Wolfweir (6 page)

Black powder smoke envelops them both as the Wolf springs OVER Lord
Blackgore
, Alphonse screaming with hatred and disgust and, of course, a dash of unbridled puppet terror

**

As the Wolf's paws touch down,
ka
-thump, Alphonse sees their salvation clearly in the moonlight -- a sewer pipe sticking out of the grassy bank.

Of course.
The sewers, stretching all the way to Paris.
Fetid, but preferable to being sucked dry by
Vampyres
.

The Wolf sees it too and leaps over the rickety railing. They splash into the
suffocatingly
cold
Siene
, Alphonse -- having stuck the twin pistols back into his sash mid jump-- clinging to the Wolf's neck, and within a few seconds they are at the pipe, and the Wolf clambers into its reeking mouth, out of the moonlight-glare.

Then they're moving again, splashing through ripe -- lucky he can't smell it -- sewer-muck, Alphonse's harlequin cap brushing corrugated steel.

He doesn't know how much time has passed or how many sharp left and right turns they've made in the ink-blackness -- presumably the panting Wolf can see well enough in the dark not to crash at the turns -- but in the end Alphonse breathes fresh air and glimpses light. The Wolf stops, and he lets go of her neck and slides off.

It's another sewer opening, and peering outside the pipe-mouth Alphonse sees the lit up Ile de la Cite and moonlit coal barges moving on the smooth, heavy river current. The moon looks fabulous.

Ah, Paris,

Something clinks in the passage behind them. Alphonse whips the sword free from its cane, turning to meet an anticipated attack from Lord or Lady
Blackgore
-- yet no such attack materializes. It was probably a rat.

He hears the surging river current, bullfrogs croaking, distant bells -- that's all.

The White Wolf shakes
herself
, soaking Alphonse with cold sewer filth. She's shivering. Alphonse lays a wooden hand on her muzzle, and she licks it, warmly.

He can still hardly believe their luck.

Pont
Neuf

Dawn -- a sooty Paris sunrise -- finds Alphonse wide awake on a stone parapet under the dark arch of the Pont
Neuf
by the sluggishly moving Seine, a little girl with fiery blonde curls tucked into his wooden arms.

They're both filthy, and must reek of Paris sewage. He's wrapped the little girl in newspapers and his jacket, or she'd be totally naked.

His pine wood body can't possibly warm her flesh -- she's just clinging to him for mental comfort, the way one holds a doll. Shivering, her cheeks are almost blue.

Alphonse glances around, looking for tinder.

Light a fire, he thinks. Or the girl might die.

Sure.
Without matches, flint or steel?

A barge glides past. A dog standing on a pile of coal begins woofing at the huddled wolf-girl and puppet boy.

Even the faintest sounds are ice-clear in this glowing air. Alphonse ducks his head when the bargemen straights up to look around.

The dog quiets at the bargemen's sharp word.
Silence.

**

Finally, Lucia yawns and wakes with a jump.

Looks up at
Alphone's
dirty pinewood face.

Touches it.
Strokes it with her fingertips.

Alphonse shuts his pine eyelids with a click.

Oh rapture.

**

She'd changed back from a wolf into a bony little girl while they were still in the sewer pipe and Paris was cold, dark and bleak.

Then, she'd fainted from the stench.

He'd carried her, lurching on his stick legs, to the stone parapet under the bridge-curve.
Covered her with drifting newspapers.

As the sun rose, he'd come close to utter despair.

How to save his parents now?

Those filthy
Vampyres
! If only he'd been able to blast them to Hell!

**

Lucia now parted her dry lips, licked them,
then
spoke, Alphonse lowering his head to listen.

It was stilted French, with a comical Italian accent.

"
Ou
est
nous?"
Where are
we.

Alphonse stood up and pointed to the river, to the sky. Then with his hands above his head he mimicked the Eiffel Tower.

"Ah, Paris," said Lucia. "You have an apartment?"

Alphonse nodded.

"We must go there."

Her
mimed that it was not far. Just down that wide boulevard to the left uphill, then --

Stopping, he looked at the shuddering girl clad only in newspapers.
Barefoot.
Filthy.

No, they wouldn't make it.

He mimicked a gendarme walking along jauntily, swinging a
billy
club in one hand, tipping his cap to the ladies. Then blowing a whistle and dashing in pursuit.

