emmanuelle & laurent i.

him

Dawn, in the city not yet known for its lights.

A Parisian of the late 19th century would be hard pressed to recognize this, a Paris composed largely of narrow ill-lit and cobbled streets. The first stirrings of la Tour Eiffel have yet to take shape in an unborn architect's mind. The Champs-Elysee already cuts a proud path through the Right Bank, but there is no Arc de Triomphe, and no glorious fanning of twelve great boulevards from that point. Le Musee du Louvre is still the Cour Royale -- though, in truth, Louis XIV had many decades before moved his palace to Versailles, being distrustful and disdainful of the Parisians. His great-grandson, Louis XV, sits the throne; the penultimate King of France. No engineer has yet created the guillotine, though the man who would do so is already born.

So too, the seeds of revolution. Across the ocean, America is coming to a boil, and Benjamin Franklin was recently and warmly welcomed here. More recently, and less warmly, the city celebrated the wedding of the Dauphin, the fifteen-year-old grandson of the King, to the fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette. Someone had the brilliant idea to stage fireworks with rockets and fireballs. There was a fire; then a stampede. A hundred twenty died, and the whispers of discontent grew ever louder, ever less secret.

Still. Revolution is a generation away. Here and now, in the affluent parts of the city where the wealthy and blooded kept their townhouses, grievances were still settled not with guillotine and rope, but with pistols and rapiers.

--

There are servants carrying torches, marking out four corners of an imaginary arena. There are seconds carrying spare weapons. There is the neutral party, a local magistrate who should know better than to oversee these increasingly illegal duels, but he is of the old school and secretly both proud of and thrilled by such displays.

There is the challenging party, who is also the wronged party: a nobleman of peerless lineage and somewhat more modest wealth, who had a wife as beautiful as she was faithless. He has his father's rapier in hand, and he is nervous, pacing to and fro, shivering in waistcoat and shirtsleeves.

There is the challenged party, who is also the wronging party: a cad of dishwasher lineage and absurd wealth, who lounges on the fashionable cushions of his fashionable phaeton, smoking fashionable tobacco straight from the colonies, a fashionable cloak warding the morning chill from his body, which in turn is clothed in none but the most fashionable designs, topped by none but the most fashionable of wigs.

The cad is not armed. He does not need to be armed. He has employed a champion, a professional duelist of deadly reputation. This man -- this hired killer in all but name -- is readying himself on the cad's behalf: removing his cloak and then his coat, rolling his sleeves up to mid-forearm. His hair is undyed, unpowdered, unwigged; a ribbon gathering the locks at the nape of the neck the only nod to the styles of the day. His waistcoat is plain, cut close to the body, yet with enough give for athletic pursuits. His cravat is unremarkable, as are his trousers. His boots are muddy and much-used.

His rapier belongs to the duelist himself; neither his father's nor his employer's. It makes nary a sound as it is drawn from the sheath, polished not mirror-bright but to a cloudy satin sheen. His hand is steady. A few test cuts, the sword whistling through the air, and then he is ready.

The magistrate raises the signaling handkerchief, and the duelist salutes his opponent.

--

There is something in common between the duels and the dances of the day.

When the magistrate's handkerchief falls, an unheard rhythm begins. The swordsmen, twenty paces apart, begin to close: spiraling inward in long strides, balance low. First clockwise. Then the quick switch, counterclockwise. Then back. Then forth. To the untrained eye it almost appears choreographed, as though each knew the steps. To those who know the art of violence, it is quite apparent that each pivot is led by the duelist. The nobleman reacts; each time lagging by a millisecond, then a millisecond more, as the tempo increases, the pace rises, the switches come faster and faster.

And then inward. The last few steps at a half-run, steps light and graceful -- a series of glancing strikes, this way and that, light and testing, hunting, coming apart. The duelist twisting agile in his passing, back never to his foe. Now another lull, another accelerating spiral inward, quicker this time. A handful of seconds and then steel meets steel again, the blows coming harder this time. Grate of metal as the nobleman parries not-quite-correctly, the blade nicking.

The cad hoots from his carriage. He applauds, his fine fashionable gloves muffling the sound, and calls some encouragement to his man. The duelist never acknowledges any of it. Wouldn't, of course: he is coming in again, those last dancing steps each time less a dance, more a charge. A lunge. The blows are savage now, overhand, from the side, across the center. Point of the rapier catches cloth, then the skin beneath.

Blood is bright on white, and seeing it, the duelist relents for a moment, steps back. The men circle, one cautious and watchful, but waiting; the other grimacing from the shallow, long wound.

