Finally they reached the top where the female confidently opened a flat wooden barrier and entered a darkened interior. He needed no prompting and followed her lead eagerly, becoming aroused in his turn. He was too young to have ever had an encounter of this kind before, even when he had still been part of the pack, but he found that his altered body retained the instinctive behaviour inherited from generations of forbears.
He seized her from behind with those altered prehensile forelimbs he was beginning to find so useful, drew her to him and began fumbling with the suddenly restrictive cloth coverings they both wore.
This evidently did not please the female, or perhaps she judged the courtship too brief, for she struggled to free herself, yipping something that sounded like,
‘furcrissakebigguy, gimmeachanztaundresscantcha?’
He felt she was escaping his dominance and lowering his head he nipped her sharply on the neck to remind her. He had reckoned without the fragile vulnerability of the hides of these creatures, however, and even the small blunt teeth of his altered shape broke the skin and drew a gout of blood.
The smell confused him and drove all thoughts of sexual satisfaction out of his mind. It appeared the female was of a similar opinion for she let out a shrill cry and continued howling at a pitch and volume that had him backing away with both forelimbs blocking his ears.
‘Yewcrazifukinsombitchlookitwhatyewdone,’ it sounded like, and ‘muthur’v’godimebleedin!’ her lips drawn back from her teeth in a way that was itself a rejection even without the wide blazing eyes.
There was a pounding of feet outside and a confused outcry in mingled male and female voices, ‘MARIWHASRONGARYEWOKAY,’ ‘SUMBUDYCALTH’FUKINCOPS’. In his mind now there was nothing but the urge to escape, and his frantically seeking eyes lit on a narrow opening in the wall through which light could be seen. He blundered toward it only to rebound from something cold and invisible that cracked with a noise like ice breaking. Behind him he heard the wooden panel being opened to admit a loud and angry pack of the creatures, and desperately he struck the incomprehensible barrier with both forelimbs gathering up as he did so two lengths of fabric that hung alongside.
With a brittle crash the barrier gave way and he plummeted into space, gathering himself into a protective ball as well as he could. The fall was not far, only onto the yielding surface of an adjoining structure, and struggling free of the enveloping fabric that had saved him from being injured by the shards of the barrier he righted himself and began to run.
It was not far to the edge of the flat surface, and after a brief look down he felt he could manage the leap to the ground. He landed safely as behind him the noises from the habitation began to fade and looking around swiftly to orient himself he began to run.
His hindlegs made no sound beyond a soft padding on the stone of the path, and when the glowing balls of light from one of the moving shapes approached down the path in front of him, he dropped into a crouch and loped off into the dark space alongside.
Immediately behind him he heard a loud hooting sound that might have come from a gigantic hunting bird, and a flashing light stabbed where he had been a moment before.
He found he was on grass once more, and moreover in a wide open space lit softly by the westering light in the sky. Consulting his directional sense he set off for his lair in the rock cave, crossing the space, while far behind him he heard the baffled barks of the pursuing creatures, who seemed to have lost his scent, growing fainter in the distance.
He was panting hard by the time he found the big tree and leaned against it trying to ease the ache in his side, but the respite was only momentary for approaching fast he heard the hooting sound growing in volume, accompanied by a medley of brightly coloured lights. Taking a deep breath he tensed and leaped high for the thick branch he remembered, drew himself up and over and dropped gratefully into the safety of his known territory.
The sky was beginning to lighten and already he could feel the tingle and quick stabbing pains that heralded the reversal of the change, and he wasted no time in making his way to his enclosure and scrambling down the rocky wall. Disgustedly he rid himself of the suddenly foul smelling fabric covering and crawled into his familiar cave, curling up on his bed of grasses and leaves where the change enveloped him in an ocean of pain as he returned to his natural form.
The security guard was reluctant to open, being still mazed from snatching an unauthorized nap toward the end of his shift. The two patrol men however, the lights still revolving and flashing potently on their parked cruiser, left him in no doubt as to the superior weight of their authority, and eventually, reluctantly, he used his keys on the two locks that secured the tall iron entrance gates. He stared after them as they pushed past, enviously eyeing the equipment dangling from their weapons belts. ‘Cool shit!’ he thought to himself, wishing he had the nerve to attempt the Police Academy entrance exam. The two officers separated and moved around the perimeter past the main building, expertly playing the beams of their flashlights back and forth, one hand on their holstered weapons.
