In proper sequence or not, the time to meet them came, Wanda well aware of it before the first labor pains. I'd had my face pressed against her at the quickening, which partly prepared me for the lance of anticipation that would pierce me body and soul soul as soon as she warned me the birth was near.

Together we traveled out of Quarantown into the outlying woods, found a spot where the clear sky was unobstructed by the canopy, where the moss thickly grew over itself like stacked carpets, and where running water could be heard cheering her on to the completion of this cycle.

She'd assured me many times over there was no need of medical supervision. Heirs did not die in childbirth, that risk passed far down the line in the form of hostility between generations. With the knowledge that I could not lose her I was free to let excitement burn rampant everywhere in my spirit, and I think my attentive giddiness was the only aspect of the experience my Wanda was able to appreciate. She did this for me, but I hoped she would eventually discover that she'd done it for all four of us (don't you dare forget the eldest brother).

No medical supervision for her, but some for me might have been nice. After I helped her undress and she took up what appeared to be an instinctive pose upon the softest mound of moss, the process began, washing over her and crashing into me.

All I saw of distress in her was a feverish fire in her cheeks under a screen of sweat. My Wanda worked her way through what is often called the most painful experience with nothing but gritted teeth and growling. If there was anything more to it, this angry rumination on torch-passing, I missed it completely, as the sympathy pain malady struck again.

There was little Wanda could do to address it, occupied as she was, so I was left to writhe and spasm on the forest floor, screams sputtering and dying in a spittle pool at the back of my throat. My back arched and stayed that way, crown of my head leaving a deeper print in the ground than my feet ever had. What was at first electric, attacking and seizing the muscles, lingered so long that it scorched its way into all tissues of my abdomen, groin, and thighs, becoming fire.

The worst pain in the world? Who can say? The worst pain in mine? I can say, and I say yes. Whether Wanda managed to trigger it or my body simply closed down for renovation, consciousness was lost.

When I returned the sun had shifted, but it was still fully day. Wanda was back in her furs, no sign of fatigue on her face, skin dry as a book. She had my head cradled in her lap, where she stroked the hair at my ears, played the ridges of my bite scar like the teeth of a comb.

"You're alright my love. It's all over now. Let's get you back and get you something to eat; you're famished." Exhaustion that should've been hers kept my inner branches barren of words, and as I urged a new crop to grow in she helped me to my feet, put my arm over her shoulders. My drenched shirt shifted, and I felt cool patches. One in particular, along my ribs, where new warmth should have been swaddled and rocked.

"Wait... what are we..." I muttered, slapping a sentence together as if from wordy scraps lining a bird cage. "Where is our child?"

"She's perfectly safe," Wanda assured me without slowing down. "You're the one who needs my attention." Resisting her was always difficult, but doubly so after the sympathetic seizing. Still, I dragged my feet, denied her support, and successfully fell over into a lizard's scramble back the way we came.

What my Venus had attempted did not slip by. It was her hope that in the time it took for me to recover our little one would wander off on her own, become as feral as any other heir of Cain, and never be seen again. Not while her father still drew breath. Just as with Mergini she would be my sweet little duckling, imprint and follow just as the ducklings do, at least until she learned she would be a creature of much greater consequence.

There she was, nestled on her back in the moss, staring up at the sun's rays in a way that would cause a normal babe permanent blindness, but to her it was just the shimmer off a pond. The differences in anatomy were clear, and would only shrink with time. If she was to be abandoned and yet live she would have to care for herself immediately, which meant the muscles were born stronger, the limbs longer, the head lighter.

Wanda would later say I spoiled her out of strength, for it only took days for her to adjust to the way of life I provided, taking up a much more traditional appearance, trusting me to carry her so much that she allowed her body to develop more slowly.

In her little face I saw neither of ours, nothing of us at all, a possibility I was well aware of given how little resemblance Wanda and her siblings bore between them. Our daughter had dark eyes, but they grew bright in direct sunlight, into webbed chasms of sanded wood. Her face was pinched about her nose, as if she was already pulled somewhere by an enticing scent.

My goddess had no interest in naming her, so that fell to me. What came to mind as I scooped her up was the power she already had, not the ones she would grow into, which was to make me forget my troubles. Wanda too had this power, but only in how they were ripped away along with the things they were attached to: labels of time and space. It was not the tonic my child used.

