“And what an excellent segue that is into my story for the evening!” He hears excited shuffling across the top of the cage. I can wear them as easily as you wear that cursed pelt of yours.” Just because I play the part of the ringleader doesn’t mean that I am him.” The Pierrot tuts his tongue like a mother scolding her insolent child. “Besides, if we’re talking about lies, then you’re just as much a liar as I am.” He doesn’t hold it back this time, letting it reverberate through the carriage like a drumroll The Wolfman feels a rumbling growl build in his chest. “Well an omission and a lie aren’t necessarily one and the same,” the Pierrot responds, blasé. “You didn’t tell me you were the ringleader of this whole damned freak-show,” he snaps up at the metal plate above him. “When did I ever say anything of the sort?” “You lied to me,” he snarls at the first sound of movement across the top of his cage later that evening. The voice is muffled behind the mask he dons-half Sock, half Buskin-but it’s familiar all the same.Įven as the crowds hiss and jeer at him from dawn til dusk, the Wolfman’s eyes never leave the ringleader’s careless, twirling form.Īnd even though his gaze bores into it like angry daggers, the mask refuses to crack. As the curtains pull back and the town’s masses gather around to take in the horrors, the Pierrot spins his terrible tales for their hungry ears. It’s only once he wakes the next day that the Wolfman places the voice beyond the veil of the night. “So you say now,” the voice says, sure enough in itself to make his hackles rise. “Like I’d want to hear any of those,” he grumbles. What matters is the fun of the story, not the truth of it. The smile laced into the voice’s next words says as much. Is it that you truly don’t have any stories to tell, or just none to tell to me?” “I told you, I don’t have any stories to tell you.”Ī whipcrack laugh lashes against the metal bars. Hope blossoms shamefully at the Wolfman’s core. If I like what I hear, I may just be inspired to help you out.”Įars prick forward. So here’s my offer: I’ll tell you a story for each rumor I’ve heard about your kind, and you’ll tell me if it’s true or not. “You’re quite the curiosity, Wolfman, and I think I’d like to know more about you. You know what will happen to you then, I assume.” “Word is we’ll reach the capital in a little over three weeks’ time. “I have a proposition for you, Wolfman,” comes the shadowy voice once more. The caravan continues ever onwards towards its destination. The wheels creak along to a steady, haunting rhythm. Silence sweeps over the bed of the carriage once more. “Well sorry to disappoint, but I ain’t got one of those either.” A snarl pulls at the Wolfman’s lip, which he buries into the curve of his shoulder on instinct. The wound smarts as though it were still fresh. Or the wolf’s mouth, as it were in this case.” I’d rather hear the answer straight from the horse’s mouth. I’ve heard all the stories, of course,” it says so casually, “but none of them seem quite right. “You see, the question occurred to me earlier and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The Wolfman huffs crossly and screws his eyes tighter in protest. If I can’t sleep tonight, then I’ve decided neither will you.” “Let me sleep,” he grumbles, shuffling deeper into the poor makeshift pillow of his arms.Ī disappointed sigh whispers across the arching carriage roof. “Wolfman,” comes the voice again, more insistent this time, from somewhere within the cover of the shadows. Sleep is one of the few he still gets to keep. The position isn’t a comfortable one, but comfort is a luxury he hasn’t had for what feels like ages. Sleep beckons him in once more, drawing heavy eyelids downwards and coaxing his cheek back to the hunched line of his shoulder. The Wolfman waits a moment longer, but the carriage continues its journey in silence.Ī figment of a dream, perhaps, as familiar as it was. When he cracks one eye open, the crates and barrels stocked for the show catch the pale light in grayscale, but besides them, nothing. Somewhere off in the distance, an owl questions the night.
The carriage creaks back and forth as the caravan continues its long, ambling journey. “Say, Wolfman?” the voice asks him with an airiness as ethereal as the hazy half-dream he’d just been woken from, “I’ve got a question for you-what is the true story of your kind?”
What wakes the Wolf that night is not the usual cobblestones, rattling the iron bars of the cage that surrounds him, but a question asked on the lofty back of a nearly-moonless night. Then said Lina: 'Do you become a rose-tree, and I the rose upon it.’ And Lina said to Fundevogel: 'Never leave me, and I will never leave you.'įundevogel said: 'Neither now, nor ever.'
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