Colonel Skorzeny had not told him that Maria Lang was a witch.
The cleft widened, the edge nearest him crumbling further, forcing him to inch away until the brambles with their reaching thorns threatened to claw into his back. This was impossible. This also made him furious. He wasn’t a boy, a feckless common soldier, he was a wolf. Hitler’s werewolves, the colonel called them, and they saluted with their heils and expected victory.
Fritz dug his booted toes into the earth, called on wolf’s strength, imagined the light of the coming full moon filling him further, giving him power. He took a single running step and jumped. Crashed to the ground on the other side of the pit, rolled once, hit the cottage’s front door, and slumped to a rest. His ears were ringing, his muscles ached. He’d only traveled a few feet but felt as if he’d run for miles. For a moment, he couldn’t remember why he’d come here at all.
The door opened, and the woman stood on the threshold, looking down on him. His information said she was in her thirties, but he couldn’t decide if she looked old or young. Her hair was black, tied under a blue kerchief. Her lips were full, but pale. Laugh lines creased her eyes. Her hands were thin, calloused.
“Boy, would you like some tea?” she said. Her voice was clear, amiable. Something like an aunt, not so much like a grandmother, and nothing like a witch.
“But I am a werewolf,” he blurted, perhaps the first time he had ever stated this aloud.
“Yes, I know,” she answered.
He looked over his shoulder at the way he’d come. The clearing, the garden, the forest and hill beyond—all were normal, utterly ordinary, the way they had been when he arrived. He looked at the gun in his hand, and the woman who didn’t seem at all afraid. Sighing, he climbed up off the ground and followed her inside.
She showed him to a straight-backed, rough-hewn chair, and obediently he sat. She had an old-fashioned open hearth with a fire burning, and already had a kettle set to boiling water. He watched as she used a dishcloth to move the kettle from the fire, pour water into a teapot, and scoop in herbs from an earthenware jar.
He looked around. The place was filled with herbs, jars of them lined up on a shelf, bundles of them hanging from roof beams, mortars and pestles sitting on a work table in the center of the room, all dusted with herbs. The pungent smell, strong as a Christmas dinner, made him sneeze. Stairs led up, probably to an attic bedroom. The whole cottage was as cozy as one could wish for, insulated and warm, filled with signs of home. Fritz was surprised that his wolf wasn’t complaining about the closed space and the shut door. His wolf did not feel trapped, but instead had settled, like a puppy curled by a fire.
He blinked up at the woman, confused. “They told me you were a nurse.”
“Healer, not a nurse. They couldn’t tell the difference, I’m sure.”
“You’re a witch.”
She smirked at him. “You are very young. Here, have some tea.”
And just like that she presented him with a teacup and set it in his hands as she slipped the gun away from him. He didn’t even notice until he’d taken a long sip. The tea warmed him, and the warmth settled over him. Citrus and cinnamon, and hope.
Then he stared at his hands, his eyes widening. She set the gun on the worktable out of his reach and left it here as she poured herself a cup of tea.
“What have you done to me?” he cried.
“I haven’t done anything.” Her smile should have been beautiful, full lips on a porcelain face, but the expression held wickedness. Mischievousness. Tricks. “I have nine layers of protection around my home, knowing people like you would come to kill me. You should have dropped dead—even you, with your half-wolf soul—should have dropped dead before you reached my door. Do you know what that means?
“You never truly meant to kill me. You thought you did, perhaps. You might have held the gun in your hands and pressed the barrel to my chest, but you could not have killed me. Everyone would call you a monster if they knew what you were. But you have a good heart, don’t you? What of that, boy?”
He didn’t know. He took another sip of tea and kept his gaze on the amber surface of the liquid. She wasn’t even wolf, and he was showing her signs of submission. He was useless.
“Then what am I to do?” he said. He knew what happened to those the SS no longer had use for. Skorzeny knew how to kill werewolves.
“It’s the night of the full moon,” she said.
A window in the front of the cottage still showed daylight. The ghosts of his wolf’s ears pricked forward. No, it wasn’t quite time, not yet.
She said, “They wanted you to come tonight, on the full moon, because they thought your wolf would make you a killer. Make murdering easier.”
“I tried to explain to them, it doesn’t work like that—”
“Especially when they have made us a world where men are the monsters, and the wolves are just themselves. Would you like one?” She offered him a plate piled with sugar cookies, wonderful, buttery disks sparkling with sugar, and where had she found butter and sugar in the middle of the war? He recalled the story of the witch who fattened children up to eat them.
“No, thank you,” he said. Smiling, she set the plate aside.
“Do you know what tonight is, boy? Besides a full moon night?”
He thought for a moment and said, blankly, “Tuesday?”
“All Hallows Eve. The night when doors between worlds open. And a full moon on All Hallows Eve? The doors will open very wide indeed. Where would you like to go? This is a night when you might be able to get there.”
I want to go home. That was a child’s wish, and he was ashamed for thinking it.
She might have read his mind.
