“No, Bea. But thank you.” His childhood friend dipped her head and batted her eyes, then vanished back into the ward. Adam tucked the letter into his coat, and leaping off the steps found Beatrice at the window waving goodbye. He raised his hand back with a smile, wishing his friend to accompany him.
The king felt replete entering the woods, freed from an orgy of sorrows. As he pressed against the roots and succored the crisp scent of pine, the thought of his late parents returned. Where did they go? Who did they fight? The land conceded to him; he was at liberty to deconstruct his kingdom and erect it in his own image. But what shape and form? He was a fatherless child who wore the crown. A monstrosity. His reign was a child that died in utero, something dead waiting to flush out. If he was king it was in spirit only, his throne an electric chair, the crown an electrode, his servants living bodies of poverty. But as he dug deeper into the woods these morose feelings began to shed. Light broke across his face with the sun upholding the mane, decrying all those who could not beset their eyes upon Adam as easy as it shone its warmth on him.
Then Adam thought of Beatrice, Beautiful Beatrice Pablo would say. The king remembered Beatrice pinning her hair with ruby pins, learning the Waltz in her father’s arms. She was common, a familiar smile made exotic in a world of calloused hearts.
Then he saw the village where the memories of Beatrice fell like scythe cut wheat. He felt naked outside the kingdom walls. Adam stopped and listened to the children tailor the breeze with laughter as they chased windborne dandelions through the field
He pulled the letter from his pocket, smelling the rose, and looked about for a home set on the greenbelt. Jakob described the cottage, about it being out of the way, quaint, something with an oval door like a misshaped button.
Then it happened. Her. The most beautiful girl. She was a goddess among mortals. The sight of her cleansed his soul of every morbid fiber, purging the longing for his parents, for a place to call home. Of Beatrice. Nothing, he swore, would ever stir him as vivaciously as her beauty. This angel could put spit and mud in the eye of his heart and cure his monstrosity.
Who was she?
Adam followed a path in the woods to a meadow isolating the hutch. He removed the dagger and staked the letter to the door. Turning back he saw that beautiful girl in the vineyard and ran back into the woods to hide in the brush.
She approached the door like a portal to eternity, something intrusive to her known universe, and touched the dagger, the presage of death. She drew the blade from the door, and with the letter disappeared inside the home. A sense of wonder beheld him as he laid back into the tree and clutched his heart.
He fell in love with the beautiful Gabrielle.
~ 9
Ice formed on the windowsill and flurry drifted down the chimney to the mantle where it melted on nodes of glowing coal. Adam stirred on his throne, feasting his eyes upon the chairs, the linen draped table, scouring for any crumb, a morsel of bread, a dried bead of fat dripped from an oven roasted fowl. The cold ebbed at his limbs. His gut moiled with hunger and frost danced like powdered sugar in the wind, vaporizing the landscape in clean sheets of white. The king listened to blackened branches break in the snowfall, these mausoleums of dead Spring, and pulled the wool blanket tighter across his chest. Suits of armor adorned the hall, each a disposed friend; winds rattled through the helmet vents and gave their dead lips voices in its echo.
Schubert entered the hall holding a wooden bowl in a cerise cloth. A frosty brow sat like winter upon his eyes, and reddened cheeks turned plum as he approached the king.
“Thank you, Schubert” Adam said. The old chef stopped short of the throne, tantalizing the king's hunger with formality, and bowed. Adam ground his fingers into the armrest like serpents auguring into the dust.
“Sire, don't be displeased with me. We have so little food, this terrible, terrible winter. My hands are old and defy me; the only thing of my youth left to me is defiance, and it was left in my hands. I can hardly control them. And now this cold has stolen most feeling. I slid the knife into my own flesh, sire. And though a petty thing, the blood mingled in the cream. Can I throw away what little food we have left? But can I serve the king this, this–” he stuttered into tears.
Adam rose from the throne and stepped down the plateau, feeling his muscles grind like iron clogs churning the cold in his marrow. He wanted to thrash, to scream and consume the void with shouts of rage, to charge and ransom the bowl with one harsh swoop. The hunger was implacable.
“Schubert!” Adam swallowed the frosty air. “You've done well. Please” he said with an outstretched hand.
