Here be Monsters Read online

  Not for lack of trying, of course. How could she have known, when he proved immune to all her wiles, that he would have fallen in love with her for herself?

  So she stepped away from him with perhaps more gentleness than she might have—just far enough away to lift her lips for a kiss. Gregory was still for a moment, then began to tremble again and his kiss, though feather-light, stunned her with its intensity.

  When she caught her breath, she smiled into his eyes, her own glowing, and said, “Come. This creature may have left havoc in its path. We must track where it has been and remedy its devastation.”

  Gregory looked up in surprise. “Why, even so! How compassionate you are to have thought of it! Come, let us seek!” He turned away, eyes on the ground.

  Well, Allouette would have thought of it as caution and self-preservation, but she was quite content to let Gregory think her compassionate—and a trace of the thought lingered, not enough to convince her that he saw truly, but enough which, added to other such remarks he had made, would someday make her begin to wonder. For now, though, she paced the trail beside him, looking for the prints the ogre’s huge feet had made, pressed down into the hardened dirt by its massive weight; for rocks showing the darkness of moisture where those feet had overturned them; and a dozen other such signs.

  Then she heard a brushing noise in front of her and looked up to see an even uglier face glaring down at her.

  Her fingers bit into Gregory’s arm. “Do not move, dear, but look up!”

  Gregory looked and froze.

  She was a parody of the female form, a burlesque, a grotesque. Where the male’s hair had been a thatch, hers was a bramble bush, grayed with age, and her face had so many wrinkles it was hard to pick out which ones held eyes and mouth. She wore a giant sack for a dress with neckhole and armholes raggedly scooped out. She was bow-legged and massive of limb and paw, and her mouth opened to reveal the yellowed stumps of snaggled teeth as she let out a roar, lifting a huge club two-handed above her head. Her eyes burned with fury as she swung it down.

  They sprang to either side and the vast cudgel slammed into the earth where they had been. “My turn!” Allouette shouted, and glared at the ogre-hag, thinking with all her might of plant cells dissolving their bonds, of molecules breaking away from one another, of candles melting into puddles of wax.

  But the huge club was rising again, and Gregory called, “Quickly, my heart!” as he drew his sword and leaped in.

  The hag howled and pivoted, club swinging down.

  “Gregory!” Allouette screamed, completely losing her concentration—but her lover leaped back, and the weapon hissed where he had been while, behind him, the horses echoed the ogre’s shriek.

  Allouette almost went limp with relief, then pulled herself together and focused madly on the thought of a snowman melting in the sun.

  The horses pounded in side by side, necks stretching and teeth reaching for the ogre. She howled in rage, whirling her club in a roundhouse swing, but the horses reared and the club swished under their feet. Then those iron-shod hooves struck.

  The ogre fell back with shouts of pain and bellows of rage. She began to swing her club in a circle overhead, wading back toward the warhorses, not realizing that she was sinking lower and lower with each step until she could no longer move. Only then did she look down, but before the horror of her dissolution could really break upon her, Allouette poured all her emotional energy into a vision of the snowman collapsing into slush, and the ogre disintegrated into a gelatinous mound.

  “Well done!” Gregory embraced her, crowing with pride—so that she need sacrifice none of her own if she clung to him in dizziness or distress. “Oh, well and bravely done, my heart! Subtly and quickly, and the coup de grace delivered like a thunderclap!”

  “But . . . but she was alive!” Allouette gasped. “And not slain, only . . . dissolved!”

  “But so suddenly that she never knew,” Gregory pointed out. “Besides, my love, what was the creature a week ago? Only this same mound of fungus, nothing more.”

  Allouette’s trembling lessened.

  “Besides, we could not leave it loose to gobble cattle and smash the peasant folk,” Gregory said with practicality, “and this was more merciful than slaying her with swords or horses’ hooves.”

  “That is so.” Allouette smiled up at him, tears drying on her cheeks. “Praise Heaven I have you to console me!”

  He beamed and lowered his head a little more, to kiss her.

