With Fingers Gray and Cold

by E.W. Pierce

  *

  Her name was Michelle, and she was but a torrid memory and a rumpled pile of sheets by the time Marten dragged himself from bed around noon the following day. The water in the basin was cold - of course - but it did wonders to chase the sleep from his eyes. He washed his face and then shaved by the room’s tiny mirror.

  Stifling a yawn, he took the stairs down to the common room to sate the hunger gnawing and moaning inside his gut. His body ached as though he'd been in a fight, and in some sense he had, Marten supposed. Michelle hadn't been shy about showing her affections - his skin stung from the marks her nails had drawn across his back. He'd been grateful when she'd finally dozed off and let him be, and hadn't entirely been sad to find her gone when he awoke. He wasn’t the young man he pretended at, and days he awoke feeling as he did today, he allowed himself to admit to such heresy.

  Breaking his fast on old, dry oatcakes and watery ale, Marten asked the innkeeper about the girl and her whereabouts. Speaking in an emotionless drone, the innkeeper said Michelle was probably still home at her chores. He was noncommittal on the topic of whether she would return and seemed quite content to ignore Marten. He stood hunched over a single spot of the bar, endlessly rubbing it with a scrap of cloth.

  Marten pushed away from the bar and, snatching up his overcoat, went outside. He’d meant to have a little fun with the innkeeper, but the man’s flat eyes and dead demeanor had spoiled that. The townspeople had given him the same blank expressions. Aside from Michelle, everyone in Hodgersville seemed not-quite-there, almost like they were sleeping with their eyes open. Which made Michelle's behavior, welcome as it had been, all the more odd. Instincts borne of long years on the road, and many of those on the run, flared. Mayhap it was time to leave.

  Baron rushed up to greet him and nudged his hand hard, whining loudly. “Gods, boy - did I leave you outside all night?" He knelt on the hard ground and scratched the dog behind the ears. "Pity you, poor thing. Let's get you something to eat, huh?” Baron took a few steps back and barked loudly, then turned and raced toward the gate. The wagon sat next to the inn where he'd left it... he swore. Not only had he forgotten about Baron, he'd left the pony hooked to the harness all the long, cold night. Michelle must be some kind of devil, to make him forget his duties so easily, as though he were a bright-eyed cod on his first trip. He hurried toward the fence.

  Exiting through the gate, the dog turned not toward the wagon but for the stable. Marten hastened his strides, ignoring the pain in his legs. Had the innkeeper seen after his horse? It was almost too much to hope for, seeing how the man could scarcely be bothered to move from the bar's length of wood.

  The stable's interior was dark and smelled of moldy hay and ancient manure. There was another smell on the air, so thick Marten could taste it - metallic, like he'd sucked on a copper. Blood.

  He saw the horse’s leg first, protruding from the open stall door at a backwards angle. That is what he remembered most clearly in the days that followed - the bent, unmoving legs, and the slow realization that he wasn't going anywhere.

  Marten stepped forward, dreading to look but needing to see. That the horse was dead he did not doubt, knew for a certainty in fact before he looked within. He thought by seeing he would know what had happened and could rationalize it. He was wrong.

  The horse lay upon a circle of bloody ice. Its sides collapsed inward, looking hollowed out, torn skin hanging loosely. Thin frozen pink strips strung a gaping hole in its belly, glittering. Giant teeth pulled back in a horrible, forever grimace. Empty red sockets, the eyes gone.

  Something crunched underfoot as he took a step backward. A bone fragment. Part of the ribs, he thought.

  Marten took the matter to the innkeeper.  “Sounds like the work of wolves,” he said.

  “The work of wolves? Is that all you have to say? I demand recompense for the loss of my beast, and for the frazzled state of my mind.”

  “Of course, good sir! And so it shall be. I will be happy to reimburse you for your loss.”

  Marten nodded, his anger somewhat abated. “Who sells horseflesh in this ice pit of a town?”

  “Old man Herbert, up on the hill. A mite unusual, that one. Some strange tendencies. Still. He’ll put you to rights, good sir, have no fear on that account.”

  Marten stormed from the inn. Baron, standing patiently outside, bounded on his heels. A child stood beside his wagon, staring at the painted words. “You there - away from my wagon.”

  The child turned toward him. Swaddled though he was, Marten recognized the boy he’d given the firecrackers to. The boy traced the gilded lettering with his finger. “What does it say?”

