Wolfgang could not relax the sneering muscles he felt contorting his face. Slipping Vogelfang in its holster, he let his guard down for the moment.
"...thus far," she added, wagging a finger for emphasis. A chuckle that could have been directed at her own joke or just as easily at Wolfgang cracked the silence like a bird call.
"Is this the Hindernis?" Wolfgang asked.
The old lady looked him up and down, a look that scathed. "Ya think MY house is the Hindernis? This, whelp, is a PARADISE, an oasis in the desert." She gestured widely with her arm, taking in the forest as deep as the fog would allow. "And I am its pearl." Wolfgang decided not to comment. It was likely that she could help him...if she chose to, if he made it appealing for her to. Being nice to her was important and a little flattery might not hurt, either, but it would have to be honest or it would score him nothing. Whatever she was, she must be powerful, or she would not be making her home here. "The fresh water, the bubbling spring. That's me." The old woman turned her back on him and waddled toward the threshold. As he followed her, he noticed something grown over surging out of the forest floor, as if it struggled to be noticed in spite of the moss and mist and that sought to drown it out. Hollowed out bone met Wolfgang's wide eyes. It was a skeleton.
"Have you seen Marie?" he asked bluntly, the sight of the bones reminding him urgently of his missing friend. "My friend, Marie. She's--"
"Yes, yes. She came here looking for you."
"Where is--?"
"Inside," the old woman interrupted again. She gestured for him to follow. He did.
"Stay for dinner?" the old woman asked. Reaching her table, one of the few furnishings in the one room house, she gestured to them both, boy and girl, one after the other, with a kitchen knife she had produced from her apron. Slipping to the other side of the table, he hugged Marie so tightly they would never be able to come apart again. Tears he didn't know were there spilled from his eyes; he wiped them before anyone could notice. He wanted to talk but not here in front of Baba Yaga. "Ya two look too thin to stand. No wonder ye came as a pair. Somethin' ta lean on."
Wolfgang felt a chill. He felt reduced in his mind to a young boy, frightened but compelled all the same by what he was seeing. The fruit in the old lady's hand writhed, its surface bulging and moving as if something beneath fought to get out. "We...we really can't stay," he said.
"Ah. You two have an appointment, I wager? Tea with the Queen of England?"
"Something like that," Marie murmured.
"Or maybe ye expect to be back home any minute now, just a few steps down the road." She must have been speaking figuratively, because there had been no sign of a road since they left Doors. "Most people get to this point so hungry they'd eat their own hands if served up to them. Those who've survived the journey, that is. That's why I always keep a pot ready." Her grin gave little doubt to the reason for the skeleton in the yard and convinced Wolfgang that the pot was for him. "I aim to please."
"We seek the Hindernis," Wolfgang said. "We cannot stay."
"SEEK it?" she asked. She gave Wolfgang a closer look--her eyes peered through his and an icy thorn pricked his soul like the sharp, deep pain of a toothache. "Well, ye can't seek it, darlin'. It seeks you." And a voice buzzed in his mind, mosquito thin: I am the door.
The pimples on the fruit opened, and scores of human-like eyes--one gazing from each pimple--scanned the room. Flipping the knife about expertly, the old lady slammed the fruit on the table with one hand and sliced it cleanly in half with the other. The eyes shut. Tight. Both sides of the fruit fell away from her grip to rock gently on the table. In the middle of the fruit was a rotten spot, round and foul, a sour yolk. "Bad omen," she said. She fixed Wolfgang with a fishy gaze, her old eyes clouded, pale. "What would we find inside you, I wonder."
Wolfgang had figured she would goad him to fight. But he would not play into her hands so easily. Instead, he calmly eyed her back, his pulse racing under his skin as she ambled back to him, knife still in hand, and reached out for his face, taking it in rheumatic fingers as she had the fruit and angling it against the firelight. As he gazed back, he could see his murder reflected in her eyes, her deft knife belying her age and gutting him in a flash, like a fish at a fry. "But that is not the fate you chose," she whispered, as if she knew what he saw. "But that was what we saw in ye."
"We?" Marie asked.
But the old woman did not answer.
Wolfgang remembered the salt statue of himself and the one of Marie together in the No Man's Land and concluded that was what she had meant, an unpleasant future that had not come to pass. "So, now, what can I see in your eyes?" There was a moment when she squinted, narrowed her eyes to make them just another pair of wrinkles in her face. She squinted deep as if searching for a splinter, and she did not like what she saw. "The Devil," she muttered. "Who do you think you are!" She backed away from Wolfgang, almost stumbled and used the knife upon her self in her hurry.
Wolfgang watched her silently, unsure. Maybe she was trying to confuse him, to lead him into a trap as she had tried before. "How did ye get free?!" Her panic genuine, Wolfgang looked behind himself quickly, wondering if she was, in fact, talking to someone else. But no one stood behind him. Only the doorway, open to the night, stood waiting, clear and dark. Had something escaped? Something unseen?
His twin had followed him here. That must be what she meant. His doppelganger, the one who took his place in the human world, the one his real mother raised. She must have caged him somewhere.
