Steam Submarine Cryptoloup Read online

  * * *

  At dinner Evans discussed the departure with Zelf, and they decided to set off before dawn, rather than during the daylight hours, since Zelf was very worried about going anywhere in daylight.

  We slept lightly. We were woken up at around one o’clock in the morning by a loud knocking at the door. Soon afterwards we set off for the dock - Evans, Zelf, Zev, Jonas and I. It was very dark at first, then as we reached the maritime buildings the gibbous moon came out from behind a cloud and illuminated the dock, the jetties, and the water with alabaster light.

  Zelf was the first to go - she leapt across a dark space and splashed onto the invisible deck of the submarine, or perhaps it was the top of the tower. We heard a hatch being screwed open, and then the hatch slammed shut again. The sound of it swiftly screwing closed floated across the water.

  We stood there waiting for a while.

  A few minutes later an engine began throbbing softly under the water and the submarine slowly emerged. The uperscope and the deck on top of the tower emerged first, water pouring off it in rivulets and waterfalls, revealing a polished silver monstrosity with lines of rivets and bolts running up and over, and a handrail all around it. Then the tips of several large iron smokestacks; I suppose they were used when the submarine was sailing on the surface of the sea.

  Then the main bulk of the ship appeared, magnificent and majestic as the torso of an armoured sea-serpent, shining silver, streaked with white in the luminous moon-glow, long and graceful as a torpedo, throbbing with power as it emerged from the gently lapping waters. The submarine pulled forwards slightly then gears crunched into reverse, and in manoeuvres seemingly too delicate for such a large vessel, gently moved sideways until she bumped the dock on which we were waiting and came to a stand-still.

  From the turret emerged the tufts of Zelf’s wolf-ears, followed by her furry face. She beckoned to us. One by one we stepped onto the deck, up a ladder, onto the turret and climbed through the hatch.

  And suddenly we were inside the steam submarine, clambering down inside into its bowels.

  The subdued rhythmic thrumming of the submarine engines and the intermittent sounds of water and air hissing through pipes filled our ears. These sounds were to be the constant accompaniment of our lives from that moment on.

  The interior of the turret was made of shiny brass walls with stainless steel rivets and fittings and a ladder with comfortable leather grips.

  We emerged into a corridor where stainless steel waterpipes formed geometric tracks over the riveted brass, like thin city streets seen from above. The ceilings and floors were elegant polished wood.

  It was more spacious inside than I thought it would be. The corridors were by no means uncomfortably narrow - even Jonas, who was quite the bulkiest of us, managed to negotiate them without difficulty.

  Zelf showed us to our cabins.

  Each of us had a comfortable cabin to ourselves with a single port-hole through which we could view the sea.

  Our rooms were decorated with embroidered bedsheets, blankets, quilts, curtains and tapestries with pictures of clothed wolves, like Zelf, doing various human-like activities; building houses, writing books, playing music, or farming, or fighting in wars; others showed the full moon among the stars; all ornately adorned with swirling, intertwining, sharp-pointed designs peculiarly reminiscent of claws and teeth, yet tempered with a gentility and artistry that seemed strangely at odds with their wolfish subjects.

  I looked through the port-hole. We had gone underwater, and it was almost completely dark outside, although, in the distance, at the top of the waters, there seemed to be a faint blue tinge; dawn approaching, perhaps.

  The throbbing sound of the engine continued.

  I stayed for a short while to put my clothes in the cupboards, then went to find the communal living quarters. There were five low triangular tables, close to the ground, surrounded by even lower couches sumptiously decorated in the same style as the cabins. A soft light illuminated the room, and on one side a large port-hole looked out on the sea.

  It seemed like a pleasant place to have dinner.

  Suddenly I felt very tired, and went back to my room.

  The next thing I remember was waking on my bed with the dinner bell sounding. I followed it towards the galley.

  When I got there, Zelf, Evans and Jonas were there. Evans said, “Troy! You’re here, lad! You missed breakfast and lunch, you know, as did Zev. Come, come and eat, Zelf has made us a beautiful dinner.”

  Interloup Eighteen - The Endless Ocean

  Zev

  In his cabin, Zev had been watching the ocean passing by outside through the tiny portal. Strange how calming the sound of the submarine is, how gently the throbbing engine becomes the foundation of one’s aural world.

  The gentle, endless ocean, finite in extent, an infinite number of points through which one travels...

  Finally he had fallen asleep, half-dreaming of Zelf, of what beautiful wolf-ears she had, and thinking with wonder about the fact that this wolf-maiden who had seemed to him to be a dream, an impossibility, actually existed.

  The next thing he knew the dinner bell rang and woke him. He leapt up and out into the corridor, almost panting to seeing Zelf again.

  In the galley Zelf served dinner up - she had cooked it herself. It was roasted lamb and vegetables.

  Everyone ate ravenously - the meal was very good.

  As they ate, the lights dimmed.

  Zelf said, “It’s an automatic thing, these lights dimming. They dim for thirteen hours out of every twenty-six, as in my world. It’s better if we feel the passing of days and nights, otherwise our bodies become unbalanced.”

  Evans asked Zelf, “What do you want me to do with the equipment?”

  Zelf said, “We will be in the Norway Sea soon. When my detectors were working I realised there were many cracks in the world there, many places where I could leap the branches of the World Tree. I will need you to set up your machine and see if you can find any - what did you call them?”

  “Ley lines?”

  Zelf nodded. “Yes - in my language they are called... um... something like... ‘cracks in the walls of time.’ Anyway, do it tomorrow, set it up in the radio room - if you need any help come and get me and I should be able to help, most of it should be self-evident to any intelligent Welfing - or human, I mean — but let’s forget about it for now. Let us eat, drink, share this time of merriment together tonight. We have to get along in this small space for many months, perhaps years even, it is best if we can learn to be sociable.”

  As they ate, Troy said, “Did you know, Zelf, that I am puzzling out my past? I have amnesia and every now and then, memories return to me. Well, I just thought that you might know something about this one. It’s a story that I heard, that… my father might have told me…”

  And this was the story as Troy told it to them.

  Interloup Nineteen - The Wolf Who Cried Boy

  Troy

  There was once a young wolf-cub who tended his brother and sister cubs in a den at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest, whenever the mother and father were away hunting with the pack, or out howling at the moon.

  One night when his mother had gone to the howling, it was rather lonely for him back at the den, so he thought upon a plan by which he could get a little company and some more excitement.

  He rushed towards the howling wolves calling out "Boy! Boy!" and the wolves ran out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time. This pleased the wolf cub so much that a few days afterwards he tried the same trick, and again the other wolves came to his help.

  But shortly after this a human boy actually did come out from the forest, carrying an evil slingshot, and he began to sling stones at the den, and the cub of course cried out "Boy, Boy," still louder than before.

  But this time the wolf pack, who had been fooled twice before, thought the cub was again deceiving them, and none of the wo
lves stirred to come to his help. So the Boy slung his stones into the den, and killed one of the cub’s brothers.

  And at the funeral of the cub an old wolf said,

  "A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth."

  Interloup Twenty - The Wisdom and the Way of the Wolf

  Zelf

  Zelf said, “Yes, I have heard this tale. It was told by Æsop, in his fables.”

  Evans thought for a moment, then said, “Do you know - Æsop - we have a man by the same name - he told fables like these, two thousand years ago, in Italy I believe.”

  Zelf said, “Æsop travelled between the worlds… It is interesting. The legend says Æsop came to First Den twenty thousand years ago, I mean, in your years. I suspect that time moved quicks in First Den. I did work out the correspondences once for the year I was born - that was the year nineteen twenty six here. But I was actually twenty-nine years old, in your years, when I left First Den, which was the year nineteen twenty nine here. Time passes differently in the different worlds.”

  After dinner, a game of darts; then everyone loafed around on the couches in the communal lounge room talking and laughing, and the night wore on and on, and then, somehow, after everyone else had left Zelf and Zev were the only ones still there, sitting alone facing each other at the table. A kind of reverent silence descended upon them, as though the moon was shining upon them again at the dock, as the throbbing of the submarine’s engines went on and on.

  The depths of the ocean were passing by the port-hole.

