Orson was sitting under a lamp reading a novel when he heard it. Well, he felt it before he heard it, felt it as a faint rumbling between his butt cheeks and under his elbow through the chair's thick padding, and he wondered if a truck might be passing by, or maybe there was an earthquake. A few seconds later, when he started hearing it, he dismissed the truck, threw the novel onto the floor and rose to his feet, thinking he should get down to the basement before the earthquake had a chance to bury her for real.
It sounded just like a lion. The biggest honking lion anybody's ever heard.
Before he was halfway to the basement door, it flew open with a splintering BANG. She stepped through the doorway. Her hair was an electrified mop with streaks of whites and greys. Obsidian eyes cast everywhere and nowhere, seeing everything, seeing nothing. In her bluish slate grey face was no hint of thought or emotion, no sign of life. She looked emaciated.
“Hey, it's about time you...”
She snarled, flashing a mouthful of teeth, looking impossibly ancient, impossibly strong and impossibly sharp.
He barely noticed the warmth gushing down the front of his pants as she took a step towards him. She noticed, though, yanking her head back slightly, wrinkling her nose just a bit, knitting her eyebrows. Surprised, confused. Sniffed the air once or twice.
She turned, strode towards the front door and left without making another sound. Her pace was quicker than any man could run, but even her footfalls were silent.
---
The next two nights, there was no roaring, no growling. She passed through the ruined basement doorway, slipped silently out, and returned a few hours later to retire to the makeshift bed in the basement. She acknowledged him not at all.
Terrified though he was, Orson steadfastly sat in the living room chair, reading a novel (or pretending to), waiting for her to appear. Each night, he noted her progressively improving appearance, hair no longer streaked with whites and greys, complexion returning to its usual subtly bluish porcelain.
---
On the fourth night, the waif with coal black hair ventured almost gingerly through the basement doorway. Curious, maybe almost apprehensive. Orson put his novel down, stood up and faced her. Said nothing.
“Are ye the lord of this house?”
“I'm sorry?”
“Pray tell me, are ye the lord of this house?”
“Um, no, I don't own this house.”
“Are ye then the lord's servant?”
“Um, no, I'm not a servant of any kind. I don't even know who owns this house.”
“Who are ye?”
“Elysse, you don't remember me?”
Her eyes narrowed, suspicious. “How cometh it to pass that ye should know to call me by this name?”
“You told me your name! Don't you remember?”
“Are ye kin to me?”
“In a way, yes, I am.”
“And in another wise are ye not? Ye are kin, or ye are not kin.”
Orson cast his eyes down, gave a small huff.
“I guess you could say... um... I'm your husband.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Ye say unto me that we been wedded one unto the other!?”
“No, we never went to a church and had a man with a bible pronounce us man and wife, and we don't have a marriage license or a marriage certificate.”
“Then play ye with words?”
“No. We've been together for quite a few years now.”
“Then are ye my lord?”
“I'm your... what!?”
“Am I bound by oath to do as ye bid?”
“Um, no, we've never had any 'oaths'.”
“If ye be not my lord, then mayhaps are ye cast in my thrall?”
“Um... I don't think so...”
“Methinks I should surely remember having lived in a state of wedlock, yet I know ye not. Play ye not with words, that your dart might find my quiver?”
“Um, no, I'm not playing with words. If nothing else, we're friends. Really, really good friends, and we've been living together for years. What's this 'dart and quiver' thing, and why are you talking so funny?”
“Upon mine ears too falleth your speech strange, but verily, I say unto ye, if by 'funny' would ye say that I be mirthful or make sport, mark ye not that I laugh not? Queer, it is, that ye should have the height, the girth and the thew of a grown man and yet have the mind of a small child, that ye know not of darts and quivers?”
“Um...”
“And if ye say verily unto me that we been wedded, would ye then not call me 'thou', for surely no man should speak unto his wife, whom he has known as is a man's wont with a woman, as if she were his queen!”
“Um... huh!?”
“Say true: who are ye?”
“Elysse, don't you remember me? I'm Orson Chagin! You've saved my life quite a few times! I've saved your life a few times! We've been living together – running together – for years! Don't you remember any of that?”
“Verily, I know ye not. Say ye that ye are not my lord, nor I yours, but that ye are mine husband?”
“Um... Elysse...”
She squirmed.
“Know ye me by no other name?”
“Well, for the first few years, you had me calling you Christine. Christine Laplace, I think it was. I've called you other names because you told me to, when we were around people we didn't know, but I don't remember any of those names. Denise or Joelle or something.”
