On the outskirts of that sleepy village was a tiny farm owned by Albrecht Hoffman and his daughter Dagmar.
Dagmar was a sweet girl, though a bit plump and not at all pretty. However, she did have eyes that were the most amazing shade of azure and a laugh that was like the waters of the brook running over stones in that way that is Nature’s music.
Though she was a farm girl, Dagmar dreamed of marrying a handsome prince, of living in an enchanted kingdom and ruling over adoring subjects. Sometimes she would get a dreamy, faraway look in her eye and her father would have to remind her that the cows were not going to milk themselves, or that the butter was not going to churn itself.
Twice a week, Dagmar would take milk, butter and cream into the village, and once a week she made the trip out to the Red Lion. Innkeeper Helmut Zauberwald insisted on the best for his guests, and there was no finer dairy in the region than that belonging to Albrecht Hoffman.
On her way she would pass the home of Stefan Lebengeist, an orphan close to her own age who made his way doing odd jobs and lending a hand at harvest at any one of the farms in the region.
Stefan was regarded as a simpleton by many. He had been kicked in the head as a boy and had never been quite right after that. He was tall, with dark and unruly hair and hazel eyes. He would have been handsome, save for the scar on his left temple and the somewhat vacant expression that he often wore. Some of the children would tease him for being slow, but most of the villagers agreed he had a good heart. Helmut Zauberwald often engaged him for simple tasks or errands, paying him in excess of what such work was worth, and always treating him to a hearty meal in the bargain.
Now that he was of age, Stefan had begun professing his love for Dagmar. The truth was, he had loved her since he was a little boy, but had been too shy to tell her. Now that he had some money saved, he felt he might court her in a respectable fashion.
As always, he would create some excuse to be near the road when she would pass by on her way to town or the inn.
“Good day to you, Dagmar,” he said.
“And good morrow to you, Stefan,” she replied.
“Are you off to the village today?”
“No, Stefan, today I go to the Red Lion.”
“May I walk with you?”
“Will you guard me from dragons and were-creatures?” she teased.
And he would become very serious and reply, “With my life.”
And so he would follow her for a few feet until she bade him ride in the wagon with her. Being so close to his beloved always made him painfully shy, and Stefan would spend the entire trip trying to voice the carefully prepared speech he had memorized early that morning, but he would always have to resort to small talk about the weather or some upcoming fair or event.
Dagmar suspected Stefan had a crush on her, but she had never regarded him as anything more than a friend. Her heart was set on a prince, you see, and a simple peasant boy would never do.
If she was going to the Red Lion, Stefan would ride with her the entire way. Helmut and his family never teased Stefan, though they knew he adored the Milkmaid. However should he accompany her to town, he would jump out of the wagon and follow at a discreet distance once the first shops were in sight, because villagers would ask if a wedding party had come to town.
When the two young people reached the inn, Dagmar drove her cart around to the back, where Helmut and his family helped her unload her wares and then the Innkeeper would paid her handsomely in gold.
As always, Stefan wanted to help, but as Helmut and his family were quite efficient, Stefan just got in the way. Once he had been responsible for the loss of nearly a pitcher’s worth of cream, and so on this day, Helmut suggested he might watch the horses in case they became unsettled by the appearance of a sprite or a will-o’-the-wisp.
But sadly, it was not one of Dagmar’s slow and gentle horses about which they needed to worry.
Unbeknownst to any of them, Valiant, a Great Percheron and steed of the late Sir Giles of Coventry, had bolted upon seeing his master devoured by a dragon deep in the forest. The poor animal headed back the way they had come, bedeviled by all manner of loathsome creatures until it was mad with panic. By the time it reached the vicinity of the inn, it was running full tilt, having been chased by a pack of small goblins tired of dining on frogs and salamanders.
Dagmar, who was daydreaming of meeting a handsome foreign prince at the inn, neither saw nor heard the great beast, but Stefan did.
