WOLFWEIR Read online

  An adventure. Climbing. Sneaking about. Dangerous stuff. All to the good. Like the breathless plotting of a serial novel. Maybe it would take some of the black, clinging despair out of Alphonse's puppet heart.

  (Once, Alphonse rode on this train with his parents -- it happened when he was very small. He remembers the smells of steam, smoke, rain, and pipe tobacco, and the jolting night landscape, and the sudden beaming arc lights of the remote stations, the train slowing and stopping for only a few minutes before lurching into that chugging rickety movement again. As his mother and father slept in the next compartment, Alphonse had glued his forehead to the cold window to try to behold anything he could, down to the smallest sheep grazing in a mountain pasture, lightning-ed by the passing windows of the train. To a child every sensation shines new, like a Christmas toy.)

  Alphonse folds the blue schedule and sticks it into his vest. He goes to a jar by the stove and withdraws from it a thick wad of francs and stuffs this currency into his vest with the schedule.

  "Ah, but however on earth shall we disguise you?" Lucia asks.

  Alphonse hangs his head to concentrate on this question. Then he snaps his wooden fingers, goes to a tall wardrobe in the hallway, and withdraws a ship's plaid blanket.

  He pulls a beret down from a peg by the wardrobe. Wraps the blanket about his shoulders, then plants the beret on his puppet crown and picks up his sword cane, leaning forward on it. Shuffling forward a few steps.

  Lucia claps.

  "You look like an old man. Excellente! E io. My disguise shall be what?"

  Alphonse tosses Lucia a black tophat. It's an old one of his father's, lined with green leather. Then he tosses her a splashy black opera cape.

  "Ah! I see! You want me to look like an actor! I will put my hair up like this -- "

  Lucia twists her hair up and places the tophat on her head. She throws the silk lined cape over her bony shoulders.

  "Ta ta!"

  Alphonse claps, his wooden palms clacking like castanets.

  **

  They exit the apartment carrying three suitcases stuffed with old clothing and some hard sausages Alphonse found in the cupboard. He's carrying the Toledo sword cane. On the way out, he picks up the twin dueling pistols from the hall table and stuffs them into his belt. He slips the bag of powder and shot into a trouser pocket.

  (One may prefer to work up close with sharpened steel, but one just never knows when one might require the barking assistance of a firearm.)

  With the blanket wrapped about him and his head down, his pine eyes shadowed by that blue Basque beret, his silver-tipped sword cane tapping the stairs, puppet Alphonse looks like an infirm gentleman attended by his actor friend going out for a walk under the blossoming chestnut trees on this fine April morning in Paris, the city of lights and dreams and good food.

  Even the sharp eyed concierge is fooled, thinking this sad figure wrapped in a ship's blanket is perhaps the somewhat germ-phobic Mr. Pierrot from the sixth floor. She takes the boy in the silk opera cape to be an eccentric nephew.

  "Poor ancient thing," she says to her drowsing cat. "It's good he has the boy to help him walk. He's soon to be in Pere Lachaise, no doubt of that. I can hear his bones rattle from all the way over here!"

  The Gare du Nord

  At the end of the Avenue Dupin, Alphonse raised his cane to hail a clip-clopping horse cab.

  They rode under the black canopy to the Gare du Nord and disembarked, dragging those overstuffed suitcases into the vast, echoing station under the great brass clock and the arced steel-and-glass skylights.

  Lucia bought two tickets on the Milan Express. She and Alphonse slumped together on a hard bench to await departure at twelve noon sharp.

  Alphonse was starting to drowse on Lucia's bony shoulder when she shook him so his teeth clicked.

  "Attend! Look," she whispered.

  Two men in long green dusters and derby hats were walking slowly together almost in step through the vast station concourse, shoving aside anyone who happened to get in their way.

  They looked dangerous, vicious, and professional. They were turning their heads from side to side in unison to sweep the station with steely eyed gazes.

  Clearly these deadly men were searching for someone.

  A shiver went through Alphonse.

  He grasped Lucia's wrist.

  "Yes," she said." I know. We have to run. Oh no. No. Wait. They saw us. Oh Alphonse! They are coming!"

  As the derby-men approached the two children, almost sauntering in their vicious glee -- taking their sweet time, both smiling the thinnest and cruelest of twin smiles -- Alphonse picked up his sword-cane.

  "Careful. They have pistols," Lucia whispered.

  Then Alphonse saw it too, the grip of a black pistol stuck in one derby-man's belt.

  He crouched down, lowering his head, his shoulders shaking as if wracked by a cough.

  "Ah, we are no doubt finished for good this time," said Lucia, a sad tremor in her voice.

  **

  The clicking steps approached. Both men wore shiny black shoes. When Alphonse saw the points of their shoes, he straightened up in a flash, hurling his blanket into their faces.

  He ripped the sword free of its cane. The naked steel glittered. Alphonse lunged. He stabbed twice, three, four times at the writhing men through the ship's blanket. He heard howls.

