Heirs of Cain

Venus in Labor

Accepting their compliments proved difficult, and I had no way of explaining myself either. You see, I, Severin Pelts, still had not informed anyone in Quarantown that my wife, Wanda Blasphemer Pelts, was secretly a bloodthirsty goddess from a smudged and misinterpreted age long before any notions of a Christ child or contemplative Buddha.

One day they would all know, the shock bending them into kneeling prayer, where they would no doubt stay for the remainder of their lives. They'd be fools not to. Already they knew the magnetic draw of her company, knowing it just then at the dinner party I'd arranged, the guest list made up of several early pilgrims to Quarantown who seemed like good candidates for lesser disciples than myself when the time came: Miss Giselle Ulterrine the duck farmer, Giggles Terroir our town sommelier, Doppler Burstyn the mining magnate, and the freshest of them, Godwin Hammerstein, a playwright looking to be heard of.

The trouble was that all of them were praising my marinated and dressed duck breast like it was equal parts fatted calf and prize hog. 'The best thing I've ever tasted.' 'I've never even had opium this good.' 'Is there a recipe or was it a divine revelation?'

And again, I malfunctioned in my attempts at gratitude, for the degree of divinity involved was impossible to parse just then. Wanda certainly hadn't warned me about anything she'd done to the food. One glance at her, gods I hate when it's just one glance, showed me her mischievous grin. She knew something about the duck, partook herself, but intentionally gave me no clue. She loved watching me puzzle things out, especially if I squirmed uncomfortably during the process.

Practiced I was in the culinary arts, with an entirely new focus on them since I was responsible for feeding my Wanda when she took her more... civilized meals, where cutlery was present on the table rather than embedded in her mouth.

But how practiced? My stay there was without time. My goddess, my Venus in furs, was the center of my existence, preventing me from coordinating in relation to what used to be the world. Never did I know where or when I was precisely, so I had no idea if I'd been practicing at the stove for weeks or years.

It would have to be years to account for the way that duck tasted that night. That's right, I too was not immune to the food's luscious flavor, even if I had accidentally engineered it. A bloody quality saturated every fiber of it, and the skin, it melted without any gamy foulness. That particular duck's flavor was almost... hypothetical, like it was the ideal duck, prototyped in the highest god's laboratory and kept under glass for examination rather than eating.

"Severin, you must tell me the secret," Giggles demanded, the tines of her fork still in her mouth, trying to suck dregs of sauce that were no longer there. She'd cleaned her plate first, in a flurry that kept her from noticing her folly until she looked around and saw the others having thought ahead enough to savor.

"I know the secret," Mr. Burstyn said before I could speak up. He swiveled in his chair to Wanda, who expertly hid her disappointment that the pressure had eased off me. "You're really the cook around here, aren't you Mrs. Pelts?" His heavy purebred mustache retracted just enough for a flash of teeth, one gold.

"What would give you that impression?" she asked without looking at him, instead giving the attention to the wine in her favorite pewter goblet. I very much doubted she was capable of intoxication, and if so it would be a product of the boudoir rather than the kitchen.

"Because I've tried to put everyone in this town to work, yet your husband is always strolling somewhere making small talk. I ask where you two get all your money, he says you're the wealthy one and he's just one of your purchases. Bu-hah!

But now I've got it figured out. You're a private chef, so good that someone can't stand to share you even with a fine dining establishment. Tell me, what's he paying you? I bet I can do better, and I will, because I've never had duck better than this, and I've eaten flocks!"

"No one has had better," Giggles muttered, eyes now haunted by the barrenness of her plate.

"Yes, thank you to whomever made it. It's impeccable," Giselle added in a more reasonable tone, though nobody could hide their enthusiasm. Mr. Hammerstein didn't speak, but I think that was because he had a silent conversation with the muse in his head, where they both discussed the duck and whether or not such a thing could be adapted for the stage.

My muse was enjoying herself too much to offer any help in fending off their questions, forcing me to concoct some story about an imported spice blend that I wasn't sure I would be able to procure more of. No, I didn't remember what was in it. No, not the name either. It was a gift you see. From who? Saint Nicholas, never you mind who. Can't have a reliable contact poached.

Dessert was skipped almost instinctively, as we all knew it wouldn't be able to compare to what we'd just eaten. There was a nice crumbly chocolate and cherry cake sitting just two rooms away, but it would have to wait until long after the taste was out of my mouth, and after the long discussion with the responsible party.

