The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (28 page)

Then trees appeared below it, and a small field, and a hut. The rat crashed into a snowdrift and felt the spectral fingers
release it. Nicolette shuddered as she slipped back into her skin, every bone and muscle sore from a night locked in reverie
beside the sleeping farmer as her secret self flew uninhibited by flesh and bone. Shaking out her limbs, she hurried to the
door to welcome the guest she had spirited away over the mountains.

The witch stepped outside, where the first streaks of light began catching in the snow. Planting herself before the door,
she smiled and fished in her rags for the bottle. The rat scurried toward her but before it pounced she raised her arms with
an oath and the creature scurried back as if struck, pacing on its hind legs and staring at the door behind her.

“No soul’s lost if it isn’t given,” she hissed. “I won’t have you wearing him like a simple glove. I’ve read of you and yours,
and know no skin but that what carries a soul will keep you when the darkness goes. Deep as the wood be, dare you risk a stray
beam touching your tail? Or I might go in after, and drag you into the light from whatever hole you’ve crept into. No birds
sing and no beasts scamper, only the snow and you and I and he inside, who hates them as much as the both of us.”

The rat squealed with rage but trailed off as light brushed the laden branches of the wood behind them.

“Quick as sin, make yourself into this.” Nicolette held the bottle toward the creature, who hesitated no longer. The rat rolled
on its back, a hazy miasma escaping its ass and mouth as it spasmed. The yellow mist coalesced on its belly, a final frosty
breath leaving its snout. Then the smoke appeared to suck into the fur, leaving not a trace on the wind. The tiny flea hurtled
toward the witch but Nicolette expected this and caught it in the bottle, jamming a wax stopper into place.

Heinrich awoke at sunset, his guts and legs and skin and even his lanky hair sore and weak. She sat humming beside him, and
in the firelight he saw how swollen she was of belly and breast. She tossed another handful of herbs into the blaze, making
the room fill with noxious smoke.

“They’ll be out of the mountains within a week, and they’ve met another enemy of yours,” Nicolette murmured, tapping the bottle
balanced atop her belly.

Heinrich rubbed his eyes. “I have no other enemies.”

“What will you offer?” She turned her wrinkled countenance to him. “What have you that could be turned against those hated
Brothers?”

Vengeance knows neither remorse nor faith, and Heinrich answered without hesitation, “My flesh is devoted to their misery,
and my soul.”

“All that is needed.” She smirked. “You would share your body with a demon?”

“Eh?” Heinrich tried to remember the words of the priest and failed, instead recalling Brennen’s ashen face in the mud. His
mind jerked back to the present and he eyed the crone. “You’re a witch, then?”

“And one that despises those Brothers. The demon does as well, I assure you of that. Would you become host for it?”

Even a few days ago the thought would have proved anathema to Heinrich but between the priest refusing to help or even condone
him and now this so-called witch offering succor, he worried his lip. Demons and witches alike could be tricked, he knew,
but he doubted he possessed the wits for such deception. It occurred to him that he would have died without her help the night
before, and she might still take his life if he displeased her. In such an event the Grossbarts would never be his, and his
failure would be eternal.

“You would need to make room inside that cramped skin, a space as large as your immortal spirit.” Nicolette saw his indecision
and patted his hand. “I too am prepared to give all that I may, for I loved my husband more than I love my life, and they
took him from me just as they took your bride and children.”

“My soul, then,” Heinrich decided, remembering Gertie thrashing in the mire, dying in agony. God and all His saints had stayed
hidden that day, as they did on this. If He wants my soul He will step in now, thought the miserable farmer, but nothing happened.
“Summon what demons you may, and inform them my soul is theirs if it means I am the Grossbarts’ downfall.”

“Unlike others of my faith I lack the knowledge to conjure demons,” Nicolette said with a smile. “Fortune’s favored us, though,
for in spying on the Grossbarts I have discovered one not yet banished to its formless realm, one whose goal is shared by
you and me.” The flea hurled itself against its prison but Nicolette did not open the bottle, instead continuing to barter
with the too-willing yeoman. “That is its price, but we’ve not fixed mine.”

“More than my flesh and spirit?” Heinrich snorted. “I have nothing else.”

