Only the Moon Howls Read online

  The dog licked his face and then sat on its haunches, head cocked quizzically. It was a Toby look: furry, loyal, animal-loving, Toby was ironically (or appropriately) Caleb’s first and best human friend. (What had they done to him?)

  The Charles River was framed in the stone arches of the bridge as a light rain fell, the drops blurring the surface as they landed on the water. A boat approached the bridge’s middle arch—a stocky young man with a look of intense concentration rowed a single-person scull. A shaft of morning light punched through the clouds and sparkled on the ripples of the wake spreading out behind the boat.

  Caleb’s brain streamed an incontinent flood of memories. Seven was too young for a child to leave his parents, even if that was the age at which a werewolf cub’s bite became dangerous. Caleb wasn’t sure if his family had fully appreciated that, or ever really accepted the diagnosis of the condition that turned their son into a howling, biting monster one night out of the month, and a sniffling, odd-behaving little boy the rest of the time.

  He himself, of course, had simply thought he was crazy. When the smelly old man in a pointy hat comes to take you away, even a seven-year-old knows that “residential treatment program” means loony bin.

  Those first months on Dragonshead Island were so lonely and scary that nothing Fintonclyde did could convince Caleb that the Reserve was a paradise. The old man took him around in his rowboat with no oars and showed him all but the most dangerous corners of his island refuge. To this day, Caleb believed the boat was a trick, with a battery hidden somewhere, but the creatures that Fintonclyde maintained on his island were undeniably magical. An Acadian ghost whose language Caleb never comprehended staffed the lighthouse, and the inlet teemed with tiny, harmless creatures shaped like lions with fins. Billdads, which were like miniature kangaroos with hawk’s beaks and webbed feet, fished for them by the shore by slapping the water with their beaver tails.

  Inside the log cabin on the island were more books than anyone could read in a lifetime. Caleb owed his academic success not to any formal training, but to nine long winters spent with the history, mathematics, science, and literature found between the damp and salty pages lurking in Fintonclyde’s study. Nothing was off-limits or forbidden, and Caleb sensed that even if he were to make inroads into the vast collection, new and exciting tomes would slip in to replace the old ones.

  He had no contact with other children for almost five years. Enough people in the Community knew why he was living with Fintonclyde, so the school in Tribulation was out of the question. His wolf-form had more of a social life than his human incarnation, because under the full moon he was able to slip through the wards that kept humans away from the dangerous creatures on the island. He cavorted with manticores and legless, voracious snow wassets that were said to devour any creature hiding in the snow. He played hide and seek with goblins and trolls and talking lobsters the size of ponies. He was less afraid of a griffin than he was of the first boatload of teenagers who came spilling onto the island the July of his twelfth year.

  The country’s mental health pendulum had swung from helping the mad to punishing the bad, so Fintonclyde’s island was no longer a residential treatment program but a “boot camp” designed to scare wayward adolescents straight. They arrived terrified, expecting prison-style discipline, and reacted in a myriad of ways to the wild, unsupervised freedom that Fintonclyde believed was educational.

  Caleb had been angry at first when the rowdy throng invaded his privacy. Most of the kids who’d come to the program had been simple hoodlums, but mixed in with the refugees from juvenile detention were kids from the Community, sent to learn some magic from the great Fintonclyde. He could never understand the old man’s motivation for taking them in, allowing them to run amok and create messes that Caleb had to clean up.

  The few exceptions were as astounding as the rule. By all appearances a good-for-nothing delinquent Mainer, Toby had possessed (still did, for at least a few more hours) a spark of magical genius that made him see that true mischief wasn’t spray painting and stealing cars. Magic would let him control the world around him, from atoms to whole islands.

