Marcus glanced at the stump, and back to Garvey.
“Oh dear,” Marcus said. “I seem to have broken you.”
He brought Garvey in close and scowled as he held the frightened man’s eyes with his own.
“Now then. Where is Virtue?”
HUNGER IN THE BONES
Anton Strout
THE STRANGER TRAVELED on, only glancing out through the hut’s crooked doorway when he noticed the distant pinpoints of light becoming discernible flickering torches. Fire could go either way, he had learned, depending on the civil sophistication of those wielding it. After all, one was never sure how well a lurching hut propelled on giant chicken legs would be received by the locals.
He closed the massive tome spread open across his lap, lowered it into his satchel with care, and positioned his lanky body in the doorway as he warily surveyed the citizenry of the small Polish town he and his hut were entering. When the villagers and their torches stayed where they were and did not charge upon the stranger’s arrival, he relaxed against the door’s frame.
All across Europe, the names of the towns might be different, the architecture, too—certainly the languages—but here he saw what he’d hoped for on the faces of the villagers below—wide-eyed wonderment.
Good. Very good, in fact. It meant fewer complications from an ignorant populace and hopefully a quick retreat after the task at hand had been accomplished.
Not all the faces, however, expressed happiness with his appearance on the outskirts of their village. Many a wary and untrusting eye fixed on the gaunt outsider in the hut’s doorway, his arms spread wide to resist the sway of the slapdash-looking building. Inevitably, their eyes shifted as if in unison down to the source of the hut’s propulsion. Dull orange legs that ended in clawed toes edged forward though the parting crowd, and with a wave of a thin hand the stranger stopped the hut in its tracks.
Trampling the locals was bad for business, a lesson he had unfortunately learned the hard way over the last thirty years. And here especially he and his hut needed to tread with care.
Throwing his satchel across his body, the stranger lowered a rope ladder to the ground below and clambered down. Rather than greeting him, the villagers continued to stare while he pulled back his long black hair into a tight ponytail, adjusted his cravat and smoothed down the front of his suit.
“What?” he asked, unable to hide a bit of disdain in his voice. “You act like you’ve never seen a dwelling propelled by enormous chicken legs before…”
Some of the crowd flinched away visibly, while others threw their hands up in wards against evil, spitting on the ground where the giant chicken feet clawed and scratched. Other gazes, thankfully, still held that initial sense of wonderment.
“What is such a thing?” an older man in the crowd called out, staring wide-eyed up at the hut.
“Come come. Don’t tell me you’ve never been tormented by the Yaga?” One of the stranger’s hands reached into his satchel, pulled free a large leather volume, and began flipping through it. He consulted the pages within for a full minute before slamming it shut. “No, no, of course not. Never you mind.”
As deftly as he had removed the book, the stranger slipped it back in his satchel.
A man dressed far too well for so late an hour—a gold-embroidered cape covering hints of a well-fitted coat, waistcoat and fine white linen shirt beneath—stepped forward from the crowd. Tufts of thin gray hair stuck out from beneath the rogatywka he wore, his forced smile not quite reaching his puffy eyes.
“Welcome to the village of Czermna,” the man said and offered up his pudgy hand.
The stranger ignored the hand completely, and gave the man a cursory but disapproving look up and down. “I take it you are Mayor Wójcik?”
The man’s smile faltered and he lowered his hand slowly. “You are indeed correct, sir,” the mayor said. “How could you tell?”
The stranger gave a dismissive wave as he surveyed the crowd of villagers and their torches. “You’re fatter than the rest. In my dealings, those who live highest on the hog tend to most resemble one.”
“I beg your pardon?” the mayor said, shock and irritation full in his voice.
An older woman wrinkled by decades of life scrunched up her sour face at the stranger and moved closer. “This is the one, Wójcik?” Her thin boned hands plucked at the stranger’s arms. “I thought the help you summoned would be more rugged. Like hunter.”
Without hesitation, the stranger batted the old woman’s hand away from his sleeve and sneered. “Have you ever heard the phrase do not judge a book by its cover?”
The old woman spit at the stranger’s feet and made the sign of the cross. The mayor held a hand up as he eased the old woman back in to the crowd. He turned to the stranger, his face full of apology.
“Please, sir, our people cannot take this any longer. But my obywatel here brings up a valid point. Rumors that reached our village led me to believe you could help, but… please forgive me, you seem more scholar than fighter.”
The stranger, however, paid him no mind, and having pulled his book back out of his satchel, he furiously scribbled in it, his quill scratching across its pages.
“Are… are you writing all this down?” the mayor asked. The stranger nodded, but didn’t stop writing. “Why?”
“The devil is in the details,” the stranger said, “or so my experience has led me to believe. If you must know, I am a collector of tales. We are, after all, the stories we tell.”
The mayor’s eyes narrowed with uncertainty. “And this will help our village how exactly?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“And your price?” the mayor asked. If the man had looked any more sheepish, a wooly tail would have sprung from the seat of his pants.
“That remains to be seen as well,” the stranger said. “I have yet to assess the threat to your village, but there is a threat here, yes?”
