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They have supposed that there is something in the soil, climate and other circumstances of America, which occasions animal nature to degenerate, not excepting the man, native or adoptive, physical or moral. _________ Thomas Jefferson, Notes On the State of Virginia

In the meridian years of the Seventeenth Century, before Cromwell rose in rebellion against his sovereign Charles the First, in the wild New Lands across the Atlantic, there lived in what Raleigh had called Virginia in honor of his Queen whose successor would murder him, a vast race of Indians who were doomed to suffer at the hands of white-skinned folk from faraway England. To them the English language owes the words that mean the creatures of the wood and the wood itself: skunk and possum and raccoon and hickory and others. The strangers from Europe called them Powhatan, after their great chief whose daughter, Pocahontas, later passed into legend. Amongst the people of what the English then called the Shire of Warrosquyoake there was reputed to have lived a most beautiful witch, as fearful with power as she was sublime with beauty. She was prim, tall for a woman, with long black glistening hair that fell to her waist, the color of jet, it truly shimmered in the looming Tidewater sun. She had almond-shaped eyes set in a pretty, symmetrical face, and a small, witty mouth that gave away nothing when she spoke. Her voice was cool and commanding but in private it was soothing and reassuring, but never did she lose her nerve - she knew her station as a woman was different amongst her people than it was to the English, still, she never, to either, wavered, nor showed weakness. She impressed all who knew her, white and native, with her knowledge of the world and its workings: it was her to whom the court of Opechancanough consulted for help with herbs and plants, and the movement of the stars and what they meant, and she was wise in this, much wiser than her fellows who were wise already, much wiser than the English. She knew the language of birds and could speak to them and ask where they found fish and where the berries were ripest, she knew which mushrooms could be eaten for taste and which could cause visions and which were dangerous to eat too. But apart from her naturalism, which was respected, she was feared also, for all the strange and hidden things were her domain as well, gifted in their knowledge since she was a girl, in the unremembered days before the English came. She knew the ghosts that lived amongst the cypress and would call on them when there was a problem even she could not solve - she was well-versed in the esoteric lore of her region, those who once were men and came to this vast New World to settle but through the caprices of the shadowy beings there before they were, became something else. Among them were the kind, mystical people, into the mountains far to the west, that worshipped the dog descended from the wolf, who cherished their ancient lore brought with them centuries ago from across the ocean - the whiskered fish that waxed gargantuan in western rivers, who year by year grew more anguished at their brethren who perished at the hands of naïve fishermen - and those antlered like an elk, once kin to the whiteskins who settled south of here but who had wandered into the sharp inland high country where now they burned hazelnuts in their Autumn fires for queer and inscrutable rituals, choosing that particular tree for their reverie because long ago they had carved their last human message to the world upon one of them, letters which spelled the word...Croatan. These and other mysteries were hers to know, hers to keep - and she knew and kept them well, offering anyone whom would ask guidance and wisdom. There were polecats that sprayed their noxious musk about her well-appointed wigwam to ward off trespassers that she commanded, or so the tale was spun, and too, a brigand of raccoons that would offer her nuts and fruit. Sometimes there were long, lonesome howls of a wolf - again, so the story went - far away from their homes in the more distant forests and hills, and more than once a reliable witness had seen a great grey wolf offer her a kill for cooking... ...persistent whispers amongst the Powhatan who never fully trusted or accepted her, repeated back as hearsay to the English who had, on a vast new continent, rather good reason to be gullible. There was a rider to these tales that made the English especially wary of her, that some did not believe but still more thought too fitting to not be true: that none of these furry creatures had been born that way, no, that once they were men and women who had crossed her, or done her a wrong. She had a name that was older than Powhatan himself, before that great monarch passed into a demonym for his people, but that had been lost to time. So the people called her