  “Marten the fool, evidently.” The fence rattled as Marten slammed the gate closed. Baron ran up to greet the child, his nose questing into the folds of cloth about the boy’s chest. “Baron, come along.” Marten took a dozen steps up the road, surveying the horizon. There were a goodly number of hills within a short walk of town. Fiends take that worthless innkeeper… “You there. Boy. Do you know the way to Old man Herbert? He who trades in horseflesh?”

  Without looking at him, the boy said. “Yes. What does this say?”

  Marten sighed. “Marten the Magnificent’s Traveling Emporium. Potions and tonics, talismans and wards. Now, which way to the horse seller?”

  “What’s an emporium?”

  “It’s a kind of store. Now, if you would just point out the hill...”

  “A magical store?” The boy looked at Marten with wonder. “Can you help my Ma with her remembering?”

  “No. Yes.” Marten waved a hand. “What I can do is irrelevant. What I need to do is find a horse to pull my wagon. Now, the way to the horse seller?”

  The boy ran to join Marten. “I will show you.”

  “It would be better if you just pointed it out so I could be on my way,” Marten said. But the boy was already in motion, skipping ahead. Baron ran circles around him, tail wagging.

  Marten hurried after them.

  “What happened to your horse?”

  “Killed most grievously by wolves. Attacked the poor thing in its stall. Do you have a problem with wolves in these parts?”

  The boy giggled as Baron licked his hand. “Only the kind that walk like men.”

  “Werewolves?” He snorted laughter. Such was impossible, of course. Though he kept silver on the wagon all the same, for just such an eventuality. Now that he knew the angle to ply, he'd have these villagers for what valuables they owned.

  Marten stopped suddenly, looking back toward the inn. Encircled by a fence. The stable sat next to the fence and outside of it. Turning, he followed the progression of houses as the road climbed the hill; every one gated, and often times the fences seemed better kept than the house it surrounded. He seemed to recall some superstitions regarding fences, that werewolves couldn't come inside without being first invited. Or, perhaps it was vampires. It hardly mattered - the people of Hodgersville obviously put stock in such nonsense, but mayhap not for unjust cause. All the more reason to flee town with haste.

  The boy led him down a narrow alley between two streets. Walls of ice rose on either side, leaving but a sliver of sky visible overhead. Pressing in on them. Squeezing, with hands gray and cold. Marten found he could not breathe and shoved the boy in the back to hurry him along. The alley let out onto a smaller street. Crouched well out in the road, Marten hunched over to collect his breath.

  “There’s my house,” the boy said. It looked much the same as its neighbors - small and rounded, with a dark door and, of course, a stout-looking fence. No smoke curled from the chimney, or any of the other houses in the area. Dark and still, vaguely round, like a field of corpses blanketed in snow.

  “There are people living in all of these?”

  “No. Sometimes people go away for a while.”

  “Where do they go?”

  The boy shrugged. “I bet it’s someplace warm.”

  “Do they come back?”

  �
��Sometimes yes. One time, I went into Miss Cordela’s house because I was hungry and she makes the best potato pie. It was really cold inside. She was asleep but I thought she was dead so I ran away. Are you leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy looked away. He kicked a pebble across the road. “Everyone always leaves.”

  Marten looked at the boy's house. Had his mother left, too? "You said your mother forgets...?"

  Kneeling on the road, his face buried in Baron's coat, the boy did not respond. Marten left it alone. "Come, the winds are picking up. Onto the horseman."

  Old man Herbert’s home stood atop a squat hill just outside of town. A large, two-story building with a stone base, the timbers sagged inward under the weight of the roof, and some of the shutters hung askew. But the chimney coughed smoke into the sky, so at least someone was home. Adjacent to the house, a dozen broad horses milled about a fenced pen. A narrow man in farmer’s overalls stood inside the fence, his cheeks red from the cold. Long white hair fell across his face as he labored with a bulky sack of grain.

  “Hail-o,” Marten called. “Might you be Herbert, the horse seller?”

  The old man didn’t answer. Huffing hard, he upended the grain in a trough.

  Marten leaned over the high fence. “I said...”

  “I heard ya just fine the first time,” the old man interrupted. He watched a moment as some of the horse ambled over and bent to the trough. Folding the spent bag neatly, the old man