The Wolf & The Witch

Lestat stood in the dark, beside the witch, in a storehouse full of broken weapons, none worth a damn. He shut his eyes and sighed- not a good start. They held the rotten apricots nestled in their cuffed arms; he reached out with his left hand and slipped one broken sword in the strap on his pants- missing half the blade, and another on the opposite hip, between him and Claire. I’m not the only one who’s lied. “I know what lie you’re talking about, and-“

“No, you don’t,” she interrupted. “Let’s go.” She seriously doubted this wolf was smart enough to know his own lie, because Claire was positive- in his head he was treating her well- politely, respectfully, considerately. And sometimes he did, in his own odd way, and sometimes he didn’t.

They gathered broken cobblestones from the bottom of worn gutters as they walked, their arms loaded full of fruit and stones. They sulked down a dark and narrow alley. Buildings were vacant- broken shudders, missing doors, and the black eyes and mouths of empty houses stood open and watched them pass. The witch found an abandoned warehouse at the far end of an alley, and they pushed their way inside, spilling apricots from their cuffed hands. The warehouse was cold, and empty, and dark- brick and stone and rusted iron and the purple darkness of coming morning through broken windows.

Claire picked up an apricot, squished it, and threw the flesh and skin off to the side. Then she cleaned the pit on her pants, and placed it between them.

Lestat watched her, then did the same, quietly.

Claire squished another, stiff in some places, slimy and soft in others, and juice ran down her arm. Another pit to the pile.

Lestat picked up an apricot and squeezed and the flesh fell away. He flung his hands clean, and tossed the pit between them. He told her he needed to talk to her, and he had words on his tongue for her- fussing, and cussing, to push her away. I don’t like you, I can’t stand you, I hate liars, all witches are the same, I don’t even want to be your friend. But he couldn’t say them. He was trying, and couldn’t. His heart would not allow him to speak those words to her. He glanced at her, and back down. “I said I didn’t like you, didn’t want to hug you, didn’t want to sleep beside you, didn’t-“

“That’s not the-“

“I know- that’s not the lie. Because I truly, truly, did not want to like you. I did not love you. I did not want to hug you. I didn’t want to involve myself with you, at all. Those words were at least partly true, and I think I was hoping that by saying them they would be even more true. But… that wasn’t the lie.”

Claire didn’t have a response. She looked at the apricot in her hand- even in the dark she could see the left side was moldy and gray and leaking. She sunk her thumb into it, carving away a thick chunk of flesh. She threw chunks of apricot to the side and they splattered off the broken stone floor.

Lestat stopped stripping fruit, and looked down. Little witch friend. His heart would not hurt like this if that was all she was to him. Stupid, typical, idiot witch. His heart would not feel like this if that was all she was. But what else was she to him, truly? He thought back to that first night, freezing, sitting on the floor, keeping her warm, and the soft lull of her breathing, and then he thought about her cold hands on his forehead, and chest, rubbing snow on him, when he was burning alive. He thought about how perfectly her hand fit in his, and how perfectly her body fit against his when he held her. He swallowed, and looked up at the warehouse roof- broken windows and debris waiting to fall. “I’ve lied to you twice, Claire. My first lie to you was that…” He let his words end in sigh. Verbalizing his failures was not easy, and he wasn’t sure he owed her anything, but he didn’t know any other way of getting this weight off his chest. “I’m trying to treat you the way a man should a woman. That was a lie.”

Claire’s heart stopped. That was the lie. That was the one he shouldn’t know- he shouldn’t be smart enough to see his own failures, he shouldn’t be kind enough to see the hurt in her eyes sometimes. Her hand stopped on a stone heart, and orange flesh slid down her fingers and plopped against the stone floor. She had thought that a hundred times since that night. What was Lestat: a wolf. Barking orders, attacking, protecting her from rapists, insulting, quick to anger- the good with the bad. She truly was appreciative for the good, and truly thought he was a different type of wolf, but appreciation and her opinions didn’t change one large truth that was forefront in her brain: he was treating her the way a wolf treats a witch, not the way a man treats a woman. She looked at him very surprised, because she had truly doubted that any wolf had enough consideration, and self-reflection, and intelligence, to realize their own nature. Then she wondered what the other lie was.

Lestat scooted away, all the way out to the end of their cuff, and retrieved a stray apricot. He scooted back, but only partway. He smashed another one, and then another. The pile of wet stone hearts was growing and the sweet, sharp odor of rotten apricot flesh drifted around the warehouse.

“How… was that a lie?” Claire asked. She knew the answer, and was curious if he did. She was watching him, looking at him, as he squished another fruit.

Lestat was slow to answer. He looked at her, and back down, and squished another. “I haven’t treated you the way a man should a woman- even a woman he doesn’t like. I’ve been treating you the way a wolf treats a witch- like shit.” Lestat slowed his breathing a step, and looked at her again. Still beat up, and still beautiful. “Sorry,” he said, and tossed another stone heart into the pile.

Claire’s fingers stopped. Her lungs and throat stopped. She was a clock unwound, and the gears were stuck, and wouldn’t turn. Apricot juice dripped from her right hand. She stared at him, his face, his eyes. She had never known a wolf to apologize, for anything; she had never known a wolf with his level of self-control.

Lestat cleared his throat, and scooted closer, and shredded another fruit, and wiped the pit clean on his pants, and tossed it to the center. They were out of apricots; Lestat assumed the goal here was to smash the pits, or break them open, or something. He wiped the stones clean between them with his hand, dirty, and filthy, and then wiped his hand on his pant leg. Then he picked up a stone and smashed a pit. It didn’t smash. He hit it harder and the pit shattered into thirds. “Is that good enough?”

Claire looked down. “… Uh… no. We… need to turn them into powder.”