Ohawas, which in the breathless language of the Powhatan meant crow, for like the crow she was intelligent, like the crow she was spiteful. And like the crow she was always beautiful, like the crow she never seemed to age. For how long she lived and for how long she had dwelt there in that part of Virginia, history will never know, but certainly she had been there for longer than most could remember and far antedating the colonists. She lived peaceably enough, isolated, along the body of water that her people called Warraskoyak, which bristled at the time with fat, handsome pecan trees - undisturbed by the feuds of the Powhatan with the subjects of Charles Stuart, King of France, England, Scotland and Ireland, meditating and exploring the unseen realms amongst the black clouds of aromatic tobacco. One dusk in the equinoctial days of Springtime, when the dogwoods were blooming and the pecans too though it was harder to tell, with sounds of bees buzzing about once again, a young huntsman came across her wigwam. He had gotten hopelessly turned around looking for the settlement which, a century hence, would be called Smithfield. His name was Andrew Tucker, and his lot was a mercenary, now a gatherer of game, who came to this continent seeking that ineffable life's meaning that would not be found on the one he came from. He would not be here, either in this darkening forest or in Virginia Colony either one, were it not for his brother Nicholas, smarter than he no doubt, better sense of direction most certainly. It was by his encouragement that he came from Chichester - they lived together, with their small little hound, Boy, in their mud-and-stud house they had built together, but he was nothing without him, as tonight surely proved. His brother was not an honest man, and in fact could be said to be a very bad man, whose dealings with the natives had been dishonest and sometimes violent, but at his heart he was still his brother, at his heart he was still family, and he was, in any case, a better man, a more skilled one, a smarter one. Now, a slain turkeyfowl over Andrew's shoulder, slim pickings, he was alone - he was lost, and though he did not know where he was, he was certain where he had ended up. Andrew approached the dwelling, lonesome amidst the thick pecan trees and the dogwoods that slumbered aneath them, the rank smell of polecat lingering - he approached it warily, for even he had heard the rumors of the powerful witch-woman, and believed him, he of near-pure stock from the race of Alfred the Great, who had lived near his whole life in a country which still had as point-of-fact a monarchy of fairies, dangerous sorcerers amidst the nobility, black dogs that foretold death. His, and his countrymen's, whole world was haunted - but he was about to enter her world, for hunger, worry, and the approaching night got the better of his superstition. He approached the door, covered by a hung buckskin, and asked in a loud, clear voice if he could enter, he had lost his way and needed shelter for the night. He was answered, to his surprise, in his native tongue - to be bade enter. He knelt to do so, pushing aside the buckskin, at once coughing and waving his hand before his face at the voluptuous miasma of tobacco smoke - he heard a voice, again in the language that he himself spoke, accented, apologizing, suggesting they exit for the moment so that they could speak while her wigwam would air out. Into the dusk they both stepped - and he was stunned by what he saw. Still coughing, squinting, still, by the light of the setting Sun that plunged out into the west he beheld her, her beauty he thought was exaggerated was in fact woefully understated - by the light of the setting Sun she was the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. What little breath he could draw, by and by, had been taken away. She, for her part, was of the same mind - this man was rugged, fit, handsome, hardened Sussex iron, a full blondish beard with premature wisps of grey, his demeanor was rather quite unlike the other English that she had met, he carried with him an endearing fear, a wariness, a sense that he did not belong here, so unlike the arrogance and the imperiousness of his brethren...at least not what she could see. When she inquired what brought him out here, he hesitated, he even stuttered - how embarrassing that so like a foreigner, stranger in a strange land so went the saying, that he did not know, simply, he did not know how he got out here and how he had gotten lost. She waved her hand and asked him to be silent - it was not uncommon for travelers out from the path back to the settlement to lose their way, would he not stay the night? The forest could be - unsafe. Surely I must not impose, inferred he. And she rejoined: Nay, for while my abode be humble, yet - I see, there, a turkey you've caught already, how fortunate, come behind my dwelling, we will eat