Wolfgang drew his knife, and it gleamed with the firelight as if it had taken the fire inside it, no longer simply reflecting it, but burning with it. Her panic fading, the old woman began to beg, "Take me with you. Whatever you did, do it to me, too. Don't leave me here."
"We're going to the Hindernis," Wolfgang finally said. "You can come with us if you want to, but there is nothing I can do for you."
"You're going back?" The old woman's eyes were wide. "If I was you, I'd run full force the other way, never to return. But it's your life." She waddled to the hearth, pushed the pot aside. The wrought iron arm that held it screeched on old hinges and swung the pot wide, leaving enough space for a person to pass through. "This," she said, "is the way."
Wolfgang bent over to study the fire and said to her incredulously, "We just walk in?"
"Not exactly." He wasn't exactly surprised to feel hands on his back and a boot colliding with his rear end as he sailed into the hearth.
Chapter 7
WOLFGANG DID NOT FIND HIMSELF burned alive in the hearth, but rather alive and well in the middle of a misty glen, surrounded by trees and stones on all sides. He turned around in time to see Marie passing through the fiery wall to emerge unmarked, the smell of baked bread and potato stew wafting toward him, more alluring and provocative than any perfume, and he regretted not taking any food with him from the crone's den.
"Marie," Wolfgang began, not really knowing where to start but wanting to know something about her and the human family who raised her just the same, "that house...did you find what you wanted?"
"Not really. I was hoping to score some food, but I couldn't tell if anything was poisoned, or if all of it was." She shook her head, her long hair rocking against the motion of its own momentum. "Typical old fae. I think if I lived out here, I'd be crazy, too. No wonder she wanted to come with us."
"No, I meant your...mother's?...house."
"Oh, that." Marie faced him, her hair and eyes shimmering through her glamour, as if she held a secret, something beneath all that magic that beat like a heart and was eager to break free, but only for the right person at the right time. "Being raised in Doors has made you better in ways you don't even know. Other humans can't really grasp fae, or deal with them. Not for long. Not before it wears a hole through them, through their souls."
Drives them mad.
Through the stillness of the mist, a howl erupted, shrill and long. Another copied it, then another, so that they seemed noth
ing more than echoes, but the pitches broke off into a hellish chorus, wavering and at last fading as if the creatures making the sound were running, moving, out of breath, struggling to scream. It snapped Wolfgang's line of thought and drew his attention back to his goal. "Let's go that way," Wolfgang suggested. Marie's eyes, cat's eyes in the dark shedding the slightest gleam of light, held an expression, for once: Fear.
"You must be possessed," she said, "because, if you're not, then you must be stupid."
"How is it stupid? We have to find someone, a clue, something other than just wandering around in this dark for nothing."
"I think we're lucky that we haven't been killed yet by anything here. I'd like to keep that streak going." She looked up at the moon, full and silver like a coin, becoming more and more hidden in ever increasing clouds. Her eyes glowed and glittered eerily, animal-like. Another chorus of howls, carried by the mist, rang through the night. The smell of water and rot was cloying. "Leaving this way isn't leaving. This is just insanity. We've lost Pilgrim, and whatever we find that way..." She pointed into the dark, into the distance, the place they thought the howls were coming from. "...will most likely be insane."
"We have to at least try."
"Why?" she asked. Her fair brows knit in frustration. "Because I don't want to end up like them."
"Neither do I," he said. "That's why I'm doing this. If I stay in the city, this is what will happen to me. I'll be trapped out here, in these woods, living like an animal."
"That's ridiculous," she said. "I've known lots of former humans--half our recruits were werewolves and vampires that were human before. Just because you see it that way doesn't mean that's the truth. If you became a--"
"Human before isn't the same as still being human!" he shouted. "They can only remember what it's like, and trust me, they remember it wrong. It's wrong. Completely wrong." He gripped a hand to each arm and held himself tight, trying hard to compose himself. He didn't know who he was, felt as if he had suddenly been born on the spot into this body, knowing nothing about what he was doing or what, if anything, he wanted to do. Returning his focus to Marie's face, it all suddenly came back to him, all his memories, and he used her as an anchor to keep from losing his mind. "If I changed, it would destroy me." He was sure of it. Sure as he was standing there.
Marie shook her head. Her hair, silver in the waxing moonlight, sparkled as if laden with a thousand tiny diamonds. And he remembered that her beauty was stolen, taken from the child she replaced, the child her changeling mother killed so she could place Marie in her crib. No matter what the girl would have looked like had she been able to grow up, she would never have been as beautiful as Marie. "It would destroy the old you. But it would make you better."
"How do you know?" he snapped. He couldn't recall ever feeling this angry at Marie before. He didn't want to, but it was irresistible, like a fire burning through him, burning his heart, turning it to ashes. Turning it cold. "How do you know what it would make me? You only know one thing: What it's like to be a thing, a copy. To be someone else. Always someone else." He stormed away from her, into the dark, toward the call of the hunt, toward the howls and the shrieking laughter, shouting back to her as he went. "You'll never know what it's like to be real, to think your own thoughts, to be yourself. Because you're not yourself. You'll never be yourself. You'll always be someone else."
