by Tanith Lee
Nothing, apparently.
The brazier sizzled and the hammer of the blacksmithing groom smacked the nails home into the horse’s hoof. Lisel found the process disconcerting.
“You must understand,” she said to the coachman, “my father would give you a great deal of money. He’s unwell and wishes me to return. I received word this morning.”
The coachman hulked there like a big black bear, and Lisel had the urge to bite him viciously.
“My grandmother,” she announced, “would order you to obey me, but she is in bed.”
“No, she is not,” said the Matriarch at Lisel’s back, and Lisel almost screamed She shot around, and stared at the old woman, who stood about a foot away, imperious in her furs, jewels frostily blistering on her wrists.
“I wish,” said Lisel, taking umbrage as her shield, “to go home at once.”.
“So I gather. But you can’t, I regret.”
“You mean to keep me prisoner?” blurted Lisel.
Grandmother laughed. The laugh was like fresh ice crackling under a steel skate. “Not at all. The road is snowed under and won’t be clear for several days. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with us a while longer.”
Lisel, in a turmoil she could not herself altogether fathom, had her attention diverted by the behavior of the horse. It was bristling like a cat, tossing its head, dancing against the rope by which the second groom was holding it
Anna walked at once out into the yard and began to approach the horse from the front. The horse instantly grew more agitated, kicking up its heels, and neighing croupily. Lisel almost cried an automatic warning, but restrained herself. Let the beldame get a kicking, she deserved it. Rather to Lisel’s chagrin, Anna reached the horse without actually having her brains dashed out. She showed not a moment’s hesitation or doubt, placing her hand on its long nose, eying it with an amused tenderness. She looked very cruel and very indomitable.
“There now,” said Anna to the horse, which, fallen quiet and still, yet trembled feverishly. “You know you are used to me. You know you were trained to endure me since you were a foal, as your brothers are sometimes trained to endure fire.”
The horse hung its head and shivered, cowed but noble.
Anna left it and strolled back through the snow. She came to Lisel and took her arm.
“I’m afraid,” said Anna, guiding them toward the château door, “that they’re never entirely at peace when I’m in the vicinity, though they are good horses, and well-trained. They have borne me long distances in the carriage.”
“Do they fear you because you ill-treat them?” Lisel asked impetuously.
“Oh, not at all. They fear me because to them I smell of wolf.”
Lisel bridled.
“Then do you think it wise to keep such a pet in the house?” she flared.
Anna chuckled. It was not necessarily a merry sound.
“That’s what you think, is it? What a little dunce you are, Lisel. I am the beast you saw last night, and you had better get accustomed to it. Grandmère is a werewolf.”
—
The return walk through the domestic corridors into the hall was notable for its silence. The dreadful Anna, her grip on the girl’s arm unabated, smiled thoughtfully to herself. Lisel was obviously also deliberating inwardly. Her conclusions, however, continued to lean to the deranged rather than the occult Propitiation suggested itself, as formerly, to be the answer. So, as they entered the hall, casting their cloaks to a servant, Lisel brightly exclaimed:
“A werewolf, Grandmère. How interesting!”
“Dear me,” said Anna, “what a child.” She seated herself by the fire in one of her tall thrones. Beautiful had appeared. “Bring the liqueur and some biscuits,” said Anna. “It’s past the hour, but why should we be the slaves of custom?”
Lisel perched on a chair across the hearth, watching Anna guardedly.
“You are the interesting one,” Anna now declared. “You look sulky rather than intimidated at being mured up here with one whom you wrongly suppose is a dangerous insane. No, ma chère, verily I’m not mad, but a transmogrifite. Every evening, once the sun sets, I become a wolf, and duly comport myself as a wolf does.”
“You’re going to eat me, then,” snarled Lisel, irritated out of all attempts to placate.
“Eat you? Hardly necessary. The forest is bursting with game. I won’t say I never tasted human meat, but I wouldn’t stoop to devouring a blood relation. Enough is enough. Besides, I had the opportunity last night, don’t you think, when you swooned away on the stairs not fifty feet from me. Of course, it was almost dawn, and I had dined, but to rip out your throat would have been the work only of a moment Thereafter we might have stored you in the cold larder against a lean winter.”
