by J.A. Clement
~~~
A man who lived in a forest found a strange creature lying in the snow. It was a wizened little beast with naked grey skin. It wriggled and squalled, but seemed helpless.
He picked it up and looked at it closely. “I have never seen your like before, and I have been trapping in these forests for many a year. Let us find out what sort of pup you are, and what beastie you grow into. If you have a decent pelt on you, it’ll make an expensive pair of gloves for some pretty lady or other.”
The beast sank its long rat-like teeth into his hand. He yelped, and threw it to the ground but as it hissed at him he hesitated. “There’s many a creature that would have earned a swift death for that, but there have been sightings of the silkenfox in these parts, and no-one has seen their young. If it were to prove a silkenfox, what riches I should earn. And then, if I should find another to breed it with... Yes, then the townsfolk would not look down upon me, nor Katya be so churlish in the bed!”
Taking off his cloak, he wrapped the creature in it so that it could neither wriggle nor bite. He took it home and kept it in a wicker hutch by the hearth where it would grow fine and large.
The Spring thaw came, bringing as it always did the first great Gather at the local town. It was a bare little place, with few shops and one hostelry, but always after the thaw all the trappers and traders gathered to restock with food after the winter and to trade their pelts. Trappers set up in the same place year after year, and the women went from one stall to the next to catch up on the gossip. This time the market started but there was no sign of the trapper or his wife Katya.
“Has anyone seen Katya’s baby yet?” one of the women demanded. “Last time I saw him he was barely born, a sweet little thing with the most beautiful curls, and such clear blue eyes! They had not agreed on a name for him. I suggested that they call him Iniska, after my old uncle. I yearn to see little Iniska again!”
“They are not here.” Larek’s wife was as abrupt as ever. “That ne’er-do-well promised my husband a load of bearskins and beaver-pelts, to be delivered at the first fair of the season, and do you see his stall here? No, neighbour, it is as I told Larek. There are some debts which you might as well write off as soon as you’ve handed over the money. We’ll not be seeing them here for a while, I’ll warrant.”
Behind her back one of the children imitated her sour face and had his ears boxed by his mother, but not very hard. Larek’s wife was not popular.
By the end of the three days of the Gather there was still no sign of them, and concern was growing. Eventually Larek held up his hands in exasperation.
“Ladies! I am sure that all is well with them, that Katya has a cold or that the baby has scraped his knee or some other trifling ailment which has prevented them from travelling. However, to allay your anxiety I will drive to their homestead myself and see why they are not here.”
“You’re a good man, Larek!” the grand-dames called as they went past, nodding to each other. “He’s a capable man, too. If anything is awry he will mend it or come back for others to help him.”
“You are too kind, ladies!” In fact this was true. Larek liked the trapper well enough, and the wife was easy on the eye, but it was not a trip he would have considered making had there not been the question of the bearskins and beaver-pelts to consider. He clambered onto his cart and set off, wondering what his options were if the trapper had nothing to offer.
It was nearly dusk when the clatter of the cart’s wheels sounded along the quiet village, and from many homes the women came out to cluster in the street. Larek pulled up beside the hostelry and helped a man down from the cart. He was wrapped in a blanket, stick-thin and staggering. Larek guided him into the hostelry and sat him on a chair by the fire.
“Bring out the strong spirits!” Larek’s shout reverberated through the open door and across the street. His mule, white-eyed and skittish, let out a hideous bray and then fled.
Larek snatched up the bottle and downed nearly a third of the raw, burning alcohol before pouring some into a glass for his companion. He lifted the glass to the other man’s lips and the blanket fell back to reveal his face, distorted with agony and horror. Larek tipped the glass, but the man simply sat slack-lipped and the alcohol spilled down his chin.
“What has happened to him?” Larek’s wife lost her sharpness of tone, looking at that expression.“Where are the others?”
“Dead. Very dead.” Larek downed the rest of the glass himself. “Looked like wild animals did it, probably some time ago.”
“And he just left them there?”
Larek drank again. “There wasn’t enough left whole to bury; just flies and bone fragments and the smell of death, so strong it was a greasy taste in the back of the mouth.”
The trapper moved then, looking around him slowly. “Where...?” His voice grated with lack of use.
“It’s me, Larek. I brought you to the town.” He put the glass of spirits to the man’s lips again. “That was no place to stay.”
“The town?”
“You need to be with people. Lots of people to look after you. You look like death warmed over.”
The trapper seemed to pass out and fell forward. Larek and his wife lunged to catch him but he was utterly limp. In the chaos of people trying to help, no-one noticed the faint black tendrils of smoke that escaped from the trapper’s gaping mouth and disappeared into Larek’s skin.
“He’s dead.” Larek straightened, and his voice was harsh and unfamiliar.
Larek’s wife stared as the trapper fell to dust before their eyes. “What in all the hells just happened?” The trader smiled, and there was something about that smile that scared her. The others gathered in the room began to make their excuses and leave, muttering about witchcraft.
“Larek?”
A few weeks after the Gather, another trader arrived at the town. He was puzzled to see that many of the decorations that were normally up for the Gather still hung limply, faded and tattered by the weather. No-one was to be seen, but wild dogs slunk in and out of the houses as he passed, and the crows sitting on the fence watched him all the way down the street with a proprietorial air. He went to knock on the door of a friend’s house, but at his knock the door swung open, letting forth a terrible, rank smell, and revealing the remains of the family, scattered about the room.
Reeling back, he went into the next house and the next, and to his horror, all he found was building after building of corpses. At last he made his way into the hostelry in search of alcohol, and there he found the one man remaining alive, whose face was remarkably horrible to look at. That one man collapsed into a pile of dust, and the little tendrils of black smoke sank into the trader, who left that site of death the following day to continue his journey onto the next town. And so a trail of death and horror spread over the land, always starting with the arrival of one person whose face was terrible to look at, and never leaving more than one survivor, who would leave in search of new victims.
Eventually just such a man staggered into the camp of an army on the plains where the horsemen made war, one tribe on another. Thinking he must be an enemy spy, they took him out to be hanged. As the rope snapped his neck the assembled soldiers were startled to see great ribbons of black smoke come pouring out of his body. The smoke felt its way across the field to where the King of the tribe, a ruthless man, stood enjoying the spectacle. The black smoke enveloped him, and when he opened his eyes, there was a monster looking out of them.