The Security guard followed them at a discreet distance, until finally, unable to bear being ignored on his own post, he asked suddenly, ‘Why ya lookin’ in here for ’im?’
‘What makes you assume it’s a man we’re searching for?’ one of them snapped, with automatic suspicion; then, taking pity on the gaping confusion on the youth’s face, relented. ‘It’s just some guy assaulted a woman over on Tenth,’ he said. ‘Witnesses said he was wearing a Zoo Keeper’s coverall.’
‘Hey Sam, over here’ called his partner, standing by a small shed whose door hung loosely open.
‘That’s where they keep the stuff they wear to clean the cages and shit,’ piped the guard, eagerly informative.
The one called Sam played his torch around the interior, noting the empty peg in one corner. ‘Looks like one’s missing.’
His partner turned to the guard in the mock menacing manner of police the world over when facing an intimidated member of the public. ‘You seen anyone suspicious hanging around here lately, son?’
The guard swallowed and asked timidly, ‘What he s’pose to look like?’
Sam’s partner shared a quick wink with Sam before replying with studied casualness, ‘Oh, a big bloke, about six foot two, barefoot, with a full beard and staring yellow eyes and big sharp teeth, the witnesses say. You seen anybody around meeting that description?’
‘Jeezus, no fuckin’ way,’ yelped the guard, looking around nervously and edging closer to the two officers as they continued the search. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of steadily decreasing tension, it was Sam who found a scrap of cloth at the edge of one of the pit enclosures. He called to his partner and both men played their flashlight beams into the deep interior, almost immediately finding a crumpled garment on the rocky floor with ‘Metropolitan Zoo’ stencilled on the back.
‘Do you suppose he climbed down there?’ Sam’s partner asked uneasily, visualising himself as junior officer being given the task of retrieving the evidence.
The guard chortled suddenly, happy to be the possessor of superior knowledge.
‘What’s so funny?’ Sam enquired patiently
‘If the fucking guy climbed down there,’ the guard explained, grinning, ‘he ain’t fucking coming up again anytime soon. Ol’ Loopy be havin’ him for lunch!’
As if to corroborate his observation, a large grey head poked out of the cave entrance, and two eyes glowing green in the flashlight beams surveyed them calmly before their owner withdrew from sight.
Sam’s partner said, ‘Holy Jesus Christ,’ in what almost might have been mistaken for reverence. ‘You don’t suppose. . . .’
Sam continued to play his flashlight beam around the rocky pile that dominated the enclosure. ‘Nah,’ he said finally. ‘No blood or other signs of a struggle. Looks to me as if he just abandoned the jumpsuit and kept going. He could still be hiding out around here somewhere. Put in a call to all u
nits in the area to continue to keep a lookout, could be naked, possibly dangerous, blah blah blah, you know the routine.’ He returned to the guard as his partner pulled his phone from its holster and started exchanging coded messages with the squawking voice on the other end. ‘Loopy?’ Sam said with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows.
In answer the guard switched his own flashlight on and played the beam over the rectangular sign fixed to the railing. Sam snorted in amusement as he read, ‘Canis Lupus, Timber Wolf, native of North America and Eurasia. This specimen is two years old and was captured. . . .’
Concealed within the comforting darkness of his cave, he curled up nose to tail and prepared to sleep. He felt much calmer now that the change had restored him to his natural form. He ignored the droning voices from up above, assuming that they would soon depart and leave him in peace, and his last coherent thought before sleep claimed him was that in the main tonight’s expedition had been highly successful. The next time, he told himself, he would be better prepared.
ROLF
I thank ’ee, Masters, I thank ’ee, ’tis a rare cold night out there, by’r Lady, bitter cold. Nobbut a corner by the fire be all I need, and if there be a bit o’ crust left over . . . ah that’s generous of ’ee, mortal generous. There bain’t many as would give an old cripple hearth room in these troubled times, by Saint Crispin, there ain’t!
Yes, I did name ’ee Masters, I did so, for all I knowed you to be but apprentice masons ever’ one. How? Why, I was once one meself, though you might not credit it now. Ah, that fire do feel welcome on these old bones.