"Ha!" The cad isn't even attempting to disguise his ungentlemanly gloating. "Le premier sang, Montmorency! Shall we call it a day, then? You could yet limp home to your sweet lady whole and hale -- although I dare not say the same for your manhood."

Naked hatred burns on the nobleman's face. "Silence, Épinay," he growls, and this time he leads the lunge, careless in his anger, driving the duelist back two, three, four steps. But the retreat is controlled, calm; it is another form of waiting, and soon enough the opening comes. The sword swings twice, finds flesh twice. Once on the leading thigh; once on the dominant arm. Deep wounds. Incapacitating.

The cad makes a show of wincing in mock sympathy. The nobleman forgets the cardinal rule of combat and looks away from his opponent, at his arm, at his leg. He clenches his father's rapier tighter.

The seconds glance at one another, mouths tight, knowing well what comes next. The magistrate, veteran of a hundred such endings, discreetly lifts his handkerchief to his nose to ward off any offensive scents that might arise from a man's final agonies.

The duelist gives his opponent this much mercy: allows him, once again, the final initiative. He waits, no longer pacing and weaving.

And the nobleman takes a moment to catch his breath. Or perhaps, to make his peace. With great effort he pulls himself upright. Salutes, with grave decorum, the man who will kill him. Then, with a mighty bellow, he charges.

The duelist meets the attack without hesitation. He swats the nobleman's sword aside. Steps in. Suddenly the elegant duel has become a brutal brawl: he shoulderchecks his opponent, sends the nobleman reeling back, smashes the pommel of his sword across the other's jaw. The nobleman hits the ground on his back, quite unconscious, but alive.

"What!" The cad is on his feet, outraged. "What is this?"

The duelist, without looking at his employer, steps out of the makeshift ring and accepts a swordcloth from his second. "Le Comte de Montmorency is quite beaten," he says evenly, "and there is no dishonor in his surrender. No honor, either, in his murder."

"I paid you to perform a task, sir! I demand that you finish it!"

"You paid me to win the duel for you. I have done exactly that." He wipes the sword clean, tosses the cloth back to his second, and faces the cad. "My payment. If you please."

The cad's face is mottled with rage, but his eyes go to the unsheathed sword. Grudgingly, he pulls a small but bulging sack of coin from his coat and tosses it at the duelist's feet. "Begone from my sight, creature," he sneers. "I've no wish to see you again."

The duelist executes a shallow bow, then flicks the coinsack deftly up with the tip of his rapier. Catches it in his left hand and tucks it into his shirt. "I fear the sentiment is mutual," he says, and sheathes his blade.

The small gathering disperses. The duelist's second brings his horse, which he mounts. The nobleman's second tends, tenderly, to his lord and friend. The cad, spitting and cursing, whips his pair of grays into a gallop. Long after he disappears into the morning gloom, the rattle and clatter of his phaeton can be heard.

her.

The oil on the torches crackles as the rags burn. The faces of the servants sweat, so close to the fire they carry. The burning oil mingles with the burning tobacco, filling the nostrils. One hears swords drawn, with those soft whistles that sound, somehow, like purity and violence all at once, just as the perspiration and blood of men mingles with the unseen but almost tangible ideal of honor. One is lifted to heaven even as one is dragged down to hell.

No wonder the magistrate finds it thrilling. Satisfying.

Satisfaction is, after all, what they are all here for. It is demanded.

--

This could end in far more bloodshed than there has already been, but it does not. The cad does not refuse. The duelist does not attack. The seconds do not shoot. The magistrate does not have to arrest anybody, and he must wrestle alone with the demons that have him feeling vaguely unsatisfied at this ending. The duelist departs on his horse with his second; the nobleman and his second go much slower. Montmorency lives tonight, and he is grateful for it.

The moon overhead, gradually fading away with the coming morning light, is smoothly curving dagger. Her light is obscured by trees. When the duelist and his companion have gone quite a way back towards the city, one or both of them realize how quiet the woods are. There is the crackle of the torch, horse-steps, and here and there, a breeze. There is nothing else: no nightbirds coo to one another. No hares rustle the grasses. No deer bend their heads, munching on berry-bushes or scraping antlers against treetrunks.

There is nothing else, at all.

These woods have stories told of them, stories of ravaging monsters that come out on full-moon nights. Still, the night is not full tonight, and in truth, there are stories everywhere there are trees. They say there are monsters in every wood.

But there are.

And more to the point: there is a monster in this wood.

