Disclaimer: The original characters Ambrose and Angelina Maurlias (any version), and Sabin, Samantha, Eric, and Alex
Duvert are (c) Arania (also
known as GaiaOnline's "Sabin Duvert")
and are being used only by permission for a contest. The following text (and
all subsequent chapters) should be considered fan-fiction and not canon.The scenario and writing are (c) E. A. O'Riordan (GaiaOnline's "Kuronue-chan") and are not to be used in any way
without the express permission of the author, with an obvious exception for
Sabin. Thanks for reading.
--
Introduction
Welcome to
"Tales," a collection of short stories about Sabin, Ambrose, and
their families. Each story was designed to be stand-alone. There is of course
one exception, but you'll know it when you see it. Each short story is also
accompanied by a "notes" section, where I explain what I was thinking
when I created it, what time it is set in, or other information I think you
should know. Enjoy!
--
Notes on AU: This story deals with immortal Ambrose, like “Seven,
Eight, Nine,” but makes no secret of Angelina’s whereabouts, though she may
have a longer lifespan than normal. The couple is in the process of assuming
new identities for the next portion of their lives when they find themselves in
a rather unremarkable suburban town. The setting in anywhere
between the late nineties and today.
--
Story 1: AU
--
The twenty-something
man unfolded his legs from their cramped position under the dashboard and
sighed. He looked over at his beautiful wife, who was only beginning to show
the first signs of aging, and she sighed too. This was another transition
period in their long lives, and neither was too fond of uprooting everything
and heading to a new place for a new identity and a new persona.
Standing and
stretching outside the car, Ambrose wondered at the strangeness of it all. Here
he was, at a gas station in some random town in some random state in
“I’m tired of
driving,” Angelina said, stifling a yawn. “We’ve been on the road for nine days
now. Can we just live somewhere around here? Looks nice
enough.”
Ambrose looked
around as he lifted the gasoline pump’s nozzle from its cradle. They seemed to
be at a crossroad in the town: in two directions, large houses raised
portentous heads in a show of yuppie wealth and hypocrisy; large brick-framed
signs heralded the entrances to such pompous neighborhoods as Stag Run
and Pinewood on the Green. In another direction lay neighborhoods that
had seen better days; houses that looked like they’d been built in the sixties
were still livable but seemed shamed by the proximity of grandeur in the form
of the larger, newer, more expensive cookie-cutter mini-mansions. In the final
direction was what Ambrose assumed to be the business district, of which the
gas station was an outcropping.
“For
Then an odor cut
through the acrid stench of gasoline that made him even more nervous. Even
while in human form, Ambrose’s sense of smell was highly developed, and it had
picked up on a disturbing scent. Not necessarily an unpleasant scent, but one
that was wild and hot and slightly animalistic while still being completely
recognizable as human. A scent that Ambrose knew very well,
because it was his.
“Angelina, have we
ever been here before?” the werewolf asked, his throat tight as he turned his
head from side to side in an attempt to find the smell’s origin.
“Here? No, not that
I can recall,” the woman rejoined, trying to read the expression on the face of
her usually calm husband.
“Ever?” Ambrose repeated urgently.
“No, no, I’m sure
we haven’t. What’s wrong? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Angelina also began
looking around, hoping to find some answers herself.
A
moment later Ambrose drew a gulp of air in sharply. Around the corner of the convenience store a teen
came sauntering, down from one of the pompous neighborhoods. He had a thick
shock of bright blonde hair that was stylishly cut into the fad of the month.
His clothes were trendy, in a preppy sort of way, and his hands were buried
deep in the pockets of fashionable jeans. But despite the differences in age
and apparel, the teen and the centuries-old werewolf could’ve been twins. The same jaw, the same dignified brow, the same nose. Within
a few years, their wide-shouldered build would even match.
Feeling suddenly
disoriented, Ambrose swung about as he heard a familiar voice call his name. He
saw a girl running up the sidewalk from the other part of town. At first he
thought he was seeing Angelina–albeit a very different Angelina from the
graceful woman who stood on the other side of their sedan, mouth agape. Why she
had called his name, or how she even knew it, was a complete mystery to
Ambrose, until she called again and the preppy-looking teen broke into a trot,
swept the girl up, and spun her around, grinning.
The pair by the car
watched silently as the boy set the girl down, kissing her on the forehead
before asking, “How’s your weekend been going, Angelina?”
Twining her fingers
into his, the girl retorted, “Oh, so-so. Y’know,
missing my boyfriend because his stick-up-their-ass parents made him go with
them to Dreu’s stupid states match.
You owe me a slushee for ditching me all day
yesterday, Ambrose.”
“I thought we just
established that it was my stick-up-their-ass parents who were responsible for
that,” the boy protested with a laugh, allowing himself to be pulled into the
convenience store anyway.
When the two were
out of sight, Ambrose and Angelina exchanged “what-the-hell-was-that”
looks, their faces blanched. Neither could shake the feeling that they had just
witnessed something that they were never supposed to have seen: a glitch in
normalcy larger than themselves...or at least the individuals they liked to
call themselves. Now they weren’t so sure that they were really Ambrose
and Angelina, and not some imposters who had outlived their own claims to
identity long ago.
