A split second later the concussion from the lightning strike hit, and Frau Beck was tumbled to her knees. She tried to rise, and couldn’t. The end of the spell had left her physically drained, and her muscles refused to do more than twitch and then subside in response to her command.
Something else hit the wet grass nearby, heavy enough that she felt the thump but it was definitely lighter than Herr Lindworm’s massive bulk. Frau Beck tried to look up, but her exhausted muscles again defied her. Finally, she forced one arm to reach out until her wrapped hand contacted something that flinched a little at her touch. Something else wound across her shoulders and settled there, and she thought she felt muscles shifting through her thin, rain-soaked shift.
She had time to wonder whether Herr Lindworm had wrapped his tail around her again before everything went black.
Chapter 12
Frau Beck woke some time later with one cheek smashed uncomfortably into fragrant wet grass. She couldn’t say how much time had passed. She didn’t feel drops of rain falling on her any longer, though she was soaked through. She knew she should have felt colder, but something large and warm lay against her on one side, with the heavy thing she’d noticed before still draped over her shoulders.
Frau Beck opened her eyes. Before her stretched an almost idyllic scene, with the path curving around the pine trees and the beautiful mountains rising in the background. It was just light enough that the sky was the faintest of blues, dotted with puffy clouds, though the sun hadn’t risen above the peaks to shine directly on anything yet. It must be just after dawn.
A closer look showed a thin trail of smoke rising out of the trees. Apparently the lightning had indeed struck there, but a bigger fire hadn’t started because of it. That was a relief.
She stirred, and the weight draped over her shoulder also moved. Frau Beck glanced, and stiffened.
An arm lay around her. A very big, human arm.
She gasped and sat up sharply. The arm fell away, and Frau Beck scrambled on her knees to put some distance between her and the heat source that had been pressed up against her side, which she now saw belonged to the man attached to the arm.
Her gasp and the sudden movement had disturbed him. He blinked once and then opened his eyes. They focused on her, and then he, too, gasped. He jerked, a clumsy sort of wiggle that traveled down the length of his body, and then an equally ungraceful thrash-roll brought his hands and knees under him. To Frau Beck’s relief, this removed the most private parts of him from her view, as he was completely naked.
He kept staring downward for a few long moments, palms flat on the ground, his face masked by a curtain of dark blond hair that fell past his powerful shoulders. Then he slowly sat back on his heels, staring at his outstretched hands and spread fingers as if he’d never seen them before. She could now see that his mouth was hanging open in shock, and she realized hers was as well.
I should have realized this might happen, she thought, as her sluggish brain finally ground around to the logical conclusion. But it never even crossed my mind…
“What…what happened?” he whispered. “How…?” One hand felt his throat, and the other traced his chest, abdomen, and down one thigh. “My voice is different…I have hands. I am…”
“Human,” Frau Beck finished for him. “The spell gave you a new form, all right. It appears casting it on someone non-human meant that ‘human’ was in the wheel of possibilities the spell could draw from. Or it picked up on the fact that you’re partially human anyway, given that lindworms are born from human mothers, and just brought that half of you to the forefront.” She was saying the first things that came to mind that made any sense, while her mind tried to sort through the implications of it all. It made things…interesting. Complicated, but certainly interesting.
“Human,” he repeated, as if he hadn’t quite understood her. He stared again at his hands, with their short, soft nails and almost translucent milky skin, and then gingerly felt his face. “I have no nose,” he said, a note of panic in his voice.
“Of course you do,” she replied. “It’s just not part of your jaw anymore. And I imagine it’s not quite as powerful, so it might not seem like you have one. But trust me, it’s there, right in the middle of your face.”
He felt the protrusion with great care, as if afraid it might break if he handled it too hard. Then he finally looked up and met her gaze. She saw that his eyes were a dark, mottled green-brown, the same color as his lindworm scales.
“You look…different,” he finally said. “Bigger. And I am—” He looked down at his arms again. “Very small.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said, eyes narrowed as she took him in. “Stand up, and let me get a look at you.”
“How?” he asked plaintively. “I think my joints all reversed themselves.”
“I’ll help you.” She stood up herself. “Wait. Let me get something first.”
She walked around until she located a sturdy, straight branch she thought might support his weight. This she brought back and handed to him, helping him wrap his fingers around it. “Lean on that, and I’ll see what we can do.”
It took some pulling and struggling and they almost overbalanced more than once, but eventually he stood on two feet. He clutched the branch almost desperately, digging it into the dirt to further steady himself as his body tried to pitch itself forward into a pose his mind said it was more accustomed to. His knees wobbled dangerously, and she could see his leg muscles flexing and standing out in turn as they struggled to keep him upright. “How do humans manage? This is…very awkward,” he gasped out.
“Practice,” said Frau Beck, thinking back to when Karl was learning to stand and walk on his own and how unsteady he’d been. This looked much the same, just on a larger scale.
