There were sounds coming from inside: shuffling. One man. Nothing else. Very curious, considering how eager they were to look busy the first time I visited. Whoever this shuffler was, they were not accompanied by the sound of turning pages, or a tuning musical instrument, or even nervous muttering. The sound of sleepwalking.
If so, I successfully roused him with my knock. A light sleep it seemed, for he transitioned into rather forceful and consistent footfalls all the way to the entryway. The door opened the way a mousetrap closed.
"Mr. Pelts," Martin said, giving me the most peculiar look, as if he couldn't blink because he'd just polished his eyeballs and didn't want to ruin their shine. He gripped the jamb grimly, leaned forward, but had his feet deeply rooted indoors, practically woven into the rug.
All of this suggested he was present, focused, even expecting someone, except for the fact that he was without trousers, bare legs surprisingly hairless for a man such as him.
"Ahh, Mr. Foster... have you forgotten... let's talk inside." Flustered on his behalf, I pushed my way in and closed the door. A quick look around showed a slightly more dismal dwelling than before, thoroughly explained by a week of idleness. If both cousins came down with an unlucky depression at the same time, leaving them unlikely to, say, properly dress themselves, of course they wouldn't go so far as to dust or sweep either.
"Why have you come?" he asked me, back to his shuffling, nearing at a glacial pace, but with that affixed stare of a taxidermy pike.
"People are worried Martin," I said as softly as I could. "You haven't been doing your shopping, which has me wondering what you've been eating, and if you have enough of it. Naturally. Now, where's Irving? And for that matter... your trousers?"
"I took them off. The bugs were crawling up the legs, trying to get to my orifices," he explained, hands bent into claws and hovering over his eyes and ears. "I shaved, so they can't climb the hair either. Greased the pole."
"Martin what bugs are y-" In my earlier survey I had neglected to properly look at the floor. In correcting that I was horrified to see a great many insects, and some of those things that have an amount of legs exceeding that identifier, which are no doubt called something that twists the tongue of any non-naturalist into a stubborn knot.
None of their species were clear to me, and many body parts looked out of place, like their segments had been separated and rearranged the way some jointed children's toys allowed them to build absurd chimeras. Scorpion claws on centipede faces. Earwig tails on lethargic crickets. Every individual was different, though in color they were nearly black, a sort of lustrous purple like an excessively varnished painting of a bruise.
The swarm trundled in all directions listlessly, pincers poised, but not snapping. They ignored me completely, and while they did walk over the top of Martin's bare feet, his shuffling kept from disturbing them.
"Where did these little monsters come from?" I asked, appalled less at their existence and more by their unwelcome nature in the home. No sooner had I asked than a theory came to mind. Wanda. Every creature of Quarantown was hers, as demonstrated more and more with each passing day.
Guilt washed over me. The Fosters were, by my own accounting, my only failure so far. I knew nothing about them, not even professions, and if Wanda had attempted to order them off my menu I would've played the humiliated waiter, hanging my head, averting my eyes. 'Oh, so sorry madam, but that dish is not available this evening. Can I interest you in something that reeks less of rotten failure? My own heart perhaps, served so rare that it still beats shamefully.'
These vermin might have sensed the blind spot, felt an instinctive need to put eyes on the Foster home since I'd failed to do so. And the result was they'd driven Martin mad with their unblinking surveillance. He'd turned not only to partial undress, but the shaving of his legs.
"Yes, well, I'll get this place sorted out for you until you're feeling more yourself," I offered. Determined, I hunted down a broom and began sweeping the creatures away, telling them under my breath that they should return to whatever crevice Wanda found them in, and that these were direct orders from their goddess's chief disciple, thank you very much.
In this I found some success, so I took my authority to be properly appreciated. Martin was still shuffling and muttering, so I moved to addressing his ills. Firstly sunlight was in dire need, in short supply though it was, but when I went to throw open the curtains I found the glass dreadfully filthy, so that I succeeded only in turning the room a clearer brown.
"Pants," I said. If I couldn't provide sunlight I could provide pants (perhaps there was never a clearer statement of my capabilities). Searching around did not turn any up as it had the broom, and I was coming under the utmost frustration. With my bag at my side I could make all sorts of alterations, could make a cat a top hat out of its own hairball; a demonstration was in order.
Rod and ring clanged in protest as I ripped the curtains from the window and tossed them onto the coffee table. Far from ideal, the material was still leagues better than the nothing all over Martin's legs. Out came needle and thread, with which I began to reshape the items into trousers. Immediately my patient reacted to the sight of the needle, covering his eyes and yelping weakly as if he was being stuck in the side with it.