Running with a speed others would later call impossible, Stefan pushed Dagmar out of harm’s way, but was himself run down.
Nearly two hundred stone of solid horse flesh on the run collided with a slight boy of sixteen. He was crushed under the enormous hooves and left like a broken doll in the road.
Dagmar was the first to reach him, weeping as she saw how grievous were his injuries. She cradled his head, her hot tears leaving small tracks in his bloodied face.
“Oh, Stefan, what have you done,” she wailed.
Though he was in great pain, he smiled – was he not in the arms of his beloved?
“I love you, Dagmar,” he whispered, “I always w…” And then he was gone.
Stefan was buried in the churchyard of Aubendroth, in a funeral that was attended by all the villagers and patrons of the Red Lion as well, including Jürgen the Huntsman and his wife Hexe and Gustav the Woodcutter and his wife Elsbeth. Afterwards, a wake was held at the Red Lion and everyone who attended had something kind to say about the orphan boy.
Dagmar, who still bore bruises from her near brush with death, gave up daydreaming about princes and castles and grieved for the shy boy with the enormous heart.
And so life went on…
Though Stefan had been in his grave nearly two years, Dagmar brought him fresh flowers or holly every week.
Though the people of Aubendroth were good folk, not everyone who traveled through that land was. Two men bound for Munich found their way to the Red Lion one day in autumn, just as the weather was turning chill and the air was growing thin.
The men told those they met at the inn that they were carpenters looking for work, but they were actually highwaymen hoping for plunder and perhaps more. The two made the mistake of giving Dorothea the eye, which drew warning looks from her husband Peter, her father the Innkeeper and Gustav the Woodcutter. Deciding they had worn out their welcome, the two headed out, figuring on staying as unwelcome guests in some farmhouse. Both were armed with knives and good reflexes – what bumpkin could stand against them?
Gustav, who meant to follow them, was instead delayed by Innkeeper Helmut, who wanted to purchase new furniture for some of his rooms.
So it was that the men found their way to the small farm of Dagmar and her father Albrecht. Albrecht tried to stop them from entering, but one smashed a clay pitcher over his head and he fell to the floor, dazed and bleeding.
Then they turned their sights on Dagmar.
“Ay,” said one, “this is a plump little pigeon.”
“Not so pretty a one though, keep the lanterns dim!”
They laughed cruelly and advanced on her. Dagmar screamed, but the Hoffmann farm was too far from any neighbor for her to be heard.
Except…
In the churchyard, something stirred, something unable to rest.
At the farmhouse, Dagmar clawed and scratched, but the men were stronger. They took their time, like wicked cats with a rapidly tiring mouse.
In the churchyard, all was quiet again, but now one of the graves was empty, sod and stone moved in a great upheaval as something lurched away.
At the little farm, the first blackguard had decided he had had enough and struck Dagmar in the face. She went down, weeping, and they dragged her to one of the beds.
Though no one was there other than Dagmar, the highwaymen and her injured father, people still talk about what happened, as if they had been privy to it.
As Dagmar continue
d to struggle the door burst in, and a horror beyond imagining shambled in and grabbed the first man, pulling him off Dagmar and hurling him through the open door.
The second villain pulled his knife, and stabbed the creature several times in the chest, to no effect.
Outside, the first man was getting painfully to his feet when he heard his partner scream – a scream that was abruptly cut off.
The man shrieked when Stefan Lebengeist emerged from the dwelling, carrying the head of his fellow by the hair. He went mad when the Stefan threw the head at him, and he could see its eyes still blinking, its mouth trying to scream.
They would find the survivor a few days later, hiding in a root cellar and gibbering, his hair gone completely white.
Stefan, his duty discharged, shambled away from the house.
Dagmar ran after him as it began to rain.
“Stefan,” she cried, “wait!”
“I don’t want you to see me like this,” he said.
She went around to him. The rain had begun to wash the graveyard dirt and mold from him, and he looked much as he had, though far paler.
