Wolfweir (4 page)

No tongue!

His wooden teeth begin clattering like castanets. He clamps his mouth shut to stop them.

**

He's inside a dim and grimy storeroom, or maybe judging by the oblong shape an unmoving circus wagon. There's an iron grilled window high on the opposite wall.

No way to get to it -- even if he stood on what appears to be a wine cask he couldn't see anything out there but clouds drifting in a blue sky.
A bucolic, serene sight.

So it's daytime.

He hears birdsong. Guessing by the sheer volume and variety of twitters this circus wagon is parked in the woods someplace.

He glances around for a chalk and slate. No such luck. He tries some crude mimicry and sign language on the other puppets.

They merely stare at him with open mouths and wide, blank billiard ball-like eyes.

They're all boys in linen shirts, short pants, and wooden sabots, some with jaunty wool caps pulled low on their heads.

Alphonse feels his head. He's wearing a cap, too.

It's dusty here, the dust motes floating in and out of light beams.

Alphonse tries to maneuver himself to the edge of the shelf. He's high up. Will falling hurt?

In any case, the clamor might arouse some life. He edges himself, scraping, off the shelf, pushing with his wooden palms --

**

SPLANG.
BANG.
CRASH.

He's on the floor, a spindly heap, one leg wrapped about his scrawny puppet neck.

The other boy puppets lean forward, gaping down at him like fools.

Alphonse feels he'll weep from mingled despair and helplessness and rage. His wooden eyes actually begin to ooze something sticky -- he touches it and looks at the stuff on his fingers.

Pine sap!

He's made of sticks. A nut brown boy, painted a gaudy green and red, dressed in a doll's raiment.

Senseless.
No heart beating in his chest.

Without a tongue he can't taste, and his nose doesn't smell. So how can his eyes see, his ears hear sounds? It must be some kind of Black Magic.

He suddenly recalls the golden-locked Lucia di
Fermonti
shouting "No!
Vesuvio
!"

And that cursed blue glowing
orb,
and the fat hirsute face with bloodshot eyes leering above it.

Definitely, he thinks, the fiery blue orb is the source of the gypsy's power. He remembers staring into it, overwhelmed, just before he got all dizzy and collapsed, and the clattering puppets bore him paralyzed off into the night.

His real body.
A.D.S.'s flesh and blood and beating heart --where could it be right now?

Maybe it's entombed someplace. And with that terrifying thought, a shiver runs through puppet-Alphonse, making his wooden legs dance, his fingers click together like bones.

Vesuvio

He explores the wagon. A clutter of objects heaped in one dark corner turns out to be a circus junk pile.
Paper
mache
lion and clown masks.
Broken drums.
A shining copper pennywhistle -- he slips it into his shirt pocket.
Dust, filth and rot, torn posters (VESUVIO PUPPET CIRCUS, GYPSY MAGIC ALL THE WAY FROM BEAUTIFUL MOORISH CITY OF PALERMO).
Wrack and refuse mixed with rat droppings. A spider perched on her dusty web.
Hello, Madame Spider. Hello, Puppet Boy.

**

With a clank, a rattle, and a bang, the double doors at the rear of the wagon opened -- a gust of moist forest wind entered, lifting Alphonse's cap. He grabbed it and shoved it back down on his pine head.

Vesuvio
stood there in the sharp sunlight, leering sadistically, holding an iron key with a red ribbon attached.

The gypsy slipped the key back into his vest fob-pocket and snatched a gleaming-bladed hatchet from a nearby stump. This weapon he brandished aloft, sneering, and roared a command: PUPPETS! FOLLOW!

Alphonse heard the scrape of wooden limbs, and puppets began dropping around him from the shelves. Scrambling and twitching, they obeyed the frenzied old rogue. They poured clattering out of the wagon. They followed
Vesuvio
as he lurched double-time through the damp, grassy clearing, kicking aside the crickets that were too slow to leap away from his steps.

Alphonse took up the rear. They were all moving fast, almost running. He had to hop every few steps just to keep the feverish pace. This fat gypsy moved like a hurricane.

