Half Discovered Wings

by David Brookes

  Gabel bellowed and, when the figure heard it, it threw Bethany’s limp body over the bench. It crouched, and suddenly was in the air, leaping from the centre of the square onto the roof of the inn.

  The hunter felt for the pistol by his waist and touched his dark-bladed kris instead. He tore the wavy-bladed dagger from its sheath and screamed at the theriope, which couched on the edge of the roof, torn trousers pulled taut over its thighs. It wiped blood from around its mouth with the back of its hand.

  ‘Get down here and fight!’ Gabel roared, but the roar was lost in the thunder, or else the blood in his ears was making him deaf. He felt claws in his back and, when he could see, he saw the creature gone from the rooftop. He twisted in pain and lashed out with his fists. The kris was knocked from his hand.

  His left wrist was grabbed and held tightly, and then the right, and he couldn’t break from the were-creature’s grip. He felt his feet lifting from the ground. Lightning again, this time from behind him, and it illuminated the creature’s face, which was flat and pale. Bethany’s blood stained its thin lips. Its tail snapped through the air behind its flank, whipping against the bony protrusions on its back and lashing Gabel’s calves.

  The lightning was like a strobe now, unnaturally frequent, making the theriope’s movements seem broken and spasmodic. He could see the creature leaning toward him for his throat, but then suddenly his toes struck the ground, then his knees and hands, and his hat fell from his head and the rain was suddenly cold on his hair. He felt it soak his back, dampen the backs of his hands. He looked up and the theriope was gone.

  Then he saw the bench, with the body – Beth’s frail body – slumped over it. By her feet was the leather jacket, crumpled and bloodied along the collar.

  As lightning flickered he thought he could see her moving as she lay broken over the wooden bench, but it was just the light making the shadows dance. He walked over in the dark and stood looking down. He saw the swollen bloody mess that the creature had made of her. Then he bent and picked her up – still feeling heat through the dress, though the rain had cooled her somewhat – and put her carefully over his shoulder.

  ~

  When he pounded on the door of the church he found that he was crying. The door took forever to open, and finally Father Dayle’s face appeared. Gabel pushed him back and, before Father could get a look, took Bethany to the room opposite the one that Rowan occupied. He kicked the door shut behind him.

  A sudden silence; the rain was muted by the window, the thunder barely a rumble, and no other sound could be heard except for Bethany’s body being laid on the hard thin palliasse.

  Gabel took off his belt and removed the kris.

  Early. Oh so early for him to be doing this; he could wait until tomorrow night, if he had to. No rush, but … to get it over with now would be best.

  The kris was heavy in his hand, the sturdy waved steel ashamedly bloodless. Carefully, he turned Bethany over so that she was face down, and he began to untie the laces of her dress. He pulled it open to expose her neck and back, the join of her buttocks. Blood was still slowly running down her shoulder.

  He counted the lumbers of her spine, and rested the point of the kris just to the left, fifth one down. It barely depressed the skin: the tip was so finely cut. He held his breath.

  The sound was thick and hollow. Immediately blood seeped up through the wound and, before it got too soft, Gabel slammed again. He heard the scrape of the blade’s tip touching the inside of her breastplate.

  For a moment he looked at the dagger, and then released it, leaving it sticking half-in, half-out of her back. He gathered a cloth – regrettably filthy – and put it around the blade. He then pulled it out, with sticky fingers, stemming the sudden blood flow with the cloth, pushing with both hands until the cloth felt damp.

  He heard a voice from outside the door. ‘Joseph?’

  Gabel kept the pressure consistent, looking at the mess of her neck. Her bare shoulders were slack against the mattress. Now that he was here, he didn’t know what to do with her

  The voice came again. ‘Joseph?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘What was it that attacked her?’

  ‘A theriope, Father.’

  ‘Theriope?’ Response muffled through the thick door.

  ‘One of the were-creatures that inhabit the world outside of town.’

  ‘She is dead?’

  ‘…Yes. She just died.’