  By the time Toby left that September, Caleb had his first friend. And when Toby returned the following year with another brilliant but quirky boy and an intrepid and energetic girl, Caleb’s world changed forever. He would have done anything to make himself worthy of the trio: Toby, Sophia, and René. Both of the newcomers were from within the Community, though in very different ways. René Cousineau’s parents despaired of his fire-starting and hoped he’d learn enough magic to control it and live an ordinary life. Sophia Daigle, on the other hand, had renowned and powerful wizards in her family who expected her to expand her powers.

  Fintonclyde could never understand how much they meant to me, Caleb thought now, gritting his teeth.

  He continued to caress the dog as the sounds of traffic on Memorial Drive and of morning joggers on the footpath crept into his consciousness. Soon students would be walking or riding bicycles back and forth across the bridge, hurrying to get to class, and here he sat with his tear-stained face buried in the fur of a stray dog. After his hasty departure from MIT, he’d spent the most of the night walking along the river, up and down each side, crossing and re-crossing whichever bridge happened to be at hand. When he was too tired to walk, he’d sat under this bridge and listened to the water lapping against the bank until he’d fallen asleep. His car waited for him back on campus. He could get in it and drive until he had no money left for gas—anywhere at all—but where and why? Was there any place a werewolf would be welcome? No. Such a place did not exist.

  He was free, at least. (Toby would never be free). He would be eighteen in two months and he could find a job, any job.

  The wound was too fresh and as much as he tried, Caleb could not stop tears from flowing. Bowing his head, he rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. This would do him no good. He’d need to keep his wits about him if he wanted to figure out where to go.

  Abruptly, the dog pulled away, gave a short bark, and was gone. Caleb looked up in surprise. Standing before him was a little man in a rumpled overcoat. A pocket protector crammed with colored pens peeked out from his coat and gave the only indication that he might be a professor. Caleb sat up sharply, taking a deep breath to banish the tears that stung his eyes and nose. He eyed the man suspiciously, taking a long moment to recognize him. “Professor Hermann?”

  “I had a time finding you, Mr. O’Connor,” the man said in a soft voice, his watery blue eyes darting about. “Your car’s still parked on campus, so I thought you’d be nearby, but I didn’t expect you to be most of the way to Harvard.”

  “But…how did you…?”

  “Shouting that you’re a werewolf who’s decided to start eating people in the Infinite Corridor,” the little man chuckled mildly. “Well, that’s going to draw some attention.”

  Caleb stared at his physics professor in disbelief. Had he really said those things last night?

  “Do you mind if I sit? I’ve been trudging along the river for what seems like hours, though I think, really, it’s much less than that.”

  Professor Hermann didn’t wait for a reply but spread his raincoat out on the ground. He taught freshman physics, and Caleb was his best student this term, so he’d been recruited to lead tutoring sessions for the classmates who struggled with the lectures or labs. In spite of this, Caleb had rarely spoken to the professor, who preferred to communicate by leaving cryptic notes for him in the Department Office, always addressed to Mr. O’Connor. The professor looked to be in his seventies, with thinning white hair and a bald spot, now covered by a shapeless brown hat.

  “As I was saying, it took a bit of work to find you,” Hermann grumped as he balanced a bulging valise on a rock to keep it out of the dirt. Then he sat down, took a deep breath and continued, “Such a promising student.”

  “Well, make sure the story makes the rounds,” Caleb replied dryly. “I’m sure it will
be a joke for years.”

  “Yes, I daresay the students thought it was funny, just blowing off steam during finals. I wouldn’t expect them to be knowledgeable in these matters,” he explained pointedly.

  “And you are?” Caleb’s curiosity was piqued, especially since Hermann seemed more curious than horrified.

  Hermann laughed faintly, eyes twinkling. “I would like to explain a few things, Mr. O’Connor, if I may?”

  3. Holiday in Romania

  Three days until the full moon, Caleb was trapped in a rainstorm in the Transylvanian Alps with a crazy old man who probably had never even seen a werewolf.

  “Do you need to rest, Professor?” His companion wheezed and struggled inch his way to the plateau where Caleb stood.