“How dare you try to frighten me in this way!” screamed Lisel in a paroxysm of rage.
Beautiful was coming back with a silver tray. On the tray rested a plate of biscuits and a decanter of the finest cut glass containing a golden drink.
“You note, Beautiful,” said Madame Anna, “I like this wretched granddaughter of mine. She’s very like me.”
“Does that dwarf know you are a werewolf?” demanded Lisel, with baleful irony.
“Who else lets me in and out at night? But all my servants know, just as my other folk know, in the forest.”
“You’re disgusting,” said Lisel.
“Tut, I shall disinherit you. Don’t you want my fortune any more?”
Beautiful set down the tray on a small table between them and began to pour the liqueur, smooth as honey, into two tiny crystal goblets.
Lisel watched. She remembered the nasty dishes of raw meat—part of Anna’s game of werewolfery—and the drinking of water, but no wine. Lisel smirked, thinking she had caught the Matriarch out. She kept still and accepted the glass from Beautiful, who, while she remained seated, was a mere inch taller than she.
“I toast you,” said Anna, raising her glass to Lisel. “Your health and your joy.” She sipped. A strange look came into her strange eyes. “We have,” she said, “a brief winter afternoon before us. There is just the time to tell you what you should be told.”
“Why bother with me? I’m disinherited.‘’
“Hardly. Taste the liqueur. You will enjoy it.”
“I’m surprised that you did, Grandmère.”
“Don’t be,” said Anna with asperity. “This wine is special to this place. We make it from a flower which grows here. A little yellow flower that comes in the spring, or sometimes, even in the winter. There is a difference then, of course. Do you recall the flower of my escutcheon? It is the self-same one.”
Lisel sipped the liqueur. She had had a fleeting fancy it might be drugged or tampered with in some way, but both drinks had come from the decanter. Besides, what would be the point? The Matriarch valued an audience. The wine was pleasing, fragrant and, rather than sweet as Lisel had anticipated, tart. The flower which grew in winter was plainly another demented tale.
Relaxed, Lisel leant back in her chair. She gazed at the flames in the wide hearth. Her mad grandmother began to speak to her in a quiet, floating voice, and Lisel saw pictures form in the fire. Pictures of Anna, and of the château, and of darkness itself…
4
How young Anna looked. She was in her twenties. She wore a scarlet gown and a scarlet cloak lined with pale fur and heavy brocade. It resembled Lisel’s cloak but had a different clasp. Snow melted on the shoulders of the cloak, and Anna held her slender hands to the fire on the hearth. Free of the hood, her hair, like marvelously tarnished ivory, was piled on her head, and there was a yellow flower in it. She wore ruby eardrops. She looked just like Lisel, or Lisel as she would become in six years or seven.
Someone called. It was more a roar than a call, as if a great beast came trampling into the château. He was a big man, dark, all darkness, his features hidden in a black beard, black hair—more, in a sort of swirling miasmic cloud, a kind of psychic smoke: Anna’s h
atred and fear. He bellowed for liquor and a servant came running with a jug and cup. The man, Anna’s husband, cuffed the servant aside, grabbing the jug as he did so. He strode to Anna, spun her about, grabbed her face in his hand as he had grabbed the jug. He leaned to her as if to kiss her, but he did not kiss, he merely stared. She had steeled herself not to shrink from him, so much was evident. His eyes, roving over her to find some overt trace of distaste or fright, suddenly found instead the yellow flower. He vented a powerful oath. His paw flung up and wrenched the flower free. He slung it in the fire and spat after it.
“You stupid bitch,” he growled at her. “Where did you come on that?”
“It’s only a flower.”
“Not only a flower. Answer me, where? Or do I strike you?”
“Several of them are growing near the gate, beside the wall; and in the forest. I saw them when I was riding.”
The man shouted again for his servant. He told him to take a fellow and go out They must locate the flowers and burn them.
