Wolfweir (10 page)

"So far we are good," said Lucia. "No?"

(Alphonse thinking, grimly: Maybe so, if you don't freeze to death in these mountains.)

Fire

Alphonse took Lucia's gloved hand and they moved staggeringly in a crooked line uphill through the drifts of snow between the dark pines. It was morning and the sun was rising but Lucia's teeth still chattered from the searing cold. There was a little less snow deeper in the pines and then they were going up the mountain steeply and every so often Lucia had to stop and bend over gasping for breath. Wind scoured the mountain and made the pines roar. Whenever the wolf-girl staggered puppet Alphonse seized her arm and tried to steady her but sometimes despite his best efforts she fell in the soft cold snow, taking him down with her, only to
rise
puffing, myriad snow crystals in her eyebrows and her golden hair. Oh hair of spun gold, thought puppet Alphonse. Even in this direst of situations he could feel himself beginning to love her.

Alphonse swatted aside hanging pine branches with his sword cane, dusting them both with snow-fluff as they staggered and wrenched their way up the mountain. At last they emerged from the tree line and there on a crag up ahead in the dazzling sunlight stood a square
stone mountain
shelter for hikers and ski-
ers
, capped with two feet of snow. They made haste for it, Lucia gasping and puffing, the puppet boy that was Alphonse trotting behind her turning his head left and right and once even all the way around to make sure they were alone on this part of the mountain.

No gendarmes, hunters, woodsmen, hikers -- no people at all anywhere but for themselves.
Empty, craggy, snow-dusted, wind-scoured vastness.

It was a small dark and dingy shelter and the wind howled in its eaves. A battered tin bucket in the corner served -- a whiff was enough to confirm this thought -- for a toilet. The beds were just wooden benches along the wall. But there was a box of dry tinder and a small stack of split firewood next to a cast iron potbelly stove. Alphonse got to work with his flint and steel and quickly got a fire snapping. They sat by it shivering, bathing in the waves of heat, as the snow melted from Lucia's eyebrows and tangled hair.

**

Puppet boy Alphonse scuttled outside the climber's hut to look around. To the side of the hut, next to the heaped woodpile under the eaves, he found a pair of old wooden skis, both warped. There were no poles to go with the skis. He tucked them under his stick-arms and walked back around the house and stepped inside. Lucia was hugging her knees and gazing into the flames through the little iron grate. A soft smile on her lips, she wasn't shivering anymore. Alphonse dropped the skis with a clatter.

"Hurrah," Lucia
said,
the dark joy-light coming back into her eyes. "Off we go, Alphonse. We'll ski 'till dark and camp someplace.
Right?"

Alphonse dipped his chin.
Right.
It was time to get cracking.
Wolfweir
awaits
, he thought. Some wicked
Vampyres
are in desperate need of killing. He would kill them.
Maybe with the help of this Were-wolf lord Gar
Frith
, maybe all by his little wooden puppet boy lonesome.

**

They trekked, sometimes carrying their skis, sometimes ski-
ing
, using pine branches for poles. The snow was deep and the mountain winds bitter cold and Lucia’s teeth chattered. Alphonse took off all his clothes and put them on her, bundled her up in them, while he ski-
ed
 
through
that raging Alpine wilderness naked, a stick-like puppet boy with painted eyes.

They moved on across mountain passes and glacial wastes until dark and Lucia, her teeth chattering, said she felt they were almost
there,
Wolfweir
was nearby, just beyond that next peak probably.

Yet Alphonse saw how she was shaking. He knew she wouldn't survive the night without a fire. He led her to the base of a crag that blocked some of the wind and blowing snow. Alone, he walked down to the
treeline
-- it wasn't so far now, since they'd crossed the highest country and come down on the other side of a great pass -- and gathered dead sticks in his arms. He wasn't cold but fear made him shake when he thought that Lucia might freeze solid tonight. No. He'd make such a roaring bonfire --

Such were the thoughts jumping nervously in his puppet head. He had to make two more trips to the
treeline
after he struck flint and steel and got the fire going, singeing himself a little in the process, Lucia first laughing at his torch-dance as he shook his flaming hand, then realizing the fire could consume him entirely and helping to put the blazing arm out with handfuls of snow. She then squatted beside the fire wrapped in all their coats, still shuddering and now snow-caked.

He trudged back and forth twenty eight times with wood in his arms.
Dumping it on the fire.
Making it roar and crackle.
Until the pale Lucia stopped shivering and began to bathe in the warmth.

"Ah.
Wonderful, Alphonse."

**

He wasn't tired. His puppet body couldn't tire any more than it could freeze, no matter how his pine wood limbs snapped and creaked. But there was now a big enough wood pile to last the night. He thumped down next to Lucia and gazed up at the stars. The Alpine night sky, starry beyond belief.

"Are we close to heaven, Alphonse? Is that how high we are? Could you touch that star if you tried?"

Lucia was chattering away now, like a bird.
A laughing bird.
But soon she fell asleep by the fire.

Jarvis and
Gund

The puppet boy falls into a trance, staring into the wreathing flames. He does not know how much time has passed, but he now feels himself suddenly, treacherously lifted by the puppet arms.

Clamped in an unwavering hold, he is raised up above the fire, toward the star-dazzled sky.

He struggles, he jerks,
he
rattles -- to no avail.

There are two assailants, he senses, though they say nothing. Their silence is grim and determined. Swiftly and silently, his arms are bound tight to his puppet body with a thick length of frayed rope.

Border police?
What? Huh?

He tries to shout a warning, an
alarum
to wake the slumbering Lucia, but his pine jaws only go click clack.

Then his head is stuffed into a burlap bag, and the stars go out, and the fire disappears too, but for an orange blur.

**

The two chuckling poachers drop puppet boy Alphonse into the soft snow. He's still wriggling and jerking, kicking his wooden legs, but his arms are bound, and his puppet head is in a bag. No threat, this little magic wooden boy. They'll deal with him later. They turn in greedy unison to gaze down at the sleeping china-skinned blonde-girl. Their leathery, bearded faces crack in toothless grins.

The poachers are brothers who never went to school, never married, and rarely take baths. Their parents are long dead, and never mourned. Their names are Jarvis and
Gund
.
 
They've lived up here with only each other for company for so long that they have both gone slightly mad.

For the first half of their lives, Jarvis and
Gund
made a precarious living shooting and skinning small animals and selling the skins for brandy. But one night two years ago they waylaid some hikers from France, killing them after having had their fun, and discovered a fresh and unique source of pleasure in life.

**

Alphonse, whipping his head back and forth in the bag, hears Jarvis and
Gund
grunting with anticipation, and he bites into the greasy burlap and begins tugging at it with his teeth just as Lucia's voice, frightened and shrill and protesting, breaks the deep Alpine silence. He hears men's rough voices, laughter, and Lucia lets out a scream.
Then another, this one almost a howl.
It's not full moon. She won't turn into a wolf. This is the howl of a little girl in pain.