Severin Molochi is in love with a goddess.  She’s not the kind found in a church, or that you can take with you to church for that matter.  She’s of the old, muddy, animal line of Cain: those who gained power in the world’s first murder.  Just as Severin and his goddess Wanda are settling in their new home, setting up her future dominion, her jealous siblings come calling, but they’re not after her.  They want every gods’ most valuable asset, the mortal chosen as the conduit between them and the people, who in this case happens to share her bed.

Heirs of Cain, a gothic horror fantasy erotic thriller novelette series, continues here.

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)

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.

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.

Now, with the obvious scar out of the way, that takes us to the ‘mysterious illness’, but I’m afraid we’ve a textual hike to prepare you for it. Much happened to bring it about, and it all started when Wanda came to me one day, at an unusual sunlit time, her furs listing to one side like she hadn’t adjusted them in hours.

I was in the kitchen, making preparations for dinner, onion and leek soup in lamb broth, when she entered. Mergini was on the preparation table, examining my greens for dirt while I blackened some scraps of lamb to create a fond for the broth. We were busy and content, about to become more of both, but my poor Wanda was… uncomfortable to say the least.

“Wanda? What’s the matter? If you’re concerned about Mergini’s flappers on the table I made sure he washed them.” I pointed my greasy wooden spoon at a pot upon the floor half full of water.

“It’s not the duck,” she said sullenly. Again she looked at the most distant corner of the room, at a cobweb that wasn’t there. I was growing a touch weary of our phantom spider. Later I would realize this behavior was as close as she could come to looking within herself: looking at something nearby rather than penetratingly into the very substance of the cosmos that both manifests and illuminates all things.

She was not a child of reflection, and so could never see where she was perched emotionally, no matter how precariously, but she wasn’t searching for emotions just then; something else resided within.

“I was just enjoying a patrol,” she said, leaning over to smell the gristle in the hot pan, “when a familiar approached and said they smelled something on me. A change in my natural state. Severin, I am with child.”

A scalding drop of fat popped out of the pan and struck my forearm, drew no reaction. I wasn’t even paying attention to the process of breathing; its grievances piled up quickly. How long I could stay such a statue would remain a mystery, as Wanda wasn’t having it. I was to produce my reaction immediately, so she placed one hand over my heart and raked her fingers down the skin, pulling all of me. I would say something or I would fall over and break my nose.

“That’s incredible Wanda! We- Whe- How? I had assumed we weren’t compatible.”

“We shouldn’t have been, not yet anyhow,” she sighed, rubbing her forehead like a rag too seasoned to ever be wrung clean again. “My powers aren’t yet to the level that suggests interbreeding between our lineages. This is a freak occurrence.”

“Nothing freakish about it,” I insisted, pulling the food from the flame and setting it aside. Greater things were cooking. “We love each other, we’ve planted a home, and we water it with sweat at every opportunity. We shouldn’t be shocked that it’s growing.”

“Move duck,” Wanda muttered, waving Mergini away so she could sit at the table and prop her head up with her arms. He waddled away silently and settled on a corner, feet disappearing underneath his dark plumage. Then he looked at me, voicing his opinion that I should continue consoling her. I went to her and massaged her shoulders into less of a sulk.

“Why are you so burdened by this, my love? What could be more fantastic than a new person, born of our life together? They will be part goddess, and the other half will be only my most positive traits, as they will rise to the surface in a vain attempt to compete with your contributions.”

“I’ve better things to do with this body right now Severin. The next time one of my siblings shows up they will find me fat, wobbly, weak, and preoccupied. And after it is born it will always be a weakness, a way to me, a chink in my armor.”

“Don’t tell me you’re as fickle and fearful as the Greek gods,” I challenged. “You know the tales of Cronus and Zeus, dashing their offspring across rocks, eating them, only to have them arise anyway out of blood-watered soil or head wounds. You cannot fight the passage of time, or the way life climbs its infinite trellis. Only a fool would try. I do not worship any such fool.”

