Departures

A priest was walking up the aisle to the altar. He carried a long staff with a crucifix on the end. At the sneezes, he whirled around in surprise. “Good health to-” he began, then stopped in horror when he saw who-or, rather, what-had sneezed.

Dieter trotted toward him. He opened his mouth to ask the priest’s blessing. That showed him the one flaw in his plan. As a wolf, he could not tell the man what he needed.

The priest saw only a great hairy beast rushing at him with gaping jaws. “Lieber Gott!”he gasped. With no other weapon he could reach, he swung his staff at the wolf.

The crucifix was silver. The blow hurt Dieter as much as if he had been human. Howling in pain and dismay, he whirled about and fled from the church, tail between his legs. “A wolf! A wolf!” the priest shouted behind him.

Some of the hunters were just drawing near Saint Cacilien’s. They yelled and pointed when they saw Dieter streak out. They ran after him. His savage growl, though, made them think twice about coming close. Having been hurt already, he now acted and sounded fiercer than before.

But the men did cut him off from the new market square. He growled, deep in his throat. So many streets led off the square, he would have had his choice of escape routes. Instead, his pursuers were forcing him away-and the priest’s hue and cry would only bring more people out after him. Already he could hear new voices, smell new scents among those who chased him.

He was halfway down a street before it jogged to show him it had only the exit down which he had come. A tall, barred gate of stout timbers blocked the other end. He yelped and whimpered. Too late to double back now; his pursuers had plugged the way out.

They knew it too. “We have him now!” one shouted. “He can’t get into the Jews’ quarter at night. Come on!”

Dieter snarled, this time at himself. He should have remembered that the Jews were closed off from the rest of the city between sunrise and sunset. The men were coming closer fast. He could not go back through them. He stood there, panting. Part of him, the exhausted part, wanted to lie down and give up.

The he thought of the flames again. No, he could not let the hunters take him. He ran for the gate and flung himself upward.

He had imagined himself easily clearing the timbers, landing lightly on the far side. His head and forelegs cleared, sure enough, but his belly slammed against the gate hard enough to drive half the wind from him. He hung there a moment, stunned, his hind feet scrabbled for purchase. The wood was rough; his claws bit. Leaving skin and hair behind, he dragged himself over, fell like a stone to the ground.

His undignified scrabble had let him be seen. “There he went!” a man yelled from other side of the gate. The fellow pounded on it with his fist. “Here, you damned Jews, open up!”

Dieter raced away. Now he had time to find a hiding place without any of his pursuers liable to spot him diving for cover. He would not keep that chance for long. Several men were battering at the gate, one, by the sound of it, with an axe. “Open up!” they shouted at the top of their lungs. “You damned stupid Jews, there’s a werewolf loose among you!”

That would make the gates open if anything did, Dieter thought. He knew he never hurried to do anything for people who cursed him and called him names. He suspected the Jews were no different from him in that, no matter that they had their own strange faith. But he would run if someone screamed, ”Fire, you fool!” The Jews might swallow insults for the sake of hunting him down.

He rounded a corner and almost ran into an old man crossing the street. They both stopped, staring at each other. The old Jew did not run shrieking as many had.

Behind Dieter, clamor grew. Either someone would come open the gate or soon the men who hunted him would break it down.

The frozen tableau that gripped Dieter and the man could not last, not with shouts of “Werewolf!” flying thick and fast. Dieter was about to run when the old Jew spoke: “Come with me, and quickly!” He opened a door, gestured urgently.

Dieter hesitated. All the wild, wolfly instincts in him rebelled at trusting any man. The boy he still was had trouble believing anyone would want to help him in his present state. But the old man had not known he was coming. No trap could be waiting for him inside that house. And even if one somehow was, what could a frail graybeard do against any wolf, let alone a werebeast?

The sound of the gate creaking open decided him. His hunters were in the Jewish quarter, and the Jews likely would be after him, too. Everyone was against him save, this one old man. He grabbed at that like a drowning man grabbing for a log. He darted inside.