Now I mind me, ’tis custom when you be a guest, to give sommat in return, aye? Well, I’ve naught in these by’r Lady rags but a long life lived, though many a tale could I tell if I was minded . . . what? Ee’d like a bit o’ story, would ’ee? Oh, aye, on such a midwinter night as this, ’tis made for story tellin’, and did I but have a drop of ale to wet my tongue . . . ahh, young Master, that is good on ’ee, a proper brown ale ’tis, by Saint Dennis. Oh aye, many’s the tale could I tell, me that’s wandered my weary way o’er half the world, tales o’ foreign kings, an’ beautiful ladies as was loved by noble knights . . . ah, ’ee do laugh now, young Masters, but one day ’ee sha’n’t, or I be a musselman.
So what would ’ee? . . . I mind one, ’twas a tale o’ a magical goose, laid eggs o’ solid gold, so it did, ’til one day a great ol’ ogre. . . . what? ’Ee wants to hear about them as carves life into cold stone, and raises towers tall as the sky, do ’ee? A tale o’ the Freestone Masons, like ’ee would be, well, well, by the blessed Saint Agnes, who’d a’ thought it? Well, sit ’ee down, young Masters, sit ’ee down.
Be all ready to hear? Only—’tis a long tale this, an ’tis distractin’, as ’ee knows, when the fire do burn low . . . ah, that’s the thing, a rare bit of the old oak, carpenter lads’ leavings be it? Silent as the grave I be . . .
Now this go back many a’ year, young sirs, I mind me, back when I was just such a lad as ’ee be, and apprentice mason n’ all, fighting for bits out o’ the common bowl, learning the Craft on any scrap o’ stone we could filch from the yard, working with tools so short ’twarn’t but hardly enough to hold ’twixt finger and thumb, aye, ’ee knows, do ’ee? And the back aching by end o’ day and arms fit t’ fall off from sawin’ sawin’ sawin’ on them great blocks o’ stone . . . I sees ’ee all nodding, aye, don’t nothin’ change, do it? And old sun beatin’ down fit to flay the skin off ’ee backs in summer, and the north wind ’awhistlin’ through cracks in the boards come winter, just as it do now . . . aye, ’tis a hard road this, mortal hard, to learn the Craft, ’ee knows . . .
Now there were this lad name of Rolf, apprentice same as the rest, only he weren’t satisfied with the hard road, see, was ever in a rush t’ be made Master, was Rolf. Now, ’ee’d think it enough labour to be carving the face level and straight when ’ee has a block to get ready for setting, does I say true? But this Rolf I’m a’ tellin’ of, he’d put a bit ’o his own stuff on the setting face, after he’d levelled an’ trued it, not so’s anyone could see after when the mortar was on, but just for hisself, to try a bit o’ carving, like.
Only this one morning, see, along comes the Master Mason along with another fellow all done up in a black robe so’s only his face showed, a face whiter than death, with these dark, dark eyes like holes in a vellum sheet, ’n mouth red like as was cut with a knife.
Master were showing him the works, he were, and Master he sees Rolf’s bit o’ stuff . . . ’twas a little bird, I mind me, like a finch, all to the life like ’twas ready to take wing . . . ah, sorry, beg pardon, young Masters, I gets to seeing things as they were then, so sharp and clear, and now when they ain’t going to be no more little birds, ever again . . . what’s that? No, I bain’t not crying bless ’ee, ’tis but the smoke makes these old eyes water . . . the story? Warn’t I just about to tell ’ee?
So Master Mason, he looks down at what Rolf had done, an’ Rolf sees he’s catched proper, like, and he looks up at Master, kind o’ scared and proud at the same time, and Master he draws back a fist the size o’ a beechwood mallet and a good deal harder t’ boot, as we all knowed, and young Rolf he sort o’ closes his eyes, well ’ee would, wouldn’t ’ee?