“The home you knew, you will never see again. Even if I could transport you there this moment, home will never mean what it did. Germany will never be the same. We might as well all have landed on another planet, these last years.” She went to the table, wiped her hands on her apron, and began to work, chopping up a sprig of some sweet-smelling plant, scooping pieces into a mortar, grinding away, adding another herb, then oil to make a paste. The movements seemed offhand, unconscious. She’d probably done them a thousand times before. She spoke through it all. “They, your masters, are intent on harnessing the powers of darkness, but they do not remember the old stories, do they? The price to be paid. They have forgotten the lessons. They put werewolves in cages and think because they have a bit of silver, they are safe.”
He leaned back in the chair, sipping his tea as worry fell away from him. He was a child again, listening to the stories of his grandmother, the old ones, about dark woods and evil times, bramble forests and wicked tyrants. He was sure he didn’t close his eyes—he remembered the fire in the hearth dancing, he watched her hands move as she chopped, mixed, ground, and sealed her potions up in jars. He saw his gun sitting at the corner of the table and remembered he had come for a reason. But he no longer cared, because for the first time in ages, the wolf inside him was still.
“Some of us still have power, and some of us can fight them,” she said. “We do what we can. Your masters, for example. Just seeing you, here, I’ve learned so much about them. They think their werewolves will save them. Even without the true wolves like you, they think that they can act like wolves to strike at their enemies. They think that they can control the monsters they’ve created. But I will curse them, and they will fail. Keep this in mind when you decide what to do, and which way to run.”
He saw an image in his mind’s eye of endless forest, and the strength to run forever, on four legs, wind whispering through his fur. His voice tickled inside him, not a snarl this time, but a howl, a song to reach the heavens.
“Boy.” He started at her voice, suddenly close. She stood before him, arms crossed. “The moon’s up. It’s time for you to fly.”
The world through the window was dark, black night. The trees beyond the clearing glowed with the mercury sheen of the rising moon. Both he and his wolf aw
oke. Marie took the teacup from him before he dropped it.
He could change to wolf anytime he liked, but on this night, this one time each month, he had no choice. The light called, and the monster clawed to get out, ribs and guts feeling as if they might split open, the pinpricks of fur sprouting from his skin, over his whole body. His clothing felt like fire, he had to rip free of them. His breathing quickened, he turned to the door.
She opened it for him. “Goodbye,” she said cheerfully as he raced past her.
He ripped off all the clothes before he crossed the clearing, left his satchel behind, never thought again about the gun. By the time he reached the trees he had a hitch in his stride, as his back hunched and his bones slipped and cracked to new shapes. His vision became sharp and clear, and the scents filling his nose made the world rich and glorious. Tail, ears, teeth, a coat of beautiful thick fur, and nothing but open country before him.
The doors of All Hallows Eve had opened, and the boy’s wolf knew where to go, even if he didn’t. West. Just west, as far and as fast as he could. Armies and soldiers and checkpoints and spies didn’t stop him. No one fired on him. All any of them saw was a wolf, a bit scrawny and the worst for wear perhaps, racing through the night, a gray shadow under a silver moon.
Later, Fritz would remember flashes of the journey, woods and fields, a small stream that he splashed through, the feel of moonlight rising over him. For decades after the smell fireworks would remind him of the stink of exploded artillery shells that filled his head as he crossed the site of a recent battle. The memories made him think of a hero in a fairy tale, the boy who had to fight through many hardships to reach the castle and rescue the princess. The knight with his sword, slaying the dragon. Never mind that he was a monster, like the monsters in the stories. Perhaps he didn’t have to be a monster any more. Not like that, at least.
He ran all night, collapsed an hour or so before dawn, not knowing where on the map of Europe’s battlefields he’d ended up, not caring. He’d run as far as he could, then he slept, and the wolf crept away again.
He’d run all the way to France.
The American soldiers found him naked, satchel and gun and clothing long gone. Hugging himself, he hid behind a tree trunk, torn between fleeing again or begging for help. When they leveled rifles at him, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t imagine the Amis had brought silver bullets with them. They could not kill him, but they didn’t know that. He waited; they waited.
He read confusion in their gazes. He must have looked like a child to them: thin, glaringly pale against the gray of the woods and overcast sky. Lost and shivering. Ducking his gaze, a sign of submission, he crept out from behind the tree. He licked his lips, needing water, but that could wait. Still, they didn’t shoot. He decided to step through the door that had opened.
“I . . . I surrender,” he said in very rough English, and raised his arms.
Carrie Vaughn is the author of the New York Times-bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the most recent of which is Kitty in the Underworld. She’s also the author of young adult novels (Voices of Dragons, Steel) and contemporary fantasy (Discord’s Apple, After the Golden Age). Dreams of the Golden Age, the second Golden Age novel, will be published in January 2014. A graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop, she’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin, and her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. An Air Force brat, Vaughn survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www. carrievaughn.com.
LESSER FIRES
Steve Rasnic Tem & Melanie Tem
Right at sunset, when the big bonfires snaggled the hilltop like pumpkin teeth, reflecting both ways through the veil that was so thin tonight between the worlds you might think there was no veil but everybody knew there was, Clara tripped over the hem of her costume and fell. It was embarrassing. Also, it hurt.
