A house in the woods
A damned soul, emerging from the fog, had claimed Rostro’s life with a single, lethal arrow-bolt. And thus Klaus discovered that past horrors seemed flimsy and immaterial indeed, when you were facing the present. Klaus had run blindly, like a fool, and now he felt very afraid. His mangy steed was long dead. His musket felt leaden. His sword… He stopped, feeling the edge. It was blunt — just about his luck. He was still thumbing the blade when he smelled wood fire. He quickly grabbed his matchlock, and sniffed at the cord to understand if he was fooling himself, but its faint scent was more like singed linen and saltpeter, of course, and cold. He then heard the howling, coming from some hell-beast, a monster, a phantasm — anything but a mundane wolf or hound. Klaus was a woodsman, he knew the beasts fashioned by the Lord. These were not like that.
He came upon the hovel mostly by smelling it out, following the smoke. He spat, figuring he had come upon wild people akin to himself, living as savages and in neglect of God, just like his own father had. Klaus hadn’t been brought up under the light of holiness. If he had been, he wouldn’t be here, fleeing from the jaws of the Devil. He hammered at the door. He hammered again and a woman answered. He implored to be let in. His prayers were met, and he discovered how deeply he had misjudged: these were not woodspeople, and this hovel was a home of widows. All of them were such, he was informed when admitted inside.
“We are alone in this world,” said Burnt-face Widow, as if she intended to use her sorry condition as a shield. “We only have each other and ourselves.”
Besides Burnt-face Widow, who was easy to recognize on account of her fire-scar, there were five others. They looked just like a bunch of nondescript barn owls to Klaus. He was no good at recognizing people, he was far better with hunting birds. Could he trust this hearth? He did not know the land so well that he could tell if a Church was close, but he saw crosses. He glared at the women: afraid, resigned, angry, each according to her nature. No wonder, he looked frightening. He waited respectfully for a sign from Heaven that he had stepped into a den of Devil-worshippers, but came away empty-handed. No surprise at all, there. He still considered turning and fleeing from this womanly abode, which made him deeply awkward. He regretted coming here at all, feeling bad because in desperation he had brought evil on the head of the wretched.
“Who are you, good man?” asked Burnt-face, shattering the surly silence. “Are you a hunter who lost his falcon?” Her voice trembled, but her eyes were intense, hard to stand.
Nobody ever taught Klaus the subtle magic of staring people straight in the face when speaking to them. His bag of morsels and his heavy glove had given him away, he should have thrown those away after Rostro’s demise. Yet this was a good lie: ‘I’m a falconer, and I was led astray searching for my goshawk’. It would keep these sad women quiet while he rested a bit before the inevitable happened.
“You are not a man of many words,” said Burnt-face Widow, not-so-subtly reproaching his silent countenance.
She was right, of course. Klaus needed a lot of time to try his words for size, before using them. Yet lately he had come to detest his tight lip. He had found out the hard way that it was just as dangerous. Six months ago to this day, he had sat down in a tavern, while keeping himself preoccupied at staring at his own beer. He had neglected to yell “Amen!” when a patron intoned a prayer to the health of the Prince-Bishop. That had been enough for jail and torture, yeah, it had been, and most recently it had also been enough to send him abroad, condemned to Hunt. No one had guaranteed for him, when he was snatched.
“Pray, if you would, all of you,” he said, choosing to be truthful when Death strode hither.
The others gasped. “Are you man, or shade coming as a portent?” asked Burnt-face Widow.
“A man made of flesh. But the one who is coming, he is…” Klaus felt his words fail.
The women huddled. Two of them started snivelling, but Burnt-face nodded. “We believe you,” she said. No doubts, there, no confusion. Klaus belatedly realized that people living in this region, no matter how isolated or dull, they were all feeling the World spinning like a top on the mouth of a Great Precipice. He drew a breath, somewhat happy to have restrained himself from falsehood against these women. They were forced by circumstance to live at the edge, with nobody to guarantee for them just as it had always been in his case. And alas, it would have felt fruitless to run. What use was drawing danger to himself when everybody else was doomed? He felt resignment, for he was about to end his troubles, and not so lonely anymore. Others would keep on fighting when he was done.
“We all saw Her,” said Burnt-face Widow, interrupting his reverie. “The Bird-Woman. How could I describe Her in any other way? She led a procession of nightmares. We believed we were crazy, and we fled to the Monastery to confess, but real madness was waiting for us right there.” She crossed herself, trembling. “Of that I won’t speak anymore. We do not know how we saved ourselves, but we all knew the Devil would come back and finish the job. You are the first pious man we saw since then. Would you pray with us?”
Klaus was aghast. This new sweet dream about dying with no regret had been shattered in its infancy, just like that. The Bird-Woman… Right here and now? The creature known only as “Zauberin” was abroad on the land, and he was needed to carry the news. Yet, he heard the howls now. No way to avoid the confrontation.
He shook himself, and prepared silently, happy to avoid any answer to Burnt-face as he loaded the musket. With a wild shove he freed a bench beside the door, and put his unsheathed sword there, for readiness. Then he realized he had thrown unceremoniously on the ground a tableful of stuff that did not belong to him. He felt the women staring. He turned and met Burnt-faced Widow’s intolerably direct gaze.
“Wh— What is your name?” he managed to ask.
“Grete.”
“I am Klaus.” He swallowed. “May God protect you, Frau Grete.”
Klaus and Grete held each other’s gaze as long as they could. Then turned to face a closed door, and the inevitable.
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