I came down late to breakfast, and boy was that a mistake. The novices were squawking, the brothers were fussing, and the abbot looked fit to explode.
“-delinquency will NOT be excused by such wild stories!” he shouted. “Now give me the REAL answer!”
“It’s true! It’s true!” squealed the youngest – a deeply unfortunate young man with a deeply fortunate face currently contorted into desperate panic. “He left to the toilet – he screamed – he never came back! That’s all I know! That’s all I know!”
“I DID hear that scream,” chimed in Brother Theodore helpfully. “I was up checking my onions. They need the night air, you know.”
“Thank you, brother,” said the abbot between his two largest teeth and nothing else. “That is very helpful. But given the evidence we have – a missing novice and a scream – and the evidence we lack – any proof of malfeasance or wrongdoing – I think we can -”
“It was full moon last night,” blurted out another one of the novices.
As one, every face in the hall turned to face me, my hand still on the bannister.
I sighed.
“Well!” said the abbot pleasantly. “Isn’t it fortunate that we have an animal expert and proven werewolf-hunter in-residence? Someone pack Brother Simon a snack for the road; he will be making his trip to the village early today.”
***
It was a bright, beautiful morning and I hated every minute of it. I hated the clock-clock of my shoes against the road; I hated the warm sun in my eyes and the cool breeze sending creeping gooseflesh up my legs; I hated that I hated the half-mushy apple I was eating instead of breakfast; I hated that last summer I had visibly expressed satisfaction over proving that the ‘werewolf’ that had killed a sheep was the abbot’s favourite dog; I hated that the abbot was getting less and less subtle about how much he knew about the bottle I picked up from the pub every fortnight; and I especially hated that I probably could’ve avoided all of this if I had just woken up on time.
A bird chirped brightly from a nearby bush. That kept me committing blasphemy in my mind all the rest of the way into town, where I saw an unusual sight.
The wrong kind of unusual.
No concerned shepherds, no pale-faced parents, no angry mobs demanding a scapegoat and justice. Just a village of farmers and pilgrim-bilkers, making their livings and glancing occasionally at the irritated lump of monk standing in the walnut-shaded center of village square and peering suspiciously at everyone. And, of course, the loud man hunched double on the roof of the pub swearing and slamming shingles into place with a hammer and a bruised thumb
“Morning, Brother Simon,” said the man at the bottom of the ladder.
“What gives?” I asked him.
“Eh?”
“Forget about it. Passing thought. How’s business?”
“Oh, it’s absolutely crazy. Jean’s spent more time with his feet on roofs than with them on the ground since last night. Dunno what it was up there, but it had sharp toes.”
“Huh.”
“So…werewolf, right?”
I gave him the stare of a man who’d eaten a mush-apple for breakfast.
“Sorry, sorry, just figured, you know? Just figured.”
“Yeah.”
“Still… dogs can’t climb houses.”
“Thanks. Can I have one of the old tiles?”
“No problem!”
I cursed him and muttered a little prayer for his soul, which probably broke even. Thus spiritually neutralized, I sat under the walnut tree and checked rooftops.
One. Two. Three. Four. More. Every building in sight had either a freshly repaired roof or some sort of odd scarring adorning its eaves.
I looked at the tile in my hands. ‘Odd.’ That was the polite way of saying ‘clawed.’ Something big – really big, with sharp nails – had scuttled over this and it hadn’t been shy about it.
I groaned and threw back my head in frustration, looking up at the picked-clean branches of the walnut overhead. If there was an honest-to-god werewolf out there I’d have to move. I’d have to leave. Hell, I might have to abandon my vows and go be a knife-grinder; anything but live in the same building as the abbot. It was a grim, inescapable sort of thought that held me close to its breast as it dropped into the abyss, and accordingly I decided to go to the pub.
***
Bret jumped when he saw me. He was a big man; it took a lot of force and it made a bit of noise. “Brother Simon!”