--

If it were not for watchful eyes, alert ears, they would miss it: just as they turn a corner, they catch sight of something enormous crossing the path, from tree to tree. It looks as though it has many legs. It gives a sound of hissing, with a sort of rattle at the end, but it is no snake. The hissing sounds almost like breathing. The rattle sounds like armor clanking together.

him

Though well into daybreak, these woods are thick and shadowed. Even on the best of days this road can be treacherous -- an ill-tended and unpaved stretch between the wealthy districts of the north and the far humbler neighborhoods of the south that falls under no one's jurisdiction, where old-growth forests have not yet been hacked away, where bandits and highwaymen could yet prey upon unsuspecting and hapless travelers.

The duelist and his second, however, are not unsuspecting. They are not hapless, nor helpless. They are armed and proficient in the use of their arms. The way they sit their horses, the way they hold themselves: they are not the sort of mark that an average highwayman would lightly prey upon.

What flashes across the path, though, what hisses in the shadows: it is no highwayman. A fool could sense that. Their horses sense it: one rearing with a startled whinny, the other stamping to a stop.

The duelist shoots his second a glance. No discussion is necessary. They grasp their reins tighter; urge their horses forward at a cautious but steady pace. Only fools truly fight with rapiers, and so the duelist leaves his wrapped and strapped behind his saddle. Reaches, instead, to loosen his coat -- a flintlock pistol at his hip, a long knife in his boot. His second has drawn a pistol as well, keeps it resting against his thigh.

her.

The echo of the hiss and rattle and clatter of whatever crossed their path begins to fade as they head forward. The woods are silent again, their horses anxious but steady, until the treeline behind them erupts with motion and noise. What appears to be a giant spider comes rambling and rapid out of the brush, hurtling towards them with shocking speed.

Just enough light hits it to show its face, which has not eight eyes but two, a man's rolling and mad eyes, a man's face, his mouth distended horribly with the pincers and fangs that have replaced his teeth. It swipes with one of its many armored legs, slashing the forelegs of the second's horse. Bone snaps.

him

"Sainte Marie!" is all the second has time to gasp before the spider-thing is upon his horse. He discharges his weapon -- a puff of smoke, a bang, a wet crack, unpleasantly reminiscent of a particularly juicy crab-claw snapped open -- but it's impossible to say if he does much damage. In the next instant the horse goes down with a scream, its rider with it, tumbling onto hard-packed earth and then into the brush.

The duelist has his flintlock out in a flash. He doesn't aim. There's no time. He fires, the report echoing into the trees. Without waiting to see the result -- with a singlemindedness, a ferocity, a desperation that suggests the bond between the two men is perhaps deeper than simple commerce and convenience -- he spurs his terrified mount forward, thrusting the pistol into its holster, drawing the knife from its sheath.

Odds don't look good. But damned if he isn't going to try. If he can just get to the other, he thinks; if he can just get close enough to grab him, haul him atop the horse, then perhaps they could get away --

her.

They both can hear the bullet ping off the monster's armor even as the second's horse buckles, shrieking in pain and panic. It is still alive, but it won't live. And, since it is wounded and now vulnerable, it appears to be the monster's choicest target. It advances on the poor animal, drool -- or something like it -- dripping from its maw. If it can get the second as well, more the better.

Another bullet hits armor, flies into the woods. The duelist hears this, too, as he charges, pulling a knife. And then his horse rears, startled, and its only his grip on the reins that will keep him astride, keep him from having his neck broken. It does not rear from the monster, though, not exactly: somethin else has joined them.

Another monster, but one less obviously horrifying. It is large, though, almost as large as the spider-thing. But it looks almost like a wolf, even if such a wolf is a gigantic one. Its fur is as black as the monster's exoskeleton, and its eyes are a savage and demonic yellow. It came seemingly out of nowhere, and has grabbed one of the spider-thing's backmost legs in its maw, dragging it backwards.

It slashes at the ground, at the duelist's horse, at the direwolf, hissing and shaking. One of the many legs stabs downward, hard, piercing the direwolf's side, but the second monster reacts by slamming a heavy paw down on that leg, holding it in place. With its remaining six legs the thing is now simply trying to get away.

him

In no time at all the duelist has gone from the safe, sane confines of his ordinary life -- though all of those adjectives are certainly relative -- to something straight out of a nursemaid's tale. A particularly vicious nursemaid who did not like children.

There is a monster. Then there is another monster. And at the sight of the second a harsh breath escapes the duelist -- not a scream or a shout, though perhaps only because he has neither time nor breath for that. The monsters collide. Dimly, the duelist registers that they are fighting each other. It is another sort of duel, vicious and brutal, dealing in the sort of damage that would kill a man at once. He doesn't know what their dispute was, but that's hardly his first priority. No, that is, quite simply:

to get to his second. Which he does, narrowly, ducking a swinging leg, wrenching his horse around the furious tumble and wheel of battle. The second has clambered out from under his dying horse, and is scarcely upright before the duelist grabs him by the back of his coat, hauls him cross-wise over the saddle.

