The Wolf With the Silver Blue Hands

by Eric Ellert

  She closed her eyes and washed her face; wolves or ghosts, what was the difference? For a second she imagined them right outside the door, tall and broad-chested like wolves of the Middle Ages.

  The tapping stopped. Moren didn't know whether to look out the window or yank the door open and run.

  She yanked the door open, stepped outside and yelled, "Let me go."

  She pulled forward and tore her shirt but it had only been stuck on a nail. She touched the blood, not much but some was too much. "I don't like it here," she whispered, her voice sounding young in her ears. She walked down the dark hallway, so the boards would creak. She was too afraid to look, took a few steps and had to look. The rat had run into a trap. The trap had smashed the rat's legs but its head still moved. Moren looked away and looked back; a hundred traps lined the edge of the hallway. "Blue," she whispered. "Mr. Blue."

  The engine kicked over and she could barely hear herself shout. "Would you kill the mouse?" She couldn't bear to say the word rat. She turned and held in the dry-heaves as she gripped the walls.

  She stooped, closed her eyes and stomped the rat. It let out one long peep as time slowed and her foot laid its full wait on it, grinding the thing, because it was no longer a rat, but a thing, into the floor.

  The floorboard popped up, half termite-rotted and all the traps went off, one sending the next snapping down the hallway.

  She got outside. Blue, with his back to her, looked strangely familiar. She slipped on the moss and fell on her tailbone.

  He turned, "You OK?"

  "No."

  She didn't want to talk about herself or about him. She got up, pushing away his helping hand, afraid his skin would be cold like a lizard's.

  Blue looked at the ground, then off at the water then back at the ground and she realized she'd just acted the way everybody must act around him.

  He got one engine started after a couple of tries. "There it goes." He shut it off.

  "What was the glass ceiling for?"

  Blue turned her way, but with the plastic head-covering, Moren couldn't be sure if he was looking at her or over her. "To watch Mrs. Rochambeau, to learn."

  "Must have driven her batty."

  "I do believe it did. She liked her privacy, all those telescopes on other planets and all those stars."

  He looked so sad, though Moren could only see his nose. She pictured big blue men with big blue heads staring through the ceiling, like kids humoring a dollhouse they'd outgrown.

  She tried to brush the loam off her shorts but they were soaked-through, clinging to her, making her feel as if she wasn't wearing anything at all. "Do you mean all those stars have people with telescopes looking down?"

  "They don't call them telescopes, but it's a good bet." He pointed to the back of the house. "Moren. Why don't you go fix yourself something to eat?"

  "And what will you be doing?"

  "Picking up the rats."

  "You, you saw me?" Moren asked.

  Blue looked embarrassed and coughed. "I see everything. I can't help it. I was made that way."

  She'd taken her shirt off. Blue had said he could see everything but did he look at everything?

  He shook his head as if he'd read her mind.

  Moren backed away, nothing at all to say. She shut the door behind her and crossed the room that would soon melt back into the swamp.

  Two doors lined the towering, far wall. She entered the right door and found a modern kitchen and dinette, mid-twentieth century modern, like all the houses around here. She didn't want to touch any of the food in the well-stocked fridge. By the tags and brands, they might have shopped in the same places but she was so thirsty she grabbed an open quart of milk and downed it. She held her breath as she wiped her mouth, just wondering if her skin might glow blue or if her arm would turn into a claw like the guy in District Nine.

  The kitchen opened up into a pantry with an elaborate, oaken cabinet built into the wall, leading back into the dining area though another door.

  Though it was nervy, she opened the cupboard and found an old, yellow, Bruce Lee jogging suit. As she changed, her skin got goose bumps as she wondered what the strange, blue creature saw and didn't see and knew and didn't know. But she smelled so swampy and the green moss that covered everything had seeped through her clothes and stuck all over her skin. She felt completely unmatchable.

  ***

  She met him outside. "You mind?"

  "I don't mind too much of nothin'...outside of the job, you see."

  "No," Moren said. "I mean if I went in the other door."

