“Ger-rda,” he said. “Gerda,” he repeated in satisfaction, and closed his eyes.
“Shhhh, shhhh,” she whispered, running her other hand through his knotted hair as drops of water fell from her face onto his. The shouting, stomping men surrounded them, but Youngblood lay still. He was with Gerda. The sounds of men weren’t frightening anymore.
* * *
Youngblood awoke weak and in pain, but warm and safe, too. He opened his eyes to see Gerda’s smiling face. He was lying on a goose-smelling thing, except he couldn’t smell its gooseyness anymore. It was softer than a bed of fresh leaves, softer even than his mother’s belly fur when he had been a pup. Gerda’s hand was on his forehead so he didn’t move, lest she take her hand away. She did anyway, when the door opened and her father entered the room.
He was a tall man, thickly built with a long brown beard and kind but wary eyes above his hooked nose. He sat in a chair beside Gerda and spoke in the tongue of men. It was not confusing. Youngblood understood the German words and their meaning.
“So, lad, Gerda tells me your name is Lukas. Where are you from? What were you doing out in the forest?”
Youngblood did not know how to answer, but Gerda caught his eyes with a kind smile, and a nod too small for her father to see. She knew. Gerda’s father was waiting. Youngblood needed to answer the man’s question, so he told the truth. “I’m from the forest. It’s my home.” At least, that’s what he meant to say. It came out as a garbled mess.
Gerda’s father raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said at last, “perhaps it will come back to you in time. You’ve been out for three days, but the doctor says you’re through the worst of it.”
He rose to go, motioning Gerda to step away and join him at the door. She did, much to Youngblood’s regret. Her father whispered something in her ear. He caught only one German word, verlieren. He gave the word a shot, but it came out more like “Vilnerer.”
Gerda came back and sat by the bed, but her father stopped at the door. “Vilner?” he asked. “Is that your last name, lad? I used to know some Vilner’s when I was a boy. Good folk, they were. Gerda,” he said, “let the boy rest now.”
“I’ll be along in a minute, father,” she said in her quiet way. She turned back to Youngblood. If only she would stay. He would love to listen to her voice. Perhaps, if he was lucky, she might sing softly again, as she had done in the field while he watched her pick flowers. Perhaps she—
Gerda bent very close, her wildly sweet hair touched his face. But he forgot all about that when her lips touched his.
The Appalachian Mountains, Spring of 1913
Garret tapped lightly on the fine piece of iron, drawing it out into the proper shape. From her wheelchair, Mrs. Malvern kept up a constant stream of prim instructions for her new gates. They were to have exactly nineteen roses each, she said, one for each year of her oldest daughter’s life. She wanted much filigree, iron “swirls” she called them, all over it for decoration. She said the new gates had to be as beautiful as Charity had been.
“Yes Ma’am,” Garret replied every now and again. There was no obeisance in his voice, only gentle tolerance. Mrs. Malvern’s pride was gone, never to return, most likely, and she only wanted Charity’s memory to be as beautiful as it could be. Mr. Malvern stood behind his wife’s chair, ready to wheel her out again, when she was ready.
Garret’s shop, hastily rebuilt and still smelling of pine tar and whitewash, was flooded with work. Not from the townsfolk, of course. The night Charity died was still only spoken of in hushed tones, and no one save Garret, Molly, and Sarn truly knew what had happened. But the creature had killed dozens, and destroyed so much of the town that most people didn’t have two nickels to rub together in their pockets.
Garret had work because of Mr. Malvern. He had, without Molly’s permission, taken the rose Garret made for her and shown it to wealthy business contacts up and down the eastern seaboard. At first, only one man had been willing to test Garret’s skill. He had asked for some interior iron handrailing for a marble staircase. He had paid Garret’s way by train, all the way to New Jersey, to measure up the project. While there, trying not to eat, sit on, or touch anything that was worth more than his entire town, Garret had learned that the man’s wife loved English Ivy. He had made a railing of iron ivy, woven together like currents in a stream, perfect in every detail. He had hidden tiny iron birds throughout the iron leaves, some preening, one singing, one sitting on a little iron nest.