  They went on their way, their horses side by side so that they could ride hand in hand. Inwardly, Gregory exulted that Allouette’s heart had softened so much that she could weep for an enemy she had vanquished, even one so hideous and bloodthirsty as an ogre.

  Scarcely an hour later, though, they encountered a peasant family, pacing beside an oxcart loaded with their household goods, their faces grim and grief-stricken.

  Allouette reined in. “Hold, good people! Wherefore do you flee your home?”

  “Why, because three ogres have come upon us, lady,” the woman said, and dabbed at reddened eyes with her sleeve. “They have feasted on our cow, and we have no wish to follow her down their gullets.”

  “Heaven forbid,” Gregory said.

  “Heaven grant they have not gone ahead of us!” the husband returned.

  “Be easy in that,” Allouette told him. “Two of them have indeed gone before you, but they are slain.”

  “Slain!” Husband and wife exchanged a glance, and the children stared wide-eyed at the fine lady. Then the wife turned back to Allouette and stammered, “But how? Such great grisly things as those—who could dispatch them?”

  “Is there some knight-errant who has come to slay them?” the husband asked. “But what weapon could dispatch such monsters?”

  “Magic,” Gregory answered, “and its wielder was no knight, but a witch.”

  “A witch!” The family shrank together, the mother’s arms going instinctively around her children.

  “Peace, peace,” Allouette said, smiling. “She is a good witch, not an evil one, as you may see by her dispatching such villainous creatures as these. Moreover, she goes her way; you will certainly not encounter her ahead on the trail.”

  “If . . . if you say so, lady.” The husband moved a little away from his family. “You have seen her, then?”

  “She has come within my glance,” Allouette admitted.

  “Well, if you should see her again, give her our thanks,” said the husband.

  “Aye!” said the wife. “She may have slain them, but she has most likely saved our lives!”

  Allouette stared at her, then looked up to find Gregory’s gaze on her, glowing. She blushed and looked down again. “I rejoice to hear it. Go your ways, now, with no fear of either ogre or witch.”

  “But what of the third monster?” the wife asked. “We dare not go back to our cottage!”

  “Where is this third one now?” Gregory asked.

  “We only know that we saw it near our cottage,” the father said.

  “That is some help, at least,” Allouette said. “Where did they come from?”

  The parents spread their hands and shook their heads, at a loss, but one of the little girls piped up, “I saw them!”

  “Hush, Essie!” the biggest boy hissed.

  Essie rounded on him. “If Mama and Papa told us never to go there, Chogie, it was surely not because they feared ogres!”

  “How is this?” the mother asked, frowning.

  Essie looked up in alarm, then tucked her chin in truculently, hands locked behind her back. “We only went because the gooseberries are so much bigger and more juicy there.”

  “As well they might be, where the river overflows in nearly every rainstorm! I will not have you tracking mud all over the cottage!”

  “We cleaned the mud off before we came home,” Chogie muttered.

  “Even so—” Mama began, but Allouette interrupted her.

  “By your leave, good woma
n,” she said, holding up a hand, “may we hear their tale? If there is a third ogre near, we must know whence it came, or we may find ourselves beset by more of the creatures.”

  The whole family looked up, wide-eyed and shocked at the thought.

  “Perhaps you would indeed do well to repair to your lord’s castle,” Gregory said, “as you no doubt meant to. There will be time to come home when he tells you that the ogres have gone.”

  “If they leave our cottage standing,” the wife said, tears in her eyes.

  The husband put his arm around her. “There, now, even if they do not, three friends and I can build it anew in a fortnight—but what reason could ogres have to smash a cottage?”

  “What reason have they for anything they do?” the wife moaned.

  “Hunger,” Allouette said. “I do not doubt they were simply hunting and foraging.” She turned to the children. “So you went down by the river for gooseberries. What did you see?”

  “Mist,” Chogie said. “There is always some mist over the river in the morning, but this was much more thick and dense.”

  “And high,” Essie added. “It was not plumes lifting, but a cliff of fog rising up to mask the sun.”