  "I'll have to unlock it," he said as if giving her a chance to change her mind. "You'll be wanting the bad silver, I guess."

  "Ha?" Moren had forgotten to zip up the jacket and hadn't realized it was half-open. She looked up as she zipped it.

  They paused.

  "Sorry but I've never seen anyone quite so lovely and no I didn't always look this way. I sleep a lot too, see, weeks and months and years at a time. I sleep when the wolves sleep and wake when they wake."

  "Well?"

  "I'm much like you, if not for the blue."

  "Oh. That's nice, I guess."

  They walked along the outside of the building and entered through a set of double-French doors with the glass pains missing. They crossed the rest of the room, their feet tearing the soggy, Oriental carpets, not saying a word until they came to the door.

  "I see things," Blue said. "Sometimes I'm wrong, but I see things."

  He opened the double-doors for Moren. Inside sat a perfectly preserved-hall, the long dining table still set for a hundred, the floor gleaming. Paintings filled the walls, the corners guarded by silvered-parade armor smelling of Brasso and dry-cloth.

  "Good silver, bad silver, call it what you will," Blue whispered. "I see things that might be, when I sleep. In my dreams I stand in a forest and paint and paint and in the paintings, I see people I will meet."

  "Have you seen me?"

  "Yeah," Blue said.

  "What did you see?"

  "No."

  Moren leaned forward and whispered, "Did you know I was going to say that?"

  "Dunno."

  Moren pulled him along and stopped to admire a painting twelve-feet-tall. The portrait subject was dressed in red, her face lit from the front, the background mostly brown, probably to save the artist time, but the rest strangely photographic. "Mrs. Rochambeau, she was pretty." When Moren looked closer, in the shadowy parts of the painting leered a wolf, crawling from the floor as if it was the shadows behind her, coming for her or out of her, it was hard to say, but knowing the woman, it was a picture of her heart. Though Mrs. Rochambeau was her friend, Moren knew she was no good and underneath the rot, this house had never been any good; it had been corrupt and moldy, hanging on to a previous era even when it was new.

  Blue did not belong here, either. She thought of all the people she had met here, not a nice one in the bunch, really. "The face is so appealing. You don't think so?"

  When Moren turned around, Blue was at the far door. He was in and out in a second or so and came back carrying two loving cups. In the brief seconds the door had been opened, Moren had gotten a peek in. There was a trophy case in the other room filled with them. "Had them at school, any school. I think I've been to them all."

  "Good silver, bad silver, I forget which is which."

  Moren smiled. "Did I win a race?"

  "Not yet. I saw something. But it was so long ago. I barely remember the story."

  "Liar, you remember everything," Moren said.

  "Take 'em both," Blue said. He placed a hand on them when she went to examine one. "All sales final."

  He turned and walked away. He might just fade into the mossy, stone walls outside and leave her here.

  "You're scaring me. I haven't seen your eyes. I want to see your eyes. Tell me."

  "I'm trying to. There was a football team. They used the building as a school, briefly. These little towns, they make he
roes of the children on their teams. On balance, well I wouldn't do it. Intramurals and local sports are much healthier. One day, anyway, a player died on the field. One of those kids the town really loved cause of how he was for an hour and a half every couple of weeks, just a few months a year. The coach played on, brought them to some kind of championship, regardless, that year. Some people said he even continued that game, but I'm not so sure and I've always thought, it ain't silver, it's the dreams of the men who went down in the mines, and their hands. That's what those cups were made of, and the silver becomes what people do with it. They rub off on it, not usually in a good way, either. Anyway, cheers to bad silver."

  "And what am I supposed to do with it?"

  "Make the best of a bad decision. Ask the witch lady. Don't know her well now."

  "Call her Mrs. Rochambeau," Moren said. "Tell me."

  A growl came from outside, the sound so unnatural she didn't want to see what had made it. Before blue could answer, Moren ducked down low.

  "One moment, please."

  A wolf stuck its snout into the room. Moren hadn't heard it approach; it might as well have appeared.