"Hold tight," he says, strained, breathless, and then kicks spurs to flanks. The horse hardly needs encouragement. It runs.

The duelist glances back over his shoulder. Just once.

her.

Blood as red as any man's is pouring out of the wound where the wolf was pierced by the spider. The edges of the wound almost seem to burn.

The spider cannot get very far, and if the wolf is to hold it, neither can it. So the first digs claws into the earth, and the second is dragged across the ground. It roars, clamps down, and one of eight legs is snapped in half. The spider-creature's scream echoes through the woods, interrupted by a second when the wolf tears another leg free, socket and all.

When the duelist looks over his shoulder, he sees not a direwolf but something else entirely: something eight, perhaps nine feet in height, shoulders as wide as two men. Its limbs are elongated, its joints backward, its claws as long as daggers. It is furred, and has the muzzle of a wolf, the glowing golden eyes of the wolf, but it is like no story, no myth, nothing he's ever even heard before.

And it has the spider-creature in its massive hand-paws, is holding it aloft,

is tearing it apart,

piece

by piece.

him

It is only a glance. A flick of the eyes over the shoulder -- a blurred image caught amidst motion and wind and the mad flight of a panicked horse. It is still enough. An impossible, mindbending, horrific image that sears itself instantly in his mind. He does not need to look again.

And doesn't. He runs, riding as fast and hard as he can, leaning over his unfortunate passenger, leaning over the horse, so close that its mane blows in his face. Together, men and beast pound down around corners and down straightaways, racing on dirt paths that become hardpacked trails that become shoddily paved roads that become, at last, a bridge that marks the boundaries of the wood.

They spill back into the outskirts of the city. Disinterested civilians glance at them, doubletaking and then looking determinedly away when they see the dirt on their clothes, their windblown hair, the weapons still clutched in one hand or another. On the far side of the bridge they stop, the second getting shakily off the horse, the duelist following a moment after.

"Go along home," he tells his second, handing him the reins. "Pour yourself a drink. I'll be along shortly."

"What -- where are you going?"

"I think I need to go back."

The other stares. "What?"

"You saw everything."

"Yes. I saw. That's the point, I saw and I am happy never to see it again."

"It was -- " he lowers his voice, steps closer. "It was what grand-tante spoke of."

"Are you jesting? Those were the ravings of a madwoman. You know she wasn't well."

"I'm not so sure anymore. I never was. Haven't you ever felt -- " he leaves off, grimacing.

"What?"

"I don't know. I can't explain it. But something, something beyond or behind ..." he waves a hand, "all this. Never mind. We'll speak of it later. Go home."

"You're mad. You're going to die."

"I don't think so. Anyway, I won't go far into the woods. And I'll be back by noon, whether I find anything or not."

"By noon. That's a promise."

"It's a promise."

Cursing, the second pulls himself astride the lathered horse with a wince. "I think I broke a rib," he complains, and spurs the horse to a trot. The duelist watches him go until he turns the corner, and then -- well aware of the scale of his own apparent madness -- starts walking back the way he came.

her.

Deep in the woods, she tears apart the thing that was once a man, whose life was so unfortunate that he did not question what he was fed, did not think twice about how he was cared for, did not complain when he began to change. He is what he is now, and it is a horrifying, hungry existence. She wonders if the Wyrm knows how to do anything but devour.

The spider is torn limb from limb in seconds, in less time than it takes the horse the duelist is on to reach a safe distance. Its face is frozen now, a pale mask of fear and hunger and loss. Legs twitch on the ground. The bulbous body pulsed once or twice, then became still. It takes her forever to spit the taste of it from her mouth.

Still in crinos, she pulls branches from trees and builds a small fire with them. She piles on the ichor-stained body of the fomor, knowing the corpse will fuel the fire longer than the wood itself. She reaches into a hidden tattoo beneath her fur and draws forth, as if from her own flesh, a small gourd painted with arcane symbols. With a flex of her hand-paw she crushes it against her side, healing the wound the thing made.

Only as the flesh knits back together does she shift again, becoming smaller. Her dark fur retracts. Her golden eyes darken to a deep hazel. Freckles appear over pale skin. She is cloaked, dressed in a dusky blue dress worked with embroidery of flowers in a much darker fabric. Her feet are slippered. Thus disguised as a mortal, a familiar human, she approaches the wounded horse.

It is not dead yet, though it wishes it were. Its mouth is drenched in foam, its coat lathered with terror. Its forelegs are both broken, nearly severed, and it is helpless, helpless.

