Yes, I will tell you how it was then. The worst of it was the way the Nazis deprived me of sleep. Before they threw me in the cell, they stripped me naked. Just beyond the steel bars of the door, the guards walked by during the day, peered in, and made coarse comments about me, a young woman, shivering and naked, just beyond their reach. Who could sleep then?
At night they threw me a blanket, but they shone strong lights into my tiny cell. At intervals, they marched up and down the corridor outside and beat on a drum or sang. I had no bed. I would lie curled up on my one stinking blanket in a corner of the cell and try to sleep while their cracked ugly voices rang out with the Horst Wessel Song or some other Nazi abomination. If I did manage to snatch a few hours sleep, guards would fling open the door, and an interrogator would march in. He was a jolly-looking little man with a round face and thick glasses that made it hard to read his eyes.
The questions were always the same and my answers as well.
“You are a werewolf, yes?”
“No.” I was telling the truth, of course. “I am not a werewolf.”
“You’re lying. Tell us the truth. We wish to know how you change.”
Silence.
“Tell us.” A slap on the face.
Silence.
A raised hand – but no slap.
“Why will you not tell us? Tell us, and you go free.”
Silence.
A shrug, a sneer, and he would leave again.
They dared not torture me, you see. They knew enough to know that if they damaged my body, I would never be able to demonstrate the change. Some prisoners might have taken comfort in this. I was hoping they would kill me. Although I knew that the war had started to go badly for my once-loved Germany, maybe the Nazis would manage to fight back and drive the Allies away. Escape? With all those men going back and forth just outside? Even in the dead of night I heard them. For all I knew, I would be a prisoner in that cell for years.
And never have a decent sleep again. When you are not allowed to sleep, your mind begins to splinter. You go beyond the state we call “being exhausted”—far far beyond. If an insect flew into my cell, I felt rage and slapped it dead. There were always plenty of flies. The smell of my own excrement—my only toilet was a bucket in the corner—made me weep. I longed to pick up the bucket and hurl its contents at the guards, but I couldn’t bear to touch the filthy thing. I swore and raged and felt only more tired than before. I wanted to pace back and forth, but my quivering legs refused to let me.
I could no longer remember how long they had kept me in the cell. I could barely remember my arrest. Fragments of memory would rise up, images of our village, of the grain fields all around where we worked, the women and children, prisoners of the Army’s need for food to fight a war that had taken all our men. I could see Frau Schnabel’s terrified face, half-toothless, her chin dotted with white hairs, as she wept at my arrest. She was the informer, she was the one who’d lied, who had sacrificed me to save her own grandchildren.
Could I have told the truth? Tell the soldiers: no, not me, then point to them, the nine year old daughter, the even younger boy—I could not bear to hand them over to the human fiends who raided our village. In the cell, my hatred of the SS lent me life. So many reasons! They shot our village priest for hiding two Jewish babies, then clubbed the infants to death rather than “waste bullets on them”. Oh, that memory kept my hatred burning hot enough! Every time the interrogator marched in, every time I saw the little silver death’s heads on his thread-bare black uniform, I remembered what he wanted and how I would rather die than give it to him. Would our village children have been able to lie, treated as I was?
At times, when I chewed my daily lump of black bread or drank the bowl of boiled meat and water they gave me now and then, I would remember eating before the war, the roast pork my mother made with the warm potato salad, the fat chickens, and noodles in gravy. At moments I would weep, remembering, but when I did, the guards would laugh and jeer. I soon learned to smother the grief. At times a rat would scuttle across the floor. I longed to change and leap upon it, rend its hide and feast upon its flesh. Instead I screamed in pretend fear. Let the guards laugh! Better that than they see what they wanted to see.
Why? I asked that question of myself many times a day. Why did they want to know? Why not just root us all out, burn us, kill us with silver weapons as so many others had done down the long centuries? The day came when I found out.
The first hint came from the guards, as they stood gossiping in the corridor. All of these men could no longer fight. Anyone strong enough had long since been sent to the front. Still, they talked about the war. They knew little, only that it went badly. But one warm day, when the spring sun cast stripes of light through my little barred window, they began to talk about despair and revenge.
“Revenge!” the sergeant would say. He would wave the stump where his left hand used to be. “Useless, when you’re dead.”
“Who’s to say we’ll be dead?” the boy—barely fourteen he was—would remark. “We could slip away into the forest.”
“How can you believe in those stupid superstitions?” The sergeant rolled his eyes.
“But Goebbels said on the radio—”
“As if that makes it true! Do you have shit for brains?”
The other two would shrug and fall silent.
Not long after, the sergeant mentioned that an important man was on his way, an officer of high rank, a personal friend of Goebbels himself—or so some said. The old man insisted that this mysterious officer only knew Obergruppenführer Prützmann—whoever he was. I knew nothing about high ranking officers, but I could guess that this one had something to do with my imprisonment.
