“How dare you? You knew what I would see. How could you have let me look? Cruel human.” She spat. “But a promise is a promise. Go away from here.” She waved her hand.
A dizzying, whirling sensation came over me, as though I were falling from a great height in a dream, and the pit of my stomach sank out from under me. I blinked as the feeling subsided, and gradually I became aware of my new surroundings.
I was in darkness, a strange darkness like nothing I had encountered before. I blinked, trying to discern what was different about it. Slowly, as I blinked more and moved my head from side to side, the realization came over me that it was the way I saw things that was new. I wasn’t blind in this darkness, though there was no moon or lantern for me to see by. My eyes had changed, and I had become like my Thérion, who could see in the nighttime. The outlines of objects were visible to me, though colorless, like one of the pen-and-ink sketches that he signed Harlequin.
I stood next to the sentry stone, above the ground outside the entrance to the grotto at the edge of the forest. I could feel the weight of the medallion around my neck on the ribbon, as before, but it seemed I must be naked, for my clothes all lay in a neat pile on the ground next to me. Reflexively, absently and without looking down, I tried to feel myself to see if I truly was bare-skinned there in the forest in the middle of the night, but my hands were gone.
My hands were gone.
I turned my neck, which felt longer than before, to get a view of my body below and to each side. Hooves at the end of slender, velvet-coated legs stamped up and down on the ground as I tried to move my arms. My chest, too, and belly were fur-covered. So were my flanks. Craning my neck, I could see the tip of a lighter-colored tuft of fur at the end of my spine.
The fairy queen had transformed me into a deer. It was I who was the beast now. Never again could I return to my children, my father, and Edmée. Even if I could find them, I’d have no power to protect them or speak to them, to warn them of the danger they were in from the Marquise. No refuge awaited me at Madame Jacquenod’s tavern in the village. For all the days that remained to me, I would be forced to live in this forest, fleeing creatures who would kill and eat me, foraging for what food I could find, mating in season, giving birth in the spring. The fairy queen had kept her end of the bargain, but had betrayed me utterly.
XIX
My senses were heightened. A thousand scents swirled on the air, like the words of a long poem, asking me to interpret them, to sound out their meter, to dance to their rising and falling. I reared up on my hind legs and felt the strength in my haunches as my forelegs pawed the air. I leapt forward and darted in a circle around the nearest tree, and it was like flying. How swift I was now, how light and full of grace!
I let the scents guide me between food and not-food. I tasted the bright sweet flavors of grasses and leaves. The constant low cacophony in my ears began to resolve itself into distinct sounds that wove a landscape of creatures, objects, and their movements, spreading out into the distance. Standing still and listening, I learned that the dogs who had pursued me were safely away behind the walls of the stable, whimpering now and then as they dreamt in their kennels with their dog-boys curled up next to them on piles of hay. Mice, squirrels, and rabbits scrabbled through the bushes around me and scampered among the trees. Crickets chirped and beetles clicked away, pattering over bark and rocks.
My own kind were there too in the woods. Their musks charmed and intrigued me from afar. Beyond sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing, a sixth sense in me was moved and informed by their camaraderie that reached like a fisherman’s net undulating through water. It was a knowledge of belonging, of my place among them. I was not merely I, but also we. As a star in their constellation upon the earth I was a point in the picture they formed. I was sister, companion, daughter, mother. I was one of the herd.
I bounded forward to join them and as I ran, a tremulous awareness blossomed in me that he was with them, too. My lord and master, the king who commanded life and death. Half-fainting with anxiety and excitement, I leapt faster around trees and over bushes. My newly enlarged and quick-beating heart was eased as I caught sight at last of two sisters and their calves. They smelled me and knew of my belonging.
We slowed our pace and milled about, feeding on leaves and becoming acquainted with one another. The tread of mighty hooves announced the king’s approach, and my heart beat fast again. At long last, his antlers shone through the branches, coming closer, closer. When he stood before me, his beauty was overwhelming, the beauty of a god, fatal and nurturing, the deadly life-giving force of a lightning bolt through a storm.