“Bartender Bret.”
“You’re here early. Weather’s ah, nice for it, isn’t it?”
“Probably. Surprised you’d call this early, though, what with all the racket you must have heard all night.”
“Oh yes, oh yes. Terrible, terrible. Jean’s giving us all deals – real neighborly of him – but still, ah, the expense, the expense! Always a terrible thing, a surprise cost. Any chance I can rely on you to recoup a little of my misfortune, brother?”
I smiled. “You know, you just might. Two this time, I think. I’ve got a headache to make up for.”
Bret beamed like a bear ass-deep in honeycomb, and he left to fetch the bottles so excited and relieved that he didn’t even hear my weary footsteps as I got up and walked around the bar.
“Boo,” I said.
To his credit, the missing novice didn’t scream. This was because he had stuffed both his hands in his mouth down to the knuckles.
“Oh Christ, get out of there. You’ll chew a thumb off. C’mon, up you get.”
“Imnotgoinback!” he squeaked, arms shaking, fingers nigh bone-dry despite their recent place of residence.
“Slower, please.”
“I’m not, goingback, I can’t, I won’t, i-”
“Okay, good. Now clearer, please.”
His mouth opened and shut in an agony of indecision.
I sighed. “Look. Bret’s going to be back in three seconds, with two bottles. We’re opening one. There’s time.”
Bret poked his head up from the cellar and went through a series of emotions.
“There, y’see? Just like I said. Hey Bret, you had a friend of mine staying over. Feel free to sit in on this.”
***
The novice shook like a leaf until three glasses in, which was pretty impressive. I didn’t aim for style in my drinks; I went for efficiency.
“I’m going home. I can’t go back,” he explained.
“So you’ve said.” I was on glass four, but I had more practice and I knew I could handle it and most importantly I really really needed it.
“I, I went to the bathroom. That was all. Nothing else, I wasn’t stealing from Brother Theodore’s garden or, or sneaking into the kitchens or climbing the wall or ANYTHING. That’s all I was doing. I was halfway back when it happened.”
“And what happened?”
He stared into his glass. I nodded at Bret, who – still-reluctantly, but apparently now believing I wasn’t going to burn the boy at the stake – filled it. The novice did not register this. He was looking somewhere farther away than the table.
“Something leapt at me,” he said, slowly and carefully. “From behind. I kicked loose and ran and I glanced over my shoulder and I saw hair and FANGS and I screamed – just once, because I needed to run. I couldn’t not scream, you know? It just shot out of me. And then I ran, and I ran, and every step I ran it was right behind me and it chased me right out of the abbey, right through the front doors and halfway down to town before I couldn’t feel its breath on my heels. And when it stopped it, it made the most horrible call.”
I sighed and slumped in my chair.
“Sharp. Quick. Furious.”
I unslumped and unsighed. “Wait, what? Not a howl?”
“No! No. I don’t think I can forget that noise, EVER. It’ll be with me on my deathbed if I live to a hundred.”
“What was it?”
He took a breath, then spat it out.
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Bret stared at us staring at each other.
“… is that okay?” asked the novice.
“Yes. From most angles it makes no sense at all, but I think I see one where it fits a bit too well.” I stood up, half-empty bottle in one hand. “Bret, I’ll be leaving my second sample with our mutual friend here. I’ve got to go back. Fast.”
“What’re you going to do?” he asked.
“Confirm a hunch. Too many things add up just wrong.” One of them struck me as I put a foot out the door. “By the way… Bret, when did you harvest that walnut?”
“The tree in the square, brother? Never. Nobody eats from it. Bad luck.”
And because nobody eats them and everyone’s eyes are on the roofs today, nobody’s noticed. Oh no. “Thank you, Bret. If I never see you again, you should know that you were the only reason I’m still alive and sane for the past twelve years. Make sure he doesn’t finish the bottle in one go, okay? Got to run.”