"Ahh! I don't like needles," he said, pacing behind me now with his face turned away.
"Don't worry. This fellow is very busy over here. You can stay right where you are. Give me just ten minutes, no... eight, no... the devil?" The point had come through in the wrong place, which wasn't such a misstep, but it had done so in the correct position as well. Had my tailoring skills suffered so much in my age of clandestine information-gathering that I had forgotten how many tips a needle had?
Carefully I withdrew the item and held it up in what little dusty light there was. A branch. A branch in my needle. And it was growing, splitting continuously into smaller and smaller deviations. In seconds I held a tiny silver tree. A root must have formed as well, for something punctured my thumb and made me cast it aside.
A single drop of blood, of which I was very aware, as if it was a crystal vase containing my soul suddenly knocked from its pedestal, fell to the floor. As it struck it effected a most disturbing change in my surroundings, scored by a sobbing Martin who retreated close to the wall: the last place I would want to be just then.
The crimson droplet infected the floorboards, erased their seams, conjoined them all in a new fleshy consistency that spread, spread, spread. Up the walls it crept, the inverse skin of a deep gash, welling up with blood until it was saturated with itself. The curtain rod could have fallen, Cain knows I loosened it plenty, but instead it let itself be absorbed into the crawling moist flesh.
"Martin, get away from the wall!" I urged him, realization spreading faster than our disturbing prison.
"Keep that needle away from me Miss, and those nasty bugs," he whimpered, leaning into the new materialization. A most horrid transformation was witnessed then as the rest of his clothing disappeared and his legs curled up into his chest. Already he was sufficiently fused to the wall not to fall. A membrane pulled itself over him like he was being tucked in, finishing as his eyes closed and cut him off from the world entirely.
Nor was he alone. Other pustules emerged floor, wall, and ceiling, erupting like barnacles that had failed to harden their shells. Each contained a person too degenerated to discern age or sex. Curled phoetal forms twitched, scowled, mewled, and in this ill body language I saw the crumpled physicality of a dreamer in active nightmare.
Dire truth had come to me before the corners of the home had disappeared completely, leaving just me and the furniture in a wretch-studded geode tumor. The bugs had not belonged to Wanda at all. In a sense they belonged to Martin.
They were one of his fears, manifested in the waking nightmare that was now his de-born life inside a bewitched cavity. Also among his fears were needles, which was why the one I produced quickly exaggerated into a ridiculous yet terrifying form. That is what fear does: propagate.
Gorily painted across this neglected carbuncle of Quarantown, my own worst nightmare was unavoidable in my heart and mind. Through my failure, through Wanda's failure, her sister Goriana Perjury Consumption had already infiltrated our operation. It now seemed likely she had done so very early, shortly after our arrival, before my goddess had taken to putting up fences hexed, cursed, and arcane.
The Fosters had become her thralls, their worsening hermit qualities tied to their progressive consumption by what was now revealed to be metastasized to the bedrock of my future. From Martin's state, and that of the others, I knew there was no way back for them. When Ruthven enslaved two poor souls on the train they became forever tied to him, but not absorbed body and soul. We sent them away, and my Wanda assured me there was a nugget of hope for them, especially the more distance they put between themselves and the vampire's temporary grave out by the mine shaft.
Had I already been consumed? On my feet, I turned to find the door had disappeared, not so much as a seam amongst the blue veins that came into relief all about me. Trapped, yes, but not consumed. This place was both inside and out of the entity Consumption, but as with Ruthven's bite and Wanda's kiss I knew there had to be a more direct act involved. One did not simply tumble into pitfalls dug by heirs of Cain. They had to make you theirs, and you had to know it.
In order for that to happen, Goriana had reveal herself, the rest of herself anyway, which she wasted little time in doing. Half-expecting her to rise like a blemish and burst into view with a cascade of pus, I was relieved, if no less aghast, when she just faded into sight, standing behind the couch with an impish smile upon her face.
Four samples now in my possession, there was something else I could safely say about the heirs of Cain I had met from the litter of Diodati. Between them there was no family resemblance. None existed with Wanda and Ruthven initially, but I thought that could be explained by his partly-deceased status, as some are unrecognizable after the undertaker has their way.