It breaks her heart, when she comes to it, kneeling. The most merciful thing a mortal would do here is to pull out a pistol and hold it to the beast's skull to end its pain, which has already gone on frightfully long. She calls on another gift, another blessing, so that the horse does not scream when she kneels beside it, her skirts pooling around her.

Her focus is intense, as it must be. She must set aside all her rage, all her self-involvement, to reach this part of the Mother's spirit. Though it is in everything, illuminates all life, she knows it can also be fragile. As fragile as a butterfly's life, as fragile as a horse's limbs. Her focus is so acute, in fact, that as she lays her hand on the horse's broken and bleeding legs,

she does not hear or see the man walking up along the path.

--

What he sees is this: a fire burning in the middle of the path, in the middle of the woods. It smells foul, fouler than death itself, as the smoke coils upward through the branches and boughs. Closer to him is the wounded horse his brother rode, its heavy head resting in the lap of a woman. Blue dress. Dark cloak. Dark hair. Pale skin. There is a soft blue light, shimmering as though with stars, glowing around her palms. It drifts, breezily, into the wounds of the horse. Even in the near-darkness, he can see bone knitting back together, sinews re-connecting, skin building itself anew as,

miraculously,

a woman heals a beast with a touch.

him

On his way back into the woods, the duelist does not rush. Why would he? He's heading into abject danger, and besides: he's tired. Tired from fleeing for his life. Tired from fighting, also for his life, but more immediately for his next meal. So he walks, and at a leisurely pace.

Then he smells smoke. And he walks a little faster. Then he rounds a copse of trees; he sees the woman. And then he runs, cursing, thinking it's just his luck that some well-meaning madame has decided to --

he sees what is actually happening. Sees that the horse is not dead, sees that the wounds are, as though by some miracle of god in heaven, knitting themselves back together.

He stops in his tracks, a stone's throw away, amazed and uncertain and staring. There he remains, agape, until the magic is done. The horse, whole and hale and quite rapidly putting the harrowing experience from its mind the way grazing prey-animals do, climbs to its newly restored feet. It shakes out its mane, and then -- recognizing the duelist -- plods over to nose through his pockets for a treat.

Numbly, the duelist rubs the horse between the ears. But he is still watching the woman.

her.

The horse heals. It needs to be rubbed down and cleaned, it needs to be fed -- rather desperately, in fact -- and it needs to sleep. But it does not need a bullet through its skull. It does not need to be put down so that its last moments are not protracted agony. It looks up at the cloaked woman, whinnying softly, then

rolls itself up to its feet. Tests its legs. Stamps its hooves. Shakes out its mane. It sniffs and snuffles at the woman, nuzzling at her, and she strokes its muzzle briefly. Then it smells something more familiar, more welcome, and... trots away, down the path to the duelist. Starts nosing at him, searching him for carrots.

The woman has seen him. Has turned and risen to her feet in what seems like a single motion. Stands there, a fire behind her, her hands folded before her.

There is blood under her fingernails.

She does not move.

him.

Foul black smoke billows up from that fire. The duelist does not need to look carefully to know what is burning. What an impossibility it is that such a thing exists.

And then there is the horse, healed. And then there is this woman, wearing blue like some painting of the Virgin. Blood under her nails, which his eyes linger on for a moment.

When they come back to her face, he asks: "How many of you are there?"

her.

It doesn't matter if he looks: the carapace keeps snapping apart, sending spark supward. The flesh keeps sizzling. If he were too look closely -- pray, he does not look closely -- he would see the face of something that used to be a man like himself.

Luckily it is behind her. Luckily her skirts are wide enough, her cloak heavy enough, that most of it is obscured.

Her head tilts at his question. "There is only one me."

him.

His throat moves as he swallows.

"You were the wolf?"

her.

Her eyebrows lift a touch. "What wolf?"

him.

"The -- "

he breaks off. He'll sound insane. He gestures at the smoking mess.

"The one that did that."

her.

She, perhaps obediently, turns and looks over her shoulder at the fire, the smoldering creature that is -- unfortunately -- still recognizable as neither beast nor human. She turns back to him. "What is it you think did this?" she ask, both wary and curious.

him.

"A... a wolf." It is the closest word he has for it, but it is so insufficient, so wrong, that he immediately shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't have a word for what it was I saw."

And then, beseechingly: "Was it not you?"

her.

The woman takes a few steps towards him. The further the fire is behind her, the more clear her feature become, until he can make out her face clearly. She stops, though, some yards from him. Her hands have remained folded.

They are no less filthy. Soot and ash and blood and earth all mingle together over her fingers, under her nails, the dirt lining her palms.

"What you saw, no mortal human is ever meant to see. In fact, should a mortal human see such a thing, they will soon call it something else in their memory."