well this night. Andrew could scarcely believe his luck - that such a beautiful woman would be so generous. As they moved to where she cooked her food, a great open-air hearth with a fire beneath it, he took the turkey off his shoulder and dressed and cleaned with some tools she provided, with some berries, she insisted, knowing that no scout went ahead without them, for taste and texture. It took an hour, perhaps two, for the meat to become done. He watched her all the while, they spoke of generalities but as the dusk grew dark and the faint trill of the first crickets of the year began singing their own names they turned to personal things. Family? No family had she - long dead - but, she said with a smile that foretold something, something he dismissed internally as heathen spirit nonsense no matter how pretty and no matter how good a hostess she was, they were still here, and she spoke to them when she could. Feeble-minded heresy of the unbaptized - yet still her words charmed him, for they came from a comely face. Was there not a wolf that lived round these parts? She smiled again, that smile that hid some basic broader truth to her answer: Aye, a strong one, but he is gone now. How unfounded the rumors were! No cruel witch, no foul sorceress, but a lovely, misunderstood young woman! Perhaps some personal conflict had arisen in her village and she was driven out here, or perhaps some misfortune had befallen a relative who had lived there previously. They supped together on the turkey, roast on her hearth. She was so charmed by this man, this bearded man with the kind green eyes, that her natural defenses had been, as the hours wore on, lessened and lightened - not all of the whiteskins were bad, some of them, she told him, quite lovely, the mothers doting on their children and the husbands grieving those they lost, which was often, but such is the lot of Man, isn't it so, to lose as well as gain? He agreed - there was much to gain here, much to gain indeed, if one knew where to look, and where to look hard enough. There was an incredulity to his words that she did not detect, that she would have known had she not, for the first night in too many nights to count, actually trusted a stranger. Andrew could have been said to have been the most thoughtful man, unlike his brother who carefully calculated all he did, and rarely did anything without planning - it had gotten Andrew into trouble before, after all, part of the reason he had to depart Chichester was a nasty business involving a certain baker wanting to duel him because he had, so as was accused, partook of carnal knowledge with his daughter in a forceful way. But here in the New Lands such a thing would be much harder to prove - and indeed, with this woman, who would think to wonder at all? She lived alone, this squaw, so isolated from either her own people or his - and it had been so long, too long, since had seen such a rare and gorgeous prize. Moment by moment his temptation grew. He was said to be the most well-endowed man in the settlement by the bawdy gossips - he would not deny it, nor would he deny the violent splashing passion that now submerged him. Tonight, in fact, he should prove it, and claim this woman as he and his brother claimed already much of the Virgin's Land. Is it minded if he removed his clothes? All day he has been travelling and hunting: Now I will spend the night as you wished me to. She made no objection, and to the contrary, the river was not far, there they could be washed come daybreak. The trap was set. Would you partake of this pipe with me, traveler? It is not much but the most I can offer afore we go to bed. And he readily agreed. He would have her. What of it? A mere squaw - no great witch she, a mere squaw. This would be easy. And so as she knelt, back turned, sitting upon the ground to light the pipe, the crickets chirping and the stars bright and oceanic above them - as she knelt, he grabbed her, roughly, hands on her shoulders, gripping them to pull her up, turn her around. She cried out in her own strange tongue in shock and surprise - he smiled at her, a finger to his lips. Shhh. She glanced down, his virile member at the ready - large, very large, rather larger than any she had seen amongst those she lain with, peeking out of the foreskin, plump and insistent. It had risen, hard, a sword to pierce and wound her - perhaps, to slay her. No - never. She was nobody's prey, she was nobody's meat, she was no turkeybird that could be slain and consumed, to be forgotten. Her eyes narrowed, and shoved him back, with a preternatural strength that belied her waifish form, that stunned him as he fell backward on his rear. Animal! I was wrong, so very wrong, for since you have come here you have taken what is not yours, you hunger and ravish - as a wolf! While he was on the ground he struggled to stand up - furious that a puny squaw would deny him. She spat