  Zelf said, “It’s very peculiar, Zev. My heart goes out to you. You are like me, though you are in human form. But I know you are a wolf as well. I saw you at the wharf, and you saw me.”

  Zev blushed again, a human habit that Zelf found fascinating.

  “You saw more than that,” he said wryly. “You saw me as a human as well, in my - ah - natural, unclothed state…”

  “I never understood that peculiar shame that humans feel about their nakedness. Perhaps it is because you don’t have fur? Yet you, Zev - you are unusual among humans - you can change into a wolf. You are both. A rare talent.”

  Zev said, “It didn’t seem like a talent when I first discovered it, on the night of the full moon, long ago...” Sorrow wracked his voice.

  The silence continued over the background of the deep throbbing of the engines and the gentle burbling of the waters passing by.

  Zelf told him everything about herself. She was an orphan, a rare thing in the First Den, where death is unknown except by misadventure. Her parents had died when she was a very young cub. She had suffered in a world where suffering was rare.

  Zev gazed on Zelf’s wolfish face with wonder as they spoke, she was as alien to him as Ultima Thule, yet closer to him than his own heart. She was as strange and beautiful as a wandering planet, shining like a distant star, as disturbing and intrusive as the pale face of the gibbous moon on a restless night, as unsettling as the full moon herself.

  She changed him, just by being who she was.

  Zelf herself spoke with a terrible earnestness, unrelenting as the pacing of a wolf on the hunt, as honest as the grave. She asked him, “Tell me, when you were a cub, did you suffer? Like I did? You are like me, aren’t you, Zev...? I was an orphan. I was raised by the wolf-pack in First Den, but my real parents were killed by trolls... My people, the Welfing, are Hwellwellyn, Zev, we are the unfallen, we do not die like your people, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve - we live on for endless ages, then go to the Isles in the West when we have dwelled in the First Den for a time - you must know what a terrible tragedy it is when one of the wolf pack dies.

  “I knew from a very young age that I would spend the endless ages of my own immortality, never knowing my true parents...

  “I often wonder - how the Alpha of Alphas could allow me to suffer?... How can the Father of all things allow innocent little cubs to suffer?”

  She gazed at him.

  “Zev, was your cub-hood like mine? Did you suffer as I did?”

  She looked at him with liquid golden wolf eyes, her ears perking up quaintly, and he knew that he simply couldn’t say anything to hurt her. He knew that never in his whole life would he ever, ever intentionally say anything to hurt her.

  The thing is, Zev’s childhood - his ‘cubhood’ as Zelf would say - had been difficult in some ways - but it was his adulthood that was truly deficient - and it was this that had cast a shadow over every joy he had known as a child. His parents, who were strict Melkites, had rejected him when he told them he believed in Hiyeswa (in whom the Melkites do not believe). The Hiyeswan Priest had helped him cope when he had found out that he was a werewolf. His parents had rejected him after he had been bitten by the werewolf - they had wanted to brush the whole thing under the carpet, forget about it. In a way his problems - his sorrows - were the very opposite of hers.

  Her sorrow was that as a cub she had never known her parents, had never known the love of a father and mother wolf.

  His sorrow was that his own parents had disowned him - they had even told him that he was dead to them - so that now he might as well have been an orphan. His childhood had a giant, black storm-cloud of subsequent events cast over every joy, every apparent truth. He had discovered that the love of his parents had limits - that their love had a caveat attached to it - conditions - like a gift that, once given, is taken back - it was not real love. He had discovered that, in the only way that really mattered, they were not his parents, even though their blood flowed in his veins.

  But how could he tell Zelf that?

  His sorrows would only seem to mock hers.

  His complaint would seem a small thing beside hers, even though it had torn his heart in two to leave his own parents on the strength of the truth they would not acknowledge, the truth that every full moon he would transform into a wolf. The truth that faith in Hiyeswa alone could comfort him in this malady.

  So strong and all-encompassing was the feeling of magic that seemed to envelope them that night, as though the two of them were floating among the very stars and moons and planets of the heavens, that Zev simply couldn’t disturb this perfection with the simple truth1.

  He couldn’t hurt her, not Zelf, not this beautiful wolf-maiden, with her muzzle and her paws.

  So he lied. Or, actually, whether he lied is an open question: he simply didn’t tell her everything.

  “Yes - I... I had... difficulties. I suffered greatly. Not the same difficulties as yours, nor the same... time-frame, though, not in the same way, but... my sorrows were like yours...” Was it a lie? He did not know.

  The thing is, his childhood had been difficult in certain ways. His adulthood had been even more difficult. God knows, he had ended up in Bedlam, labelled insane because of his transformations, which the doctors hadn’t bothered to understand or explain.

  “It was very difficult,” he repeated. “I had a difficult time of it…” He could barely speak of it - his suffering was painful - he could barely explain what he meant. He wanted to say more but he couldn’t find the words. Was it a lie? Was she taking it to mean he had been an orphan cub like her? But how could he tell her the whole truth?

  It would seem to mock her.

  At that moment a ringing bell began sounding from the depths of the submarine and Zelf stood to go and attend to it.

  Interloup Twenty One - Happiness and Sacrifice, Poverty and the Unseen

  Zev

  “Sorry,” Zelf said, “I have to leave. It’s the ASDICS alarm - it has detected something up ahead. Probably just a flock of birds, or a fishing boat...”

  “Shall I come up?”

  “No need to worry, it’s probably nothing. Get some sleep - we’ll need it if Evans gets his device going and finds a crack in the æther.”

  Zev smiled wryly and said, “That’s alright.” She left, and he withdrew to his cabin and shut the door.

  The port-hole showed the passing waters of the ocean, sp
acious, abyssal, distant; the deeps passed by in their immensity.

  And Zev began growling and yowling like a dog, quietly, so that no one could hear.

  For such a long time he had waited for the one he was destined to love with true love, and now it seemed the Alpha of Alphas was playing a cruel joke on him.

  She was not human - she was one of the wolf-kind - a Welfing. It’s not that he cared about that - he would have loved her whatever she happened to be - but the Welfing were Unfallen and he knew that if she loved him, she was doomed to suffer, for his lifespan was so small compared to hers. He would have to die and abandon her, long before she died, if the legends of the Unfallen were true.

  Like everyone in Ultima Thule, Zev had heard the legends of the Welfings when he had lived over there for three years2; in that time that he had learned the language of that place and the customs of the elves, gnomes, trolls and other strange beings, although he had never encountered the fauns.

  Or Welfings. He would have believed fauns existed, but if anyone had asked him he would have said that the Welfing were only legends, stories, fairytales.

  The Welfing, like all the Unfallen, were effectively immortal, according to the stories. Like the Hwellwellyn Elves who were also Unfallen, few of the Welfing left First Den, for they were safe there - they can never die from sickness or old age, only through misadventure, mistake or murder - in their own world these things seldom happen, for they live in peace as one pack under the Alpha of Alphas and things are different there. There is no entropy - no death or illness or decay - none of that quality of fallibility that our world possesses, where things tend to break down, or go wrong for no reason and mistakes and disasters happen more often than it seems they should.

  When they come to our realms the Hwellwellyn do not grow sick or old - is this true of the Welfings as well?

  If the legends were true…

  But to love Zev, would Zelf have to trade in her immortality? It seemed logical. If they married she would become one flesh with him, part of the Fallen realms, subject to some degree to entropy, the decay that seems natural and so endemic to our world, common to all the Fallen worlds.

  Perhaps he would participate to some degree in her longevity - his years would be extended. But even with that she would outlive him by many, many years - she would live for a good five or six hundred years longer than him - he would live for a hundred and twenty years if he was lucky, for such was the limit of a man’s lifespan since the days of Noah, before the realms were broken, and he doubted whether that curse could be broken.

  What good would he be to her, in his final years, when he became a dotard, a doddering, decrepit old man? Transforming into a grey-muzzled wolf once a month would probably only compound her problems. With Zelf’s sense of time, where a hundred years might well be like a day, Zev knew his final years were virtually imminent from her point of view. After he died, what would become of her? She would be left wandering like a lone wolf, suddenly mortal and bereft, alone and doomed to die.

  What right had he to do that to her? Isn’t love supposed to bring blessings, and not a curse?