“Powder?” That would take a considerable amount of smashing. He groaned and got started. Lift the rock up, slam the rock down, and break a stone heart into smaller stone hearts.

Claire sat watching, thinking, lending her left arm to the effort of turning pits to dust; she also retrieved any pieces that went flying off. She watched him, and heard his words again, and she realized they were in the past tense. I didn’t like you. I didn’t love you. And he had been very mad about being lied to. But the only reason for him to say that in the past tense, and the only reason for him to get that mad was if… She watched him a minute longer, than asked, “Um, do you-“

“What is this we’re making?”

She cleared her throat. “Poison.”

“How strong is it?”

Claire was still lost in her own thoughts, and watched him work, and sweat, and pound the ground with a rock over and over. “I… uh… just a pinch is enough to kill…”

“…to kill?”

Claire cleared her throat. “Twenty rats.”

There was a lot of pits. That would be a lot of pinches. Lestat nodded approval, and smashed apricot pits for over an hour. Eventually the chunks were small enough to grind, so he got up on his knees, and held the rock with both hands, and ground the stone hearts into the stone floor, until finally, an hour after the sun came up, they had a heap of damp gray-brown paste.

Claire used his boot to hold the paste, and since it was awkward to walk with just one boot, he tossed the other away, but kept the string, just in case. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now we need to get them to eat this, or drink it.”

“Them as in… the entire city, or…”

“It’s not enough to kill the entire city, but it’s more than enough to kill every person at that estate. At least the men. I’m not sure about the wolves. It might not kill them, but it will make them sick.”

Lestat stretched his back and shoulder. Poison. Was this a particular specialty of a village witch? Well, poison was a hell of a lot better than walking through the front door with two broken swords. He yawned and helped her to her feet.

He led her through the city, avoiding people, back to the Alpha’s estate, to a back wall, and leaned against it, thinking.

Claire couldn’t see much over the wall, but she could see the top of a water tank near a tree. “Let’s put it in the water tank,” she suggested.

“No. If we want to kill men and wolves we need to put it in their beer. But that’s not our only problem.”

Claire couldn’t argue his logic- either point. If they poisoned the water everyone would die. If they poisoned the beer, at least most women and children would be left alive. And he was right- killing some by poison was not their only problem.

Lestat brought their cuffed hand up to the wall around the Alpha’s estate, and the wall faded and dissolved in front of them- he looked through the opening, and strained his hearing, then led them into a corner of the estate. He pulled her behind a bush, along the edge of the stables, barefoot, in silence, watching, waiting.

She shifted the boot full of apricot pit poison in her arm. “Um, do you-“

“Shhhh,” he said, then leaned closer. His lips touched her ear. “Wolves have very good hearing.”

His lips, and his breath, on her ear sent shivers down her body and back up the center of her back. She thought about whispering something to him- a question, but then thought about his answer- his lips on her ear again, and decided not to ask. She sat that way, quiet, for an hour, then another, waiting, watching as his eyes followed first one guard, then another, back and forth. She had waited long enough, and had been thinking long enough, and wanted to know something. She leaned up, her lips very close to his ear, and whispered, “Do… what you said… it sounded like you were saying… you like me?” She embarrassed herself and turned away from him. What the hell. How damn stupid could she be. That did not come out of her mouth the way it had in her head. She had practiced that thirty times. Shit. She turned away.

Lestat had been watching patrols for over two hours. He knew where every guard and every soldier, every man, and wolf, were. He knew where they kept the beer. He knew where the kitchen was. They just needed to wait for the next shift change, and hope for the best. And because he knew all that, he knew he did not have to be as quiet as before, but he still whispered. “I do like you. But I’m trying hard not to. If I didn’t your lie wouldn’t hurt.”

She kept turned away, now blushing. “Why are you-“

“Shhhh. Not so damn loud,” he whispered.

She turned back to him, a little startled; she paused, then shifted to get on her knees, and leaned up and whispered at his ear, “Why are you trying hard not to?”

He looked at her like she was glowing yellow, or apricot orange. Was that truly a question he needed to answer? His answer would literally be her own words. At least, that’s the easiest place to start. He leaned close to her ear, and whispered. “You said no wolf is good enough for you, including me. You called me scum, ignorant, dumb-“

She pulled back, her eyes serious, and wide, and again chills ran up and down her body, from his breath on her ear. “I took some of that back.”

He caught her ear again, “Stupid, worthless, dumbass moron who-“ he whispered.

She pulled back again. “I… I didn’t mean some of that.”

Lestat stopped, and looked at her, their noses nearly touching. “That’s another lie, and you know it. We both meant it.”

Claire lowered her eyes. He was right. “You… called me worthless, and dumb, and…” Her voice lost its way and fell apart in the shadows of a cool August day. Surprise, and sadness, and regret. Claire knew what she wanted in a man, and her brain told her that there was no way possible Lestat fit that mold. She agreed with her brain. Every fiber of her being agreed with her brain. Every part of her agreed. Except her heart. At some point along the way her heart had started tying itself to him. She could feel it, the same way she could feel the wind tugging at a handful of ribbons.

He sighed. “Why am I trying hard not to like you? Because I don’t know who to trust- the witch I’m cuffed to, or the woman I’m walking home with. One calls me her friend, and one hopes I die in my sleep.” He looked at her for a moment, at her honey-colored eyes and turned back.

If there had been any doubt before, there was none now- Claire knew her heart was tied to him, because he had every single ribbon in his hand, a handful of red ribbons running in tangled webs back to her heart, and he pulled on all of them as he turned back around, and she nearly fell forward into him. She steadied herself, and cleared her throat, and lowered her eyes, and bit her lip. “Le-“

“Let’s go,” he interrupted, and pulled her up, and ran to the storehouse.