by Adam Dreece
As he turned, Elly saw the once piercing green eyes were now emerald windows to a shattered soul. He was a man undone. A strange smile crossed his lips as he and Elly made eye contact. “It is… good to see you are alive,” he said, his voice was oddly hesitant. His eyes darted away, bouncing around the room before settling on the window. “Elly… You must fix Tee. She’s taken my wolf, but she’s using it. I can’t get it back until she’s fixed. I need it back, because without it, who am I?” He rubbed his cheek, confused. “Who am I?”
Elly felt Tee tense. “Tee, is he insane?”
Tee turned and glared at LeLoup.
LeLoup recoiled at her gaze. “No! No! Give me back my wolf! Please, don’t eat me. Please!” He covered his face and looked out the window again. “You need to get well, and then I will take it back. You can’t keep it.”
Elly saw the fragile look in Tee’s eyes and nodded. She couldn’t imagine what had happened—why he was there, why Tee had that look—but Elly knew it was now her turn to be the defender. “Go,” she said to LeLoup.
“One day I will find you, Tee… And… and I will become me again,” he said, leaving.
CHAPTER FOUR
Da Boss
The tea cup took off out of Franklin’s grip and smashed on the wall. “YIG!” he cursed, glaring at the fading spasm in his hand. They’d been coming and going ever since Tee had shocked him, and were strong enough to shake him awake in the night. Every spasm added fuel to his fiery temperament.
“That’s four cups, kid. You’re getting expensive,” said Stefano, annoyed, rubbing his dark, stubbly face. The henchman’s arms and neck were as thick as they were hairy. “Don’t throw the rest of the breakfast, okay? I’m still working on it.”
Franklin glared at the newly shattered cup through his long blond bangs, which hid the black eye from Elly. He turned from the plate of dry toast, the plate of sausage, and finally to the tea pot. No matter how many cups he destroyed, the pot wouldn’t care.
“Hey, hands off the pot,” said Stefano, knocking Franklin’s hands back. “You were doing that mumbling nonsense thing again, kid. I heard you say that girl’s name this time. Geez kid, look, she zapped you. She zapped all of us. You’ll get better.”
“And if I don’t?” asked Franklin angrily. “I’m an inventor. I need my hands, and no distractions. I can’t be flailing about like an idiot. I have every right—”
“Hey!” yelled Stefano, slamming his hand down on the table rattling the dishes. “You listen up now, kid. I’ve had enough of your whining. Suck it up, or put your anger to use, that’s what my Ma used to say. The other option is I just snap that neck of yours like a… like a… a twig. Either way, get quiet—and quick.”
Franklin was all ready to unleash whatever fury he had in him when he realized that Stefano was right, in his own simplistic way. There was no point seething with anger and twisting himself up more and more, especially when there was no Tee around to direct it at.
Stefano pointed with his thumb at the tea stains. “You better hope that LeLoup shows up, because let me tell you, Franky, Ruffo and I, we ain’t paying for jack.”
Franklin frowned. “Does jack mean nothing? Did you just imply you were going to pay for everything?”
Stefano’s fists made a noise like tightening leather just as Ruffo walked in. He was bigger than Stefano. His face was clean shaven and his shoulder length brown-red hair was a wet mess. Like Franklin and Stefano, he was dressed exactly like he was the day before, just more wrinkled. “That crackpot LeLoup here yet?” he asked.
“No,” said Stefano, disgusted.
Ruffo cursed, looking at the breakfast. “The guy’s not coming back, then.” He dropped himself in a chair. It shook as it struggled to hold together under his wall-like frame. “This LeLoup guy, he’s missing some cards, you know? What’s with this thing he’s got for that sixteen-year-old girl? I mean, that’s not right.”
“Thirteen,” corrected Franklin. “She’s thirteen.”
“Geez, really?” asked Ruffo, smoothing his hair.
“I am dead certain,” replied Franklin, rubbing the black eye Elly had given him.