My hands moved down her seated body, one finger pressing into her navel like an ear to the ground, trying to feel the thundering vibrations of an approaching stampede of life. Sadly I was not so adept at reading her internally as she was me. All I felt was the dulling of her typical heat, her glow having retreated rather than swelled as is usually the case with expecting women. Stoking it once more would be my duty.

“I suppose it will have a few benefits,” she said, hand emerging from furs and stroking the stubble of my cheek. She had not yet given me a shave that day, an activity I would get us to shortly, as it always improved her mood to sit me down and groom me. Setting her house in order, with a house that could thank her. “You’ll need to step up your devotion, and your pampering.”

“That goes without saying.” I kissed her cheek, and came away with a dozen thoughts. “Your mother had seven… should we expect so many? We’ll be overrun.”

“No,” she said with a sharp amused breath from her nose. “That was a union of two heirs of Cain, and my mother was older. Unlike heirs of Abel, the women of Cain grow more fruitful as they age, assuming they’ve not been brought low by a competitor. We will have one, and should we have more than two it would mean I’ve come to understand nothing about this world.” She played with a cut leek idly. “I still don’t know how this happened.”

“I do.” She twisted her head to look into my eyes, admonishing me for the presumption, which I felt across my mind both like rolling wave and lightning storm. My skin prickled and breath came up short, which would make it all the harder to justify the claim. Her tut-tuts could bring a man to the edge of himself, and anything else from her could push him over.

“You’ve been paying attention, despite pretending not to,” I elaborated, taking a few steps back, just behind a resting Mergini. She glanced at him, most of her amusement falling away in an instant. “You couldn’t help but notice how nurturing I’ve been to our-“

“Do not say it.”

“Firstborn son.” I picked up Mergini and cradled him in my arms, his feathers ruffling up and eyes squinting in contentment. “As such you innately knew we were ready to have another, and your body responded. All of the confidence I have in you as a mother is applied to Mergini also in his role as the eldest brother. This duck shall show our newborn the ways of the world-“

“Do stop.”

“Their first steps will be waddles of admiring mimicry.”

“Enough out of you!” she huffed, rising from her sullen sit. I set Mergini down so he wouldn’t be crushed between us in her approach. In his infinite wisdom he beat a hasty retreat, sensing that the two of us were about to play some of our games. “I told you not to say it, and you deliberately disobeyed me. Punishment is in order.”

“What sort of punishment?” I was already suffering in trying to keep the fool’s grin off my face.

“It’s past time for your shave.” She undid the top buttons of my shirt, with a single fingernail. “Strip down completely. I won’t have even one secret on you while I’m putting everything back in its proper place. And you’ll have to be taught a lesson for daring to plant a flag in a goddess.”

“And it was done so brazenly,” I criticized myself, halfway through removing my pants.

“Shh. One more word out of you and I’ll shave your head too. Good luck explaining that to those ladies I have you buttering up.”

The statement was made in jest, but I sensed a twinge of jealous truth, stuck in her like a splinter. Just as I grew weary of our phantom spider, she too tired of the things about me that were out of her control, including aspects of tasks performed at her order and on her behalf.

To serve as the bridge between her and her people was my purpose, which required extensive socializing, and to that end I would inevitably spend time with unmarried women. Wanda knew this, ordered it, but all the same it irked her. At that time in our relationship, no matter the attached numbers of date, there were only two positioned to bother so: Miss Giselle Ulterrine and Giggles Terroir. They were no threat to her, and I would not do her the disservice of claiming she didn’t understand that, but all of us humans, regardless of lineage, are subject to smaller decisions within larger ones, made solely by emotion as infectious riders on our nobler deeds.

Mostly we can hide such things, but sometimes, when others look at us, they see through the deliberate structure and to the chaotic mound of emotion, defining us by our compounding animal errors. After that day I saw in my Venus one of those riders beyond her control. In her jealousy over Mergini, and in the time I spent with those women in place of her, grew a need to be with me at all times, and for that presence to be more aware than the breath and other puppet strings she kept on me always.

So there was to be a child. Perhaps so that they might serve as surveillance. She would not have done so consciously mind you. I try to see people both as what they’ve built and what they knocked over in the process. I was concerned for her is all. I sought in Wanda Blasphemer Pelts a happiness that seemed difficult for her to achieve, and felt some shame that I could find it for myself so easily in her. I was inadequate.