My muse playfully tried to escape while I was shooing the last of our guests out the door, allowing Mr. Hammerstein to keep the drink in his hand. Silently she could move, but without turning I knew she would be at the threshold of the dining room, hoping for me to stall her with a scold, as if I had any power at all.

"Hold on now darling," I said, eyes still on the door. I knew she stopped, and we both reveled in the playful tension as much as we did the meal mere minutes ago. When finally our eyes met I was gifted with my favorite sight: a new expression of hers, responding to a situation we'd never faced before and never would again. Short auburn hair. Bunched freckles fanning out from the bridge of her nose. Vivisecting green eyes. All of her responses were irreplaceable to me.

"What is it, my precious little Severin; I want some cake."

"And I want some answers!" She leaned against the wall assertively. First time I'd ever seen that as well. "What did you do to my dinner? Obviously I would recall you popping into the kitchen while I cooked, even for a flash. You weren't there. So when did you put... whatever it is that you put in that duck in the..."

Her smirk aligned with my conclusion. I went back to the dinner table, closing some of the distance between us, and picked up a fork. Its tines waddled across a plate, leaving cute little footprints in a puddle of sauce.

"You interacted with that duck when it was still alive," I said, waddling my way through the thick smoky discovery. "Made it into one of your familiars." Most of her true friends in Quarantown, the home we commandeered, built to keep us isolated from the plague ravaging whichever countries happened to surround us, were the animals of the forest. The majority of them acted as sentries, protecting us not from the illness, but Wanda's equally dangerous siblings, some of whom were murderously jealous of her growing prominence.

"Please Severin, as if I would employ such a creature as anything other than a last resort. All they see is floating shreds of bread."

"Then what? Whatever you did enhanced it as food almost beyond belief! Giggles looked addicted after the first bite."

"Then she should try a bite of you; you're even sweeter," she teased.

"The flavor profile was smoky, and the sauce was at best jammy," I corrected. The two culinary words triggered an avalanche of others, all disturbed in my lexicon recently. Suddenly it struck me that some other foods in Quarantown had been improving in quality. I'd made mental notes of particularly good chicken, rabbit, and trout. All meats. All kept around Quarantown domestically or fished out of the nearby stream.

"It was a gift for you, my Severin," Wanda said, breaking away from the wall and meeting me alongside the table. Her furs bristled at our closeness as if they were attached to her. "I was waiting for you to notice. You love playing with your pots and pans almost as much as needle and thread. I invigorated the livestock. They now lead richer lives, which gives them richer flesh. You're tasting experience."

She kissed me so that I might taste her experience once more. The fork clattered as my hand found something better to do. My eyes were closed, but I felt her furs move over us, slithering down my back. Sometimes she allowed them a mind of their own, largely so they could play dead as a throw for a time while Wanda and I made love.

Now I had her bare skin in my grip; she answered with a snaking arm up the back of my shirt. The place between the shoulder blades is too flat to grasp, unless you are an heir of Cain skilled in the magic of dominating a human being. Her fingers curled like cat claws, and I felt picked up by the nape, all the nerves under her hand bunching in response to her order.

It crumpled me, brought me low with a tide of tingling sensation. From there the only thing I could kiss was her navel, but it was as gorgeous as every other part of her. Unfortunately for the rest of both our evenings, some part of my mind was still caught on the coat hook of our conversation.

The thanks had to go to this poet's heart of mine, which knows that since there are a thousand different odes to a thousand different subjects, there must be at least one thousand things in the world to love, and they should all have some portion of your attention at all times, lest we neglect them.

What my mind refused to neglect was my dear dear friend Mergini. Mergini was a duck. He was one of Giselle's just like all the others that were so regularly butchered and eaten in Quarantown. They were originally a seafaring variety, carrying with them a hardy noble sailor's quality though they now only braved the waters of our small lake. They were black of feather, like chimney soot, and olivine of bill and foot.

I admire their tranquility often, sitting as I like to on the lake's dock when engaged in creative endeavors, like failing to write my own poetry or sketching some new clothing designs, hoping one day that my uncle Piotr would find a single one he couldn't reject.

Some time ago, you know I cannot be more specific than that, my measuring cup is demarcated by the various onomatopoeia of the cosmos's ridiculing laughter, I was on that dock not with pad and pencil, but a wooden game board.

