The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

The Book of Pamela Strauss

I was sixteen then. It never occurred to me to tell Friederich that I possessed the power of the Wolf, and I never asked him if he could only turn at the time of the full moon. I’d never known him to do it any other time, though. I had to remember this fact, however: my mother had been a wolf. And he had come for my birth. Had he waited for a full moon to change? Had I been born on one?

Friederich was like my husband now, but Hagano was my lover. We ran through the hills and we ran with the wolves. They let us come and go as we pleased, and I began to understand the wolf mind, which is different from a human mind, but not less, I do not think, and when we parted from them, either in wolf form or with human bodies, Hagano and I shared ourselves.

One night, I came home and Friederich demanded, “Where have you been?”

This was unlike him, and I said, “It’s none of your affair.”

He shook me by the wrist and then said, “Gather all you can. We must go.”

I was about to ask why when I saw a hand sprawled out in the next room and a puddle of blood surrounding it.

“Georg,” he said. “Georg said he had seen me as the Wolf. He said he saw you as the Wolf as well.”

There was the question in Friederich’s eyes which I decided I had no time to answer.

“So you killed him?”

“What else could I do?”

I could not answer this, but I said, “I am going down the hill to Frau Inga’s.”

“What can she do?”

“I’m about to find out.”

Frau Inga was succinct.

“You must flee.”

“Again?”

“You have never fled, my Pamela.”

“But Father has. Will we have to flee every time he does something?”

“Next time he does something, if there is a next time, you must put him down. But you are young and you should not spend your whole life under these mountains.”

“We could go to Wurzburg.”

“The world is not what it was,” Frau Inga said, “and these days I have dreams of blood. Blood and water drowning the land. I see fires in the sky. You must leave this land. This continent. Every day, outside of this village, great powers jostle for war. I have seen it. Soon this land and all lands will be covered in smoke. If you flee, flee to America. Never come back here. I have a little money, and I have directions.”

Later in the day, she said, “Take these envelopes. My daughter, the one who breastfed you, has gone to a place called Ohio. She is wed to a man called Keller. Find them. Find the Kellers. Our blood is strong, wolfling. it is the blood of witches. Bind ours to yours.”

The anger and weariness died in Marabeth’s heart, replaced by a realization that was hot and cold all at once.

“Frau Inga. The witch who bound Friederich. We are descended from her. Everyone in this house.”

WE COULD HAVE BURIED Georg and hid him away in the dirt, but there would have been questions. We could have moved the next town over, or even to Wurzburg, but by then the police went from place to place, and crimes were not as easily hidden. Besides, Frau Inga had told me of her terrible vision. And so we left in the early morning, in a wagon with all we had, making our way to Wurzburg, then from Wurzburg to Munich, from Munich to Frankfort and then to Cologne, each time my becoming more and more surprised at the size of the world, for I had never known even Germany to be so huge. At last we reached the port of Hamburg, and from that city we touched the sea. Looking back on that city, with its tall Gothic houses on the port, was the last time I saw Germany, but Germany meant nothing to me. The last time I saw the green trees and hills of Bavaria was the last time I saw home. Everything else was foreign land, and so I turned my back on the old port city, and looked forward to the sea, and to America.

Marabeth looked up and saw her brother standing in the doorway.

“Don’t say a fucking word to me, I’m not in the mood for it.”

Her room was filled with smoke, and she crushed out the last cigarette, and then downed a swig of the bourbon she’d taken from the library.

“I don’t feel like your shit, and I’m tired of your moods. Oh, by the way, I’ve handled everything with Steigler and Steigler. At eleven o’ clock in the fucking night. There’s going to be using a nice oak coffin and no embalming. There will be…. They said something about rendering or refrigeration, and I said I really didn’t need to know anything else. Now, if you don’t have anything else to say…”

“I’m sorry,” Kris said, “and I also talked to Jim. I‘m—you’re right, Mara. And I do need to read that book, and I will, and I brought you someone.”

“You brought me someone?” Marabeth sat up.

A man entered the room. He was Black and a little shorter than Kris, and Marabeth thought, Why are you bringing some Black guy into this bullshit? Don’t they have enough to deal with? And then she thought, God, I look a mess.

“This is my mentor, Dr. Uriah Dunne,” Kris said.

“Oh…” Marabeth climbed off the bed, pushing her hair out of her face and getting past what she looked like and what she must smell like.

“You were going to write to my cousin, Eve,” he said.

“Yes,” Marabeth remembered. “Eve Moreland? Should I?”

“Perhaps,” Uriah said, “but not by yourself. And, anyway, she is not the real power in our family. If you are going to talk to anyone, you must talk to her grandfather, Augustus. Or better yet my nephew, Lewis Dunharrow.”

End of Part One