The forest was dense and thick with a mist of cobwebs.
"The widows of twilight made that," said aunt Kia.
I ate a cooked breakfast of meat and bread, as my two cousins played with toy cars on the floor. They had their breakfasts already.
"They're not real," I sighed. "It's a story."
"Yes they are real!" Little Cezar yelled angrily at me in loyalty to his mother.
Aunty Kia told him off for shouting. Then she said to me, "Just don't go in the forest at night or in the day."
"Why?" I asked. The forest doesn't scare me. I'm a
creature of the night, as I quote from the book of Count Dracula. My entire family and I are werewolf kin. We belong to the ancient werewolf clans who lived through Dacia Felix, Wallachia and Romania. The forest is where I run freely. I'm at one with the forest. My aunt thinks I'm still a child.
"These are vampires who will suck the life out of anyone unfortunate to go in there during those times when the dreaded widows are out and about, weaving their silken threads until dawn."
"Aunt Kia," I finish my breakfast now. "They can't kill me."
"Mortals and ordinary people can't," she said. "The widows can!"
Her frightening words scare me. But what do I care? Stories for children.
My family, werewolves, are not immune to the scary stories. Even we were fed creepy legends of ghosts and vampires when we were small. We can be afraid of the dark just as much as ordinary humans can be. I've gone out in forests and fields many times. I'm not scared of the dark.
Yet aunt Kia may have a different reason to be worried for me. Ever since my parents died four years ago, she's taken me in and treated me very well. I suffer with epilepsy and have to take medicines brewed by her friend, a clever herbalist, so I'm not treated by mainstream doctors.
Yes werewolves have ailments, illnesses, diseases and disabilities too.
I think she's worried I'll go out and have a siezure. It must be it.
So one evening, against her warnings, I venture out and become my nocturnal self... the wolf.
As I explore the deep dark forest, I can hear the insects, owls, distant cries of foxes. I hear the sound of real natural wolves too over the hills, miles and miles away. I'm way outside their territories. But I can see shining lights glittering like illuminated dew drops, all throughout the forest. Then its spread all over like pretty glittering pearl necklaces.
Those lights are not pearls or dewdrops. I can see it is the spark of moonlight upon thick twists of cobweb threads! Eeek!
I don't venture on, because I'm not going to be tangled up in sticky spider webs.
Then the ghostly white forms of dancing maidens emerged from behind the trees. They smiled at me and laughed like teenage schoolgirls. I knew they were spectral beings, and I sensed dread. I backed away. The maidens floated through the air like feathers, and surrounded me. They threw daisy chains at me, all entwined with cobwebs, so that I wasn't able to move.
I growled and bared my teeth. These ghost maidens captured living animals often in the past, I could tell. I noticed that they were giving off a foul smell like rotten corpse.
Bursting through the trees were a large pack of angry wolves. My family and friends! The ghost maidens disappeared, and the dairy chains lost their hold onto me and broke apart. I was freed.
I was escorted home safely and the wolves transformed into people wishing me well.
"Thank you all for saving me," I said.
"No problem Rochelle," they told me.
Then aunt Kia said "You encountered the evil widows of twilight. They could've killed you. I told you not to go into that forest," she scolded me.
The others went home. She made me soup. My two cousins were asleep in their beds.
"Why do you live here then aunt Kia if those creatures haunt the nearby forest?" I asked.
"It's out ancient territory and I'm the guardian. I won't let these damned ghosts frighten me away."
"They're capable of killing any living person and animal," I said. "What if Cezar and Dan wander off outside in the future..."
"They will be protected as you were tonight."
"Not everyone is protected. I guess many poor people and animals fell victim to those rotten smelling gouls."
Then aunt Kia handed me a huge book. It contained historical facts and figures about the clan, the area and the forest itself. The widows are simply a curse on the land from a dead man who was bitten by a poisonous spider. Out of revenge he cursed everyone here in the land with the widows of death that he conjured up. The widows are spirits of princesses who are forever trapped in the desire to feed off the living. Someone needs to undo all of that.
One day I plan to take this information with me to the city of Bucharest and find a hero (a werewolf warrior) who can right this wrong. So far, no one outside the village knows about this local legend.
((The Fenrir's Daughters fiction stories belong to author Rayne))
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 Rayne Herbert.