It wasn't chess, or anything else you may have played yourself, but it was a thing of devilishly complex strategy. As you might have guessed, Wanda was its source. The immediate source. For its true origin one would have to travel back to the time where the world serpent could be seen swimming the aurora rivers nightly, something immemorial to all men but those of Cain.

She told me the game was called amblush: its most modernized name. At first glance it is not too vexing: a circular board divided into smaller circles and the compressed diamonds between. Sitting on them are two factions, one gray and one brown, of nine tokens each. Each carved token, as tall as a chess piece, has a different name and role. There's the blood moon, harvest moon, goblin moon, comet, crater, constellation, darkness, world serpent, and world serpent skin.

Her instructions were very clear, but since she delivered them while licking her chops I assumed the game would bring me great frustration, but also be deviously compelling. Correct on both counts. The goal was to eliminate your opponent's pieces, banishing them to the center, while dealing with the piece that achieved the feat turning traitor and going over to enemy control.

To win you had to let your opponent win, which meant their final piece betrayed them, and thus you were the true victor. Confused? Then you're human. Wanda did warn me, knowing full well my rampant curiosity would overpower such a weak offhand statement, that the game was meant for an heir of Cain's mind. No one who hadn't seen the cosmos from the serpent's back, learned the true nature of death as it is spilled across the void, could grasp the interwoven layers of its strategy.

But I was determined to try, and on cool calm mornings I took the board out to the dock and used her instructions to play against myself, unwilling to burden another person who wouldn't, given our reservations, even know what godly business they were getting into.

Somehow I always lost. Believe me, I hear how that sounds. Never could I declare brown or gray the winner, only both the defeated. One time I mangled it so badly that half the pieces went missing, and I found them in the grass nearby as if they'd tried to make a break for it. More common was my looking down, ready to move, only to find that the 'mood' of the constellation did not allow it to occupy the diamond I wanted it to (they can occupy the diamonds instead of the circles whenever they recant their traitorous stance, which might make you, the player, physically dizzy).

Severin Pelts is no quitter, and while one retort to that (calling me an endless failure) delivered by a schoolyard rival has never left me (he is the subject of someone's ode too I'm sure), I kept at it, day after day, chin growing so accustomed to the nest of my left hand I was worried it might lay an egg.

Another egg-layer was the key, though I'm referring to the species and not the individual. Mergini is a drake, and one day he flapped his way up to the table holding the board. I almost instantly shooed him away, but something in his little dark eye caught my attention. The animal made no attempt to knock the pieces over or harass me. He just... examined.

So I made an experimental move. He quacked, head darting back and forth between two pieces, then the center where the dead congregated (we won't get into resurrection rules yet, as there are least a dozen... and I think their number changes between games).

"Go on, if you're so smart," I snidely encouraged. but then he did go. Oh did he go on, and go on fully. His bill snatched the goblin moon by its top and dragged it over to another circle. As far as I could recognize, it was a valid play. One that put me in a difficult position. I tried to wriggle out of it, quacking after my move to inform him it was his turn.

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The drake did go on again! Over the course of the next hour, in which we successfully completed one of the game's nine phases, it became clear to me that I'd been missing a crucial element: a real opponent. Of course. The heirs of Cain would not create a game that could be played by oneself; that would be too much like introspection. Conflict itself was the framework.

Sadly, that only allowed me to figure out, I think, forty percent or so of amblush... and ten of that was purely the work of Mergini. I played with that duck several times a week, judging the weeks purely by feel mind you, like finding your bedpost in the dark, to further our progress in understanding it.

In the process of that fun I named him, and learned to identify him by the lighter charcoal patch on his tail feathers. Then I asked Miss Ulterrine to please not include him in any of the groups sent off for slaughter. She kindly obliged; what was one duck between neighbors?

Except, it wasn't just one duck, I realized while I knelt under Wanda's playful grasp of the bunched nerves beneath my skin. It was all of them. This 'invigoration' Wanda spoke of was an increase in the ducks' intelligence. That allowed them to understand more, feel more, and, apparently, tenderized them with the bludgeoning awe of perspective. I shot to my feet, broke out of her magic trick so unexpectedly that she couldn't disengage it properly, causing me to lose all feeling in my left leg.

Timber. Thankfully she ignored the instantaneous trailing drool, quickly correcting the issue with her influence and pulling me back to a more dignified orientation.