  Blue raced forward, grabbed it by the neck and shook it. "You don't come here till I tell you to." His voice grew louder with each word. He held the wolf high in the air. Steam rose from its fur where he touched it and flames singed the outlines of his hands. Tiny flames lit around his fingers, went out in the damp and lit again as if by magic.

  "Stop it," Moren said. "Stop it."

  Smoke came from the wolfs neck as it scrambled over the ledge and out of sight, into foggy nothingness and the howling of distant wolves.

  "Sorry," Blue said as he turned back to Moren, all the ferocity gone from his half-hidden face. "I'll take you back. Just give me a couple of moments." He checked his pockets and looked under a side table, then checked the floor. "I had a menu somewhere. There it is." He retrieved it from one of the chairs. "It's all variations on pork, but the sit down after the...dance...calms them."

  "Dance calms them. You sound like a wolf shrink."

  "Me, no. Just a boy with a dream." In the pause after lay all the forgotten dances neath the musty roof. "Bringing them pigs they hunt."

  "I want to see."

  "No."

  Moren needed see them hunt. She tried to think of the right way to ask Blue when a bat scratched at the rafters and let out one long ping. When Moren looked closely, every hole in the wall seemed to house a couple of bats, which were flying rats, which made her hold her breath on instinct, terrified they might carry something.

  "Don't be afraid," Blue said. "Watch this." He blew a whistle and a bat flew down and landed on his hand. "Here." He put it in hers and it crawled in and out of her fingers.

  He'd moved so fast, and seemed so boyish she hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings and drop it, but it really wasn't so bad after she shook off the momentary terror. It had a cartoon mouse-like face and stared at her with that strange recognition some types of animals had, as if they might speak at any moment. She wished she could ask it what it had seen in the walls of this floating house.

  "Blue, why are you here?"

  "I'm so blue, you'd be too," he sang, as if through a sound trumpet then stopped as if realizing how off-key his voice was. He walked to the broken window. "I was left here to take care of 'em."

  "The wolves? You hate 'em."

  "Maybe, but they were children," Blue said.

  "Why's that hat on your head?"

  "Eyeglasses. They're eyeglasses"

  "Don't change the subject. Let me see," Moren said.

  He stepped back, then forward, then sideways like a Harry Haryyhousan claymation monster. "I suppose you would insist." He took his glasses-hat off, revealing his eyes, one normal, the color of his skin, the other the size of a billiard ball. Sometimes it looked along with the good eye; sometimes it wandered. "I'm sorry, Moren."

  She took a deep breath and tightened her gut, hoping her voice would stay normal, level, everyday sounding. "Don't be." She smiled, wondering if the eye could tell a real smile from a polite smile, he'd probably only seen polite smiles, if that. He was so like the Aurora model of the Hunchback of Notre Damme in the mall that he must never, ever see it. Moren promised herself she'd go there as soon a she could and buy them all.

  She said the first thing that popped into her head. "You think I can drink whiskey from time to time, just a bit?"

  "No. You been at the still with the witch?"

  "That's not nice."

  "I wasn't referring to her appearance. But she has a certain jen e se qua, don't you think? While were' asking advice, you think I should get a tattoo?"

  She laughed. "It's not?" Moren asked. "It really is from drinking silver?"

  He laughed. "I like your frankness, I think. Anyway, it's different. Ain't thrown you to the wolves yet."

  "No."

  "Doesn't look like it. I see very far." He covered the great, whale-like eye. "Doesn't make it easier on people. Don't talk to most people."

  "You don't talk to anyone, do you?"

  Blue swayed as if moved by the breeze.

  It was so strange to see a bluff man tremble. "They did that to you?"

  "They did a lot of things to a lot of people," Blue said. "They're buried in rows like soldiers." He gestured to the skylight ceiling. "Every bit of information they put to some use. They listen."

  "And if Rau finds his brother, you're free?"

  "And if he doesn't, they flood this place and shoot what's left. Free? And where would I go?" He smiled. "Let me show you something before you go."

  "I don't want to go. I like you."

