Immortal Lycanthropes

VI. The Shape

“I fear me, Cuthbert, this is far from the spirit in which we a while ago agreed that men should go to the holy war.”

Cuthbert hung his head a little.

“Ay, Father Francis, men; but I am a boy,” he said, “and after all, boys are fond of adventure for adventure’s sake.”

G. A. Henty, Winning His Spurs


chapter 1.


Melodrama is my usual, if not necessarily my preferred, idiom, so you can imagine how difficult it was for me not to falsify the preceding events. How choice it would have been if, right before poor Spenser perished, he had finally found the cheese of his dreams! He reaches one hoof gingerly toward the wedge, which is emanating visible stink lines, and only then does he fall. His last words are poignant, and involve some kind of pun on Edam.

But absolute fidelity to facts, established through extensive interviews of the participants, especially young Myron in this instance, forbid my coloring of events with my usual palette. And so it is with no mendacious or even misleading rhetorical flourish that I draw back the curtain on a scene in which our hero awakens in a bed in a small round room, tastefully appointed. The red rays of the sunset stream through a small circular window. A low bookshelf squats beside the bed, like an incubus preparing to clamber into position. Entering the room are two women. One, moving as quickly and nervously as a chain smoker, is black and has the gangly limbs of a teenager; she stands well under five feet tall, and if she is wearing children’s clothing (striped shirt & purple overalls), perhaps this is why. The other is very pale, tall and slender, perhaps thirty, her blond hair cut short and her fashionable gray business skirt cut to the knee. I will go so far as to say that, in the magical and forgiving light of dusk, she is beautiful. Perhaps she looks familiar. It’s very cold; Myron’s neck is prickling, and this is what has awakened him.

“Well,” and it is the taller woman who speaks, as taller people always do, “how are we feeling today?” In the chill, her breath is faintly visible. She bends over above him, her movements slow and languid, and places the back of her hand on Myron’s forehead.

All the confusion of the moment is right then swept away by amazement that someone, anyone, is able to touch his face without flinching. And so Myron could only gape, dumbfounded as the woman explained that one of her employees had been some distance from here walking in the woods, collecting mistletoe, and had chanced to come across Myron, bloody and half frozen. As she spoke, silently the teenager, all four and a half feet of her, paced back and forth with a glass of water in each hand. Myron was tucked in tight, the heavy covers up to the chin, but his eyes darted back and forth between the two. He could see on the floor beyond her his bow, the cardboard tube, and a duffle bag that was not his. He could barely bring himself to ask the obvious question.

“Was there,” said Myron, “when the guy found me, was there a moose with me?”

“A moose?”

The air on Myron’s face was cold, and he realized that the little window was wide open. It opened outward, like a door, on a little hinge. “Not with me, I mean, but back, back where I left my stuff. That stuff over there.”

“No. We followed your tracks back to locate the bow and some other things, which we took the liberty of consolidating in a duffle bag. But I can assure you we would have noticed a moose.” She smiled, quite a lovely smile, to show she could be ironical, and Myron let out a long billow of breath. The lack of a moose was a relief; no body could mean that Spenser had escaped whatever had attacked them.

The woman was asking, “What’s your name?”

“Vladimir Speed,” said Myron. “What’s yours?”

“This is Florence Agalega, and I am called Mignon Emanuel.”

Myron passed out. But it was only for a moment; he woke from the shock of cold water in the face. Florence was reaching out—reaching up, actually—and offering him the remaining glass of water. “Sorry about that,” she whispered. All Myron could think about at the moment was that the offer was absurd, as his arms were both beneath the bedspread.

“Vladimir,” said Mignon Emanuel, smoothing her skirt before she sat on the bed across from Florence. She carefully avoided any wet spots. “Do you mind if I call you Myron? You really are very fortunate we found you.”

“Fortunate?” Myron cried, coming to himself. At which point he tried to throw back the covers and leap out of bed, but he found that he was securely pinned under the heavy blankets. There had been very little give before, and now Mignon Emanuel was sitting on one side of him, Florence leaning on the bedspread on the other side. Neither one could have weighed much, but Myron had no leverage and, to be frank, was not very strong at all. But he wriggled back and forth desperately. He remembered the frog’s parasitic worm, and, like that worm, he would not give up.

“And we are similarly fortunate to have found you. For you are instrumental to our plan.”

“Your plan to kill me!” he shrieked.

“Killing you would be counterproductive, not to mention impolite to a guest.”

“You’re not fooling me, I saw you in the car. You work for Mr. Bigshot.”

“For—for whom?” Mignon Emanuel’s puzzlement seemed so genuine that Myron stopped his writhing. Could he have the situation all wrong?

“Mr. Bigshot,” he said. “You know, the lion.”

“You mean Marcus?” She laughed, I am compelled to say musically. I’ve heard it, and it really is a charming laugh. “Our association has been terminated, I’m sorry to say. What did you call him again?”

“Mr. Bigshot? Isn’t that his name? I mean, what he goes by?”

“Heavens no! Where did you get that idea?”

“That’s what Gloria called him. And Arthur and Alice.”

“Oh, those characters! They were having a little fun at his expense, I suppose. Mr. Bigshot!” Mignon Emanuel reached across Myron, taking the glass of water from Florence’s hand. For a moment Myron could see, in the buckling of her blouse’s collar, a nasty purple bruise on her shoulder. She then stood up. Every move was very slow and deliberate, either through general habit or to avoid spilling the water. With her body off the blankets, Myron managed to work a hand out, and no sooner had he extracted it than Mignon Emanuel slipped the glass into it. Myron had more or less meant to use the free hand to tear the covers off, but, with water in his hand, he realized he was thirsty. He downed the glass in three swallows, and, as he brought his arm down, he found Mignon Emanuel was taking the glass from him and replacing it with a handkerchief.

“Your face will be cold. We wanted you to get some fresh air, but there’s still a chill, isn’t there? And now you’re wet!”

Myron began to dab his wet face with the handkerchief. It felt like what he was supposed to do.

“You don’t work for the lion anymore?” he asked.

“I’m afraid our current relationship is more akin to rivalry. Which is indeed why you are instrumental. And you must get out of the habit of saying the lion.”

“Um. Marcus, then?” Myron said.

“It’s terribly imprecise, I am sure you’ll find. He is Panthera leo.”

“He is what?”

“Panthera leo, the proper nomenclature for Marcus Lynch. I am Procyon lotor, and Florence is Lemur catta. Do you know what you are, Myron?”

“I don’t know what they call it in Greek, but I think I know what I am”; and Mignon Emanuel chewed her lip and nodded conspiratorially when Myron said, “The chosen one.”