"Whatever has gotten into you I did not put there," she scolded me.

"You made the animals we eat more intelligent!?"

"Yes, that's how you make them taste better. It's not a difficult concept Severin."

"Wanda, I've been playing amblush with a duck! I thought he was one of yours!"

"Right, Mergini," she groaned, just as unamused as the other times I had mentioned the extraordinary bird. "With that game rolling around in his mind he'll probably taste best of all."

"What!? Absolutely not!"

"Severin, you're upsetting yourself."

"No, cruelty is upsetting me! You mustn't do this to them. It's one thing for a mind no more nuanced than a coin flip to not recognize the knife coming down on its neck, but what you're doing lets them... anticipate! And fear! How could you Wanda?"

"Their lives last just as long, and during that time they have a greater capacity for thought and joy," she excused. "Would you tell a soldier he shouldn't go off to war because he is afraid of death?"

"Yes I would!" My breathing was irregular, I was so upset. She took to evening it out remotely, using her standing permission to adjust all my internal functions if she thought it in my best interest. As in most cases she was correct. It allowed me to set my terms without sounding hysterical.

"You reject my gift, Severin? Are you truly unhappy with what your goddess has done for you? That would bode ill."

"It might bode ill, but not for our love," I assured her. "You can do no wrong by me, but you can still do wrong. I tell you these animals have been wronged. Greater capacity for joy? Perhaps, but that makes the mechanism all the more finicky. It now needs more maintenance, more ideal circumstances to generate joy at all, and that starts by living without threat of the cleaver."

"Should I take it back," she said, tiptoeing through the language of regret like a floor strewn with shards of glass, "that process would itself generate much agony. I'd be driving them insane."

"Then that leaves but one solution my love. We must purchase every last animal you have changed... and set them free." Now while her initial reaction was to roll her eyes, it should be clear that she respected my position. Her frustration with my 'silliness' was itself relief that I was not pressing the issue of her misreading my heart's desire.

Around town I referred to my goddess as a wealthy woman, but the amount of liquid assets we had on hand was almost always more of a dry bucket with a well nearby. When money was needed she would insert herself into a situation with one of the richer residents of Quarantown, exert her persuasiveness (in a non-flirtatious manner she assured me, as if she needed to), and come back with a generous donation matching our desired amount.

That was how we got our house, and it would be how we got all those ducks, chickens, and rabbits. Of greater difficulty was coming up with an excuse for the behavior and finding something to do with a mingled herd of animals that were, on average, smart enough to get tired of a joke by the third time they heard it.

The rabbits were not so numerous, so I went around to many of the families with young children and offered them as pets. Miss Ulterrine's boys took one, and they were popular with the other children, so many followed suit.

Chickens proved simple, as another Quarantown resident had been looking to set up a supply of fresh eggs. I claimed the ones I had were a breed that laid better eggs than usual, which was true, if only for the one generation that had known Wanda's ambitious touch, so I suggested to their new owner that it would be a great misuse to slaughter any of them prematurely, before they had laid their last. Hopefully enough time would pass, new layers mixing with old, that the slow drop in the quality of the goods would go unnoticed.

Only the ducks remained, and I sent them to populate a fountain in the town square, successfully impressing upon them, with much gesticulating and fear-mongering, that it would serve them well to keep their droppings well away, thus increasing their value as decorative additions to the square's atmosphere.

Mergini wished to be kept separate, and I wanted him to as well, so I brought him home with me. A window could be left open, allowing him to return to the lake or fountain as he pleased to socialize. Otherwise he was free to socialize with the Pelts family, and was in fact part of it. Anywhere warm under our roof was his bed.

My poor Wanda was nagged by a splinter of jealousy she couldn't admit. Not one person or creature had known any true attention from me since the two of us met, with all my gallivanting about town connected to errands done in her name. Mergini, not so. We met and bonded over a game that she refused to play with me, insisting that I had to figure out the rules before I could rise to the level of challenging her.

Soon there were times when she had to come looking for me, or interrupt me, because I was already engaged with Mergini over amblush, or soliciting his opinions on Quarantown. His own favorite topic was fruit (yes the eating of it, but also painting with its pulp and juice). Ever at my lover's beck and call, Mergini understood I needed to drop whatever was at hand when she needed me, and was very polite about the intrusions. Wanda, on the other hand, never acknowledged him and rarely used his name.

