Storm
Wolf
Stephen
Morris
Genre:
fantasy/historical fantasy
Date
of Publication: September 1, 2016
ISBN:
ebook 978-0-9847731-0-
ISBN:
Paperback 978-0-9847731-8-3
ASIN:
B01JF9SJTU
Number
of pages: 392
Word
Count: 116049
Cover
Artist: Elliot Kreloff
Book
Description:
"LIBAHUNT!"
Alexei breaks the terms of the wolf-magic he inherited from his
grandfather and loses the ability to control the shapeshifting. His
grandfather's magical wolf-pelt was meant to protect their rural
village in 1880s Estonia by fighting the terrible storms in the sky
but instead, it drives Alexei to kill, slaughtering his neighbors,
his friends —even his family.
Heartbroken,
Alexei flees his home in search of an enchanter to free him from this
hideous curse. Wandering through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
and Bohemia, he encounters the Master of Wolves, who forces Alexei to
terrorize and murder the local farmers, and the infamous Frau Bertha
who traps all those who anger her by turning them into wolves. Will
Alexei find a sorcerer who can free him?
What Reviewers
Are Saying About Storm Wolf
"Morris'
werewolf isn't a fur-coated romantic, but a refreshingly murky
protagonist who's both flawed and sympathetic; he kills innocents,
but never intentionally. There are quite a few werewolf onslaughts,
which the author unflinchingly portrays as bloody and brutal.... A
dark supernatural outing, featuring indelible characters as sharp as
wolves' teeth." -- Kirkus
Reviews
"...a
unique weaving together and retelling of central and eastern European
werewolf folk tales. Set in 1890, when such tales were still being
told, Storm Wolf stands apart from contemporary myth and legend
retellings... The magic--Alexei's battles with storm creatures, the
conjuring of a snake demon from pipe smoke, a witch's talisman of
skin stripped from a sailor--is extraordinarily well imagined and
described here. Dollops of regional history and glimpses of customs
and legends are fascinating." -- Blue
Ink Review
“…the
beginning of the book also serves to give us a thorough grounding in
the setting, which is impressively fleshed out by Morris, and provide
an unusual as well as detailed folkloric background for the tale.
Morris has done extensive research about the folklore, customs, daily
lives, and language of the people of 19th-century Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania, and it shows. Morris’s initial premise—that of a
man who becomes a werewolf willingly to protect others—also puts a
welcome and unusual spin on things.
Alexei
is also a highly sympathetic, realistically flawed character who the
author is clearly invested in, and this enthusiasm is infectious.
Trouble seems to hound Alexei (forgive the pun), both as a result of
his inner wolf and some seriously bad luck, and it’s easy to root
for him to find peace with himself and the world. Morris also takes
care to give us enough information about secondary characters for
readers to care about what happens to them, sometimes—perhaps
especially—when they are in danger of meeting bad ends.
Filled
with details that make for a sincerely rendered world, peopled with
characters who breathe; STORM WOLF is a thoughtfully constructed
fantasy tale filled with emotion and action.” – Indie
Reader
Chapter 1:
Libahunt
Edvin
(Estonia,
Winter 1815)
The
wolf, its thick silver-gray fur bristling and standing up along its
neck, stood its ground, snarling as the humans approached. Edvin and
his father drew their hunting knives and the wolf fought to free
itself from the clanking trap, even as it knew that it was doomed.
Edvin and his father
stood before the trapped animal. Edvin heard a quiet whisper. “You’ve
seen this done before, Edvin. You helped skin the wolves last year
and have been practicing the kill all summer.” His father paused.
Edvin’s eyes locked with the wolf’s squinting eyes. “Why don’t
you kill this first one of this season?” The boy glanced at the
older
man out of the corner of his eyes and slowly nodded.
Edvin was able to
slip up through the quietly crunching snow to the wolf from behind as
it continued to glower at Edvin’s father—yellow eyes glinting,
upper lip curled back, and snarl rumbling in the back of its throat,
free legs poised and ready to leap at whoever would attack first.
When Edvin leapt onto its back and held on with his left hand, the
wolf twisted through the air, jaws snapping at the teen. Edvin wedged
his knife into the wolf’s throat and pulled the knife back towards
him, ripping the muscles, tendons, and arteries in ragged, jerky
motions.
Blood sprayed out in
great bursts as the animal’s heart pumped vigorously in its breast.
Edvin held on, terrified of the still snapping jaws and knowing that
the only safe place was on the giant’s furry back. It seemed to be
forever before the monster gradually slowed its writhing and
abandoned its attempts to bite Edvin’s young head off, before the
shower of blood was reduced to a trickle, before the beast slumped
down onto its haunches and then finally collapsed in the now
bright-red snow. The iron trap lay still and silent.
Edvin pushed himself
up from the carcass, panting. His breath hovered in frosty clouds
before his face. He looked across the corpse at his father. His
father grinned broadly before coming around behind and clapping him
on the back. They surveyed the carnage before them.
Dead, the wolf
seemed even larger than it had when it was alive and standing before
them, crouching and ready to attack. It seemed the largest wolf Edvin
had ever seen. As big as, or even bigger than, the wolf Fenrir that
the old stories said would devour the sun at the end of days.
Together, Edvin and his father hoisted the wolf onto their nearby
sled and brought the creature back to their house on the edge of the
vast forests of Estonia. Edvin was given the honor of skinning this,
his first kill. He was careful to keep the gray pelt with its tawny
streaks intact, rather than cutting it into easier-to-handle smaller
strips. Then the whole family undertook the job of butchering the
meat to be smoked, dried, or eaten that evening. There was enough to
feed them for at least a month.
