Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition

by Tanith Lee

  The wolf raised its supernatural head and once more it looked at the young girl.

  The moment held no reason, no pity, and certainly no longer any hope of escape.

  As the wolf began to pad noiselessly toward Lisel up the stair, she fled by the only route now possible to her. Into unconsciousness.

  THREE

  She came to herself to find the face of a prince from a romance poised over hers. He was handsome enough to have kissed her awake, except that she knew immediately it was the dwarf.

  “Get away from me!” she shrieked, and he moved aside.

  She was in the bedchamber, lying on the canopied bed. She was not dead, she had not been eaten or had her throat torn out.

  As if in response to her thoughts, the dwarf said musically to her: “You have had a nightmare, m’mselle.” But she could tell from a faint expression somewhere between his eyes, that he did not truly expect her to believe such a feeble equivocation.

  “There was a wolf,” said Lisel, pulling herself into a sitting position, noting that she was still gowned and wearing the scarlet cloak. “A wolf which you let into the house.”

  “I?” The dwarf elegantly raised an eyebrow.

  “You, you frog. Where is my grandmother? I demand to see her at once.”

  “The Lady Anna is resting. She sleeps late in the mornings.”

  “Wake her.”

  “Your pardon, m’mselle, but I take my orders from Madame.” The dwarf bowed. “If you are recovered and hungry, a maid will bring petit déjeuner at once to your room, and hot water for bathing, when you are ready.”

  Lisel frowned. Her ordeal past, her anger paramount, she was still very hungry. An absurd notion came to her—had it all been a dream? No, she would not so doubt herself. Even though the wolf had not harmed her, it had been real. A household pet, then? She had heard of deranged monarchs who kept lions or tigers like cats. Why not a wolf kept like a dog?

  “Bring me my breakfast,” she snapped, and the dwarf bowed himself goldenly out.

  All avenues of escape seemed closed, yet by day (for it was day, the tawny gloaming of winter) the phenomena of the darkness seemed far removed. Most of their terror had gone with them. With instinctive immature good sense, Lisel acknowledged that no hurt had come to her, that she was indeed being cherished.

  She wished she had thought to reprimand the dwarf for his mention of intimate hot water and his presence in her bedroom. Recollections of unseemly novelettes led her to a swift examination of her apparel—unscathed. She rose and stood morosely by the fire, waiting for her breakfast, tapping her foot.

  * * * *

  By the hour of noon, Lisel’s impatience had reached its zenith with the sun. Of the two, only the sun’s zenith was insignificant.

  Lisel left the bedroom, flounced along the corridor and came to the stairhead. Eerie memories of the previous night had trouble in remaining with her. Everything seemed to have become rather absurd, but this served only to increase her annoyance. Lisel went down the stair boldly. The fire was lit in the enormous hearth and blazing cheerfully. Lisel prowled about, gazing at the dubious stained glass, which she now saw did not portray a hunting scene at all, but some pagan subject of men metamorphosing into wolves.

  At length a maid appeared. Lisel marched up to her.

  “Kindly inform my grandmother that I am awaiting her in the hall.”

  The maid seemed struggling to repress a laugh, but she bobbed a curtsey and darted off. She did not come back, and neither did grandmother.

  When a man entered bearing logs for the fire, Lisel said to him, “Put those down and take me at once to the coachman.”

  The man nodded and gestured her to follow him without a word of acquiescence or disagreement. Lisel, as she let herself be led through the back corridors and by the hubbub of the huge stone kitchen, was struck by the incongruousness of her actions. No longer afraid, she felt foolish. She was carrying out her “plan” of the night before from sheer pique, nor did she have any greater hope of success. It was more as if some deeply hidden part of herself prompted her to flight, in spite of all resolutions, rationality and desire. But it was rather like trying to walk on a numbed foot. She could manage to do it, but without feeling.

