Wrede, Patricia C - SSC (6 page)

Mother took one look at him and said,
"O my husband and light of my eyes, not
again!"
in the
exasperated tone she usually saves for me when I've put a rip in my skirts.

"I'm afraid so, Mirza,"
Father said. "He was in an awful mood today, but I simply couldn't put off
asking him about those water rights for the caravaners any longer. So we're
going to find out about number forty-eight." Father never says the word
curse
when he's talking about one of Caliph Arenschadd's; he only refers to them
by number.

"Someone should take that
caliph in hand," Mother said.

"Are you offering?"
Father demanded.

I could tell there was an argument
starting, so I got up and slipped out of the room before they could get me in
on it. Mother and Father usually have an argument right after Caliph Arenschadd
puts another curse on us; I think it relieves their feelings or something. It
never lasts long, and as soon as they're finished they start looking for the
way to break the curse. They're very good at it. Most of the curses last less
than a week, and the longest one only went nine days. It's never much fun to be
around for the arguing part, though, which is why I left.

I went to visit my best friend,
Tumpkin. Tumpkin isn't his real name; I call him that because the first time I
met him he wouldn't tell me who he was and I had to call him something. I ran
into him in one of the private gardens at the palace, so I figured he was one
of the caliph's pages, poking around where he wasn't supposed to be. He's about
the same age as I am, and he's nearsighted and sort of pudgy—just the kind of
kid that gets picked on all the time. That's why I started calling him Tumpkin;
it seemed to fit.

I didn't have to spend much time
looking for Tumpkin on the first day of the forty-eighth curse. He was in his
favorite spot, under a bush behind a gold garden seat. He heard me coming and
looked up. When he saw who it was, he grinned at me in relief.
"Imani!" he said. "I was just thinking about you."

"You ought to be thinking
about your duties," I told him. "Someone's going to catch you shirking
one of these days, and then you'll really be in trouble."

"Do
you
have to tell me
what to do, too?" Tumpkin said grumpily. He waved in the direction of the
palace. "You sound just like everyone in there."

"No, I sound like my
father," I said, flopping down on the bench. "Sorry, it's been a
rough day."

Tumpkin stopped looking grumpy and
looked interested and sympathetic instead. "What happened?"

"Father picked up another
curse, and he and Mother are arguing about it," I said.

"Another one?" Tumpkin said.
"How many does that make?"

"Forty-eight," I said
gloomily. "And we don't have even a tiny hint of what it is this
time."

"I could try and find out for
you," Tumpkin offered diffidently.

"Don't bother," I said.
"Caliph Arenschadd takes better care of his list of curses than he does of
the crown jewels. If you got caught, he'd probably slap four or five curses on
you at once."

"He can't," Tumpkin said
smugly. "They only work one at a time. And besides—" "It's all
right,
Tumpkin," I said hastily. "We'll find out soon enough what number
forty-eight is; you don't have to risk moving yourself up the list."

"Well, actually—" Tumpkin
said, and stopped, looking very uncomfortable.

"Tumpkin!" I said,
staring at him. "Do you mean to say the caliph has never put
any
of
his curses on you?"

"I guess so," Tumpkin
said. "I mean, no, he hasn't."

"You must be really good at
keeping out of the way," I said with considerable admiration. "I've
never heard of anyone who didn't make it through at least five curses during
his first six weeks at court, and you've been around for nearly a year!"

"Longer than that, but I spend
a lot of time out here." Tumpkin sounded more uncomfortable than ever, so
I let the subject drop and went back to talking about my parents and curse
number forty-eight. After a while Tumpkin relaxed, but he didn't make a second offer
to sneak a look at Caliph Arenschadd's list of curses.

I stayed with Tumpkin for most of
the afternoon, and there was still no sign of the curse when I started for
home. That worried me. The longer Caliph Arenschadd's curses take to have an
effect, the nastier they tend to be. I could tell that Mother and Father were
worried, too; neither of them said much at dinner.

That evening I had the first dream.
I was running and running through the night, and the wind was in my hair, and a
silver moon shone high in the sky. I woke up just as I realized that I was
running on four feet, like a dog. The thin crescent of the waxing moon was
framed in the window at the foot of my bed. I sat staring at it for a long time
before I fell asleep again.

