I hear footsteps, and a faint crying. I crouch, suddenly afraid. This is not a feverish dream. I am awake.
* * *
This morning my mother woke me at dawn, fear in her eyes, and told me to dress.
“What is it?” I asked.
For several days, I had smelled smoke in the air and heard shouting in the distance. The few servants who came from the village, usually friendly folk, avoided me and my family. I felt as if they had seen my dreams, seen what I longed to be. Could other people see what was inside your head, inside your heart? Or only God?
“Greta,” I finally said to one of the housemaids whom I usually embroidered with. “What is the matter?”
She averted her eyes. “Several children have gone missing,” she said. “And yesterday one of them was found.”
“What happened?” I asked, my stomach tightening.
“The flesh was torn from the poor child’s thighs.” She began to weep.
“A wolf, then,” I said, patting her hand, which she quickly withdrew. “The men will hunt the animal. The archduke has a fine set of dogs. Last year he himself took down a bear.”
She said nothing, her lips pressed together.
Generally the wolves that inhabit the wooded areas of the surrounding forests prefer to keep their distance from humans, but young males do occasionally come down from the mountains to prey on livestock or small children. They are quickly dispatched. I did not understand her agitation, the sense of foreboding that enveloped the castle.
After lunch my father gathered us in our chambers, his brow creased with worry.
“They believe it is a werewolf,” he said.
We children and our mother stared at him in silence.
I knew the term, of course, but it had never been spoken aloud in our family. I had read that werewolves were men who, in exchange for doing the devil’s work, were given the power to transform themselves into wolves. There had been trials over the years – a man in Bavaria confessed to eating several young women, and I had heard the kitchenmaids say that in recent months confessed werewolves had been tried and burned in Anjou and Valais.
“How do they know?” I asked my father.
“Some of the villagers say they saw someone…” He sighed, knitted his brows and began again. “The archduke is concerned for our safety. He asks that we stay in our chambers.” The way he said it made it sound like it was the werewolf we had to fear.
My mother nodded and turned away, picked up her sewing, as did my little sister. “But,” I said, “do they think it’s one of us?”
My mother’s eyes widened and she told me to be quiet.
After lunch I wanted to go down the hall to the archduke’s library, to look at his books on witches and werewolves. But when I opened the door to our chamber, there was a guard outside. He was in armor and carrying a halberd. I knew him.
“Good day, Friedrich,” I said as he blocked my exit.
He said nothing, just pushed me back inside and shut the door.
As darkness fell I heard shouting outside the walls of the castle grounds. I could smell smoke and hear the crackle of the flames.
“Bring him out,” they yelled. “Bring us the werewolf.”
A flaming branch sailed up past the window and illuminated my father’s shadow against the stone wall of our chamber. He shrank back in fear. My father, whom the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi traveled hundreds of miles to meet and whom he declared one of the great scientific marvels of the world. My father, who says the rosary every day. A stone smashed the window and the crowd cheered. They tried to launch a torch up, but it fell to the ground and set a small bush alight.
In the early evening the archduke’s personal secretary came to us. “We are not certain we can hold off the mob,” he said. “There is talk of moving you to another location.”
“Is that… safe?” asked my father. I thought of how easily a carriage could be stopped, overturned, burned. Sending us out there was akin to sending us to our deaths.
The archduke himself did not come to see us. I chose to believe he was ashamed of his people, these ignorant mountain villagers. But perhaps he too was afraid of us.
The drums began. I heard my parents whispering. Another child had been found dead, half eaten. People from surrounding mountain towns had traveled here to witness the burning of my father alive. The archduke’s promise to protect us was in doubt.
I saw in the moonlight that my mother was sitting in a corner of the sitting room, weeping silently. My father sat nearby, not touching her.
“Maybe I should go talk to them,” he said. “They will see I am a man of God.”
“Do you know what they did to Peter Stumpp of Bedburg?” my mother said.
I didn’t, but I knew what they had done to Walpurga.
“The whole point of being a werewolf is transformation,” my father said in exasperation. “If I had the power to be hairless, would I be this way?” The gesture he makes, throwing his hands up, makes my heart grow dry and light like a dead thing. My father hates himself. Does he hate me, too?
“Peter Stumpp was flayed alive on the wheel, and his daughters and his woman were raped and strangled,” my mother whispered.
* * *
The grass rustles. I can smell the animal before I see him. He smells of death. A tall wolf, gray, with yellow eyes. It is only a wolf after all, as I expected. He is carrying an infant in his mouth, but gently, like a hunting dog with a bird. I imagine he has grabbed it from a nearby farm.
The wolf looks around and drops the baby, who is uninjured but too exhausted and frightened to do anything but stare with huge eyes.
I will kill the wolf, and save the baby, and the villagers will see that my father is innocent. Perhaps they will be ashamed, though I suspect not. My family will be safe, and we will be able to continue to live at Schloss Ambras, under the archduke’s protection.
This year or the next, the archduke will choose a husband for me. Will my husband want me? Or will he be repulsed? Perhaps I will be sent to the palace of one of the archduke’s family members in Vienna, or Prague. What manners, the people will say, staring in amazement as I pour tea, and dance a minuet. And think about ripping their throats out.