But I was determined to be less so as her husband all the time, and to start competent as a father. This new life would think my arms a crib, stable as they were. I would be their ground and world whenever they were in need of it.

As it should happen, and as we should get to the ‘mysterious illness’ mentioned earlier, we did run into some trouble with young Miss Terroir, though I would hardly ascribe complete blame to her. She made an emotional decision, but it was one we had fed her without sufficient concern for her well-being.

Most of it took place at our open air market, which sold mostly produce, soaps, tools, and such, but before we get there I wish to talk about my Venus in furs once more. Some may tire of hearing of her, but only because they have not met her. After her announcement I felt like I was meeting her anew everyday, each sunrise Wanda slightly changed by her pregnancy, in stance, in demeanor, in power.

Seeing her in flux was like seeing her in athletic competition. With every turn of the rapids she adjusted her hold on the paddle, applied herself to the natural course, made her way with an, admittedly agitated, radiance that blinded me on several occasions. And when that bright dawn finally gave way and let me see again she had already become herself anew once more. I couldn’t keep up, and this race I was all too happy to lose.

The distance between us fluctuated, all but proving to me that I experienced my days out of order, or that my memory arranged them incorrectly after they were experienced. Some days her stomach would look smaller than before, others much larger. The same went for her breasts, but the overall trend was upward.

Ebb and flow of body did combine with wax and wane of moon to make for whirlwind months that I couldn’t grasp firmly enough to savor. Still milestones occurred. My Wanda, in her godly fortitude, suffered very little in the way of nausea, but was doubly subject to temperamental cravings.

Whereas she used to allow me to select the menu on an average night, now there was always a specific request, sometimes accompanied by one of the relevant ingredients slapped onto the table, having hunted it down on her own, with it still coated in dirt or blood as the case might be.

Then she would hover over me while I cooked, pace back and forth behind me, getting in the way every time I had to transfer something from one vessel to another, and it was a problem for her if I was not transferring it to the plate.

Distracting her with conversation was not effective, as her mind was on the food. I could tell it would’ve made her feel better to criticize my technique, to guide the hand that guided the ladle, but she had no knowledge of the culinary arts whatsoever, being perfectly willing to dress a hare with her teeth until I’d so cursed her with a finicky parasite.

And the cravings shifted at the drop of a hat. Several times she ordered me to stop cooking in the middle of the process and pivot to an entirely different meal, keeping me up until the early hours and making me smell like simmering soup, blackening bacon, and crusty bread all at once. If the craving should change as I was serving her, well, there was nothing to be done.

I was to take the food to someone nearby as a gift, return, and prepare another meal. The worst example was the evening where I had slaved for hours on a trout amandine with asparagus green and white, in a butter so brown it almost looked like cinnamon, only for her to turn up her nose at it the moment it was plated (the steam didn’t so much as caress her skin).

Without complaint I wrapped it up and delivered it to Mlle. Legraff at her monitoring desk inside the train station where she awaited any and all messages by telegraph. Upon my return I was met in the doorway by Wanda, stance wide, hands on her lower back, demanding to know why I had not received the mental telegram she’d very clearly sent me while I was away.

Strong as our bond was, I’d never been capable of directly hearing her thoughts, regardless of distance, yet she had expected me to when an entire fish was at stake. Apparently her stomach had changed its mind, and now she would starve to death if denied a trout coated in shaved almonds.

I know not the strains of the process on the body, but I do know the strains of such ridiculous requests on an already harried mind. All the same I apologized, displayed my willingness to cruelly go back and rob a delighted old woman of a hot meal, but Wanda saw my frustration and decided to go and do it herself. With her influence she would be able to reclaim it without leaving any hard feeling.

I found the plate the next morning, outdoors in the grass, overturned and chipped.

Another difficulty for her came when she had to take her new shape to bed and found she’d grown too large to comfortably wrap her arms around me from behind, hold me, and bite on my pruned ear, as was her most clung-to creature comfort. Our compromise was for me to hold her that way, cradling both her and our child with equal love and admiration.