Sure enough, after a blurred space of days and nights—maybe three days, maybe four, I could not tell—two men strode down the corridor and stood in front of the door to my cell. One I recognized as the officer who had arrested me, a middle-aged, swag-bellied gray thing with a moustache stained with food. The other stood tall in his black uniform, youngish, good-looking in a blond, bland way. He set his hands on hips and looked me over, turned his head, looked over the cell, the walls, turned and looked up and down the corridor, and then swung around to face the gray, fat man.
“This will not do!” His voice was low, tight, a snarl. “Do you want to kill the prisoner? How can she teach us what we need to know if she’s sick and miserable?”
The gray man stammered a few words. The officer turned to the guards and began to bark orders. They scurried before him like the cell rats. Soon I had clothing—coarse brown stuff, yes, but warm skirts, shirts, shoes. After I dressed, he opened the door and gestured for me to come out. I took three steps and nearly fell. He swore and picked me up. By then I was so thin that he could carry me down the corridor to another cell, this one with a bunk, a proper toilet, a sink. He set me down on the bunk, then turned and ordered the guards to bring me food.
“Not too much! She’s been starved.” He looked my way. “Small meals, but a lot of them.” He smiled. “Once you’re stronger, we’ll talk.”
His smile had all the warmth of a melting icicle. I nearly laughed. Muddled and sick and splintered as I was, I could see through his ruse, the false concern, the smile. I was supposed to like him, I realized, supposed to see him as my savior, if only I would give him the information he wanted. He wanted me to trust him, to cling to his promises, and then he would throw me aside once he had the truth.
“My name is Wülf,” he said and showed strong white teeth with his smile. “Think of it as an omen.”
I stared at him and let my mouth sag open.
“Just rest,” he said. “I can see you’re too exhausted to talk.”
He left the cell, but lingered outside for a moment. “By the way,” he said, “the man who’s been questioning you? He’s going to be shot. For mistreatment of Aryan prisoners.”
That did please me, but I hid my pleasure from him.
For the next few days I slept and ate. How I slept! Long blissful hours of it, both during the day and all night, wrapped in warm, clean blankets. They brought me decent food, small amounts, but many times during the day. I was surprised they could find so much good food after the long winter of near-starvation we’d all suffered, those of us who farmed and sweated and went hungry so the armies could eat. When I was awake, I planned how I would act, just what I might do in response to the opening gambits that Wülf might make.
Because of course, the day came when he opened the door of my cell and walked in. I was sitting at one end of my bunk. He sat at the other and smiled his icicle smile.
“You know what we need to know,” he said.
“Oh yes.”
“What I’m wondering is why you won’t tell us.”
“Would you have told that man anything?”
“Of course not. Very well. What about telling me?”
“What I’m wondering,” I copied his words deliberately, “is why you want to know.”
Wülf mugged comic surprise. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“No, he didn’t.” As you know damn well, I thought to myself.
“I see.” Wülf nodded and arranged a look of sympathy on his face. “Let me be honest. We’re losing the war. The Russians are nearly to Berlin. The Führer has shut himself up somewhere.” His expression turned to honest grief. “There’s no hope. We’re going to be defeated.” He paused to swallow heavily, to take a few deep breaths and choke back tears. “All we have left is revenge.”
That word again, revenge. I began to suspect an ugly truth.
“We’ll fight to the end, kill as many of them as we can,” Wülf continued. “But they’ll take the Homeland. Some of us want to plant bombs, traps, anything we can to make them pay high for it.”
“And how many of our people will stumble onto those traps by mistake?”
He winced in another honest gesture. “That’s very true. And the rest of us see that. Some of us have to survive to lead the resistance. Otherwise, as you say, who knows who’ll take the damage?”
Us? I thought. Who is this “us?” SS officers, I supposed, but of course I could not know until he told me.
“Goebbels himself came up with a better plan. When the Homeland falls, the enemy is going to hunt the SS down and kill us all.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Unless we can hide like wolves, in the darkness of the night. Why not be wolves, then? Safe in the forests, the hills, during the day, but at night, we kill. We take our revenge. They will pay in blood for their victory.”
He sat smiling at me, a bland-looking youngish man in uniform, calm, relaxed, even, but utterly mad, crazed by defeat. I shivered—oh, I went cold, colder than the snow of the horrible winter past. At that moment I saw my plan. A madman can be led by his madness.
“Do you understand now?” He leaned a little closer to me. “Do you?”
“Oh yes. Of course. But who’s going to take the wolf form? Not everyone can.”
“That’s true. I’m hoping I can, but who knows? We’ve been reading, searching the old books. Young people are the best. We’ve recruited some of the boys from Hitler Youth, the true ones, the young men who have the true German spirit. They’re eager to learn. Most are twelve and thirteen, still young enough to learn.”
To myself I thought: Your god will punish you for that, if Russians don’t get you first. Aloud, I said, “I must have time to think. You’re asking me to betray a sacred trust.”
“Very well. I’ll come back tomorrow.” He got up and went to the door, only to pause and look back. “But remember, the Fatherland is a sacred trust, too.”