on the ground. That would you be this monstrous in the face of my hospitality! But no monster yet - monster soon enough! A small puff on her long clay pipe still in her hand - and a spew of smoke into his face. Your amercement should be great, your penalty shall be forever. For the second time that night he wheezed with the acrid cloud of the tobacco-weed, but this was harsher, this struck and burnt his lungs in his ribcage, he found himself out of breath and out of vision, blurred immediately, so that the only sense he could trust was his hearing. And so heard he: Begone - begone forever from my house! Off he ran, he tore from that accursed wigwam where dwelt that awful temptress, submerged at once in the fetid wind of the polecat, the quavering trill of the crickets, the crawling shadows that swam in the forest of the pecan trees, losing his footing, half-naked, sliding into the grass. The blood that pulsed in his temples pounded, pounded like a cannonade that was shot off every second, and in the space between he heard that woman's voice, soft but assured, gentle but malicious: You hunger and ravish - as a wolf. At once he felt it - his whole body was a consumed ember, so hot and so ablaze with fever he felt as though his insides were cooking, roasting, like a turkey on a hearth. He cried out to God Almighty, but the heat would not abate, no, in fact it grew worse, and worser still, until he could not bear it any longer and he put his whole arm in his mouth to try and tear the skin off, for with the heat had come a madness that shouted in his head and screamed in his mind. He lost his balance in this awkward position and toppled over, his back into the grass that was bathed in the inkiness of the night that his now febrile consciousness was certain was going to devour him whole. His eyes swam in his skull - down he looked, all the way to the riverbank that choked by those infernal pecan trees and the flowering dogwoods that phosphoresced hideously in the Moon, down, to his own flesh... ...flesh that was not his own flesh. He saw erupt from it, every pore, fine hairs, a bloom of carpeted fur, down his chiseled form, down to his member, which even in the moonlight had become red and enflamed as though swollen from some nameless malady. He watched it, his senses returning just briefly enough to let him into the Hell that he was soon descending. He watched it change. What had been his pride, when he could be ribald and vulgar amongst his fellow-soldiers in England and the sailors on the way here, so much larger and easier to please a woman than anyone he had met, was becoming, as he watched, something vile, something monstrous. It was stiff and ready as it was before when he had attempted to ravish the woman, but overly so, bloated, obscenely full, uncomfortable to a special pain - the head, familiar rounded shape, began to taper, like the end of a spear, moment by moment, until it was sharpened and pointed. His foreskin bloomed in the same fur, his testicles, a hot itch that he could not scratch as every muscle in his body convulsively cramped at once. His legs had burst from foot to waist with still more of the fur - blondish-grey, as his beard, as his coarse bodyhair already - but it was not uniform, but in patches, long stretches of fur with streaks of still-smooth skin. So it was with his hands: his left spasmed and twitched but his right did not, the palm of his left darkened and then hardened, leathery, in oblong splotches to make pawpads whilst his right remained as he was born - human, yet still. He felt a pressure, ambient, then mild, then unbearable, at his seat - his tailbone had descended and ripped out from his skin, a spray of blood that coated the soon-meated bone with more fur, fur that erupted out of his ears which twisted and point up, up into points, both sides of his head. His hands went to his face, where inside his mouth he could feel his teeth grow, and grow again, until against his lips were pressed fangs, stretching his face even as he felt the bones in his skull pop, and reshape, to give him a nauseating near-muzzle. And finally, in his deepest humiliation - naked, deformed - he felt his member grow and swell once more, at the base, a firm new muscle swollen and hot, bulging out from the foreskin that had thickened into a fat sheath. His body was revolting against him - he felt his penis engorge and become corpulent with a pleasure he did not wish to have, but it built and built until he was helpless to it, the seed bursting forth, spraying his own body, fur and skin, up to his muzzle and into his eyes, a gush, a wave, of sticky fluid that reeked of animal, a pack of unwashed dogs diseased with mange... ...not dogs, not dogs, no, but wolves, for he had ravished as one, and would live as one - incomplete, not to be given the beautiful grey shape, but only there at the halfway, imperfect and unwanted by Nature and by Man. The