“I, uh, don’t think
this is the best place to stop,” Ambrose muttered, his voice strangled.
“Yeah, what’s
another couple days’ driving?” his wife agreed, quickly getting back into the
car.
In their haste, the
couple forgot to pay for the fifteen gallons of gas they had pumped into their
sedan. Unfortunately for the enraged owner of the gas station wanting
retribution, they were never seen in the area again.
Story 2: There Is
No Second Warning
--
The young man
stifled a groggy yawn as best he could. He’d had a
late night...the party hadn’t broken up until four in the morning. Now he came
stumbling into his anthropology class at the crack-of-dawn hour of ten. He slid
into his desk and rummaged around in his bag for the can of coffee he’d brought
with him. Downing the entire container in three swigs, he stared bleary-eyed
towards the front of the classroom.
Twenty minutes
later, he felt his head snap up. He hadn’t even realized it was drooping. His
eyelids felt like a cruel mixture of lead and sandpaper, and it was nearly
impossible to keep them open. Trying to be inconspicuous, he propped his head
up on his hand to get more comfortable. The professor’s lecture faded into a
pleasant hum in the background as the young man fell asleep.
“Stephen?”
The student opened
his eyes. It felt like no time had passed at all. The professor was looking at
him, so he quickly passed a hand over his eyes and responded stupidly, “Huh?”
The
professor, a young-looking man with shockingly white hair, said, “We’ve been
talking about fears and how they played a large part in the development of
ancient cultures. What do you
fear, Stephen?”
Stephen looked
around at his classmates, most of whom had their eyes locked on him. “I...uh,
well...I can’t really think of anything right now.”
“No? Nothing specific? How unusual,” the professor mused,
eyebrows raised.
Stephen breathed a
sigh of relief. He had been certain that he would be reprimanded for falling
asleep in class. The upperclassmen had always said Duvert
was really strict about that, but he seemed to have escaped unscathed.
“We’ll just have to
run the gamut, I suppose. You shouldn’t have been sleeping in class, Stephen,”
the professor said softly.
Blinking in
confusion, the young man noticed that the edges of the room had become fuzzy. He
glanced back at the front of the room and saw Professor Duvert
slowly walking towards him, mouth slightly open. His teeth seemed even longer
and sharper than normal.
Turning to ask
someone else if they had noticed anything odd, he noticed that all of the other
students were staring blankly at him. Then the left eye of the girl closest to
him sagged. A splotch of a strange flesh-colored liquid dripped from her chin.
Her features softened and distorted as more and more liquid splattered to the
floor. Her face was melting.
Horrified, Stephen
turned to his friend sitting two rows back. The boy’s black hair was leaving
streaks of dark color in the oozing river of his face. His glasses clattered to
the ground as his ears melted away. Stephen glanced around wildly and found
that every student in the classroom was melting in the same way.
The professor was at
his desk. Facing him, Stephen stifled a screech. The long teeth were now
officially fangs, each one–and there were more than fifty–longer than his hand,
making the face appear wildly disfigured. The blue in Duvert’s
eyes had been consumed by red, and lumps under the skin on the cheekbones and
over the professor’s eyebrows squirmed sickeningly.
“Tell me, Stephen, what
do you fear?” the monstrous man above the student hissed, fangs clicking
ominously. “Darkness?”
Instantly the room
was covered in a blackness so complete that it seemed
like light had never existed. Stephen stood and fumbled forward, to where h
knew the door was. His groping hands met something wet and sticky. In a moment
of terrible recognition, he realized he must’ve touched someone’s face. He
tried to wipe his fingers on his pants, but the goo
clung to his skin like a parasite.
Then was no noise in
the darkness except his own breathing and heartbeat.
There was no sound of movement, but suddenly a chill swept down his spine as
the professor’s voice whispered, “Heights?” into his ear.
A dim grey replaced
the darkness, and Stephen saw he was on a tiny platform, no more than a foot
wide. In every direction was a huge chasm. What he imagined was thousands of
feet below was water. One false step would send him
hurtling down into that chasm.
Stephen tried to
calm his breathing. He glanced at his hand and shrieked. Where the goo had stuck was a brown eye and part of an eyebrow
staring spitefully up at him. He tried again to wipe it off, but the eye just
glared.
A light chuckle
caught his attention. Duvert was sitting across the
chasm at his desk, which was the one thing in the room that seemed unchanged.
The man himself, however, had become even more hideous. Oily black flames
dripped from his gaping mouth, and as Stephen watched, the writhing skin on Duvert’s face cracked and peeled back, revealing four more
evil red eyes. “Spiders? Rats? Snakes?” the deformed
mouth whispered, the words coming out like thick globs of fire.
A ticklish
scratching began in the pockets of Stephen’s jeans. A long, hairy leg poked
out, followed by the huge, bulbous body of a spider. Something wriggled against
his legs, and he could feel a cold reptilian body slithering up his back.
Looking down, Stephen saw that dozens of rats were overrunning the platform,
clinging to his jeans, gnawing on his sneakers. Spiders hung from his shirt and
hair, and a long tongue flicked against his ear. Shrieking, Stephen tried
desperately to brush the creatures off. He lost balance.