“You saved me,” she said.
“I couldn’t rest while you were in danger, but now I must go.”
His manner, his speech, they had changed. Though his voice was that of the grave, he almost seemed learned compared to the boy she knew. As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Much has changed in me, Dagmar, though my love has not. Farewell.”
“Please, let me go with you.”
“It… it is not a place for the living.”
“Must I throw myself from a cliff or drown in a lake to be with you, Stefan Lebengeist?”
He smiled, and shook his head. “I… I have heard of others in similar predicaments. What of your father?”
At this her face fell, but then she grew resolute. “There are plenty who could help him… Perhaps you could spend some months here, and other months, I there?”
“I am afraid it is taking a great deal of magick to keep this body together, my love… But perhaps…”
Dagmar saw to her father, and made sure he would be cared for until he healed. He had been semi-conscious during the incident, and had thought he had dreamed Stefan’s return. When he learned Dagmar meant to go with him, he wept, until he understood she would return.
And so Stefan took her with him, many miles through the Black Forest. Wild creatures that sought to harass them halted when they saw that Stefan was one of the Undead, and then they would slink off into the forest, for anything living fears that which is between Life and Death.
They came at last to the Lake of the Restless Dead, where many ghosts howl and wail in chorus with the wind. Beneath its surface is the entrance to the Underworld, the Land of the Dead. Stefan took Dagmar’s warm hand in his cold one and took her down, and all the ghosts and wayward spirits bowed and made way.
Dagmar thought she would surely drown, but her lover’s magick was powerful, and she did not.
When they crossed into the Land of the Dead, she was shocked to see that Stefan had become quite handsome, without any sign of infirmity, though he was now as white and luminous as a moon seen through fog.
“This is what I am in death,” he said, “Here we are all what is inside. Look…” And he held up a mirror, and she gasped to see herself as beautiful as the Faerie Queen herself. Then, Stefan knelt before her.
“Dagmar Hoffmann, will you marry me, and rule by my side for a portion of each year, when leaves are dying and frost covers the ground?”
“I love you, Stefan – of course I will… But rule…”
At that, a tall woman in royal robes appeared, her face half dead and blackened, the other side pale but alive. One eye filmy with cataracts, the other an icy blue.
All the spirits of the realm bowed low, as did Stefan, and Dagmar followed suit.
“I am Hel,” said the woman, “Queen of the Underworld – you are the woman my son means to have as bride.”
“I am, my Queen,” said Dagmar.
“Ay, you are not my subject, for you live,” said Hel with some distaste.
“I love her, mother,” said Stefan, “And who but you would better understand a marriage of the living with the dead, when your very face is its expression?”
Hel considered this, and nodded her assent.
And so a grand wedding was held, attended by all manner of magickal beings and creatures.
And Dagmar, who had once dreamed of marrying a prince, did so. And for six months of the year, she rules over the Dead, and in spring and summer she returns to the land of the living with her husband, who takes on the aspect of a raven. And they are happy to this day.
* * *
THE SONG OF ABSENT BIRDS
Dylan Walsh dried his breakfast dishes and put them away. He wiped down the counter and made sure the burners were turned off on the stove.
He was dressed in a blue and white plaid flannel shirt his grandchildren had sent him. He wore this with a tee shirt, jeans and heavy work boots. He pulled a jacket off a hook by the front door, and slipped it on. Although the temperature in the Underground never varied, it always felt cold to him in the winter. He supposed it was age creeping into his bones rather than a winter chill from topside.
He checked himself in the mirror before he left. It was a big day and he wanted to look his best. He had gotten his hair cut and his mustache trimmed. His hair had receded quite a bit in the last ten years, and the lines on his face were much deeper, but he figured he didn’t look too bad. He had managed to get old without getting fat, and tried to keep up with contemporary styles without looking ridiculous. He had gotten a manicure, too. Marie might have laughed at that. He smiled, then grabbed the bouquet of margarites and walked out the front door.