Nepenthe was her name, said aloud there in the glade, heard by many hidden familiars radiating curiosity. Nepenthe History Pelts.

...

This leaves only the last thing I suffered for a time, the aforementioned instance of bodily constriction, perhaps the wildest occurrence of them all. It took place sometime after we brought our daughter into our home and into our routines, a process that was not without strife, most of it suffered by my jealous goddess.

It should be made clear that she was never a danger to our dear little Nepenthe, only ever committing acts of negligence that don't properly count as such when the child in question is a greater danger to whatever comes across her, rather than the other way around.

Suddenly Miss Pelts was doing a much better job at being seen and heard in Quarantown, busy as she had to keep to avoid spending time with her daughter. In a way it was a positive development. We threw more parties, she scrutinized those immigrating more thoroughly, and she even learned the basics of the social web so that she might one day become the superior brooding spider at its center.

Nepenthe did not take her breast, nor did she need a nursemaid, for just as the heirs can move under their own power at birth they can also take solid food. She ate tiny morsels of whatever I cooked, and was usually down for an evening nap when Wanda and I dined together.

Being attentive was a delight, but Wanda had her demands, and I couldn't argue against them when our child was already so at home in her surroundings she never did anything to endanger herself. Even if she had, Mergini was often right there to interfere. They had also bonded immediately, as I had hoped. She didn't attempt to strangle or eat him at all, which is more than I can say for some of our residents.

My time and attention was ultimately Wanda's, and the new need to remind me of that irked her to no end. Nepenthe was not to interfere with our dinners, or our shaves, or when we first went to bed, though she allowed me to address any midnight crying immediately, if only to put an end to the sound.

At first I thought they had not bonded at all, which saddened me greatly. Life was briefly torn in two. Never was I allowed to have my present and my future at the same time, which is the default position for most men.

A fortunate change was brought about one day, and if not by the world serpent then by fate itself. It began like any other, but when I went to Nepenthe's crib I found it shoved off to the side, coated in dust.

Our daughter was wandering around the house unsupervised, fully upright, having dressed herself. Her head was full of curly hair, her eyes holding onto pond shimmer she'd seen hours ago as the sun rose. This was not our babe; she had to be at least five years old. And that is all I can say, for my memory regarding the rest of that day has failed me.

When it stopped failing me she was back in her crib, all as it was. I shared this phenomenon with Wanda, though I already had an idea what happened. Just a day out of order was all. Wanda was my center of time, and she minded the rope masterfully, but she was still a creature of the Earth, not one of the thinkers pondering the cosmos. The difference in skill results in instability.

"And that instability will give you the gift of prophecy," she told me, holding both my hands together as if something might escape between them. "A chief disciple and a prophet are one and the same my Severin. You must always tell me when you see such futures. Only I can adjust your time and influence them."

I obeyed. And Wanda, she heeded. It was not the first time she'd considered my opinion, or my strategy, but it was the first time she acknowledged my wisdom. Because I had seen our daughter somewhat grown, and seen her still living with us happily, it opened the possibilities of family in Wanda's soul.

Now she would occasionally take Nepenthe out, just the two of them, and I did not inquire as to their activities. It was between mother and daughter. Should I get lonely there was always a duck to play games with and lose to.

The two disparate halves of my life drew closer, then fused, and I was back to my bliss, until the bodily constrictor showed up, as fate would have it, right where I'd been the last time something mysterious assailed me: the market.

I wasn't even lucky enough to have Mergini with me this time, as he was busy parading around some hens of his own stripe. Wanda was off on her own, and little Nepenthe was in the care of our preferred sitter Mlle. Legraff, who had plenty of time during her long days sitting in the post office waiting for telegrams and such. Our schedule was neatly worked out, with Wanda set to retrieve Nepenthe and come home around supper time, where I would be waiting with a leg of lamb, pan potatoes with breadcrumbs, dressed greens, and wine in her pewter goblet.

Only I would be early, and the lamb late, for I encountered someone unfamiliar at the market. Visitors were allowed in Quarantown, but it required they be sequestered in one of the outermost buildings for several days, to wait out the possible incubation period of Throng's delirium, an annoyance most did not bother with. Wanda discreetly screened them all, and had made no mention of this person being in wait.