The mayor nodded. “Times have been hard on my people, as far as coin goes. Few visitors dare to venture to our humble hamlet. What I mean to say is that we don’t have much.”
The stranger smiled. “What price can one truly put on peace of mind?” The mayor’s face went white, and the stranger could not help but chuckle. “Do not fret. My fee will be… reasonable. Now what seems to plague you and your people?”
“All we know,” the mayor said, “is that people disappear from time to time, and they seldom come back.”
The stranger looked closer at the village spread out before him. Even in the dim light of the gathered torches, he could see the cracks in the plaster of its buildings, the unkempt and muddy paths of cobblestones desperately in need of repair.
“Maybe those missing villagers have simply become disenchanted with so humble a place to dwell.”
“Do not insult our village,” the mayor said in anger, surprising the stranger by showing the first hint of a backbone. “We cannot help the state of our town when there are things that walk the night here driving others away.”
The stranger held a hand up as an apology. “Do you wish my help or not?” he asked plainly.
The fire on the mayor’s face died and his expression switched to something the stranger couldn’t quite interpret. At a guess, the mayor looked both sad and full of regret, but for the moment, the village leader fell and remained silent.
“As I thought,” the stranger said. “Now, what can you tell me about that which preys upon your village?”
“We aren’t sure,” the mayor said, “save for the yearly disappearances that occur within our village. They don’t happen often, but our people know to board their homes securely at night, to shutter their windows, yet still whatever lurks in the darkness manages to find victims nonetheless. Tonight, however, there is one who has lived to tell from the latest attack. A girl. Jadwiga. The poor young thing was discovered earlier this evening cowering in the church yard, but she has fallen silent to our queries.”
The stranger closed his
book and slid it back into his satchel with a grim smile. “Rest assured, she will answer me.”
The mayor blanched at the words and the severe tone with which the stranger dealt them.
“You’re… you’re not going to hurt her, are you?” the mayor asked.
The stranger sighed, then addressed not only the mayor but the assembled crowd of villagers behind him. “Fair citizens of Czermna, I apologize if I come off as harsh or insensitive. Long years of religious and arcane study have made me a bit unfit for human interaction, but make no mistake. Time is critical and the quicker I can assess your situation, the faster you can return to your miserable little lives.” The stranger’s eyes shifted back to the mayor, a wide but wholly insincere smile filling his face. “Now, if you would be so kind, please show me this girl.”
The mayor gestured for the stranger to follow him through the village, which he did as a parade of townsfolk fell in behind them. The no doubt once beautiful town felt familiar to the stranger, but was perhaps so far from its former glory that all he could feel was a bittersweet sadness at the state of it.
At the far end of the village, placed far enough away to not be too much of a reminder of the fragility of life, stood Czermna’s one church, and off to its left, a sprawling graveyard that rolled over hill and dale off into the darkness. Even the most recent grave markers were faded, chipped or slanting, and the oldest were worn with weather and age.
Several villagers stood crowded at the side of the church around a ramshackle wooden shed. Their ranks parted as the stranger approached, revealing a child who looked no more than ten curled up against the moss covered back wall of the shed. Her blond hair lay in braids over her shoulders, the only bright spot against the dirty farm girl clothes that she wore. Thin, clean trails ran from her eyes down through the grime on her cheeks.
“Hello there, my dear,” he said. The stranger approached and extended one of his bony hands to her.
The frail thing recoiled, backing further against the back wall of the shed. If it were possible to burrow through the actual wall, there was little doubt she would do it.
The mayor stepped closer and grabbed the stranger’s wrist, drawing the man’s hand away. “Can’t you tell she’s terrified?”
The stranger’s eyes fell to his wrist and sneered at the hand holding it, driving the mayor back from him as he pulled free.
“Is she?” he asked as he considered it. “I never know how to read children.”
“Jadwiga hasn’t spoken since one of the women found her cowering here in the church yard.”
The stranger examined the girl’s dirty, frightened face. “But something you’ve seen put such fear in you, didn’t it, Jadwiga?” The girl’s name hung on his lips with an almost familiar taste, and he watched as she nodded in response.
Kneeling, but keeping his distance, the stranger spoke in a soft tone. “My dear child, can you tell me what put you to such a fright?”
Jadwiga thought for a moment, then gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.
“I told you,” the mayor said with irritation as he repeated himself. “She won’t speak.”
“Nonsense,” the stranger said. “Of course she will. Look at the face of this poor frightened child. In my humble experience, that is the face of someone who has a terribly interesting tale to unfold, wouldn’t you say?”
“She hasn’t spoken to any of us,” the mayor said, but the stranger silenced him with a withering look before turning with a sweet smile back to the girl.
“There is no need for this foolish fear, my dear,” he said, then lowered his voice to a whisper only the girl could hear. “I can make the bad things go away.”
Hope crept into the still skeptical look on the girl’s face, and her lips parted.
“H-h-how?” her thin, cracked voice managed to croak out.
