Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (13 page)

past her.

He ripped off all the clothes before he crossed the clearing, left his satchel behind, never thought again about the gun. By the time he

reached the trees he had a hitch in his stride, as his back hunched and his bones slipped and cracked to new shapes. His vision became sharp and clear, and the scents filling his nose made the world rich and glorious. Tail, ears, teeth, a coat of beautiful thick fur, and nothing but open country before him.

The doors of All Hallows Eve had opened, and the boy’s wolf

knew where to go, even if he didn’t. West. Just west, as far and as fast as he could. Armies and soldiers and checkpoints and spies didn’t

CARRIE VAUGHN [95]

stop him. No one fired on him. All any of them saw was a wolf, a bit scrawny and the worst for wear perhaps, racing through the night, a gray shadow under a silver moon.

Later, Fritz would remember flashes of the journey, woods and

fields, a small stream that he splashed through, the feel of moonlight rising over him. For decades after the smell fireworks would remind him of the stink of exploded artillery shells that filled his head as he crossed the site of a recent battle. The memories made him think of a hero in a fairy tale, the boy who had to fight through many hardships to reach the castle and rescue the princess. The knight with his

sword, slaying the dragon. Never mind that he was a monster, like

the monsters in the stories. Perhaps he didn’t have to be a monster any more. Not like that, at least.

He ran all night, collapsed an hour or so before dawn, not

knowing where on the map of Europe’s battlefields he’d ended up,

not caring. He’d run as far as he could, then he slept, and the wolf crept away again.

He’d run all the way to France.

The American soldiers found him naked, satchel and gun and

clothing long gone. Hugging himself, he hid behind a tree trunk, torn between fleeing again or begging for help. When they leveled rifles at him, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t imagine the Amis had brought silver bullets with them. They could not kill him, but they didn’t know

that. He waited; they waited.

He read confusion in their gazes. He must have looked like a

child to them: thin, glaringly pale against the gray of the woods

and overcast sky. Lost and shivering. Ducking his gaze, a sign of

submission, he crept out from behind the tree. He licked his lips, needing water, but that could wait. Still, they didn’t shoot. He decided to step through the door that had opened.

“I . . . I surrender,” he said in very rough English, and raised his arms.

N

[96] UNTERNEHMEN WERWOLF

Carrie Vaughn
is the author of the
New York Times
-bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the most recent of which is
Kitty in the Underworld
. She’s also the author of young adult novels (
Voices of Dragons
, Steel) and contemporary fantasy (
Discord’s Apple
,
After the Golden Age
).
Dreams of the Golden Age
, the second Golden Age novel, will be published in January 2014. A graduate of the

Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop, she’s a contributor to the Wild

Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R.

Martin, and her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines

and anthologies. An Air Force brat, Vaughn survived her nomadic

childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado.

Visit her at www. carrievaughn.com.

a

LESSER FIRES

Steve Rasnic Tem & Melanie Tem

Right at sunset, when the big bonfires snaggled the hilltop like

pumpkin teeth, reflecting both ways through the veil that was so

thin tonight between the worlds you might think there was no veil

but everybody knew there was, Clara tripped over the hem of her

costume and fell. It was embarrassing. Also, it hurt.

She’d just crossed the bridge between the lesser fires that marked the path, on her way to the party. Before then she’d been feeling

pretty good, pretty proud, feeling like the witch/fortuneteller/farseer of impending doom she’d tried to make herself up to be. With all the school she missed, and all her trips to the hospital and the doctors, and all the meds she took, and the way her body moved, people

thought she was weird anyway, and some of them avoided her and

some of them wanted to be her friend just because of it, which she didn’t much like, either.

She couldn’t get up. She wasn’t sure why. She felt like she’d broken something, but she always felt like she’d broken something. One of these days she wouldn’t be able to get up at all, and that would be that—whatever “that” was. She’d always sort of imagined that was

how she’d die, but maybe she’d have to be carried or pushed or

dragged around for the rest of a long life. Whatever.

At the moment she could barely raise her head. Just enough to

see the legs in costume walking by. She caught herself trying to figure

[99]

[100] LESSER FIRES

out what the rest of the costume must look like based on the legs, but stopped herself because that was being dumb. It wasn’t solving the problem. A couple of people stopped to help her up but she said no in kind of a mean way in order not to act as helpless as she actually was. “I’m fine. Just go on. Don’t be late for the party,” she sort of snarled at them, and then when they did go on and leave her there

she was mad and hurt. No wonder people thought she was weird.
She
thought she was weird.

Being late to the party would not be good. Clara couldn’t exactly

sneak in; Clara couldn’t sneak anywhere. The whole family would

stare at her while she clunked to her place. Ma would have that OMG-I-can’t-believe-this-is-my-kid look on her face, and she’d be drinking too much of what she never called just “ale,” always “Pa’s good amber ale” that she looked forward to all year and Clara could manage just a tiny sip of. And Pa—she’d never please Pa no matter what she did.

The cousins would be laughing behind handfuls of crumbly cakes for the dead, which were really dry cookies Clara could hardly swallow, especially when it was Auntie Reba’s year to make them. In a few

years Clara would be expected to take a turn. She hated cooking and was terrible at it and saw no reason to learn just so she could make cakes for the dead who couldn’t eat them anyway.

