Just an Old Legend Ch. 06

I'm trying to move this one ahead, so it'll likely be quite long. I'm trying to mix this up a little. There's some of the dreaded (for me) background needing to get said in here somewhere, so for fun and frolic - or something like that - I'm throwing in a curve. Oh, and the wolf guy gets a name in this, just sayin'. Hope you like it.

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He looked down at the woman that he now cared so much about as she twitched feebly and he lowered her carefully to the floor. His mind was still working on the word to finish his sentence.

"Do not leave."

He said it at last, but now had other words to search for which might have worked better in the event, such as - 'run away' - 'hurt yourself'- or perhaps the best possible phrase - 'run into the door behind you'. He looked down at her face, and she wore a confused look that turned into a weak smile for some reason before her lights obviously went out. He sighed. It might have gone better if he'd known her name. He admired and loved a woman from across an abyss who had no name to him. He shrugged. She'd never told him.

He hoped fervently that she wasn't badly hurt here. He'd caused enough damage. He stood up and looked out the door into the still-teeming rain. He was about to walk away when he suddenly had a desire to look at her one more time. That look led to more gazing and then he thought of how he just couldn't leave her like this. For God's sake she was lying in a puddle.

He found the pile of dry towels and stepped to the sink with one. Turning on the water, he rinsed it well, glad now that there was still some hot water and pressure in the tank below and then walked back to her. He considered a moment, and then mentally threw up his hands. He would either do this or not, he told himself. He knew what he would have done if it were Danaya - before he'd left to come here, and so he decided that it would be appropriate for his now ex-friend here as well. It didn't matter anyway, he told himself. There was no way now that he'd ever let her find him again - even on this little island.

He gently undid the button at the front of her jeans and the zipper. Taking hold of the wet material, he gently but firmly tugged them off, moving her to a dry part of the floor in the process, and carefully used the warm wet towel to wipe her body. Then he took the last dry towel, threw it over his shoulder, and very gently picked her up, being careful to cradle her head.

He cursed himself the entire time. He should have known his place and remained outside, regardless of her words. What could she have done? He was much too heavy for her to move. He turned to carry her to the couch, looking hard in the dim light and realized that her soft voice was much more than his weight or his will could have withstood.

There are certain automatic functions to the human body - even to one such as his. And there are certain automatic functions to the male body, specifically. He felt one of them begin and willed it not to, but before he'd reached the couch, his unwanted erection brushed against her and he groaned with more frustration.

Wonderful, he thought, and now this too.

He laid her carefully down and placed the clean beach towel where it would do some good. Then he thought about her eye, and stepped to the kitchen. He'd only been inside the place a very few times in all the years since, and it had been upgraded a lot since he'd built it. He wondered what to do, and then thought of the refrigerator. Tearing open the freezer, he found a bag of frozen vegetables. He found it as stiff as a board, but a few light raps against his hand and it went limp, the attachment between the individual frozen pieces broken for the moment. He walked back to her.

Kneeling at her side, he looked down and felt truly saddened now. He'd really enjoyed being near to her the last little while. Now he wouldn't even be able to stay close enough to her to protect her from anything. He leaned down and kissed her softly, noticing the single tear that he left there on her cheek, but not daring to wipe it away.

He studied her a minute, preparing, and then gently placed the bag on the side of her face that she'd hit. It wouldn't stay put, so he grabbed a cushion to block it so that it stayed. He was worried that the cold might be enough to wake her, but was relieved when it didn't. He turned to go, and then worried that if it hadn't woken her, then maybe she was more badly injured than he'd thought. Shaking his head, he stood at the door for a while just watching her. At the first sighing movement that she made eight minutes later, he was out into the rain and gone.

Helen woke in confused pain. Her head was searing agony. Half of her face was numb, too, She reached for this first and her hand recoiled from the cold plastic. She pulled it away from her face and wondered about the echo that still rang in her mind. It was the front door clicking shut, she thought suddenly. She went to sit up and saw stars for a second, and then remembered what had happened. She sat up as slowly as she could and noticed that her pants were gone. She wanted to shake her head, but just knew somehow that it would be a bad idea. She recognized the terrycloth of a beach towel by touch and wondered how that had gotten here.

