Wolfweir (9 page)

It was dark in the baggage car, since there were no windows. The heaped baggage swayed with the motion of the train.

Alphonse searched his vest pockets and came out with a box of matches. He struck one. The match head rasped and sputtered into flame.

By its light Alphonse found a lantern hanging by a small iron hook at the end of the car.

He climbed a pile of suitcases to get to the lantern and took it down carefully. It had a little kerosene sloshing in it.

When he'd brought it to the floor, he shook out his match -- it had burned down almost to Alphonse's wooden fingertips -- and struck another. He opened the tiny window in the glass chimney and lit the cotton wick.

Puppets have to be a little careful around fire, he reflected.

He set the lantern on the wooden floor and sat cross legged by it. Lucia smiled, pulled up a suitcase and perched close to the flame, gazing into it as if to discern the shape of their future.

Maybe she saw
Wolfweir
castle, and the river where she used to sit singing, dangling her bare feet in the water and floating leaf boats downstream.

They had some light now. It wasn't too uncomfortable in the baggage car. They were alone, with no interference or danger, and could just enjoy being alive.

For the nonce, anyhow.

After
awhile
, Alphonse decided that he'd like to take a look at the countryside passing. Since the door was locked from the outside, he'd have to find another way.

His simple but elegant solution was to shoot a hole in the door. He loaded one of the dueling pistols, crept up close to the door, squinted holding the pistol at arm's length -- Lucia covered her head with her arms -- and fired.

BANG

Daylight shone through the bullet hole. Alphonse waved away the wafting black powder smoke and stuck his eye to the hole. He saw green fields, a river
scummed
with algae, a stone bridge, a cow lying in a pasture, a pile of hay, a mountain covered with pines.

It was the French countryside, all right.

He saw a field of dazzling orange poppies. He waved for Lucia, but by the time she put her eye to the hole, the heavenly poppy field was gone. She saw a pile of smoking manure, then a little village with red tiled roofs click by.
A stone wall.
A man walking behind a cart drawn by two muddy white oxen.

"Eh.
Marveloso
!" she cried.

**

It was getting colder. They had rumbled through vast pine forests all afternoon. The train was climbing steadily into steep mountains.

Alphonse draped the silly silk opera cape around Lucia. She wrapped it tight around her shoulders, sitting huddled on the suitcase.
Her breath smoking.

Then Alphonse glanced around him at the heaps of luggage and -- mentally at least -- chortled.

There must be many wardrobes worth of clothing in this baggage car, he thought.

Lucia watched the puppet boy with wonder as he danced about the jolting train car opening suitcases and bags and yanking out items of clothing, tossing aside some and stacking up others to try on.

Eventually, he found a sheepskin-lined leather coat and handed it to Lucia, who was shivering now. She put it on and zipped it up to the chin.

She put on the gloves Alphonse tossed in her lap. Then she wrapped a thick red wool scarf around her neck.

As for Alphonse, he didn't feel the cold, and so he wasn't trembling a bit.

All he needed for himself, he thought, was some well-made hiking boots, and maybe a fetching leather aviator jacket.

He soon found such a jacket in his size -- it must belong to a
runtish
teenaged boy -- and put it on, turning for Lucia to admire him. She clapped her gloved hands.

"Wonderful, Alphonse!"

There were other things in the luggage. After pulling out a pair of hiking boots that very nearly fit him, Alphonse found a big bar of Swiss chocolate, which he tossed to Lucia. She
unwrapped
it at once and took a big bite.

Then he found some crisp apples, a golden wedge of aged Gouda cheese wrapped in newspaper, and a dark blue tin of Beluga caviar.

Finally, there was a small hurdy-gurdy with ivory keys and brass trim, its sides painted with colorful Bavarian scenes. Alphonse perched on a crate and began testing it out as Lucia devoured her apples, cheese, caviar and chocolate. He'd learned to play some simple tunes on such an instrument during a long past summer vacation with his parents to Corsica.

He soon had Lucia clapping and dancing. She whirled faster and faster in the flickering lamplight, stamping the boards.

Alphonse found his wooden fingers more than ample for this instrument. It seemed to him he could play even faster than he had when he was a real boy.

He was wrenching furious music out of that hurdy-gurdy like a real organ grinder, sans monkey. Even he was moved by the magical, whirling, plangent notes.