  He wept. What kind of cruel joke was the Alpha of Alphas playing on him?

  Yet Zelf was surely the one in his vision.

  The one he had seen, in the vision the Alpha of Alphas had given him, long ago, of the one he would marry - and he had thought the fact that the vision showed a wolf was a symbol - a secret code for some other quality that his beloved would have.

  Oh, yes, Zev had fallen in love before, but it had never been right.

  But here she was - he had met the wolf-woman from the vision he had begun to think was merely a symbol or a dream - and she really was one of the wolf-people, with paws and fur and golden eyes.

  How could he make her endure what might be hundreds of years of loneliness after he passed away, followed by death, when it was not her destiny otherwise? Would she not be better off without him?

  Sadness and deep joy vied in his heart like a wolf fighting its prey - a single tear fell down the stubble on his cheek as he made a sound like a grizzled wolf complaining - as the whole abyssal ocean passed by the port-hole like the deep eternities of starlit space behind the full moon.

  What solution is there to this problem? Alpha of Alphas help me, he thought. Alpha of Alphas help me.

  My happiness depends on the sacrifice of another.

  Interloup Twenty Two - In the Conning Tower with Evans

  Troy.

  After dinner and darts I had gone up to the Conning Tower with Evans, for I had wanted to see what the Control Room was like.

  Zelf wasn’t here, but through the large, dome-shaped window above the brass dashboard and wheel of the submarine I could see that we were still chugging through the deep ocean at an almighty pace. I looked up - the surface of the water was a long, long way away. From time to time a squid or a shark or a small school of fish would swim past, but most of the time there was nothing. Just particles of dust in the watery abyss through which we were passing.

  “Why is there no one steering?” I asked, a little concerned.

  Evans scratched his head.

  He said, “I suppose we are drifting... But the engines seem to be running still, don’t they? Hear that throbbing sound? I mean we seem to be going at a fair pace, actually. I honestly don’t know - perhaps there is a way of fixing the rudder so that the ship doesn’t go off course?”

  I said, “So you don’t really know what any of these mean, do you?” and pointed to the complex dashboard, a piece of brass covered with a complex latticework of levers, buttons and dials of every description.

  “Oh, no, most of these dials and things are quite elementary - exactly what one would expect on a sub-marining vessel.”

  He indicated a large device with handles sticking out from the sides and an eyeglass, like a teleoscope, only larger. The whole monstrosity distended downwards from the ceiling. Evans gingerly took one of the handles and peered into the eyeglass.

  “Nothing - it’s completely dark. I suppose it is down while we are travelling. This monstrosity is undoubtedly the uperscope - it uses mirrors and lenses and is most likely attached to a viewing teleoscope that protrudes from the top of the submarine - Zelf uses this device to look at things above the surface of the water.”

  Then he pointed to a small Vacuum Ray tube on the console, with a spinning line upon it that showed blips and bleeps of light. It was surrounded by buttons and dials. “Over here - I believe that this is the ASDICS device - the Auditory Submarine Detection Investigatory Comptroller and Sounder. We invented that, I believe, although this version appears to be vastly superior to ours.” He appeared a little peeved at that thought. “So... perhaps someone in the realm where this submarine was constructed invented it first. Darnit.”

  Suddenly the ship’s wheel jerked, and of its own accord began rotating slowly to starboard. Gears and cogs clicked and whirred in the dashboard, then the wheel jerked again and stopped of its own accord.

  I cried out, “Is it a ghost?”

  Evans shook his head. “No. No, not this time.” His eyes, staring at the dashboard, were wide with admiration.

  “Fascinating, fascinating - undoubtedly the Automatic Captain is on. The ship is steering itself, apparently. Some sort of Comptometric process, by which the device compensates for the shifting and changing of the seas. The submarine continues on the same course, regardless of the push and pull of the ocean currents. I wonder if it’s attached to the ASDICS device?”

  Lifting his monacle to his right eye, Evans bent over the dashboard and examined the Automatic Captain closely, leaning forwards, balanced dubiously on one leg. I was a little worried about his precarious angle, so I said, “Watch out, Evans - you’re about to touch one of the le-”

  Speaking to me in the tone of voice of a teacher telling off a recalcitrant child, Evans said, “It’s alright, boy, my left hand knows exactly what my right hand is doing!” But
it didn’t look like it - in fact he was flopping his hands about in a very unstable manner.

  I said, “Don’t touch anything Evans. It looks to me as though you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  He was almost keeling over to peer at the dials at the top of the dashboard. He insisted “I have been in plenty of military vessels. Why this dashboard is elementary, elementary - the operation ought to be an easy perplexible to puzzle out.”

  Just as he said this his left foot slipped back and he fell forward and cried out, “Oh, Lord preserve me!” as his shoulder shoved the dashboard violently, bumping one of the levers forwards the whole way. A cog shuddered deep in the submarine’s stern, even as Evans hastily jumped back and jerked the lever back to its middle position.

  The stern engine shuddered again, and Evans jiggled the lever a little to and fro and said, “Oh dear. I do hope that’s right - I - I think that’s where it was - I’m not really sure where it was.” He stood back and examined the dashboard. His hands were shaking uncontrollably like seaweed in a strong underwater current. The engine continued throbbing and the submarine continued on its course for some time without incident, but Evans still held his breath as though he expected a disaster at any moment.

  I felt no sympathy for him whatsoever, for he had ignored my advice.

  Nothing happened for a long while.

  Finally Evans heaved out a sigh of relief and began breathing normally again. He squeaked out, “Well, no pain, if nothing to gain. Admirable contraption, absolutely admirable. What technology these Otherworlders have - things that we English couldn’t possibly compete with. Not yet, anyhow. Though we’re trying our best.”

  An alarm ear piercingly loud began to blare out, echoing throughout the corridors. Giving a loud, high-pitched, feminine cry, Evans leaped backwards.

  A light was blinking on the dashboard, right next to the Vacuum Ray Tube, on which a blip had appeared at the very edge of the screen, at the top, and the steering wheel was shaking as though someone was trying to gain control of it.

  Evans panicked, then seemed to get control of himself. Peering at the Vacuum Ray tube through his monocle he cried out, “It’s alright, it’s alright, don’t panic, boy, it’s just the ASDICS alarm! Zelf will hear it presently I’m sure - she will come up here and help, soon, you can be certain of that. It’s alright, everything will be fine.”

  I suspected his reassurances were more for his own benefit than for mine.

  Zelf came rushing through the air-lock a few moments later.

  Evans blurted out, “I’m terribly sorry, I - I - touched one of the levers.”

  Zelf was drawing switches and pushing and pulling levers all over the place, and I could only admire her proficiency at operating the complicated device.

  After a minute or two in which Evans was left standing in a comical state of complete discomfort, she finally stepped back, as though she had done all she could do, and glanced at him.

  She said, “It’s alright. No harm done. It wasn’t you, Evans - we’re approaching something large in the water - the ASDICS alarm sounded, that’s all. It’s probably just a Germanischen U-boat - they’ve been lurking in the North Sea lately and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve come this far north as well... No, wait...”

  Evans took a deep breath, cleared his throat and nodded down at me knowledgeably.

  “Ahem. There you are, boy, just as I told you - the ASDICS alarm... And what do you know - she’s right about the U-boats, too - Hister began rebuilding them earlier this year.”

  Zelf took hold of the wheel and pulled it to the right. She said, “We’re going hard to starboard. I’ve shut down the engine and I’m putting on the water brakes. Whatever it is, it’s very large - and it’s not a U-boat, unless Hister is making very, very big ones - much too large.”

  The engines were making a grinding sound.

  Zelf looked up at us.

  She said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we have found ourselves an uncharted island.”

  Interloup Twenty Three - Uncharted Island, Almost Full Moon

  Zelf

  Zelf steered the submarine around, and the engines came to a stop. She raised the uperscope and peered through it.

  The moon was almost full. It cast an eerie light over everything.

  As she had thought there was an island on the starboard side of the ship; basically a grey, lifeless pile of strange, large boulders, at the edge of a huge, bald crater that seemed to extend into the sea, with hardly any plants or trees upon it - just a few scraggly pine trees and some bracken and thistles growing from unlikely cracks and crevices in the stone at the foreground.