last thing he would ever recollect with a conscious human mind was a cackle coming from somewhere near him, and then all around him, an unending cacophony in his ears - a laughter, a high mocking laughter, a woman's laughter, yes, that passed into the japing, amelodic call of a crow, dozens, scores, great hundreds of crows all cawing in awful, awful unison. He screamed for the sound to stop - but all that emerged from that misshapen face was a long, lonesome, baleful howl... ...a howl that a man with a torch searching for him with a little dog by his side heard at once. Nicholas had known his brother Andrew to be clumsy, to be reckless, but never to be actually lost, never to be so inept as to not find his way home. Where could his brother have gone? Was not the path back to the settlement clear enough? Ah, his older brother would surely be the death of him - thinking only with his flintlock and his prick, it was a marvel he had survived and prospered with him in this wilderness. This was far from the fort, where could he have gone wrong with his sense of direction? Where could he be? Out with Boy by his side, he was determined to find him, even all the way out here, a sense of unease he could not place rising inside him. He heard the howl but it was Boy who caught his attention, running ahead, giving tongue to whatever it was that was ahead of him - Nicholas hustled, torch in hand, flintlock in the other, to catch up, but he had only a small distance to go before Boy came bounding back...his little canine voice a flurry of panicked whimpers. Alarmed at his dog's own alarm, Nicholas trekked forward still, that same uneasiness, however irrational, however unfounded, making him almost want to turn tail himself. There in the ghastly admixture of Moon and torchlight, he beheld it - an eldritch thing, not quite wolf but not quite man, tortured and twisted and loping about as though in an agony that would never abate. Boy growled, then bayed, but then whined, and then cowered behind him - his fear palpable to his master, unnerved by this usually foolhardy-brave dog's act of real terror. What was there, writhing in the grass, was an incomplete, deformed mass of fur and flesh - it was an asymmetric monstrosity, a wolf denuded, a man made furry - there was a tail, there were paws, but there were hands, there were feet...there was a muzzle, but there were eyes. He could scarcely believe it - was this a new creature, a strange new thing that dwelt here in these parts, unrecorded by wiser men? A nocturnal beast that only came out at night? But then the thing crawled nearer, a living cloud of gurgling whines - a strangled, desperate keening - and the torchlight threw upon its face an awful truth. Nicholas cried out in stark, dread horror. The eyes - those green eyes that he also shared. He choked out the first syllable of his brother's name before it was dead on his lips. His eyes rose slowly - over the unyielding mournful cries of the beast before him, and the cowardly yips of his hound aneath him...he could see, into the forest of pecan trees that danced in the shadows over clusters of leprous dogwoods, he could see it, just barely, a solitary wigwam, the still-stoked fire of a hearth behind it, homey clouds of smoke rising, up, up, into the treetops, the spirits of the past communing with the astral fantasies of the future. And he knew what had happened. He had been warned of the woman whose name meant crow, he had been warned not to stray too far near the pecan forest where lay thick and noxious the smell of the polecats - did not the Powhatan call them skunks? - for there dwelt someone who was a great sorceress, who communed with birds and who knew the secrets of the ownerless vastness that his countrymen, by hubris and folly, had tried to claim as theirs. Andrew had wandered too far - he had gotten lost - and by his own poor judgment and mistakes, had been turned into the craven monster begging for unanswerable death before his own brother. Nicholas was crushed by grief, immediate, needling, he was swallowed by a sorrow that he had never before felt in his life, not when they had buried their mother far away across the ocean, not when they left England together to die, ignobly, here. The thing made sounds at him - guttural noises that may have been human speech, may have been trying to tell him something - a furry forearm rose, the hand was padded at the bottom like the paw of a great beast, claws shone luridly in the torchlight. He swallowed - hard - and hesitated, tried to make sense of this, this tragedy that defied words and logic. And then - with a steadiness he did not feel - he raised his gun. The thing that had been his brother would not, could not, should not, suffer to live as he was. A shot was fired, a bloody mess made of the chest cavity of the creature that had been his brother, Andrew Tucker. It was done. Boy came forward, tentatively, his