But Devorgoil too looked entirely different from his siblings. Age, race, features, build. There was no consistency, which led me to believe that an heir of Cain spends their lives shaping themselves physically, body becoming the perfect representation of the soul by adulthood. That idea was in keeping with Wanda's notion of the heirs as outward-looking creatures. If they wanted to see their spirits at all, it had to be worn on the sleeve of skin.
Perhaps my Wanda had been indistinguishable from the other six at one point, each born as a pink, bald, and blind squirmer like a mouse of the field, but now she could not be more different from the creature Goriana before me, with her petite dimensions, cherub face, and upturned piglet nose.
Dressed all in white, lined all in lace, with a matching parasol on her shoulder, Goriana was like an illustration out of a children's book, someone come to the door to fetch some jam for her sick grandmother. The only indication of her inner ugliness was, well, the inner ugliness that encapsulated me right then.
"We finally meet, dear sister," I sputtered, straightening my collar in the hopes that would make my fear fall all the way down and out my pant leg.
"Severin," she said, words splitting open and oozing something, cake with a molten filling. "Don't call me sister. You and Wanda aren't really married."
"It's common law."
"She isn't common and she has no laws. And besides, we've met before. I was here the first time you entered this house." Her parasol popped open with an unnatural gust. "The first time you entered me."
"Normally I ask permission for such things, but you didn't announce yourself."
"How could I?" she pouted, spinning and worrying the handle. "Wanda does not share her toys. None of them share. I just want us to be a big happy family, so I snuck in. I hear when you say 'goodnight' and I whisper it back as I lay in the dirt under your floorboards."
"Your family looks plenty big," I said, gesturing at those imprisoned in the walls. One hanging from the ceiling drooped lower from their flailing: a nightmare of drowning. Given how Martin's fears had manifested in the open there seemed a possibility that rupturing the membrane above me would result in a torrent of water, and that if submerged the head would not break the surface again.
"They are where they belong," she said demurely, almost forlorn, stepping over to the wall and stroking the slime on one cell; the captive shuddered. "Freed from all responsibility, facing only the dangers I face, which are few."
"Some look very diminished. Are they free when there's nothing left?"
"Of course. Then they are completely me, transformed into an heir of Cain without the labors of murder and abandonment. The cosmos they get to see is loving, warm, and red."
"What is it that I can do for you Goriana?" I asked, with little hope she would be as benign as Devorgoil, seeing as I'd already triggered the trap of her subcutaneous hothouse morgue. Both her brother and sister had given a one note characterization, so her answer was disheartening to both predict and hear. Goriana was a less wise creature than the others; she wanted only a captive audience. Already I could see the twitching tension in her face at having to keep a conversation going. Her jaw was for swallowing, like a python.
"Only what you have already done for her, undeserving witch to the squirrels. Be mine in a way that can't be shared. I know she works you to the bone. All your time is spent corralling these useless people so that one day they might sing hymns dedicated to her. Whereas I want you to relax. Leave the corralling to me. There's plenty of room in here for all of your friends."
"I know heirs of Cain such as yourself see people like me as mere objects, perhaps finicky at times like an old stove, but ultimately idle. But I am not idle, sister. I can't serve my purpose locked up or dwindling away in an ampule, lost to evaporation. My Wanda treasures me; she does not consume me."
"I can keep the bones intact," she offered, knowing full well that would convince me of nothing. She took a step forward, not-so-secretly delighted at banter's close. What exactly the process of consumption looked like I dared not discover, for if I did it would likely torment me as nightmare over and over again.
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But I sensed touch was key. She had to taste me, gnaw me, stew close upon me as two chunks from different animals did in the same pot. I was only safe as long as I did not know her touch.
Her parasol spun again as she slowly approached, up to a frightening speed that caused it to shed accumulated blood from her humid interior. Cascading rings of the stuff flew off it, slapped and splashed upon the fleshy floor. The flowing stripes obscured her face, making it more difficult to tell exactly how close she came.
One splash on my eyes would blind. The moment after that she would have her teeth in me and the best I could do in rebellion would be a slight case of indigestion. Now was the time to employ strategy, but there was precious little to work with in her 'membranous spatial lining' as Wanda had named it.
Of the furniture only the sofa and coffee table remained, with the curtains I'd begun altering kept safe from the changing floodwaters by their place on the table. Those aside, the space was featureless, all doors, windows, and stairways sealed up by tissue.
These poor people are no longer complete, but I should not ignore them, I told myself as I snatched up the curtains, little room left to back away from Goriana's approach. The blood spiral emanating from her parasol painted itself across the front of my shoes. With luck the curtain could buy me a moment, held up as a screen between us to block her touch, but soon as it worked she would shred it.