The stranger’s eyes lit up. “Ah, so you are capable of speech!” He reached into his satchel and produced the book once more, drumming his fingers down the spine of the great tome. “With this.”
The girl’s nose scrunched up, and her face fell in disappointment. “A book?”
The man nodded. “This is no ordinary tome, though. These pages help me take away the bad things, but in order to do so, I will have to know your tale.”
The girl’s eyes lit up with hope. “That will make the white cave go away?”
The spine of the book creaked as the man opened the tome and pulled the quill out of its special inkwell and casing hidden inside the spine. “Tell me about this white cave.”
The girl’s eyes searched the faces of her fellow villagers who stood both inside and outside of the shed while she struggled to find the words. When they did not come to her, the man closed his tome and rose. Once again, he extended his hand out to her.
“Come,” he said in a pleasant, even tone. “Show me this cave of yours.”
After a bit more coaxing and hand holding from the stranger, the reluctant Jadwiga started off back into the furthest reaches of the graveyard. Judging by the worn and often rudimentary headstones, the stranger assessed their trek would lead them to one of its oldest sections. When they finally stopped, most of the crowd of villagers had petered off as the girl pointed off into the darkness.
“This must be the place,” the stranger said. The girl’s hand trembled in his.
“Potwór,” she said.
Even with the lanterns and torches of the remaining crowd it was hard for the stranger to see where exactly the girl was directing him, but after a few minutes in the darkness his eyes adjusted. Before them, a barrow rose between two headstones which then sloped down into the ground.
“Potwór,” the girl repeated.
“Monster,” the stranger said, and the girl nodded.
The stranger turned to the mayor and what little of the crowd remained. “Has not one of you in this village found the bravery to venture forth? None of you?”
Eyes shifted away from his gaze as the stranger tried to meet theirs with his, but only the mayor would look at him.
“I’m afraid there are none who would have discovered such a place,” the mayor said. “This part of the cemetery has not been cared for in decades.”
While the stranger heard the mayor’s words, his eyes never left the crowd. “Shame on you,” he said. “Shame on all of you.”
The silence that answered him was deafening. Rather than waste his time, the stranger stepped towards the barrow. If he bent over, he could fit his lanky form into the entrance to shine his light, but even with the lantern the darkness from within was almost palpable.
He turned and looked to the girl still holding his hand. “White cave? Are you sure?”
The girl nodded, but made no effort to move closer, her hand locked with the stranger’s own. “You’ll see.”
The stranger gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “No harm will come to you while you are under my protection,” he said. “This I promise.”
“Who’s going to protect you?” scoffed the mayor.
The stranger whirled around to face him. “Certainly not the likes of you.” Silence. “Any further comments from you, or anyone else in this miserable little town?” Silence. “I thought not. Now be still and let me help this poor girl, and for that matter, the rest of your pathetic lot.”
The stranger proceeded forward towards the opening in the ground, but the girl stood stone still. He turned to her and spoke in a soft gentle tone.
“You don’t have to go first, Jadwiga, but you will have to be terribly brave and come with me. As I said, no harm will come to you.” The stranger patted his satchel with reassurance and when he smiled at the girl, she met his with a nervous one of her own.
“Very well,” she said.
“Godspeed,” the mayor muttered and crossed himself.
The stranger shook his head. “I do not think God cares much for these types of goings-on. Rest assured, I will get to the bottom of this. If, however, for some reason we do not return, be sur
e to feed my traveling hut. As of late, it has had a peculiar craving for rabbit. I’m not quite sure why.”
Lantern in one hand and the girl in his other, the stranger ducked into the barrow. The steep downward slope and twisted turns meant every step was a fight to keep both he and the girl from tumbling forward, but soon the ground evened out into a more open cavern somewhere beneath the cemetery.
“So this is what you do?” the little girl asked. “Travel from village to village collecting such stories?”
“More or less,” the stranger said.
“That book you write in is quite thick,” she said.
“That’s because I’ve heard quite a lot of stories,” he said. “No two the same, mind you, but all unique and quite special in their own way.”
As the stranger pressed forward, the light of the lantern began to penetrate the darkness more and more. After a few moments, the reason—along with the meaning of white cave—became clear. Light reflected off the white of the walls deep down in the burrow where piles of neatly stacked bones and skulls lined the space from floor to ceiling. Whole and identifiable pieces—leg bones, arms, ribcages, full skulls—stretched off into the far distance of the barrow as far as the stranger could make out.
“I see I’m not the first to come this way,” he said. “And I think your village’s problem may be even older than the rumor that led me here.”
“I thought our mayor summoned you?” the girl asked.
“He did,” the stranger said as he moved down the line of bones, “but I’ve been following certain types of rumors throughout Europe since I was a boy.”
“Oh?” Jadwiga said. “Where were you raised?”
“That part’s never been quite clear to me,” the stranger said. “I’m afraid those memories have all been repressed. Lost as the result of a traumatic childhood, I suspect.”
“Something more traumatic than this?” the girl asked.
“No,” he said, running his hands over a perfectly clean set of ribs on the wall. “As exactly traumatic as this, now that I think of it.”
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