Wolverine was left alone. He rested for a moment and then began to look around and examine his surroundings. He was astonished by the deathly silence of this isolated spot. He had expected it to be a paradise of birds, but it seemed deserted. Neither singing, nor chirping, nor the usual bustle of the late afternoon.

The pines stood motionless like mutes; all around seemed completely deserted while life positively teemed just on the other side of The Drowning.

“Some enchanted corner!” he whispered to himself. He walked along the shore, looking around. Farther on, the old pines mixed with spruce, and the ground was overgrown with ferns and blackberries.

When he stopped for a moment, trying to find a path among the undergrowth, something like a dog barked in a pine tree behind him. Instinctively, Wolverine retreated behind the trunk and looked up.

On a thick branch, side by side sat two huge, gray immobile figures. Two pairs of bright yellow eyes stared at him, blinking; the faces of these old criminals were finished off by black, powerful, bent beaks and crowned with tufted horns.

Without least movement or sound, the man and the pair of great robber knights stared at each other. Now, Wolverine understood the silence and emptiness of this wilderness. Here was the fortress of a robber baron with a plume on his head.

The cause of the silence was clear: the killer knight had destroyed all life around him. He reigned and ruled, a mighty one above all law.

“There you are, you Teutonic monster!” growled Wolverine. “You heraldic dogcatcher! You executioner of forest creatures, you wicked tyrant, you terror of the weak, meek, and peaceful! Now has come your time of reckoning! Now it’s over for you! I have often heard you at night, your bloodthirsty war cry, and the screaming of your victims. I have been looking for you. And now the great keeper of the birds has brought me here so that you might pay with your throat for your criminal life. This is your last night on Earth!”

He turned and walked away. Taking advantage of the last moments of daylight, he located the beehive. He was pointed to it by the workers coming back from fieldwork, and he was glad to see that the hollow was not too high and the opening was quite wide.

“Now, I will rest and listen to the silence,” he said, stretching out on the moss.

But he could not rest. The sun had gone down, and cool vapors rose from the marshes. He felt a chill, so he undressed, rubbed his body with moss, and pulled his damp clothes on again. Now, warmed up a bit, he lit his pipe to kill his hunger and built a small fire on the shore.

The lords of the island were offended.

Their gloomy “Uhu, uhu!” was menacing. A black shadow popped out of the thicket; soft wings practically brushed him in flight as the scarecrow wheeled over the fire then glided over The Drowning into the forest in search of prey. After a while, the second one followed.

“Uhu, uhu!” Unguibus et rostro! “Claws and beaks” is their heraldic motto and their war cry: “Uhu, uhu!”[1]

Stretched by the fire, Wolverine listened. The spring wedding music thundered from the forest: the weeping of nightingales, the mumbling of the black grouse, the barking of the deer. Then the robber’s war cry, a sudden moment of silence, and again the joyful hymn of young life.

Then the air was split by a scream of pain, horror, and death – and there was silence again.

“He took a hare!” Wolverine whispered.

The moon had climbed into the sky. In its ghostly light, the mists were a procession of swaying figures in long, trailing shrouds. Frog orchestra played for them; an occasional breath of wind rearranged the figures in groups and circles.

Some distance away, water splashed, something rattled, clattered, disturbed the procession of mists. “A moose is fording the bog!” Wolverine whispered. “The Drowning is no bar for him!”

Like a ghost, without the least rustle of feathers, the murderer flew over him again and into the trees beyond.

He’s back with the loot! He has little ones in his nest!

But at last, Wolverine grew drowsy from exhaustion. He still watched as the smoke of his fire wafted towards the mists and mingled with them; he heard the warning croaking of a mother mallard; and then he also wafted away, joining the smoke and the mists.

And he was now as light as them. Day came, and he floated over the meltwater, looked into nests, stroked birds with his hand, swam in the river, wrapped his arm around the moose’s neck, watched, standing one step away, how a recluse bittern sank his beak into the slime and buzzed loudly, and with his fist knocked away the eagle owl from a piebald deer foal.

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[1] Medieval knights adopted heraldic emblems, mottos, and war cries. The author continues the symbolism eagle owl = Teutonic knight.

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