  “Please, Mr. O’Connor, you should call me Jonathan.” Professor Hermann took a couple of ragged breaths, then reached into his coat for the laminated map, which he handed to Caleb.

  Drops from his hood trickled onto the two-dimensional mountains as Caleb bent over to read. Landmarks were difficult to see in the dense clouds that hugged the peaks, but he was sure—almost positive—that the road was twisting and turning in a way that mirrored the map.

  “We should speak Romanian,” the old man added. “We both need the practice.”

  “Yes…Jonathan.” Caleb still couldn’t get used to calling his former physics teacher by his first name. He shook water off the map and held it in one hand while he pointed with the other. “We are—” He struggled to switch from English to Romanian. His head buzzed with verb endings and vocabulary. “We are here, I think, because the road turned west—no, sorry, that’s not the right word—east just now after going north. We should be less than a kilometer from Stilpescu.”

  “Very good. I don’t know what I should have done without you,” Hermann said pleasantly, as if they were on a bird-watching expedition in the Berkshires, instead of slogging along a river of mud in Communist Romania. “Let us press on, then.”

  Caleb watched the old man stump on ahead of him while he folded the map. Once he had put the map away, he caught up in a few long strides. This wasn’t his idea of the walking tour of Europe that Jonathan Hermann had originally suggested. Caleb wondered, as he did with increasing frequency, where the old man was taking them, and to what end.

  It was the summer of 1986, and Romania was a closed country in the grip of a dictator. Crossing the border in an official capacity was simply not the way to go about it—whether you were a wizard or a harmless old physics professor. Caleb had followed his mentor over a frontier post in Hungary, at a location that Hermann had termed “unchartable.” When Caleb asked whether magic was involved, Professor Hermann simply said that the Communists concealed things better than sorcerers ever could.

  There was no magic in their means of transportation. Nothing but their own two feet had carried them from the Hungarian border all the way to the Transylvanian Alps. Spring had not yet melted the snow from the mountain passes, causing the pair to spend extra days in the low-lying town of Rosu, waiting for the roads to clear. Caleb had pressed for details: Why must they visit the mountain village of Stilpescu and the castle on the promontory above? He had been ignored or hushed throughout the journey, even when Hermann ushered him into an old bookshop. As they sat down at a small table, Jonathan told Caleb he was never again to speak English.

  Caleb couldn’t catch the name of the wizened old proprietor, who handed them a chipped bottle of deep purple glass and made each take a long swig. To chase the bitter taste, the proprietor gave them sweetened black tea. He talked with them for hours, and Caleb was astounded to find Romanian words flooding his mind as he listened. Finally, he and Jonathan began to speak.

  “A Polyglot Potion,” Professor Hermann explained once he, too, had absorbed enough vocabulary. “It allows you to acquire language the way children do—naturally, free of accent, though of course with practice.”

  “So you can practice by telling me—” Caleb began, but was waved into silence as the bookseller began again with tales of local history that Hermann seemed to think they needed to know.

  Caleb leaned back in resignation and dedicated himself to listening. He had signed up for this adventure, and he had nothing to go back to.

  Soon the structure of the grammar began to flow smoothly off his tongue, although the potion frequently made him dizzy and gave him headaches. By the following week, after they left the city and began to scale the mountains, his head was clearer and he felt almost fluent.

  It was impossible to escape the chill, even in mid-June. Rain fell straight down, or sideways, or sometimes in several directions at once. No matter how much they swathed themselves in hats, scarves, and raincoats, they found themselves soaked to the skin. The old man did not complain, but with each passing day he had an increasingly more difficult time matching Caleb’s pace. Caleb urged him along, anxious to get the professor settled in a safe place before the full moon. The waxing gibbous moon tugged at his insides despite the thick, gray blanket that cloaked the sky.

  They both felt immense relief when a bone-jarring gust of wind momentarily pushed aside a fog bank to reveal a collection of houses and the glimpse of a red church roof up ahead.