“Yet ye know that I am Elysse. I have said this unto ye with mine own tongue?”
“Yes.”
“Have I told ye the name of my father?”
“No. I know only that your name is Elysse Deschamps.”
“Know ye the fields whereof this name speaketh?”
“No. I've never seen them, and you never talk about it.”
“Ye know then naught of my father, yet ye say unto me that I should now call myself Elysse Deschamps Chagin?”
“No. You've always just called yourself Elysse Deschamps when you're not using false names.”
She furrowed her eyebrows and studied the floor for a few moments.
“What land is this, that your speech should be as that of a mindless child?”
“If what's happening is what I think is happening, this won't mean a whole lot to you, but we're in Canada.”
“Ye have right that I know naught of this 'Canada'. Pray tell the speech of other men in this land be less strange than yours.”
“Um, no, we all talk more or less like this.”
“Ye are Canadish?”
“No, I'm not Canadian. I'm just like you, but I was born into a much later time.”
“Ye are become as I?”
“If that means 'am I just like you', no, not in that way. I just meant we're from the same country.”
“With this word 'country' ye say 'land'?”
“Yes.”
“Where is my land?”
“It's on the other side of an ocean. A very, very large sea.”
She fidgeted, studied the floor a while longer.
“Know ye what I am become?”
“Yes.”
“Long have ye known this?”
“I've known for about half my life, yes.”
She brought her face up abruptly and fixed her bottomless oily onyx eyes on his.
“Then ye know what awaiteth should my rest be disturbed, or if I should come to trust not your fealty.”
“... yes.”
She turned, and passed soundlessly through the door, returning to the basement.
---
Three more nights passed with no further interaction. She left the house once during that time, returning an hour later and pausing on the way to the basement only to give the seated Orson a cursory glance.
---
Well, that was idiotic. Why did I tell her that?
Six months, almost to the very day. Best of times, worst of times, take your pick, but it was also the longest of times. Last time she took an extended nap like this, it was after an emotional meltdown after I got mad and bashed her over the head with the truth of just who and what she is, and what she isn't, and that nap was only two or three days. Or maybe as many as four.
Was that really less than ten years ago? Seems like a hundred. Seemed like a hundred years then, too, when I was scared and alone and thought she was dead. I was... what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Yea, yea, I'd had to grow up fast and deal with a hard life, and yea, yea, I'd already been growing up fast before I met this strange little girl, but just how the hell does a fourteen or fifteen year old kid grow up fast enough to handle losing the only world he knows? I remember not feeling like eating even though I was getting headaches. I remember checking the trunk of the car every night, scared to death I'd smell something festering. I remember sleeping propped up against the front door scared somebody was going to come along and see everything – see what I'd become – and I remember the shotgun I cradled in my arms like a teddy bear while I slept by that door was a real big comfort because it wouldn't even leave the fillings behind when I blew my teeth out through the top of my head.
It wasn't so bad this time. I know how to get around, how to take care of myself. She saw to that. She got all set up in the basement, told me she didn't know how long she'd be out of it and told me what to expect if she died for real. That first couple of weeks were kinda rough, yea, but the things she told me to watch for never popped up, so I knew to just set up housekeeping and wait it out.
And if you want to know the real truth of the matter, for a little while, it was the next best thing to heaven. All I had to do was watch for signs of people coming around, which is no big deal because that much got to be second nature a very long time ago. While she was out, though, there was no body count on the radio or in the papers, no cop cars cruising slowly by every hour or two, no blacked out windows in people's houses. I could sit in the living room, watch TV or read a novel (and actually FINISH it!). I could wander around in the daytime, do some regular old-fashioned grocery shopping, maybe buy a few CDs, and I didn't have to be looking at the same time for groceries for her. My time was my own!
Thing of it is, she's still the only world I know, and when she zonked out, that world went byebye. No more long talks wandering down empty country roads together, no more cheating at poker and getting clobbered over the head with a pillow for it, no more making fun of her for the perfectly disgusting things she'd whip up in the kitchen for me to eat (although, I have to say, she's gotten to be really good at pizza – if we could stay in one place long enough, I'd open a pizza place and get rich off the pies she can make). The world might have been my oyster, but after a few days of exploring all my new freedoms, I started feeling less free and more like I was just locked up in a little 8x6 cell, even if there weren't any walls or bars you could see or touch.
