Twilight of the Wolves Read Free Page A

birthday, no one. Now you must give away the notebook you’ve kept here.
    Blinking, sweat upon his brow and lower back, he reached inside his blackrobe and squeezed the beaten notebook in his pallid and frail hands. Shaking hands, his eyes shot back and forth between The One Who Lives and the notebook until a Raven’s blackness took it from him.
    Tomorrow you are Death and there is much dying now. The world is at war. Thousands die every day. Children, the aged, the sick, but mostly young men. Older than you but if not for the war they would live for many more years. There are the countless who do not fight but who will die. Humanity is murdering itself but it is murdering the planet, too. Burning and laying everything to waste, to ash and cinder and smoke. Even the wolves die and hide. But you cannot help them. Tomorrow you are Death but the world is not the same world. The forest was the world but now humanity destroys to build monuments of their hubris. You must keep the balance. To engage and intervene, these are abominations for Death. You must look but never touch. You will be the shadows of the world. Follow the shadows and they will lead you to Light, for shadows only exist because of Light. All is connected and you will maintain the balance of existence. This is who you are. This is what you are. When you return here, you will write it all down, record the memories of the world. Whenyou see their lives that you shepherd away, you must remember it, carry them inside, all the lives you guide to Mother, to Me, must exist forever here. We hold the Memories of the World. Not only of this world, but of the previous and future worlds. Every word must be recounted, every moment relived forever or they will never live. I am the Light and you are the shadows. There is only one of Me for the multitude that is you. You are My hands and mouth and you will die forever.
    Happy birthday, no one. Return to Me when you are finished.
    The Twilight Day and they sang and the wolves howled and the world caught fire and the forest screamed and the moons shown and the suns circled and he walked out of the gate without looking back and exited the thick meniscus greying the world of the monastery and he watched the dirigible flying far away struck by fire and explode and burn its way to the ground erupting anew over and over until it disappeared from the sky like a supernova extinguishing into nebulae.

The moons were down and the suns not yet up. He touched her cold lips, left tears on her eyelids, took the screaming child, and walked until the sky pinked and then purpled.
    The child screamed day after day. The fragmented moon, pale and large, bathed the world in reflected light.
    I wish I was the moon tonight, he said, Quiet and alone, bathed in starlight.
    The dying fire glowed. He placed wood on it and wrapped his coat tighter. The child cried, screamed, kicked. Watching him for a moment, the man picked him up and rocked.
    Go to sleep, he said, Tomorrow you’ll be home.
    The screams woke them before the pounding of the door. She told him to be careful and he sat very still staring at the door two meters away. The fire still burned and the moonlight came strong, the room softlit giving definition to the shadow’s edges. She took his hand and squeezed, and he told her it would be all right. She squeezed harder.
    They waited through the screams but no other sounds reached them.
    A child, she said. He nodded. She let go of his hand and rose, skins wrapped round her, the cold wood against her feet creaking with each step.
    He stood when she reached the door, his hand raising, grasping after her, silently. She opened the door, the volume increased, thickening the air, he stepped towards her but she bent down and took the screaming child in her arms: cooed, cradled, bounced.
    He stepped around her and entered the night. Autumn cold, the moons large and arcing across the sky casting pale light in the village. He clenched his fists and shivered