Another step towards him, a gentleness in her tone at war with the curiosity in her eyes.

"And no mortal would ever run back, having seen it."

him.

It is, at first, a struggle not to back away when she advances. Yet unexpectedly the struggle does not last. It calms. What brief panic rose in his chest subsides. The smoke clears and he can see her: see her eyes, see her face.

He has never seen her before. In spite of that, a shiver of déjà vu flickers through him, as though he has been here before. As though this were all somehow familiar.

"I am nothing if not mortal and human," he says, with a little laugh that is at once humorless and helpless. "But you. You are something different."

A beat. Then another question, a fractal of the first:

"How many ... like you ... are there?"

her.

She smiles at him, at his humorless laugh. It isn't an ungentle thing; she takes no pleasure in his feeling of helplessness. Only a certain tenderness at how very wrong he is.

"You cannot be human," she says softly. "A human would not be standing where you are, speaking to me as you do."

But she answers him, nonetheless: "There are many of my mind, though far fewer than there are humans walking the earth."

She is a step closer, then two. "I will not harm you. I would not even take your friend's horse; I planned to return it to you, had you not come back." Her head tips. "Do you believe what I say to you?"

him.

Curiously, and perhaps unexpectedly, those final assurances -- that final question -- raise in him an instinctive resistance. It born of pride, perhaps, or at least of a fierce self-sufficiency, cunning and survivalism that manifests much like pride. He holds his ground, but his brow darkens.

"There is no need to address me as you would a frightened animal or a child," he says, low and stiff. "You need not reassure me of my basic safety; I have a good instinct for such things. I would rather you spoke plainly and answered my questions, for I have many.

"That wolf-creature I saw. Was that you?"

her.

"I am not, I assure you," she tells him, her tone having flattened out, "speaking as I would to a child. I am speaking to you as someone who may yet pose a threat to me and my kind."

"You are not the only one with questions, Monsieur. But where you will live if yours go unanswered, if the same should happen to me, I and my kind could be hunted."

him.

Simultaneously, he wants to laugh, and yet laughter is the farthest thing from his mind. Hunted, she says. His mind flashes back to that beast he saw, the effortless way it lifted that wriggling, armored thing that bullets could not dent. The way it tore it to pieces.

Hunted, she says. He cannot fathom it.

"I believe you mean me no harm," he allows, grudgingly. "I believe you would have returned the horse. I don't know what to think when you say I am not human. What am I, then?"

her.

She reaches up with her filthy, bloodied hands and withdraws the hood of her cloak, observing him in the growing light of dawn.

"Kin to my kind. Of our blood, but unchanging. Able to see us, as we are, without going mad."

him.

His eyes narrow as she lowers her hood, as though he expected -- what? Horns? Wings? A halo? There is only her, though. A tumble of dark hair from the dark hood; somehow, he was sure it would be dark.

"Unchanging," he echoes. Thinks a moment. Another echo: "As you are.

"It was you, then. The wolf."

her.

He's asked her so many times. She has not yet answered.

It takes her some time, even now, before she nods. Confirms, then speaks aloud:

"Yes. It was me."

him.

His nostrils flare. It could be terror. It could be some odd species of gratification: to be confirmed, finally, in his suspicions -- no matter how insane.

"There was a ... a sister of my grandmother's. Raved of such things. Monsters with human faces. Wolves who walked as men. She was a madwoman. Died before I was grown.

"Am I mad, then?" A fracture in the calm; a muscle jumping in his cheek. "How is any of this possible?"

her.

Though she's been still for many of their exchanges now, she drifts a bit closer again, a few more steps. She's listening, but the more he speaks, the closer she gets, as though she's moving towards the sound of his voice, towards the breath that gives the words themselves shape and meaning.

"No," she answers him simply, softly. "You are not mad. At least, not in this," she adds, with a touch of humor that has no place here.

"Before I answer you: the man you were with. The one thrown from his horse. Was he hurt?"

him.

"My brother," he says, automatically. "And no. He's fine. I sent him home before I came back here.

"Because," a hint, just a sliver of that same out of place humor, "I clearly am mad."

her.

"Mm," is all she says to that, though she's clearly in some form of agreement.

And yet, all the same: "You are not mad. You are just lost. It happens sometimes: some generations lose track of their children, or never know of them to begin with, or there are so few full-blooded wolves to a line of succession that the truth becomes the story of a raving elder.

"I am not a story, though," she says. "You saw me with your own eyes, and you did not forget. That is how I know you are of our blood. Only kinfolk may see us and remember."

