And Breda certainly had her idiosyncrasies. She preferred raw to cooked meat, and would not sleep in the same room as her husband. She grew very angry when Ivan expostulated, saying, "You promised you would never thwart me. If you do not keep your word, I shall despise you, scorn you, hate you." And Ivan, who loved his wife beyond anything, yielded.
Some weeks after their marriage, neighbours complained of losing cattle and horses. They said there was a wolf about, and that its tracks, which they had followed, always ended under the walls of Ivan's house. They asked Ivan if he had not heard the brute. But he had heard nothing, he slept very soundly. Then they inquired of Ivan's sisters and mother, who also replied in the negative; but there was hesitation in their voices, and they looked very frightened and ashamed. And then people began to talk. They looked at Breda curiously, and finally they cut her. One night, when there was a downfall of snow, and the wind howled down the chimneys of Ivan's house and blew the snow, with heavy thumps against the window-panes, Ivan, who could not sleep for the storm, heard the door of Breda's room open very softly, and light steps steal stealthily down the passage. Then there came a half-suppressed, half-smothered cry, a groan, and all was still. Ivan got out of bed and opened his door, but his wife's voice called to him from the darkness and bade him go back.
"Do not be alarmed and make a fuss," she said; "I was ill a moment ago, but am quite well again now. Go back to bed at once, or I shall be very angry." And Ivan obeyed her.
In the morning his eldest sister, Beata, was found dead in bed, her throat, breast, and stomach slit open, as is the custom with wolves, and her flesh all mangled and eaten.
Breda took no food that day, and Ivan's mother and other sister, Malvina, looked at her out of the corner of their eyes and shuddered. But Ivan said nothing. A week later the same fate befell Malvina. Then Ivan's mother spoke. She told him that he must assuredly be under some evil spell, or he would never remain idle whilst his sisters' destroyer was at large, and she adjured him, by all that he held holy, not to allow himself a moment's rest till he had had ample vengeance for the loss of two such valuable lives.
Roused at last, Ivan, instead of going to bed, sat up, gun in hand, and watched. He passed many nights thus, and his patience was well nigh exhausted when, during one of the vigils, he fell asleep, dreaming as usual of the blue eyes and golden curls of Breda, whose beauty held him just as much enthralled as ever. From this slumber he was awakened by loud screams for help. Seizing his gun, and taking a random aim at a huge white wolf as he went (though without stopping to see the effects of the shot), he ran to his mother's bedside. She was dead. Her throat and body were slit; but she was not eaten.
Wild with grief and thirsting for revenge, Ivan started off in pursuit of the wolf, and discovered, in the passage, a track of blood which terminated at his wife's door. Receiving no reply when he asked for admittance, he entered the room and found Breda lying on the floor, in her nightdress, the blood streaming from a wound in her shoulder. Ivan knelt down and examined her. She had been struck by a bullet, and the bullet fitted the bore of his gun.
He knew the truth then—the truth he might have known all along, had he not, in his blind love, thrust it far from him—and, in the sudden alteration of his feeling, he raised his knife to kill her. But Breda opened her eyes, and the weapon fell from his hand.
"You know part of my secret now," she whispered, "but you don't know everything. I am a werwolf, not by inheritance, but of my own free will. In order to become one I ate the blue flowers in the wood. I did so to be avenged on my husband."
"Your husband!" Ivan cried; "good God! then you were a widow when I met you?"