Several times she tried to convince me to send him off to the others in the fountain, but I argued that if she could have her thousands of familiars ringing the entire settlement, working for her every hour of sunlight and moonlight, then it would do no harm for me to have but one familiar. If anything I was embracing my position as her chief disciple all the more, utilizing some of her power without attempting the feat at her scale.

Such a line was sufficient for her to drop the subject and move on with our lives, though she would soon find that perhaps she moved on a little too much for her liking. Me? I was ecstatic with the results... but not at first. First I had to suffer a most unexpected injury, then an obvious scar, and then a peculiar illness, followed by a harrowing incidence of bodily constriction, but once all that was done with... bliss!

Beginning with the injury, despite only ninety percent confidence that I listed these physical challenges in the order they actually occurred, puts me in our bed, and Wanda too. It drops the sun and raises the moon, the stage set for some time after Mergini had joined the Pelts family and all our food had returned to normal (at all further dinner parties I claimed that the spice rub had run out and that my supplier had met a grisly fate in the midst of a distant political revolution).

In the early days of Quarantown Wanda would disappear into the night for recruitment of wildlife and natural forces, but all that was firmly entrenched now, so the entire night was spent in loving embrace, where, should I have ever found myself uncomfortable, I knew not to stretch to free myself, as her hold on me would tighten, the trap to loosen only at dawn.

As possessive in slumber as she was when awake, Wanda preferred to sleep behind me with both arms wrapped around, nails touching my bare chest and stomach, always ready to twitch and dig in. Another quirk I would never deny her: her perpetual bite on my left earlobe. When those impish teeth clamped and her breath poured into the canals of my outer ear, flowing as ambrosia into my spirit, I knew she had fallen out of consciousness.

Abandoned as a newborn in the wilderness, like all her siblings, my Wanda had learned much from the animals, so even to this day there was more confidence, more assured sensations, in her bite than in her human grasp. Teeth were stakes, and rather than take bites with them she made claims. All parts of my body had been claimed in such a fashion, but always at night she made sure I was secured by the ear: a sailor tying down her freight so it wouldn't go overboard while her attention was elsewhere.

I too was comforted by this hold and all its aspects. Cherished. That's a more fitting word. I was cherished, like a childhood toy, like a fragile investment, like something that, if stolen, could not be properly reported to the authorities, as they would never understand its actual value. So imagine my surprised when I, cherished, comforted, loved, protected, was mauled in my own bed, in the house of a goddess.

Normally my thrashing would not free me, but I was able to jump up immediately, dragging along a sheet already copiously stained with blood. Blood all the way to the corner. Dripping across the floor. Climbing my naked flank. Emerging from my left ear. Or what remained of it. The pain temporarily overwhelmed my sense of hearing on that side, so it was difficult to gauge how terrible my shouting was, but it disturbed Wanda greatly.

She leapt off the mattress and immediately stilled me by exerting her aura, which also ceased the blood flow. My own examination of the wound stung with every touch, but her finger traced an invisible salve all along it, teaching me its exact contours. I'd lost the entire hanging portion separate from the cartilage, which had itself been permanently marked by intense pressure on several areas, most clearly at two outer points. Once she soothed me to where safety was no longer a concern, we shared a look and an understanding.

"You bit me," I said numbly. A sensation that should've remained localized to my ear spread throughout my head and down my trunk. She numbed everything, perhaps to quell my fears, or anger.

"I was... having a dream," she said. I think both of us pictured the dreams of cats and dogs, which could often be seen by non-participants in the ways the animals ran on their sides, growled at nothing.

"Oh alright," I said, because there was nothing else to be said. When a divine creature such as herself overreacts, to a slight craving, or perhaps the image of a turkey leg steaming with dream aether, they naturally produce an outsized result compared to an ordinary human. She meant no harm. Even when she meant harm she meant it only as inquisitive prodding instigated by a raw cavernous curiosity to know my every response to all the stimuli of the cosmos and the wormy ditches alike. "Where is it then? Can you reattach it?"

I went back to the bed, pulled at sheets and blankets, hoping my eager ear, which must have been burning since I was talking about it, would bounce off them and back to me. Nothing. I turned to Wanda, who looked away, at a cobweb that wasn't there. She was as naked as I, but that was not the source of her embarrassment, even with some of my blood dripped down her chin. She licked at it reflexively, then forced her tongue to disappear and still.