Some days were worse than others. Sometimes, I'd remember just how much I hated her when she barged into the bathroom while I was soaking, tell me to get some clothes on now because we've got to get a move on before people with guns find out where she is. I didn't even have time to dry off or find underwear, and it's something of a minor miracle the guys with the guns didn't just follow the fish tracks I left. You seriously want to bet I was mad at her, and I spent quite a few days making sure she knew it! On the days I remembered that, and about a million other things, it was very easy to get along with her spending so much time away. I made a point of taking in several novels front to back while sitting almost up to my neck in hot water.
Other days, it was bad in a different way. She told me what was happening, and what to expect, but she didn't tell me why. In the whole time we've been together, she's missed a night, maybe two. Once in a while, it'd be three, and I think there's only been a couple of times she's been out of it for four nights. There doesn't seem to be any particular time of year or phase of moon or anything to blame it on, it just happens whenever it feels like happening. This time, though, she knew it was coming a couple of weeks before it happened, and she make arrangements. She wouldn't tell me why, and wouldn't tell me why it had to happen just now. Was she tired of me? Did she need to just curl up and get all rested up because I was wearing her down? Maybe she was just punishing me for something I'd said or done.
After a while, though, I tried not to think about it at all. Being mad at her, even hating her, was easy to forget. What's not so easy to forget are the times like when she kited a birthday cake, a bunch of candles and a jug of milk, and brought them to me wearing nothing but the kind of bow you put on birthday and Christmas gifts. She sang “Happy Birthday”, smiled, and laughed at me when I couldn't blow all the candles out. Just how the hell she can remember my birthday when half the time she can't even remember what day of the week it is, well, it's just beyond me – but she's never once forgotten, whereas I nearly always did.
So, I guess you could say I'm her husband? I seriously doubt she's anybody's idea of a real wife. I mean, it seems like I've just spent twelve years or so teaching her all kinds of stupid little things any kid born twelve years ago had already known for years. Most of the time, I'm not really her boyfriend, and haven't been for a very long time (seems like), let alone her husband. I'm not really her father, either, because most fathers of twelve year old girls don't spend about half their time being told what to do, and more importantly, why. She's twelve (and worse) when it comes to things like “people skills” or keeping up with who's on the charts, but she really is dozens of decades old when it comes to knowing how to survive. So, let's just say our relationship is... um... complicated.
But when she came back up the stairs for the first time in months, I didn't care what she looked or sounded like. All I really saw was the girl who'd saved my life and taught me that life can be worth living, even if it's not always really easy. I saw her with the eyes I'd had when I was myself still only twelve.
OK, so she freaked or something, and bolted. She didn't do that last time she was out for more than couple of nights, but I figured maybe longer you sleep, longer it takes for you to get your wits collected again. She was hungry – had to have been beyond ravenous (and for a moment there, yea, I felt like maybe I was a hot dripping greasy drumstick just waiting to get gobbled up) – but then she was gone and back again, and I thought maybe we'll be on the run again soon.
Strike that. We'll be on the run again soon, regardless. She doesn't get her hot lunches from the drive-through at McDonald's, and she doesn't pay in clean, silent, anonymous cash.
She will be on the run again soon, at any rate.
So, now she comes up gibbering away with all this kind of French nobody's spoken in three or four centuries, asking who I am. She said she might wake up a little bit confused, but this isn't “confusion”, this is just flat-out total amnesia. She lost at least a couple of centuries, and everything that came with them.
Including me.
So, when she asked who I was, I tried to remake our connexion. Guess I should have known better, remembering now what a big deal she made out of just “going steady” after we'd been out two or three times. Maybe I should have known better, too, because I still don't know what happened to make her so suspicions of men sometimes. I know she's had to hook up with some pretty disgusting types over the years, but I think there's more to it than that, I think it has something to do with how she got to be what she is, and I think it more now than I used to because if she's lost me, she's also lost all the guys she's been with in the centuries since.
Maybe I just said the first thing that popped into my head not because it's what she needed, but because it's what I needed. Her talking to me for the first time in six months was a lot like giving a donut to a starving cop.
Thing of it is... if she's lost me, it means I might have lost her. It took half a lifetime, hoofing it on thousands of miles of empty road and more bodies than I could count to bring us to where we'd been before she went on this really long snooze. That's an awful lot to lose, and even though I'm young on the outside, on the inside, I think I'm too old to just move on. I don't know if I can live without her, and not at all sure I'd want to even try.
---
“Thou spokest what was in thy heart.”
He gave a loud yelp, almost jumping out of his chair. The novel he'd been reading tumbled down his lap and onto the floor at his feet.