"Stop!
I grow breathless!" Lucia cried, at last. Alphonse stopped, and she collapsed, smiling, sweaty, and magically beautiful onto a pile of baggage.

Alphonse put down the accordion. He wasn't tired but he saw that Lucia was near exhaustion. She needed to rest up a little. And, in fact, soon the wolf girl was snoring lightly in her sleep.

He took the blue train schedule out of his pocket and studied it. The train was due to reach the Italian border just before dawn. This was where, the wolf-girl had said, they would have to get off to proceed on foot.

Through the deep snow.
Would they need skis? Alphonse made a mental note to search the baggage car for some.

They'd hike or ski over a mountain pass, eluding the border stations and police. It would take them a day and a night and half of another day at least to reach the frontier of her kingdom.

Wolfweir
.

Lucia had assured Alphonse that she would recognize the place by its small blue flowers (if any were blooming, Alphonse thought grimly), the scent of the clear mountain air (maybe, he thought, maybe), and also the peculiar quality of the light (although in truth the light was probably no different from anywhere in these Alps).

Besides, she'd added in her quiet, melodious, very un-wolf-like voice, all wolf-people have
a
innate sense of direction and so rarely get lost (though Lucia had wandered around totally lost in the forests near Paris for three days or more, the worry-wart puppet Alphonse reflected).

The Border

Alphonse sat awake all that night as Lucia slept on the pile of luggage.

He supposed that puppet boys don't need sleep. It was his second night of total wakefulness, yet he wasn't tired in the least. His pine eyes wouldn't shut but to blink.

He tried not to think too much about his parents, or the
Vampyres
, or
Vesuvio
with his magical Blue Orb and the other enslaved boy- puppets. But he sometimes did think of these things despite his best efforts, and at these instants he clenched his wooden hands into fists.

Every so often he peered out through his bullet-hole into the freezing dark.

Sometimes he saw far off lights, or the empty platform of a small station lurching by, illuminated by a single dim electric lamp.

Since this train was the express, it didn't stop in any of the Alpine towns or villages along the way. It just roared through without slowing down.

As soon as the bit of sky Alphonse could see through his bullet-hole turned robin's egg blue, Alphonse shook Lucia. She woke, yawned, and stretched her arms out, smiling.

"Ah. I dreamt such wonderful things, Alphonse. But I won't remember any of it in a few hours, naturally. Why do we always forget our dreams? Shouldn't we recall everything beautiful that ever happens to us?"

Alphonse shrugged. He was checking his pistols to make sure they were primed and loaded.

**

The sun was rising as the train groaned and squeaked to a stop at the border. Alphonse looked out through the hole and saw a guard walking along the tracks with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

He waved Lucia to him. They crouched together by the heavy sliding door, Alphonse gripping his sword cane in one hand and Lucia's arm in the other.

The train had now stopped moving completely. They could hear voices. Then the lock clunked, and the door slid wide --

And the railroad worker stepped back, his mouth agape in shock, as a little boy and a young girl sprang from the baggage car.

The little boy wore a beret and a stylish aviator's jacket and clunky brand new hiking boots, and was carrying a silver tipped cane. His movements were oddly jerky, like a marionette's. The little girl was clad in a sheepskin coat and a red scarf and snow boots.

They hit the frozen ground running. They dashed away from the train, Alphonse in the lead, tugging on Lucia's gloved hand.

She was having trouble running in her new boots. Every few steps she sank up to her knees in the soft deep snow.

A whistle shrilled. A border guard unslung his rifle and raised it in the direction the railroad worker pointed, but he couldn't see anything to shoot at. The sun hadn't risen over that part of the mountain yet.

He fired a crisp shot at the dark pine woods anyhow. The cracking report echoed back and forth between the peaks.

"Oh Alphonse!
They're shooting at us," Lucia gasped.

Alphonse tugged hard on her sleeve. She was wading in a deep snowdrift. They'd reached the dark eaves of the forest. Alphonse pulled harder, and Lucia, sliding and puffing in the snow, followed him into the pines.

They stopped and looked back. The railroad worker was gesturing and pointing like an actor in a silent movie. The guard looked bored. Finally, with a shrug, he slung the rifle on his shoulder again and walked back toward the station.

Lucia laughed, covering her mouth with a gloved hand. Alphonse reached up and brushed snow from her hair.