Suddenly everything became clear to her and she tensed. Where was he now? She'd hit the door. Why was she here, then? She looked around, and began to have some frightening thoughts, but got it together, grabbed the cold plastic bag and stood up cautiously. She wasn't quite steady, and held the armrest tightly. She looked in wonder at what she held in her hand. Frozen vegetables. She found her dinner dish out on the table. She remembered putting it in the sink. Looking there, she found her clothes, wet along with a sopping towel. She smelled the urine and remembered.

She walked to the window.

He was there. Way out at the edge of the woods. She just saw him through the rain in the dim flicker of far-off lightning. He was standing still in the rain. Her first thought was to grab the gun and load it up with the red-painted shells, but as she was about to turn to do this, her eyes fell on the pot out on the porch with its poor wildflowers, a sad but hopeful offering.

There was no stalker, she realized suddenly. There was only him. He'd picked her flowers, just as it had been him who had moved the dead-falls on the beach and blocked the inlet - as she'd said she'd like. She remembered how intently he'd listened to her. Well, now she knew that he was a man as well. And he was also something else. She wondered if he was more than a man, or something less when he was like this. She herself, or anyone else for that matter, might have needed a tractor with a winch to rip out the tree trunks, but he certainly wouldn't. Someone like him, who could separate a bear from its life in five seconds flat by dis-assembly, could have done that work if he'd had half an hour, and Buddy'd had all day, mostly.

So what had happened here? She'd been frightened well out of her wits this time, and it hadn't been her fanciful imagination, but what it had been was her own visceral fear, and she'd had good reason, perhaps. But then as she thought about it, he hadn't done anything to her. She had just reacted. She'd realized the edge of the door was there but it had been too late to stop herself. She'd fallen, and he was looking down at her. And then she'd woken on the couch.

He must have carried her there. She looked around. She would have to mop soon, but for now, he'd even wiped the floor. What kind of wild beast wipes the floor? She looked at the bag of frozen vegetables, the no-name, least expensive variety that they sold, and then she touched her face. There were a lot of people who would never have thought to... But something less than a human did?

It wasn't possible.

She looked again, and suddenly knew exactly why he still stood there. She saw one of the plastic bags that she'd brought her purchases home in, and grabbed it, moving as quickly as her head allowed her to move. Grabbing the bag, she stepped quickly to the table. The wooden box was still there with his old letters to Danaya on top where she'd put them down. She hoped that he hadn't been more observant than she had been for a lot of this. Setting the envelopes aside, she looked.

There had once been twenty shells that he'd loaded. Ten had been loaded with silver slugs. Three of those had been used, leaving seven. She'd bet money that a poor farmer working alone, and maybe hiring himself out to work for others would have used every nickel he had to do what he'd done, and wouldn't have a gram of silver left to his name now. She ripped the seven shells out of the box and stuffed them into the bag, spinning around to look for a place, someplace where a wolf's nose wouldn't find them. She settled quickly on the spices in the cupboard - right behind the pepper. As an afterthought, she flipped the lid of that jar open, and sprinkled a little on the tightly wrapped bag before putting it back.

Hobbling to the door, she opened it. She was half-naked here. She looked at her windbreaker, but as her hand touched it, she heard the swish of the fabric. Not good. Her last laundry load sat neatly stacked, waiting for her next trip upstairs. She had another bulky sweater...

It was freezing cold in the hissing rain, but if he was still there by now, then she dared not call to him. She knew enough about him to know that if she did that, she'd likely never see him again. She walked out and hobbled down the steps with her injured toes. As she struggled over the cold mud and grass, she questioned her sanity, wondering if she should have brought the gun. That was just stupid, she knew and she knew all the reasons for that, not least among them that it would have been the sane thing to do. Well, she'd never let a little thing like sanity get in her way before, so ...