  A gun clattered to the floor. Lucia kicked it so it spun away.

  She grabbed Alphonse's arm shouting:

  "Come, Alphonse! We must abandon this place!"

  They fled, shoving through the crowd, overturning carts and scattering luggage.

  Alphonse sheathed his sword as they ran. He used it to swat aside a swarthy gendarme who stood in their path, red-faced, puffing on a tin whistle.

  Lucia's tophat was gone, and her hair flew.

  Many people simply stepped aside from their path, dumfounded at the sight of a puppet boy (sans strings) running pell-mell beside a golden haired girl in a billowing opera cape.

  **

  They dashed through the chaotic shouting crowd, crashing aside wooden barriers, onto the concrete boarding platform where the sleek blue trains, chugging and humming softly, were already loading passengers and luggage in puffing clouds of steam under those great brilliant skylights.

  Lucia was gasping for breath. She tore off her opera cape and draped it on Alphonse, to hide his stick-like puppet body from prying or astonished eyes.

  Then she turned her head anxiously from side to side, searching for the Milan train.

  Meantime, Alphonse was watching behind them for the sudden appearance of more rough derby men armed with pistols, or club-waving gendarmes. He had one hand on the grip of a dueling pistol.

  "Ah!" Lucia hopped up and down, jerking on Alphonse's sleeve.

  There it was, the long dark blue train shuddering like something alive even as suitcase-laden passengers popped into view through the steam-misted windows.

  "C'est la. "

  As she seized Alphonse's wrist and began to run for it, Alphonse tugged her to a stop. He pointed to the open door of a car full of boxes, crates, and luggage at the rear of the train, just in front of the glassed-in observation car.

  "Ah, si. Si!" Lucia cried.

  They made haste into the baggage car, crawling over suitcases and crates to the darkest corner, where a big green steamer trunk sat. Padlocked, its lid was stencilled with red letters: MAIL. Alphonse glanced around, then unsheathed his rapier and struck again and again at the chain holding the padlock, sparks flying, until it snapped.

  He threw open the green lid and waved Lucia forward. She crawled inside, on a pile of letters. Alphonse jumped in after her and shut the lid with a heavy clunk.

  Had anyone heard Alphonse hacking at the chain? It was eerily silent in the baggage car. They could hear bells ringing, a conductor's distant shout.

  Then door to the baggage car slid shut with a bang. A lock thunked into place. In the dark, Alphonse smiled.
He stroked the panting Lucia's hair with his wooden fingers.

  The engine let out a whistle blast the two children could hear even in the depths of the mail trunk, and the Paris-Milan express jolted into movement -- streaming out of the Gare du Nord toward Germany, the Italian-Swiss Alps, and Wolfweir.

  Baggage

  Once the train was well underway, Alphonse pushed open the trunk lid and climbed out.

  Then he put out his wooden hand and helped Lucia clamber out of the trunk. She held onto his shoulders and lowered her feet to the floor.

  It was dark in the baggage car, since there were no windows. The heaped baggage swayed with the motion of the train.

  Alphonse searched his vest pockets and came out with a box of matches. He struck one. The match head rasped and sputtered into flame.

  By its light Alphonse found a lantern hanging by a small iron hook at the end of the car.

  He climbed a pile of suitcases to get to the lantern and took it down carefully. It had a little kerosene sloshing in it.

  When he'd brought it to the floor, he shook out his match -- it had burned down almost to Alphonse's wooden fingertips -- and struck another. He opened the tiny window in the glass chimney and lit the cotton wick.

  Puppets have to be a little careful around fire, he reflected.

  He set the lantern on the wooden floor and sat cross legged by it. Lucia smiled, pulled up a suitcase and perched close to the flame, gazing into it as if to discern the shape of their future.

  Maybe she saw Wolfweir castle, and the river where she used to sit singing, dangling her bare feet in the water and floating leaf boats downstream.

  They had some light now. It wasn't too uncomfortable in the baggage car. They were alone, with no interference or danger, and could just enjoy being alive.

  For the nonce, anyhow.

  After awhile, Alphonse decided that he'd like to take a look at the countryside passing. Since the door was locked from the outside, he'd have to find another way.

  His simple but elegant solution was to shoot a hole in the door. He loaded one of the dueling pistols, crept up close to the door, squinted holding the pistol at arm's length -- Lucia covered her head with her arms -- and fired.

  BANG

  Daylight shone through the bullet hole. Alphonse waved away the wafting black powder smoke and stuck his eye to the hole. He saw green fields, a river scummed with algae, a stone bridge, a cow lying in a pasture, a pile of hay, a mountain covered with pines.

  It was the French countryside, all right.

  He saw a field of dazzling orange poppies. He waved for Lucia, but by the time she put her eye to the hole, the heavenly poppy field was gone. She saw a pile of smoking manure, then a little village with red tiled roofs click by. A stone wall. A man walking behind a cart drawn by two muddy white oxen.

  "Eh. Marveloso!" she cried.