Behind her, the fire is dwindling. The dry, almost bloodless corpse of the monster is fast burning to ash. The sun is fast rising, too, bringing out the flecks of green in her eyes, the hints of amber and gold. "There are a a number of packs of wolves in these woods," she tells him. "At the heart, a caern: a place of healing and power that we hold sacred. That is why monsters are drawn here."

him.

"The monsters." He finds himself echoing her again. It is a way to buy time. A way to revisit things she has said; all the great and fragmentary pieces of a shadow world he never had suspected.

Except that wasn't true. Except on some level he had suspected, amorphously and indistinctly -- threads and glimmers from childhood memories, dreams. A sense, distant and vague, that things were not all as they seemed. That perhaps there was something else, something more, a layer to the world that lay beneath the ordinary.

He had no words for it then. He has barely any for it now.

"And what are they, these monsters? Where do they come from? What is it they want?"

her.

The woman standing before him glances behind herself at the dying fire, and at the rising light over the treetops. Then she turns back to him.

"I will walk with you back to the edge of the woods," she says. "In case there are any others. And as we go, I will tell you what you need to know. About the monsters, and the wolves who fight them."

A pause. A heartbeat, only.

"If you wish to know. I cannot promise the knowledge will give you any peace. Far from it."

him.

He does not leap to an unconsidered decision. She warns in the same breath she offers, and he gives it time. Lets it land. Thinks for a long moment, looking away, into the woods. Somewhere there, a sacred place. Somewhere there, more creatures like herself, and more monsters like the one she killed.

He'd always wondered why this forest still stood. Why, despite the spread of the city and the growth of its outskirts, this one region was spared. Now, he has an inkling.

There are things he doesn't know. Not just things that have nothing to do with him, that will never intersect his life, but threads that have already woven into his existence. That, in some cases, link what is disparate; illuminate what is shadowed.

"I wish to know," he says. "Tell me what you can."

Emmanuelle

Dawn has broken now, and even though the heavy boughs overhead block much of the light, still it filters inward. Everything is a deep green shadow, flecked with gold. The woman standing before him is easier to see, and he knows he must be getting clearer to her eyes, too. She's watching him as he decides, without rushing him.

If she were a nobler or more honorable sort, she would insist on telling him the truth. She would not let him go back to Paris, if she were more like some others of her own tribe. He would not have a choice.

--

He chooses. And she walks toward him then, closer still, until her hand rests in the air between them, awaiting his arm. She's no woman of court, but she's clearly not just an animal, either. She looks up at him,

and then they walk together.

--

She tells him that werewolves have existed since before written history. She tells him that so, too, has the Wyrm existed, and the two have ever been at war with one another. She tells him of Gaia, her free hand brushing along leaves as she does so, drawing back wet with dew that she brings to her mouth to taste, as if it were honey.

She tells him that they have arranged themselves into tribes, that they can be born in different forms, but that regardless, there are always kinfolk. Parents, siblings, mates, children. She tells him how some of these kin become lost: generations of a bloodline growing further and further removed from their last changing member until the truth becomes a story.

And she tells him why they must hide themselves, though surely he can guess: the anger and fear of mortals, not to mention the need to protect their secret, sacred places. She says that several wolves even live within Paris itself, for various reasons and in various echelons of the social structure, but she gives him no names. For her part, she only rarely ventures into the city, for -- as she tells him:

"My duties to the Mother require strength of spirit over strength of the body. Living steeped in mortal invention, away from nature, can sap one's spirit and calcify the soul. I do not go very often."

Laurent

She tells him...

fables. Stories. Wild imaginings, the ravings of madwomen shamefully hidden away from the world. She tells him things that couldn't possibly be true, that must be the product of an unwell mind. Or so he would think, except he's seen it. With his own two eyes he's seen it.

Some superficial surface, anyway. The very first glimmerings of the world she tells him about. Monsters and werewolves; and then the likes of him, somewhere between what is mundane and what is not.

It is not an enviable position.

--

And he is quiet while she speaks. Hard to say what he thinks of it all; if he's even begun to form opinions. He has no questions. He has no comments. For the most part, he seems simply to absorb. He seems to try, anyway.

--

They are nearing the bridge again. She tells him that the city saps her spirit, calcifies her soul. He slows. Her hand still rests upon his arm, as though they were a lady, a gentleman.

The first question he's asked, and the first thing he's said in some time, is almost laughably prosaic:

"You live in these woods, then?"

Emmanuelle

His steps slow and, a half-breath after, she is slowing with him. She feels that she can sense when he will move and when he will not. She feels that she knows some glimmer of why he moves one way or another. She recalls, like a breeze through her mind, what it feels like to be in a pack, not just a war party but a true pack where bonds of spirit and friendship grow to something uniquely intimate.