Walking the hundred yards was taking forever the way that she hobbled, careful to be as silent as she could, but she worked out some plusses as she went. The sweater was already soaked, and the rain would likely kill the smell of it. Thank God it wasn't wool, she thought, and as long as it rained, she might have a shot at getting close.

She began to be able to make out his shape as she walked carefully. Jesus, she thought, what was she doing here, trying to sneak up on something that used stealth as easily as he drew breath. She doubted that this would work, but he didn't seem to be aware of her yet. Then Helen thought with a start that maybe he was actually facing her, she couldn't tell from this distance. She decided to bank on his facing away from her. But the closer that she got to him, the larger he seemed to loom. She saw with some relief that his back was turned.

He stood in the rain for the second time, but he didn't mind it or care anymore. He was struggling. He'd gotten this far and should by rights have been long gone by now. But he'd forgotten something. He knew what it was, and was now caught in his own thoughts.

Back there, in the house that he'd built long ago for himself and his Danaya, on the farm that he'd begun here, was the solution to his pain. It was the old shotgun that he'd cut down for ease of use in tight quarters as he hunted what the love of his life had become. Loaded with the silver slugs that he'd made and the shells that he'd hand-loaded as he wept for his beautiful wife, the old cannon could end this forever.

It had taken all the money that he had left to buy what he needed. He couldn't have known then, though he understood now that there was little madness once you got past the first part. But in his mind back then, he just couldn't stand by and watch his wife hunt as a wolf. The people in the town would never have known what hit them. Not that many had been kind to him, being a foreigner, though there had been a few who had treated him as a friend. He had put off what he knew he had to do until late in the autumn. He didn't dare wait until the channel froze over, there would have been no stopping her hunger then...

He shook off the memory and decided. There was no point to any more of this. He'd learned to live with this curse, though in all of the time that he'd had to think about it, he'd never thought of a reason why he'd deserved to live this unending horror. He'd gone on alone and managed to survive, but he had no idea why, if there had to be a reason for it. Just when he'd been almost at peace with what he was, this lovely woman came. He loved her from a distance, and that was all that it could ever come to, but now, after over seventy long years, he no longer wanted any of it. The price had become much too high for him.

He wondered if she were conscious yet. He ought to go back and retrieve the thing whether she was or not. What could she do to stop him? Why would she try, now that she knew? He'd be doing her a last favor, and she could have the island. He hoped that she'd be happier here than he ever was. All it had been to him was a prison that he'd adapted to. He looked down and began to weep.

Helen found him there. She'd actually been a few feet off to the side, but another flare of lightning had illuminated him, and she'd adjusted her path to stand behind him in the driving rain. She was cold. So very cold, but she didn't shiver. Her head hurt, and her cold bare feet ached. At least the cold had numbed her poor toes, she thought as she looked at him, close enough now to feel the heat from his body a little bit, and she could even see him in the darkness here.

He was massive, she thought. No wonder that bear hadn't stood a snowball's chance in hell against him. And he'd been her friend. Yeah, she thought, she was still almost scared to death of him like this, but she knew him as a huge wolf, and he hadn't harmed her. She'd seen him as a man now, whose mind obviously lived inside the wolf when he was in that shape, so why not while he looks like this? She remembered that he'd even tried to plead with her in this shape. She wasn't that afraid of him now, she realized, especially now that she was listening to him cry.

She knew that even in the rain, she had only seconds before he became aware of her, so she began to slowly reach toward him. She watched her hand and arm as it went. There were tremors - she couldn't hold her arm steady at all. The rest of her wasn't shivering, she thought, so this can't be the cold, it had to be fear. She stopped still right there, feeling stupid with her arm out while she thought. Her hand moved further. This wasn't so much fear of him, she now knew. It was fear of what he might do.

Her middle and third fingers touched his clawed hand.

He inhaled sharply and spun with a roar and time instantly slowed as she jumped back. A bolt of lightning tore across the heavens from one cloud to another at that instant, and in the flare of light, they saw each other.

But his massive arm was already in motion, driven hard by the same muscles that she'd admired a little while ago.

