expression in her eyes as she raised a crystalline dagger to the level of her heart. Diamond light filled the blade, splashing into the air like starlight, her fierce soul binding him to the spot as the blade flicked through the air and severed the celestial chains of fate that bound him to the forest and confined him in time.
She fell to her knees before him from exhaustion, beseeching him for help with a curse placed upon her by her own family as her breath ravaged her once strong body. The words came to him across a great distance as he turned back in the direction he had come. In the instance of his liberation, his spirit had rejoiced and he took flight, dashing from the cloying shadows of his prison for the powerful, icy winds of the mountain peaks.
He knew already it was too late to help the mage out, she had already gone. He had seen the ruins of the great temple of Kata Jinja and the black scarring from the flames of an ajukara. For a long time, the great wolf sat watch above Kata Jinja as memories returned to him. He had been cursed twice, first by his own kind, and then by the family of the Sykajuman girl. Somehow that girl had broken the first of his curses and tamed his wild heart, and unable to speak his given name, she had started calling him Vaenel.
Finally moving from his perch by the temple entrance, he walked towards the mighty crystal tree at the far end of the small town that still maintained its faded glow against the dark world and guarded it’s most precious treasure. Dropping down through a gap in the routes, Vaenel found the sepulchre created by the soul tree in the moment of the Sykajuman curse, perfumed by countless geraniums growing within.
The girl’s body was suspended in a capsule of soft golden white light as though she were falling through space, preserved for all eternity by the power of the tree exactly as she had fallen. The curse had formed celestial fate chains that snaked all around the girl’s limbs, biting into the skin as his own had done for so long.
How many times must he lose her soul? They had been cursed never to cross realities again, though the soul that had forced the girl from her body was still searching for him, fighting against the odds and searching the depths of the ethereal realms and insanity to reach him.
The wolf carefully plucked a geranium flower and placed it into the girl’s hand before reaching into the light to join her in one final embrace. He discarded his physical form and gave himself back to the world of dreams and the absence of time. Unbound, he was free to travel the ethereal worlds unhindered and could search for his mage in as many incarnations as it took to save her soul from the darkness.
- Artwork by Scarlet Letter (Pixabay)