He was tall, thin, yet unassuming. His black eyes would've been nothing of note if not for his unblinking stare directed at me from across two aisles of produce. Somehow his posture seemed to stare as well, neck and body leaning like an investigating snake, an image furthered by his peculiar clothing, which was predominantly green. Wherever he hailed from I was not familiar with the style: an undershirt with thin vertical stripes, carp-mouth cuffs, and a stunted collar.

When my eyes met his he smiled without teeth, started walking toward me as if the stand between us didn't exist. Overcome with prickled skin and caution, I turned and fled, though at a pace that would not draw attention. Couldn't be sure of anything yet. Could always be safer however. Back to the house. Constantly I was checking over my shoulder, and it seemed the man wasn't following. My feelings disagreed.

My next full breath only came when the door clicked shut behind me, and I was safe within walls much more visited by the Blasphemer goddess. It had charms that could protect me, surely... but why was that first full breath so unrewarding? To be perfectly honest it felt like there was an entire shovel jammed into my windpipe.

"You are Severin, yes?" spoke the jammer. Still against the door, I flipped around and met my stalker, who must have slithered to have beaten me to the house and gotten comfortable inside. I was surprised again, which my thudding heart did not appreciate. A woman this time... but the exact same sort?

She was tall. And thin. And smiling without teeth. With black eyes. With the same foreign ensemble. Two of them? Could two of Wanda's siblings have been twins like this, as there seemed little chance this creature could be anything but one of our infrequent but quite threatening invaders.

"Yes," I answered, seeing little point in denial. How had they gotten into Quarantown? Wanda's barriers had worked flawlessly ever since we'd excised her youngest sister Goriana like a tumor.

"Don't be afraid. It's me. Your sister." Her eyelashes fluttered.

"And back at the market... is he my brother?"

"He's not in the market," she giggled. "He's right here." Before my eyes she changed, into the man I'd seen. As fluid and quick as an octopus changing pattern. "I am your brother too, now that you've married my sister Wanda. Has she told you about me?" I shook my head. "That's alright. I would've asked her not to if I thought she cared enough to babble about me. You deserve a name though, no matter what it costs me, for the intrusion. I am Melmoth Sympathy Dunajew." He shifted back to the female form. "and so am I."

"I see. That's quite the ability you have there. I daresay it's more pleasant than Ruthven's thirst for blood and Goriana's hunger for flesh."

"I know Devorgoil has been here too," they said. (I'll default to 'they' now, seeing as I had no idea as to the sex of their birth.) "I'm very good at sensing heirs; I have to be to avoid the bones." They drew up on me too quickly for me to push them back, grabbed my hand. After that all they did was sit me down on the nearest lounge and join me, refusing to release my hand but not applying painful pressure.

"The bones?"

"Yes, the boring old belligerent bones," Melmoth pouted. "They're always after me dear brother. How I despise them, how I wish to destroy them... but I cannot." They spilled a tear, addressed it with a whipped-out handkerchief that disappeared just as swiftly, reminding me of Wanda's furs. "One touch and they would have me again. Splitting from them the first time was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and I don't know if I can achieve that again."

"These... these are your bones we're discussing?" I said, trying to muddle my way to some understanding. My natural politeness had me trying to console before I even knew what was going on. "Do not fear then, for that makes them, at least in part, an heir of Cain, so they cannot breach Quarantown." I had them now; in refuting my point they would reveal to me how they had infiltrated our home.

"That would be true I think," they said, "if I wasn't already here. There's a sort of link connecting us to each other, and Wanda's magic can't sever it. Since we're of the same body the bones always know where I am, and they pursue tirelessly! I fear they'll be here very soon. Today even! You must help me Severin. We are family, yes?"

"How is it, Melmoth, that you came to me in the first place?"

"Oh I've been here a little while, keeping out of the way mind you, hoping the bones wouldn't find me tucked away inside Wanda's aura, but I can feel them getting closer, so it hasn't worked."

"Yes, but how did you get in here?"

"Silly. You and Wanda invited me. I didn't say anything, you both looked so busy with pain of your own." That was enough for my mind to fill in the rest. Technically, this imposition was Wanda's fault, something I would never say to her, for the notion would imbue my expressions forevermore with certain reservations that she would perceive. My goddess would know that I knew, and understand that my measure of her, always expanding, would now do so more slowly.