Ruffo rubbed his face in embarrassment. “We got our butts kicked by a thirteen-year-old girl? Man, she’s got a lot of anger and skill for a kid, but still.” He drummed his fingers on the table for a few seconds. “Okay, the official story, though, if any word of this gets out, she was sixteen.”
“Eighteen,” offered Stefano.
“Yeah, eighteen,” replied Ruffo. “That’s better.”
“Yeah, and there were three of her,” proposed Franklin with a half-smile.
Stefano nudged him with a laugh. “Hey, someone’s getting it.”
Franklin spread his fingers flat and wide on the table. He stared at them while the two thugs continued their banter. Finally, he interrupted them. “So, am I your prisoner or not? We have to assume that LeLoup’s not coming back, so—”
“Hey, quiet,” said Stefano, smacking Franklin in the chest, nearly knocking him clean over. “If the innkeeper hears that, she’s going to come after us.”
“You guys can take her,” said Franklin, trying not to look like Stefano had just knocked the wind out of him, which he had.
Ruffo leaned across the table. “That’s not the point, Franky. Do you know why we’re in here without paying upfront? Because this lady knows who we are, and she’s got friends that are ten times scarier than us or LeLoup. Heck, she’s twenty times scarier than us. We do wrong by her, or make her go missing, we’re looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives. And that’s if we’re lucky.”
Franklin glanced at Stefano and was surprised to see the same expression of serious concern. “Really? I wouldn’t have guessed that. I mean, she’s a petite lady, who’s what, fifty? Sixty? Renee doesn’t sound like a big tough name to me.”
Stefano leaned in. “I heard she used to run the Carvalho gang years ago.”
“Were they with the Fare or Tub?” asked Franklin.
“The who?” asked Stefano, confused. He looked at Ruffo. “Tubs? I’m trying to educate the kid and he’s talking to me about bathing?”
Franklin rubbed the bridge of his nose as he recalled that the Tub and Fare were called secret societies for a reason. He gestured for Stefano to continue.
“The Carvalhos used to run things, unofficial like, in the northern part of Farkees. This lady, Renee—I heard she started as a slave in Kaban, and somehow made her way up. Did some nasty evil stuff on the way, and no one, let me tell you, no one messes with that old lady.”
Franklin couldn’t believe how impressed the guys seemed. “Well, that sounds—”
Ruffo cut him off with a gesture. “It’s scary, that’s what it is, Franky. Now she runs this place. I don’t know why, but I ain’t asking. Maybe she wanted a change of scenery, maybe she’s been exiled. Maybe she just up and retired.”
Rocking his chair on its back legs, Franklin flipped his gaze between the two guys. He kept expecting them to finally crack and admit they were joking, but so far, he couldn’t detect anything. “So a little lady like that could run some big… what did you call it, gang? Is that like an army?”
“Yeah, I suppose,” said Ruffo, scratching his head. “Don’t judge her by the way she looks at first glance. Nah, this lady, she’s an example of you got to look at what’s on the inside. She’s got brains.”
“Determination and ruthlessness, too,” added Stefano. “Without those, she’d have snapped like a… a…”
“A twig?” offered Franklin.
“Yeah,” said Stefano, sitting back. “Like a twig.”
Franklin mulled over what they were saying. “When the Yellow Hoods and I fought the Red Hoods and some soldiers, I saw much of the same thing, I guess. I also saw how elementary fighting was, how it was simply about timing and basic anatomy. Hit someone when they were ready for it? It had no effect. But even a small fist from a child like Mounira, at the right moment in the right
place? You could go down like a sack of—”
“Twigs,” interjected Stefano.
“Ah… sure,” replied Franklin.
Ruffo scoffed. “Fighting is a lot of things, but it’s not easy or about brainy stuff like that. It’s about hitting a man where it counts, hard” said Ruffo.
“Or shooting him,” offered Stefano.
Ruffo gestured that the point was a good one and took another bite of salty sausage.
“I bet I could take you down,” said Franklin squarely to Ruffo. “I bet I could take you down with a single hit.” He kept his sweaty hands below the table, out of sight.