  Zev and Jonas arrived at the bridge as well.

  She glanced away from the uperscope, seeing Zev, and an upward bent touched her muzzle. Zev’s eyes smiled back.

  She turned from him, pointed to the wall and said, “Look at this,” and pressed a button on the uperscope. A riveted panel divided - it would have looked like a typical port-hole cover to them - but it opened up to reveal a large vacuum ray tube.

  The screen flickered into life and the image of the moonlit island appeared, complete with the scraggly old pine trees, the crater, the rocks, the boulders, and a pebbled beach with turbulent surf churning in the foreground. “It is the island... It is a landscape not unlike that of your own moon, actually. Almost lifeless, rocky, with crags and craters upon it.”

  She felt amused at their puzzled expressions. They would wonder how she knew what their moon looked like at the surface - let them wonder.

  “What technology,” whispered Evans, clearly awe-struck. “How in Hades does this device work?”

  “The uperscope is able to send an image to a radiovision scanner. Observe -” She turned a small wheel at the base of the uperscope and the image expanded. The humans looked so amazed at this feat that she felt she had to explain that technology as well. “It’s a proportional-focus varifocal lens. I can focus on a small part of the image. There, look at that -” Two of the trees now filled the screen, and between them in the distance was a tiny cottage, nestled between two enormous boulders, on the inside edge of the lip of the crater, on the far side.

  Jonas raised his eyebrows and said, “I know they have zoom lenses on some of the cinematic cameras, but none have a magnification level anything like yours.”

  Evans said, “And this island is not on any of the charts?”

  Zelf realised that Evans was stupider than she had assumed - any intelligent Welfing would have been able to extrapolate their position from the dials - and it was a comforting thought that Evans was stupid. Her submarine would be safe from such a dolt.

  Mind you, she thought, he is a spy - perhaps this idiocy is just a ruse.

  She spoke slowly to him, as though he was a cub barely away from his mother’s teats. “We are in the Norway Sea, Evans; sixty five degrees five minutes north, four degrees thirty nine minutes west.”

  Zelf pulled out a drawer on the dashboard and a kind of brass table came out with a large, detailed ocean chart on top. She waved her hand at a large area of open sea and said, “We’re in the Fram Strait - the ocean is extremely deep here, two thousand metres at its shallowest. This island should not exist here. Evans, what do your instruments say about the cracks in the æther - the ley lines - here? Could this anomaly be an encroachment from one of the other worlds? An interlocutor from Ultima Thule?”

  Evans stammered, “I - I don’t know, I - I wouldn’t have any clue... I haven’t set up the machine yet. I didn’t know where you wanted me to set it up.”

  Zelf felt her throat constrict with anger. She tried not to snarl, suppressed her wolfish temper - humans usually did not respond very well when she bared her teeth. She said, “Your part of the bargain is that you are looking for the gateway - the place where the barriers are weak, Evans - why are you here on my ship, if not to do that? I told you - put it in the radio room. You do know where that is don’t you? Here you ar
e in the Conning Tower, looking at my dashboard, fiddling with the controls - I am beginning to think you are trying to steal my submarine, or at least spying on me in order to steal this technology. You have a job to do, Evans. Don’t you realise that if this island is from one of the other worlds then we can cross over here? But even if it isn’t - it is rather a coincidence that we end up here now, isn’t it? At an island that shouldn’t exist? We need to know, Evans, one way or the other. Does this island belong to Earth, Ultima Thule, or is it from somewhere else entirely?”

  Evans’ eyes widened.

  “I - I’ll set it up right away.”

  He rushed out, but turned on his heel and poked his head back through the air-lock and asked her, “Where do you want me to set up?”

  Zelf answered with an exasperated howl, “There are English power points in the radio transmission room - it’s downstairs in the forequarters - the points that match your equipment have the same voltage and frequency as the English Alternating Current. But please, please, restrain your curiosity - I’m begging you, Evans, don’t fiddle with any of the other controls. You might actually do some damage next time.”

  He sprinted back out and Jonas followed him.

  She commented to me, “Troy, I’m putting down the anchor. Get some sleep. In the morning put some warm clothes on; boots, gloves, hats, scarves, and whatever else you may need - it’s very cold out there. I really think we ought to go over to the island and see who lives in that cottage, no matter what turns up on Evans’ equipment. One never knows. This could be an opportunity placed in our path by the Alpha of Alphas...”

  At that moment, Zev walked in.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said apologetically. “What’s going on?”

  Zelf waved her paw at the charts and said, “We found an island where one should not exist. Zev - would you please go down and sit with Evans - have a nap if you need to - but if Evans should discover anything during his Ætheric Detectors, come up please and wake me up? I need some proper sleep - while you lot were sleeping I was working and setting the automatic captain. In the morning we’re going to go over there and see if the island itself can tell us why it is there. I think that, even if it isn’t a meeting place of the ley lines, it has some relationship to the other realm you call Ultima Thule.”

  Interloup Twenty Four - Seek and You Shall Find

  Zev

  Zev nodded, quickly went and retrieved his coat and scarf from his cabin, and climbed down one of the hatches into the lower level of the submarine. At the very front of the submarine he found Evans setting up the contraption in what was clearly the radio transmission room.

  When Zev walked in, Evans was tightening some large steel bolts around his contraption with a spanner, and Jonas was holding the frame steady. Evans acknowledged Zev’s presence with a curt nod, and said, “This is the state of the science technology, Zev, right up to the moment. You shouldn’t even know that it exists, as a layman. Extra-high-level top secret and all that, so don’t go babbling.”

  Zev couldn’t help noticing how ironic Evans’ comment was, in light of the contrast between Zelf’s shiny radio dashboard with its tiny circuits and detailed wiring, and the clumsy, brutish design of the English device. Evans’ contraption appeared primitive and under-developed alongside the sleek brass design of the submarine’s radio dashboard, as incongruous as a mediæval tower clock beside a small Roccoco timepiece from the late seventeenth century.

  Evans’ contraption was very much like the machine in the warehouse, which Zev hadn’t seen; but the boy had described it to him. This one appeared to be smaller than the one the boy had described, with less moving parts - it was basically a large ring, with a circumference of about twelve feet, formed of metal boxes- and the boxes were joined together with wires and hinges, with electric coils and large vacuum valves sprouting from it, jutting out at various angles.

  There was no mechanism for printing punched cards on this one; just a small vacuum tube screen on a panel next to some dials and levers and buttons.

  Jonas looked up at Zev and said, “Yup. Don’t go blabbin’. Or babblin’.”

  After he had finished tightening the bolts Evans tested the vacuum tubes to make sure they were plugged in properly. Then he checked the bolts again.

  Finally Evans finished the job and laid the spanner aside. He played with a few switches and levers, and a dismayed look crossed his face as nothing happened. He said, “Oh- what’s wrong?”

  He reached down and grabbed the electric cord, searched the dashboard for a little while with his eyes, then said, “Ah! There,” and plugged it in. The vacuum valves around the outside of the ring heated up and began glowing with a warm light and the contraption hummed slowly into life.

  A glowing line appeared on the vacuum ray tube, sweeping around like the second hand on a clock-face, with patches of light appearing and vanishing in its wake.

  “One momentary minute,” said Evans, and he turned a dial. The image seemed to focus on one of the patches of light. He turned another dial and a squiggly wave pattern appeared, being rewritten constantly slightly differently so that it appeared to be drifting slowly across. Evans twiddled the dials until the wave pattern stayed still.

  “What does it mean?” whispered Jonas.

  “Hmmm,” said Evans. “This island does indeed come from Somewhere Else, quite another universe, a different realm, but not recently, I would say. It’s been here in our realm for quite a while - a long, long time. Many years, hundreds of years perhaps. We cannot use this place as a doorway into Ultima Thule - the ley lines are too ancient, too weak, they’ve been degraded by the passage of time. But if someone lives in that old cottage they may well be able to tell us something about what happened, or even where the real entrance is...”

  So Zelf was right again. She usually was.

  Evans suddenly looked directly at Zev. “Zelf is quite the intuitive, isn’t she?”

  Zev nodded cagily, unsure if his... feelings for her had shown.