You see Wanda had opened our defenses intentionally, when birthing our daughter, in the hopes that neophyte Nepenthe would immediately run off, out the figurative open gate like a hungry goat, and never return. We were there at the border for some number of hours, and during all that time anything could have snuck past given the physical sensations that distracted us.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And so something had. An heir of Cain had entered instead of left, though Melmoth had done a spectacular job of avoiding suspicion for some months. We knew all our people, so they'd never even been seen, nor reported by any of Wanda's familiars gifted with keen hearing and scent-tracking. Not even one of her mosquitoes came to us with a blood sample, which I'm Certain Wanda could've ingested to analyze the donor remotely.

"So we were," I said, wondering where to go from there. Melmoth seemed harmless enough, but I was not to treat them that way. The best I could do in the moment was hold them idle in conversation until Wanda could return. "What's this quarrel you have with your bones? I get along with mine spectacularly. They're always cracking jokes and playing tricks, more as I age, but it's all in good fun."

"That's fine for you," they said with a jolt of bitterness, the first sign they knew anger at all, "but mine are the captor reversed, trapping me from inside. My bones hate the flexibility of my flesh, the mutability of my destiny. There are at least two ways I could die, if I fell right now, and that's one more than the bones care for. They think there should be only one, and it should be the same form I was born in.

Those bones, especially that pelvis that bosses all the others around, always the first to rattle the leg sabers, think the grave should be as tidy as the cradle, as if we never grow, never change, don't get to have gnarls and scars...

If they get me I can't be man or woman, only the one, and thus only half a life. I am content with myself, and take no disciples like my siblings, only because I get to be everything. Don't help the bones take that from me Severin. Please... will you aid me? Will you convince Wanda?"

There was urgency in their voice now, and I realized why a moment later, for Wanda came storming in, Nepenthe nestled in a basket swung low. Fluidly she tossed our child away, all the way to the dining table, where the basket slid and stopped on the edge without unsettling its contents.

"Severin, come to me, now!" she ordered. With that tone I knew any argument best be saved for later, for a time when she could chuckle while she described how wrong I'd been, so I tried to leap off the lounge to her side. The Abel-bodied are not as spry as the heirs of Cain. I wasn't even in the air before Melmoth grabbed my wrist, a motion that became too much for me to comprehend when the rest of their body 'grabbed' the rest of mine.

The heir snapped to me, like a chemical reaction, wrapping around in one big coil and drawing up tight, as if a python had me. Clearly this was something that would also be made impossible by the presence of bones. Somehow I remained upright, managed a frog's jump in Wanda's direction, but decided against trying anything further.

From the constriction I knew I could never slip free, but also that Melmoth was holding just tightly enough to ensure that, not enough to do injury. They had left me mobility that amounted to shuffling forward at a snail's pace. As I did so Wanda came to me, circled to look for weaknesses in the wanderer's grip, found none.

"This is how the bones make me feel Severin," they said, allowing me to pinpoint their face as somewhere around the left side of my neck. Turning my head to confirm was impossible.

"Of course it's the bones," Wanda growled as she completed her orbit, "It's always the forsaken bones with you."

"They felt they were invited when we were busy greeting little Nepenthe," I sputtered. My fingers felt blue. My goddess seemed most irritated by the realization, like she was waiting in a line for a ration of additional wisdom, and it had not moved in days. She adjusted her furs on her shoulders.

"I'm sure," she grumbled sarcastically, yet her demeanor reassured me I was in less danger than it appeared. Her rage had been much more explosive when dealing with Goriana, and much more cunning and careful with Ruthven. Melmoth was apparently closer to a headache than a guillotine. "Release my disciple at once."

"Not until you help me!" they pleaded.

"What is it you expect me to do? I can't destroy your bones any more than I can stop your heart. Nor will I be wasting my time locking them up in a box and checking on them constantly just for your peace of mind. This is Quarantown, realm of the Blasphemer! Home and throne to one god only."

"Well I'm not letting go!" Melmoth pouted, squeezing tighter. I was starting to feel like too many umbrellas stuffed into a stand. "If my bones take me back while I've got Severin, it could be very bad for him. Oh, sorry brother, but I really have no choice." I couldn't form the words to refute them, not that I would. All the heirs believed, in their own way, that they had to keep running from themselves. They thought it was like the endless slither of the world serpent, thought it was instructive, that it helped them understand and overrule the cosmos.