Only, the fist don’t come down, and Rolf he looks and there’s the Master, with his face all red and his big fist in the air ready to strike, and there’s the Worthy in the black cloak has him by the wrist with one hand, and I’m telling ’ee, that weren’t no worker’s hand, with the fingers thin an sorta’ spider-like, with these knobbly knuckles like a bunch o’ dead white twigs, an there’s the Master like as he had his hand caught in a bear trap, so he does, and a’ pulling and a’ tugging trying to get free, and weren’t the air like sulphur burning with the oaths he were saying?
And the Worthy in black, he says, calm as anything, ‘Hold, Master Thomas,’ he says, and by’r Lady that were the first we heard he had any other name but Master. And the Master, he lowers his hand, looking kind o’ white, and the Worthy lets him go like it were nothing to best the strongest man in the county, and he says, ‘This boy is possessed of a rare talent,’ in this soft deep voice, t’was like a bell tolling, fair to send the shivvers down ’ee. ‘What might he not do with a little encouragement?’
And Master, he says, sort o’ hearty, like as he weren’t really holding his wrist and a’rubbing of it under his cloak, he says, ‘Why, I was just saying t’other day, young Rolf here’s nigh ready to be made Journeyman.’
Then the Worthy in black, he says, ‘Just so,’ he says, ‘Will you give him to me, for a year and a day, to learn all that I can teach?’
Well, Master, he don’t much care for this way of doings, ‘Bain’t proper,’ he says, ‘Boy’s ’prenticed to me, ’tis me should set him his ’prentice pieces, ’fore he be made Journeyman.’
The Worthy, he sorta nods, like as he knowed Master’d say that, an’ he takes Master by the arm, and walks him a ways aside, to speak private, like, but I tell ’ee, in that old shed you could’ve heard a tin penny drop, an all of us with ears up on stalks, so Master turns, and he bellows something fierce, like as we was all a pack of good fer nothing layabouts and there was all them stones to be made ready to lay come morrow, ’ee knows the tune, I ’spect, so we ups tools and sets to work, but I seed Rolf hammering away but with one eye cocked just as we all had.
So there’s Master, shaking his head, like as Rolf is dear to him like a son, and he can’t bear to part with him, and the Worthy Gentleman, he just nods, and nods, and then he holds up his hand, like the priest do, blessing like, only ’tweren’t no blessing ’cause with t’other hand he hauls out his purse, and he grabs on Master’s wrist again with them spider fingers, and he gives him the purse and folds his hand o’er it, and pats Master’s hand like as if he had give a sweet to a child. Master, he just stands there, looking like a hammered bullock what don’t know he be dead yet.
Then the Worthy, he beckons to Rolf,
and Rolf he comes quick, hammer ’n chisel ’n all, and the Worthy says, ‘Drop that rubbish. We will find you some proper tools.’ And Rolf done so. Then he says to Rolf, ‘Hold out your hands, boy.’ Rolf, he done that, palms up. Then the Worthy, he takes Rolf’s hands in his, and he curls those long spidery fingers over his, and I seed Rolf go pale as a chasuble, and I mind those fingers was colder ’n ice, yet burned like hot coals, so that Rolf he would as lief as taken his hands back, if only he could have, and the Worthy looks Rolf in the eye, and he says, ‘You are mine now, apprentice, to come and to go, to do and let be, as I command, from this day forward.’ So he says, and each word was like a Smith’s hammer on fetters. Then he turns, with that black cloak like smoke around him, and off he goes, with poor Rolf stumbling after like a tethered goat.
That were the last any of us seed of Rolf for nigh on a year, maybe, but one day he told me how ’twas, as we was always closer than brothers, him and me. Seems as he were set to work at once, and the labour he knowed with Master were like childer games, and no mistake. The Worthy says to him straight off, points to a bit of stone and says, carve me a rose there, boy.
Rolf done it, the rose, the stem and two leaves, cutting deep so’s it seemed to rise from the surface. Three hours it took, and when the Worthy next came by he points to it, all proud like, and says, ‘It’s done, Master.’
Well, the Worthy sneers with that blood red slit of a mouth, and he says, ‘It is started, I grant you. Now finish it.’
So Rolf he goes back to work, carving with the smallest chisel, and smoothing with the finest grit stone, and when three more hours has passed the Worthy comes again, and again he sneers cold as ice and he says, ‘Have I not told you to finish it? Make it live, boy, or it will be the worse for you.’
The Girl with the Peacock Harp Page 26