  Evans said, “I think she has taken a shine to you, Zev - that wolf-woman treats me like her most bitter enemy. But you seem to have gotten to her, somehow. Well done, friend - be sure to tell everything you learn from her to me - this thing could give us an edge in our war against Hister.”

  “What do you mean, this thing?” Zev said, taking hold of Evans’ shoulder. “I’m not sure about your attitude, Evans. As though Zelf is merely an object, a tool.”

  Evans’ eyes shifted to the side and he said, “No, you have it wrong. You know - this thing - this contraptible - this submarine - this technology,” leaving the suggestion hanging.

  Zev turned away and half-mumbled, “Zelf wanted me to tell her the minute you found something.”

  “Oh. Go ahead then,” said Evans, in a tone of voice that questioned Zev’s loyalty.

  Zev snapped, “His Majesty’s marvelous government kept me locked up in Bedlam mental asylum for seven years, Evans, for believing in things like this. You think I owe the government of Great Britain anything?” He turned on his heel and walked to the ladder.

  As Zev put his foot on the ladder Evans pleaded almost plaintively, “Well, I did get you out of there, you know, Zev!”

  Zev almost stopped on the ladder and turned around and hit him.

  Evans had only got him out now because he needed him - Zev had actually remembered Evans poking his little head into his tiny padded room in Bedlam before a number of times over the past five years, and the dirty little rat had never lifted a single claw to help him until he needed him.

  Zev shook his head. These humans are all the same.

  Then he remembered that he was human, too.

  Mostly, anyway.

  He growled under his breath and felt sad and ashamed, unsure if it was because he was a traitor to his own kind or because he was ashamed of the selfishness, that terrible self-centredness that people call human nature, that he knew was at the core of his own being as well.
<
br />   Zelf.

  Such a contrast.

  He wasn’t sure that other people - other human beings, he meant - would approve of his feelings for her - well, she was almost human, for a wolf. She wasn’t an animal by any means. No, that wasn’t it, Zelf was more than human - kinder, more gentle, more humane in every way.

  He stopped halfway up the ladder.

  The wolf part of him was the best part.

  He suddenly realised that he worshipped the ground her four paws trod on, every atom her snout breathed out. The dust of his bones would keep loving the musky scent of her fur and her golden-yellow eyes when he was gone. Every atom in him loved her, her wolf-ness, her Zelf-self, and would keep loving her even when every last atom that made him was scattered to the four winds of the Cosmos. And the memory of him, the impression his last breath made on the air, would keep on loving her and seeking her, as though he still trod on all four paws and could wander the wildlands, right to the end of every universe, even to the end of Ultima Thule.

  He gasped and leant against the wall. He felt short of breath suddenly.

  He had to be wise.

  He must keep these feelings hidden.

  Heaven knows, Zelf herself could be endangered by his feelings for her - he knew little of Welfing custom but he was sure that marriages with humans were not approved.

  The Unfallen were certainly not fond of those from the Fallen realms, he knew that much.

  And Evans - if Evans knew that he loved Zelf - he might think Zev had become a security risk in Evans’ eyes - a risk to England.

  Blast Evans. Blast everyone. He would do what he liked.

  Zev climbed up the ladder again, climbed out into the corridor and strode down towards Zelf’s cabin wondering, should he wake her up with this news? In fact it really was so trivial. Would he be annoying her? It was nothing - just that the island was from Ultima Thule a very long time ago. It was not the news they were looking for and she was very tired, probably sound asleep.

  He should tell her anyway.

  He knocked on the door of her cabin.

  Zelf said, “What’s wrong?” The tumult of his thoughts in the short journey down the corridor must have shown on his face. He simply sighed - it was too much to explain.

  Zelf looked at him wolfishly, and he looked back at her and he just about lapped up the sight, more than if he had had a double scotch on the rocks. He laughed in a low growl.

  Suddenly he felt that, actually, everything would be alright.

  Zelf said, “Did Evans find out something?”

  Zev sighed again and said, “Evans has discovered that the island does come from Ultima Thule, however it was a long, long time ago. Not recently. We can’t use the ley lines here; they’re too ancient and their power has atrophied. But he seems to agree with you that going to see whoever might be living in that cottage is a good idea.”

  Zelf said, “Exactly. Well, if there isn’t anything else, I’m going back to bed. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

  She closed the door, and Zev was left standing there in the corridor, wishing that he could have thought of some way to make their conversation last longer.

  Interloup Twenty Five - That Very Moment

  Zelf

  She lay in her bed, still awake, thinking. The ocean deeps travelled silently past her port-hole.

  She thought back to that dinner, to afterwards, when she had been talking with Zev. That moment when she had realised that Zev was just like her - he had suffered just as she had.

  Zelf’s heart had warmed to Zev in that very moment, awesomely, terribly, perhaps even irreversibly.

  He was strong and true and wise and good.

  He seemed to be so very much like her - he was the same as her - cut from the same cloth. This was what she had sought and prayed for and waited for - the one destined to be the Alpha of her heart.

  That the one destined for her might be complementary to her was not something she had considered. That what differences or similarities there might be, might have been designed by the Alpha of Alphas to make them suitable for one another in a more complex way, the way that a key fits a lock that it is designed for, was something she had not even thought of nor conceived.

  And that he might be imperfect - a sinner - in the way that all the sons of Adam and Eve are - was something that could not have even entered her mind either. She hardly realised how different humans are from the Hwellwellyn - the Unfallen and the Fallen. Of course, the Welfings are somewhere in between...

  All she knew was that her heart told her here was a soul companion, a wolf that seemed to be everything she had been seeking, waiting for, longing for.

  And she loved him in that moment, as she had never loved another. In her heart she said to herself, “This human, though he be no true Welfing, is the one for me. He is the king of my heart. I know that, and it is true forever. For he is just like me.”

  The perfect world she came from - the world where, nonetheless, she was one of the few who had suffered - was a place where she could not conceive of the sorrowful and twisted nature that every human being has - no being in the universe is as broken as a human - except for Afazel and his followers, of course, who are broken irrevocably, for all anyone knows, although even that is a secret in the heart of the Alpha of Alphas. But humans - all are twisted - all are broken - yet not forever, if they will have it. There is still grace for the sons and daughters of Adam, if they will yield.

  She didn’t consider the cost of loving a human.

  She didn’t even think of what she knew - that for any of the Hwellwellyn; not just Welfingkind, the wolf-people, but elves as well - any of the Unfallen who might wish to love a human - the cost they must pay to follow this desire is their immortality.

  The cost didn’t even enter into the equation, for her.

  She loved him, and that was the end of any questions. He was destined to be the Alpha of her heart, and that was that.

  For the first time in a long time, her shame was forgotten, the reason why she had left the First Den.

  And then she fell asleep and dreamed of the forests of her home, and cubs, Welfing pups of her own, and Zev was a Welfing beside her.

  Interloup Twenty Six - Across The Crater

  Troy

  As soon as Zelf told me to go to bed, I went to my room and slept.

  In the morning I went through my suitcase and found a jacket, a woolen shirt, a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, and some warm trousers. I felt grateful to Evans in that moment, for he was the one who had purchased all these clothes for me.

  After getting dressed I made my way back to the Conning Tower. I met Zelf and Zev half way there. Zev was climbing up to the upper level, and Zelf said, “Come along, Troy. We’re taking the boat to shore.”

  I climbed up after Zelf, and Jonas and Evans were already there. There was a fifteen foot dinghy in the middle of a large domed hold, that I realised must have been located just behind the Conning Tower.

  Zelf closed the air-lock behind us and we all clambered into the boat. It was five feet wide, more than large enough for all of us. They seated me at the front, “You’re the lightest,” explained Zelf, and the others each took a seat next to one of the four oars.

  Zelf reached across and pressed a button on a wall panel. Smoothly and silently the brass domed roof slid open and the sea rushed in to fill the hold. In moments the boat was floating on a thin layer of salt water, that was rising.

  Soon we were making our way across the rough, tumultuous ocean, towards the island, constantly splashed by foam and salty seawater. Zev, Zelf, Evans and Jonas were hauling on the oars. The boat mounted each wave, then plummeted, then up and down once more - this see-sawing went on and on and I began to feel ill. Finally we flopped down onto the pebbled beach like dead fish, as though the ocean had coughed us up.