I smiled and nodded. He saluted me and left.
In the morning Wülf returned soon after I’d eaten. We talked a little, meaningless greetings, just as if courtesy could still matter after the horrors of the last seven years. Finally I stood up with a carefully arranged toss of my head and a defiant tilt of my chin.
“I’ve decided,” I said, “for the sake of the Fatherland, I’ll show you. But we must have the proper place. Moonlight. And outside somewhere.”
“Outside?” He frowned, a little suspicious.
“You think I’m going to run away. All right, is there a building here with a flat roof? Too high for a wolf to jump from?”
“Yes, there is, the old stables. Very well.”
My turn for the suspicious smile. “I must be naked to effect the change. Can you keep the guards from—”
He patted the revolver at his hip. I smiled.
“Excellent!” I said. “Now, the old books say that the moon has to be full, but that’s not true. Well, it’s not true if you do the proper meditations beforehand.”
“Meditations. Huh, I knew we needed more information.”
“Much more, apparently.” Which was certainly true. “Let me show you the change first. Then the instructions will make more sense. Tonight will do. I could see the moon last night through the cell window. It’s just a quarter moon, but it’s enough for you to see by.” I paused to think. “Or maybe not quite enough, especially if you want to take notes. You’d better have a lantern there, too. A good bright one.”
“I’ll do that.” Wülf got up and made me an odd little bow. “I’ll come here an hour after sunset to fetch you. I’d let you out of this wretched cell now, but it would make the others suspicious if I did.”
“I understand. I’ll need to rest beforehand, anyway. This will do.”
“Heil Hitler!” Wülf saluted as he spoke.
“Heil Hitler!” I said the hated name for the last time. “For the glory of the Fatherland.”
And then, thank my own gods, he left.
That afternoon, I slept and dreamt of the mountains. When I woke, I ate the decent meal the guards brought me. I took the blanket from the bunk and folded it neatly into a bundle. I’d need something to lie upon while I changed. Wülf arrived a little while after I finished, and together we walked out of the prison house into the clean sunset air. The quarter moon already hung pale in the sky above the wooded foothills to the west. In the darkening east, the Evening Star glimmered.
Two guards fell in behind us as we walked across the cobbled yard toward a flat-roofed building by a broken stone wall. I had arrived in this place blind-folded. Now I could look around and see that it was a small schloss, an old stone manor house, a single squat tower. Wülf noticed my curiosity.
“My family owned this,” he said. “I’m the last of them. Who knows who’ll have it now? Probably some stinking Russian.”
“Spoils of war, eh? Perhaps you can make them pay for it with blood.”
“That’s my fondest hope.”
A sturdy ladder was leaning against the stable wall, which rose about twenty feet above the cobbles. One of the guards clambered up first. The other ducked into the stable and came out with a lantern. I climbed up to the roof, Wülf followed, and finally the last guard. While the guard lit the kerosene lantern, I spread my blanket out on a reasonable clean spot near, but not suspiciously near, the edge of the roof. I could see that if an animal larger than a rat jumped down onto the stones, it would at the very least break a couple of legs.
“Very good,” I said. “Now. Notice that I am positioning myself to look at the moon. You know the face there belongs to one of the old Germanic gods, right?”
“Right,” Wülf said.
“So as you lie down, invoke him.” I was inventing lore as fast as I could. “His name is Máni. Next, I need to disrobe. The guards—”
Wülf told them to turn their backs. He knelt by the blanket. I took off my clothes safely in front of him, who lusted for lore, not a woman. As I lay down on my back, I spoke the names of three runes. I don’t remember which ones. They had nothing to do with the change, but Wülf in his ignorance wrote them down in a small notebook.
By then the night had grown dark. The lantern light cast a dazzling pool around us, bright enough, or so I hoped, to make him night-blind. I stretched my arms out to each side and began to chant some meaningless babble. I repeated it several times to allow Wülf to write it all down. While I chanted, I prepared the hawk image in my mind.
Now the crux—I would have to change faster than ever I had before. I forced the image from my mind until I saw it hovering above me. One deep breath—a shriek—the hawk came to me. Every muscle in my arms and back burned with the shock as I merged myself with the image. I leapt into the air, wings beating, but I had forgotten how weak I was from my long confinement.
A woman’s legs hung from the hawk’s body, meaty, thick, heavy. I swooped over the roof and beat my painful wings. Hampered by the weight, I plunged down toward the cobbles below, but at the last moment my legs transformed, thin now, and light. I flew. I gained the sky at last. I heard them shouting below, heard shots, too, as they fired at me. I spiraled and swooped in as twisted a course as I could fly. The shots missed.
As I soared into the night, the last thing I heard was Wülf’s voice, crying “Come back! Come back! The Fatherland...”
I flew higher and left the voice behind.
* * *
You know how I survived in the hills, until not the Russians but Americans came. Now you know everything. Put it in our village archive so we may always remember to live in fear.