Our standoff continued for some minutes, Wanda pacing back and forth, trying to find a solution somewhere in our serene little town. All the while Melmoth tried to hurry her along, providing estimates as to when the bones would arrive. In two hours. In ninety minutes. Forty. Fifty. (A little out of order on my end I think.) Thirty.

The increments grew smaller, revealing that their guesses were more accurate the closer the bones were. It was right about then Wanda's ears perked up, likely hearing the distant howl of dogs as they spotted a pale gaunt intruder traipsing through her lands. The bones were brave indeed, willing as they were to traverse a gauntlet of hungry canines that would've liked nothing more than settling down by the riverbank with a femur to gnaw.

"The mine," Wanda suggested. Her plan was not immediately apparent to either being standing on my feet. "Burstyn's mine shaft. There's a narrow path within, terminating where they struck an underground portion of the river. If I lure the bones in there there's only one angle they can approach from. You'll see them coming.

Then I can swoop in, dismantle them, and feed them one by one to the waters. They'll be carried far, and to different places, so that it will take many years for them to find each other and start pursuing you again. How about that Melmoth? Will you leave then?"

"Yes!" the wanderer yipped. Whether or not they thought the plan was good, they would accept anything this close to reunion. "Off we go! Right now!" Their squeeze bent me forward, forcing me to shuffle and skip to avoid planting my face on our doorstep. Wanda was following behind, having overlooked something in my estimation, so it was up to me to resist. All my effort only managed to stall me in the doorway for a moment.

"What about Nepenthe?" I rasped under pressures external and paternal. Wanda bristled and rolled her eyes.

"The duck will watch the child!" she shouted, shaking the whole house. It roused a previously unseen Mergini, who quacked in mild terror as he flapped his way up to the dining table and strutted around Nepenthe's basket, indicating agreement. This was the best result I could've hoped for, so I said nothing else during our brief journey to the mine, and into its depths, which was sped along by Wanda knocking us over and carrying us under her arm like a rolled rug.

Never had I visited the space before, as it seemed pointlessly dangerous to do so. Doppler was fond of blasting new openings rather experimentally, and once a rock had been loosed from the exterior and rolled all the way through the back door of someone's home. If the shaft was so volatile as to visit you, there was little reason to return the favor.

Inside the light was all but eaten after one turn, darkness driven off only by the occasional mounted lamp that Wanda lit, having produced the means to do so from deep within her furs. The air was cool and damp, with the occasional specter of wind speeding by, originating from openings unknown.

The character of the stone was almost blue, smoothed by wandering waterways that had slowly made their way deeper, as if trying to float the mountain downstream. There was plenty to explore, Doppler's men had cleared much more space than I'd originally thought, but Wanda knew every pathway already, took us straight to the spot she deemed best for our snare.

The river could be heard churning below, wider and more aggressive than what was above ground anywhere nearby. Its spray was all about us, and when one of the wind phantoms came through it could be seen as a brief whirl of water and dust, something peeking in on this deep dark world and fleeing, like mute children too scared to do anything but test one foot over a threshold.

I did not like the sensation of being positioned near a ledge over the waters, with them just invisible at that height. Melmoth's grip had not relented, but I still felt something separate, stronger even, trying to bend me back, topple me into the void. Wanda felt it too, stared down into the dark, challenging its mysteries with the flashing lightning in her green eyes. It would have to wait for now, as Melmoth was fretting.

"Hurry hurry! They're almost here! Do you hear it? They're grinding my teeth!" It struck me then why Melmoth smiled through closed lips, spoke with their face aside and angled down. When they escaped themselves they couldn't even abscond with teeth. It must have been a close call.

"Just stay where you are," Wanda ordered. "Don't move at all. If you get so much as a drop on my Severin I'll truss you into a bow about your bones and throw you both to the wolves!" She quieted and went to the wall, scaling it like a practiced lizard until she was completely upside down, latched only by her fingertips. Then her furs spread out soundlessly, covered her, flattened and blended with the shadows until she looked like nothing more than a bulge of black mold.

