The Frenchman Read online

  He spotted a massive rock imbedded in the shallow banks of the stream. Testing if these muscles were simply for show, Darren gripped the edges of the boulder and heaved it out of the ground. It took little effort to rip it from its deeply inset home on the banks and toss it clear to the other side of the stream.

  No, these muscles were not just for show. Darren let out a laugh of disbelief, feeling his heart hammer with unimaginable joy in his chest. He could lift a thousand wheelbarrows or plough a field without the leading aid of a horse. The possibilities were endless and he gave a great shout to the heavens.

  To clean the rest of his body, he dove into the stream and let the frigid waters flow over his legs and chest, somehow knowing that he wouldn’t get sick from it later. When he climbed out, he checked himself just once more to make sure he didn’t wash away the miracle that had taken place.

  Still unsure of where he was, Darren took a chance and ran to the north, hoping that he hadn’t fallen unconscious too far from where he fell. He had to see George and tell him what happened.

  Yet, as soon as he took off, he found himself colliding with a tree. Darren fell flat on his back and looked around, baffled. He was so far away from the stream that he could just barely make out the glittering sunlight along the surface. Darren only remembered taking a few steps and suddenly he was running into trees that weren’t there? Or was it there all along?

  He rose to his feet and dusted off the back of his legs before he started again. Once more, he nearly crashed into a pine, the prickly bark biting into his skin on impact. This time, he couldn’t even see the stream. Darren looked to his legs. Perhaps he could run much faster now, at a blinding speed that not even he could keep up with.

  He rose again and this time took off at a light jog instead of a full sprint. Sure enough, this speed was more manageable and he could easily weave through the obstacles in his path, but it still felt as if he were faster than he had ever been. His old stamina barely let him run for less than a quarter of a mile before he had to stop and rest. Now, he could jog at a steady pace for so much longer.

  It must have been half an hour before he finally saw a break in the trees and realized that he was much farther from Lockleat Forest than he anticipated.

  Before him was Lockleat House itself, the grand estate that was home to the politician Thomas Thynne. He could see the gardeners tending to the front lawn and expansive maze of hedges. These were the voices he heard from the forest, the mumbled conversations that woke him from his sleep. Closer now, he could hear them talk and gossip about estate affairs, but he was nowhere close. He couldn’t even make out the details of their faces, so how was it possible that he could hear them from so far away? Could everyone hear in this way?

  With a cleared path, Darren tested his speed once more. He took off at a run just around the perimeter of the estate, far enough from the eyes of the groundskeeper so that he wouldn’t be seen in all his nakedness.

  He managed to stop just before reaching the other end of the property where the woods continued. Looking back, he must have conquered several acres in a matter of seconds. This was impossible. How could he run so fast for such a long distance and barely break a sweat?

  Now he knew that he had to see George.

  He snuck onto the estate and swiped a pair of trousers from one of the laundry lines a maidservant was tending and rushed back to the safety of the woods. He directed himself a little to the east and continued on, until he reached Cley Hill with its rolling mounds and thick shrubs. It took him less time to arrive on foot at the strip of woods where George’s hut was situated than it would have taken him with a horse. Poor Gollumpus would be out of a job as long as Darren’s new body didn’t fail him.

  He smelled the herbs and spices before he even saw the plume of chimney smoke. He could even detect the slight whiff of George’s personal odor that he remembered from the evening before when they stood close to converse over a certain plant he was lecturing about.

  As he came into the clearing, George did not come out to greet him as he usually did. The planked door to the hut remained closed, but Darren could smell a bowl of stew steeping over the fireplace inside. His stomach rumbled in response to the savory smells.

  “George?” he called out, only successful in disturbing some birds from their nests in the trees around the hut. He heard no response and no one came out of the hut.

  The hermit had mentioned that he might not have been there in the morning. With every inhale of the delicious aroma of the stew, Darren could feel his hunger worsen.

  Surely George wouldn’t mind if he took a sip? Cautiously, Darren made his way inside the vacant hut – realizing he must have also grown in height overnight since he had to duck under the doorway just as George had to - and found a bowl to fill for himself. It was a struggle to ignore the overpowering herbs and the acrid smoke from the fire.

  The first few sips of the broth seemed to satisfy his appetite. But, upon the fourth sip, Darren knew something was not right. His stomach felt as if it were flipping within his core, and soon, the soup made its way back up.

  Darren hurried outside of the hut in just enough time before the soup came spilling out of his mouth in a vehement storm of vomit and broth mixed with a bit of blood. He had thrown up his meals many times, but never as violently as this, or so soon after tasting it.

  When it had all been expelled from his body, the nausea quickly abated and all that was left was a sense of utter perplexity and a more vicious hunger than before. New strength, new stamina, new senses, and a revulsion to simple stew? What did George give him?

  He wiped his mouth on the back of his arm and tossed the soup onto the ground before going back into the hut to retrace his steps. He carefully went back over what George had put in his salve and tonic and rehearsed each of their purposes and meanings, though he still couldn’t quite recall their names.