The chef bowed and walked the supper up the steps. Sprouts swam in the coral and half a potato sat as an anchor to the school of peas. Adam’s stomach grumbled as a claret vein slithered through the curdles of fat. The bowls wooden lip sunk into the corners of his mouth, digging into his cheeks, and washed his throat with brine as the vegetables rolled over his teeth and jellied in the broth.
He opened his eyes to ribbons of sunlight sitting naked on the wall. Adam lowered his eyes to the bowl striped with pea skin and lard sitting in his hand. There was something alien. What is that? He took the specimen scored with bruising and lifted it.
He held the finger by a bone that stuck out from the second knuckle. He squeezed it, feeling its density, firmness, a thing that all the other ingredients forfeited. Freshness. Is Schubert unaware? Adam eyed his bandages. Is the cold that numbing? Has he accounted the missing part? Schubert moved toward the throne, leading with his crippled hand, and Adam recoiled in a grip of cold sweat.
“Sire, let me have it.” Adam tightened his grip on the finger as his hunger grew from a mutter to scream. “The bowl, sire. Allow me.” The king fell back into his throne, wrapping the finger tighter in his fist.
“Thank you, Schubert. I'll keep it for now.” The old chef bowed and left the chamber. Adam rolled the severed finger in his hand, then lifted it to his lips and licked the pad with the tip of his tongue. The nail pricked him, taunting him to go further. Adam’s bit into the cold flesh, gliding through the narrow pockets of meat till his teeth came to a vulgar halt on the bone. He pulled the finger back, grinding the marrow from the bone, and ripped the ring of flesh from its rest. His jaws rotated mindlessly around the meat, turning the tissue into paste. Adam swallowed and tasted nothing.
He took the finger out of his mouth and stared at the red vein hanging from the end. Then he put the finger back into hit mouth, bit, and tugged till the knuckle routed the back of his teeth. He loosened his bite to slip the sleeves of skin and muscle over the knoll, and swallowed a second tasteless serving.
Then he cracked the knuckle at the joint, divorcing the ends, leaving a sliver of meat stuck on the tip. Adam stared at the knob crowned in its own sick, at the red meat hanging to the side, then slid the finger into his mouth. His tongue worked around the bone, his teeth carving and grating until the remains reduced into crystals. Marrow paved his tongue and granules stung his throat. The metallic taste of copper lined the walls of his cheeks, blood slicked his throat. Then all returned to the zestless taste of winter air.
~ 10
Months later.
Hagar brushed his hand along the blade of the axe, pushing splinters into the sawdust. The tang of fresh cut timber rested in his beard as he meditated the forest left sodden by blizzards. He wound the axe over his shoulder and slung it into the base, sending birds spry with a sharp crack that rattled through the leaves.
“Break stone” Hagar mumbled. “A strong fellow I am, am I? ‘What good do big arms do with a little quail pen? Sounds like a bit of misuse’.” He redoubled his grip, chest heaving, and slammed the tree. “Tell me what is decent, they will. But they’ll never know. No. They think that because I’m mighty like bronze that I have to labor. I can be a learned man too, I can.” He pulled back the axe and slid into the mud. Rage flittered from his lips as his fists drank into the muck.
“By the gods!” Haga
r kicked the tree with boots dressed in stirrups of moss. “Tell me, will they! Damn heathens! Maybe I ought to show them how strong I really am, yes. I’ll show their heads how strong these arms are.” He kicked the tree till it creaked, then stood to his feet, feeling the ends of his fingers swell in his fists.
“Hold yourself there, Hagar. That’s what they expect of a brute. A big man and a big temper, but little brain, that’s what they’ll think. No. I’ll just have to be a thinking man too. But that isn’t reward enough for the wrong they do me. No. I’ll have to take their most envied possession. No! No! That won’t do. Think, you stupid Hagar.” He slammed a rotted log, releasing a sharp crack to sizzle in his ears. “Think, Hagar! Don’t take it, win it.” He stroked his beard and smiled at the thought of championing her heart.