"Severin, dear, darling. Arrest your emotions. I swallowed it." I felt like a tossed die, one that could shatter if it landed on the wrong number. Part of my perception broke away, flipped, tried to imagine a new life inside my wife's gullet. Briefly I was assailed with images of her youngest sister, Goriana Perjury Consumption, who had also tried to swallow me, in a sense. Good thing she hadn't guessed the winning strategy to be daintier nibbles.

"You swallowed it? So it's gone? Gone gone? I am trying to stay calm you know, and I recognize this is a good deal less than what your mother did to all those poor unwitting poets... but I'm in need of my ear back! What will we tell everyone!? We don't even have a dog to blame it on!"

"We have a duck."

"Now you recognize Mergini? Now that he might take the blame? Let's have no blame, shall we? Use some of that Cain magic. Force my body to regenerate it."

"Severin," she sighed, drawing up against me. Her center of heat touched my twitching thigh, stilled it. The roll of her skin against mine instantly dried the trail of blood, caused it to flake into the air and dissipate like brittle rose petals. Her hand touched my ear again, not to soothe, but to reassure me that each divot was its genuine shape, that this was its new life and its new feel.

"I cannot do that," she continued, resting her forehead on my collarbone, speaking into my heart. "I have the control you have given me, but error is error. Everything I do to you is permanent, good and bad. Cain could not resurrect Abel, even if he'd wanted to. You are the record of my journey in the world, so you must also reflect my... fleeting moments of imperfection."

"I am a child of reflection," I said, using her term for the short-lived men that were my stock. "I feel lesser. And not just literally."

"I'm sorry, my Severin. I don't know what came over my dreaming self. I feel a little unusual tonight. But you can sleep soundly, as now that I know about the possibility of this I can guard against it. You have my word it will not happen again. Do you trust me?"

"I trust you to come up with a good excuse for me by morning. What I need more than an apology is a bang-up set of words that can smooth out this new rough edge." I tapped behind the damaged ear. "But yes, I do trust you Wanda. Completely. These past... units of time have been the best of my life, of anyone's life. They're worth a third of an ear. I'd pay more if you raised the toll."

"Excellent. Now prove it to me." She returned to bed, whipping the blankets up all at once; by the time they settled, perfectly flat and centered, the bloodstains had vanished. Another probe of my ear revealed that the scab had been skipped; it had gone straight to scarring. My Wanda peeled back the sheet like it was nothing, yet still more stubborn than my flesh was under her direction. There was my place next to her, in her hot coal shadow. Was I man enough to retake it?

Yes, and it was easy. Her arms encircled me, locked me in. That was not the proof she sought. Her teeth clamped down on my bitten ear, further up than before, and her breath poured into my head. Again she slept. And with the lull of embodied trust, so did I.

More time passed, and in that indeterminate amount at least several nights, with each one an additional test. Wanda Blasphemer Pelts was true to her word, as every night she nipped at me precociously, lovingly, and in no further instances did she keep a piece afterward. The only faith of mine that was shaken was her notion that the heirs of Cain weren't predisposed to some sort of cannibalistic hunger.

Of all the heirs of Cain I knew of in the Diodati family, only one had not consumed man flesh in some capacity, and it was her brother Devorgoil Oblivion Goblinry, the specter-barber, who had been stillborn. Being an heir meant he could shake that off, but perhaps his ghostly beginnings immunized him against the cravings of a living growling appetite.

Next in the ordeal here described was the 'obvious scar' I mentioned, on the ear. Again keeping her promise, Wanda had an excuse for me to use on all the other Quarantowners. I was to blame a feral dog, apparently it attacked me while on a midnight stroll, and got away with a bit of ear before I managed to bravely fight it off.

To make it convincing she would have one such dog, of which she had several among her familiars, howl aggressively around our town's borders every few nights. The beast was out there, and it hungered for ears! Some of the men would go out in an attempt to hunt it, but always come back empty-handed, for Wanda kept all the animals apprised of the threats blundering into their woods.

When the time came, after the next natural passing of a familiar dog, she would leave the body somewhere to be found, thus ending the monster's reign of terror. This meant I had to lie, and many times too, but I assuaged my guilt by remembering that I had fought off a few vicious creatures and was not yet allowed to describe them. My bravery and cunning were true, if not the location and circumstances.