There were three wagons parked in the forest clearing. Two big cages were set on the grass. In one sat a melancholy looking bear with his paws clasped. In the other --

With a shock, Alphonse's puppet-eyes met the searching blue gaze of Lucia di
Fermonti
, wrapped in a
wolfskin
, looking thin and pale and utterly forlorn.

She smiled sadly at Alphonse, as he made a rakish salute, completing it with a bow and a skillfully doffed cap.

She had clearly been weeping. She wiped tears from her cheeks, pointed to one of the circus wagons -- it was painted with a large mural of the grinning
Vesuvio
-- and mouthed:

(Your sword.
In THERE.
)

Alphonse's eyes widened. He nodded, the chin clicking on his chest.

Of course.
His rapier.

Alphonse was no longer a real boy, but still had hands. Armed with a blade he could teach the brutal gypsy a trick or two.

Vesuvio
was suddenly roaring: LISTEN GOOD, PUPPETS!

Alphonse gave Lucia one last sharp glance, then scrambled and bounced on his rickety legs through the grass, catching with the motley crowd of wooden boys as
Vesuvio
whirled on them, raising the hatchet high overhead.
Bellowing: GATHER FIREWOOD.
STACK OVER THERE, FOR BIG BONFIRE.
DOUBLE TIME.
NOW CHOP
CHOP
OR I GONNA CHOP YOU.

**

Alphonse follows the other clattering puppets.

Into deep still woods.

He knows that if his wooden nostrils could smell it would smell rich and clean in this vast
primaeval
forest.

The
treetrunks
are as big as iron-hooped barrels.
Branches
woosh
and swish faintly high up.

The sun is dying. Its last slanting rays hit the pine needled ground like fire-reflections.

He begins picking up dead littered wood from the earth.

He hobbles around, his arms stacked with pine branches, until he can barely stand under the weight, then he struts toward the clearing. Blind to where his sabot-clad wooden feet are stepping, he raises his knees high to avoid stumbling on humped and twisted tree roots.

Vesuvio
is standing by the enormous stick-pile, hands on his fat hips.
Glaring.

Alphonse dumps the wood out of his sticklike arms. It slides and clatters. He hastens to stack it up neatly with the rest.

More puppets arrive every few seconds, tossing their fuel into the pile then jolting and jittering away like sun-warmed crickets.

The pile is growing -- to the sky.

After a half dozen trips into the forest and back, Alphonse can barely see the ground to locate firewood.

The sun is gone. It's night.

His puppet body can't feel the cold, but he still shivers.

Yes.
he's
completely terrified.
Scared out of his bark.
Why not? Wouldn't you be?

**

Then he sees it -- the Blue Orb.

Vesuvio
is holding it cupped in his fat hands. He's finally put down that cruel-looking hatchet.

The fat gypsy gazes lovingly into the star-fiery depths of the Blue Orb.

Who knows what he's imagining? Maybe he sees some fair damsel there -- some laughing black haired dimpled peasant girl from beautiful Moorish city of Palermo.

Alphonse sees by the Blue Orb's illumination the gypsy's crude smile -- it's more of lurid grin, like a gashed pumpkin.

The gold capped teeth glittering. Then:

THAT'S
A
ENOUGH, PUPPETS!
Vesuvio
shouts.

The puppets stop their feverish work. The
stringless
wooden boys in the woods dump what's left in their arms and troop back to the clearing, obedient
slaves.

The Black Riders

Alphonse sits down in the grass to observe. He doesn't mind that the dew-dampness spreads into his short pants -- he can't even feel it, really.

He sees
Vesuvio
, still carrying the Blue Orb in one fat
hand,
go over to a small tin outdoor stove where a faint charcoal fire is glimmering.
Vesuvio
picks up a dead stick that's been wrapped in cloth and soaked with oil, and thrusts it into the fire.

It flames up.
Ghastly hell-light.

He tosses the torch whirling at the stacked pine branches. In a few moments, part of the woodpile is smoking. Then it bursts into bright flame. Soon a veritable bonfire roars up, showering sparks.

Lost in the shadows, Alphonse decides to use this moment to creep to
Vesuvio's
wagon and retrieve his father's sword cane.