Mixed Blood

THE POWER OF WOLF

The Agreement

A lone man stretched his massive arms above his head and then yawned, before idly leaning against the wall of his stone hut. His dark eyes looked vacantly out to sea, occasionally blinking as dust devils flicked his long, black, unkempt hair across his face. The bare skin of his arms and legs showed clean channels, as beads of sweat picked up grime on their descent.  Shifting his position slightly he lifted the hem of his goatskin frock exposing one weatherworn cheek, which he slowly scratched, disturbing the many flies that had settled there.  Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he looked along the narrow beach that stretched as far as he could see into the hazy mist. With the assistance of the prevailing winds, the sea, over thousands of years, had pushed the pebbles into a steep embankment; the other side gently sloped to a shallow sea, where fish fry in there millions succumbed to the many predators.  Although blocked out by the shimmering heat rising from the water, the man knew that at the other end of this causeway was the Otherland, from where no one had ever returned alive.  Only the two giant clay statues that looked angrily across the water kept the murderous evil away from the island.

A black-headed gull with a broken wing caught his eye, as it tried to protect itself from hungry ravens surrounding it.  He wanted to help the bird, but the heat made it too much of an effort. Instead he watched the ravens take turns darting in and pecking at their victim.

“They are not nice to eat.” The voice made him jump a little. He turned to see Tara smiling at him.  Although she was older than him by two years, he had always fancied her.  With lust in his eyes, he looked at her round face, and noticed she had cut the long hairs off the two warts on her chin. “I think they are?” he replied, as he ogled her large, half-filled sack-like breasts.

 “Not them. I mean the great, black birds, you half-bake,” she whispered, as she brushed flies away from her hairy armpit.

“Bugger the birds, I want you maid.” He pulled her towards him, the sweat dripping from his heavy chin.  “Why don''t you ever skirt-lift with I?”  He gently squeezed one of her nipples.  Slapping his hand away, she pulled him around the corner of the hut, out of the view of the dusty street. “People will see us; they will laugh.”

“People, what people. No bugger''s coming out in this heat.”

She smiled.  “You do like me, Wolf, don’t you?” Slowly her hand crept up the inside of his leg.  “Is this what you want me to do?”

With his eyes shut he listened to the flies buzzing, as they got disturbed beneath his dress.  His legs buckled with anticipation as he became aroused.  Suddenly, agony! The searing pain shot up his backbone, as her hand squeezed his testicles until her fingers went white.

Running down the track, she looked back to see him rolled up in a ball, moving first one way, then the other. With his hands between his legs, he rolled over and over.  Her laughter could be heard throughout the village.

After an eternity of pain he found he could walk again. Feeling sorry for himself, and holding his groin, he hobbled into the dark interior of his hut, where he dropped like a sack onto the stone slab he used as a bed.  Wiping the tears of pain from his eyes, he began to ponder over the events that had just occurred. Why didn’t the young girls like him? Why did they tease him so?  Lying there, he watched the armada of flies that had tormented him silently take off from under his goatskin and hover over an ant-covered dead crab in the corner.  He had noticed that crab belly-up three weeks ago. He could not understand why his mother had not thrown it out.

He was trying to remember what it was she had asked him to do when a dark shadow fell across the doorway. “You lazy bit of nothing, Wolf. I thought I told you to hook some fish.  If your father were alive, says I, he’d give you some stick.”  His mother filled the doorway, fish in one hand, goat hair fishing line in the other.  Lumbering into the dark room, she loomed over him. “What is wrong with you? ”

Wolf, unable to look his mother in the eye, bowed his head, and watched the beads of sweat run down one of her legs and turn into little waterfalls, as they trickled between her toes.

“It’s girls, Mother, it’s girls,” he blurted out. “Every one my age are joined.”  Sitting up to get away from the smell of his mother, he put his head into his hands.