A much larger scale. Herr Lindworm might think himself small in this shape, and to his own senses he would be. To Frau Beck, who had always been short even as an adult woman, he towered over her the way a city cathedral dominated every other building around, broad as well as tall. The top of his head had to be approaching seven feet, with everything else proportionately large to match. He was also very strong; every muscle was beautifully defined beneath his skin, like those of a mason or someone else who worked hard for a living.
Frau Beck couldn’t help an impressed whistle escaping between her teeth. “I hope you don’t expect me to catch you if you fall,” she said. “Even at this size, you’d crush me.”
“Have you finished looking your fill?” he asked, strain in his voice. “May I go back down, now? Close to the ground, where it’s safe?”
“Yes, of course.” She blinked, and shook her head slightly to clear it.
He fell forward onto his hands and knees again with a thump that shook the wet ground. He sat there for awhile, getting his bearings, before pushing himself up again into more or less a seated position. He looked at his hands, now smeared with a few streaks of mud. Then he ran them through his hair, picking up a few locks and going nearly crossed-eyed to examine them, rubbing the flexible strands between his finger pads in amazement.
“Human,” he said again, softly, still slightly disbelieving. “Did you know?”
“I had no idea,” she assured him. “I thought being able to transform into a wolf, or an eagle, or a squirrel, or something else manageable in size, would be enough. I never imagined the spell could give you a human form, though in hindsight, I probably should have guessed. I had a lot on my mind.”
One corner of his mouth quirked in an attempt at a smile. “I suppose I can forgive that.” Then he thought about what she’d said. “A squirrel?”
“All right, I knew you wouldn’t be a squirrel. You never once struck me as squirrel material. I just said that to see if you were paying attention.” She grinned.
“Can I change back?”
“You should be able to, whenever you want. That’s the way the spell was designed, and since it worked in every other way I have no reason to believe other
wise.”
He opened his mouth to say something else, but then his eyes darted behind her and widened. She turned back towards the path and saw a group of people just coming around the bend.
Frau Beck swore under her breath. Then she swooped down and seized her discarded dress and bodice, the former of which she threw at Herr Lindworm. “Cover up!” she hissed.
She yanked the bodice on over her head and tugged it down to cover her torso so that at least she wouldn’t only be wearing her undyed cotton shift, which was still damp. There was nothing to be done about her disordered hair or the dried mud daubing her here and there from head to foot. At least she still had her shoes and long stockings on.
Apparently Herr Lindworm had lived long enough among humans early in his life that he understood the concept of modesty and she didn’t have to explain what parts of him most needed concealment. He bunched and arranged the dress so that it covered his waist and lap, and tucked it around behind his lower back as well. Things might get awkward if he needed to stand, but since that would be difficult enough anyway they would just have to hope it wouldn’t be necessary.
By the time they were finished, the group was within shouting distance and Frau Beck recognized individual faces from the village. They looked tired, wet and haggard, and had probably had no pleasanter of a night out in the storm than Frau Beck and Herr Lindworm. They were well within the concealing barrier she had set up, so it had dissolved on its own at some point in the night. The herbs that had marked its boundary had probably been washed away by the rain and wind’s sheer force. Even her spells had their limit.
“Neighbors,” Frau Beck said in German, nodding gravely. She couldn’t stop the deep blush that stained her cheeks. She knew perfectly well what this looked like. But she kept her head high.
“You picked a dangerous night to be out in the open, Frau Beck, Signore…?” said one of the men who stood at the front of the group, which numbered about fifteen. She placed his name a second later: Herr Schultz.
“L-, erm, Lynd,” she supplied at random. She felt Herr Lindworm’s eyes on her but she didn’t turn to look at him.
“Signore…Lynd.” Whatever Herr Schultz thought of the somewhat unusual name, he kept it to himself. “You are very lucky. With the storm, and the monster lurking nearby, it’s a wonder you’re both still alive.”
“Did you catch it, then?” she asked, leaning forward and pretending eagerness.
“No. But we hope when we return to Brig one of the other groups will have killed it. Or perhaps the storm drove it far away and it won’t trouble us again.”
“Let us hope so,” she said.
“I haven’t seen you around before, signore,” one of the other men, Signore Vincente, said. He was looking at Herr Lindworm with deep suspicion.
To Frau Beck’s surprise, the human lindworm climbed ponderously to his feet. One ham-sized hand clutched the supporting branch in a vice grip and the other held her wrapped dress tightly around his midsection, but the motion was already much easier than it had been a few minutes ago. Frau Beck stole a look at her fellow townsfolk out of the corner of her vision and noticed that several of them widened their eyes or shuffled backward half a step involuntarily.
“I am a hunter, from near Salzburg,” Herr Lindworm said, and even though his voice was much less resonant than before it was still deep and even, his German perfect if obviously missing the local Italian flourishes. With the long, unkempt hair and muscle mass he looked the part he claimed, though his pale skin didn’t bear the tan of someone who spent most of their time outdoors. Frau Beck hoped fervently no one in the group would think of that. His sheer size might prove a useful distraction.
