by Kelly Link
On the third afternoon following his arrival at Delvoir, while out for a vigorous walk in one of the outer plantations of oak and beech, Thornton came upon a troubled wolf giving birth among the gnarled roots of a massive tree. He had spent a year as a shepherd in New Zealand after Cambridge, and remembered what to do. He mentioned this at dinner.
—A breech birth, couldn’t save the mother, but sheep and wolf are the same at that particular moment. I wrapped the whelp in my scarf and left the mother for dead beside the beech. When I brought it to one of the outhouses, he took a rubber nipple and bottle very well for such a luckless and furry mite. The mother looked as though she had a nasty scaly mange. Digger, you may have to thin the pack.
—There are no wolves at Delvoir, Thornton. The forest is not as wild as all that. Perhaps she escaped from Col. Cody’s menagerie. Haw, haw.
—Well, there’s one wolf pup, anyway, resting in a hamper full of blanket scraps. I shall look after him during my intervals between periods of study. Do you know I found an entire sheaf of timber accounts from the time of the second and third feudal Lords of Wyland? The hand is a bit crabbed but the records are uninterrupted for more than fifty years. I shall get a good article out of that, Digger, not simply a note. Tomorrow I will begin to read in the first volume of the Chronicle, I don’t suppose anyone has looked at it in our lifetimes.
—Tomorrow I’ll send out the keepers to look for the corpse. You stick with the books, Thornton.
from Thornton’s notes:
The Herbalist’s Song [ca. 1150 C.E.], bound with Delvoir Chronicle Liber 1
Of the wulkderk, the yeomen say it was the smiths, who woke the wulkderk, in their quest for iron from the hills, I alone know the truth of the wulkderk
In the year I made herbal master, the first season in the forest, gathering wolfsbane at the full moon, in March I was silent witness, when the dragon fell from the sky, upon the she-wolf in her spring heat, their coupling flattened the rivermeet, a swamp still boggy after five decades,
I saw the wulkderk three times since they were got, once at their birth in the beech wood, when the wolf suckled her wulkderk whelps, once I saw the pair in winter flight across the sky, and last I saw their brood come down from the Welsh hills, across the fields and skies
Of the wulkderk, its head is of the dragon father with teeth of the wolf mother, four-legged and of two forms, the male fur-clad with strong wings, the female scale-clad with furry mane and back, like dog and dragon the wulkderk will sleep for days and decades, until hunger stirs it or the unwary trouble its lair
The wulkderk is unlike the mule and the get of the first pair was many, they were early weaned when the Sieur’s huntsman slew the wolf-mother, they dwelt in the Welsh hills and took deer and sheep and cattle
When the barons turned lawless and the forests grew, the wulkderk spawn split into four packs, and these now dwell in Wales, the Anglish fens, the northern lakes, and the Dartmoor
Of the gaze of the wulkderk, to look into its eyes is death, men like sheep stand still as the beast seizes its prey, only strength of will or purity of heart are proof, wolfsbane is of small help and dragonbane none, but when the wulkderk has eaten, in its brief torpor can it be approached
The wulkderk can sleep undisturbed for years and decades, yet wakes with terrible hunger and will take a grown man at midday, at Delvoir in the castle is a cloak of wulkderk hide, the Sieur of Wyland killed the beast and took its likeness for his shield mark
Thornton rarely saw the Duke and Duchess, who were often in London; the heir, Lord Weareigh, was in the corps diplomatique in Washington, the two married daughters lived in London and Edinburgh. This suited Thornton just fine. When the family was not in residence, luncheon and tea were brought to him on the terrace beside the library, and other meals on a tray to his room. The wolf cub now slept in its basket beside his table at a library window.
In late July, there was a small summer party and Thornton was seated towards the lower end of the long table, between two beefy women of the county hunting set. The Delvoir Hunt had a reputation for bold riding. When the ladies withdrew, the Duke said to him,
—Still here, Thornton? How are the researches coming? I will be in Scotland next month for the twelfth and we will be cruising from Oban to Cowes, and off to Paris after that to meet Weareigh who is coming over for a big parley. Not back here until the end of September.
