The Legend

by Sheritta Bitikofer

  “You may have noticed that you can heal from most anything. If your skin is cut, it heals. If your bones are broken, they will mend without the aid of a physician. But if a limb is severed, it will not grow back. If you are decapitated, you will die.”

  “I heard that silver hurts a werewolf,” he said. “Is it the same for a loup-garou?”

  She nodded. “Yes. It burns you like fire. And there are plants. Such as wolfsbane that are poisonous to your kind.”

  Annalette stopped. “If you were not bitten, then you were born a loup-garou,” she reflected as she looked to him. “Where is your father? He should have told you all of these things.”

  John’s brows lowered in hatred and looked to Annalette with brooding eyes. “I did not know my father. If I did, he might have taught me these things. But God has not been so kind as to give me a life of ease and comfort.”

  There was something more. She was not the only one withholding the truth.

  Annalette’s heart bled for the loup-garou. There was much pain and sorrow within his heart, and although she could teach him many things, she had come so late. Decades had been spent in darkness, and every voice in his own head screamed their lies that he was not worthy of salvation. If only he could understand that he was forever transcendent beyond salvation. The favor of God did not matter so much for a loup-garou as it did for a mortal man.

  “We are many stars scattered in the sight of God,” she said. “He has been more than kind to you. This is a gift. A blessing. Not a curse.”

  John scowled. “Is that what your uncle believed when he was cast from your family?”

  Her eyes searched his for the kindness that he had once shown her, but something of the wolf had finally emerged, though his eyes were no longer gold. He had never been part of a pack, but it was clear that he would be an alpha one day. Despite his biting question, she smiled and slowly set back on the trail.

  “My family saw him as unclean. He was marime. It is a word that our people use to describe someone who has committed a sin or defiled themselves. Like the hen, who is a bird that doesn’t fly; or the frog who both swims and walks on land, they saw the loup-garou as an unnatural blend of two things that should never be blended.”

  “But, you still helped him. Why would you do that if he was unclean?”

  She smiled to herself. “Because I did not care about the traditions at the time. I was an obstinate child. When my father told me not to climb a tree, I climbed it anyway. When my mother wanted me to help with washing the clothes in the river, I would wander off and chase bugs.”

  “It sounds like you were quite the handful,” John remarked with an amused upturn in his voice.

  “Yes, I was. And it was my wildness that convinced my uncle that I would be a good companion for him.” She sobered quickly when she thought of his trial, when they called a kris to decide his fate within their vitsa. “I do not agree with my family. They didn’t see how magnificent he was as a loup-garou. They only saw the beast and scorned it because they thought it was a mulo – an evil spirit.”

  “A demon,” John corrected.

  Annalette looked to him and saw a sparkle of humor in the way the corner of his lip tilted upward. He tried to turn the tables, but she would not fight the current as he did. She rolled her eyes. “I suppose they would agree with that, but I don’t. He was not possessed, and neither are you. Mulo or demon.”

  “Did they know you disagreed with their verdict?” he asked, kicking at a rock along the path to send it rolling through the grass ahead of them.

  Finally, their conversation had turned to her. For how long, Annalette wasn’t sure, but it was a good sign that John wanted to know more about her. Perhaps he would drop his defenses just long enough for her to squeeze through.

  “No,” she replied. “Under my uncle’s warning, I did not speak my mind. Besides, a woman cannot speak during a trial. I haven’t seen him since, but I’m sure he is well. He had talked about traveling across the sea to France, where our family is from, but I’m not sure if he ever made it.”

  A beat of silence passed between them before John inquired, “If you’re from France, then why are you here? You must know about the edict that all gypsies are to be deported from the country.”

  Annalette sighed. “I know,” she said. “The Romani roam. It’s what we do. We find where we are welcome and Scotland offered our people a safe place to exist. The only reason we have come this far south was that my other uncle, on my father’s side, has fallen ill.”

  She looked to John, wondering how much she should divulge. It might have been reasonable to assume that if she confessed more of her own past, then he would feel more open to disclosing the secrets he had kept hidden.

  “It’s customary among our people to come to the bedside of an ailing family member. It helps the spirit transition from this life into the next. If there exists any animosity between the dying, it’s expected for the offender to go and ask them for forgiveness. Before I was born, my father and his brother did not agree on coming to Scotland. The vitsa – our clan – was divided. My father wanted to come to his bedside to ask forgiveness for splitting up the family.”

  “But how did your brother get arrested?”

  Anger burned in her chest for the injustice and disgrace to her vitsa. None of them had been captured, but one simple mistake became their undoing. Now more of their family was scattered, and Annalette could feel the weight of the strain on her family ties.

  “We were separated from the family for a few days looking for work around Canterbury, and one of the townspeople reported him to the constable. He was arrested and thrown into the Westgate prison.”

  “What about your family? Why aren’t they helping you?” She didn’t have to see his face to know that John was growing indignant at the idea of a woman traveling alone.