  **

  It was getting colder. They had rumbled through vast pine forests all afternoon. The train was climbing steadily into steep mountains.

  Alphonse draped the silly silk opera cape around Lucia. She wrapped it tight around her shoulders, sitting huddled on the suitcase. Her breath smoking.

  Then Alphonse glanced around him at the heaps of luggage and -- mentally at least -- chortled.

  There must be many wardrobes worth of clothing in this baggage car, he thought.

  Lucia watched the puppet boy with wonder as he danced about the jolting train car opening suitcases and bags and yanking out items of clothing, tossing aside some and stacking up others to try on.

  Eventually, he found a sheepskin-lined leather coat and handed it to Lucia, who was shivering now. She put it on and zipped it up to the chin.

  She put on the gloves Alphonse tossed in her lap. Then she wrapped a thick red wool scarf around her neck.

  As for Alphonse, he didn't feel the cold, and so he wasn't trembling a bit.

  All he needed for himself, he thought, was some well-made hiking boots, and maybe a fetching leather aviator jacket.

  He soon found such a jacket in his size -- it must belong to a runtish teenaged boy -- and put it on, turning for Lucia to admire him. She clapped her gloved hands.

  "Wonderful, Alphonse!"

  There were other things in the luggage. After pulling out a pair of hiking boots that very nearly fit him, Alphonse found a big bar of Swiss chocolate, which he tossed to Lucia. She unwrapped it at once and took a big bite.

  Then he found some crisp apples, a golden wedge of aged Gouda cheese wrapped in newspaper, and a dark blue tin of Beluga caviar.

  Finally, there was a small hurdy-gurdy with ivory keys and brass trim, its sides painted with colorful Bavarian scenes. Alphonse perched on a crate and began testing it out as Lucia devoured her apples, cheese, caviar and chocolate. He'd learned to play some simple tunes on such an instrument during a long past summer vacation with his parents to Corsica.

  He soon had Lucia clapping and dancing. She whirled faster and faster in the flickering lamplight, stamping the boards.

  Alphonse found his wooden fingers more than ample for this instrument. It seemed to him he could play even faster than he had when he was a real boy.

  He was wrenching furious music out of that hurdy-gurdy like a real organ grinder, sans monkey. Even he was moved by the magical, whirling, plangent notes.

  "Stop! I grow breathless!" Lucia cried, at last. Alphonse stopped, and she collapsed, smiling, sweaty, and magically beautiful onto a pile of baggage.

  Alphonse put down the accordion. He wasn't tired but he saw that Lucia was near exhaustion. She needed to rest up a little. And, in fact, soon the wolf girl was snoring lightly in her sleep.

  He took the blue train schedule out of his pocket and studied it. The train was due to reach the Italian border just before dawn. This was where, the wolf-girl had said, they would have to get off to proceed on foot.

  Through the deep snow. Would they need skis? Alphonse made a mental note to search the baggage car for some.

  They'd hike or ski over a mountain pass, eluding the border stations and police. It would take them a day and a night and half of another day at least to reach the frontier of her kingdom.

  Wolfweir.

  Lucia had assured Alphonse that she would recognize the place by its small blue flowers (if any were blooming, Alphonse thought grimly), the scent of the clear mountain air (maybe, he thought, maybe), and also the peculiar quality of the light (although in truth the light was probably no different from anywhere in these Alps).

  Besides, she'd added in her quiet, melodious, very un-wolf-like voice, all wolf-people have a innate sense of direction and so rarely get lost (though Lucia had wandered around totally lost in the forests near Paris for three days or more, the worry-wart puppet Alphonse reflected).

  The Border

  Alphonse sat awake all that night as Lucia slept on the pile of luggage.

  He supposed that puppet boys don't need sleep. It was his second night of total wakefulness, yet he wasn't tired in the least. His pine eyes wouldn't shut but to blink.

  He tried not to think too much about his parents, or the Vampyres, or Vesuvio with his magical Blue Orb and the other enslaved boy- puppets. But he sometimes did think of these things despite his best efforts, and at these instants he clenched his wooden hands into fists.

  Every so often he peered out through his bullet-hole into the freezing dark.

  Sometimes he saw far off lights, or the empty platform of a small station lurching by, illuminated by a single dim electric lamp.

  Since this train was the express, it didn't stop in any of the Alpine towns or villages along the way. It just roared through without slowing down.

  As soon as the bit of sky Alphonse could see through his bullet-hole turned robin's egg blue, Alphonse shook Lucia. She woke, yawned, and stretched her arms out, smiling.

  "Ah. I dreamt such wonderful things, Alphonse. But I won't remember any of it in a few hours, naturally. Why do we always forget our dreams? Shouldn't w
e recall everything beautiful that ever happens to us?"

  Alphonse shrugged. He was checking his pistols to make sure they were primed and loaded.

  **

  The sun was rising as the train groaned and squeaked to a stop at the border. Alphonse looked out through the hole and saw a guard walking along the tracks with a rifle slung over his shoulder.