“Another superstition?” Anna asked. Her husband hit her across the head so she staggered and caught the mantel to steady herself.
“Yes,” he sneered, “another one. Now come upstairs.”
Anna said, “Please excuse me, sir. I am not well today.”
He said in a low and smiling voice:
“Do as I say, or you’ll be worse.”
The fire flared on the swirl of her bloody cloak as she moved to obey him.
And the image changed. There was a bedroom, fluttering with lamplight. Anna was perhaps thirty-five or six, but she looked older. She lay in bed, soaked in sweat, uttering hoarse low cries or sometimes preventing herself from crying. She was in labor. The child was difficult. There were other women about the bed. One muttered to her neighbor that it was beyond her how the master had ever come to sire a child, since he got his pleasure another way, and the poor lady’s body gave evidence of how. Then Anna screamed. Someone bent over her. There was a peculiar muttering among the women, as if they attended at some holy ceremony.
And another image came. Anna was seated in a shawl of gilded hair. She held a baby on her lap and was playing with it in an intense, quite silent way. As her hair shifted, traceries became momentarily visible over her bare shoulders, and arms, horrible traceries left by a lash.
“Let me take the child,” said a voice, and one of the women from the former scene appeared. She lifted the baby from Anna’s lap, and Anna let the baby go, only holding her arms and hands in such a way that she touched it to the last second. The other woman was older than Anna, a peasant dressed smartly for service in the château. “You mustn’t fret yourself,” she said.
‘’But I can’t suckle her,“ said Anna. ”I wanted to.“
“There’s another can do that,” said the woman. “Rest yourself. Rest while he is away.” When she said “he” there could be no doubt of the one to whom she referred.
“Then, I’ll rest,” said Anna. She reclined on pillows, wincing slightly as her back made contact with the fine soft silk. “Tell me about the flowers again. The yellow flowers.”
The woman showed her teeth as she rocked the baby. For an instant her face was just like a wolf’s.
“You’re not afraid,” she said. “He is. But it’s always been here. The wolf-magic. It’s part of the Wolfland. Wherever wolves have been, you can find the wolf-magic. Somewhere. In a stream or a cave, or in a patch of ground. The château has it. That’s why the flowers grow here. Yes, I’ll tell you, then. It’s simple. If any eat the flowers, then they receive the gift. It comes from the spirit, the wolfwoman, or maybe she’s a goddess, an old goddess left over from the beginning of things, before Christ came to save us all. She has the head of a wolf and yellow hair. You swallow the flowers, and you call her, and she comes, and she gives it you. And then it’s yours, till you die.”
“And then what? Payment?” said Anna dreamily. “Hell?”
“Maybe.”
The image faded gently. Suddenly there was another which was not gentle, a parody of the scene before. Staring light showed the bedchamber. The man, his shadow-face smoldering, clutched Anna’s baby in his hands. The baby shrieked; he swung it to and fro as if to smash it on some handy piece of furniture. Anna stood in her nightdress. She held a whip out to him.
“Beat me,” she said. “Please beat me. I want you to. Put down the child and beat me. It would be so easy to hurt her, and so soon over, she’s so small. But I’m stronger. You can hurt me much more. See how vulnerable and afraid I am. Beat me.”
Then, with a snarl he tossed the child onto the bed where it lay wailing. He took the whip and caught Anna by her pale hair—
There was snow blowing like torn paper, everywhere. In the midst of it a servant woman, and a child perhaps a year old with soft dark hair, were seated in a carriage. Anna looked at them, then stepped away. A door slammed, horses broke into a gallop. Anna remained standing in the snow storm.
No picture came. A man’s voice thundered: “Where? Where did you send the thing? It’s mine, I sired it. My property. Where?”
But the only reply he got were moans of pain. She would not tell him, and did not. He nearly killed her that time.
Now it is night, but a black night bleached with whiteness, for a full moon is up above the tops of the winter pines.