Lucia said: "Let me dress in your clothing. Then I'll carry you while you whisper the directions in my ear.
Si?
Comme
un
buratino
."
Like a puppet.

Alphonse stares at the girl, thunderstruck, his mouth hanging open. Of course! It's the only way.

Politely, Lucia shuts her eyes and turns her beautiful face to one side.

Alphonse strips off the linen shirt, sash, short pants, sabots, and finally that silly jaunty cap. He piles them in front of Lucia, claps to alert her to dress quickly.

Then he lies face down on the stones, motionless, like a marionette with all its strings cut.

The Werewolf in the Bath

So the blonde-haired, Botticelli-curled girl child with the rapturous name Lucia di
Fermonti
carried the puppet Alphonse through those teeming dawn-bright streets of Paris as wagons and buses rumbled down the great avenues and over the Seine's postcard-picturesque arched stone bridges, and vegetable and fruit sellers wheeled their creaking carts up and down side streets shouting out their wares, and the zinc bars filled with grimy workmen tossing down a morning glass of white wine to fortify themselves for another day of suffering.

Alphonse did his best to be limp as if nerveless, his naked wooden legs dangling and clicking together, and the dirty Lucia, clad in Alphonse's puppet garb, did her best to look like a working boy, maybe a magician's assistant, clacking along in her sabots already late for an important job. She carried the cane sword jauntily under her arm, like just another prop, and kept the twin dueling pistols hidden under the green velvet jacket.

Then it was only a matter of slipping unnoted past the humming concierge in Alphonse's elegant apartment building on the Avenue
Dupin
. Lucia held her breath as she crawled under the loge where the old woman was knitting a sweater for her latest cat,
Alphone's
skinny pine arms wrapped about her neck (he couldn't risk clattering on the tiles even a mite -- the concierge had sharp ears).

She carried Alphonse up the broad, turning stairs and stopped before a massive oak door when he yanked on her sleeve.

"Do you have a key?" she asked softly.

Alphonse shook his head and pointed to the transom.

"Oh. I see. Put you through," Lucia said. Then, sadly: "But I do not have a ladder."

Alphonse thought for an instant, and jerking his arms up and down motioned for the girl to toss him up. She set down the sword cane, braced herself, took careful aim, and tossed Alphonse high in the shadows; he caught the edge of the transom and hung swinging from it, then scuttled up and tested the mechanism. It was unlocked. He opened it in a flash and slipped through. Lucia heard him land with a clunk on the other side of the door. Then the door opened, and Lucia picked up the sword cane and entered the vast, tidy, book-lined apartment. Alphonse shut the door softly behind her, taking his sword cane and placing it by the door.

"Oh, the pistols, too," she said, drawing them out and handing them to Alphonse. He sat the pistols carefully on the polished hall table.

Suddenly ashamed of his puppet-nakedness -- though the puppet body was far from being anatomically correct in at least two major ways -- Alphonse excused himself with a wooden bow and trotted down the long hallway into his bedroom at the rear of the building to put on some fresh clothes.

His puppet waist was so much smaller that he had to cut a new notch in his belt to keep his trousers up. He glanced at himself in the mirror and instantly wished he hadn't.

Lucia was singing in an undertone as she wandered the apartment in the dirty puppet clothes, sabots, and silly cap. Alphonse gathered up some items from his drawers and brought them out to her in his arms.

"Ah", she said. "Delightful. Thank you. May I now have a bath?"

Puppet boy Alphonse jolted on his stick legs to his private bathroom (for he didn't want Lucia to have to see what was written on the mirror in his parents' bathroom ) and turned on the taps for the little wolf girl, hot water thundering into the deep tub.

Steam floated in the sunlit air. Birds were singing in a treetop just outside. Alphonse remembered the smell of hot water and soap -- heavenly. He placed the folded clothing on a cane chair, beside the vase of fresh cut flowers his mother always left on a low walnut table.

The flowers weren't quite so fresh this morning, but in this clear sunlight how could one care?

He went into the kitchen and fixed Lucia some breakfast while listening to her sing like a lark in the bathtub. She had a beautiful voice and a fine sense of melody. He heard the water splashing as she washed herself. It gave him a strange feeling to think about a naked girl in his bathtub.
Even if she was a werewolf.