I bowed my head in deep obeisance to him, every part of my new body atremble with love and terror. My eyes were closed, but I felt him come close to me and raise me up, nuzzling his cheek against mine, filling my nostrils with the perfume of lily of the valley. Upright again, I opened my eyes and gazed into his, their irises silver-gray like rain, like the eyes of Thérion, his descendant. Then the king lowered his antlered head before me, so that for a moment I wondered whether he was bowing to me. Instead, he nudged with his nose the medallion I wore around my neck, acknowledging who I was and whence I had come.
We were alike, he and I, both of us dual-natured, half deer, half human. And yet not alike, for he was ancient and immensely powerful, beyond any notion of good or evil, immensely dangerous. He was love, he was death. And I was his.
I was his favorite now, his companion, his devotee. We walked side by side in his forest. We danced and leapt and played together. We raced, rested, fed, and slept. All the night we explored his domain. He showed me all that he commanded and at every moment I was suffused with awe at the beauty he had wrought through his powers. No painter, no sculptor had traced lines more delicate and intricate, no composer had orchestrated more brilliantly structured layers of harmonies. Through all the lovely tableaux were woven darker notes of fury, violence, blood, and death that made the light glow brighter, with its achingly fragile rush through the hours toward its changing and fading.
Among the dark notes were the scents and cries of the wolves. So long as I was by the king’s side, I didn’t fear them, but I shuddered at the thought of their teeth, the odor of blood and rotting flesh in their throats, and their mournful, pitiless hunting songs. My king could transform into a hunter to marshal them, could become the gaunt ogre of the bloodstained hunting gloves, but he kept himself beautiful and gentle for me.
The sun rose, igniting swaths of smells and colors that dazzled my new sight. Forgetful of the dangers to my human family, I laughed now at the fairy queen, and at the Marquise who had harried me and driven me down into the fairy queen’s domain, both of them thinking to punish me and take from me my human life on this earth. Instead they had given me the joy of a new existence, new powers, senses, and strength, and the wondrous love of my king.
For the rest of the day we ran and rested together, the king and I, and then we shared another night, the sky cloudless and clear, illuminated by a crescent of waxing moon above us.
Then, in the ashen hour before dawn, the intruders came.
Horses’ hooves beat over the earth. The steeds neighed and snorted. The dogs barked, their boys running after them, and the men and women called back and forth to each other in the tongue my own mouth had known before my changing. It was the Marquise’s hunting party. In a flash of joy, I thought, My love comes to me! Thérion would be riding with them. The dogs with their clever noses would have shown them my discarded clothes on the ground by the standing stone. My love would fear for me but would know I had made it alive out of the garden and into the woods.
As they approached, I sensed more clearly who was with them. Besides the Marquise, Donatien, the Abbé, and Thérion, the Scotsman and Aurore were there. My joy turned to icy fear that squeezed my heart as my animal mind remembered the muskets. Bullets flew more swiftly than arrows. Even my king could be harmed by them. He had lived through millennia, never aging, and his powers
were great. But surely the jealous fairy of Aurore’s tale had counseled the nobleman to kill him in stag form, because she thought in that form he was vulnerable, so she would have attained her vengeance had it not been for the daughter’s plea for mercy.
The riders came into sight. My brothers and sisters and I bolted, and the stag-king ran with us. The Marquise blew her hunting horn. The dog-boys let the hounds free from their leashes, and they barked and raced after us more swiftly than we could flee, over hillocks and bushes, over the warrens and burrows of our cousins who made their homes in the earth, through thick copses and clearings sweet with wildflowers. I had to warn the king about what we faced, but I had no words, no language in which to cry out to him, only my vague bleating of fear. He didn’t know what muskets and bullets were. In his day, men had come with stones and spears and knives, bows and arrows, clubs and cudgels, hooded falcons, and hounds bred for scent, speed, or killing. His forest had been protected for so long, he had never faced these weapons that boomed like thunder and ignited with sparks and smoke, that struck with the force of a hundred spears and punched through flesh with the precision of an awl.
