About Books: Wolfbane

 

 

Have you ever read a story and thought, “I could write that better!”

Perhaps not the entire story, but certain aspects of it. While that may sound terribly conceited, sometimes an author doesn’t quite hit the mark, and it can be frustrating for the reader, especially if it’s a favorite genre.

This was the case when I read Stephen R. Donaldson’s first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogy, a series about a man with Hanson’s disease.

In this novel, Covenant slips into and out of an alternate world. In this world, he is free from his disease. His wedding band is made of white gold, and the people in this world believe that the white gold wielder has special powers. Thomas is reluctant to use these powers, and only when he is put in a situation where he has no choice does he ever use them and save the day.

I found Covenant to be a bit of a drama queen over the white gold. I understood why his wife left him. He was annoying and prone to whining, and overall not a very good role model for a hero.

At the time I believed you should plug through a novel in a series because the second one or third one might just get better.

I was wrong. The time spent reading those novels is time I will never get back. Yet, it wasn’t a worthless exercise. As I read the books – I’m told the author improved with subsequent novels, but after an entire trilogy, I felt he had his chance and he blew it – I kept thinking of how I would have done things differently.

As far as I was concerned, Thomas Covenant took himself far too seriously. True, Hansen’s disease is no laughing matter, but landing in a place where you’re completely free of disease is a chance to show a little humor.

A source for ideas was, of course, The Twilight Zone. Slipping into an alternate universe seems perfectly normal to anyone who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s watching Rod Serling’s weekly program. There was always the possibility for your consideration of this sort of occurrence actually happening.

And of course, the individual slipping into the universe would be alleviated from some illness or other difficulty. Of course, one must pay the piper, so to speak, and a price of some sort would be exacted.

I had seen many Twilight Zone episodes where being in a strange place resulted in meetings with monsters or worse. But the characters were plucky, and even if they screamed at first, they pulled themselves together and solved their problem – unless they were eaten by the monsters.

So, putting Rod Serling and Stephen R. Donaldson in a blender with some strawberries and a shot of vodka, not to mention late night radio, I created my own story. And before you take umbrage at my “stealing” an idea from elsewhere, even Shakespeare’s work is of questionable originality.

I offer for your consideration: Wolfbane.

Enter Tristan Devereaux, overnight disc jockey on a progressive rock station in the 1980s. Still in his 20s, he has everything going for him until he develops an illness the doctors can’t figure out. Something is wrong with his blood, a disease so rare it doesn’t even have a name. But until they can figure out what to do for him, his best option is to receive transfusions periodically.

Tris is a free spirit who doesn’t want to be tied down, especially with medical issues. He believes he is owed as long a life as most other people. He’s lived his life as a fairly decent person: not perfect, but not a trouble-maker, either. He certainly shouldn’t die before his own parents.

He pulls inward and starts avoiding many of his friends just to keep them from realizing he’s ill. As a way to lighten the mood, because his illness requires blood transfusions, he calls his late night radio show, “Vampires into the night.” Unfortunately, there aren’t any Vampire songs, so he begins his program each evening with “Werewolves of London.” In the 1980s creatures of the night were as in vogue as rock bands that looked like the members were vampires or werewolves.

One night, tired and in need of blood, he stumbles in his living room and falls to the floor. A growl coming from nearby alerts him to the fact that suddenly he is no longer in his living room, but in a woods somewhere, and a wolf is chasing him. The wolf is huge and gaining on him. He has no weapon, so he runs to a tree with low enough branches to climb up, and scurries up the tree high enough to keep the wolf from reaching him.

The wolf jumps and snaps, snarls and paces, but he can’t reach Tris. The young man doesn’t understand why the wolf wouldn’t just get tired and go away. But this wolf is on a mission, and eventually settles on the ground below the tree.

Looking around, Tris sees no one who might be able to help him. Night is coming, and he doesn’t want to spend it in a tree. After a while, as he’s trying to come up with a solution of what to do, he realizes he’s not wearing the clothes he came home from work in, but an outfit that looks more like something from a Robin Hood movie. He didn’t have time to think about how that happened, but he begins to search for pockets in his clothes, to see if he has anything that might help. He finds a dagger.

The dagger isn’t much, and he doesn’t think it’s big enough to kill the massive wolf below him. He moves to the lowest branch, and the wolf appears to be sleeping. Tris has to do something. Without thinking he jumps down from the tree, landing squarely on the wolf, and jams the dagger into its neck. Then he does something he can’t believe: he begins drinking the wolf’s blood as the wolf struggles to get free.

Tris doesn’t have time to be horrified by his own actions. He works instinctively to get the blood he desperately needs.

Finally, the wolf stops struggling, and Tris is sated. He sits up, finally realizing what he’s done, and glad that there was no one to see him. He wipes his mouth, cleans off the dagger and is about to go see if he can find a town or people somewhere to help him.

He’s kind of amused at his decision because he believes he’s still on the floor of his apartment, and this is all a dream. He doesn’t need to do anything, just let the dream move at its own pace.

Gradually he becomes aware that he’s not alone. One by one, people who are all several inches shorter than him, all wearing the same drab garments, come out from behind trees and bushes to surround him. Once a large group has gathered, they begin haling him as the Wolfbane, the killer of the wolf that has been terrorizing their village for months. A cheer goes up, and they heap praises on him.

At first startled, he quickly becomes annoyed because he’s just spent a few hours in a tree, and realizes these people, whoever they are, have been hiding and watching him all this time without anyone lifting a finger to help him.

Finally, they manage to cajole him into returning with them to their village so they can welcome him properly.

The whole episode strikes him as the craziest dream he’s ever had, but since it is a dream, he goes along with it.

It has to be a dream. These people are plain, simple folk who seem to live in the Middle Ages, yet their houses have holographic fireplaces that actually give off heat, sophisticated kitchens with heating and electrical sources he can’t figure out. They have a town council and a town witch. In one sense they seem modern, yet they don’t understand the simplest ideas of 20^th century living. But it’s his dream, so he’s going to run with it.

Before he can figure out the ins and outs of this new society, he wakes up in a hospital, and everyone wants to know where he’s been for the past few days. People had gone to his apartment, but he wasn’t there until that morning, when they found him lying on the floor, barely alive.

He tried to give evasive answers. He knows if he tells the truth, they’ll assume he’s crazy, but he has to tell them something. He claims he doesn’t know, and they think he’s as mad as they would have thought if he’d told them the truth.

He does finally tell someone about his adventure, and even though they don’t believe it, they continue to try to help.

Over the next several months, he has a few more experiences with this alternate world. He tries to find things there that wouldn’t be in his 1980s world, and tries to bring things back with him to prove he isn’t mad. He develops relationships with the townsfolk, both good and bad, and tries to convince his friends there is another world he goes to.

His doctor doesn’t understand when he disappears and comes back seemingly well. He confides in her about the strange village, and insists he doesn’t believe it himself, that it’s just a dream. Yet he is well when he’s there, and in the real world, he’s quickly losing ground to his disease.

He finally tells her he’s decided that he’s going to go permanently to the dream village, where he can live a different sort of life than he ever visualized, but one where he’s no longer the slave to an illness. And yes, later I used a similar plot twist in the Unicorn novels.

Since she can’t talk him out of his decision, she decides wants to witness his going. He seems to fade as he’s lying in a certain spot on the living room floor.

But just deciding to move to an alternate universe isn’t as easy as it might seem. Outside the village, a pack of wolves, brothers to the one he killed, have come for revenge. If the disease doesn’t kill him, the wolves might.

How does it end? You’ll have to wait until the book is published.