  There wasn’t another sound that night. He sat with his back against the cold wall, looking at the figure pale and still on the bed beside him. The morning was long in coming, and he awoke with shifting fingers of sunlight warmly stroking him through the window. He snatched another glimpse at Bethany who was now much whiter, her blood darkly staining the straw mattress.

  ‘Joseph, I’d like to see her.’ It was the Father again, waiting outside. Had he been there all night? Like Gabel, he most likely hadn’t slept a wink.

  ‘You should stay out there.’

  He stood and instantly smelled the blood on the kris. He’d always had a powerful sense of smell. It was one of the reasons his enemies called him an animal, a savage. He picked up the wavy dagger and wrapped it in a small cloth, put it inside his jacket. His boots were heavy and loud on the wooden floor as he walked across the room.

  ‘Turn around, Father.’

  He opened the door and saw the priest’s back. Father heard the door close and he turned. Tears sparkled unhappily in his eyes, the black rings underneath them slightly darker than usual, and puffy from crying. His palms were red. Gabel caught a sparkle from his left fist, and looked to his neck to see that the icon necklace he usually wore was missing. He had probably been rubbing it continually all night in front of the altar. The man looked indescribably tired.

  ‘Bethany should be buried before the end of the day,’ said Gabel, already walking away.

  ‘Joseph!’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Did you get the … theriope?’

  ‘It got away. It was fast.’

  The theriope had once been a man, but was now substantially less than that. Or more. The man had long since ceased to exist. Gabel couldn’t tell the priest that the creature had once been known to him, although Father had probably worked out that much for himself. The look in his eyes told Gabel that he had already suspected what Gabel had been doing with Bethany’s body: ensuring that the theriope’s bite did no more than kill her.

  Gabel left the church and walked to the edge of the town. The sun was out, and he saw from it that it was almost ten o’clock. The ground was wet still, and when he followed the water up to the square he saw a figure dressed in blue, standing very still by the bench where Bethany had died.

  The woman was scrubbing something by the bench, then seemed to finish or give up and moved away. He stopped at the place that she was cleaning and saw a dark stain over the bench and floor. His fists clenched and he thought of the kris in his jacket; he could smell the blood and didn’t know if anyone else could.

  He opened the inn doors and Cul looked at him, his arm still mechanically wiping down the smooth surface of the bar.

  ‘Do you remember the man that was in here before me last night?’

  ‘I had quite a few men in here last night,’ the barman replied.

  ‘This one was black. With a long coat.’

  The barman shook his head, mournfully. ‘I think I would’ve remembered.’

  Gabel left. Arriving at the building where he lived, he walked inside and climbed the steps to his apartment on the second storey, where the wooden slats let in light that striped him as he sat on the dirty floor. There was nothing in the room that revealed it as his own, nothing that betrayed the fact that someone actually lived there. He slept alone on the bare floor, in the dust and with the insects.

  Samuel arrived and sat next to him in silence for nearly half an hour.

  ‘This place is too lonely, Joseph,’ he said eventually.

&nbs
p; ‘It’s not lonely,’ Gabel replied. ‘That’s just you, Samuel. You’ve been that way for all these years: lonely. This place is just empty, which is not the same thing.’

  ‘You could at least get a bed.’

  ‘A bed costs money. There was no furniture here when I begged this space from the man downstairs, and I had no need of it then, nor do I need any now. I have not changed in the time between. I’m happy here.’

  There was another period of silence. Samuel made a pretence of looking around the empty room for interesting objects to look at, all at once boy-like and curious. Finally the silence grew too heavy for the hunter, and he blurted:

  ‘I had to put a dagger through her heart.’

  ‘I understand,’ said the boy, nodding as he spoke.

  ‘She’ll be buried today, I think. Tomorrow is the Sabbath.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think Father will wait until Monday.’

  Gabel watched the strips of light play over the walls. He looked over at Samuel occasionally and saw that the strips passed him by. They seemed to be absorbed by his grey skin and clothes.