  The coachhouse and stables bulked gloomily about the courtyard, where the snow had renewed itself in dazzling white drifts. The coachman stood in his black furs beside an iron brazier. One of the blond horses was being shod in an old-fashioned manner, the coachman overseeing the exercise. Seeking to ingratiate herself, Lisel spoke to the coachman in a silky voice.

  “I remarked yesterday, how well you controlled the horses when the wolves came after the carriage.”

  The coachman did not answer, but hearing her voice, the horse sidled a little, rolling its eye at her.

  “Suppose,” said Lisel to the coachman, “I were to ask you if you would take me back to the city. What would you say?”

  Nothing, apparently.

  The brazier sizzled and the hammer of the blacksmithing groom smacked the nails home into the horse’s hoof. Lisel found the process disconcerting.

  “You must understand,” she said to the coachman, “my father would give you a great deal of money. He’s unwell and wishes me to return. I received word this morning.”

  The coachman hulked there like a big black bear, and Lisel had the urge to bite him viciously.

  “My grandmother,” she announced, “would order you to obey me, but she is in bed.”

  “No, she is not,” said the Matriarch at Lisel’s back, and Lisel almost screamed. She shot around, and stared at the old woman, who stood about a foot away, imperious in her furs, jewels frostily blistering on her wrists.

  “I wish,” said Lisel, taking umbrage as her shield, “to go home at once.”

  “So I gather. But you can’t, I regret.”

  “You mean to keep me prisoner?” blurted Lisel.

  Grandmother laughed. The laugh was like fresh ice crackling under a steel skate. “Not at all. The road is snowed under and won’t be clear for several days. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with us a while longer.”

  Lisel, in a turmoil she could not herself altogether fathom, had her attention diverted by the behavior of the horse. It was bristling like a cat, tossing its head, dancing against the rope by which the second groom was holding it.

  Anna walked at once out into the yard and began to approach the horse from the front. The horse instantly grew more agitated, kicking up its heels, and neighing croupily. Lisel almost cried an automatic warning, but restrained herself. Let the beldame get a kicking, she deserved it. Rather to Lisel’s chagrin, Anna reached the horse without actually having her brains dashed out. She showed not a moment’s hesitation or doubt, placing her hand on its long nose, eying it with an amused tenderness. She looked very cruel and very indomitable.

  “There now,” said Anna to the horse, which, fallen quiet and still, yet trembled feverishly. “You know you are used to me. You know you were trained to endure me since you were a foal, as your brothers are sometimes trained to endure fire.”

  The horse hung its head and shivered, cowed but noble.

  Anna left it and strolled back through the snow. She came to Lisel and took her arm.

  “I’m afraid,” said Anna, guiding them toward the château door, “that they’re never entirely at peace when I’m in the vicinity, though they are good horses, and well-trained. They have borne me long distances in the carriage.”

  “Do they fear you because you ill-treat them?” Lisel asked impetuously.

  “Oh, not at all. They fear me because to them I smell of wolf.”

  Lisel bridled.

  “Then do you think it wise to keep such a pet in the house?” she flared.

  Anna chuckled. It was not necessa
rily a merry sound.

  “That’s what you think, is it? What a little dunce you are, Lisel. I am the beast you saw last night, and you had better get accustomed to it. Grandmère is a werewolf.”

  * * * *

  The return walk through the domestic corridors into the hall was notable for its silence. The dreadful Anna, her grip on the girl’s arm unabated, smiled thoughtfully to herself. Lisel was obviously also deliberating inwardly. Her conclusions, however, continued to lean to the deranged rather than the occult. Propitiation suggested itself, as formerly, to be the answer. So, as they entered the hall, casting their cloaks to a servant, Lisel brightly exclaimed:

  “A werewolf, Grandmère. How interesting!”

  “Dear me,” said Anna, “what a child.” She seated herself by the fire in one of her tall thrones. Beautiful had appeared. “Bring the liqueur and some biscuits,” said Anna. “It’s past the hour, but why should we be the slaves of custom?”

  Lisel perched on a chair across the hearth, watching Anna guardedly.