“Cry pardon. I had no wish to startle thee so.”
“That's OK. Just let me get my heart out of my throat and back into my chest where it belongs.”
He took a few deep breaths.
“Art thou not well?”
“No, I'm well enough. I'd just forgotten how damned quiet you can be.”
“Cry pardon.”
“That's OK, honestly. I just... wait, did you just say 'thou' and 'thee'?”
“Aye.”
“This means you know me now?”
“Nay. I know thee not, but I know now that thou knowest me, and that mine heart saith unto me that thou hast spoken what is in thine heart. For the nonce, this shall be enough. Cry pardon that I spoke unto thee in such manner.”
“That's OK. Um... this means you're OK with me? I mean, you know I don't mean you any harm?”
“Aye.”
“OK, so, where are you?”
“I know not. Thou sayest this land is called 'Canada', and that the land I call home lieth beyond a great sea.”
“Do you know what year this is?”
“Nay, but that the year is not mine. Thy strange speech saith unto me that I have slept long.”
“Yes. Six months.”
“Wouldst thou say that thou knowest me well?”
“I'd say I know you better than any other living person, yeah. I'd even be brave enough to say I might know you better than almost anybody in the past has.”
“Thou knowest me so well that thou knowest me both as that which thou seest with thine eyes and as that which I am become? Thou sayest thou hast known half thy life?”
“Yeah.”
“How many years hast thou?”
“Beg pardon?”
“I have twelve years, or so I believe. What is the number of thy years?”
“Oh. I'm, um... I think I'm twenty four years old.”
“Thou hast four and twenty years?”
“Yes. I think. To be honest, I'm not sure. You've always kept track for me.”
“Thou sayest thou art born in my land?”
“Yes, but you were born a long time before I was.”
“I am... born? … before thee by what number of years?”
“We don't know.”
“Hast thou not the magic of numbers?”
“If that means 'am I any good at math', yes, but I can't tell you what the difference is between your age and mine because you said you didn't know when you were born. You couldn't even be sure of exactly where you'd been born. I can only give a rough guess based on what little you were willing to describe.”
“Would that thou couldst bear me thither, to any place nigh unto mine home; I can yet see the hilltops, the flosses, the meadows. I could show unto thee mine house, though it now be gone could I yet show unto thee the very spot on which it stood.”
“Um... Elysse...”
“Aye?”
“What's the last thing you remember?”
“Art thou truly mine husband?”
“... yes.”
“Then if thou wouldst that I tell this tale, I must do so, but if thou beest truly mine husband, who knowest me more than doth any other man, then I am thy wife, and I would pray that thou shouldst not say unto me that I must tell this tale.”
“That's not what I meant. I mean... well... do you remember ever being in a land far away from your home?”
Quietly, downcast: “Aye.”
“Wait... you're trying to tell me the last thing you remember is what happened to you to make you what you are?”
“Aye.”
“Oh, brother.”
Silence.
“No, don't tell me. I've tried to ask before, and you've never wanted to talk about it. Maybe if you get your memory back, you'll see it in a different way. For right now, I guess what I really need from you is this: do you remember where you ate last?”
“Nay.”
“So you don't remember if you cleaned up or not?”
“'Cleaned up'?”
“Did you hide or destroy the bodies?”
“Ah. Had I done so, I remember not.”
“OK, well, that means we have to pack our bags and get going.”
“Whither shall we go?”
“Anyplace but here. Since you've not been keeping up on the current state of the art, I promise you, you're not going to like the kinds of angry villagers you get these days. They have things a lot nastier than pitchforks and torches.”
---
“It seemeth queer.”
“What does?”
“We walk along a highway made of stone, smoother than any woven wool pulled taut, and I see houses shining with the light of flameless candles in crystal, and thou sayest that these things are crafted not with magic but with knowledge. This land is not my land, and I know thee not, nor thy folk nor thy custom nor thy speech, yet...”
“And yet?”
“... yet it seemeth right that thou shouldst be at my side, and that we should been in this place.”
“You don't remember it, but we've done this so many times before, there's no way I could count them all.”
“Thou hast always given me such trust?”
“I don't understand.”
“Thou knowest what I am become, yet thou art with me alone in this place where none might hear thy screams?”
“If we'd never met, I think I'd have been dead a long time ago.”
“Sayest thou so?”
“I do.”
“Wouldst thou tell this tale?”