  Gabel tried to think of a face, other than his own, that he had never seen smile. The only one was Samuel; even Bethany, who spent most days in the mental world she created in order to retreat from her own insecurities, smiled occasionally. Even Rowan, who lived in the dark hollows of the church along with Bethany, found a reason to curl her lips every now and again. But Samuel … He, for as long as Gabel had known him, found difficulty in expressing himself. Gabel often saw far too much of himself reflected in Samuel's pearlescent features.

  ‘What do you advise?’

  ‘Find the dark-skinned man,’ said the boy.

  ‘Where will he be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Samuel stood and left, and Gabel found himself alone once more. He stood and left as well.

  ~

  Weeks later he was waiting in the forest, surrounded by damp fern and the evergreens, sniffing the warm air. Moving slowly forward, he pushed the pine branches from his face. They were heavy with water from the previous night’s rain, each drop trapping the surrounding smells.

  He pulled a large, flat leaf from its plant and rubbed his fingers over the waxy surface. Then he sniffed his palms carefully, detecting amongst the odour of pollen and chloroplast the scent of the creature he pursued.

  The wet leaf slipped from his fingers to the ground, and soon it would dissolve into mulch and become the soil. He didn’t think of this as he stepped over it and continued on his way through the trees.

  He came into a clearing in the forest where the ground-ferns were flattened and soggy leaves made a grubby nest in the centre. A small bloody rib-cage, partially stripped of its meat, festered quietly. The jagged mess was home to fat white larvae, and flies buzzed monotonously around it, setting down then taking off again in an endless, undulating cloud.

  He stepped on a brittle twig and, with the snap, the flies disappeared upward into the silently dripping trees. Beside the corpse was a heap of dung, hard and cracking in the heat. Crouching, Gabel pushed in two fingers and then tasted, feeling the warmth on his tongue; still fresh.

  He stood and spat, and when he moved the various objects fastened to his belt rattled against each other. Unseen inside his jacket, his silver pistol with five smooth bullets hung with satisfying weight against his chest, and at his side was fastened the short kris blade. The serpentine icon of the H’ouando church hung from his neck, gold-plated and glistening whenever the sunlight caught it through the netted canopy above. He’d gotten it from Father long ago.

  A sudden rustling of leaves erupted into a storm of shifting sinew and fur. Before the hunter could turn the creature was upon him, black claws glinting fiercely in the light as they knocked Gabel to the ground. Ten talons flashed down and his leather jacket tore at the shoulder. He was up in a second, facing the theriope.

  The two warily circled each other. Suddenly the beast lunged – but a chemically-treated bullet caught it and it fell back against a tree, a clean cauterised hole smoking in its shoulder.

  ‘Don’t torture me, Joseph,’ it snarled, its vulpine snout opening and closing slowly with each ragged breath. The skin of its flat face was pulled taut with pain, curling back from the wide jaws and yellowed teeth. Earth and flecks of old meat were lodged between the long incisors, decaying and flavouring its hot breath.

  Gabel nodded grimly, and slowly he moved the muzzle of the pistol to the creature’s skull. Despite the savage murder of Bethany, he intended to grant the theriope’s request—

  But once more the thing moved, dashing into the undergrowth. Gabel swore and tore through the trees after it. Branches snatched at his clothing as he stumbled into another clearing, this one much larger, and through the trees to the east he could see buildings.

  Apart from him, the clearing was empty.

  Gabel lifted the rim of his hat with a gloved finger, sniffed once more and listened carefully to the sounds of the forest: large droplets of rain occasionally falling onto the foliage around him; the quiet chirrup of tiny insects under the tall grass, in the trees; his own heavy breathing, poorly subdued as he stood waiting…

  He realised with chagrin that he was downwind.

  Disturbed air behind him made him whirl around. His eye caught a flash of russet fur.

  Nothing.

  Closing his eyes he tried to steady his breathing, drawing in the scents of the forest. Before he realised it, a claw wrapped around his neck from behind, and another was felt hard and sharp in his back.