  “We’re almost there,” Caleb yelled to the lagging professor. He stopped and waited for Hermann to join him, taking his arm and pointing to the vague outlines of buildings. The little man nodded, his eyes—the only part of his face visible within the scarves and hat—tired but alert. They didn’t speak again until they found shelter in the village.

  The warmth and scents inside the baker’s shop almost drove Caleb mad after eight hours in the cold, dank rain. The waitress bustled about, setting their cloaks and scarves to dry near a fire while her husband cut them large slices of steaming brown bread. They sat around a wooden table with mugs of tea, bread, and honey.

  “Out in weather like this,” the baker was saying. “You speak pretty good, but you’re not from these parts, are you?”

  They did not try to hide the fact that they were foreigners. Despite their continually improving Romanian, they had the accents of the city, having acquired the language there. The baker seemed to accept them, but he was suspicious of their plan to travel on to the castle.

  “I’ve not seen that old man who lives there,” he said, “but he sends his servant down for supplies. If you ask me, it was a bad idea, him coming back to that castle. Better to leave well enough alone.”

  Caleb looked at him quizzically, but before he could frame a suitable question, the baker’s wife chimed in, “The village has enough troubles with werewolves prowling and the things that live in the Petrosna Caves.” She shuddered, not wanting to name her fears. “And Castle Arghezi as well, home to…”

  “Hush, woman!” her husband said sharply. “No need to bring up the past.” He shook his head in trepidation. “These men will see for themselves soon enough.” He seemed to consider them insane but harmless. If they wanted to go and get themselves killed, that was their own business. He gave them beds for the night, and shared what he knew about how to find the path to the castle on an old, water-stained map.

  Weak sunlight cast feeble shadows in the village square as they set out the next morning. Caleb had held his tongue while they packed and said their goodbyes to the baker and his wife. He didn’t say anything as they crossed the little square in the village, the locals silently staring at the crazy foreigners. By the time the village was well behind them, hidden in the misty folds of its alpine valley, the words in Caleb’s mouth were a river about to overflow its banks, burst the dam, and drown everything in its path.

  “Prof—Jonathan,” he said with forced calm, trying to squelch his mounting exasperation and irritation. The rain had ebbed to a light drizzle, and they had stopped to rest by the side of the track. As they shared some of the bread the baker had given to them, Caleb demanded answers. “It’s time you told me where we’re going. Every time I’ve asked, you’ve changed the subject or told me to
wait. I’m not taking another step toward that castle until I know what I’m in for.”

  With just the two of them under the broody sky, Professor Hermann finally allowed himself to speak.

  “You might well wonder why I asked you to be my traveling companion this summer,” he began.

  Caleb chortled at the understatement, but simply nodded his wool-swathed head, afraid that anything he might say would make the old man clam up once more.

  “I have observed you,” the old man continued, “with the other students and have noted how well you’ve done in my classes. I observed a few other things as well. How you are invariably absent the day after the full moon, for example, and how you always return with your face and hands covered with scratches.”

  “I go hiking,” Caleb responded in his best tone of scientific scorn.

  “Yes, yes,” murmured Hermann as if it scarcely mattered. “You in turn may have wondered what I am doing teaching at a place like MIT.”

  This was a hard question to answer politely. Even as a freshman, Caleb had heard all the stories. “You don’t do research,” he replied cautiously, “which is a bit odd.”

  “Yes. The younger faculty consider me quite beneath their notice.” Hermann laughed faintly, eyes twinkling. “I earned my position in a less conventional way: I did a favor for the dean, and was rewarded with a permanent lectureship. You wouldn’t happen to recall the name of the previous Dean of Science, by chance?”

  Caleb was about to reply that he didn’t, but the name sprang unbidden to his mind, the way all Romanian proper nouns now did. “Of course, Dean Arghezi—Castle Arghezi? Our old dean is the one who…?” He stopped himself, afraid of being disrespectful.