Anna is poised, motionless, in a glade of the wild northern forest. She wears the scarlet cloak, but the moon has drained its color. The snow sparkles, the trees are umbrellas of diamond, somber only at their undersides. The moon slaps the world with light. Anna has been singing, or chanting something, and though it can no longer be heard, the dew of it lies heavy over the ground. Something is drawn there, too, in the snow, a circle, and another shape inside it. A fire has been kindled nearby, but now it has burned low, and has a curious bluish tinge to it. All at once a wind begins to come through the forest. But it is not wind, not even storm. It is the soul of the forest, the spirit of the Wolfland.
Anna goes to her knees. She is afraid, but it is a new fear, an exulting fear. The stalks of the flowers whose heads she has eaten lie under her knees, and she raises her face like a dish to the moonlight.
The pines groan. They bend. Branches snap and snow showers down from them. The creature of the forest is coming, nearer and nearer. It is a huge single wing, or an enormous engine. Everything breaks and sways before it, even the moonlight, and darkness fills the glade. And out of the darkness Something whirls. It is difficult to see, to be sure—a glimpse of gold, two eyes like dots of lava seven feet in the air, a grey jaw, hung breasts which have hair growing on them, the long hand which is not a hand, lifting—And then every wolf in the forest seems to give tongue, and the darkness ebbs away.
Anna lies on her face. She is weeping. With terror. With—
It is night again, and the man of the house is coming home.
He swaggers, full of local beer, and eager to get to his wife. He was angry, a short while since, because his carriage, which was to have waited for him outside the inn, had mysteriously vanished. There will be men to curse and brutalize in the courtyard before he goes up to his beloved Anna, a prelude to his final acts with her. He finds her a challenge, his wife. She seems able to withstand so much, looking at him proudly with horror in her eyes. It would bore him to break her. He likes the fact he cannot, or thinks he does. And tonight he has some good news. One of the paid men has brought word of their child. She is discovered at last. She can be brought home to the château to her father’s care. She is two years old now. Strong and healthy. Yes, good news indeed.
They had known better in the village than to tell him he should beware on the forest track. He is not anxious about wolves, the distance being less than a mile, and he has his pistol. Besides, he organized a wolf hunt last month and cleared quite a few of the brutes off his land. The area about the château has been silent for many nights. Even Anna went walking without a servant—though he had not approved of that and had taught her
a lesson. (Sometimes it occurs to him that she enjoys his lessons as much as he enjoys delivering them, for she seems constantly to seek out new ways to vex him.)
He is about a quarter of a mile from the château now, and here a small clearing opens off on both sides of the track. It is the night after the full moon, and her disc, an almost perfect round, glares down on the clearing from the pine tops. Anna’s husband dislikes the clearing. He had forgotten he would have to go through it, for generally he is mounted or in the carriage when he passes the spot. There is some old superstition about the place. He hates it, just as he hates the stinking yellow flowers that grew in it before he burned them out. Why does he hate them? The woman who nursed him told him something and it frightened him, long ago. Well, no matter. He walks more quickly.
How quiet it is, how still. The whole night like a pane of black-white silence. He can hardly hear his own noisy footfalls. There is a disturbance in the snow, over there, a mark like a circle.
Then he realizes something is behind him. He is not sure how he realizes, for it is quite soundless. He stops, and turns, and sees a great and ghostly wolf a few feet from him on the track.
In a way, it is almost a relief to see the wolf. It is alone, and it is a natural thing. Somehow he had half expected something unnatural. He draws his pistol, readies it, points it at the wolf. He is a fine shot. He already visualizes lugging the bloody carcass, a trophy, into the house. He pulls the trigger.
A barren click. He is surprised. He tries again. Another click. It comes to him that his servant has emptied the chamber of bullets. He sees a vision of the park gates a quarter of a mile away, and he turns immediately and runs toward them.
Ten seconds later a warm and living weight crashes against his back, and he falls screaming, screaming before the pain even begins. When the pain does begin, he is unable to scream for very long, but he does his best. The final thing he sees through the haze of his own blood, which has splashed up into his eyes, and the tears of agony and the enclosing of a most atrocious death, are the eyes of the wolf, gleaming coolly back at him. He knows they are the eyes of Anna. And that it is Anna who then tears out his throat.