  “When all else was bright with sunlight?” Gregory asked.

  The girl nodded. “A wall of mist, it was! And the ogres came out of it, all three.”

  “The gooseberry bush was between us and them,” Chogie explained. “We crouched down and held our breaths.”

  “We were too frightened to breathe,” Essie added.

  “I was not frightened,” Chogie said quickly.

  “Oh, really!” Essie turned on him again. “Why then were you shaking in every limb?”

  Chogie reddened and opened his mouth for a blistering retort, but Allouette quickly said, “Did you stay still till they had gone out of sight?”

  “Yes, lady.” Chogie turned back to her.

  “And saw only three ogres come?”

  Chogie nodded.

  “Then we ran home and told Mama and Papa,” Essie explained.

  “Was the fog still there when you left?” Gregory asked.

  “No.” Chogie frowned, puzzled. “We looked back from the top of the slope, and the mist had thinned and lifted.”

  “Mist always burns off in the morning,” Essie said condescendingly.

  Chogie reddened. “Not so quickly! Not when it was so thick!”

  “Yes, that is odd,” Allouette said, frowning. “Was that only this morning?”

  The children nodded. “Then Papa came home to tell us he had seen an ogre shambling across the field,” Essie said, “so we took what we most needed to the cart.”

  “Wisely done,” Gregory said.

  Allouette turned to him. “Like enough, then, there is only the one left.”

  “It would seem so,” Gregory said. “Still, let us be watchful.”

  Allouette nodded, then turned back to the family. “Thanks for this news, goodfolk. Go to your lord’s castle, then. But be watchful—the third ogre might still be on the road.”

  “No, lady,” the wife said. “We looked back at the turn and saw it breaking a tree.”

  Gregory and Allouette exchanged glances; Gregory nodded. “After it, then.” He touched his heels to his horse’s flanks.

  “Beware!” the wife cried. “You are riding straight toward the monster!”

  “We are indeed,” Allouette assured her.

  “Had you some thought of going onward?” the husband asked in alarm. “Oh, if you do, gentleman and damsel, do not, I pray you!”

  “Have no fear for us,” Allouette said, touched. “The witch who dispatched the first two shall surely be equal to the third.”

  “Has she ridden past us, then?” the wife asked, horrified, and Essie and Chogie looked over their shoulders in fright.

  “Do not fear,” Allouette told them. “She rides past you even now.”

  “Where?” The husband and the wife looked about them frantically.

  But Essie and Chogie stared up at Allouette, eyes round as saucers, and Essie raised a trembling finger to point at her. “There!”

  “Even so.” Gregory reached out and caught Allouette’s hand. “The witch rides with me—so fear not, good people. I shall be quite safe from the ogre, and so shall you.” With that, he clucked to his horse and rode on, Allouette’s hand firmly clasped in his own. She gave one dazzling smile to the peasant family, then turned her eyes and her mind to the task ahead.

  They didn’t find the third ogre until the slapping of huge feet running up behind him made Gregory shout, “Beware!” as he pushed Allouette’s horse away, sawing back on his own reins, pulling hard to the right. His horse reared, screaming in rage as the monster’s acrid scent struck its nostrils. The huge club hurtled past it but grazed Gregory’s leg—a graze from a club as thick as a ham. It cracked on bone and shot agony through his thigh and knee. He set his jaw against pain and set his mind to thinking of melting, but the pain seemed to send a red haze over everything he envisioned. Somehow, though, the ogre tripped and fell, its whole form shimmering and slumping into a shapeless mass as Allouette screamed, “Caitiff! Cat’s meat!” She raged on in the same vein for several minutes, glaring at the flaccid heap. It seemed to wince with her every word. “Swine! Snake! Unnatural son of a lizard and a cow! Strike at my love, would you? Forever be fungoid, then! Worse—be no more than slime!”

  The heap flowed outward, turning into a puddle that spread across the road. The horses retreated, nostrils flaring, picking their hooves fastidiously away from the moisture that was already evaporating to leave only a thin greenish coating over the hard-packed dirt.