As I plan my attack, the wolf noses the infant until its bare neck is exposed. The infant is calm, just the way the rabbits are before the archuduke’s hounds pounce. This is the moment of the pact, I think. The moment of connection, when one life is sacrificed to another.
I am about to launch myself at the wolf, but something stops me – as the wolf stares at the infant’s neck, he begins to transform. His snout disappears, his claws retract. For a moment I stare in disbelief as he looks like me, like my father, like my little brother and sister. Then his fur disappears, replaced with smooth skin.
I suppress a gasp.
My mind leaps in excitement. For an instant, I almost forget about the baby, I am so fascinated. Who is this man? He is so free. It’s awful and beautiful at the same time, this freedom he has. To be both man and animal. To choose.
The baby reaches up a tiny hand, waves it. The man pauses.
I will speak. I will ask him to spare the infant. I will rebalance him, be the voice of our human side. Restore the man/animal equilibrium. In exchange he will teach me how to live in freedom.
I could run away with this man, live in the shadows. There are woods, deep, dark woods we could flee to. Never be found. Live on rabbits, and mice. I could be free, with this man. I am reminded of my nakedness, of the pleasure I feel in being naked. I look at the man’s naked body, watch the play of muscles under his skin. He is an animal, and I am an animal.
But we are also human. I will remind him of that. We do not eat our own.
The moon comes out from behind the cloud, and the man’s face is illuminated.
It is the archduke.
I am all amazed, I almost stagger, swoon. The archduke, who studied the dark arts in order to bring his lost love back to life. Th
e books, the potions, the spells… they are real. He has mastered the art of transformation, of unification. The marriage of two things. Alchemy. He is a man, and he is an animal.
I am about to step forward, to reveal myself to the archduke. Tell him that I too have dreamed of this, of blood and biting and of wildness… tell him I understand. That we are twin souls. Of course he will not kill the infant. He is the archduke. He is–
In that moment, I look again at the glint in his eyes. This is not a momentary impulse. I realize he has planned this, this murderous spree. I realize why he brought my father to Ambras. For this. To take the blame for this. When his animal side took over, someone would be blamed. Will be blamed.
He picks up the child and opens his mouth to tear out its throat. I see one tiny feather lift off from the archduke’s lips and float away into the night air. He must have eaten a duck, too, in the farmyard.
The baby whimpers. It is, I think in that moment, the same cry my father uttered, standing on a table in France. My father, who believes that I am not an animal, but a lady.
My father is wrong. We are all animals.
I spring, and plunge the silver dagger into the archduke’s back. I have not been trained in feats of strength, in swordsmanship or wrestling. I have been trained to dance and sew and laugh. To drink from delicate porcelain cups. But I am still strong, and my heart has the heavy weight of truth behind it, so the archduke’s own silver knife goes deep into his flesh. I have helped the kitchen maids quarter pheasants many times, but now it is the ease with which the thin blade slips in that surprises me, and the warmth of the blood that covers my hand, its scarlet color, the color of royalty.
The archduke whirls, stares at me.
“You,” he gasps, dropping to his knees.
“Yes, your grace, it is I, Maddalena Gonzales,” I say, and despite my nakedness I give a polite little curtsy.
I snatch up the baby as the archduke groans, snarls, twitches in agony, paws at the blade but cannot reach it. Blood pools beneath him. His face pales and his lips form a grimace. His hands claw the dirt. I stare at the pool of blood, where the reflection of the moon appears. He twitches once more, then is still.
I scream, as loudly as I can. I place the baby down on a soft pile of leaves. When I hear footsteps, I run. I can hear the shouts of the farmer and his wife discovering the baby, alive, and the archduke, dead. They will not be surprised to learn that the nobleman strayed to the side of the devil, I think. The whispers I took for idle gossip, for superstition, were true. It is I who was ignorant.
I return to the castle walls, make it over unseen, and dress myself once again under the lilac bush. I pull on the stifling hose, button the brocade dress. I stuff my feet back into the tiny shoes. The archduke’s second wife, so pious like my father, will protect us for now. The public’s need for blood has been sated. But we will be sold again, no doubt, now that the archduke is dead. We will be back on display somewhere, or hidden away.
We will continue to unnerve people, to remind them of the animal within. But it is not, I now know, the animal in us that we should fear.
Art by Eric Orchard
A Score of Roses
by Troy L. Wiggins
* * *
1870s
Memphis, Tennessee
I.
Sunshine flowed through the crowd, sliding between hooters and hungry-eyed applauders. A whiskey runner with a long, toothy scar down his neck poured up servings of burning moonshine at a row of nearby tables. The harsh, fruity scent of the liquor filled Sunshine’s nose, luring her with its sweet poison.
She swayed up to the tables, lowered herself into a seat, and stretched out like a yawning cat. The runner regarded her with flat eyes. She nodded. Her hand landed softly on the thigh of the stony-faced man sitting next to her, and her lips quivered. The scent of rosewater wisped from her skin, cutting softly through the dense reek of smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes, black bodies, and day-old sweat.
“So tell me, baby, why’s yo ears so pointed like that?”
