James Enge - This Crooked Way

Trannon accepted the blade without protest. Possibly, Morlock thought, he felt he had earned it.

Morlock threw his pack over his crooked shoulders. "Well, Trannon," he said. "We may meet again, or not. Either way, good fortune to you."

"Good-bye, Morlock Traveller," the other said. "Thank you."

Morlock walked away quickly. He had the feeling that Trannon was intent on doing something that would wreck everything Morlock had done. That was his choice; Morlock had discharged his own obligations, and they in no way included being Trannon's nursemaid forever. But the thought still bothered him.

He looked back when he reached the far side of the valley, and saw Trannon motionless in the moonlight beneath the toothlike hill.

Morlock set himself to climb the slope before him. When he reached the crest he looked back again. The other had disappeared. Morlock shrugged and walked on eastward.

When he finally got to sleep, late the next morning, Morlock's rest was broken by a nightmare. He dreamed that he had opened his own chest with a moonlight blade, intent on replacing his heart with a stone. But when he reached in to remove the heart, he found neither heart, nor stone, nor anything.

The storm was getting thicker and the day was getting darker-if you could even call it day anymore. Rhabia was having second thoughts about her decision to walk alone from Thyrb's Retreat to the town of Seven Stones. On a good day she could have almost made the trip by now, but she hadn't anticipated how much the snow would slow her down. This was a bad road to travel at night; there were gnomes and werewolves living nearby. Unfortunately, it was too late to turn back: for all she knew the danger lay behind her. She'd have to trust to luck and keep going.

For a moment it looked as if her luck had deserted her: she saw a silhouette even darker than the sky, looming in the snow ahead on the road. Then she recognized the crooked form and laughed: it was just that odd wryshouldered man who had been staying at Thyrb's. She ran on to join him. He was no particular favorite of hers-she didn't even know his name-but there was safety in numbers on this haunted road.

"Hey!" she shouted over the hissing of the wind-driven snow. She wanted him to know she was coming up behind him: he was probably as nervous as she was.

He turned to face her …sort of. There was just a dark patch where his face ought to be, with a slash for the mouth and two holes for eyes. A large dark hump loomed behind the featureless head…. She stopped, stricken by a sudden panic. But then one of his hands tugged at the dark patch and it came down around his neck; it was just a mask against the snow and the freezing wind. The face revealed was the one she expected to see: dark weather-beaten skin with a crooked smile and gray searching eyes that peered at her through the murk. The hump, she now saw, was just his rather large backpack.

"I don't know if you remember me," she said, almost apologetically. "I'm Rhabia. We sort of met back at Thyrb's."

He nodded.

"I thought we could walk together, at least as far as Seven Stones," she forged on.

He nodded again and gestured at the road beside him, as if it was his to give. When she was level with him he began to trudge forward through the snow again.

"It'll probably be safer for both of us," she explained. "There are werewolves nearby. Gnomes, too."

He nodded a third time, and said, "Werewolves are certainly less likely to attack two than one."

"Cowardly beasts," she agreed.

"Just careful," he disagreed, and pulled his mask back up.

"Do you have to wear that thing?" she complained. "It gave me a turn when I saw it."

"I'm wearing it."

"Oh," she said, shrugging. It wasn't like his face was that much more attractive.

"I had to cut off somebody's nose once."

"Oh?" she said, a little alarmed again.

"Frostbite. Now I wear this thing when it's cold."

"Oh."

"You have just said, `Oh,' three times."

"So what if I have? You think your conversation is winning any prizes, with all this talk of nose-cutting and frostbite? What are you, some sort of surgeon?"

"No. I make things. And you?"

"A little of this, a little of that. Right now I'm taking a message from Thyrb to a goldsmith in Seven Stones." The message was a letter of credit for a large sum of money, but Rhabia thought she'd keep that to herself. Not that she anticipated any trouble from this guy, but you never could tell. "He told me he'd pay me double if I got it to the addressee before tomorrow morning, so I headed out in spite of the snowstorm. Now it'll be midnight before I get to Seven Stones and I'll never find the goldsmith before morning, unless he lives above his shop. So here I am freezing my ass off and Thyrb will keep my bonus after all, may Morlock eat his liver."

Her companion turned to look at her and then looked back at the road. She supposed he was offended by her swearing in Morlock's name. Lots of people didn't like it, especially at or near dark, but she thought that was nonsense. It was one thing to be afraid of gnomes and werewolves, which everyone knew were real. But had anyone ever really seen Morlock Ambrosius? Even if he'd ever really lived, that was hundreds of years ago; he wasn't likely to show up here and now.

"I doubt he would," her companion remarked, sounding more amused than offended.

"Who would? Would what?" Her train of thought had distracted her from the conversation.

"I doubt Morlock would chew on Thyrb's liver."

"How would you know?"

"Eh. Who eats liver by choice?"

"There is that, of course," she admitted. "Even on Thyrb there must be more attractive cuts of meat. His heart, for instance, for a very light snack."

"You loathe Thyrb, but you work for him," her companion observed.

"I'll take his money to do a job I'm willing to do, but I don't work for him. I work for myself. You must understand that, being a journeyman …what is it you make, exactly?"

"Many things."

"All right, so you're a journeyman tinker. Someone pays you to mend his kettle, but is he your boss? I ask you."

"I see your point."

"Say, what is your name, anyway?"

Her companion trudged on for a few steps through the knee-high snow without saying anything. Rhabia began to think he might not have heard her (the wind was blowing something fierce) and was about to repeat herself when he said, "As a matter of fact, it's Morlock."

A qualm of fear gripped Rhabia's heart. Here she was, alone in the middle of a howling blizzard, surrounded by werewolves and gnomes, taking a stroll with Morlock Ambrosius…. But, no. It couldn't be him. Her fear receded.

"Isn't that funny?" she said, a trace of nervousness still present in her laugh. "I suppose it causes you a lot of trouble."

"Now and then," Morlock admitted.

"You should change it."

"My name is my name. I don't trust people who go by pseudonyms."

"I suppose some people even think you're Morlock Ambrosius."

"It has happened. What makes you so sure I'm not?"

He's trying to scare nae, Rhabia thought, and laughed again, more confidently. "I've seen you by daylight, Morlock. Yesterday, at Thyrb's Retreat."

"So?"

"Everybody knows that Morlock Ambrosius will turn to stone if he stands in the light of day."

"I didn't know it," Morlock admitted, "and I thought I'd heard all the Morlock stories. Gnomes will turn to stone in sunlight, or so I'm told by those-who-know."