—Did you know the Chronicle has never been published? Perhaps next year I could begin work on an edition, I shall speak with someone at the University press. In the 1780s, a local antiquarian prepared a very good index to it, in manuscript only.
—What did you do with the wolf cub?
—The whelp is not quite weaned, yet, but very docile, I take him on my walks on a lead. Growing fast, with some odd bumps in the shoulders. One of your kennelmen told me today that it is time to start him on flesh, he will bring puppy scraps tomorrow.
from Thornton’s notes:
The Delvoir Chronicle Liber 4 Eliz 16
A warrant was issued against the Baron of Blaidh on charges that he did murder his younger sister Ysabel aet. 15 and her paramour the viscount Heldraig on Lammas day and did bury them by stealth under a beech tree at Blaidh Hill. The Baron, who had been elevated to the title upon the death of his father at ambush in Ireland in May, was never brought to answer the charges. At noon on the first day of September when the Baron sat his horse, a dreadful beast descended from the sky in the court of the Barons Tower and seized him in its great jaws and devoured man and steed. None dared to face the wingèd wolf, the wulkderk of the ancient chronicles. The Baron was a man of cankred hate and brutal mien and was adjudged guilty of the misdeeds, his lands falling forfeit to the Sieur of Wyland his liege. The wulkderk levelled walls in its going and the hill remains a desert shunned by all.
On the fifteenth of August, Thornton finished his luncheon and looked toward the library door. A note to Skeat on the chronicle was written, he would address it for the evening post. It was a fine day, the wolf pup slumbered at his feet. He took the lead and roused the beast. It stood up on long legs, and he noted that it was now the size of a large Alsatian, a pup no more. It had refused food this morning, and he hoped that a walk into the plantation might give it an appetite.
Half an hour later, Thornton was a bit breathless as the walk had been mostly uphill. The whelp strained at the lead, making a low growling sound, with Thornton trotting to keep pace as the track took a sharp turn around a ruined wall and then continued up to an ancient beech tree. Thornton recognized the huge roots of the tree. He had been mistaken about the she-wolf, he thought, for there she was, her legs not mangy but scaled: a wulkderk. When she turned her gaze upon him, Thornton stopped and was dragged off his feet as the young wulkderk lunged forward to the mother. The herbalist did not know, Thornton thought, the wings emerge at maturity.
After a week, when Thornton had not again visited the library, the librarian reshelved the volumes of the Chronicle and its manuscript Index. He made a small record in the library diary that Thornton’s working notes had been filed with the Index. The Duke never gave another thought to the proposed edition of the Delvoir Chronicle or to his cousin. The Delvoir herd of roedeer suffered some losses that autumn but this was charged to heavy flooding in November.
This one is for Graham Sleight, 27 May 2013.
The Blood Carousel
Alyc Helms
They say any child brave enough to ride the carousel can win her parents back from death, but every child must bring her own mount to pay the ticketman. Unicorns would please him best, but to catch one you need innocence, and innocence cannot find the carousel.
Hazel wanted to make do with the Creighton’s Rottweiler, until Barnabas—never Barney unless you wanted to be kicked—suggested the fox who lived under the shed at the back of his yard.
“You don’t think a dog would be better?” Hazel sat cross-legged in the doorway of her plastic playhouse, the one Santa Claus—but
really her dad—had gotten her from Walmart last year and put together in the middle of a snowstorm. She picked at the scabs on her knee. She was older than Barnabas by a year, and she didn’t like him much, but neighbors made strange playfellows. He straddled the crotch of the sugar maple that grew up against the back of Hazel’s house, its roots nudging the foundation.
“Dogs.” Barnabas hocked a loogie, but not at Hazel, so that was okay. “The Ticketman probably has a hunnerd dogs. Bet every crybaby who ever went to Fairyland brought him some stupid stray. You need something better. Less you don’t really want to bring your mom and dad back.”