I had the same dream the following
night. I didn't worry about it much at the time; I was far more concerned about
the forty-eighth curse. There still didn't seem to be any signs of it taking
hold, at least none that I could see, and I'd never known one of Caliph
Arenschadd's curses to take this long to affect someone. I stayed inside most
of the time, figuring that I'd rather not have to try to get home with my feet
turned backward or my knees stuck together if the curse hit all of a sudden. I
didn't even go to the palace to see Tumpkin.

Two nights later, the dream got
stronger. I ran and ran, with the wind down my back and the ground flowing past
my feet and the sweet smell of grass at night in my nostrils. And a silver moon
hung round and perfect in the sky above me.

I dreamed again the following
night, and every night after that. Always it was the same dream, of running
strong and free and wild in the wind and the moonlight. And always I woke with
the moon shining through the window at the foot of my bed. At first it was just
a crescent-shaped sliver of silver light, but every day the sliver grew wider.
My dream became more and more vivid as the moon waxed, until I could close my
eyes even in the day and see moonlight shining on sharp blades of grass. I
began looking forward to the night, because I knew that then I would dream of
running in the wind.

I didn't tell anyone about the
dream. Mother and Father were still puzzling over the curse, and I didn't want
to distract them. Besides, the dream was a private, special thing. I didn't
want to share it with anyone, not even Tumpkin.

Not that I'd been seeing much of
Tumpkin. At first I didn't go to the palace because I didn't want the curse to
catch up with me while I was away from home. By the time I decided I didn't
care about the curse, I didn't want to go anywhere. I probably would have
stayed home forever if Mother hadn't chased me out after a week so she could
work on some delicate enchantments.

Tumpkin was glad to see me. In
fact, he practically pounced on me the minute I came into the garden.
"You're back!" he said. "Did your parents figure out how to
break it already? What was it, anyway?"

"What was what?" I asked
crossly.

"The forty-eighth curse,"
Tumpkin said. He frowned worriedly at me. "Don't you remember?"

"Of course I remember!" I
snapped. "No, Mother and Father haven't broken it, because they still
don't know what it is."

"They don't know?"

"That's what I said. Didn't
you listen? I think they should give up. If nothing's happened yet, the curse
probably didn't take and we don't have anything to worry about."

"Something's happened,"
Tumpkin muttered.

"What did you say?" I
said. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"I said, something has
happened," Tumpkin replied quickly. "Your eyebrows are getting
thicker."

I snorted. "Well, if that's
all curse forty-eight amounts to, I think Mother and Father should quit wasting
time trying to break it. Who cares what my eyebrows look like?"

He didn't have an answer for that,
so he told me about the latest book he was reading instead. I was feeling
restless and impatient, but I knew Mother would be annoyed if I came home too
early, so I made myself listen politely. At least I didn't have to say anything
myself as long as Tumpkin was talking.

Tumpkin kept giving me speculative
looks whenever he thought I wasn't looking. Finally I couldn't stand it any
longer, and I left. I dawdled all the way home, and then when I arrived Mother
and Father were talking and hardly even noticed me.

"... beyond the bounds of
reason this time," Mother was saying as I came in. "Even you have to
admit that."

"I'm sure the caliph has a
reason," Father said in the stiff tone he uses when he knows he's wrong
but can't say so.

"For a curse like this? We
aren't talking about a petty inconvenience, Selim. This is a danger to everyone
in the city. And there's no cure for lycanthropy."

"Caliph Arenschadd wouldn't
endanger his people," Father said, even more stiffly than before.

"Maybe not if he thought about
it first," Mother retorted. "But I don't think he's thought about this
at all. Lycanthropy—"

"Imani!" Father said,
spotting me at last. He shot Mother a look that was half warning, half relief.
"When did you come in?"

"Just now," I said. I
looked up at him. His eyebrows were getting thicker; they nearly met in the
middle. Mother's were thicker, too. "What's lycanthropy?"

Mother and Father looked at each
other. "You might as well explain, Selim," Mother said. "If we
don't tell her, she'll just look it up in the dictionary."