little black nose twitching in the air at the mangled corpse - he growled again, then dove back to Nicholas' heels. In his infinite despair, awash with a misery he could barely understand, his thoughts blank with the blackest sadness, Nicholas did his brother one last favor - he threw his torch down onto his crumpled form, where he caught alight, and there in the grass of Virginia would he be cremated and laid rest. He bid Boy to come, sobbing into his sleeve as he walked. When he returned to the settlement, the night-watch was there to greet him outside the wooden gate. The leader, a handsome fellow with blackish hair named Maximilian, who would disappear strangely himself in the next decade after joining some privateers and battling the Great Gasparilla off the Spanish Main, came out to greet him: Found you your brother, Tucker? Your brother who went out hunting and never returned? He shook his head, his voice choked with emotion, but for why, they would never know, nor why also was his torch missing, or why his hound dog shivered, as though in fright, for two days after. No, sirrah, I found him not - looked all over I did, looked high and low I did, but my brother has vanished, he is no more, he sleeps now in Shepherd Jesus' tender arms. That should have been the final word, but Nicholas Tucker was not an honest man, he had lied before and stolen from the natives and expanded his lands by devious means so perhaps, went the whispers, he would not even stop at killing his own kin. There was no proof, of course, and the controversy grew. News of Andrew Tucker's disappearance lit Jamestown and Neweportes Newes afire with rumor and speculation - weeks passed, and then at last it became apparent that some grave ill had indeed befallen him while he was along the banks of that river, near where the witch-woman was reputed to live. It took not long at all for the people come to a leap of logic: Andrew Tucker had been slain, and slain deliberately, his body never found, not by the oily Nicholas Tucker of Chichester, but by the arcane and occult skill of the native savage. Nicholas Tucker did his best to dismiss this, to explain that surely he had fallen into the swamp and drowned, gotten lost and eaten by a wild beast... ...all the while remembering his brother's misshapen, warped, half-wolf half-human face, chest bloodied by musket-shot. Would not he do something to avenge his fallen kin! Done in, treacherous murder, by the evil designs of the heathen magic of the savage witch-woman! Would not the man defend his family honor - indeed, the honor of England - by doing unto her as she had done to his brother! Yet...Nicholas did nothing. And was hated for it. Some say that his foresight was the better part of a stronger valor, for there would have been, undoubtedly, ruthless and immediate reprisals by the Powhatan against the English should their beloved woman-magician be killed, even in vengeance, by a whiteskin - already there was nervous talk in James Cittie of a coming conflict, which a decade hence would prove prophetic. But others say that this was Nicholas at his most self-serving and self-preserving - perish the thought of the whole colony under attack from the invaders, it was only he, lowly planter, that he was ever concerned with. Nicholas never - not once - told a soul what he saw that night. He thought the matter would die, unlike his brother, in peace, but two full months passed before folk began demanding he do something about what had transpired so vociferously he was left with no other choice. He was overcome: he sold his holdings, freed his pair of slaves who chose in familial loyalty to accompany him, and he fled west, never looking back, perfectly content to be alone and perhaps even die alone, if only he never heard his brother's name again. The witch-woman was left be, and many years later when Middle Plantation was given the task of being the heart of the Virginia colony and then the name of King William, she was not recorded as being where her wigwam is supposed to have stood - she, like Andrew Tucker, simply vanished, leaving no certainties to history. When Harvey, the governor against whom the wrath of his countrymen was freshly roiling, heard of Nicholas Tucker's cowardice into the west, he sneered that though Tucker had not a heavy heart of iron he had at least a swift, light foot - and much to his despair this was a moniker Nicholas Tucker could never shake off. But when his son, also named Nicholas although history would know him by the diminutive, Nicky, moved with General Wood out past the New River, into the land of strange natives who had whites of their eyes that glowed like the full Moon, he would take the affixed title and reclaim it, to save his new American family face. When he reached the Greenbrier Valley with his freedman, Turner Jack, and there settled, he was not Nicholas Tucker II - but rather Nicky Lightfoot.