It was worse than being called chicken. “I do!” Hazel’s lip trembled, and her whole lower face puckered like he’d smashed a lemon into it, but she’d learned not to cry in front of Barnabas. She horked back the tears like they were a loogie.
Barnabas rocked back and forth in his perch. “No you don’t. You want to leave here and move up to Indy with your faggy uncle.”
“I do not! I want Mom and Dad back.” She searched for something to throw at him, but her playhouse was empty of ammunition. Her Uncle Bill had packed everything away for the move tomorrow. Only the weather-bleached playhouse remained. His condo in the city didn’t have a yard.
Lacking a missile, Hazel launched herself at Barnabas. She dragged him from the tree, and they rolled across the grass, punching and kicking. Hazel used her teeth. The chiggers feasted.
“You hit like a girl,” Barnabas said when they tired enough for him to wiggle away, and maybe it was true, but blood trickled from a split in his lip, and his arms were punctuated with purple parentheses.
“Your mom’s a . . . girl.” Hazel frowned.
Barnabas laughed and hauled her to her feet. “Let’s go catch you a fox.”
Barnabas made them wait until the afternoon thundershowers passed and evening crept upon them. They lay on the deck behind his house, kicking each other and trading his Dollar Mart spy kit binoculars back and forth, until Barnabas said the vixen had left her den.
Hazel expected an elaborate trap, the way Barnabas always went on about fox hunts, but it ended up being short, dirty work. He gave her a worn canvas mailbag bigger than she was and wormed under the shed with a wire hanger twisted into a noose. A few minutes of kicking feet and muffled curses, and he came up with one fox kit, mewling and still grey, with a white-tipped tail. He went back down and fished out a second. Hazel popped them into the sack, where they squirmed and screamed.
“How did you know they’d be here alone?” Hazel peered down into the sack, closed it quick when one of the fuzzy kits jumped and snapped at her nose.
“You know that fox Jemmy found on the road last week? We figure that was the dad. Now their mom’s gotta do all the hunting. Gone all the time and leaves her kids to fend for themselves.” He kicked the squirming bag. “She’d be better off if we threw this sack in the lake, but she’s too stupid to know that.”
Barnabas would know. When his mom wasn’t stocking at Walmart, she was cashiering down at the Flying-J on the interstate.
“They’re too small to ride,” Hazel said, nudging the lumpy canvas with her sneaker in a weak echo of Barnabas’ kick.
“So’s their mom, but she’ll do once the Ticketman takes her. Jemmy says that’s how the carousel works. Now we wait.”
They waited. The fox kits screamed and quieted, screamed and quieted. Fireflies emerged, little flickers of night-goggle green against a backdrop of black shadow that used to be the trees and shed. The sky above glowed the deep blue of a blank TV screen.
The vixen skulked out from the tree line. She stopped at the edge of the yard where mowed weeds gave way to wild growth, too far away for them to lunge and catch her. Her stiff bristled tail thumped against the ground, but she held the rest of her body still.
Hazel held her breath. She wanted to ask Barnabas What next? but what if she spoke and scared the vixen away?
The vixen raised a black paw, nibbled it, and set it back in place. “I suppose it would be naïve of me to ask you to let my kits go.”
Hazel almost fell back over the porch rail she perched on. Barnabas steadied her. He didn’t seem at all surprised that the fox had spoken.
Magic. It really did work, which meant everything else he’d told her might be true, too. She didn’t care if he thought she was a girl. She let the tears fall.
“Shut up,” Barnabas said to the vixen. “You’re going to do what we ask, or I’ll toss this sack into Lake Monroe.”
Hazel wiped away tears. “Barnabas . . .”
He socked her arm.
The vixen’s ears flicked. “I see. It seems I’m going to do what you ask. What are you asking?”
Hazel spoke up before Barnabas could make things worse. “I need you to take me to the Carousel so I can get my parents back.”
The kits had started up again with their screams. Barnabas kicked the sack to silence them. The vixen lunged to her feet.
“Stop it,” Hazel hissed and socked him back. She nodded at the vixen. “You help me, and Barnabas lets your kits go.”