  She looked heavenward, remembering the terrible fight she had with her father before she left their camp. “They have already given up hope that he can be rescued. According to our customs, I cannot say the name of the dead, but I know that Gallius is alive. I will not mourn his death until I see his body. Against my father’s wishes, I have decided to go after him on my own.”

  John was quiet for some time until a single sound roused him from his silence.

  “You’re hungry,” he stated.

  There was no use denying it. With his keen hearing, he surely heard her belly growl. “I have not eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

  John pointed ahead. “If we continue on the Pilgrim’s Way, we will come to Chilham. There’s bound to be a bakery there that you can steal from.”

  Annalette huffed and reached up to unfasten one of the gold coins from her bandana. “Contrary to what you have been told, my people do not steal. We don’t take bread that we can easily make ourselves.” She handed him the coin. “If we need something, we buy it honestly.”

  John took the coin and examined it, letting the sunlight glint off its polish face.

  “Of course, if you’re to go into town, we may need to clean you up a bit,” she remarked, looking up and down the loup-garou’s ragged appearance.

  His clothes needed to be washed, and though there was no time to mend the tears and holes, she would make time for him to shave the thick beard that covered the lower half of his face. If he walked into a bakery looking like a vagabond, they would not serve him, money or not. Though they hadn’t reached their destination, she needed him to look as inconspicuous as possible.

  Chapter 4

  John brushed his hand against his shaven cheek. The dagger Annalette had supplied him was sharp, but still left behind a shallow layer of stubble. Yet it was an improvement upon the scraggly beard that he had grown over the last year or so since he had shaved last.

  His clothes, though still worn thin in some spots and torn in several others, were clean and free of the blood and dirt stains that had accumulated from weeks of living in the forest. Annalette’s superb washing skills aided him in looking pre
sentable to the villagers he walked amongst.

  Chilham was a quiet town along the River Stour, but still a far cry from the secluded nature to which he had become accustomed. Mothers with their babies in tow walked past shops whilst running errands. Craftsmen such as tailors, cobblers, furniture makers, and leather tanners toiled away in their shops and tended to their customers.

  Merchant carts rattled through the streets, their mules hauling the heavy loads of wheat and other goods waiting to be sold. He could hear the ping of a hammer striking an iron anvil as a blacksmith on the other side of the town worked diligently at his trade, with the hissing and crackling of firewood in his forge to keep him company.

  It had been a long time since he had ventured this deep into any village. Most of the time, he kept his distance from humans, and skirted around towns to avoid being seen. He had little reason to visit a village unless it was to steal – for lack of a better word – what he needed. A shirt here, a pair of trousers there, but nothing that was irreplaceable.

  His memories of the last town he visited for an extended period of time were not happy ones. He could still hear the screams of the women as he ran through the streets of London, half naked and crazed with the broken chains attached to shackles clinking against the cobblestone with each step. When he fled to the safety of the woods that night, he vowed never to step foot amongst the humans again. The risk was too great. How the tables had turned.

  John had swiped a cloak from a homestead just outside the town and turned up the collar of the coat to conceal some of his face. Though, with his wild hair pulled back by a cord Annalette had loaned him, he still didn’t look the part of an average citizen.

  He spotted a young child turn and point at his appalling appearance as he pulled on his mother’s skirt. John could hear the boy’s hasty and childish babbling words from across the square, but he pretended not to notice the ridicule. Adults gave him similar looks, but they were prudent enough to keep their opinions to themselves. In the past, he would have cowered under such scrutiny, but, today, his once raw and sensitive disposition had been hardened by a life of solitude. Their opinions no longer mattered.

  While John followed the scent of dough and flour, he thought of Annalette’s words and how her simple, yet firm grip on his shoulder had pulled the demon so close to the surface. He had been terrified that he would hurt her, that he would lash out with gnarly claws and slit her throat. He had never felt the demon come out in the daylight. The evil restricted itself to the dark hours of the night.

  It made him second guess everything he had known, everything he had been taught as a young boy sitting in the church pews. With his mother on one side and grandmother on the other, he had listened to the booming voice of the priest and his sermons on hellfire and damnation for the wicked. When he was possessed, he was sure that only an act of God would save him from the hell that awaited him behind the veil of death. He knew that demons took the body for its own and would not subjugate itself to any other authority.

  When Annalette gripped his shoulder, John felt the fear of violence rise in him. He took hold of the demon, and for the first time, he made an effort to force it back into hiding. He succeeded, meaning that the demon was not the all-devouring plague of the soul that he had once believed.

  After over one hundred years of struggling to understand the demon and his special affliction, John found himself thirsty for more knowledge about these loups-garous.

  John took another step towards the possibility that he was a loup-garou, just as Annalette had said. If that were true, he was still cursed. Not as a bastard, susceptible to the influences of the demonic realm by the unfortunate circumstances of his birth, but in another way that still had much to do with his absent father. His sins were still John’s to deal with.

  He found the bakery marked by a plaque that swung above the door. An image of a steaming pie was carved into the wooden panel. It was common enough, but when John placed his hand on the doorknob, a strange sensation passed through him so suddenly that a gasp escaped him.