  As long as George was telling the truth, none of these contents should have been able to give him these abilities. The only explanation was that when taken in conjunction with one another, they produce these unbelievable results.

  Whatever the reason, Darren was not going to protest about a simple upset stomach. This new body, this new life that he had been blessed with, was surely worth a picky palette. Still, he needed to find George and thank him.

  He made his way out of the hut and called out into the morning once more. Through the myriad of smells, he could still perceive George’s distinct scent. At first, he thought he was imagining it. Then, as he veered toward the direction from which the scent seemed strongest, he knew it wasn’t a mistake. Darren picked up George’s scent, much like a bloodhound would, and was able to follow it right out of the clearing and to the east, toward Warminster.

  Without questioning his nose, Darren followed it, hoping that it would truly lead him to George and a possible reasonable explanation for his new body. If anyone knew what had happened, it would be George.

  Chapter 3

  When Darren entered Warminster, he didn’t consider the attention he would draw. Every one of the townspeople knew who he was by reputation, either of himself or his mother. They all knew him as the bastard child who could barely lift a basket full of grain. Even though he snitched a shirt from another farmer’s clothes line on the way into town, it did little to hide the change that took place in him.

  Heads swiveled in his direction and he could feel their shocked and frightened gazes as they assessed his new body. What he didn’t expect was to hear their whispers. Every word they said, whether in hushed voices or simply masked by their own hands as they talked to their neighbors, he could hear them loud and clear, even if they were across the street or behind closed doors.

  “Look at him!” they silently jeered. “What happened to him.”

  “That’s not the same boy.”

  “That can’t be Martha Dubose’s son.”

  “What did he do to himself?”

  “It must be the work of the devil.”
<
br />   “An angel must have blessed that poor boy.”

  Darren’s steps slowed as he turned to listen to each of them with a fluttering heart and uneasy stare. Their voices of dissention, ridicule, and disbelief crowded in until he was ready to give up on finding George and run for the quiet safety of the forest. He could scarcely hear himself think through the cacophony of noise from the townspeople’s chatter to the rumble of carts and stamping of horse hooves on distant streets.

  He could hear the merchants toiling away in their shops and laborers talking with their fellow workers. Children’s laughter and baby cries screamed in his ears as if they were close enough to touch. Smells of all kinds, from the putrid stench of dung to the perfumes of ladies in their homes, strangled his mind, and sometimes made him retch and cough for cleaner air.

  The town had never seemed so odious, so revolting and unkind a place as now. Darren thought he could take no more, until a new sensation pierced through the chaos. A tight and prickling feeling in the back of his skull. He sometimes felt this when he rushed out of bed too quickly or took one sip too many of the brandy that Arthur offered him to ease his stomach ailments. This, however, was much worse and more intense than any of that.

  He touched the back of his head to make sure he wasn’t bleeding or hadn’t been inadvertently struck by something. Darren did wake up on his back, so perhaps some bug or insect had bitten his scalp during the night. However, there was no blood or bump to indicate an injury.

  “Pssst,” he heard coming from up ahead, a harsh sound that seemed to break through all the distracting noises.

  Darren looked up and saw a man standing just outside the door of the bakery. His sharp blue eyes fixed on Darren and he waved him forward. As he obeyed the summons, Darren could feel the sharp needles in his skull dig their invisible points deeper into his skin.

  Yet he bore the discomfort long enough to join the man at the door. The baker’s cheeks and tunic were dusted with a decent layer of flour that offset his dark hair. As soon as Darren was within arm’s reach, the baker pulled him into his shop and shut the door.

  The yeasty scent of unbaked dough and fire from the ovens that met him was a pleasant smell compared to what he encountered on the streets of Warminster. All around, trays and bowls of rising dough and bushels of golden brown loaves were scattered over the floors and surfaces.

  Before Darren had a chance to adjust to the sudden lack of congesting noise, the baker grabbed him by the arm. “Were you bitten?”

  Darren looked to the frantic man and blinked back the fresh wave of confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  The baker quickly let go. The tingling in Darren’s skull began to ebb away, giving him some relief as he grew accustomed to the feeling.

  “Were you bitten or born this way?” he clarified as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Darren, still lost in the question, shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The baker’s brows lowered and he gestured to Darren’s body. “This. What made this happen?”

  Taking a look at the hysterical baker, Darren didn’t think that he was looking for the secret to his strength. Though the baker’s profession might have been innocuous enough, the man looked as if he could crush bones easily between his hands. In fact, their statures were not so dissimilar.

  “I… I just woke up like this,” Darren replied, not wanting to give away George or make the baker suspect that the hermit had anything to do with this just yet. The rest of the townspeople already believed him to be a sorcerer or witch of some sort. If they thought that George had created this new body for Darren, their suspicions might be confirmed.

  “So you were born one,” the baker said with a relieved nod. “That is good. At least we know that there isn’t another of us running around somewhere. Where is your father? Or is what they say true, that you have none?”