But she was not comfortable with it, and would frequently rouse, waking me as well. There was little to do in the dark but make love, which she engaged in with the most aggressive and frustrated air, as if trying to speed the whole process along by creating a queue of babes in wait.

On a heavier night of a heavier month, with the moon full and taut out the window, its trenches like stretch marks of its own, Wanda straddled my naked body, held me down by the shoulders, as we finished finding each other in the dark. Her intense bodily heat was always magnified in shadow; drops of her sweat struck my chest like sauna rocks.

Climax cleared from both our expressions, from my vision, but strong moonlight couldn’t penetrate a haze around us, a gray smoke Wanda left in my eyes because she didn’t want me to see what I already sensed.

The goddess had been brought to tears.

Never before had I seen her weep, or eyes water with anything but the wind as she ran in the forest and cleared streams in single bounds. My world of a wife was not a creature of sorrow, quick as she was to action, anger, and an inventive cruelty that sought the highest ground when the water rose, but no human was free of it, nor could any of us be complete without it washing over us and clearing some of what mucks us up.

Through her body on mine, the rhythmic circling of her spine, I knew she had her head tilted back and was rolling it around to keep the tears from spilling. There was no reason for me to see it, for there was nothing to solve about their presence. Wanda cried because she too had a world, above and beyond her, stronger than her, and her control over my time and space was not practice for her next more challenging victim. It was just our love, and it would change us much, and change the bigger things very little.

She cried because time was passing, and life was passing through her, and she wasn’t sure if she had enough to show for it. Perhaps when our child emerged there would be judgment in their eyes, and we would have to tell them we weren’t ready yet.

On one of the following days (perhaps directly following) she’d sent me to the market with very specific instructions for dinner: fiddleheads and mushrooms braised in butter. The ferns she would source herself, but plenty in Quarantown foraged for and grew mushrooms, and had set them out on display for me that sunny afternoon.

Accompanying me was Mergini, strolling alongside as I carried my basket, for he had an excellent nose for ingredient quality. The market was quite busy, all the carried greens yet untrimmed giving the impression that some gigantic vegetables had uprooted themselves and started mingling into the crowd.

Bees in our town and surrounding fields made honey for Wanda, and their queens, fully understanding the strain of impending motherhood on her body, had no doubt instructed their underlings to triple the output in case she craved sweet honeycomb for dessert. The stands that sold it were literally overflowing in places, some of the colors dark as syrup, red as blood.

Mergini liked the honeycomb too, so I paid for a small morsel and gave it to him, unwittingly providing an opportunity for the assailant that had tailed me since entering the market. She very much wanted what I had, and like Mergini and his sweet treat, had tasted it before.

My head was practically buried in mushrooms as I examined the woodiness of their stalks, further distracted by the smell of the soil they’d been plucked from, which carried notes of Wanda’s watchful patrolling. Then I remembered Mergini was on duty, and hadn’t picked out any for me yet.

I emerged to find he was not by my side. Under the table, enjoying some shade? No. Buried in the wares? No. It wasn’t like him to wander off, and there were no other ducks about of the sort he might fraternize with. For some reason the possibility of kidnap came to mind, but surely he would’ve quacked his smart little beak off to alert me the moment he was snatched.

Unless it was occupied by a sticky honeycomb that made speech difficult. A kidnapper would be fleeing, so I looked all around, for anyone that seemed to specifically move away from my position. Through several others I spied one that was only retreating. Extensive knowledge of the people who were to be Wanda’s allowed me to identify the woman solely by her yellow hair and the bundled sections of it often nervously handled. That was Giggles, and peeking out from her arm, the olivine bill of Mergini.

Only one motive came to mind, wrapped up haphazardly in all the praise she’d lavished on the too-intelligent duck I’d served her some months ago. None of our guests had been as insistent on getting the recipe as her, to the point that my excuse about the spice blend had drawn genuine anger: the one and only time I’d seen the emotion. ‘That’s damn inconvenient’, she’d said. I’m sure she’d eaten nothing but duck in the following month, just to make sure I wasn’t lying. Perhaps it was then, after how many frustratingly ordinary meals, she’d set her eyes on the duck I now kept as pet.