“Nothing save a father’s love for his murdered children.”

Heinrich eyes filled and he reached for his knife to cut out her horrible tongue.

“I would have you be a father again, Heinrich,” she whispered, stroking her stomach. It pulsated at her touch. “My babes will
require a guardian as they grow, a guide to bring them to the Grossbarts.”

“Carry wee ones over winter roads? I’ll never watch another child suffer, witch, not even to see those Brothers die.”

Heinrich had witnessed horrors great enough that he felt himself righteous in accepting his own damnation without regret,
but still his bowels twisted in fear at Nicolette’s throaty laugh. “You will not need to carry them,” she chuckled. “But when
you flag they will carry you. Yes, and hunt for you and do all that obedient children should.”

“I doubt that. New babes do naught but cry.”

“Doubt? Doubt! We’ll assuage those, dear master of turnips.” Nicolette groaned, her stomach rippling. “I’ll free you both,
just give your word!”

“You have it.” Heinrich stared into the fire. “Give me my revenge and you may take anything I’ve got that those Brothers haven’t
yet stolen.”

The bottle slipped onto the floor and broke, the flea leaping onto Heinrich. Its body, bloated with even the most diminished
form of the evil it carried, popped when it reached his shoulder, a foul golden smoke drifting into his nostrils. Heinrich
began to cough and gag, feeling as if a white-hot wire pushed through his sinuses and down his throat. His nose dripped black
phlegm and when his boiling guts finally calmed he saw Nicolette had fallen out of her chair, her massive belly heaving.

“Into the wood,” she gasped, “find what they buried. Don’t return without it, but dare not touch it or such mischief as even
I know not will occur. Tongs!” she wailed, slapping the iron tool beside the hearth and arching her back, viscous fluid gushing
from between her legs.

Snatching up the tongs and hurrying out of the shack, Heinrich stood panting in the snow. Setting off into the wood, he did
not notice that the feverish sweat coursing off him hissed instead of freezing when it dropped onto the ground, nor did he
realize his vision was better in the dark wood than it ever had been in the sunny fields of his home. The pain in his sides
came in waves but he followed the stream with purpose, almost smelling their stink, almost seeing their snow-shrouded footprints.

Eventually he left the stream, the spoiled-milk stink of witchcraft growing stronger until he picked his way through the underbrush
into a small clearing. In the center of it lay a patch of disturbed earth where the snow did not fall, although it lay heaped
up to Heinrich’s knees everywhere else. Digging in the frozen dirt with the tongs, he saw something shining in what early
light penetrated the icy bower. Holding the pelt at the end of the tongs, he marched back through the woods, for the first
time reflecting on his superior senses and the impossible nature of the last day’s events.

The sun crept farther up as he found his way back to her shack, only a finger of smoke rising from his destination. Stepping
over the dead rat by the door he went inside, calling out to the witch. She weakly raised her hand from the floor, two shadowy
bulges nursing at her chest.

Approaching the prone woman, even in his madness he could not control his nausea. After he had expelled what few turnips his
belly held, he again stared at the abominations. They were brown and slick, easily twice the size of normal babies, and they
chewed rather than suckled on her flabby breasts, milk mingling with blood on the wet floor.

Heinrich snatched a log from beside the fire but before he could act she bellowed at him, “Leave them be! I’ve done the same
to their siblings, leave them be!”

Curious despite his revulsion, Heinrich tossed the wood onto the hearth. Through her agony she continued to instruct him:
“Give them the sack hanging above you, it’ll take them off me long enough. Long enough!”

Heinrich shakily took down the satchel, and she shrieked, “Tear it open! Spread them on the floor!”

Following her instructions, he opened the bag and dumped out its contents. Hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny teeth scattered
on the slimy stones, and the two newborns turned from their meal. Crawling off her, they began rolling in the loose teeth,
and while Heinrich watched the small white pegs sank into the surface of their skin, forming new snapping mouths on chests
and legs, arms and backs.

“Follow the road through the mountains,” she gasped, her gory chest spewing blood, milk, and loose skin. “But do not follow
them to the city, for men will burn you alive. Shun even the smallest hamlet, stay to the wilds and journey southeast past
the dwellings of men, into the desert. Farther than those ruins that men call holy, where fools battle for stones and dirt
until the world ends, always south! That is where you will catch them, in the desert of dead kings.”