Ruffo laughed, nearly spitting out his mouthful of breakfast. “No way.”
Franklin licked the side of his mouth, his eyes moving between the two men. Leaning forward, he said, “If I do, you guys listen to my plan. Just listen to it. If you like it, you follow me.”
“We’re going to listen to some punk kid? Why would we do that?” asked Stefano.
“It’ll never happen,” said Ruffo, laughing.
“I know, I know—but still, why would we do that?” he asked, crossing his arms and glaring at Franklin. “Come on, kid, tell me why.”
“Because I have a plan, and, much like Renee, I’m a lot scarier on the inside than I look,” replied Franklin.
“Ha,” said Stefano.
Just as Ruffo stood and gestured for Franklin to take his best shot, Franklin leaped forward and hit him in the ear for all that he was worth. Ruffo went down immediately.
Stefano grabbed Franklin with one hand and put a knife to his throat. “What the yig did you do?” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Ruffo, you okay?”
Ruffo groaned in response, and then a hand showed up on the table, followed eventually by the top of Ruffo’s head. “What’d you do, you little pargo? My world’s spinning,” he said, his words coming out slowly.
Franklin grinned proudly. He’d risked everything and it had worked, at least so far. He felt compelled to show them just how smart he was. “I noticed that you were wincing every now and then, moving your head to the right. That meant you had a nasty ear infection. So I—”
“You slammed me,” interrupted Ruffo, carefully crawling back into his chair. “Yeah, I get it. Let him go, Stefano. Let’s hear what the genius has to say. Maybe he’s not as dumb as he looks.”
“By the way, I have an idea how to fix that ear,” offered Franklin, realizing his position with the two thugs wasn’t yet secure.
“What’s this plan of yours?” asked Ruffo.
Franklin interlocked his fingers and leaned forward, his head down. He let a few seconds pass to build up the moment. He then looked at them and smiled. “We don’t really need LeLoup to do his plan, now do we?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Death of the Hound
The early evening light felt harsh to Gretel as she attempted to open her eyes. Slowly sitting up, she saw the Hound sitting on the grass ten feet away, lost in thought facing the downing sun. He was wearing clothes she didn’t recognize.
For a while she watched him and the sun. She asked softly, “What are you thinking about?”
“Where we go from here,” he replied, standing and coming to sit beside her. “How are you feeling?”
Gretel sat up slowly. “Better. I’m a bit hungry and thirsty.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I was worried you weren’t going to ever wake up.” He stepped away and then returned with some bread and a wineskin. “It’s filled with water.”
“I can’t believe it’s already the end of the day,” said Gretel, taking a drink from the wineskin.
“It’s been two days,” answered the Hound.
Gretel was surprised. “Is that why you have those clothes?”
He glanced down at them. “I didn’t steal them. I was tempted to, but… you made me feel like that would be wrong. I mean, I know it’s kind of wrong in my head, but that hasn’t stopped me in a long, long time.
“The route near here is really bumpy. The first merchant paid me with these clothes, the other two in bits of food and water. I also got that blanket you’re wrapped in,” he said, pointing awkwardly.
“Oh,” she replied. She liked how he had an air of polite distance, a shyness that was in sharp contrast to his brutish appearance and her first impressions of him. “How are you feeling?”
He rolled up a cream colored sleeve and stared at the scarred arm underneath. “I can’t feel much. It’s… going to take some getting used to. Touch my arm, tell me how it is.”
Hesitantly, Gretel reached over and gently put her hand on his arm. The skin was hot and rough. She moved her fingers along the scar ridges, each feeling like the small stone mountain of pain. “Can you feel any of that?”
“A little,” he said, taking his arm back.
She crossed her legs. “The woman who sold me the salves told me that the feeling should return, in time.”
“I hope so, but maybe she was just trying to sell you more salves,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be cynical. If it doesn’t, I’ll live.” With an awkward swallow, he turned and looked into her light brown eyes. “I need to know something. Why did you save me? You stole from Hans to pay for salves. You nearly got killed. Why save me? I’m nobody.”