The dogs circled around us. We scattered before their snapping jaws and they began to drive us back toward the horses and hunters. I darted this way and that, trying to evade them, but always was met with those snapping jaws and the acrid odor of their malice. The stag-king tossed his mighty antlered head as though laughing as he loped alongside me. To him it was a game, and he had no fear of losing.
The king and I and two more of our kind were now separated from the rest of the herd, and the riders and horses joined the chase, leaving behind the dog-boys on foot. We began to tire, except for the stag-king who ran alongside me unwearyingly. He wouldn’t abandon me to my danger, but I knew he was the one they would see as the prize, not me. What care did they have for a mere hind with no antlers? Through the woods we ran in an ever-narrowing circuit, the strength draining out of us.
Then in a clearing we were caught and surrounded. The stag-king stood at my right shoulder. The other two deer, a male and a female, cowered behind him, stamping and pawing at the earth in terror. The dogs growled, slavered, snarled, and slowly advanced over the ground toward us.
The riders had reined in their horses. I could make out their faces now in the gray foredawn, Aurore and the Marquise in riding habits. The Marquise sat tall and broad-shouldered in her seat astride, with a musket slung over her back. Donatien, likewise armed, was elegant as always in his riding clothes, while the Abbé seemed absurdly shriveled, diminutive, and bloodless seated on his great horse. The Scotsman looked rumpled and ill at ease. And my love, all in black on his black horse Hadès, looked sad and exhausted.
For a moment I forgot the muskets and tried to catch his eyes, which were are swollen and red-rimmed from weeping. He had to recognize me, even in my new form. Surely the eyes of love must see through disguises, especially his silver-gray eyes that could see in the dark, as mine did now. But it was the stag-king he stared at, whose eyes he met first, and whom he recognized. His lips parted in shock and a look of horror came over his face, for he saw that the stag-king’s eyes were the same color as his, and that he stood before an ancestor and a god.
I tossed my head and reared up on my hind legs for a moment, trying to draw his attention. My effort succeeded, for now his gaze fell on the medallion around my neck, and his eyes widened still more.
The Marquise and Donatien had unslung their muskets and raised them to their shoulders to take aim.
“I say we both shoot at once,” the Marquise said to Donatien, “or else the others will bolt. I’ll take the big one. See if you can get a fix on the male behind him. You’ll still have a five-pointer to take home.”
“I’d have an easier shot at the hind in front. Better her than nothing.”
“Up to you. I wouldn’t bother. Say when you’re ready. Fire on the count of three.”
“Wait,” said Thérion. “Don’t do it.”
The Marquise and Donatien ignored him and took aim, each tightening a finger against the musket trigger. Donatien followed the Marquise’s advice and aimed at the male behind the forest-king, instead of at me.
“Stop!” Thérion shouted. He slackened his reins and allowed Hadès to carry him forward a few paces.
“What is it?” the Marquise said in an irritated tone.
“Don’t kill them. For the love of God. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The Marquise puffed out her breath derisively.
“Ready,” said Donatien.
“One. Two. Three,” the Marquise said. “Fire.”
I leapt to save my liege, the stag-king, to save Thérion’s ancestor. I bounded up in front of him as two shots boomed through the air.
A great force struck my chest and knocked me backward, as though I had been punched. One leg went out from under me, and I crumpled to the ground.
I blinked, dazed, and looked up. The Marquise swore.
“That damned hind. Of all the worthless things.”
My sister and brother, who had been trapped by the dogs behind the stag-king, reared up. The male kicked a hound so hard the dog flew several feet through the air before landing in a broken heap. Both of the deer bounded away, flying over the other barking hounds and trampling on the wounded one.
My king stood over me, his eyes flashing like blue flames, and he snorted in furious breaths. He appeared unwounded. He took a step toward the Marquise as the hounds wheeled around in confusion. Her horse began to prance away.
There was another boom like a canon, but this time it was no musket going off; it was true thunder from the sky. We didn’t see the lighting strike, but in a matter of moments, black clouds had gathered and thickened, and the air around us darkened as though time had turned backward and the approaching sunrise had reversed course into night again.