He told her. He told her every little thing about their first hello, about how she seemed to be laughing at him for trying to fell a tree with a boot knife, about what life at home and at school had been like, about the kids who beat him up, pissed on his head, called him names. He told her about how she tried to give him strength and courage, about how it backfired, and about how the police found little bits and pieces of those kids by the lake one morning. He told her about how she'd lugged him around, useless little zombie that he'd been, and about how she'd steadily (and steadfastly) drummed into him the basic survival skills they were exercising now. He told her about how she's been watching out for him ever since (using as example, among other things, a slightly edited version of the Frankenbean incident).
“To hear thee tell this tale, one should wonder that I not be what I am become, but rather an outlandish elf!”
“You said it yourself: I say what's in my heart. This is what my heart sees.”
“Have I then no blemish?”
“Only that you're a girl.”
“Orson, I am no maiden!”
“Yeah, that's what you keep trying to tell me.”
She pondered this a moment.
“Thou sayest that the only blemish thou seest in me is that I be a maiden?”
“Sorry... an old joke between us that I forgot you've probably forgotten.”
“Thou hast sport with my sex, saying that it is a blemish; art thou then a man who would fain lie with a man as another man would lie with a woman?”
“Um, no, that's not what I'm saying at all!”
“Ah.”
She pondered a bit more.
“Thou sayest that we together slew this Frankenbean monster?”
“Yes.”
“Thou gavest not this tale whole.”
“No.”
“Is it thy custom to help me?”
“In any way I can, yes.”
“Is it thy custom to kill for me?”
“I have killed for you, but you usually do that yourself.”
“Is it thy custom to kill with me?”
“No.”
“Say forsooth: who did slay this Frankenbean monster?”
His lips tightened.
“If it be not thy custom to kill for me, nor to kill with me, then mayhaps did you slay this monster. Were this so, wouldst thou fear I would think less of thee, I who before all folk dare not judge?”
“That's not why I'm slow to tell you about it.”
She thought about this for a while, as they trudged along the highway.
“Mayhaps...”
“Maybe what?”
“Thou knowest not my tale; now, I know not thine. Queer it must seem, that I be thy wife, and thou mine husband, yet we know not our tales, even with such a number of years as thou sayest we have shared?”
“But you know my story. I told you everything.”
“Yet hast thou not given me the tale of Frankenbean whole. Pray forget not that mine ears can hear when a man singeth not true. Mine heart saith unto me that this tale bringeth thee pain. I would know this pain, as it seemeth thou knowest mine. If anew we must be wed, canst thou not understand that I would wish to know thee so well as thou knowest me?”
He told his shoes “What I'm afraid of isn't that you'd judge me. What I'm afraid of is that the story might hurt you.”
“Words might rend or rive my flesh?”
“A broken heart and a crushed spirit are worse than any kind of death. Trust me on this.”
“I see.”
“No, you don't. You're right, I didn't tell you everything about Frankenbean, and I didn't tell you everything about us. I left out parts of it because I was afraid it'd make you see yourself the same way you used to. I'm thinking maybe this last long sleep of yours was a good thing because it might have erased decades or centuries of living with a lie, and I'm afraid you'd see that lie again, and believe it.”
“Thou speakest always what thine heart saith.”
“I've never known anybody I trusted more.”
“I would know better the man who can stand his ground, giving no cry of alarm and showing no wish to flee, not overwrought nor driven mad with fear though he pisseth into his breeches. Thou hast furthermore said unto me that thou hast asked of me my tale, yet hast thou sought no punishment for that I not do as mine husband hath bidden. I therefore say unto thee: would that thou shouldst give me thy tale, and I shall give thee mine.”
He pondered this for a moment.
“I don't know exactly where you come from, or how you came to be what you are. That doesn't mean I don't know who you are. Strangely enough, I think it's fair to say right now that I know you a lot better than you do yourself, and if you'll give me time, I'll show you who you are. Whatever happened so many centuries ago can't change the Elysse I know. Can't that be enough?”
“Nay, for I know thee not, and though I know that thou sayest what thine heart saith, I know not the hue of thine heart. With that which thou hast not said of the Frankenbean monster might I see.”
Feet scuffled along the highway for what seemed an eternity.
“Oh, God, I'm really going to have to do this all over again?”
He started slowly. He chose his words carefully, and reworded himself on occasion when she seemed not to understand. He didn't just tell the whole story about Frankenbean; he told quite a bit about what her life had been like before they'd met, and quite a bit about the conversations they'd had after the Frankenbean incident. She nodded from time to time, but said nothing.