"Wolfgang," Marie called to him reluctantly, as if afraid the air would carry her voice to the pack as well as it carried the howling to them. "Calm down. You're not making any sense."
"Don't act like you don't know what I mean," he stopped briefly to shout back, but the pause made him almost physically ill. All he knew was, that sound, that howling, endless and long...he had to find it, had to join it. It felt like it was leading him to the place where he belonged, his wildest heart's desire, leading him to freedom. Leading him to the portal.
"Wolfgang!" Marie called to him. She began to run to catch up. "Where are you going? Wolfgang!" But he could hardly hear her anymore. The fog was so thick, it swallowed her every word. Or maybe the fog was in his head, making his thoughts slow and his mind sluggish. There was only one thing he wanted to do--only one thing he could do--and that was to run. His legs began to pull him toward that hellish sound, that braying, shrieking, nightmarish howling, faster than he'd thought possible, as slick and uneven as the ground was in this swampy forest. His feet struck somewhere above the ground, and there was no fear in his mind that he would stumble or fall. It wasn't long before a light appeared, then several, then finally a whole chain of lights which he at first thought were from will-o'-wisps that he would never reach but then realized that they came from the gleaming eyes of a score or more of wolves and werewolves in the light of the freshly revealed, bright blue full moon. Without a thought given to the danger he faced, Wolfgang rushed ahead to greet them, to join them, and, as his feet beat a steady, rhythmical pattern he became aware of the pounding of the others' feet as well, like the beating of one giant heart in the lonely depths of the wood.
The wolves were hunting. He understood that now. It all made sense, nothing was more important than this, this hunt, this night, this wood. He would hunt or die. It was the one thing that made everything right in this world, it kept everything in balance. To run, to chase round and round the city meant that the city would stay healthy, that it would stay alive. He hadn't really seen everything as a living being in and of itself before; that the city lived and breathed, that these woods did the same. Before, he'd thought of himself, his family, and the people he knew as separate living beings, but they weren't. They were all one, one big supernatural machine. And if the hunt did not hunt, did not fulfill its duty, then the city could not do its duty, and everything would die. It was so clear now, and with this knowledge came the understanding that he could not let anyone down. They were all counting on him, though he never understood it before. He had to do this, he must! And he would not fail. They made room for him in the pack, and he accepted his place with a feeling that he had been meant to do this his whole life.
Of course, every hunt had a master. There was no ignoring the statuesque shadow that plunged headlong into the night, eagerly following the lead of his dogs. He cut a tall and foreboding figure against the black trees and starless sky. Swathed in dark, heavy cloaks against the night, his head covered with a deep hood, he rode high upon a black horse in the midst of the throng. He made no sound, and neither did the hellish horse, yellow fire burning where eyes should be, its heavy feet barely touching the ground, but its iron shoes ringing heavily on something unseen, a song that spoke of weapons and war and damnation. Sparks flew from its feet, running on a private path to hell meant only for this pack for eternity. And Wolfgang, who never remembered feeling so alive before, so purposeful, while at the same time so out of control, wanted nothing more than to remain here with them and forget everything else. Life had never felt so worth living before this night, before this hunt.
Exactly what they hunted, though, was not clear to him. If it was a person or animal, he thought, it would have had to have gotten a long start by now, or surely they would have caught it. A person or animal could not keep up this ruthless pace without magic, so Wolfgang figured it had to be something supernatural. Maybe it was even the moon itself. Glowing like a window to heaven in the night sky, the moon, darting in and out of the clouds and fog, was a worthy goal. It was good enough for Wolfgang, because these feelings, this desire, were worth more than anything he could ever own. This would be his life now. There was nothing to stop him, nothing to get in his way anymore--not himself and his own crazy ideas about what was right and wrong, not his parents, and certainly not--Marie! There she was, running up alongside him, at a pace that Wolfgang did not believe she could keep up for long. He couldn't usually run this fast, or this easily, but tonight it was as if all the magic in the world was in his legs and came pouring out of him at his command to follow, follow this hunt wherever it led.
She stuck out
a foot and tripped him. He knew she would try to stop him. Everyone always tried to make him do the opposite of everything he ever wanted to do. "No," he wheezed, the wind knocked out of him. "You can't...stop me. Stop!"
He looked up in horror to see that everything did, indeed, stop, slowed to a sickening stop. All the wolves in the pack turned their glowing, wild eyes to the scene of Wolfgang flat on his face and Marie standing threateningly over him. Some of them relinquished their dog-like form to become half-man, half-animal, snarling, drooling beasts. Even the Huntmaster, his black, hooded coat trembling in the mist from a breeze which no one felt--or perhaps even his cloak feared him, and so it shook--tall upon his black horse, the only one who rode and did not run under his or her own power, even he stopped, and Wolfgang knew. He knew the importance of this hunt. He knew that they would not let him leave, they would not let Marie stop him. They would help him. They must help him! He was a pack member now. He belonged! Every creature in the hunt was eyeing him, angry that their hunt was interrupted, wanting only to continue, and for him to come back.
Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) Page 8