Hardly a day went by without a new letter arriving from somewhere Garret hadn’t heard of. Most of them contained bank notes to begin a new project. Garret had more work than he could possibly do alone.
Fortunately, he wasn’t alone. As Garret tapped lightly with his hammer, Sarn, shirtless and sweating, pounded away on a thick iron stave at the other anvil. It had been Pa’s anvil, the one on which he had forged the silver knife that had saved them all.
Now it was Sarn’s anvil. Sarn had helped Garret rebuild the shop, board by board, nail by nail. Then he had simply stayed, paying close attention to everything Garret did, asking questions, joking, laughing until the years and the recent darkness began to melt from them both.
Sarn had decided to work at Mr. Malvern’s mill when he was ten years old. He had never told Garret why he had made that choice instead of apprenticing with Pa. Neither did he tell Garret why he had now changed his mind, or why he seemed to enjoy blacksmithing work almost as much as he liked the three-legged, cantankerous raccoon which he’d brought to the shop that morning. It was currently sitting on Garret’s tool table, inspecting his fullers and hardies, putting the ones it liked in a pile and dropping the rest on the floor.
Sarn had given no explanation, and Garret had not asked for one. Some things were best left alone.
Mr. Malvern wheeled his wife out the door. She continued explaining all the way. Garret bid them farewell, then watched Sarn for a moment. He looked a lot like Pa, Garret had to admit. Despite the blonde hair and his shorter height, he had Pa’s build, certainly his slab-like arms, which bent glowing iron into submission with effortless force.
“Hey muttonhead,” Garret said offhandedly. “I hear Eliza Carpenter likes your butt.”
“Hey cowface,” Sarn replied tonelessly, shoving the end of the fence stave back into the coal bed. “I hear Molly doesn’t like yours.”
Garret started to laugh and retort, when he caught sight of a silhouette in the doorway. It was Molly, hands on hips, picnic basket hanging from one arm. She had recently begun to wear high-necked dresses, as were popular. Her hair was coiled beneath a white hat, instead of loose, and the hat was trimmed with blue lace the same color as the dress.
“Think carefully,” she said. “Before you answer that.”
Sarn turned to the forge, but Garret saw his face open into a broad smile. Sarn pulled the stave back out of the fire and laid it on his anvil. He gathered up his shirt and raccoon, and headed for the back door, from which it was a straight shot to the textile shop owned by Eliza’s family.
“She only likes your raccoon!” Garret yelled as Sarn stepped through the door. The fat raccoon, which was perched on Sarn’s shoulder, looked back at Garret, raised its little paw-hand, and flipped Garret the middle finger.
Garret almost swallowed his tongue. “Did you teach it to do that?”
Molly was leaning against the doorpost, helpless with laughter.
Without looking back, Sarn shrugged nonchalantly, and was gone into the midday sun.
Garret turned back to Molly, who was almost crying.
He set his hammer down. “Laugh it up, girl.” He crossed the space between them and had her in his arms, kissing her mouth, her cheeks, her neck as if he couldn’t get enough. He couldn’t help it. Didn’t want to help it.
After a breathless minute, they relaxed in each other’s arms.
She tugged on his ear. He kissed her again. Her smile sparkled like her eyes, clear as the summer sky above.
“H
iya, boy,” she said. “You look hungry.”
Chapter 24
Molly pulled at the corner of her dress, straightening the folds as they lay in the unmown wheat. Garret lay beside her, pointing at a cloud as it scuttled overhead. He insisted it looked like a beaver, but she said it most definitely was a duck.
She’d laid her hat in the grass beside them, undone her hair, and removed her shoes. She giggled and slapped his bare chest when he told her the cloud was starting to look like her left boob. The left one he insisted, not the right. She wanted to be offended and turn red, but she couldn’t. He wasn’t a boy anymore. Instead, he’d become the wonderful contradiction she’d always wanted. On the outside, he was simple, but finally, he was sort-of-professional. He could talk to his customers easily now, taking a minute from his day to discuss the exorbitant price of corn meal, or to listen to a harrowing story of travel that ended in a broken wagon wheel, which she knew actually bored him to death.