  “You are the interesting one,” Anna now declared. “You look sulky rather than intimidated at being mured up here with one whom you wrongly suppose is a dangerous insane. No, ma chère, verily I’m not mad, but a transmogrifite. Every evening, once the sun sets, I become a wolf, and duly comport myself as a wolf does.”

  “You’re going to eat me, then,” snarled Lisel, irritated out of all attempts to placate.

  “Eat you? Hardly necessary. The forest is bursting with game. I won’t say I never tasted human meat, but I wouldn’t stoop to devouring a blood relation. Enough is enough. Besides, I had the opportunity last night, don’t you think, when you swooned away on the stairs not fifty feet from me. Of course, it was almost dawn, and I had dined, but to rip out your throat would have been the work only of a moment. Thereafter we might have stored you in the cold larder against a lean winter.”

  “How dare you try to frighten me in this way!” screamed Lisel in a paroxysm of rage.

  Beautiful was coming back with a silver tray. On the tray rested a plate of biscuits and a decanter of the finest cut glass containing a golden drink.

  “You note, Beautiful,” said Madame Anna, “I like this wretched granddaughter of mine. She’s very like me.”

  “Does that dwarf know you are a werewolf?” demanded Lisel, with baleful irony.

  “Who else lets me in and out at night? But all my servants know, just as my other folk know, in the forest.”

  “You’re disgusting,” said Lisel.

  “Tut, I shall disinherit you. Don’t you want my fortune any more?”

  Beautiful set down the tray on a small table between them and began to pour the liqueur, smooth as honey, into two tiny crystal goblets.

  Lisel watched. She remembered the nasty dishes of raw meat—part of Anna’s game of werewolfery—and the drinking of water, but no wine. Lisel smirked, thinking she had caught the Matriarch out. She kept still and accepted the glass from Beautiful, who, while she remained seated, was a mere inch taller than she.

  “I toast you,” said Anna, raising her glass to Lisel. “Your health and your joy.” She sipped. A strange look came into her strange eyes. “We have,” she said, “a brief winter afternoon before us. There is just the time to tell you what you should be told.”

  “Why bother with me? I’m disinherited.”

  “Hardly. Taste the liqueur. You will enjoy it.”

  “I’m surprised that you did, Grandmère.”

  “Don’t be,” said Anna with asperity. “This wine is special to this place. We make it from a flower which grows here. A little yellow flower that comes in the spring, or sometimes, even in the winter. There is a difference then, of course. Do you recall the flower of my escutcheon? It is the self-same one.”

  Lisel sipped the liqueur. She had had a fleeting fancy it might be drugged or tampered with in some way, but both drinks had come from the decanter. Besides, what would be the point? The Matriarch valued an audience. The wine was pleasing, fragrant and, rather than sweet as Lisel had anticipated, tart. The flower which grew in winter was plainly another demented tale.

  Relaxed, Lisel leant back in her chair. She gazed at the flames in the wide hearth. Her mad grandmother began to speak to her in a quiet, floating voice, and Lisel saw pictures form in the fire. Pictures of Anna, and of the château, and of darkness itself.…

  FOUR

  How young Anna looked. She was in her twenties. She wore a scarlet gown and a scarlet cloak lined with pale fur and heavy brocade. It resembled Lisel’s cloak but had a different clasp. Snow melted on the shoulders of the cloak, and Anna held her slender hands to the fire on the hearth. Free of the hood, her hair, like marvelously tarnished ivory, was piled on her head, and there was a yellow flower in it. She wore ruby eardrops. She looked just like Lisel, or Lisel as she would become in six years or seven.

  Someone called. It was more a roar than a call, as if a great beast came trampling into the château. He was a big man, dark, all darkness, his features hidden in a black beard, black hair—more, in a sort of swirling miasmic cloud, a kind of psychic smoke: Anna’s hatred and fear. He bellowed for liquor and a servant came running with a jug and cup. The man, Anna’s husband, cuffed the servant aside, grabbing the jug as he did so. He strode to Anna, spun her about, grabbed her face in his hand as he had grabbed the jug. He leaned to her as if to kiss her, but he did not kiss, he merely stared. She had steeled herself not to shrink from him, so much was evident. His eyes, roving over her to find some overt trace of distaste or fright, suddenly found instead the yellow flower. He vented a powerful oath. His paw flung up and wrenched the flower free. He slung it in the fire and spat after it.