Distraction. The danger was only that until I was consumed. Think, Severin. Surrounded I was by people, each one a rich well of knowledge, experience, and emotion. They were not merely spectators; Goriana had claimed as much. They were part of her, and so active in this encounter.
I thought back to my battle with Lord Ruthven, where he was defeated by a quirk of his own dark magic. Goriana was not the sort to learn a lesson from his story. She would think her pocket, made from her own substance, already immune to everything. It was, after all, the flesh of Cain, and anything of Abel would bounce off or be assimilated.
Connections, associations. These table scraps of logic were strewn about whenever an heir of Cain altered natural law, messy eaters as they were. What aspect of Goriana's eating habits could be turned against her?
Then it came to me, mere seconds before my sister-in-law did the same. Technically, any tool could be at my disposal in her lining, as long as it was the subject of a phobia in one of her prisoners' minds. Martin had manifested grotesque insects and thirsty branching needles, his fears exaggerating their characteristics in a loop of terror that only stopped expanding when it found the ceiling of his sanity.
Was there another fear somewhere in there that could be used? All of them were invisible at the moment, so how was I to search them? Couldn't. And no time. Necessity dictated that I knew them already. One possibility shined in the bramble of catching thoughts. Irving. The other Foster cousin was the only person I knew.
All her other victims had to be from before her arrival in Quarantown, as no one else had fallen off my menu. Where was he? My head whipped about, searching. Luckily Goriana enjoyed looking upon the slow smoothing of her prey's features, for if the membranes holding them had been opaque I never would have been able to recognize what remained of his face.
I found him just behind me, stuck on the wall a touch lower than one might hang a portrait. In so finding him I was pushed up against him by the confined space Goriana's spray created. Shoulder touched shoulder, with membranous screen between, where I felt his very bones bend out of the way, weakened by absorption to a state rather like a shark's skeleton. In response he crumpled in on himself further: a phoetus seeking an ouroboros demise in fear of its own birth. Could he hear me?
Lost in a nightmare, surely, but again Goriana had boasted of her own greatest weakness. She could hear me, and if Irving was part of her than so could he, as a voice cast down from the rain cloud heavens of the nightmare realm.
The first time I had visited the Fosters Irving had been startled, rather exaggeratedly, by the sound of something suddenly dropped. At the time it had struck me as a peculiarly violent reaction, like that of an abused dog. Now I imagined he had his fear of sudden loud noises well under control by adulthood, but then Goriana had come along and fed its fire so that he could not help but react.
If so, if the breadcrumbs of my new sister's shameful table manners had been followed properly, then a sudden loud noise, right in his shrinking ear, would draw an immediate reaction so out of proportion as to create the fear physically, all the worse and more powerful, like Martin's bugs and needle.
A stripe of blood embraced my midsection, then another on the collar. She cast her parasol aside, leaned, mouth gaping like a demon after a soul flitting about in the air. All I could do was throw up the curtain to block her and ignore the wet impression of what had to be a tongue, despite it not being able to fit in the mouth I'd just seen.
I turned my head, cheek to cheek with poor Irving, unable to request his assistance, about to traumatize him in the taking of it. If there was time I would've thanked him for having a fear I could simulate with nothing but judicious use of my own interior spaces, chiefly the lungs. Quick as I could I filled them up, stirred and disturbed the dust left there by my Venus in furs, and converted it all into a piercing shout. The name of my weapon. The name of my wielder.
"WANDA!"
The sound rippled not just across Irving's deformed ear, but the rest of his flesh as well. My voice echoed all about us, except an echo was not supposed to be louder than its parent. Her name, layered aggressively as a series of boxer's blows on the concussing world of Goriana's guts, grew so powerful that it pressed Irving's fleshy wall outward. Then it ruptured.
Explosive force took with it their home's wooden gate, chunks of meat and splinters of wood now intermingled. Some of those pieces were undoubtedly Irving himself, as nothing so large as an intact man landed anywhere within the blast radius. Air rushed into the stale vacuum and buffeted me, whipping me, thankfully, free of the Foster home and tossing me out into the grass, drooling and temporarily deaf.
Though I heard nothing I felt Wanda's name fly a final time in all directions. Out into the surrounding woods. Into the ears and tympanic membranes of every creature on or in her soil. Supernatural senses were not needed to hear it.