In her desperation she’d reasoned that it was the duck bearing the special gourmet taste, not the spices, for it had to be, as spices would be too easy to conceal and too hard to steal. To her Mergini was no pet, just a Christmas feast kept alive until the perfect Christmas for it. That day at the market, with him silenced by honeycomb, was probably the best chance she would ever get to take him, and so she did.

If she succeeded and then learned I was irate she could simply offer to get me another duck, as there was nothing special about him after all, yes? Clever, but she was not practiced in any clandestine work, or any sort of conflict at all, as I now was as Mr. Pelts. Spotting her was as elementary as recognizing the only anxiety present at the market.

I was about to take off running after her, I would have my duck back before she even reached the potatoes at the end of the row, when I was suddenly struck by my mysterious illness. Eagle talons gripped my stomach and upper guts, rent them into shreds. The pain created a wave of muscle spasms, like an alarm raised throughout the body.

My fingertips tingled and my tongue went dry, both usually a prelude to passing out; I managed a stomp that kept me upright and locked into consciousness. But I couldn’t move. Nor could I move my left hand from where it had gripped my stomach, as it seemed to be the only thing keeping organs from spilling out.

I could only look down for a moment if I wanted to keep my head from spinning into the flashing black, but when I did I saw no blood, no injury. This was all internal, and it was moving more than I was; the sensation traveled into my lower guts, then stabbed back and forth, like a jousting tournament in my intestine.

Its repositioning freed some of my core muscles from their shock, and with them I found the strength to stumble, but I couldn’t yell. Nor could I ask anyone for help, nowhere near the state of mind that would allow me to explain both my pet duck and the seriousness of the theft of him. Giggles couldn’t just walk away however. The market was a series of aisles, and boxed in with an outer wall of other stands, with only one entrance, which meant she had but one escape route if she wasn’t going to vault over someone’s asparagus like a crazy person.

She had to make her way back up to me, but could select any of the aisles to do so, giving me chance to head her off even with my abysmally slow shuffle. Sweat broke out all over me as I began the effort, one foot audibly dragging through the grass. Every smell I passed made me sicker, felt like a concentrated essence of it was being poured into my internal puncture wounds: mushroom, honey, dirt-coated potato…

Nausea and pain were secondary to my fear of Mergini coming to harm, so on I went, on a journey that took seconds but during which my body paid a toll of many miles marched. I caught a glimpse of her from all the way across the next row, two from the exit, and she me, but she quickly averted her eyes and kept walking, pretending not to recognize me.

The whole way I suffered. Row after row after row that wasn’t there but was felt regardless, until finally I took up most of the exit and she had no choice but to come toward me. Or stand still and pretend to browse. Which she did, taking enough time to sap the rest of my strength. I collapsed onto my back, became nothing more than a bump in her escape.

At my fall I was quickly surrounded by concerned shoppers, all asking if I was alright, returning the kindness I’d extended to all of them, but in reality only obstructing my vision at crucial moments where Giggles was certainly closing the distance, hoping to escape before I regained my senses.

The pain had not abated, my whole abdomen was hollowed out by it, and my throat endured a desert sandstorm of its own making. I let my head flop to the side, called it a deliberate turn. And a successful one. I saw Giggles’s feet. She always shopped barefoot. Her dress fluttered chaotically, like water kicked by an inexperienced swimmer. All the energy that remained within me could be used to call out once.

“Giggles! Please, help me. Take me to Wanda.” She heard, froze. The feet around me backed up, as they were not the ones asked. I had put her on the spot, drawn all the attention, and there was no doubt in my mind it would work. You see, Giggles may have been a duck thief, but she was far from evil.

We had fed her something deceptive, something she was not prepared to have swaying her internally, and that was our responsibility. I do not blame her for the momentary lapse in judgment. I could not have presented a better target for her undeserved addiction. All the same, the true gentle heart of Giggles Terroir would once again seize control after I forced perspective.