The skin was large
enough for Edvin to wrap around himself three or four times, with the
head—easily half again as large as his own—hanging over his left
shoulder. The thing was huge, lush, and warm. It was beautiful.
Edvin’s youngest sister wanted to add it to her wedding chest, but
everyone else agreed that as Edvin’s first kill, it was his to do
with as he pleased. He kept it on his bed but would, on occasion,
wrap himself in it and play with the younger children, chasing them
and catching them, pretending to devour them as they collapsed in
giggles and laughter.
It was five years
later that the terrible storm had appeared on the horizon.
Edvin’s marriage
to his sweetheart in the village had been arranged for late in the
summer of 1820. It was in the early summer, though, when the fields
and gardens were full of the wheat and vegetables to feed the village
during the coming year, that a tremendous storm appeared on the
horizon, beyond the forest. As the massive thunderclouds slowly
approached the village, they seemed to hang so low that they scraped
the treetops. Ribbons of storm cloud streamed out behind them in the
wind, and lightning flickered high in the sky. Deep within the
clouds, thunder rumbled. Treetops tore rips and tears in the heavy,
low-hanging thunderclouds and out came the howls of ghosts and
devils.
That was when Edvin
took the wolf pelt to the local nõiatar,
the village cunning woman. In Estonia, in the traditional village
practice away from the German and Russian landowners, it was the
responsibility of the libahunt
or suteksäija—the
vlkodlak,
or
man-wolf, as many who do not speak Estonian might call it—to drive
the storms away from the farmlands and villages. The werewolves of
Estonia had been known to fly into the storm clouds and fight the
spirits there, the ghosts and devils that bring terrible storms and
blizzards that destroy crops and homes. But there had been no
werewolf in Edvin’s village for many years, and he knew someone had
to defend the farmers against the storm everyone could see coming.
Because he didn’t know how to make the werewolf, he took the pelt
to the cunning woman—he knew that she would need that to work with,
at least.
The nõiatar
took the pelt and rubbed it against her deeply lined face. The fur
was thick and soft. Rarely had anyone killed such a large wolf, and
keeping such a large pelt intact was even rarer. She studied Edvin.
“Do you truly want to do this thing?” she finally asked him. “It
is more dangerous than you know.”
“I do,” he
answered. “It is dangerous,” he agreed, daring to look her in the
face. “But we will starve next winter otherwise. The storm coming
looks more terrible than any we have seen since my father was a boy.
It is the duty of the werewolf to fight the storms, and our village
has no werewolf. We cannot expect the werewolf of another village to
fight the storm for us, and there is no time to travel far to find
one who will. I have the wolf skin, so I must use it to save my
family and the village.” He pulled himself up, holding his head
high, and thrust his shoulders back. “I am young. I am strong. I
can fight such storms, but I cannot do it as a man. I must become the
werewolf.”
The cunning woman
considered what he had said. “Yes, we need a werewolf to protect
the village and it has been long… long since we have had one here.
Yes, I can help you become the werewolf. But you must be careful. It
is said that the power of the wolf skin can be intoxicating and can
make you as drunk as it makes you strong and able to fight the
storms. You must not use it every time it rains, but only when there
is a true äike,
a thunderstorm that can destroy the crops or flood the küla.
Our village. You must resist the temptation to use the wolf skin for
your own advantage and use it only for the sake of the küla.
It is not a power to wield for yourself and your own benefit, but
only to protect others. Can you remember this?”
“Yes,” Edvin
answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I only want the wolf
skin and its magic in order to protect the village. Or any village
that needs our help. But you must do the magic now or it will soon be
too late. The storm will be here any moment.”
About
the Author:
With
degrees in medieval history and theology from Yale and St. Vladimir’s
Orthodox Theological Academy, Stephen Morris brings his extensive
knowledge and meticulous research in medieval magical practices to
his historical and contemporary fantasy novels. In each of his
novels, the magical and fantastic elements are all drawn from
authentic occult beliefs and practices from the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance or from local legends and folklore.
“I
first became interested in the occult and magic when I was very VERY
young and saw The Wizard of Oz on television for the first and second
times. The first time, my mom says I was terrified of the Wicked
Witch’s appearance in Munchkin Land amidst smoke and flames and ran
straight to bed! (I must have been 5 years old or so.) The next year
I began watching the movie again and made myself stick with it past
the appearance of the Witch and after that — I was hooked!
“The
Wicked Witch of the West became my favorite character because not
only is she the most interesting but she is the only one who wields
any real power in the movie. She became my idol for years and years!
(When a major storm recently struck Manhattan, I made a comment on FB
about the wind picking up our house and depositing it atop someone
wearing peppermint stripped stockings and glittering red shoes and my
cousin responded: ‘You’ve been chasing those shoes for YEARS!’
LoL!)”
A
former priest, he served as the Eastern Orthodox chaplain at Columbia
University. His previous academic writing has dealt primarily with
Late Antiquity and Byzantine church life. As a Project Leader with
Inter-Disciplinary.net, he also organizes annual conferences on
aspects of the supernatural, monsters, evil and wickedness, fairy
tales and folk tales, and related subjects.
Stephen,
a Seattle native, is now a long-time New York resident and currently
lives in Manhattan with his partner, Elliot.
Author
Central: https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Morris/e/B0089PYB6C/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/StephenNYC1
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