Goriana Perjury Consumption stepped to the threshold of the meaty eruption, gently holding her side, having suffered nothing more painful than a runner's stitch. But she did not cross. We both knew the inevitable result of my outburst; it was just a matter of how many seconds until-
Had I witnessed the rupture of the Foster home from the exterior I imagine it would've looked something like the poor trees at the edge of Quarantown just then, a little too close together and a little too in the direct path of a vicious, snarling, possessive heir of Cain. Ah my Wanda: the heat in the dark. Out of the raining leaves she bounded, flanked by hundreds of rodents, weasels, crows, and songbirds that only knew dirges right then. She too looked positively bestial, transformed into a shape I had not seen before, unsurprising given that our only previous battle was aboard a confined locomotive, and this new form would've cracked its floors as it scared all the passengers into throwing themselves out of a speeding caboose.
She came on all fours, though that was not apparent until she first landed in the open, her leap having covered ten times the distance of a typical human's. Each finger was a spade, penetrating deep into the earth with each step, with the palm never so much as touching a blade of grass.
Her cloak of furs clung to her body as if wet, but most of it billowed and trailed far above and behind her as a flag does in the strongest battlefield gale. Its whipping could not disguise that it was a great deal larger than it usually was, an inflated posturing I conflated with the bristling of a wildcat.
Always her vivisecting, electric, green eyes enchanted, threatened, promised, chained, sat in your memory like shelved crystals watching you back, but now their character was blinding white through and through, her speed dragging minute bolts of lightning across her cheeks like tears. Fully extended fangs glinted in pure refined hostility. I found it impossible to tell if she roared, or if that was merely her presence as she loped nearer.
"Wandy!" Goriana bubbled, throwing open her arms for a hug. Wanda pounced, carried the both of them back into the broken cyst of a living room. Here I should remind you that the heirs of Cain are not capable of killing each other, having earned the right with a rock for the Abel-bodied only. It is one of the reasons they operate through us so frequently, why I was sent in against Lord Ruthven.
However, they are perfectly capable of fighting. This includes all manners of injury, but rest assured that the final result would be two wheezing, limp, bloodied things scowling at each other a breath apart, with nothing more to say on the matter. From my peering position, standing awkwardly just outside with absolutely no intention of getting my shoes any bloodier than they already were (I eventually had to discard them), it was nonetheless plain to see that our little sister was perfectly willing to get to that pathetic state.
Any time spent that way would be togetherness to her, and the fighting itself was the only play she likely ever had with her siblings, a tragedy I cannot make my Venus understand, with such efforts angering her faster than you might crack an egg.
My goddess had considered all this long before, no doubt discussed many war scenarios with her furry generals deep in the moss and undergrowth, acting on those considerations immediately by vaulting out of her tumble with Goriana and clawing her way up the inflamed wallpaper.
Her next strike took out one of her sister's entombed morsels, obliterating their head and ending their nightmares once and for all. Yes, she had killed them, but the process had been begun by the woman Consumption, and the only ends to it now were pained fading or merciful execution. I had unwittingly provided Irving with the latter as well.
Adhering to the walls like a gecko, Wanda made her way from one thrall to the next, freeing them systematically. They were Goriana's power, just as myself, her furs, and her woods were Wanda's. For Goriana to let it continue was to see her own strength diminish, her siblings pull further and further ahead in the race to a life that completely excluded her.
Enraged, our poor sister tried to stop the assault, but my Wanda was much slipperier. The next time they clashed it produced a great volume of blood, a surging wave, that caught me by surprise and washed me further afield. As it drained I sat up (now all of my clothes would have to be discarded) and saw that Goriana had used the expulsion of her own fluids as cover for escape. That route was one way. Once she passed our borders Wanda's protections locked her out.
Irving was dead by my hand, or vocal cords I suppose: an iron chandelier fact hanging heavy in my heart. Wanda later mentioned that Martin was among the ones she destroyed, making sure to do so lest his connection to Quarantown provide Goriana any kind of immunity to our defenses.
It was in this lull, the silence of our mutual isolation, the quiet of the animals in awe of their god (myself included), the tension of the other townsfolk still cowering in their homes in case a second exploding name rang out of the mountain, that I looked over and saw her in the wake of the struggle.
Her furs lost their phantom's buoyance and rested so heavily on her shoulders that they slumped. The sharp lines of a predator's face as it draws its saber teeth disappeared like shadows sucked into a corner while her eyes faded to green. In her hand was a flat smooth stone plucked right from the ground, untouched by the chaos.