The vixen paced back and forth along the line of cut weeds. “The Ticketman keeps his mounts. What’s the point of saving my kits if I can’t take care of them? They’ll die either way.”
Hazel chewed her lip. “Barnabas will take them to Animal Rescue.”
“I will?”
Hazel kicked Barnabas to silence him. “He will. They take care of abandoned babies all the time and release them.” She didn’t know if that was true for foxes, but the vixen wouldn’t know if it wasn’t, would she?
“Your promise,” said the vixen. The light from the back porch, or maybe the road, or maybe the stars, caught her eyes, and they flashed amber.
“I promise,” said Hazel.
“I promise,” said Barnabas, but only after Hazel had kicked him again.
“Then let’s be off, girl. It’s a long walk.”
The vixen turned and trotted off through the tall grass. With a quick hug for Barnabas, which he squirmed through, Hazel followed.
Fairyland lay between Old State Road 37 and the new highway, just down the way from the Starlite Drive-in. It had been closed down, the rides dark and still, for as long as Hazel could remember. The fence around it was bent, rusted, sagging in places, curled up in others like a sneer. Walmart had bought the property for their new superstore, but left it fallow when they secured a better site closer to town.
The closed park taunted every kid who drove past it in buses on the way to school, or in the backs of cars on their way to visit relatives. Even chipped, the gaily-painted signs promised fun that could only ever be dreamed of, even dark and silent, the sleeping husks of rides enticed like roadside sirens.
The vixen led Hazel down a pitted frontage road that nobody bothered to repair because nobody ever used it anymore. She stopped at a pair of gates overgrown with barbed wire twisted and sharp as blackberry brambles. The gates hung crooked between two posts of carved elephant tusks. The top branched out into fingers pale as bleached bone. Antlers. The biggest rack Hazel had ever seen.
“Behold the Gates of Horn and Ivory.” The vixen turned, her patch-furred tail sweeping in a grand gesture at the broken, twisted mess. “They’ve been consolidated. Downsizing.” The vixen pulled back her black lips in what looked nothing like a grin. Her teeth shone white as the bone antlers, as yellow at their base as the ivory gateposts.
“So we just go in?” The gates hanging askew left a gap wide enough for Hazel to squeeze through, if she were careful.
“What is your name?”
“Hazel.”
“Hazel. You seem slightly less cruel and slightly more intelligent than your friend.” The vixen rose and circled Hazel. “What say you and I make a deal?”
Hazel turned to keep the fox in view. “We’ve already made a deal.”
“I agreed to pay your way with the Ticketman by being your mount, but it’s a rigged game. If we play by his rules, you’ll
never reach your parents, and I’ll never see my kits again.” The vixen sat and cocked her head, doglike now where a moment before she’d been as fluid as a surly cat. “I have a better way.”
“I just want my parents back. Barnabas said this was the best way.”
“And who are you going to trust? A boy named after a purple dinosaur, or a fox who can talk?”
When she put it that way . . . “What do I need to do?”
“Follow me.” The vixen left the path. Hazel hesitated at the crumbling boundary. Her guide, almost lost among the shadows of the tall grass, looked over her shoulder. Her amber eyes caught the glow of the gate lamp. “Well?”
Hazel followed.
The vixen led them along the fence line, rusted chain link wrapped in a second skin around dull brass.
“Where are we going?”
“If we take the gate, you’ll be bound by the rules of Fairyland. We’re sneaking through fox paths.” Grass rustled with every step the fox took.
Hazel drowned it out with her own tramping. “Why do foxes need their own paths?”
“You think your world is the only one that is cruel to my folk? We’ve learned to do for ourselves.” The vixen stopped at a low gap in the fence. A wallow had been dug underneath both barriers, only enough room for a rangy fox body, or a skinny girl. “Under the fence with you.”
Hazel wormed her way under the fence. She whacked her head on the bottom rail of the brass barricade, and her hair caught in one of the chain links. It took a bit of tugging and tearing, and the aid of the vixen’s sharp teeth, but Hazel ripped free. A tangle of wisps remained behind, catching the starlight like cobwebs.
