Wolfweir (11 page)

Gund
tries to catch it in his hands.
Tries to hold it in.
Gets dizzy.
Tottering from side to side.

The girl gets her legs free and kicks him, and he sprawls backward into the deep soft snow, his mouth open, gazing wildly at the stars.

**

After pulling his rapier free of
Gund
, Alphonse, still burning, rushes at Jarvis.

The big, bearded man stands up as Alphonse dives at him. He feels the sword stab into his thigh. Howling, he strikes out like a windmill, and one of his fists hits Alphonse's burning head. The puppet boy tumbles over and over in the snow.

Jarvis throws himself at the smoking wooden boy. As they tumble over and over, the last flickers of flame on Alphonse go out. Lucia pulls on her trousers and a shirt and rushes after the tumbling pair. Jarvis is smashing at Alphonse with his fists.

ALPHONSE!
screams
Lucia, caught in this horrible dark waking nightmare.

**

They tumble into the fire. They are both ablaze, in a halo of flames. Then they roll out of it. Jarvis is howling curses as he batters the puppet.

Lucia espies the glint of metal in the snow.
The rapier.
She snatches it up and leaps over the fire.

Sees Jarvis throttling Alphonse.
His wooden eyes rolling in his pine puppet head. If he were a real boy, his face would by now be black.

Luckily, that's not the case.

Lucia shrieks and, clutching the pommel in both fists, thrusts the blade through Jarvis's neck from behind. The sword point sticks in Alphonse's forehead. Blood splatters his painted marionette face.

Jarvis lets out a dying rattle.

Lucia wrenches the blade free and, with another scream, hacks the grizzled poacher's head clean off his shoulders.

The bearded head rolls into the soft snow, trailing blood. The body, shooting twin blood-geysers from the neck, sways and falls sideways.

Lucia tosses the sword aside. Alphonse, his arms still smoking from the fire, leaps up like a hero.
Ready to go on with the fight.

"Ah, sweet Alphonse!" she shouts, hugging him harder than she's ever hugged any being.

He's just cold fire-blackened wood, true, but the boy's spirit is still there. She can feel it. She hears his pine-wood eyelids click. She feels his arms grasp her, the wooden fingers stroking her snow-crusted hair.

Skiing

Alphonse stacks more pine branches on the fire and he and Lucia wait, shivering, for the sky to lighten a little.
To drown the starry sky.

After a time, Lucia falls asleep with her head on Alphonse's wooden knee, clutching him like a doll.

She's wearing all her clothes and his, including the coats, gloves, and both caps -- even his gum soled and cleated hiking boots.

The wooden boy sits watch on the night. Gazing into the darkness beyond and to all sides of their snapping and popping fire, he sometimes glances up at the Milky Way, that breathtaking
star river
, and his eyelids click back in his head and his painted mouth gapes in awe.

O magic. O purity.

**

Holding a dueling pistol in each hand, Alphonse is now primed and ready for anything at all to rush at them from out of the freezing darkness. Wolves, bears, poachers -- it doesn't matter. His guns are loaded and the powder-and-shot bag lies ready at his feet next to his father's Toledo sword cane. He'll shoot, stab and hack his way through a thousand enemies to protect the little wolf-girl.

Bit by bit, the puppet boy stops cursing himself for his trance-state that allowed the two poachers to creep up to the fire unseen and unheard. Done is done. You can't take anything back from the past, so look only to what's coming at you from the future.

He spares little thought for Jarvis and
Gund
,
those bloody frozen corpses now stretched out in the snow like herrings packed in the ice hold of a fishing trawler.

Serves them both right, the swine. Even if Alphonse could weep tears, he wouldn't. Not for that vile, murderous scum.

And in time, he vows to the starry night, the loathsome
Vampyres
Lord and Lady
Blackgore
will get just what the poachers got.

**

Dawn.
Ringing silence.
Unbearable splendor.
Wind blowing ghost-eddies of powder snow from the stark mountain peaks.

The sun breaks over the cloud-banked horizon and rises with slowness and majesty -- brilliant red then luminous orange.

Ah!
cries
Lucia, sitting up crusted with snow to gaze into the light, tears shining in her blue eyes.