A little sign on the door read, “Doctor Dylan Walsh, MD, OB-GYN.” Maintenance would be removing it tomorrow, but the brass had said he could keep the apartment. A perk for forty-five years of loyal service.
In the corridor, left would take him to the public tubes and transportation throughout the Tri-Sector area.
Doctor Walsh turned right.
He walked to an exit marked “Authorized Personnel Only”. He punched in his code and the door opened for him with a faint click.
He stepped into the service corridor just as Mac pulled up. He was driving one those little electric carts they all used. The front of the cart read “ZDC – Official Use Only” and a series of numbers and letters. It seemed like a lot of fanfare for a glorified golf cart.
“Morning, Doc,” Mac said, his bulk dwarfing the little vehicle.
Kyle “Mac” McCready offered him a beefy hand and hauled him up onto the passenger seat. Once the doctor was situated, Mac stepped on the accelerator and they sped off.
Mac talked the entire way to the access shaft. Non-stop.
Nothing important or compelling, just stats on the inter-sector magball playoffs and the coming election. Walsh could tell Mac was trying to distract him. He’d known the young man most of his life. There was almost no one under thirty in his sector that he hadn’t delivered and treated.
At an intersection Mac yielded to a flatbed vehicle carrying several figures wrapped in heavy white canvas and bound with bright yellow nylon ropes. The bundles were secured with colorfully striped bungee cords. One wrapped bundle thrashed spastically.
“B ‘n’ G,” Mac said, grinning, “Binding and grinding.” As he passed the flatbed he and the other driver, a fellow “zed-head”, gave each other the waggle-finger “hang loose” greeting.
Mac had grown from a skinny little kid with freckles to a big, beefy block of a man with a head the size and color of a canned ham. The freckles were still there, though, and Walsh knew the other zed-heads razzed Mac about them, calling him “Opie” and “Howdy Doody”. Jesus. Those TV characters were ancient when Walsh was a kid. He guessed that was the blessing (or curse) of a crystalline memtrix. Nothing of pop culture got lost,
just preserved, recycled, reused.
Like people.
They scooted along the corridor, which smelled vaguely like machine oil and cloves. Unlike the public ways which were a riot of colors, sounds and smells and lined with shops, food and service kiosks, ad-info screens, the service corridor was gray and unremarkable, its smooth contours sometimes erupting in a profusion of pipes and conduits, then becoming featureless again. The cart was smooth and quiet, its efficient little hum no match for Mac’s chattering.
If Mac was worried about what they were about to do, he didn’t admit it. Of course, nothing illegal would occur until the hatch had been breached.
They passed an access port for the grinders, and Walsh could hear the hollow thrumming as the big drums started up, waiting for the cargo now some one hundred yards behind them. He tried not to think of what happened beyond those walls. As a doctor he knew human corpses were just a collection of bone, blood and muscle. Rendering them down to their essential components before they reanimated was logical and efficient.
But as a husband and a father he wondered what might survive once life was over, what ephemeral and splendid energy might now be irrevocably linked to dead matter. Surely something had changed since The Incident. Dead was no longer dead, so what remained? What essence of a person was retained inside a zed? It was a question that had been argued since The Incident.
People still called them “zombies” in the early days, before activists claimed the term too pejorative and judgmental, ill-befitting a group that contained so many friends, relatives, civil servants and sports heroes. The more politically and emotionally neutral “zed” took its place. Thus, members of the former Zombie Retaliation Force were now members of the Zed Defense Corps. Walsh had never liked the term zombie, either, but for different reasons. He still remembered a time when a zombie was a term for a supernatural creature, someone raised from a grave to act as a servant. And “zed”? Colorless and without any poetry, which is just what the brass wanted. He himself preferred “shamblers” or “lurchers”. Some called them “wanderers”, but Walsh felt that was a little too romantic for a creature that wanted to feed on you.
Dark Valentines Page 13