“I slew the child-eating dragon. Good.”
“Well... at the time it seemed important that you understand that you did it with my full blessing.”
“... aye... I understand not that thou hadst fear that this tale might harm me. Forsooth, thy tale saith naught of me that I had not already known, save that I might use my body so.”
“I hope you can still say that after you've had a few more meals.”
“Thou hast said thou knowest not the fields whereof speaketh my name. What knowest thou of the tale my name bringeth?”
“In my family there was a story about a girl who'd set fire to a field while an army was crossing it, and that her ghost still haunts those hills. It was one of those 'once upon a time, in a land far away' kinds of stories that I guess nobody outside my own family had ever heard, but the story goes that she burned that army up because they made fun of her.”
“'Made fun'?”
“I think you'd have said they 'made sport of her'.”
“Aye, 'made sport'.”
She paced a bit more quickly, fists clenched.
“I shall give thee 'SPORT'!”
“Um, Elysse, the countryside might not look like there's anybody around, but you can never be too careful. That, and your shouts can shatter glass and crumble brick walls. Please try to be a bit quieter, or we may find ourselves running away from things a lot faster and a lot more powerful than the horses people rode around on in your time.”
She almost whispered “As you say, a time now long passed, in a land beyond a great sea...”
Orson glanced at her. She was looking straight ahead, grimly, but looked as if what she was seeing lay beyond the stars.
“My family dwelt in a house on a hill nigh the trading grounds: my brother who was born a small number of years after me, my sister perhaps two or three years before me, and with her man and her son, our father and mother, and my mother's mother. Our father's brother dwelt on the hill across and beyond the trading grounds with his woman and his children who were as mine own brothers and sisters. When he tilled no earth and brought no game from the woods, my father would build houses and barrels and wains; my sister's man would bring deer or squirrel from the woods, and help our father to build. Our father's brother would do the same.
“We were a plain folk; we ate what grew or grazed in our fields, and wore what we wove or sewed. Men who passed through our trading grounds from lands beyond our ken would oft say unto us that the manner of our dress was rude, as were we, but we would answer that we had no need to wander many days' walk without to seek our dinner; verily, I say unto thee, that the earth gave us far more than we could eat. We wrote not, for we read naught, but we kept our lore with many long tales and songs. We had no riches, yet thought ourselves not poor when these wayfarers told such evil tales of folk dying in great numbers of hunger, of illness and of war. Save that we been carried these tales, we knew naught of such things.
“One day an host of men was come. Their mares were dark and huge, as houses, and on their shields they bore the mark of their king and god. Theirs was a speech of barks and coughs. They were come without goods or boons to trade.
“What few men of my land as bore swords fell first; our swords broke beneath theirs, as if they were made of dry twigs rather than iron. Our mother bade us flee into the woods, before the strange men might see us. So did we, my brother and my sister and her son, but her son was a baby and would cry aloud. The strange men soon found us. My brother, who had but perhaps eight years, did they bind and lead away. My sister and I were bound, too, and borne away, but not together.
“They stilled my sister's son. Ere I was away, I saw them gut and skin him, as for the spit.”
He coughed. “You're saying they cooked and ate him?”
“Aye, so I believe.”
“That's... I mean...”
“Aye. No greater wrong beneath the sun, no worse evil can man do, than that he eat the flesh of his brother, or drink his blood. Ere that day, I thought it evil to steal eggs from my father's brother's hens!”
“Yeah, there can't be anything worse, but you said your people had farm animals, right? And you hunted?”
“Aye, swine we had, and kine and horses, and fowl without number. They needed not the flesh of my sister's son, though the strange men hunt not.”
“What happened then?”
“I know little of what thereafter befell my folk. The strange men bound mine hands and feet, and hove me over a horse as if I were dead, and bore me away to the trading grounds. There I saw the strange men hew and rend our elders, man and woman alike; they bore the womenfolk of childbearing years into houses wherefrom I could hear screaming. The lads younger than myself, they bound and left lie on the grounds before the trading-house, thence to what end I dare not think, and I know not what befell most of the younger maidens, and I knew not then what befell the men they'd not hewn.
“I was thrown into a wain and borne to a great house of grey stone many days from mine home, a week mayhaps, and kept in a dungeon. Of what passed in my time therein I can remember little, and would fain say nothing. I know not the number of days or weeks passed in this dungeon; I was as one besotted with wine, or hot with illness.