  “Peace, peace, sweet one!” Gregory gasped. “I am not so badly hurt as that!”

  “Hurt? You are wounded!” Allouette turned from attacker to victim and touched his knee. “How bad is the pain? Nay, do not seek to be brave—I must know truly or I can do naught to heal!”

  “The knee itself is fine,” Gregory told her.

  Skeptical, Allouette tapped his knee a bit harder.

  Gregory shook his head. “No pain there at all. The thigh aches abominably and will no doubt bear a horrible bruise, but I doubt there is any real damage.”

  “Let me see.” Allouette probed the outside of his thigh. Gregory stifled a groan between clenched teeth. She gave his face a sharp glance—then, frowning, set one hand on each side of his thigh as she pressed outward in a spiral. “How far does the pain go?”

  Gregory caught his breath, eyes losing focus.

  Allouette gave him a shrewd look, then a smile as she took her hands away. “Nay, if you can feel pleasure as well as pain, there is no lasting harm. But I’ll not have you confusing the two, so put any thoughts of dalliance out of your mind!”

  “I shall not even think of it,” Gregory said with exaggerated innocence, “not when we still ride into danger.”

  “Yes, we do, do we not?” Allouette frowned at the road ahead. “There is the matter of this mist from which the ogres came.”

  Gregory nodded. “It sounds indeed like something wrought by an esper.”

  “How would an esper make mist?” Allouette asked, frowning, then instantly answered her own question. “Of course, by making water molecules cling to dust motes!”

  “You knew the answer already.” Gregory’s eyes glowed.

  “Oh, be done with your admiration!” Allouette scolded. “Anyone who knew a bit of physics could have worked it out! After all, mist forms when moist air cools and the molecules cling together—so when it is too warm for that, simply have them cling to something else!”

  “And your telekinesis is equal to the task.”

  “Be done with your gloating, I said! I am no special woman to be able to use common sense.”

  “If you say so, love.” Gregory turned back to the road with a covert smile.

  Behind his back, Allouette allowed herself a small smile too, one of satisfaction. Gregory was so thoroughly besotted with her
, mind, spirit, and body, that it might someday become irritating.

  But not yet. Allouette gave a brief and unsparing look within her own heart and knew that her self-esteem was still so low that she could absorb a great deal of admiration before she tired of it.

  A mile farther on, they met several families traveling together, looking nervously over their shoulders. When they saw the man and woman riding toward them, they did their best to wave them away with cries of “Forfend!” “Beware!” “Ride swiftly away, gentle folk!”

  “Wherefore?” Gregory asked, drawing rein. “What lies ahead that is so terrible?”

  “A wall of fog with huge hulking shadows that move within it!” one woman said.

  “We doubt not that they wait only for nightfall to come out and fall upon us,” a man added.

  Allouette looked puzzled. “I thought the ogres came forth in the early morning.”

  “Ogres?” The peasants stared. “Have they come out, then?”

  “Aye, some hours ago,” Gregory said, “but banish your fears, for they have been vanquished utterly, and have left only slime behind.”

  That scared the people even more; they huddled together. “What monster could have vanquished ogres?” one quavered.

  “A witch,” said Gregory, “who sought to protect the common folk, like yourselves.”

  Allouette blushed but didn’t deny it.

  “Will . . . will she come this way?” a woman asked, eyes wide with fright.

  “Is she needed?” Allouette asked sharply. “If so, tell me what dangers she must face!”

  “Only what we have said,” a man told her, “though we did find several sheep torn and half-eaten this morning, by the riverbank.”

  “The riverbank?” Allouette turned to Gregory. “A water spirit, do you think?”

  “Say rather a monster,” he answered, “though perhaps no more than a crocodile.”

  “A crocodile in an old wives’ tale would be a dragon,” Allouette pointed out.

  “A dragon!” the people cried, and tightened their huddle.

  “Peace, peace, good people!” Allouette said in a soothing tone. “We do not say that there is a dragon—only that there might be.”