Baby took a sip from his tin cup. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told ya, so I ain’t gonna tell ya.”
His skin was black, like the dead time between new days. She reached out and traced along the curve of his ear with her finger. “They like knives. Like knives made’a skin and bone. You kin to the devil?”
“Devil don’t exist, honey.”
Sunshine pulled a pout. “C’mon, baby. Tell me somethin’. You sayin’ things like that just make me more curious.”
Baby turned to Sunshine and met her gaze. His face was angled, his chin tapered, and his eyes were thundercloud gray, full of lightning and storms. Sunshine scooted closer to him, and he smiled.
“So, you not gon’ answer my question?”
“Nope.”
“Fine then.”
“I might answer another one of your questions, though, if you promise to smile again.”
Sunshine fulfilled his request. “I ain’t seen you round here before. Where you come from?”
Baby tapped his chin, considering. “You sho’ do know how to ask the wrong questions. What am I supposed to say to that, huh?”
“Tell the truth. Shame the devil.” Sunshine took a sip, stopped, slapped her thigh. “Oh shit, he ain’t real. Forgot. ‘Scuse me.”
“Yo mouth gon’ get you in a lot of trouble. Fine, you want truth, here it go: I come from the dirt.”
“And I come from yo’ neck bone. Gimme me some mo liquor, Jerry. And you, gimme some mo’ answers.”
“I tole you, I come from the dirt and live wit’ the dirt, laugh wit’ the dirt, love the dirt and everything that come to be because of it.”
“You soundin’ like one’a them big foot country boys that just learned the world was bigger than a fool’s middle finger, baby.”
He laughed, a boom boom from deep in his chest that sounded like a drumbeat delivered from the top of a mountain. “Maybe so.”
Sunshine swished a swig of moonshine around in her mouth, swallowed it, and growled away the burn. “Yeah, you talkin’ like a man who’s fulla some good drink.”
“I’m sober as a stone, honey.”
Sunshine hooded her eyes and ran her tongue over her lips. The air seemed to clear. “Well, that just ain’t no good. What’s the point of sitting’ up in a place like this and not drinkin’ yo troubles down the river? Why’ont you just come on home wit’ me and tell me some mo’ stories about yo dirt, then? I might even sing you one of my special songs.”
Baby laughed again and drained his cup. “Now that don’t sound like a bad idea a’tall.”
II.
“Ah…” Baby gasped. “Sunshine…”
“Yeah, Baby,” Sunshine growled, jerking her slick hips. Rosewater and musk hung heavy on the air. Her eyes glowed in the darkness.
“Ah–” Another jerk. A flash of dusky nipple. An umber thigh against onyx. A cresting moonbeam. “Ah – a’lina suatha tautroga…”
“Shit, Baby. What that mean?”
Baby’s white smile split the night. “You owe me a song, honey,” he gasped.
III.
She claimed that night was safer, so they met after sunset. She said that the riots had brought out the evil in everyone, especially those people that already had hatred in their hearts toward folks like them. Baby had rolled his eyes. Nobody knew who he was. Still, she’d said, better to stay on the side of skin. Baby looked out over the hard faces and noticed how many hands twitched inside of pockets, how many backs bent before pieced-together shanties. He snorted at the “safety.”
A familiar itch tingled on the tips of his ears. It was time to leave, past time. He stayed anyway, standing in the lopsided shadow of an old wooden fort that still bore the stink of dying and despairing men, still wore smudged gunpowder on the gates, still muddied the dirt road before it with blood and sweat. He could hear the hoots of the men inside as they glimpsed brown thighs and were swayed by low-
down song that reminded them of times before horrors.
Someone yanked on his ear, and he whipped around, growling murder. Only Sunshine was there, wearing an old housedress with faded pink flowers. Her skin and hair glowed. There was no dirt on her shoes. He removed his hat, held it to his chest. She smiled, and he forgot the stink of the outdoors, forgot the darkness.
“I ain’t think you was gonna come,” she murmured, sliding her arm into his. He looked down at his boots. They were dirty. He didn’t care.
“Why wouldn’t I come? I don’t cut and run.”
“Let’s go downtown, baby.”
“Thought it wasn’t safe there. Besides, I like the trees over here. Ain’t no trees or nothin’ really alive downtown that’s no different than what we can see here.”
“You call this livin’?”
“Bein’ in these walls y’all done made ain’t livin’ at all, but at least here there’s more dirt, more trees and such.”
“You and yo dirt. Fine then.”
They walked. Different lives unfolded a million times in the span of a few minutes. Three boys played baseball on the next street over. One boy couldn’t hit the ball and called for a change of rules. The other two yelled and screamed. Several men sat around a fire built in a low pit. The biggest of them stood backlit by flames, swinging his arms and building a tale out of yells and memories. The other men laughed as they passed a jug between them, looking around before they sipped. Ahead of them, two rickety houses made of discarded slats of wood nearly leaned on each other. Moans and creaking spilt into the street from them. Glass clattered and crashed. Someone defiled the name of God. Baby smelled blood, pulled Sunshine closer to him.
“They the same damn thing,” she whispered. He pretended not to hear.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 25