“I remember dimly a man clad in black robes of a cloth whose like I had never seen, and he did say unto me that I would bear witness to the wages of the great wrongs my folk had brought to the sight of this strange man's god. He said unto me that so great was our pride and our lawlessness that his god had commanded that my folk be smitten, our kine and swine given over wholly to the altars of his god, and that our land be given over to his king, that those of us who lived might know the greatness of our wrongdoing. Forever would we remember the name of this god, said he, that we might say unto others what is reaped were they to not heed this god's words.
“This man came unto me, as a man cometh unto a woman, saying that my womanly pride did anger and 'vex' his god mightily, and that I should never again give the sun leave to see my skin, lest mine wantonness cause the sun to shrivel and burn me.
“I say unto thee verily, though I had promised my hand to a man, I had yet suffered no man (nor woman) to disturb my maidenhood as was oft the custom of other maidens whose years were like mine; a hand promised is an heart given, and I would not show my skin that men might ask to pass time with me in the woods. My blood told this tale unto the man with the angry god when he rove me, so much as I spilt, yet came he unto me many times more to remind me of my great wrongness.
“I know not by what black magic am I become that which I now am, but surely did this man call upon it. Nor do I know how I came to forsake this great stone house. I awoke one morning in a cave, naked and starved nigh unto death.
“It was that morning that I found the words of the angry god's man of the strange black cloth true. The sun did indeed shrivel my skin; the very sight of the light of day burnt mine eyes. He had not said that I would be sickened by fruits from trees very like those of mine home, nor would I abide the flesh of swine, kine or fowl. Better I had withered unto dust in yon dungeon, or given the sun leave to burn away my flesh, than to find what fare I now needed and craved!
“I knew not where I was, but found folk who would say how to follow the moon to find mine own land. Few knew what befell my folk, and who knew would say little, saying rather that I should hasten to leave their lands. When I drew nigh unto mine home, I found folk I had known, even at times from mine home.
“They said unto me that they ran, who could, to lands beyond the hills and woods. The elders all had been put to the sword or axe; one believed she'd seen the head of my mother's mother roll on the earth, she whose hair had not yet begun to come grey! Those folk whose years were fewer than mine, lad and maiden alike, went onto the spits in the strange men's camps. The men had been fitted as oxen for the plough, to till the king's new fields, and such maidens and womenfolk as were found pleasing unto the eye were given unto the captains, or borne away, save such womenfolk as had great magic with the needle or loom. Those not so pleasing had been given unto whomsoever might take.
“The first sight to greet me, when I was come onto the trading grounds, was of the men who'd been fitted for dray. They lay quiet, far too tired to worry over what might befall them, and they had no cover to ward away the cold of night. I sought my man, but found him not; I found none of the blood of my father's father.
“There took I that night's meal.
“Thou sayest thou seest what I am become, yet thou walkest with me without fear. Hadst thou been with me that night, thou wouldst have been wise to flee. I wandered through the woods, happening at times upon the festering bodies of folk with whom I'd sung and danced; folk I'd loved. Among them found I none of my father's father's blood, for which I cannot say to be glad or nay. As I saw how I had been sundered from mine home, the daytime sun and from my kin, my anger kindled and grew. As I saw that I had been sundered from me, my anger grew, and as I saw that I must do that which is most forbidden, lest I die, my anger grew yet more.
“On the night which followed, I began to slay in great numbers. For though the strange men be of greater height and girth than the men of my land, with greater thew and speed, and for though they were many, yet could they see naught after the sun has fallen, nor could any ten of them match the thew I now had, or speed. Their heads rolled down the hills, as my mother's mother's head was said to have rolled; their entrails spilt out onto the earth, as did those of my sister's son. Their fruit fell from their loins, and between their legs were they more deeply cloven, that they spill blood as I have.
“So that they might know the true power of their lying and greedy god, I did cry aloud to bid those who might flee to remember me to the man in the great house of grey stone, saying 'I am called Elysse, of the fields wherefrom was riven that which belongeth to no man!'
“I slew. I slew the strange men for what they had taken, and I slew the men and women of my land, so that they need not live without that which had been riven from them.
“Come more strange men, slew I them. I have no name for the number of men whose offal the sun, flies and birds found following the sun's rising. Soon, I thought, men would dread to set foot upon the earth I once called mine home. My folk were dead, my blood ended; let these hills be their headstones, and let no man disturb their rest.