It wasn't a long wait after that; the bones did nothing to hide their approach. Each clacking footstep made clear the endless march of Melmoth's skeleton; no time was taken to sleep, to eat, or to drink. The wanderer of both sexes had taken those faculties with them when they left, enriching their life, but handicapping themselves against their pursuer. Every rose they stopped to smell was trampled by the bones in a quarter of the time.

Melmoth's grip tightened again, but this time I believe it was out of sheer fear. Forced to struggle to keep my vision clear, I locked my eyes on the dim entrance to the passage, swore I would not look away. One of us had to stand our ground for both of us. Their face folded, tucked itself into a seam near my collarbone, cowering like a pup.

The bones arrived. Naturally I'd assumed a bleached appearance, but those were the teaching skeletons, strung up and harmless before fledgling anatomists. This was a soldier's marching bones deep into a campaign that crossed the breadth of Europe, always advancing, never retreating.

They were brown and crusty, caked with grime in the joints so thickly that small ferns sprouted there, as underarm hair and almost thick enough in the pelvis to serve as a loincloth. The teeth looked weathered, clung to the jaw in a death grip, like the crocodile that bites and never lets go. Remnants of a bird's nest poked out of the lower eye sockets, glued on by long-dried fluids from hatched eggs.

Obviously the bones bore no expression, but I still felt piercing recognition as we came face to stripped face. The skeleton's pace picked up, arms suddenly outstretched, shedding some of the hard-earned soil and accumulated plants. Vocalizing without a windpipe was impossible, yet one of the ghostly gusts seemed to help it out as its jaw dropped open, passing through with a ghastly yawning whoosh: the hunger of a chasm with a corpse-lined bed.

Oblivious, it passed right under god herself, who struck just as planned. Wanda peeled off the ceiling and dropped directly in front of it, taking it by the shoulders in an attempt to pop off the arms before it could gather its thoughts. We'd miscalculated however. It needed no time, as when you only had a single thought it was exceedingly trivial to gather.

Reunite. Its only goal. Even if Wanda could have destroyed the bones it would not have altered its response. Reunite, against everything, no matter how far the distance in space and time. Reunite. The bones shook loose of her grip, pushed her face away, started sprinting through her, forcing her heels into the mine's loose dust.

Wanda fought back by using the bones' momentum against them, swinging the skeleton around and tossing it back the way it came, but it landed on its feet and started back toward us. She reached out one hand, and from under her wrist launched a small iron animal trap, likely meant for a weasel of some kind.

Such a weapon was unknown to me. Its story came out as a matter of course, like the links of the chain that attached it to the recesses of her furs. At our outer borders some foolish hunter had laid it, so it had to be claimed and honed to a new purpose, to minimize anyone else's mastery of our land and fauna. If the trapper had come along and tried to get it back, she would have turned him away aggressively. If he had dared try again he was dead, and currently being newly honed himself, as fertilizer, or as the sort of bones the wolves were permitted to gnaw.

The trap closed its jaws about the skeleton's left arm, and with a yank on its chain Wanda managed to claim the entire limb. It tried to grab her just as she did it, so she tossed it over her shoulder, past the two of us, where it fell into the dark and splashed into the river. Unfortunately it had sailed a little too close for Melmoth's taste, and they squirmed, which in turn threw me off balance, left us teetering right on the edge of a deadly fall.

Wanda had to lunge and snatch at a band of her sibling, like a rope, and hold us at a sickening angle, all while the bones ran toward her. A most impressive physical feat, what she did next. Balanced on one leg, she used the other to catch the skeleton by the sternum and hold it back as it continued to try and scramble forward. Gravity was pulling us over the side, and the bones were pushing in the same direction, yet with nothing but the flat of one foot Wanda held her ground for several seconds.

"Don't let it touch me! No! Don't let it near!" Melmoth screamed right in my ear, and their wriggling threatened to undo all of my goddess's efforts. I wanted to help, I so hated feeling useless to her, but I was bound up tight as a mummy... until Melmoth's panic slipped the band of body that pinned one of my arms too far down.

It was free! Any weapon of Wanda's was a colleague of mine, so I reached for the looping chain of the animal trap that was still dangling out of her sleeve. Its metal was the exact same temperature as her skin, which would later lead me to wonder if all she had hidden away in there was always pressed up against her body so she didn't lose tally of what she had at her disposal, but for now I had to focus on giving that chain a great nasty swing.