  Darren took a step away from the offending baker. “Born what? If you don’t start talking sense, I’ll… I’ll…” He held up one of his fists, something that never used to be intimidating. “I won’t hesitate to –“

  The baker let out a hearty laugh, cutting Darren’s threat short. “Boy, you can do nothing to me.”

  He had enough of their contempt, enough of being disregarded. He used to be defenseless, but no more. Darren used his fist and threw all his weight into the punch, sending the baker to the floor.

  With his chest heaving and heart thrumming heavier in his chest, Darren stood over the man and shouted, “Don’t laugh at me! Tell me what you mean! What am I?”

  He was expecting the baker to call him a bastard, a coward, or a fool. Instead, Darren watched with horror as the baker took his jaw and popped it back into place. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth and he wiped it on the back of his arm, smearing flour across his lips and chin in the process.

  If Darren had broken the man’s jaw in that way, he shouldn’t have been able to talk or even push himself off the floor so quickly. He hadn’t even expected to throw that much force into the punch.

  “You, boy, are a werewolf,” the baker said and he shoved a baffled Darren backward a step or two so he would have room to straighten out his tunic.

  “A… a what?”

  “Werewolf,” the man repeated. “Just like me.” He offered out his hand. “Bartholomew,” he introduced.

  Darren wasn’t sure whether to take the man’s hand or run out of the bakery screaming. He didn’t move, he didn’t accept the gesture of friendship offered by the man who just realigned his own jaw, and he wouldn’t believe anything the baker said.

  “Werewolf?” he questioned. “The beasts that mothers tell their children to make them behave?”

  Bartholomew lowered his hand. “Not the exact same, but the general idea. There are many differences, of course.”

  “Such as the fact that they don’t exist,” Darren replied. “No man can turn into a beast.”

  “Yet, you changed forms overnight,” Bartholomew stated. “I’ve seen you in town and you were not like this before. So how much more fantastic is it to believe a man can change into a wolf?”

  Darren shook his head. “It’s not the same.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  They stared at one another for a long, tense moment before Darren broke in. “What proof do you have? If you are a werewolf, prove it.”

  Bartholomew looked toward the paned window that gave him an ample view of the street beyond and moved away so anyone who might have peeked in couldn’t see his face. When the baker turned back to Darren, his eyes were no longer blue, but a brilliant shade of gold. Darren staggered backward, but could not look away as his hands trembled.

  “This is the easiest way to show you,” Bartholomew said, a note of apology in his voice as if he didn’t want their first meeting to have come to this.

  More startling that the change in Bartholomew’s eyes, was the change in Darren when he stared into the gaze of the wolf. Something deep within his chest began to stir, as if some whirling mass was coming alive beneath his ribs. There was no pain, just a sense of comfort and affinity with the pair of golden eyes.

  The rational, reasonable part of his mind could not comprehend any of it, shunning any possibility that this was real. Perhaps he had been dreaming this entire morning? The change in Darren’s body was slightly more difficult to accept than a man’s eyes turning an unnatural color that belonged on an animal. Yet, what if this were all a fantasy? What if these muscles and those eyes were nothing but a figment of his imagination, concocted by whatever George put in that tonic? This all led back to George in some way or another and it reminded Darren that he still needed to find him.

  First, he needed to see if this really was a dream. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut to block out the false reality. “This isn’t real,” he repeated to himself over and over again, as if it would do him any good.

  The baker grabbed him by the arms and shook him. “I assure you, this is real. Look
at me.”

  Against his better judgment to ignore the fictitious figure, Darren opened his eyes. The wolf in Bartholomew’s gaze was gone now and the blue had returned.

  “Where did you wake up? What happened last night before you fell asleep?”

  Darren saw no point in lying to the baker, since this was only a dream. He would wake up soon enough when someone found him in the woods. So he told him about riding his horse through Lockleat Forest, how he fell under tremendous pain, and blacked out in consequence.

  “Yes, you were certainly born a werewolf,” Bartholomew mused as he let go of Darren. “Do you know where your father is?”

  “Neither I nor my mother have seen him for years. He was not a werewolf.”

  “Can you be sure of that?” Bartholomew’s brows arched and Darren wasn’t positive anymore.

  “For the sake of argument, what if he was? What does that matter?”

  Bartholomew crossed his strong arms over his chest. “A werewolf can either be born or bitten by another werewolf. If you were not bitten, then your father must have been a werewolf. Those are the only two ways. It is preferred that fathers stay with their sons until they reach maturity, as you have, but it seems to be a rarity now. I’ve met many more like you who change and have had no guidance. Most unfortunate, I cannot give you such guidance. Only your father or an alpha can.”

  It was all too fantastic to believe and Darren gave the baker a mirthless smile and looked heavenward. “This is absolutely ridiculous. I’m not a werewolf.”

  “Then how else can you explain your enhanced senses and your new strength and speed?”

  Darren had mentioned none of that to Bartholomew in the short few minutes they had known one another. “How could you –“

  Bartholomew grinned and tapped one of his ears. “I am a werewolf too, remember? I’ve been around for centuries. I know how unusual it can seem, but you must believe I’m telling the truth.”