“It did indeed come to pass that the strange men would no longer come, nor would any other man, woman or child. It was said not only was this unearthly being called 'Elysse' to be feared, whosoever ye might be, lest your bones also should rest with the untold numbers of other folk slain by this being, but also that no man, woman or child could withstand the reek of so much festering flesh. I marked it not, but it is said to have sickened men yet a day's walk from the hills of mine home.
“I then went unto the great house of stone, and did for it what I had done for mine own home, save that I spared the life of the man of the black cloth. Him I suffered not to leave his home; in it had he known the boon of that which had been taken from mine home and my folk (for I saw through his windows the crafts of my folk up his shelves); in it, he knew the boon of what he had wrested from me. And in it, he should know the living death that were now my unsleeping hours. He dwelt alone in this house, knowing not the joy of a child's song nor a woman's comfort (but if he should so direly need, I would give him leave to know this comfort with a woman whose body no longer held heat).
“And I asked of him wherefore had he wrought upon me such punishment, that my folk should be taken from me, and my blood ended, and that the sun should be taken from me in such manner, that I should now live out my nights able to give naught but death. He said unto me that I was as all women, stinking mouths to the caverns of his god's hell from which can flow only a festering vileness.
“Years would pass, yea nigh unto his death, ere he would say more true, that his land had been poorer than mine, and that he craved the riches of its fields and trees and hills and flosses. He had hidden behind his god, whom his folk feared, and bidden them unto their deeds.
“I cried not my name at the man's great stone house; surely folk would yet say one unto another that the being called Elysse had walked among them under the moon, having now no new men to hew where once stood the house of my father, but I would that this name guard over mine own hills. I therefore suffered the folk who dwelt nigh unto the great stone house to name the shade which brought them death however they might. Hence am I become Elysse 'Deschamps', rather than Elysse 'de la Maison', where I had as a maiden been known only as 'Elysse'.”
Orson swallowed. “That's quite a tale.”
“Believest thou it not?”
“Oh, I believe it. Guess you missed the part where I told you what you did when you saved my life the first time. I was there, in the water, couldn't get out, couldn't get up and couldn't run away. I'd known what you were, I'd thought, but that night told me everything I needed to know about how dangerous it can be to make you mad!”
“Doest thou fear now to anger me?”
“Well... I know I should. I mean, you keep saying you don't know me, so you're not the same Elysse I knew. She understood me. Thing is, you sure sound different with this funny talk of yours, and I had no idea you could be so bloody vengeful, but... well... you feel the same to me.”
“Cry pardon?”
“You're not any angrier now than you had been before. I mean, there was a lot of blood in that story, and you told parts of it in your special little voice that says 'this part really pisses me off', but mostly, your voice is still Elysse's.”
“Then I know thine Elysse not.”
“Why don't you tell me what happened afterwards?”
“There is naught left to tell.”
“I don't believe that. You were jailing this man in his house. What happened then?”
“He died not long after I wrought upon his land what he'd wrought upon mine, ten years mayhaps. Bitter was he, and methinks more than a bit mad ere his death. Oft when I think on those days do I wonder if mayhaps what drove him mad was the weight that now bore against him of the scales he did tip against my folk.
“I know this weight well; had I had more thought, I might have spared what folk of mine I did find, for though they would laugh or sing never again, might not their unborn children? By mine own hand are now gone all the songs we would sing, all the dances we would dance, yea, even our very speech is now stilled forever. Since we wrote naught, it is as if my folk had never been, save that there now lie beyond a great sea a land wherein can be found hills whose bones are as much from men as from stone, and that one of the daughters of mine home liveth yet who can and must give folk naught but their deaths.
“I went unto mine home, and tarried I know not for what number of years, but found therein no rest nor peace. Though the hills be the same, and the flosses and the meadows, mine home had gone from this world. I believe truly that if the strange men had instead but merely thrown us into wains and borne us thence all together to another land, I should not now be so hollow even while I am yet what I am become. I might even have sought to become their guardian beast, unseen and unheard save in time of need.
“When at last men began again to set foot onto the earth of mine home, and I saw that these new men were not of the same land wherefrom came the strange men, and that they brought with them their women and their children, I hid away. They brought with them no craft of war; rather, they brought ploughs and butter churns and looms. Very strange was their speech, such that I understood them not, yet did I also understand that these folk were as mine, and that they wanted nothing more than what I had lost.
“When their numbers grew such that I could no longer hide away, I forsook mine home, and wandered whither the wind might blow. Forsooth, I say unto thee, I remember nothing more until this very week, and now I have given unto the the whole tale, save small bits of what I might yet remember from my time in the dungeon.”