“Are they—” Heinrich swallowed, seeing the babes’ faces were umber skulls, impenetrable pits where eyes should rest. “What
are they?”

“Homunculi to inspire envy in all others, my own addition to an ancient recipe.” She motioned to a bound pile of parchment,
which the illiterate yeoman did not recognize as a text. “A gift from a traveler, long gone. One is Magnus, the other Brennen!
But hurry, they return to me!”

True enough, the baby-shaped monstrosities crawled to her feet, their numerous maws snatching out chunks of meat and skin,
blood dampening Heinrich’s knees where he knelt beside her head. She wailed and he shivered, averting his eyes. Her hands
pawed at his face, her voice ragged as she urgently went on.

“They will serve you well, if you do as I say, but hurry.” Her eyes were rolling wildly, her grimacing mouth struggling to
form words. “Oh my love, my charcoal-man, my Magnus! It was yours first and always, purest and first, and all this for you,
I’ll bear it! They’ll pay for your murder, over and over!”

Heinrich raised the tongs to offer the pelt, hoping to slow their feast, but again she wailed, “No! Not yet! They need it
or they’ll melt away in rain, but not yet! First my ears, then my eyes, then my nose, and that split in twain! My heart! Half
a heart, last!”

“What?!” Heinrich squeezed her hand with his. “What do you mean?”

“One each,” she gurgled, her young moving up her thighs, “one ear each, to hear your commands, and so in Hell I can hear the
Grossbarts scream. One eye each, to hunt their quarry, and so I can see the Grossbarts die. Half a nose, to smell them out
and inhale the last breath breathed by Grossbart lungs. Half a heart to live, to live despite all wounds! My tongue—” But
her instructions turned to a scream as they devoured the region whence they had so freshly birthed.

“Your tongue?” Heinrich said to himself but she ended her scream and resumed her frantic orders.

“My tongue,” blood bubbled out around it, “my tongue. Tongue.”

“Cut in half, so each might speak! Yes?”

She either tried to laugh or to moan, the gurgling making it impossible to say which. “No. My tongue. You eat. Or. They’ll
eat. You. Alive.”

They were spread across her chest and stomach, their mouths chewing in tandem. With unsteady hands Heinrich set the tongs
and pelt on a chair and drew his dagger. He sliced off her ears, bloodying his hands. When he held them out a skeletal face
snapped near his fingers, but inspiration took hold and, maneuvering around the side, he pressed the gruesome flap of flesh
against the side of its head. The muddy surface sank in and the ear stuck fast, Heinrich hastening to give its brother the
other ear.

They had almost reached her previously skinned sternum, and Heinrich plunged in his dagger to steal her heart before they
could. Entrails wound into their prodigious orifices while he dug past her collarbone, the mix of fever and confusion cheating
his act of its deserved horror. Sinking his finger into the muscle, he cut it free just as teeth dug into his wrist. Slapping
the creature off him, he left a handprint on its exposed but malleable skull.

Dropping the heart, he carved off her small nose and plucked out her eyes, taking their stringy moorings with them. They were
almost to her throat, the crunching of bones drawing his eyes to her lower body. Nothing remained, not even a speck of marrow,
and he saw their hands now seemed firmer, more defined. He nearly popped the first eye sliding it into place, and the clay
socket tightened around his fingers. The yellow eye dilated and focused on him as he gave one to its twin, and it stretched
out a palm split by a snarling maw.

The nose proved difficult but after nicking his fingers and shaving flecks of skin away he managed to split it through the
septum, a nostril on each side. These he attached quickly as they moved away, each going down one of her arms. Tearing through
her heart, he approached the first, unsure where to place it in the nest of feeding mouths. Moving behind it, he saw an unoccupied
space between two enormous sets of teeth, her devoured bones forming jaws even as he watched, allowing it to chew harder and
faster. When he pressed his hand toward its back the clay split to reveal a small cave, into which he thrust the hunk of meat.
The back closed around his fist but he yanked it out, seeing the heart began to beat and bleed in its new home.