I caught it unaware, hooked a rib that I pulled right off. That didn't even slow it, so I slapped away at the accursed thing, pieces clacking to the floor, undergrowth bugs then abandoning them. Finally it was robbed of sufficient force for Wanda to push back, regain full balance, and start kicking the bones I'd removed into the churning void behind.

Once she had both hands on it this time there was nothing it could do to stop her: toes, pelvis, wrist, spine, skull, and then the rest of it. A series of splashes, which she counted to match them up to every toss, marked our victory over the stalking skeleton of Dunajew. Wanda watched the dark, and the water underneath it.

Something still had her attention, and I very much doubted it was a pair of skeletal arms reassembling themselves as they paddled forward against such a powerful current. If it had been Melmoth wouldn't have released me, as they swiftly did. Back under my own power, I wobbled some, found a wall to lean on while I adjusted to my old self.

"Don't lean," Wanda warned me without looking my way. "Don't touch anything in here." I sprang back to attention.

"Don't worry Wanda, it's gone!" Melmoth celebrated, twirling; each time I saw their face it had swapped between the sexes. Their voice pitched higher and lower as they giggled. Slowing to a stop, as a man, the wanderer looked ready to embrace the both of us, as if none of this was done under duress, but perhaps that was because they always operated under duress themselves, as even now the bones were plotting an eventual realignment. To Melmoth duress was merely degrees of doggedness.

"It is gone," Wanda snarled, "but there's something else in here."

"What is it?" I asked, sensing nothing.

"I'm not sure." The answer startled me. If Wanda couldn't identify a threat then it was something that could be in my digestive system before I even noticed anything amiss. After she said it she glanced at her sibling, seemed to regret displaying uncertainty, though if Melmoth noticed they didn't show it at all.

"Haha! Free to be me and anyone else that might come along in this body," they said, performing a lunge to test flexibility, then again as a woman with the other leg. "Shall we celebrate? I've heard you're an excellent cook Severin and I am peckish. Why I don't think I've had so much as a bite to eat in... five months." Since I'd already had them wrapped around me like a snake, it was all too easy to picture them lounging in a cave somewhere with a bloated gut, like a python with a swallowed gazelle.

"You're not staying," Wanda said. Her sibling's exaggerated frown did not sway her. "And neither are we. Come along Severin. I'll have Burstyn blow the entrance, seal this place up for now." She stayed behind us, urged us to march to the exit without letting up until red evening light warmed our faces. "Melmoth there's a train leaving in one hour. Be on it."

"But sister." Wanda drew something out of her furs, held it up for them to see. A segment of spinal column.

"As soon as those bones of yours put themselves back together they'll be coming straight here to get this last one. You'll want to be as far from here as possible when that happens."

"And when we receive our visitor we'll be happy to send you a warning," I added on her behalf, and to her ire, "provided you keep us abreast of your address." I smiled as the presence of Wanda's hot shadow crept up me, threatening a most stimulating punishment for daring to act hospitable to family. Later, when I wanted her just a little angrier, I would say I did it because her daughter would want to get to know the aunt and the uncle she had in Melmoth Sympathy Dunajew. Then I would surely pay for my impudence, more thoroughly than I usually did.

"Thank you Severin," Melmoth said with syrup, head at that low angle that helped hide their absent teeth. "Adieu you two." They turned and headed downhill, toward the train station, where I'm sure they would unsettle our babysitter with strange questions for that full hour before departure.

"Get moving you," she snapped at me, flicking the chain of the trap just enough for it to strike my backside. "You haven't even started on my dinner yet. Poor Nepenthe is probably starved half to death... unless she's eaten Mergini already." I was moving, but I couldn't restart the old printing press of banter quite yet, unnerved as I was.

"Wanda... the cave?"

"We'll deal with whatever is hiding down there," she assured me. "Hurry and whip me up a prophecy that tells us what we find."

"Is that my ultimate role here?"

"One of them, my Severin, only one. You have a role at my side, in my shadow, under my heel..."

"Hmm, I think one's coming to me now. Yes, it's a stubby one. For tonight in fact. You're going to take me into the bedroom, and then with that chain you'll-" She struck me again, sped me up so I was practically rolling downhill toward home.

"As if I need a prophecy to know that."

The End

Wanda and Severin will return in

Heirs of Cain

Venus in League