Gretel thought back to that moment when they found him, bloody and burned with wreckage all about. “Did you want to die?” she asked, not ready to hear the answer.
“I don’t know. I just remember wanting the pain to stop.”
She looked into eyes that had once harbored so much pain and anguish, but were now home to tender confusion. “You came to our home and ended Mother’s reign of terror. You humbled Hans, something I never thought possible. Then when I saw you lying there, broken and beaten, cold and scared, I felt something strange. I wasn’t sickened, as I expected, but… I don’t know, I felt connected to you… like I could be whole, somehow, with you.”
The Hound nodded, absorbing what she’d said but not sure what to make of it. He broke off a piece of bread and handed it to her. “When you were asleep, you kept talking about the Yellow Hood. Sometimes you called her the Yellow Fury, sometimes the Yellow Sorrow.” He shifted uncomfortably, not sure he should even be talking about the subject. “That’s the girl who went crazy after you killed that guy on the horse, right?”
Gretel’s face went pale, her eyes lowered.
For a while, they sat in silence watching the diminishing brilliance of the sunset.
With an awkward sigh, Gretel answered, “The Ginger is a strange thing. It was as if during the battle with the Yellow Hoods, it lost its grip on me. I remember the sick joy of killing that man and seeing her erupt. But then she looked at me, and I felt horror and regret for what I’d done. It was in that moment that I became me again. I was instantly ashamed of who I’d been.” She stared at the ground.
“I understand,” said the Hound. “I have many layers of shame, many lives I’ve walked away from in hopes of finding a new one that would let me be better than the last. Each one seemed to be worse than the one before it.”
Gretel took his hand. “I hate that feeling. When I was taking care of you, I felt like all of that didn’t matter.”
“You helped me. You’re a good person,” he offered.
“Am I? Does one good act clean the slate? I don’t trust myself,” she said. “I don’t know who I am.”
The Hound hung his head. “I hope it means something. It’s got to.”
They watched the sun bury itself below the horizon.
Gretel wondered if he could feel her hand in his. Despite his wounds and strange tufts of sprouting hair in his otherwise bald face, he was beautiful to her. “What’s your name?”
“The Hound,” he replied without thinking.
“No, your real name,” she pressed.
He glanced at her, then back at the sky. “It’s The Hound.”
She was about to push harder when a silly thought popped to mind. “Well, if
you’re going to be like that, then you have to call me Regretel.”
He laughed, surprising himself. Turning to her, he saw the image that he’d focused on to fight the pain. The face that never failed to light up his soul. The fifteen year difference between them felt like he’d simply taken longer to get to a worthy point in his life.
“You had a name once. What was it?” she asked gently.
He stared at her, unsure of himself. “I’ve gone by a lot of names, had a lot of different lives. But my first name… was Raymond.”
Gretel rubbed her nose and sniffled. “I like that name.”
The Hound shrugged. “I don’t remember the guy.”
“Well, you aren’t the Hound anymore. He died in that crash. He was hairy, and chained to whoever made those shocking gloves. You have no master anymore, you are nobody’s lapdog,” said Gretel, thinking. “How about Ray?”
He frowned at her. “Why would I call myself that?”
“Because you give me hope. You’re my Ray of Hope.”
He frowned even more. “I don’t know if I like that. I’ve never cared for word jokes.”
“You liked Regretel,” she pointed out.
He laughed. “Yeah. I guess so. Maybe the Hound is dead.”
She smiled. “I’ve decided. You’re Ray. Can you live with it?”
“I think so.”
Reaching over, he pulled a two foot long darkly wrapped item into his lap. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” he asked, knowing he was killing the mood but wanting to get it off his chest. “Or do we leave the past in the past?”
She stared at the ground, and nodded nervously.
He removed the cloth wrapping, revealing Hans’ broken rapier. “I didn’t kill him. I was tempted, though. I honestly didn’t know how you’d feel about it, so I left him severely injured. I think I broke his arm, maybe his leg, too.”