“Oh Severin, are you alright?” she asked, rushing over. “Please, everyone, help him up. Yes, I’ve got him. Lean on me Severin. One step at a time now.” She had to set Mergini down to take most of my weight. He followed alongside, quacking nervously, already more concerned for me than himself.

With my arm over her shoulder we trekked back to the house while the illness continued to course, but we met Wanda halfway. She felt my condition the moment it began, made her way to me. She must have dismissed Giggles, which I missed as I finally started to slip beneath the choppy surface of awareness.

A few breaths later, only some of them remembered, I came to on the floor of our home, resting on a rug made of my Venus’s furs, folded and fluffed to increase their comfort beyond that of our mattress. Loose sable tails moved on their own, feeling across my sides, gathering more information for Wanda.

She was crouched over me, despite the difficulty a normal woman would have holding such a position so advanced in pregnancy. Her free hand replaced mine over the most afflicted area, palm pushing in pulses, washing away the pain’s intensity in layers. It took time for all of it to dissipate, and for all of it I was silent.

“You’re alright now, my Severin,” she said to soothe, helping me into a seat and wrapping me in her furs as if I had a cold. It drank the sweat off my body, kept itself dry in the process. “I’ve figured it out.” I knew she would. She knew me inside and out after all, invested in both my realms equally.

“What happened to me?”

“You obeyed my orders a little too well,” she teased, nuzzling up, stroking my stomach in a very specific way, as if I were the one carrying our child. “When I instructed you to be one with me, to anticipate my desires, I didn’t mean for you to take on the burdens of my body as part of the process.”

“I’m too worn out to understand, I think.” My throat was still parched.

“My poor Severin. These are sympathy pains, concocted entirely in that overly imaginative heart of yours. What I feel you feel, only I am far more fortified against the actions of other heirs of Cain. And here that other heir is our child.”

“But… they’ve been on their way for a while now… Why would this come on so suddenly? It was an attack!”

“Yes darling, it was. This will upset you to learn, but remember that you wanted all of this to happen. Much of it is more harrowing than fiddleheads and mushrooms. Do you recall your mention of the Greek gods… of all the strange ways in which they could be born? With us the laws of nature are not so strict either.

In light of what I’ve just learned from your pain, a few things make sense to me now. I was already pregnant the night I bit your ear. An early craving I think. That piece I took of you was treated the same as the piece you gave me. It too became our progeny, grew alongside the first.”

“Twins?”

“Only superficially… and no longer.” She clasped my hand, bent herself in such a way that her stomach was obscured by her furs, making the conversation just us two. Her longing for that simpler time was clear, and if she’d had the power to wad our child up and stick it in her furs like an unpleasant mouthful into a napkin she would have.

“What do you mean?”

“Heirs of Cain cannot kill each other after we are born, but we can before. It is a loophole we know even before we are conscious of ourselves. There can be internal conflict, battles for dominance. I think it was even more likely with us, for the two of them came to be at different times, from different sources.”

“You mean… one of our children attacked and killed the other?” Cold exploded in my chest. I thought I could bring an untarnishable joy to my heir of Cain. How foolish. My naive soul was to be stretched out on the rack for the offensive assumption, wrapped about the world serpent and paraded overhead of the heirs the world over.

“Yes. I didn’t even feel it. Such a process is natural with us. Even some animals have competition like that going on inside them, sharks for one. Only one child remains, the stronger. I was their battlefield, but you were the one hurt.”

“Madness… There is madness in your kind.” She allowed the shocked statement to pass without objection. “Which child are we to have? The one of love or the bitten one?”

“I don’t know, and we likely never will.” She kissed me, put breath in me. Despite her attempt to hide it, my hands found her waist, her swell, and what remained of our future. Mergini was saved, but I’d still lost a child. I was losing things before I even had them. The cold exploded again, interior icicles turning thick as old growth logs. This was the course of an arctic river, and I would have to become accustomed. When my days were out of order I would inevitably feel losses not yet suffered.

Perhaps joys not yet attained as well, but only if hope remained. Wanda had only ambition. She could not provide our already vicious battle-hardened babe any hope at all. I would have to, if they were to live fully.

…

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 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 intervene. 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.

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