My king, too, changed and blackened as the sky did. He tossed his head and reared up on his hind legs, and then his body lengthened and flattened and he stood upright. He took on the nightmare form I remembered from the night by the standing stone with Séléné: the bleached-white mask of the antlered skull covering the upper half of his face, cruel red lips showing beneath, the tall, gaunt, sinewy hunter’s form, the black clothes and boots, the leather gloves with fingers crusted wine-black from old blood, a bow and quiver of arrows slung over his back, and a white horn and long sheathed knife at his waist.
Flee, oh flee, I wanted to tell my friends, but I was voiceless, and my shoulder throbbed with heat and dull pain. Blood dripped from a hole in it onto the ground, and I realized I was wounded. The life was flowing out of me.
The Erl-King raised the bone-white horn to his scarlet lips and blew. My broad ears heard the shrill sound it made, though the humans’ small and mushroom-like ears couldn’t. The call was answered at once by such howls as to make any man or beast’s blood run cold. The Erl-King’s eyes glowed silver-blue from behind his bone mask as the wolves heeded his summons from the depths of the wood.
Flee, oh flee, I pleaded silently. To my immense relief, Aurore and the Scotsman turned their horses away at once and began to gallop back toward the manor. The hounds whimpered and streaked away after them, blurs of brown and black fur. Through the stands of elms and alders, between the rough bark of the trunks, orange eyes gleamed from far off, but their roaring howls were so loud it was as though the wolves were already upon us. The horses pranced as if the ground were the molten mouth of hell burning their hooves. And yet – what madness was this? – Thérion tried to dismount from Hadès’s back. He swung one leg up and over his saddle, clinging with both hands to the saddle horn, with one foot still in the stirrup and the other free, as Hadès bucked and reared, trying to throw him off. In a movement like a dancer’s twirling leap, Thérion braced himself against Hadès’s flank and pushed off with feet and hands out of reach of the wind-milling hooves, flew through the air, and landed on the ground, rolling to break h
is fall.
Donatien’s horse threw him and bolted away into the woods. Donatien fell flat on his back and lay still with his mouth half-open, like a child’s discarded doll. Hadès galloped after Donatien’s horse. The Marquise and the Abbé struggled to keep their seats, to regain control of their mounts and turn away, but now the wolves had surrounded us. These were no ordinary gray wolves, but nightshadow horrors, blacker than the clouds covering the sky, with the thick shaggy pelts of bears and the bulk and length of wild boars, and eyes that glowed amber like sparks rising from a bonfire.
The wolves went first for the horses’ throats. They leapt and sank their great jaws into the neck-flesh and tore it open with powerful wrenches and gushes of blood, first the Marquise’s horse, then the Abbé’s. The horses screeched with a noise like shattering glass. The Marquise wailed and swung her musket like a club, battering down a wolf on her right and one on her left, as the horse toppled to the ground under her, the butt of the gun thumping and cracking against flesh and bone. But they were too many for her, too strong, too fast. One clamped its jaws onto her arm that held the musket, and she shrieked as the gun slid from her grip. The rest of the wolves fell on her as her screams grew hoarse and ragged. I closed my eyes and turned away.
When I opened my eyes again, the Abbé’s staggering horse collapsed before me. The Abbé jumped from the saddle with astonishing spryness and began to run while the pack was busy with the Marquise. He was almost out of sight by the time they had finished with her. Through the woods came the sound of a horse galloping to meet him. It was the Scotsman, returning to rescue whomever he could. One of the wolves broke away from the kill, his jaw dripping blood, and streaked through the woods after the Abbé. The wolf reached him a moment after the Scotsman did. Gripping the Scotsman’s outstretched arm, the Abbé got one foot into the stirrup and the other foot over the horse’s back, and his thin hips slid into the saddle just behind the Scotsman. The Scotsman kicked the horse’s flank and jerked the reins to turn and gallop away, but just as the horse sprang forward, the wolf bounded up and snapped his jaws onto the Abbé’s leg. It was too far away for me to see exactly what happened, but after a brief struggle, the horse tore away at full speed. The Abbé had kept his seat and still clung to the Scotsman, his arms wrapped around the Scotsman’s waist.
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 25