“I heard you were having…difficulty with an unnatural beast of some kind and came to offer my assistance,” he continued. “I have spent my entire life in these mountains and there is little that I don’t know about them. But the storm came up, and I was swept away unexpectedly. The lady, here,” with a gesture he indicated Frau Beck, “found me nearly senseless at the bottom of a ravine, all of my things gone, and brought me to safety.” His knees wobbled and he swayed slightly, as if to prove the truth of his words.
“This seemed the best place to take shelter,” Frau Beck added, going to stand beside him and offering him a shoulder to lean on, “rather than trying to go all the way back to town.”
The suspicion faded noticeably from most faces, and several looked at “Signore Lynd” with a lot more sympathy. “We’re sorry for your injury, then, since you intended to help us,” said Herr Schultz. “Do you need help getting back to town, now?”
“That would be welcome, thank you,” said Frau Beck smoothly, before Herr Lindworm could say anything. She shot him a look that she hoped would warn him not to argue. Then she smiled back at the group. “Does anyone have something Signore Lynd might borrow so he can be a little more…decent?”
They all did their best, but even the biggest among them had nothing that would come close to fitting. Even the loosest shirts weren’t large enough to fit Herr Lindworm’s arms and shoulders, and the trousers were absolutely hopeless. In the end, a few of the men took the poor lindworm into the relative shelter of the cottage and rigged up an outfit that would at least get him to Frau Beck’s flat without offending anyone’s delicate sensibilities too badly. They tossed Frau Beck her dress through one of the empty windows, wrinkled but wearable. It was still warm from the lindworm’s human body and it felt good to pull on over her chilly, damp shift.
When the group of men emerged, Frau Beck had to admit they had been very clever. One of them had happened to have an oiled cloak, and while it was much shorter on Herr Lindworm than on its owner it still concealed everything important. He had something else on under it, or a combination of several somethings, but while the ensemble wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny it was perfectly serviceable for now.
Frau Beck was grateful that the taller, stronger men were able to help them get down the mountain, because even with the group Herr Lindworm’s unsteadiness was a constant challenge. They all took turns helping him and carrying Frau Beck’s pack and what few supplies, like the bucket, that remained after the spell and the weather consumed or scattered them.
They met several other groups coming back, with a few other scattered injuries such as cuts from flying branches, and a twisted ankle thanks to being unable to see treacherous footing. Frau Beck threw together a few quick remedies from plants she plucked along the way and applied them as they walked. These were mountain people, and each group had had someone who knew where the closest shelter was when a big, fast-moving storm rolled in. There had been no deaths.
No one, of course, had captured or even seen a glimpse of the monster they had all been hunting. Plans were discussed to go out again the following day. Frau Beck pretended not to hear any of it, and she noted “Signore Lynd” kept his head down, allowing his new hair to conceal his expression under the guise of focusing on walking in a straight line.
Back in town everyone who had been on the hunt regrouped in the town square. Frau Beck was relieved to see that the funeral trappings had been removed and there had been enough respect to bury poor Kristina and her grandmother before they all climbed to the hunt.
She took charge of Herr Lindworm, leading him away from the gathering to her flat. He was starting to get the hang of upright motion, though he still clung to her shoulder and his branch.
“Try to pick your feet up just a little higher for each step,” she advised once they were alone on the deserted streets. “Then they won’t get caught on the edges of the stones so much.”
“Are you certain coming here was the best idea?” he asked, looking around nervously at the houses lining the streets.
“Yes. It would have looked odder to leave you on your own in the mountains, supposedly injured as you are. What would we have told them?”
“I’ve never been able to just…be out in the open, in daylight, in a place with this many humans, before. It
feels…wrong.”
“Soon it’ll feel like second nature. After all, now that you have a human form, you can go among humans whenever you like,” she pointed out.
“I will have to change back eventually. This is not my true form. I can…feel my other self. He is just below the surface. I cannot just become a human who can transform into a giant lizard when he wants. I am a lindworm still, and I always will be.”
Frau Beck glanced at him sharply. “You’re not going to change back here? Now? That would be…inconvenient. Not to mention difficult to explain.”
“No, no. Have no fear of that. I think I would have to want to change back. Will it, somehow, though I would have to attempt it to be sure.”
“What about if you were to fall asleep? Are you only remaining human through concentration?” Frau Beck bit her lip. Perhaps insisting he come into Brig on the first day had been a mistake.
“I do not think so.” It was hard to read his expression. “I think…it is like wearing this cloak. Now that it is on, I don’t really have to think about wearing it until I want to expend some effort to take it off. I could even fall asleep with it on, and it would not come off until I removed it.” He reached up and plucked at the collar of the cloak, which was clasped firmly, to make his point.
“I think I understand. Well, that is a relief. There have been enough narrowly averted disasters in the past few days alone and I would like to continue avoiding them if possible. Though I’m not sure my nerves can take many more close shaves.”
“I will strive to be easier on your nerves.” They looked at one another, and started to chuckle in spite of themselves.
The Dragon & the Alpine Star Page 12