Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

Larner touched the bride’s shoulder to quiet a rumble he anticipated and feared. “She cannot be seen,” he said, “not an inch of her flesh today.”

“And why’s that?” said another man nearby.

How terrible if they clamored for me to reveal my skin, a general rebellion on the boat, led by a drunk. Larner had remained silent alone for years, but last night’s ceremony had opened a long-closed door in him.

“Friends,” Larner said. He looked at the captain expecting paid support. “We have no time to suffer a lengthy speech that might win your favor. So, simply, row on and forget the presence of my humble daughter, no more important in the grand scheme of your day than a common moth. Give her no thought. Let us proceed.”

“Such protest surely obscures a strange truth,” muttered another passenger. He wore no hat and shielded his eyes from the glare.

“My daughter’s dress glows in today’s sun, brighter than a beacon guiding endangered ships. Heed her brilliance, respect this special day, and leave us in peace.”

The captain approached the wedding dress and said, “If we are to believe your words let us hear one from her. Or will we not be able to hear her voice through such thick veils?”

“A word and you’ll leave us in peace?” Larner said. “Not the most pleasant melody emerges from her crippled mouth, I warn you.”

“Crippled?”

“Aye, a fire. Long ago. I wished not to reveal this, but it is the reason she covers herself thus and marries a blind man. Please pity my poor daughter, whose voice has been affected by inhalation of smoke, though her ears remain as sensitive as her heart.”

“So we know she is not a fugitive, let her speak.”

“Speak then, my dear. Tell them of our haste.”

From beneath the series of thick veils, I said, “We are in a great hurry on this my special day”—thinking: this is no better than attempting passage with wings exposed. I tried to make my voice sound feminine, but it came out odd, of course.

“A woman, you say!” said the drunkard. “Please. Unmask him! Not a woman, and most likely no free man, either.”

“Acrid plumes damaged her voice.”

The captain turned to Larner. “Let us see her hand before we travel on in peace.”

“So disfigured it is you will forever regret the request.”

“Show it,” the hatless man said, and the others grunted agreement.

“Show it,” said Larner to me. “Let their curiosity be sated. Serve their selfishness.”

I inched a hand out of the sleeve. At first sign of aggressive reaction I would tear off the gown, grab Larner, and fly us over the sea, safe from this world of so-called men.

I held out my hand. It was delicate enough to pass perhaps for a woman’s.

LATER LEARNED that Branley Jukes—thief, mental defective, father of three—met us on the road to Umbria, doubled back along a footpath, entered a tavern called the Bucket of Blood, and relayed the encounter’s innocent beginning and nearly tragic end: “Sinfulness such a creature harbors, without doubt, whose existence foretells horror to come.” It was not the first time Jukes had ranted about a talking chicken or a stranger more cow than man. The tavern crowd did not trust him any farther than they could stumble at the end of the night.

The Jukes family had long worn the crown of fools. But no one found these jesters humorous. Above-average height, below-average weight, they walked with a jerking motion inherited Jukes to Jukes. They kept their mouths shut as though ashamed of their teeth, but their eyes they opened wide, staring into a distance where their gaze melded the branches of a dead elm with distant laundry on a line, combining these until they swore they witnessed something remarkable, if not a devil than a spirit no more damned than its beholder. That generations of these odious idiots survived was an unfortunate miracle, most thought. Many hoped that each successive Jukes would be the last. But when confronted with a potential mate, instead of uttering incomprehensible, delusional rants, they somehow managed to woo.

Each generation of Jukes deposed itself well before old age. That he talked of horned fingers and a satanic growl seemed proof that the current Jukes would soon proceed down the path of his forebears. Many wished he’d get on with it. Three days straight he talked. And then news arrived of a couple on the ferry, an old man and a woman in a white wedding dress. The old man claimed she’d been burned and deformed, but when she revealed a hand, it was clear of scars and delicately boned yet nevertheless masculine.

This story substantiated, in Branley’s mind, the claim that some mysterious creature was about, one that perhaps was two separate forms, an old man and something so hideous it must be concealed from sight or else cause an uproar.

Jukes now maneuvered all conversation to the presence of this monstrous pair. They were responsible for the death of Farmer Chandler’s cattle last month, he said, as well as every accident and negative variation in life. Leaves dried and fell and the light weakened and rain came colder and breath could be seen from one’s mouth—their presence brought these changes, so claimed Jukes.

Once this mysterious pair no longer existed, he said, we would live in paradise—everyone accommodated. Jukes then displayed an unexpected investigative diligence. He analyzed every cloven footprint, sniffed at every turn for monster and old man, scrutinized elderly couples to see if one were not disguised, even nosed around wedding receptions to ensure excessive veils did not obscure a beast in place of a bride.

Nathaniel Leeds oversaw the press at the Umbria newspaper and distanced himself from the spoken-word world of the tavern. Illiterate Jukes had forever passed Leeds as though he were words on a page. But now the former approached the latter after thirty years of no more than a nod.

“Mister Leeds. Honorable Leeds,” said Jukes. “Please confirm your relation to the Leeds Devil.”

Nathaniel Leeds laughed. “No one has ever mentioned the similarity in surname other than my father, who said it related to a legend based on an old almanac we possess. My father asserted it was composed for monetary purposes, but he also said the Genuine Leeds American Almanack could be as valuable as I wanted it to be. I value its connection to predecessors. Impossibilities in the text— the monster that slaughters its family—I have always understood as sensationalist hoax.”

Nathaniel Leeds had also always understood Jukes as crazed. Jukes’ father had been unpredictable: at times noble; at times volatile; at times he’d help anyone who needed it; at times he was reckless, dangerous, liable to beat with fists those he had helped. Now, this current Jukes—younger than Leeds by half—haunted the tavern and sand trails, and preyed on travelers through the pines like some utterly unremarkable beast himself.

“Mr. Jukes,” Nathaniel said, his voice searching for tones suitable for confession more than lecture, “as I have aged, I have taken more interest in descriptions of William Leeds, in fact, than the so-called Leeds Devil. There is a fantastic call for information about him in the form of an annotated man, as well as excerpts of William Leeds’s apocalyptic writing from previous issues. These may fire your imagination as they have mine. The family history my father handed down—I am more stable than my distant relative, of course, but the era is easier now. I believe the obvious fantasy of the beast was conceived to regain readers lost to the work of Poor Richard Saunders. Confronted with such competition, their compendium of predictions, prophecies, and sundry usefulness they transformed into a purveyor of simple hoax. It was original and ambitious, and charged with such violence, it would have restored their almanac’s reputation had it been widely distributed, so entertaining, if not necessarily functional, were the drawings and prose.”