  Zev and Evans pulled the boat further onto the beach and tied it to one of the knobbly, gnarly pines. The freezing wind wa
s biting my cheeks, and each breath I took chilled my lungs unpleasantly.

  As we made our way up and over the edge of the crater, and across it to the cottage, the cold wind buffeted us, and it continued even when we reached the bottom of the crater. It continued to blow and bluster until we had reached the far side, and the gap between the two huge boulders at the top edge of the crater. Suddenly, all was calm - an oasis of peace in the middle of the tempest - indeed, we could hear the wind roaring outside, but neither the wind nor the rain reached us while we walked between the two huge, dominating boulders.

  Evans knocked on the cottage door.

  The door opened and a gnarled, twisted, bent old woman was standing there. The pupils of her eyes were white with cataracts, but she stared directly at Evans as though she could see him anyway, somehow.

  In a voice more croaky than a crow’s caw, she said, “What do you want? What are you doing here on my island?”

  Evans asked, “May we come in, madam?”

  The old woman bared her teeth and snarled at Evans, peered around him at Zelf, and her whole manner changed to sweetness in the blink of an eye.

  She said, “Now just look at this one. You are one of them, aren’t you dear? One of the Welfing? My word, how very rare, you really aren’t from this world, are you? How fascinating, how very fascinating. I had no idea the wolf people even existed still. Come in, come in... Make yourselves welcome...”

  She waved at an ancient wooden table in the middle of the room, surrounded by six chairs. We went in and each took a chair. Then she casually pointed a bony finger at the door and a sudden gust of wind blew it shut. Had she made that happen? Or was it merely a coincidence?

  I felt ill at ease in the cottage already, and seeing her do that didn’t make it any better.

  Excruciatingly slowly, the old woman hobbled over to an old wood stove in the corner, took the kettle off the boil, poured six cups of tea, and placed them on a tea tray, which she brought over so precariously - it was tipping from side to side with tea sloshing out - that I had to stop myself from leaping up to save them.

  Finally she reached the table and we all took our cups off the teatray before she tried to pass them over to us.

  She sat down smugly and stared at Zelf with her strange white eyes.

  “Kuchuiölhønd miryr hvaÞ 'vanees whæ héreð.”

  To my surprise I understood exactly what the old woman was saying:

  ‘Tell me why you are here and what you want.’

  Zelf said, “Zhsheam 'ørfæ Anneryr 'Trilfameuns”

  We are seeking a way to the other realms.

  The old woman leant forwards and asked, “Zhsheeð whæ anneryr 'trilfameuns whæ hérenan?”

  Why do you people seek to go into the other worlds here and now?

  Zelf said, “Sdhøndand hér marchir þiessis 'uiöles bij annerøm 'trilfameøm luksa’eð. Lustanø ‘lfakårørea ffaiöluhøndyr. Unðeremüiölees meroffastæs mires nfahatreæ to annermis 'trilfamemis mid vashimeun finðanæun n’fakineæ.”

  This island stinks of other worlds, and there are many cracks here in the æther. I desire to return to my home. My submarine can travel to the other worlds if we can find the right place.

  The old woman said, “Og 'ümthnees annerand þiessisuns?”

  And you trust these other ones?

  Zelf said in English, “More or less. In any case, two of them speak trogthen, so this conversation is hardly private, anyhow.”

  The old woman switched back to English as well, but she spoke in conspiratorial whispers, as though someone outside - or something - might hear her if she spoke any louder, “Mmm. Ahhh. Beware! Beware edraken-sjogvures, that ancient beast that lies in wait beneath the waves, in the deep, dark places of the ocean. The Norse call him Kraken - he dwells only where the ocean goes down, down, down, and from the dark realm of the deepest chasm he guards the cracks in the fabric of time that lead to the other realms. With one single arm - er - tentacle, the Kraken - edraken - could crush your vessel into particles of dust. Beware!”

  The old woman cackled as though the thought of Zelf’s submarine being crushed was funny.

  I shuddered.

  The old woman leaned forward again. “Bring me with you and I will help you. I know how to escape the Kraken. I can help you find the cracks in the æther. Bring me with you, Welfing! Allow me to come with you!”

  Evans recoiled visibly, as though the thought of the old woman joining them on their journey was awful to contemplate.

  Zelf looked around at us, her wolfish face inscrutable, her eyes narrow. She looked back at the old woman.

  “Alright,” said Zelf. “Alright. If you agree to a few conditions.”

  The old woman smiled a gap-toothed grin that showed her unhealthy, pallid gums, and I felt afraid.

  I didn’t want her on the submarine with us.

  There was something creepy about her.

  “Conditions,” said the old woman, “Well, you’re the captain, obviously.”

  Zelf agreed. “You would have to obey me, for the sake of the Alpha of Alpha’s honour.”

  “Hehe,” said the old woman. “All the gods have honour but Loki, as the saying goes. But wouldn’t you prefer to leave the gods out of it?”

  Zelf said, “No - you are wrong.”

  The old woman snapped, “Alright, bring the gods into it then.”

  Zelf said, “No, I meant, the Alpha of Alphas is not one of the gods.”

  The old woman nodded.

  “Agreed. The Alpha of Alphas, as you Welfings call him, is higher than all gods. But I cannot offer you Ellulianæn’s honour, but only my own honour, for what it is worth. On my own honour, which is as great as can be, considering, I would obey everything you say while I am on your ship, Captain. Under these conditions I offer you my obedience, Captain. I offer you my honour, which is worth everything I have said of it.”

  Zelf nodded at that. She trusted the old woman, clearly, on the basis of the promise she had made.

  But Evans didn’t look happy at all.

  I don’t think he trusted her any more than I did.

  Even so, the decision was only Zelf’s to make, and she had made it.

  We finished our tea and then made our way back across the cratered island silently.

  The trip back across the ocean was much more difficult. The wind and the waves were against us, and Evans, Zelf, Zev and Jonas, who had the oars, had to work much harder this time, since we also had an extra passenger.

  The old woman sat at the bow and I sat at the stern, for they judged me to be the heavier of the two of us.

  I watched her clinging to the side of the boat, and I thought to myself that she did not seem weak at all - her hands were certainly arthritic and crippled - but she was extremely determined. No matter how high the boat rose on the waves or how deep it plummeted into the troughs, she kept her grip on the boat’s side, even when I was on the verge of losing my grip.

  I watched her. I decided that there was something very unnatural about her - that was what I thought - for I had known other old people, and she simply did not seem to fit. I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  Returning to the submarine took at least three times as long as it had taken to go to the island, not least because a storm was blowing up. Zelf, Zev, Jonas and Evans were absolutely exhausted by the time we alighted on the docking bay. The sea was much more turbulent now, and Zelf tied off the dinghy and leapt off into the waist deep water. She reached a paw forward and pressed a button and the roof slid back over again, and the water that had filled the place beforehand rushed out through an invisible plughole.

  Just as the roof closed an enormous smashing, crashing sound came from the hull - a wave, larger than the others, had hit the submarine - and a strange grinding sound came from below. We all fell to the other side as the submarine lurched over towards the island.

  A distant clank, clank, clank sounded from below.

 
; Zelf cried out, “The anchor - it has come loose! I must get to the Conning Tower before we are smashed into smithereens against the rocks!” She leapt down the hatch as the submarine lurched from side to side. Though I ran after her as quickly as I could, Zelf was way ahead of us by now - I could hear her two-legged gait turning into the four-legged gait of a wolf, pitter patter, down the corridor and up into the Conning Tower.

  The engines exploded into life, chugging at full speed, and the inertia pushed us backwards onto the floor as the submarine strained against the force of the ocean waves.

  The whole corridor jockeyed from side to side, and even though I had grasped one of the handrails I could not stop myself from being slammed into the metal wall, forwards, backwards, and thrown about randomly as the waves began pommelling the side of the submarine.

  Suddenly the whole world tilted - the corridor had leaned right over so that the bow of the submarine was facing down, and the stern was upwards; I found myself hanging by the handrail with my feet swinging below me. I looked up. The old woman was above me, still standing perpendicular to the floor, quite relaxed, crazily unaffected by gravity.