  It was as if a thousand needles were gently pricking into his skull. A surge of alarm rushed down his spine, and he released the handle. The sensation did not fade as he stood near the threshold, staring at his mucky feet, but the longer he waited, the feeling did not pass.

  For a moment, he wondered if it had something to do with the effects of the shoulder grab Annalette had exacted upon him earlier. This, however, wasn’t painful and though the demon in him stirred, it did not writhe or jolt into action as it had before. This was something entirely different that he had never suffered before.

  “Come in, whoever you are,” a voice called from beyond the door.

  John braced himself and entered.

  The scent of freshly baked bread permeated the air, mingling with the spices of custards and fruity jams. Shelves against the walls were stocked with rolls and loafs of all shapes and sizes. Two brick ovens were in full operation towards the back of the shop, while a long table had been set out, covered in white flour and littered with the assorted tools of the trade.

  A man stood behind the table, a rolling pin between his hands as he flattened out a white ball of dough. His sleeves were rolled up to reveal his thick arms and his apron was dusted with excess flour. Dark locks of hair were pulled back behind his head, but some flour had managed to make its way onto his cheeks and in his hair.

  John stood still as the baker’s blue eyes fixed on him with an intensity that set him on guard. Though there was a wide window that allowed the baker to watch the streets, John had not passed by it, and there was no way the man could have looked through solid the door. How could he have known that John was standing there a moment ago?

  The baker smirked and stopped what he was doing to wipe his white powdered hands on his apron. As he straightened, John realized how well-built the man was. One didn’t become so strong by kneading dough all day.

  “Can I help you?” the baker asked.

  John moved forward and took a long loaf off one of the shelves and approached the baker with the gold coin that Annalette had given him. “I just need this,” he said.

  It had been a long time since he had been a customer to any merchant or artisan. Mostly, his mother or the manor’s cook had sent him into town to fetch a head of cabbage or package of beef from the local market, but back then he didn’t need to speak to the vendors. They knew what he needed, and the exchange was made quickly. They didn’t want to talk to the runty boy who had no father and served a local landlord in Shrewsbury.

  The baker gave him a peculiar look and then examined the coin. “I’m sorry, I don’t take gypsy money.”

  John looked at the face of the coin, but couldn’t see what denounced it as gypsy money. It appeared to be like any other gold coin. Then again, it had been a while since he had seen any form of currency up close. He offered it back to the baker. “It’s not gypsy money,” he asserted.

  Piercing eyes narrowed on John. “Sure, it is. It reeks of gypsy hands. You should have known that. Either way, a crown is far too much for a single loaf of bread. I charge tuppence.”

  John curled the coin back into his palm and gripped it tightly. He wanted to ask how the man could smell Annalette on the coin and why he even cared that it belonged to a gypsy at all.

  When he didn’t reply, the baker leaned his hands against the edge of his worktable. “Friend, if you’re trying to protect the gypsy, you need not fear me. Only ask, and it shall be given.”

  “Given?” John questioned.

  The baker sighed. “There’s another of our kind who is a mysgather in this town. I happen to know that he checks all of the coinage that comes through his station. If I pay my taxes with a coin that smells of gypsies, the constable will be told, and my business will be confiscated from me,” he explained. “Not only that, but I know you don’t need the bread and if you are desperate enough to use tainted money to buy this gypsy food, I admire your courage. Take what you want, as a token o
f brotherhood.”

  John’s face wrinkled in utter confusion. He spoke of brotherhood, but John knew he did not have any siblings. And when he mentioned their kind, John was completely lost. “What do you know?”

  The baker’s smile faded. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Blue eyes began to glow the devilish gold that he had known for over a hundred years. He had seen similar golden eyes stare back at him from the surfaces of rivers and lakes in his wanderings. John staggered back and gaped. He had never seen the demon manifest that way in one besides himself, but the baker remained in full control of his faculties. He didn’t snarl like a beast or launch himself at John to tear out his throat. He simply stood there, staring with the eyes of the demon. The eyes of the wolf.

  “Impossible,” John whispered as he tried to quiet his thundering heart.

  “It is quite possible, my friend.” The golden hue spiraled back into the blackness at the center of his eyes to reinstate the human blue color. “How long have you been a wolf? If you’re shocked by my display, you must be fairly young. Were you bitten?”

  John snapped his teeth together. The baker was not the first one to ask such a strange question that day. His eyes darted towards the door and storefront window.

  “Don’t worry,” the baker laughed. “No one is around to hear our conversation.”

  John looked back, but shook his head, too dazed to even consider having a conversation with the man. “I can’t stay, I’m sorry.”

  And with that, he turned and hurried out of the shop. In his quick getaway, he nearly collided with a well-dressed lord and his consort.

  “Watch where you’re going, peasant!” the pompous man shouted.

  In a fury, John growled and sped away. He could hear the baker calling out to him from the open doorway of the shop, but he would not stop. Not for man and not for a werewolf.