“Poetic Justice”
Harker
Pressing my trembling hands against the rough surface of my worktable, I surveyed my domain. A forest of gourd-shaped copper vessels and glass tubes. Iron implements of every sort. Crucibles, mortar, and bellows. Most critically, the small distillation furnace that transmuted an herb-infused Walachian wine into a lifesaving quintessence.
The chapel on the rock was built with the idea that a religious man would make his home here. It was a symbol of my ancestor’s piety and devotion to the church. He had not designed it to accommodate a family. When my father was alive, the lower floor served as both dining and sitting room, while the upper floor was divided between sleeping chamber and his study. I now used the latter for my laboratory.
For many long years it had been my sanctuary, which perhaps was why I’d come directly here from The Magpie—and Mina Penrose. My venture into the village had shaken me to my core. I wanted the steadying influence of my work.
Though I had just completed a distillation, I began gathering the components of the apparatus to begin again. My movements were jerky, and a glass alembic slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor.
I squeezed my eyes shut and raked a hand through my hair.
Harker Tregarrick, you’re a fool.
I had told myself it was right to go there, breaking my family vow never to step foot in the village except in direst need. Because shutting myself away here, though it had kept me safe for many decades, could now bring danger.
There would be rumors about Mr. Roscoe—mysolicitor, found at the edge ofmyestate. Rumors that, if history was any guide, could so easily turn to shouting and calls for blood.
Poetic justice.In many ways, it would be easier to just let it happen.
In the year of our Lord 1854, people still feared Roche Rock. Most of them just couldn’t remember why. Old stories of a wolf that prowled the estate, preying on solitary travelers who chanced to wander too close. The authorities would seek a more rational explanation, but all of it would still come back tome, and continuing to hide myself in Roche Chapel would only make things worse. I must allow them to see me as a man before they could make me into a monster (even if that’s exactly what I was).
This was the story I’d told myself before donning my newest, most modern suit of clothes and stepping off the estate for the first time in many years. And I believed in my decision until the person I most feared on this earth—a tormentor I knew well, though only by her meadowsweet scent—appeared before me in a smocked blue blouse and faded plaid muslin skirt that had probably once been the same color as her hair.
How fitting that it was red.
Despite my alchemical elixir, my sluggish heart hadhammered. The bloodlust had arced within me, and the slight rhythmic motion at her throat—I could hear, feel, and almost taste it. Had we met anywhere other than a crowded tearoom, she would never have survived.
I had not felt the thirst so powerfully since the earliest days of my change, when I’d been made prisoner in this tower for the protection ofevery beating heart in the parish. That time was shrouded in the red fog of my bloodlust, and to this day I was haunted by the not-remembering.
Mina Penrose was enough to chase me back to my tower, never again to emerge.
Yet that option was closed to me now.
Shapes
I cradled the teapot in my hands, rubbing a thumb against the blackberry pattern and wondering whether others who read tea leaves saw shapes everywhere. I saw figures in the clouds and faces in tree bark. I saw them in the grain of a worktable, the surfaces of pools on the moor, and even the smoke coiling from a doused candle. Our father had said that Mum’s stories turned both Jack and me fanciful, and I must have believed him. Because until recently, I’d never thought the shapes I saw were anything more than that.
But I’d always thought Jack more fanciful than I. Until he went to the mine, he was left more to himself, while I started taking on some of the household chores. My attention would occasionally drift to the window, where I could see him in the garden behind the house, carving arrows for the bow he’d made or trying to swordfight our goat with a stick.
Sometimes he’d catch my eye and salute me with a flourish of his weapon—like a knight to his lady—and I would have to stifle a giggle. The mine slowly crushed that out of him, though, and what the mine didn’t crush, the drink finally drowned.
Our parents’ passing had been different for me. In some ways, it had freed me; Mum would have laughed at the idea of me going to work at The Magpie when there was so much to do at home. I could never have worn her down about it the way I had Jack.
But then, if she’d lived, there wouldn’t have been a need, and I’d have given anything to have both of them with us again. We’d all worked hard, and sometimes Da could be stern, but there was love in our home, and laughter, too.
We took our meals together and went to church on Sundays. Evenings when Da wasn’t too tired, he would play his fiddle while Jack and I held hands and twirled around the room, or Mum would tell us fairy stories. Losing them both almost at once had somehow caused Jack and me to lose each other, too—and sent us off in different directions, looking to fill the emptiness. I only wished Jack could have found something besides the bottle.
Taking the teapot lid knob between my fingers, I thought again about Mum and her visitors. Instead of being afraid of what she saw in the leaves, she had used her gift to help our family. And sometimes there’d been little surprises, too. An especially fine pudding on a feast day, or a ribbon or sweetmeats on a birthday. Mum had even given us a picture book with children’s stories for Christmas one year. When Da looked surprised at these miracles, she’d always say he was lucky he’d married a woman who knew how to make the most of her pennies.
These memories might have played a part in what I now saw in Mr. Tregarrick’s teapot. Lifting the lid revealed a cluster of leaves that looked like nothing so much as the head of a wolf, nose raised and jaws open. The only wolf I’d ever seen—besides the one on the sign at the tavern—had been in that children’s picture book, in the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
Letting my breath out in a whoosh, I plunked the pot on the table.
Mrs. Moyle turned, her eyes widening as they moved from the pot to my face. “Oh dear,” she said.
I picked up the pot again and took it to her. “Tell me whatyousee, ma’am,” I pleaded. “I don’t trust myself.”