  "But Esmerelda has to go, for she could never live in the belfry, and could never love quasimodo, not after the gratitude wore off and when he had not even that illusion left, he'd cut his own heart out."

  "Maybe you could come to dinner and we could hold a sort of peace conference. You, Rau, me, my sister. I'd serve Don Bravos tacos. They're not that hard to make. Press-ding."

  "That'll be the day. Let's go. Come."

  Blue led her through endless, brocaded-rooms, fit for the frilly French court, preserved like a musty, under-budget museum and onto a great porch. He set her up in front of a bronze, steam-punk-looking telescope. "I made this. I wanted others to see what I see, as I see it."

  "And?"

  "Have any others seen it quite like I see it? I do believe you're the first."

  Moren looked though one eyepiece and saw clear stars through the clouds.

  "Now try the others?"

  She wondered if she'd have to humor him all day, figuring she'd see a little something bigger or another picture of the same view smaller but when she looked, she saw through a fence like the one that surrounded the town and she saw stars through it, though daylight shown in the sun above it.

  "What's different?"

  It took her a moment to realize it. "There's no moon."

  "Yes, the Back Beyond."

  He saw things; he knew, somehow, what she'd seen through the telescope. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, everyone must hurt them, staring at that hideous eye but she had to know. "Blue? Will I become a." She almost said monster, but dare not.

  "Good silver, bad silver, you'll have a slim bit of time if you're lucky...to get it right." He stared at her as if he'd learned she had some strange disease that could not be cured.

  The wolves howled again. He went to the window angry as if he was about to howl back then looked as if he thought of something important. "Did your sister come here? They don't miss much."

  "Well, yeah."

  "She shouldn't have. She shouldn't have at all. Let's go. The scent. You smell alike; no offence."

  "None taken," Moren said, zipping up her jacket as if it was a turtleneck.

  ***

  As they hurried through the last room before the entrance, Moren noticed a painting with Blue as a character in it, as he must have once been. In the painting, Eighteenth-Century Re
dcoats marched up a hill, Grenadiers falling, bear hats rolling down the hill and in the smoke, Blue whole and well, just a blue aura about him but call as she might, he wouldn't answer or turn around until they got to the reservoir's edge.

  "Stand near the water. Jump in if anyone but me comes. I'll get the engines and Moren."

  "Yes, Blue."

  He pointed up. "You can get to the Back Beyond that way, which you can't." He pointed in all directions, spinning around as if aiming a bow at the eight corners of the world. "Or you can go right through the fence, not over it, not under it, right through it, if it ain't electrified at the time you do it. If it is, you stick and fry like a Don Bravos Taco. Ding-Press-Ding-Game Over."

  "And why would I want to do that? Esmerelda wants to live in town."

  "She can't."

  Moren wiped he nose.

  "Got to get the engines."

  "Right."

  Chapter 18

  Faudron walked through the fog until she found a road. All bases were the same, no dead-ends in the path, some type of phone or duty shed or office would appear if you walked far-enough. She walked, wondering why the fog stayed so thick, even as she grew close to it. She slowed, then took baby steps, trying to stay in the center of the road, afraid of nipping things that must lurk in the grass.

  A hundred yards away, she found a yellow, emergency phone box. She held her breath, afraid it wouldn't work. She opened the box. The receiver's wires looked good. The phone looked as if it was maintained once in a while. It just might work.

  As soon as she picked up the receiver, a voice on the other end said, "Hold on. I'll be right there."

  "You'll be right...but."

  Being anticipated was horrible but she wouldn't argue and hurried back to Rau skipping sideways in a faux astronaut walk.

  When Rau came into view, he looked like a casualty splayed out on the grass but if he'd rolled over on his stomach, he was alive, more alive than when she'd left him.

  She tried to turn him over but he was heavy, Summer Glau Terminator heavy.

  She felt so dizzy, she imagined the island floating on a current. Around her, the discharge from runoff pipes gurgled, making it hard to remember in which direction the reservoir lay. "Hey, Rau. You think Summer Glau could play me in the movie? I think that Cylon guy who didn't know he was a Cylon guy, you know the one? He could play you."