Hagar fawned over the idea of winning Gabrielle’s love. Wasn’t she the most beautiful after all? Didn’t he catch her green eyes swimming over his massive form? Truly she has to be interested. Even if that were not so, wouldn’t she be once she found him a thinking man? Stronger, enormous as a beast, yet a mind as mighty in strength. All other men would be inferior. What wouldn’t she desire? It would be true love, he swore. He wouldn’t have her to spite the council, the filth, or anyone else. No, he loved her beauty and would relish it whether they scorned him for having her or not.
“Is she not the most beautiful” he mumbled. Hagar set the axe aside, brushed his pants clean, and unbuttoned the collar of his long-johns. He fumbled around a log and plucked wildflower from a rotted pocket. Placing the stem into a patch of moss he thought of Gabrielle, of tucking a flower into her hair, then rested back on a stump encased in grime and rolled back his sleeves to rub the knots in his forearm.
“She is a beautiful woman, that Gabrielle.” A blush rose in his cheeks as the thought of her in a silk white seamless dress flushed him with generous warmth. “By god she is heavenly.”
And so she was. Every man whispered to themselves about her beauty, her mystery. The girl lived in a hovel on the edge of town, wrapped a green belt, secluded in a tiara of annuals that died back every winter. It was rumored that this mistress was the daughter of a wealthy baker, if there was ever such a thing.
Another story followed that she was royalty, a wayward princess. That, Hagar thought, is more believable. No walls could hold such beauty, not even big ones.
More gossip followed that phantom men would treat her at her home with every sort of book; teachings of astronomy, mythology, natural science and dramas from every part of the world, from the Germanic to Arabia, from the New World to the Asia Minor, from every foreign land, the forgotten to the forbidden.
Others negotiate that it is foods, primarily beets from her homeland; those believing she is a princess say it is her favorite treat, the one nostalgia for which she has no amnesty.
That left the ignoble to sneer that she was a prostitute, a daughter of a prostitute, from a lineage of prostitutes. But Hagar didn’t care which was true; no matter, he sat arrested in awe of her.
Then his mind turned to the council. His upper lip stiffened and back straightened, tightening his burly chest. Who are they? No less of an immigrant than he was. We all come from somewhere, he thought.
Hagar found Sir James Walden abhorrent, deploring his sleek face and leaden blue eyes, so pale that they were sash gray. He detested fair skin because it belonged to that pompous sir on the council, and felt revolted by the cleft in his lip, the way it ticked when he spoke. Hagar resented him, how his straw hair drifted in the lightest breeze, the way the bluish veins slid through his forehead, his existence.
But he wasn’t the sole reviled incumbent. A squat man with buck yellow teeth and narrow beady eyes followed Sir John Walden like a servile dog. Hagar spat at the thought of this creature, Gale Luther. Something about the feeble way his ponytail hid the oily rolls of fat gorged on the back of his neck sickened him. Between the two there is no shallower man, Hagar thought.
And of course there were others on the council. The mayor, Elton La Noire, whatever a La Noire was, and his powder dusted wife who always stunk of mildew. Her husband was just a suit she wore to govern the small province, may the gods curse it. They had such darkness that it made their hearts jet. Thinking a little more, Hagar wondered if the name really meant donkey testicles; it was so atrocious that it professed them. Albeit, the filth didn’t end there.
Wilma was next. Her lips were shrouded by wrinkles like a skin colored prune and she wore a hazy pair of spectacles, fixed to a necklace of chipped pearls, across the bridge of her nose. But she was so daft and blind that when the glasses fell off their arch she was heedless. It was hard to differentiate between her speaking voice and laughter, for both were shrill and cackled with any excitement. She gained the title on council following her husband’s death, as so many unworthy members have done; warm bodies worked better than ledgers or favors to guarantee a position. It is not that she was horrible, but only unworthy to rule. But measuring that the La Noires neither tried to remove or renounce her assured Hagar that his dispute was justified.
Then there were the late Albigensian brothers, who left a financial void in the wake of their death. The twins, an ugly duo, not in their appearance but in their constitution, were frail, built with svelte features, each soft spoken. They were moderate. The twins were in charge of marketing, which no farmer or merchant contested. Their hair was the color wheat, and they possessed the continence of angels; each quality only dignified in a woman, Hagar believed. But that was nihl. Each brother passed the week before, and Hagar was out to mill the lumber for their coffins. Bloody terrible thing, what happened to those two Hagar thought.