She covered her mouth to hide her grin from him as she recalled a scene from yesterday. Sheriff Halstead had entered the shop just as she’d brought Garret’s lunch. Halstead, with chest protruding even farther than usual, had made a wild accusation about Garret being in league with the devil, and how people were talking of demons, and how eventually, when people got scared enough, somebody always burned at the stake.
Garret had leaned on his hammer and listened to the whole thing with a bored expression. When Halstead failed to get a rise from Garret, he ended with, “I’ll be keeping my eye on you, Mr. Vilner.”
That, at last, had brought a small smile and a sigh from Garret. Molly expected a smart remark, but instead, shaking his head, he said, “You know Sheriff, I don’t think I’d have it any other way.”
That was Garret on the outside. On the inside, though, he was still the same, but younger than ever. Well maybe not younger, but more alive. He laughed so much more. He spent every free second with her, made her all sorts of things from iron, and he was becoming amazingly good at it. Most of all, he wanted her in a way that was so simple and pure that it sometimes brought tears to her eyes.
In fact, as they lay there in the wheat, he was looking at her that way, with his big brown eyes, and his always-tossled brown hair. She gazed back at the boy that he would always be, inside the man he had become, though he was not yet seventeen. He smiled, cutting the patchy beginnings of his beard stubble with white teeth. She couldn’t get him to shave it. He guarded his seven facial hairs as if they were his life. At least the coal dust was gone. She’d gotten him to wash off in the creek before they lay down to waste the afternoon together. She hadn’t gotten him to put his clothes back on, though. He said she’d have to do it if she wanted them back on. During the dark time, he’d been either naked or furry for most of two months. She’d gotten used to it. Both ways actually. Maybe she even liked it a little.
He was still smiling, big and goofy. Warmth rose inside her that didn’t have nearly as much to do with his lithe, thin-muscled frame as he would like to think it did.
“What,” he asked, still grinning.
She played with the hem of her dress. They’d talked about it several times, making love together when the time was right. Any time and place was right, he’d insisted, whenever they needed each other. That was how wolves were, he’d told her. She’d rolled her eyes and told him to go find a wolf.
He’d accepted her reluctance, but not happily. He controlled himself, pretty well anyway, but it was always raging inside him. His ability to express love was wound into his sexuality in a way she didn’t fully understand. Sure, maybe it was like that for most people, but as usual, Garret was a different animal altogether. A skinny, cute little animal.
His needs didn’t seem wrong necessarily, but they weren’t like those of anyone else she had ever met. And maybe she was kind of dying to find out exactly what that meant. But she was afraid, too. Perhaps it came from his dual nature. Both man and wolf. She had absolutely no idea how that was going to work. Perhaps it came from the fact that it was 1913, and if they made love before they were married and anyone ever found out, they would be ostracized and shunned by everyone they knew.
She rolled closer to him and looked deep into his brown eyes. They were always open to her, and boyish, but with a wolf prowling around behind them, always alert, always on watch. Ready at a moment’s notice to defend, to protect, to kill if necessary to keep her from harm. It didn’t frighten her, it made her feel safe. Somehow she had always known he was more than human. She knew it long before he did.
A shadow passed between them, from a cloud above, and she knew again that she wasn’t human either, but not in a way that had anything to do with growing fur or claws. She was not human because she didn’t deserve to be. She had killed her sister, whom she loved. Happiness crumpled in Molly like a paper wad in a flame.
If only she had killed Charity with the knife. That perhaps, she could eventually forgive herself for. But she had killed Charity with Charity’s own love, killed her with her trust. It was not what Molly wanted. It was the farthest thing from her desires. She had only wanted Charity to laugh again. She’d been desperate to see her sister smile. How had it all gone so terribly wrong?