  “You stupid bitch,” he growled at her. “Where did you come on that?”

  “It’s only a flower.”

  “Not only a flower. Answer me, where? Or do I strike you?”

  “Several of them are growing near the gate, beside the wall; and in the forest. I saw them when I was riding.”

  The man shouted again for his servant. He told him to take a fellow and go out. They must locate the flowers and burn them.

  “Another superstition?” Anna asked. Her husband hit her across the head so she staggered and caught the mantel to steady herself.

  “Yes,” he sneered, “another one. Now come upstairs.”

  Anna said, “Please excuse me, sir. I am not well today.”

  He said in a low and smiling voice:

  “Do as I say, or you’ll be worse.”

  The fire flared on the swirl of her bloody cloak as she moved to obey him.

  And the image changed. There was a bedroom, fluttering with lamplight. Anna was perhaps thirty-five or six, but she looked older. She lay in bed, soaked in sweat, uttering hoarse low cries or sometimes preventing herself from crying. She was in labor. The child was difficult. There were other women about the bed. One muttered to her neighbor that it was beyond her how the master had ever come to sire a child, since he got his pleasure another way, and the poor lady’s body gave evidence of how. Then Anna screamed. Someone bent over her. There was a peculiar muttering among the women, as if they attended at some holy ceremony.

  And another image came. Anna was seated in a shawl of gilded hair. She held a baby on her lap and was playing with it in an intense, quite silent way. As her hair shifted, traceries became momentarily visible over her bare shoulders, and arms, horrible traceries left by a lash.

  “Let me take the child,” said a voice, and one of the women from the former scene appeared. She lifted the baby from Anna’s lap, and Anna let the baby go, only holding her arms and hands in such a way that she touched it to the last second. The other woman was older than Anna, a peasant dressed smartly for service in the château. “You mustn’t fret yourself,” she said.

  “But
I can’t suckle her,” said Anna. “I wanted to.”

  “There’s another can do that,” said the woman. “Rest yourself. Rest while he is away.” When she said “he” there could be no doubt of the one to whom she referred.

  “Then, I’ll rest,” said Anna. She reclined on pillows, wincing slightly as her back made contact with the fine soft silk. “Tell me about the flowers again. The yellow flowers.”

  The woman showed her teeth as she rocked the baby. For an instant her face was just like a wolf’s.

  “You’re not afraid,” she said. “He is. But it’s always been here. The wolf-magic. It’s part of the Wolfland. Wherever wolves have been, you can find the wolf-magic. Somewhere. In a stream or a cave, or in a patch of ground. The château has it. That’s why the flowers grow here. Yes, I’ll tell you, then. It’s simple. If any eat the flowers, then they receive the gift. It comes from the spirit, the wolfwoman, or maybe she’s a goddess, an old goddess left over from the beginning of things, before Christ came to save us all. She has the head of a wolf and yellow hair. You swallow the flowers, and you call her, and she comes, and she gives it you. And then it’s yours, till you die.”

  “And then what? Payment?” said Anna dreamily. “Hell?”

  “Maybe.”

  The image faded gently. Suddenly there was another which was not gentle, a parody of the scene before. Staring light showed the bedchamber. The man, his shadow-face smoldering, clutched Anna’s baby in his hands. The baby shrieked; he swung it to and fro as if to smash it on some handy piece of furniture. Anna stood in her nightdress. She held a whip out to him.

  “Beat me,” she said. “Please beat me. I want you to. Put down the child and beat me. It would be so easy to hurt her, and so soon over, she’s so small. But I’m stronger. You can hurt me much more. See how vulnerable and afraid I am. Beat me.”