Father sighed.
"Lycanthropy
means the assumption by human beings of the form and nature of wolves,"
he said, and looked down. "That's what the forty-eighth curse is, Imani.
We've become werewolves."

"Well, I don't see what's so
terrible about that," I said. I thought of my dream of running in the
moonlight. "I think I'm going to like being a wolf."

They stared at me as if they'd
never seen me before. Then Mother got a grim look on her face. "You'll
find out soon enough," she said.

Mother was right. Two nights later
I woke up well after
midnight
, feeling
strange and tingly all over. I slipped out of bed and went out onto the balcony
that overlooks our private garden. It was deep in shadow, because the moon was
still on the other side of the house, rising. I could see the edge of the shadow
creeping nearer as the moon rose, and I shivered in anticipation. I sat on the
edge of the balcony, watching the line of moonlight come nearer, and waited.

The moon came over the domed roof
of the house. I leaned into the silvery light and felt myself change. It was
strange and exciting and scary all at once, though it didn't hurt at all. A moment
later I stood on four paws and shook myself all over. Then I sat back and
howled at the moon.

I heard answering howls from the
corner of the house, and then two adult wolves came padding into sight below my
window. Mother had turned into a slender, coal black female; Father was dark
gray and more solidly built. He had white hairs in his muzzle. I leaped down
from the balcony to join them, and Mother cuffed me with her paw. I snarled,
and she cuffed me again. Then Father made a sharp barking noise and we turned.
Together we jumped over the garden wall and into the city streets.

The first thing I noticed was the
smells. The whole city reeked of garbage and people and cooking spices and cats
and perfumes. It was awful. I cringed and whined very softly. Mother bared her
teeth in sympathy, and even Father coughed once or twice. Then we faded into
the shadows and headed for the edge of town.

If it hadn't been for the smells,
sneaking through the city like that would have been a lot of fun. As it was, I
was glad we lived outside the city wall. Nobody saw us but a couple of dogs,
and they ran when Father snarled at them. And then we passed the last of the
houses and came out into the fields.

It was even better than my dream,
to begin with. We ran and ran, and I could feel the wind in my fur and smell
the fresh grass and the flowers and the little animals that had hidden as we
approached. Now and then we'd stop and howl for the sheer joy of it. And all
the while, the moonlight poured down around us in silver sheets.

Then we ran over the rabbit.
Literally ran over it; the stupid thing was too scared to move when it heard us
coming, and Father tripped over it.
Then
it ran, or rather, tried to.
Mother caught it before it got very far. She trotted back with it while Father
was picking himself up, and we split it between us.

The moon was getting low in the
sky, and we began to feel a need to return home. I tried to fight it; I didn't
want to go anywhere near that awful-smelling place again. But all I could do
was whine and shuffle and edge closer. Mother cuffed me a couple of times
because I wasn't going fast enough to suit her, and finally she nipped my tail.
I yelped and gave up, and we ran back toward town.

As we passed the first house, we
heard a baby crying inside. Mother and Father stopped and exchanged glances,
just the way they'd done when they were people. Father looked up at the sky.
The moon was close to setting; we had to get home. He growled and leaped
forward, and Mother and I followed. A few minutes later, we reached our house
and jumped over the garden wall.

Jumping back up to my balcony was
harder than jumping down; I had to try twice, and I almost didn't make it in time.
The moon set just as I scrabbled over the balcony rail, and I sprawled on the
floor as a girl instead of a wolf. I sat up, remembering the wild run I'd just
had.

Then I was sick to my stomach. Raw
rabbit may be great when you're a wolf, but it's pretty disgusting to think
about when you're a person.

I didn't get much sleep the rest of
that night. I had too much to think about. I felt as if I'd been suckered: all
those dreams about running in the moonlight, and not one about raw rabbit. I
wondered how many other nasty surprises were in store for me. I thought of the
way Mother and Father had looked at each other when they heard the baby cry. A
cold shiver ran down my back, and I decided I didn't want to find out any more
about being a werewolf. Then I remembered Mother's voice saying, "There's
no cure for lycanthropy," and I shivered again.