Great-grandma Beryl had been invited home for this year’s party,

west windows left open for her for weeks in the October chill, so that it was as cold and bleak inside as out, the empty place set for her at table. When Great-grandma Beryl had been on this side of the veil

Clara had never been able to figure her out, and it wouldn’t be any easier now. Great-grandma Beryl was a scary lady, alive or dead. But Clara didn’t want to miss her.

Waiting for her body to decide if it was going to get up this time or not, Clara worried about Great-grandma Beryl’s crystal ball in her backpack. Lucky she’d fallen forward instead of back. You had to take luck where you could get it, especially when you didn’t get much of it. The backpack pretty much ruined the costume but at least it was behind her so people didn’t see it right away. If she was a fortuneteller she needed a crystal ball, right? But this one was so heavy. She

remembered it just sitting on a shelf in Great-grandma Beryl’s house, STEVE RASNIC TEM & MELANIE TEM [101]

dusty, not doing anything. She’d heard the clink when she’d hit the ground. There was probably a crack in it now. Would it work if it was cracked? That was dumb. Crystal balls didn’t work. They weren’t how you told the future. It was just a prop. She’d promised to take extra special care. Ma would be furious, or sickeningly understanding,

depending on how much of “Pa’s good amber ale” she’d had by now.

The most Pa would do was shake his head, if he noticed at all.

Falling hadn’t been in Clara’s plan. It should’ve been. She

should’ve known. She should’ve been more careful. She should’ve

worn something that fit her better—not that anything really fit her—

instead of this old tie-dyed dress of her mother’s that they’d only been able to take up so much. But she liked the colors and the way it felt, and it hid her legs and made her movements look kind of mysterious instead of just clunky. She liked the dress. She liked Great-grandma Beryl’s crystal ball. She hated always having to be careful, and then falling anyway.

The ground was cold, like the glass in her bedroom window when

she put her cheek there to see what was down in the yard. Except

during the weeks when the lesser fires burned, she never could see much, but she held her cheek there as long as she could, until it hurt so bad there’d be tears in her eyes and her face so frozen she couldn’t smile or frown or do much of anything with it at all except stare at her dumb self in the mirror: weeping eyes above a stiff red and white face.

Here on the ground, under the red-green-purple-orange tent

the big dress made over her, it was warm. As hard as her heart was beating, she knew she was making lots of heat. In fact she was sure she’d be too hot soon. Part of your body too hot and part of you too cold—wasn’t that what gave you pneumonia? Sweat was sliding off

her skin like Auntie Reba’s “special” oil that was maybe a little less disgusting than her “cakes” for the dead.

“Clara.”

Somebody had stopped beside her. Who was that? The voice was

really familiar and strange at the same time, a girl’s voice, and Clara’s name didn’t sound quite right in that voice. The girl had on a green and purple and orange dress that covered her shoes and dragged

[102] LESSER FIRES

on the ground. A lot like Clara’s. It sucked that when you tried to fit in you just made yourself look more different, and when you

deliberately tried to be different somebody else showed up in the

very same costume.

“Clara.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” Clara managed to sit up,

leaning on the backpack and probably doing more damage to Great-

grandma Beryl’s crystal ball. Her head hurt and she was dizzy.

The girl was circling around her, far enough away that her edges

faded into the firelight and then so close that Clara’d have felt her body heat if she hadn’t been so hot herself. The girl moved like Clara, jerky and clumsy. Was she making fun of her? Or were all the same

things wrong with her body that were wrong with Clara’s?

The girl leaned down toward Clara on the ground and held out

her hands, then pulled them back out of reach so that Clara couldn’t grab them even if she wanted to, which mostly she didn’t. The girl’s face looked red and white and kind of stiff. Any minute now she was going to fall on top of Clara or drift away.

“Dance with me.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Dance with me.” In the big flowing dress, with the oily shine, with the drumbeats and the sunset and the greater and lesser bonfires in the background, what she was doing did sort of look like a dance.

“Duh. I can’t dance.” But if this chick who looked so much like

her and moved so much like her could dance, could Clara, too?

“Duh. Sure you can.” Clara found herself reaching for the

outstretched hands, though she didn’t want to. Her hands were so

cold she didn’t really feel the girl’s hands, but somehow the girl was helping her up, and the two of them danced a few steps together to the music from the party that she was already late to. Then the other girl was gone and Clara was dancing by herself, and she accidentally kicked the backpack and the crystal ball clinked and clunked again, and her mother was yelling at her to hurry up. Clara hurried as fast as she could, which wasn’t hurrying by anybody else’s standards except maybe, she thought, that girl’s.

Clara stumbled a little but made it to her house and inside and

STEVE RASNIC TEM & MELANIE TEM [103]

to her place at table. Great-grandma Beryl’s place was at the other end where she could barely see it, but there was a shimmer around

it. Here next to her was the empty place for her cousin Spencer

who’d been killed in Afghanistan. Clara didn’t miss him. He’d never grown up enough to quit being mean to her. Last year, just before

he deployed, he’d played this bizarre trick on her where he claimed he wasn’t Spence, he was Spence’s ghost, and then he’d said he was the living Spencer again and he’d seen his own ghost, and he acted scared, all wide-eyed like a cartoon of scared.

She’d thought she was the only one he’d done that to, just messing with her mind, and it’d made her mad. She might be sick but she

wasn’t stupid. Then, after they got the news, she’d heard Pa tell Ma he’d known Spence would die within the year because he’d met his

own ghost. That gave Ma something to use against Reba. Clara

wondered if she had.

Now Reba was crying and making everybody eat her cakes for

Spencer. Ma teased loudly that Reba never got the recipe right,