  I had seen the Salvador Dali paintings in that 1934 issue of Life magazine - it was like looking at one of them.

  The old woman looked perfectly composed, standing at complete odds to possibility.

  I gasped at this shocking incongruity, then another great wave battered the hull and my head snapped downwards. Below me Zev, Evans and Jonas were all there, hanging from the handrail with their feet flopping around just as I was.

  Then everything had righted itself and the turbulence had ended as suddenly as it had begun.

  I wasn’t even sure of what I had seen a moment ago. Had I really seen the old woman, virtually floating stock-still in mid air, while the rest of us were tossed around like flotsam in a storm blast? Perhaps I had imagined it, or misinterpreted what I had seen - she was lying on the ground now, very weak, and Zev was helping her to get up.

  Zelf’s voice piped over the koinophone.

  “Sorry about that everyone - I had to dive to get away from the storm; we’ve gone over the edge of the canyon - we’ll be alright now. I hope the old woman’s alright. Bring her up here, if she is, and we’ll talk about how we’re going to find the place where the cracks in the æther are.”

  But a moment later a small shudder shook the submarine and the koinophone buzzed into life again.

  “Wait a moment... I have a very strong signal on the ASDICS... What could it be?”

  And a few seconds later, Zelf’s voice crackled again, “Üdvé! That island is no island!”

  Interloup Twenty Seven - the Wolf that Ate the Moon

  Zelf

  The submarine lurched forwards as Zelf pushed the boilers as far as they would go. The hull shook, and low groans and strange shriek-like yawns came from every corner of the submarine’s hull.

  Zelf heard the others running up the corridor, which was almost horizontal again. She heard them clambering up the ladder into the Conning Tower. Jonas burst through the airlock first and cried out, “The hull is springing leaks, Zelf - you are going too deep! Take us back up to the top.”

  But Zelf was in furrow-browed concentration at the wheel, in a state of deep fugue, as the submarine forged through the deep, dark waters.

  The island behind them, she had realised, was no island - it was something massive, much larger than a blue whale - and it seemed to be chasing them.

  It could only be Kraken.

  Ellulianæn, they had walked on that thing.

  She had thought to dive to avoid it, but it followed them into the trench. Instead she must calculate the best escape trajectory possible - a straight line away from the massive beast.

  As though from a great distance, she heard Evans’ shaky voice saying, “By Üdvé. We are travelling at a depth of fourteen hundred feet. Surely we’re close to crush depth.”

  Zelf said, “This submarine has been tested to nine hundred feet, Evans - seventy three shragkin. But I don’t actually know what ultimate crush depth is.”

  Evans gripped her forepaw with both hands and his voice went as high-pitched as a sea-bird squawking, “What are you doing? Why are you doing this to us?”

  “Look at the uperscope.” Zelf said, shaking off his hand and indicating the uperscope screen. “And don’t disturb me! I’m concentrating.”

  The uperscope showed the view from the stern. The colossal Kraken took up the entire width of the screen, an enormous dark shape.

  Evans whispered, “My God. Look at the ASDICS. It’s huge. It could only be the Kraken. The old woman was right.”

  Zelf noticed the old woman cackling quietly - what did she have to cackle about?- but she pushed the thought out of her mind.

  She had to go faster.

  Zelf shoved the throttle forward as far as it would go. The boiler dial had gone all the way around once and was jiggling and bobbing against the top, twice past the red zone. Never before had she pushed the boiler so far, but it was designed for high pressure - it was on the outside of the ship - the crushing depth was aiding their speed by keeping the boiler intact.

  Nonetheless, at a certain temperature, it would crack, it really would.

  Well, actually, according to every theory she knew, it should have cracked already.

  The Kraken was below them now, about thirty degrees below the horizon, but it was so huge that it was behind them as well. She looked at the kleinometer. They were level. She emptied the ballast tanks and lowered the fins until the bow was pointing upwards sixty degrees, then opened the throttle fully again.

  Zelf only hoped they had enough diesel to get away.

  But the Kraken was getting closer.

  The old woman cackled and her voice went very low as she said, “That is the Kraken. You have made him angry.”

  Everyone protested at once, and Zelf, turning her head away from the console for a moment, made the loudest noise, a wolf’s bark, “Why?”

  The old woman smiled eerily and spoke softly, “His back is the moon’s reflection and his arms are the mountains below the waves and his face is the sea floor at the depths of the deepest ocean trench. His breath is the volcano’s fume erupting, and his heart beats blacker than the dark at the bottom of the sea. You walked on his back and you woke him up from his slumber. He wants you, now.”

  Zelf shook her mane and barked out, “For Üdvé’s sake, why on earth did I accept you as my passenger? You are so creepy. What on earth does she mean? Crazy old woman.”

  “That island!” cried Jonas, waving his arms about. “That island - don’t you see? - it was the Kraken. That’s what she means. The island is the Kraken. We walked on it’s back.”

  Evans said, “Are you an idiot, Jonas? The rest of us worked that out fifteen minutes ago.”

  The old woman looked annoyed, as though she didn’t like the fact that Jonas had worked out her riddle.

  Zelf said in low tones, “Evans, can you drive her?”

  Evans shouted, “What? What did you say? Can I drive who?”

  Zelf barked, “Can you captain the submarine? Can you take over from me?”

  Evans, looking quite shocked, stammered, “I- I say! - y-yes - yes, I should say I could, I suppose. If you want me to I’d be honoured.”

  “Do it. Take over now.”

  Zelf leapt up, becoming her four-legs form as she did so, and Evans jumped into her seat and took hold of the ship’s wheel. She pounced upon the old woman, pushing her backwards with her front paws onto the floor, landed on top of her and took her throat in her jaws, gently but firmly.

  In the same moment Zev transformed into a wolf as well and stood next to her, wearing a slightly shocked expression. Perhaps he hadn’t realised it was the full moon.

  Jonas gasped and fell backwards against the bulkhead and said, “What in blazes just ‘appened? Where’s Zev gone? Zelf? What are these wolves? Get off her! Get off her!” Jo
nas started flailing his arms at them.

  Evans said, “Shut up Jonas and sit down!”, which he did.

  The old woman tried to get up, but Zelf gave her a great push with her forepaws that kept her on the floor.

  The old woman cawed, “What do you think you’re doing, wolfy?”

  Almost incomprehensible, Zelf growled, “Who are you?”

  Wolf drool dribbled onto the old woman’s face.

  The old woman’s face changed into the sneering, mocking face of a young man, and his whole body followed, in a strangely rubbery shloop... A slender man lay there, with wiry muscles, wearing a fur coat around his shoulders, a linen tunic, and a small, neat, ornately decorated horned hat; for all the world he looked like a viking from the sixth century except that he wore no beard.

  Despite this change, Zelf still held him fast.

  He spoke without moving his mouth, “Alright, alright, you win.”

  Jonas, still sitting on the floor, grabbed his head with both hands and cried out, “Oh, Üdvé, how can that be? He’s talking in our minds.”

  Evans looked over from the console.

  He said, “The Kraken is withdrawing - if that is what it is.”

  “Oo are you?” repeated Zelf, finding it hard to pronounce the words clearly with her jaws still around his neck.

  Zev growled even more incomprehensibly, “All she need do snap her theeth shut.” (He had never tried talking while he was a wolf before that, and didn’t quite have the art of it.)

  The young man said in their minds, “Alright, alright. I am Lochüra, in your language Zelf, or Loki in theirs!” His voice became overpowering in their heads, “And you ought to treat me with more respect, for I am the grandfather of the wolf that ate the moon!”

  Zelf lifted her jaws away from his throat, a fraction of an inch, far enough that she could talk, but close enough that she could still snap them shut in a fraction of a second if she had to.

  She spat out, “Loki? That is a fairytale for children. What a lot of rot.”

  And she put her jaws right around his neck again.

  Like a spoilt child Loki whined, “Please! It’s true!”

  Zelf moved her head back again slightly, enough to speak. She said, “What guarantee will you give me? Guarantee our safety, Loki. You son Fenrir ate a god’s hand, did he not? If I bite your neck it may not kill you but it would still hurt you - even if you are a god! Why anyone would want to worship such a lying, thieving reprobate...”

  Loki sighed and said, “You’re right. So few people worship us these days. Even Wednesday hardly gets a prayer.”