She’d just crossed the bridge between the lesser fires that marked the path, on her way to the party. Before then she’d been feeling pretty good, pretty proud, feeling like the witch/fortuneteller/farseer of impending doom she’d tried to make herself up to be. With all the school she missed, and all her trips to the hospital and the doctors, and all the meds she took, and the way her body moved, people thought she was weird anyway, and some of them avoided her and some of them wanted to be her friend just because of it, which she didn’t much like, either.
She couldn’t get up. She wasn’t sure why. She felt like she’d broken something, but she always felt like she’d broken something. One of these days she wouldn’t be able to get up at all, and that would be that—whatever “that” was. She’d always sort of imagined that was how she’d die, but maybe she’d have to be carried or pushed or dragged around for the rest of a long life. Whatever.
At the moment she could barely raise her head. Just enough to see the legs in costume walking by. She caught herself trying to figure out what the rest of the costume must look like based on the legs, but stopped herself because that was being dumb. It wasn’t solving the problem. A couple of people stopped to help her up but she said no in kind of a mean way in order not to act as helpless as she actually was. “I’m fine. Just go on. Don’t be late for the party,” she sort of snarled at them, and then when they did go on and leave her there she was mad and hurt. No wonder people thought she was weird. She thought she was weird.
Being late to the party would not be good. Clara couldn’t exactly sneak in; Clara couldn’t sneak anywhere. The whole family would stare at her while she clunked to her place. Ma would have that OMG-I-can’t-believe-this-is-my-kid look on her face, and she’d be drinking too much of what she never called just “ale,” always “Pa’s good amber ale” that she looked forward to all year and Clara could manage just a tiny sip of. And Pa—she’d never please Pa no matter what she did. The cousins would be laughing behind handfuls of crumbly cakes for the dead, which were really dry cookies Clara could hardly swallow, especially when it was Auntie Reba’s year to make them. In a few years Clara would be expected to take a turn. She hated cooking and was terrible at it and saw no reason to learn just so she could make cakes for the dead who couldn’t eat them anyway.
Great-grandma Beryl had been invited home for this year’s party, west windows left open for her for weeks in the October chill, so that it was as cold and bleak inside as out, the empty place set for her at table. When Great-grandma Beryl had been on this side of the veil Clara had never been able to figure her out, and it wouldn’t be any easier now. Great-grandma Beryl was a scary lady, alive or dead. But Clara didn’t want to miss her.
Waiting for her body to decide if it was going to get up this time or not, Clara worried about Great-grandma Beryl’s crystal ball in her backpack. Lucky she’d fallen forward instead of back. You had to take luck where you could get it, especially when you didn’t get much of it. The backpack pretty much ruined the costume but at least it was behind her so people didn’t see it right away. If she was a fortuneteller she needed a crystal ball, right? But this one was so heavy. She remembered it just sitting on a shelf in Great-grandma Beryl’s house, dusty, not doing anything. She’d heard the clink when she’d hit the ground. There was probably a crack in it now. Would it work if it was cracked? That was dumb. Crystal balls didn’t work. They weren’t how you told the future. It was just a prop. She’d promised to take extra special care. Ma would be furious, or sickeningly understanding, depending on how much of “Pa’s good amber ale” she’d had by now. The most Pa would do was shake his head, if he noticed at all.
Falling hadn’t been in Clara’s plan. It should’ve been. She should’ve known. She should’ve been more careful. She should’ve worn something that fit her better—not that anything really fit her—instead of this old tie-dyed dress of her mother’s that they’d only been able to take up so much. But she liked the colors and the way it felt, and it hid her legs and made her moveme
nts look kind of mysterious instead of just clunky. She liked the dress. She liked Great-grandma Beryl’s crystal ball. She hated always having to be careful, and then falling anyway.
The ground was cold, like the glass in her bedroom window when she put her cheek there to see what was down in the yard. Except during the weeks when the lesser fires burned, she never could see much, but she held her cheek there as long as she could, until it hurt so bad there’d be tears in her eyes and her face so frozen she couldn’t smile or frown or do much of anything with it at all except stare at her dumb self in the mirror: weeping eyes above a stiff red and white face.
Here on the ground, under the red-green-purple-orange tent the big dress made over her, it was warm. As hard as her heart was beating, she knew she was making lots of heat. In fact she was sure she’d be too hot soon. Part of your body too hot and part of you too cold—wasn’t that what gave you pneumonia? Sweat was sliding off her skin like Auntie Reba’s “special” oil that was maybe a little less disgusting than her “cakes” for the dead.
“Clara.”
Somebody had stopped beside her. Who was that? The voice was really familiar and strange at the same time, a girl’s voice, and Clara’s name didn’t sound quite right in that voice. The girl had on a green and purple and orange dress that covered her shoes and dragged on the ground. A lot like Clara’s. It sucked that when you tried to fit in you just made yourself look more different, and when you deliberately tried to be different somebody else showed up in the very same costume.
“Clara.”
HALLOWEEN: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre Page 9