I watched as she curved her wrist, flicked and tossed, her spite going with it I think. The object skipped several times across the pond of blood yet to be sucked into the earth. At its edge it paused, hopping in place, memorizing its own ripples, before it continued across the dry ground until it disappeared into the forest.
Asking would only have her confirm my idea, that it was some sort of magical device, hexed right then and there, meant to track Goriana's scent and report something back. Perhaps she was not gone forever, which led me to wonder if Wanda would ever allow me to leave Quarantown, now safer than anywhere else on the planet for me.
'Allow' here is an interesting word, for I do not mean she would chain me to our bed if she caught me fondling compasses and walking sticks. I mean the granting of permission, for she knew as well as I that I would never disobey a request to stay, not after that day. Trusting not only in Wanda, but in what we built together, would be the only thing keeping me alive at several points in the future: knots in the rope of my life only two hands from two people could untangle.
"I worry the people here are too weak," she said to break the silence. She was the only creature who could. Not a duck would've quacked until she spoke.
"Without you," I said to actually complete the thought. To demonstrate our need I remained plunked down in the muddy blood, hair and stare disheveled.
"You were right my Severin. She was only able to trespass because they were giving out invitations on my behalf." She turned away from her woods, to me, expression full of possessive love, like she smelled a loaf of bread at the same time her mouth tore into it, trying to anticipate and experience at the same time because one could never be enough. "Only you can act on my behalf."
"I should like to act on all of you, not just half," I said. Now you might think it crass for such a comment to be made while soaking in a lagoon of nightmare-contaminated blood, and I would agree, so I must admit that was something of a lie.
I did say that exact thing, but much later (actually I have no idea how long it was. The greatest certainty the new me can muster tells me it was at least the next day). The true place was in our bedroom, with a floor full of guests beneath our feet. We were getting dressed for the first of many soirees we would host.
Obviously I dressed myself perfectly, but still submitted to inspection from Wanda, who made a show of straightening what was already straight and dusting off what had never known dust, all to touch me while I was giddy with the prospects of the evening, to pluck berries of enthusiasm off me and taste.
Gorgeous couldn't begin to describe her. Out of her furs, in a bold gown of green and orange taken from a sketch of mine that she'd found, she succeeded in taking away any excuse her guests would have to call her otherworldly. Yet they would still feel it. That night was her first true introduction to her people. After it they would all seek her approval and shy from her scorn.
"You've supplied them with enough to drink?" she asked. Not nervous, not my Wanda. Just fidgeting. Impatient. Trying not to devour the evening in one bite.
"Giggles is handling that; she knows what she's doing."
"And the food?"
"...Yes, there is food." She growled a little, looking up at me, bending my lapels like iron bars, but it was an amused growl.
"Do enjoy this one night Severin, where you are more skilled than your goddess. By the time I take you to bed I will have this partygoing business mastered." It was here that I made my comment about acting on all of her, trusting that she would remember the reference, and that she would accommodate for my temporal drifting by picking up the conversation right where it was left off.
But I will not report what she said in response. There were many things, all snappier than mine, and really meant only for me. Suffice it to say that we said aloud the things we had learned in the quiet wake of Goriana barging in on our lives. Wanda could listen to me, when necessary, and I would do well to remember that I can't talk my way out of every encounter with an heir of Cain. Only luck got me out of one with nothing but a close shave.
Shuffling conversation underneath swelled. We were missing our own affair, but some of the phrases I plucked out of the noise gave me pause. I thought I heard something about a new year, about a new goal.
"What... no, it can't be."
"What can't it be my love?" Wanda asked coyly, pretending at a much lesser mind.
"Is this... are we throwing a new year's party? It can't be. We crossed the new year after we got off the train and... three months. I was counting! Three months! Wanda how long have we been here?"
"All our lives." The cold had lasted too long, into what I thought was the spring. Were Wanda and I in bed while the summer whizzed past?
"Oh you must tell me! How do you expect me to make my way down there if I don't even know the occasion? And it couldn't have been so long, could it? Or have my feelings been getting ahead of me and it's only weeks from the train?" Her eyes caught like green suns. "Days!?"
"Come darling, our public awaits." She towed me by the hand. So that was it then. Time was a lost cause. Wanda Blasphemer Pelts marked our shared progression with nicks in my bone, rising as we grew together. If there was any order to my life now it was all a rope stretched out by Cain, interrupted in uniformity only by his heirs.
Two knots. The potential for at least three more. Trusting in the hand holding mine and guiding me, I hoped there was no noose at
The End
Wanda and Severin will return in
Heirs of Cain
Venus in Labor