But he is a stranger to her, just a lost kin in need of understanding, and the feeling makes no sense at all. She turns to him, not terribly far from the treeline now.

She nods at his question, her head canting to one side. "Of course. I protect the caern here, and the spirits of the land around it." A small smile. She looks out, at Paris some distance away, then back to him. "And you live there, in the city."

For no reason she can discern, she adds: "It is not so far."

Laurent

He has no reason, either, for saying this, but he does:

"No. It's not."

With the words out of his mouth he hears how strange they are. How strange it is that they, two strangers, are making something like assurances to one another. And growing aware of that, in turn, makes him aware of her hand still on his arm.

He steps back from her, as decorum suddenly seems to demand. Clearing his throat, he smooths some dirt from his coat.

"I require some time to think on all this," he says. "My brother and I own a small butchershop on the left bank, two streets from the river, half a block from the Drunken Egret. Perhaps in a week you might call on me.

"Or I can come here again. To look for you."

Emmanuelle

Just as he moves, she feels it again, senses it, and her hand lifts before he has fully withdrawn. She folds her hands -- again, he sees how wretched they are, how still cloaked in ash and blackened, dried blood.

He tells her of the butcher shop and his brother, and she breathes in steadily, cooling herself. She begins to nod, then pauses. "I... must tell my kind of the two of you. Some creatures, less obviously monstrous as the one you saw tonight, seek out our kinfolk as prey." Her brow furrows briefly in a small wince. "To better protect you, others must know -- at least -- that you are there. But I will do my best to see you are not bothered."

There's a hesitation there, then a small hopefulness she cannot entirely conceal: "I would like to call upon you. In a week." Her cheeks don't color, but in another woman, they may have. This woman only holds his gaze a moment, then looks away.

She reaches into her cloak, reminded of something, and draws forth a small, hollowed gourd. Strange symbols are drawn all over it in black. It fits into her palm as she holds it out to him. "If your brother is wounded, crush this over his flesh. He will be healed. If he is hale... keep it. One never knows."

Laurent

It is possible she does not yet know his true profession. If she did, perhaps she would understand why he does not, and has never, drawn back from her hands in horror and revulsion.

Yet even knowing would not explain why, when she offers the gourd, he looks for a long moment at her palm. He takes the small talisman, tucking it into the inner breast pocket of his coat, and from the same pocket draws a handkerchief. It is no gentleman's belonging, being only plain linen, but all the same he gives it to her.

"Forgive me," he says. "I have not yet thanked you for what you have told me, and what you have done for my brother and I. He is bruised, but otherwise unhurt. It would have been quite different, I think, had you not come upon us.

"When the time is right, I will tell him of what we spoke. He is ... more skeptical than I."

Emmanuelle

He gives her his handkerchief. She takes it, and perhaps he means her to clean her hands with it, but... she doesn't. It doesn't occur to her. She just sees it as an exchange, and it makes her feel amused and slightly tender, because it's not necessary to begin with, and if it were, it would hardly be adequate payment.

Yet she folds it in her hands like it is something far more precious, holding it between her palms. Holds it still, as they speak.

"No thanks is needed," she says, wincing slightly as though this embarrasses her. "It is... why I exist." She nods at the rest, though. "A word of caution: it will be better for him to learn the truth in peace, than to have it violently thrust upon him again in the future. If he requires proof, you need only bring him to me."

Her eyes glance at the horizon, then to him. She realizes she does not want to see him off. She realizes she wishes she had something to say. She feels as though she has far, far too much to say, and all of it sounds like madness.

"You may come see me again," she says, as abruptly as she told him earlier that they aren't so very far apart. "If you wish. Many spirits in the wood watch the goings-on and will tell me if you come. We could speak further, if you have questions. I could show you --"

stops herself, there. Finishes, instead: "-- the caern. How we live."

Laurent

Oddly, this makes him smile -- a quick breaking of humor, there and then gone.

"Perhaps the week after next," he says. And then: "Have you a name?"

Emmanuelle

She never told him. To be fair, he hasn't offered his, either. And she has forgotten to ask. Somehow she thought she already knew it.

"Emmanuelle," she answers, softly. "And you?"

Laurent

"Laurent," he replies.

And then, after a beat of hesitation, he bows to her. The pause was awkward; the bow is not. In this small thing, at least, he's had practice. Nobles love to bow before they attempt to slaughter one another.

"It has been my pleasure, Mademoiselle."

Emmanuelle

The bow makes her smile. This time it's not some small, shy thing. She's amused, and a bit endeared, when he rises again. He can see her smile, and the light in her eyes.

"And mine, Monsieur,"

and it sounds as though, to her own surprise, that she means it.