And I did. At least for most of the way. Time was wasting – had been since before I got up today. But I might still have just enough.
***
The abbot didn’t come to his door at the first knock.
“Perhaps we might-” said Brother Theodore behind me, and while he was saying that I pushed it open. It took some effort since there was a lock in the way, but it was more of a formal barrier than a real one and the cheap clasp burst loose from the firm wood with a quick crunch.
There were six large and surly brothers behind me who would probably have something to say about the destruction of monastic property. As the door swung wide, they immediately found higher priorities than myself.
Abbot Alvin was an arrogant, high-handed, peevish son of a bitch. He also lived only somewhat more smugly and less frugally than was technically expected of a man of his station. His furniture, his writing desk, his bedframe, all were well-made and solid and only mildly adorned. If he had more than the monks under his care, it was comfortably debatable how close it came to extravagance.
Every single wooden item had been shredded and reduced to slivers and splinters. In the center of the room the abbot himself blinked and sat upright, nestled in the midst of a sea of woodchips and some fuzzy lint that might once have been a blanket.
“Brother SIMON?” he asked, and the outrage was there, but it was off. He was upset I was there, but not as upset as a man whose subordinate had just broken his front door should be.
Got you.
“I left the village early,” I explained. Move on, before he takes the focus anywhere but himself. “Bet you expected me to stay out of the way while you cleaned up. Nice redecoration.”
“The missing novice, I came upstairs just now and found that, he must have-”
“He’s in town. Has been since last night.” No sense giving someone rope to hang themselves when they might use it to get a grip instead. Let’s keep him flailing.
“You can’t prove that!”
“Something chased him out. Know anything about that?”
“Wild nonsense! You, you yourself proved it! Werewolves aren’t real!”
“Didn’t say anything about werewolves.” Time to make the play. “Know anything about this?”
The abbot stared at the little walnut in my hand like I’d kidnapped his daughter. “Give it,” he whispered.
“It was hard to find; something cleaned out the whole tree. Know anything about it?”
“It’s not yours you can’t have it.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“It’s mine.”
“Why?”
“MINE!” he screamed, and he leapt – and really, really leapt at me. From across the room, a standing start, and as he leapt he was furred, and striped, and he hit me all needle-claws and furious anger and indignation, tail bristling above us both like a little flag as I fell flat on my back in the doorway, staring up at a pair of insulted eyes in a very different context than usual, perched above razor-sharp and saw-sized incisors.
““CHIP-CHIP, CHIP-CHIP, CHIP-CHIP!” he screamed.
And about then was when the two brothers on the stairway who’d been holding onto the abbot’s dogs let them loose.
“CHUCK, CHUCK!” he squeaked furiously. Then he spun on his heel and leapt out the window, exploding outwards in a haze of glass shards and outrage.
I laid there. The dogs were barking out the window. In the distance, the abbot was chipping furiously. And above me, the round, puzzled face of Brother Theodore gently intruded. All of these things were difficult to contemplate.
“Do you suppose,” he asked carefully, “that he will be coming back?”
I shrugged. It hurt. Those little claws had been sharp.
“Well, I suppose we can put up screens to stop him creeping indoors. And put a lock on the novice’s quarters, so he won’t chase them out.” He frowned, an uncanny expression on him, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “There is one thing that’s troubling me, though…”
“Shoot,” I croaked.
“…do you think I shouldn’t have fed him that walnut tart last month? I didn’t know that tree was so contentious, and when I went to look for new produce there were so many of them just CRYING out to be picked up, and well. Waste not want not?”
“I do not think,” I said, “that anyone is going to blame you for turning the abbot into a were-ground-squirrel as a result of feeding him cursed walnuts.”
“Oh yes, of course, when you put it like that.” He reached down and helped me up. “But still, one likes to be certain about things.”
“Yes,” I winced as I was towed upright, heels slipping through the mess of strewn wood fragments. “Especially with chip-monks.”