Helen saw it coming and was certain that this would end things for her, but then she thought sadly that she'd removed his way of ending it for himself. The pieces were in play now, she thought, so be it. She watched his claws come, and pulled her head back.

In the sticky slowness of it, she heard one of her vertebrae click in her neck. Out there, past the sharp focus of her view close in, she could see his yellow eyes in softer focus as his brows rose slowly and the eyes opened wide.

The wind from his swing moved her hair in the rush of the wet vacuum left behind it, and the rainwater that saturated the fur on his arm was thrown off to hit her face as hard as any bucketful of water could have been, and it stung her skin. His powerful right arm was raised now and moving for the follow-up in this defensive move. Hunting bears the hard way as he did left no room for not connecting.

She knew that he wouldn't miss twice. She doubted that he ever did.

But he was pulling back now, as hard as he could. What came from his throat was a tortured groan, and Helen's eyes widened even further. She was determined suddenly to see the end as it came.

It took everything he had, and his shoulder muscles strained against the inertia that normally was what dealt the damage that he depended on. Helen's vision was jarred from the impact and she felt his claws come to rest against the back of her head and neck, one pressing her ear uncomfortably. It caused even her to see even more bright sparks in her left eye.

But she noticed that she was still standing. Her own left hand was moving now, and she slapped it on top of his as everything crashed to a halt.

The wind fell off as did the rain for a moment. Helen heard her own heartbeat in her ears, as well as everything around them dripping. She couldn't hear her own breath, but there was his between them to replace it as he exhaled fog like a steam locomotive letting off its brakes. She admired his yellow eyes as the tremors finally started in her legs.

He began to slowly pull his hand back, but she grabbed as much of his fur as she could and held tight. He relaxed, and the horror of what he had almost done came to him. It was worse now than the terrible split-second when he'd realized what he'd been about to do. There was no apology that he could think of for this. They stared at each other's eyes for a long few seconds.

Helen squeezed her eyes shut against the dull throb in her head. When it had passed she opened them and blinked, and just said, "Please ....."

He was struggling in so many ways now, but she sensed it, and only allowed him enough movement to take some of the pressure off her skin. She felt the thin, warm rivulet of blood from the edge of her ear run to her throat. She knew that he'd see it in a second or so and recoil in remorse, so she turned her head and kissed the inside of his wrist before turning to him with a small smile. That he had tried to stop and that she was still alive settled all of her questions now.

"Please don't kill me now," she said quietly, "I couldn't bear it if this got any worse now."

He was transfixed, as he thought of what she'd done here. The courage that this had taken...

He looked down, still in absolute surprise, "Why I should kill you? I never would hurt you if I knew you were there. Why do you do this? It is cold here for you." He looked up above her head at the farmhouse, "I have to go back. I need my gun."

Helen let go of his hand and leaned against him as desperately hard as she could, throwing her arms around as much of him as she could hold, and knowing it was nothing to him, "No," he felt her shake her head, "That won't help you. I want to help you."

He was confused now, "I need my gun. There are red shells. I have to..."

"NO!" she screamed it at him and it made her head hurt again. She even saw flashes of light in her left eye. He stopped and stared at her. The wind began again, and it brought more rain.

"How can you help me? No one can help me. The red shells..."

"They're at the bottom of the channel," she lied, "I threw them overboard this afternoon as I came from town. I want to help you."

He didn't know what to feel now. Rage came to mind, now that he'd decided it, but that was quickly replaced with sadness. He'd never have his way out now.

She squinted up through the rain lashing her eyes, "How do you say your name?"

He looked at her, "Ion," he said.. It came out like 'yon'."

"Ion," She tried it, and then said, "It's John here, isn't it?"

He nodded slowly, "Yes. What is your name, please, and why do you want to help me?"

She smiled through the rain, "My name is Helen, and I have a friend. I didn't know his name because he didn't ever say it. I just called him 'Buddy'. He's my friend, and I know that you're Buddy. You're my friend. I won't let my friends cry in the rain, Ion."