**

They clamp on the wooden skis and set out again,
sking
over the high mountain pass then down a glacier, trailing black shadows across the blazing snow, leaving behind only the coals of their dying fire and the stiff corpses of two unlucky and unwashed psychopaths.

Lucia skis easily, golden hair tucked under her cap, smiling at the brilliant mountains all around. Alphonse, because of his clacking marionette limbs, is a little clumsy.

As they ski, the sun warms them. There are no sounds but the soft hissing of the polished hardwood skis in deep snow, the wind rushing in tall pine trees, and
icemelt
water dripping into the deep crevasses.

Ecstasy.
This is the life, thinks Alphonse. As long as they can avoid starting an avalanche --

**

They cross another deep mountain pass, going above the
treeline
into a stark and glacial cold that turns Lucia's lips blue, and there is a brief snowstorm that threatens to bury the intrepid pair -- then they are out of the black clouds again and on a downhill run that Lucia takes with brio,
glissing
through the snow so fast that she creates her own mini-blizzard.

Alphonse follows, flailing his sticks, squinting against Lucia's snow-dust. The sword cane, tied by a length of string he'd found in one of his coat pockets, clicking on his pinewood shoulders.

This little wolf girl with the golden hair whips along as if she knows exactly where she's going. Maybe she knows more about everything than Alphonse thinks.

**

They'd left the glacier and ski-
ed
down through the pines in soft snow and chattering birdsong. Abruptly, Lucia stopped and bent to take off her skis. Alphonse stopped behind her, breathing hard, in a cloud of snow dust. He snapped off his skis also. There was a meadow below them, dazzling green and in it were many small blue flowers the color of Lucia di
Fermonti's
eyes.

They left the skis leaning against a pine and walked down through the meadow, Lucia peeling off her scarf. It was getting hot. Alphonse wished he'd brought the Bavarian hurdy
gurdy
. He took out his tin whistle to toot as they hiked down the mountain toward a great valley filled with haze -- but then, realizing he didn't have the breath in his puppet body to make a note, put it back.

**

It took them all day to reach the valley. They stopped to rest at a pyramid-like cairn of stones. Lucia was sweating but happy. She did a little turning dance and laughed at the quizzical look on Alphonse's fire-smudged face.

The sun was setting. They walked to the banks of a clear, broad fast running river and Lucia crouched and drank and splashed water on her face and arms. Then they crossed the river
into a deep, clean, quiet woods
.

It was a forest, rich and soil-fragrant.

Alphonse had never seen such a forest. The tree trunks were as big around as circus drums. Fat black mushrooms sprouted everywhere under the leafy shade. Hidden frogs and crickets were singing. Vines entangled creepers. Leaves of all sizes and shapes blotted out the darkening sky.

This is my Kingdom, said Lucia. This is
Wolfweir
. You are welcome here, brave puppet boy.

The Black Iron Gate

They marched through the forest, the puppet boy and the golden haired girl, and sometimes the golden-haired girl broke the silence with a burst of clear singing. She sang in Italian.

Alphonse shut his eyes when she started singing. He wanted to let it sink into him like fresh rain.

Maybe he loved this girl, he thought. But who wouldn't?

**

They stepped at last out of the dark eaves of the forest into moonlight. Alphonse glanced at Lucia to see if she might change into something but the moon was only half full, and waning.

Look, Alphonse, she said, pulling his wrist.

He looked up at where she was pointing. It was a magnificent, sprawling black castle profiled against the moonlit sky.

"
Wolfweir
Castle.
My father's," said Lucia. "Strike a match, please."

Alphonse shook a match out of the box he plucked from his shirt pocket. He struck it. It sizzled and burst into clear flame.

"Hold it up high," she said.

He did. He held it until the flame burned close to his wooden fingers. Then she shook it out and dropped the charred matchstick.

"Wait," she said.

The darkness seemed darker, and deeper. He could hear the hum of the forest creatures behind him. The castle remained stark, lonely, and silent. There were no lights in it, or at least none he could see -- the Norman style stone ramparts were silvery with moonlight.

"Ah! There!"

She'd seized Alphonse's wrist again. He stared without blinking at the monumental black castle.

He saw some kind of movement.
A door in the ramparts lifting.
He could hear the groaning creak of metal and wood. Then the jingle of
harnesses,
and a group of horses emerged all at once from the yawning mouth -- with riders.