She looked up. Garret had taken her gently by the chin, his expression grave. “Molly, you gotta stop.” He softened until she could barely hear him. “Please stop.”
“I killed her, Garr. I killed my sister.” Molly broke down. Again.
Garret took her in his arms, and she soaked up his warmth, his love. “No, you didn’t,” he insisted. They’d been through this many times. He held her for a long while, until her sorrow was expended, for this occasion, at least.
“Molly,” he said hesitantly. “I didn’t know whether or not to tell you this because of…” he stumbled. “Because of the way things happened with her, and what she…” He seemed to wish he hadn’t opened his mouth. “What she tried to do to me.” His face went beet red. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I… shit.”
He still held her, but he’d gone uncomfortably rigid.
“Tell me, Garret,” she said in a small voice, not at all sure she should have said it.
That loosened him a bit. “I just… I can’t stand to see you hurt like this.”
He swallowed hard. “She was in my head, Molly. She could make me see things, feel things when she wanted to.”
“I know that, Garret,” Molly said. “I understand.”
He met her eyes, and his were full of fear. “But did you know I could hear what she was thinking too? I could still hear it, well, sometimes, right up to the moment she died.”
Molly waited.
Garret swallowed hard and clung to Molly more tightly, as if he was afraid the coming words would pry her from his grasp. “When… when she was reaching for you. You remember she was trying to say something.”
Molly nodded, though the memory made her sick. “She wanted me to hold her.”
Garret shook his head, then sighed. “Well maybe. But I heard her, the last thing she tried to say to you. Do you remember when she looked up at you, right as she died?”
Molly swallowed hard and couldn’t answer. She saw Charity’s face again in her lap, turning up two sightless, fire-burned eyes towards her.
“She said she loved you, Molly,” Garret said hoarsely. “And I felt her relief as she died. She wanted… she tried to say ‘thank you, for setting me free’.”
Molly fell apart. She bawled until she sounded like a mother bear who had stumbled upon her dead cubs. It was the most wonderful, relieving feeling she’d ever had. Garret held her, stiff with pure terror over what he had done. She wanted to tell him it was okay, to hug and kiss him for being brave enough to say it, but she was overwhelmed. All she could do was bawl.
“I’m sorry, Molly,” he begged, petting her hair. “I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”
She kissed him, kissed him deeply.
He was surprised, but softened to it quickly. He w
as a cute little lunkhead, but sometimes, just at the right moment, he understood, and no words needed to be said. This was one of those times.
He picked her up, holding her firmly to himself as he kissed her. He carried her as if she weighed nothing, and she was amazed again, reassured again, relaxed again, by the strength in his small arms. They were corded, tough as the iron with which he made life beautiful and good.
He carried her into the shade of the willow by the stream, laid her on the ground. He’d unbuttoned the back of her dress at some point, but the touch of his hand had been so light that she hadn’t noticed when he’d done it. He pulled her dress away in a smooth motion, and the last piece of anything that would ever come between them, was gone.
Epilogue
Youngblood leaned on his crutch, standing close to Gerda, keeping her in his shadow. Not because he feared for her any longer, but because he wanted to be close to her. She slipped one of her hands into his and knocked on the shop door with her other.
The shop was small and low, but solid-looking. He liked its size and low roof better than many of the taller, airier buildings in the village. The door opened and Gerda smiled at the short man who had opened it. He had a long grey beard which spilled over his round belly. He had big forearms and strong hands with black dirt in his knuckles and under his fingernails. Something about the dirt held Youngblood’s attention. The older man had a gentle but solid way about him. He had earned the dirt under his nails. It reminded Youngblood of the dirt that used to cling beneath his uncles’ claws as they ruled the forests.
Gerda entered the shop, speaking softly to the man. Youngblood followed and breathed in the air inside the shop. It was close and dim, hung with all manner of tools and other dark, heavy looking things. It reminded him of his pack’s den, though such memories were now fading. A low fire burned in a brick structure in the middle of the small shop. The fire was no longer frightening. It was warmth. It was comfort. Like Gerda, it was home.
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