  After this, Zev growled, “Who would want to? They sacrificed men and women to you, did they not, in the old days? Savage gods of dark barrows and cursèd blood-drenched groves. Flesh is the food of gods such as you.” He had got the hang of talking now, and it was a fearsome growl.

  Loki massaged his throat where Zelf’s teeth were pressing on it. He wiped blood off and looked at it.

  “Blood, yes, ahem. Aye, the other wolf is right. The life of a mortal is in his blood - mortal blood gives us life when they shed it willingly for us. Or unwillingly...”

  Zelf gasped - she had thought Loki just a trickster, a thief - but on hearing that a chill ran along her backbone. “How different from Hiyeswa,” said Zev angrily, “Who let himself be hung on a tree willingly for others.”

  At the name of Hiyeswa Loki’s form suddenly changed so that they could see that his lips were sewn together so that he could not speak. Yet even so, he could sneer, and there is nothing more chilling than a sneer, on lips that are sewn shut.

  And Loki’s sneer snarkled in his voice in their thoughts as he snarled,“How I long for the old days - you humans are such fools - wedding yourselves to the High God, or to nothing but your own fool appetites, now - life was so much better back then when the kings were sacrificing young men every ninth year - they always gave one or two to me just in case - Wednesday never really wanted his sacrifices so I usually got to eat them as well - ah! Halcyon days! For those days when they sang songs in the sacred groves and had their bodies burned in my honour, or let themselves be strangled - and slaves offered themselves on the funeral pyres of their masters, to accompany them to the other world - what halcyon days they were!”

  Zelf had had enough.

  “Stop jaw-wagging, sewn-up-shut-snout - for my snout is getting tired - I’m about to snap it shut to end it all for you -”

  Loki said, “Alright. Alright. It always seems to come to this. I give you my word that I will not harm any of you, but I swear by... the High King... not by my own name, which is worthless as you know.” He chuckled. “I pledge that I will not harm you on your way into the Other Realms.”

  Zelf said, “Alright.” She stepped off him and returned to her two-legs form in one fluid movement.

  Loki stood up. The ship was still on an incline, but he was standing vertically.

  Jonas was shivering in the corner, holding himself like a madman and blathering, “I can’t believe it, I won’t believe it. This is just incredible. Can this really be ‘appening? Oh, God, oh, God, oh, oh, gods.”

  Evans, still at the console, mumbled over his shoulder to Jonas, “You get used to it after a while in this business.”

  Jonas asked, “What business? What are you talking about?” Jonas was really distressed.

  Evans said, “Jonas, this is hardly the time.”

  Jonas leapt up and grabbed Evans’ shoulder.

  “I have to know!”

  Evans barked at him, “I’m trying to drive this ship! Let go of my arm.” Jonas let go of him. “Don’t you understand, Jonas? Didn’t you get it? We’re the arm of Her Majesty’s Service that investigates the Paranormal. The Bureau of Paranormal Investigations. That which cannot be explained rationally. Things that go bump in the night, so to speak. We’re the front line, the first in line to get bumped.”

  Jonas said, “I know, but... Ghosts that slam doors I can cope with. Spies I can cope with, and poltergeists, and even - you know, these hypothetical other worlds. This is way too much!”

  Evans said, “It’s not spies, man. It’s leprechauns. It’s other worlds, literal other worlds, not hypothetical. Did you really think they were hypothetical? You’re an idiot, man. It’s - you know - Hister’s occult, or wizards, or secret Druid societies.That’s the sort of thing we’re always looking into - in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Jonas tore a clump out of his hair. “I know, I know, guv’nor. I never knew there was so much - they keep on ‘appening - fauns, ghosts, strange coincidences.” He was staring into nowhere, almost gibbering, wailing, as though a great darkness had come over him. And Jonas cried out, “Oh, God. Oh, God, Evans. We’re like bits of bloody foam floating across the waves; like - like - dust floating on the storm-winds, we ‘ave no control over our lives! It’s all darkness, darkness, darkness, all the way to the bottom! We’re at their mercy, we’re at their mercy! What can we do against that?” Open-mouthed in horror, he stared at Loki, who seemed to have grown a foot taller as Jonas blathered.

  Loki looked at Jonas with contempt and spoke in their minds.

  “At least men had honour in the old days. Why, a viking would have died gladly to stand before me unsubmissive rather than live and kneel when I ordered him to. They were real men. Look at you gibbering and blubbering like a woman. Like an animal.”

  Anger suddenly took hold of Zelf and she snarled, “How offensive. I am a woman, an animal, a wolf, yes, and of the female gender, certainly - but I am also the captain of this submarine and I am not gibbering or blubbering. Get off my ship, Loküril! I did not welcome you aboard.”

  Loki shook his head. His voice sounded in their minds, a little less confident now, almost pleading. “Yes, you did. You certainly did. You asked me to come aboard.”

  Zelf snarled, “No, I didn’t. I welcomed an old woman aboard. You don’t look like any old woman to me.”

  Loki l
ooked offended. He said, “I’ve borne children, for goodness’ sake. I’ve milked cows. I’ve done a woman’s work. I’ve nursed children at my breasts. I’ve tempted a stallion with my shapely mare’s body. I’m more of a woman than you. And I’m older! Is a person’s gender defined by the equipment they have between their legs? Do I have to have breasts twenty four hours a day to be a woman? - god, you sound like bloody Wednesday. Get off your high horse, wolfy-girl. I am a woman, and I’m more woman than you - I’ve been married, I’ve had children, and I’ve had more men - or whatever they were - than you - you - you — spinster. I should smite you where you stand.”

  Alpha of Alphas, help me, thought Zelf.

  Help me get him off my boat. Help me. Give me the right words, please.

  The words seemed to spill out of her jaws; her voice bore the ring of authority. She snarled, “I welcomed an old woman aboard. You are a man. Get off my submarine, in the name of Ellulianaen. In the name of the cub of the Alpha of Alphas, who gave his life to reconcile all creation, Hiyeswa!”

  A look of shocked surprise crossed Loki’s face just before he vanished into thin air. His voice lingered afterwards, echoing onwards in their minds, disgorging gibberish like a flibbertigibbet for a while as it faded, but then at the very last moment everyone heard his voice saying, very clearly, “I’ll get you for this! I’ll get you all! Every last one of you! Just you try to get to the Other Realms! Just you try!”

  Jonas began blubbering, “But ‘e won’t really get us, will ‘e? ‘E promised us that ‘e would give us safe passage, and ‘e said that ‘e wouldn’t ‘urt us. ‘E promised. Ain’t promises binding on gods? God, he’s a god. God, he’s a god. God, he’s a god.” He kept on repeating it, ad nauseam; one had to remind oneself that he wasn’t being intentionally annoying.

  Zelf said, “I’ll take over the wheel now. Calm your servant, Evans.”

  Evans cradled and stroked Jonas’ head, as though calming a little child. Jonas was breathing in short, quick gasps. Evans was crooning, “He’s gone now, Jonas. The nasty god has gone now. Calm down, everything’s alright now, little one. Relax. We’ll get overtime for this, I swear we will, double time for the entire trip, I’ll approve it myself.”

  At that moment, the submarine broke the surface. Through the front window they could see how calm the sea was. It was beautiful - completely calm for miles and miles.

  Zelf turned the engines off.

  She said, “I think we could all do with a cup of tea. The submarine can drift for a little while, we won’t be going anywhere. The ASDICS alarm will sound if anything turns up within a radius of a hundred miles or so...”

  “A cuppa tea,” said Jonas, vacantly. “A cuppa tea. Sounds loverly.” He wandered off down the corridor like a lost soul.

  Following Jonas down the corridor Evans laughed and mused, “Maybe it was just a vision, a trick of the eye, a waking dream,”

  “What?” asked Zelf, amazed that he could doubt the evidence of his own eyes so soon after it had happened.

  “Was the Kraken real do you think?” whispered Evans in a hoarse voice. He was trembling and his hand was shaking. “I don’t want Jonas to worry.”

  “I should think so,” said Zelf. “After all, the island was real. And Loki was real.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Evans, staring vacantly, his eyes focussed on some inward horror. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. Goodness grievous me.”