And so there were other council members, some drunkards, others accepting election for monetary gain, another for the licentious pleasure of caroling young maids.
But all that didn’t matter. No. None of it would matter if only he won the love of Gabrielle. Why couldn’t he? She never loved any man as far as anyone knew.
But the women were most suspicious, jealous of the attention. With Gabrielle there was no longer competition but complacency. If only the beautiful young girl would marry then men would lose their hopes, but never interest; it would be easier to find a suitable mate, since none would be looking to Gabrielle. But still in secret every woman prolonged their fear, for marriage generally meant children, including daughters, and what new terrors of beauty might follow that instead of one Gabrielle there might be many. What then of the other women, and their children? It was a dreadful bittersweet idea, her marrying; no one knew for sure what they wanted with Gabrielle.
Certainly she has noticed me, Hagar’s thoughts broke away. I am too large to miss. His eyes sunk to his palms rolled into fists as big as stallion’s hooves. Sighing, Hagar took up the axe and walked back to the tree trunk. The sun slid behind the hills, turning them plum, ands left the sky rosen. A breeze shivered in the leaves, releasing a melodic chorus. The earth grew cold and mud firm as he stood before the tree with the axe.
He was alone.
He tilted the axe on its metallic head and eyed the mauled bark, readying to drive the wood open. He stopped. A loud rustle shook the tree. Too big to be a fowl, he thought. He steadied his grip and anchored the axe over his shoulder. Another whack and it will go.
“On with you.” He swung hard into the tree which rattled against the blunt instrument and a growl returned.
“Then onward” he threw his hand. “No need to make a tizzy.” He jerked the axe from the wood then slammed it back in. A deafening roar filled the air and shook the skies. Hagar raised his head to catch the lusty eyes, then toppled to the ground. Heaven became night under the creature. Jagged teeth sank into his shoulder, leaving a gushing well of pain. He thrashed and ripped away a slough of fur, and no sooner did he scream was the creature swallowed in the woodlands shadows. Hagar crawled to his feet, cupping his throbbing wound, and reached for the axe embedded in the trunk. Feared seized him.
Gabrielle!
/> A shadow whisked around him. Hagar lurched toward the axe and tore it from the trunk. He swashed side to side with heavy steps, the pain dizzying, fighting to focus his blurring vision He heard paws trample, circling him, and slung himself around to see the creature slide into the dark forest. A low growl perfumed the air. It charged his side and struck a pocket of meat from his leg. His knee buckled in agony. Hagar tried to stand but fell, then with a harsh limp rose and swung the axe with a wild cry.
“Sorcery!” Hagar growled. He spun the axe as the roar boomed. The creature dashed beneath the blade and leaped to the tree line. He saw its massive build, the wild hair, and a smile that marred its imbrued face. It rose upright on its hind legs, glaring at him with those eyes. Those yellowish red eyes. The creature became consumed in darkness, only a shadow, yet its eyes burned as it sank deeper into the pit of night.
“To hell!” Hagar lifted the axe when a reverberating explosion pulsed through the woods on a short blast wave. A red flare stitched the darkening sky with a thread of smoke. The forest became blood under the light as he turned his eyes back to the creature.
It was gone.
~ 11
Fierro slept at his post, cozy in the nipping cold. A knife wrapped in leather hung from his belt and Old Spanish boots sat hitched on the windowsill of the guard box. It was rare that the commander ventured to check on his men. Even if he did, it would be well announced; he never came without his carriage, despite the hour or weather, and the carriage never came without the trotting of horses and grinding wheels.
The outpost creaked in the wind and frost settled on the fields as Fierro stirred to keep warm. Stress was nostalgic to him. He reminisced the days of glory when any common man could become a hero in the trenches. But it was also good to rest without cannon fire or soldierly affairs; anything rustling alarmed the men, every creak, every whisper. Danger awaited everywhere back then, things now lost in dreams and stories of foreign lands. Fog rolled from the edge of the woods and oozed out the fields onto the roads. The cold stirred Fierro awake and he stretched, feeling his stomach tighten under the cold belt buckle.
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