  ‘I’d take your head off right now.’ The theriope’s voice was coupled with harshly-drawn, stinking-hot breath.

  Smoke trembled upward between them. Gabel’s pistol had jumped with a single muffled shot, and the theriope staggered backward as Gabel turned to face him.

  ‘I said I wouldn’t torture you, William,’ he said.

  ‘Then don’t,’ the beast gasped. Its eyes, like black stones, lowered as it spoke.

  Gabel sighed and raised the gun, and a third bullet was fired.

  ~

  Swiftly fading, the light made it hard for him to rediscover the trail. After making his way back to his horse, Gabel mounted the animal and let it carry him toward the outskirts of the town, meeting the cobble road just as the buildings obscured the dusk.

  Above the tree where Bethany died the straight spire of the church could be seen. Gabel gazed at it, ambivalent, as a light, steady rain began to fall. He let the horse drink in the trough outside the inn, and stood by it a while as it had its fill.

  Coming from out the double doors, the dancing girls broke the silence.

  ‘Good evening, Joseph!’ they chorused, and giggled amongst themselves as they disappeared across the square.

  Later, he came across the steelsmith in the street, who grunted a half-hearted greeting as he passed. Gabel almost worked up the courage to mention the great news that the William Teague, the theriope that had long troubled Niu Correntia, was finally dead, but he didn’t quite make it. In the company of horses and monsters Gabel was perfectly comfortable, but when it came to exchanging words with the townspeople he turned mute. His unmanageable anxiety was a result of the disapproval of those around him, the people who looked down on the factotum as nothing better than mercenary at best, serf at the worst.

  He thought back to that third bullet, cutting through William’s skull and thudding into the dirt. He had watched as the dark chest deflated, saw the long claws slowly sheath themselves. He had watched him die, and then buried him under the leaves. William had once been his friend.

  He walked to the church door but then stopped, hesitating under the archway. He gazed outward back toward the square. In his mind’s eye he saw Bethany sitting on that old stone bench with her hands on her lap, looking up at the sky. Light was reflected off a streak that ran from her eye down to her chin, and then – in that moment – he saw her as the woman he had always wanted but never had the courage to claim
. Her face was bright with the light of the moon, and under the same light his chest staggered as he imagined her.

  He turned now and looked into the church from the threshold, gazing down between the pews to the candlelit apse. His boots echoed on the hardwood floor and, almost immediately, an accompanying echo came as the Father met him in front of the pulpit. The two men embraced.

  ‘I freed a spirit tonight,’ Gabel said. ‘William Teague lies with Erebis, now.’

  ‘Ah!’ breathed the old man. He smiled tiredly, sat on the dais by his feet. ‘Finally,’ he added quietly. ‘Have you told Cul? He will pass on the word.’

  ‘Not yet. But I’m sure he and his inn would be glad to hear it.’

  ‘At that, child, I would not surprised.’ That said, his face clouded, and he asked, ‘Would you tell Rowan, as well?’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘I know you barely know her. But you should, Joseph.’

  Gabel scuffed at the uneven varnish under his boots, conceding to the Father. For Bethany and Rowan, “Father” was quite literal; he had raised them as his own, and they’d both taken his name: Dayle. But they were not his girls, and weren’t even related to one another. Three bloods, under the wide roof of the H’ouando church.

  Gabel walked toward the eastern wall, but the wooden door there was shut, so he knocked and then opened it. The dark room was just large enough to house a bed and a chair and, as the light flooded around him and onto the bed, the covers stirred. The young woman sat up, holding the blankets to cover her.

  Gabel sat in the chair. ‘Were you sleeping?’

  ‘I tried at sunset, but couldn’t,’ Rowan said slowly.

  He noticed that she had dark rings underneath her brown eyes, and as he looked at her neck and shoulders saw how thin she was. She mistook his concern for impropriety, and pulled the blanket further around herself.

  ‘I came to tell you that William Teague is dead,’ he told her clumsily. She looked blank, until he added, ‘the were-creature. The one that killed Bethany.’