For a moment he
thought he was weightless. Then he was hurtling downwards at an increasingly
frightening velocity, spiders and rats following him off the ledge like he was
some twisted pied piper. It seemed to take an eternity to fall...and then, too
suddenly, the water seemed to rise up to meet him. The impact left Stephen
breathless.
A few yards away, on
an outcropping of the original classroom, Duvert was
still sitting at his desk. How the desk had moved from the level of the
platform to the water was a question that went unasked and unanswered. Duvert rose from his seat and walked to the edge of the
water. His hair was turning to a gaseous black at the ends, and his skin seemed
to be chipping away, revealing an inkiness that pulsated with a life of its
own. Crouching, he spat, “Drowning?”
Stephen felt himself
sinking in the water and tried to swim, but his limbs seemed frozen. The salt,
for it seemed to be seawater, burned his eyes. His head dipped under the water
and he sucked in a gulp of the freezing brine. He fought his way back up,
spluttering and choking. But he didn’t stay above water long. Something brushed
against his legs, and he looked over and saw Duvert
grinning. A dorsal fin broke the surface of the water not ten feet from
Stephen.
Frantic, the young
man tried to swim to Duvert’s outcropping. But once
again his limbs refused to cooperate. Struggling to breath, Stephen turned to
face the fin, but it was gone. He bobbed for a minute, terror rising like bile,
before a sharp pain erupted in his leg, and he was being pulled down, down,
down...
Then a land was
lifting him up, and he was gasping for air. There was still a screaming pain in
his leg, but at least he could breathe... Looking over his shoulder, Stephen
saw with horror that his left leg was gone below the knee, and there was a
blood smear across the floor where he had been dragged from the water. As he
watched, a huge shark rose up from the pool and lunged across the floor towards
Stephen, its tiny eyes fixed upon him and its rows of teeth gnashing. Before it
could reach him, however, it got caught on the lip where the floor had broken
away, causing it to slide back into the water.
Stephen sensed a
presence in front of him and saw Duvert hovering over
him. Only a few bits of flesh still clung to the blackness, and the clothes
were beginning to corrode. Leaning close, he chuckled, “The unknown?”
Suddenly all was
dark again. Stephen lay panting and bleeding, completely
ignorant of his surroundings. Then he heard the snuffling. What sounded like a
huge creature was off to his left, breathing heavily and sniffing. A low growl
started. Stephen had no idea what it could be, but his mind started to conjure
up horrific images of monsters and beasts. The young man began to crawl away as
quietly as he could. An unearthly howl sounded from his right. There was
more than one. Stephen, disoriented in the darkness, scooted as best he
could in every direction possible, trying to avoid the noises.
At one point he
seemed to be leaving them behind. He reached his hand out to pull himself along
when it fell into water. He could feel the water churning and pulled back just
in time to hear jaws snap shut inches from him. The shark was still there.
Stephen curled up
into a fetal position and fought the urge to cry. Then he saw six points of red
light hovering above him. A clawed hand reached down and dug into his jaw,
pulling his up. He dangled, feet inches off the ground, and finally started to
sob. The eyes narrowed in pleasure as the savage voice asked, “What do you
fear, Stephen?”
Stephen could see
the outline of the creature that had been Professor Duvert.
It was tall and seemed to be fluid and amorphous. The jaw was filled with dozens
of huge fangs, yellowed and painted with blood. With the hand not holding him,
the monster pressed claws into the young man’s eye socket. There was a horrible
pain, and then Stephen could only see from one side. The creature studied the
eyeball in had in its talons, then popped the whole thing into its mouth and
crunched. Fluid leaked from its mouth as it grinned horribly.
“Tell me what you
fear, Stephen! Tell me!”
“You! You!” Stephen
shrieked. “You you you you! Please, God,
don’t kill me! It’s you I fear, okay! Please, God...d-don’t kill me!”
“Stephen?”
The young man sobbed
uncontrollably, unheedingly.
“Stephen, are you
all right?”
Stephen looked up
suddenly. He was in class, the bright sunlight falling across his desk. All of
his classmates were staring at him, shocked. Up front, Professor Duvert looked bemused. “Stephen, do you need to go back to
your dorm? You’re not looking so good. You seemed to be having some sort of
nightmare.”
Moving his feet,
Stephen discovered he still had both legs. The young man felt his face. Both
eyes were there, but tear streaks and snot covered a large part of the skin
below them. Suddenly burning with embarrassment, he asked to go to the
restroom.
The professor
checked his smile as Stephen left the room. He wouldn’t sleep in this class
ever again. Though, to be fair, he had given the boy a warning the first
week of the quarter not to doze. He turned back to the class. All of them were
looking back at him, puzzled. Well, all except for one girl, whose head was
resting on her arms, her breathing deep and peaceful. Duvert quirked an eyebrow, focused in on her, and said to
the sleeping girl in his mind, “Tell me, Amy, what do you
fear?”
This would be a fun
day.
Story 3: Marquis
de Cyr's Gala
--
“What is it?”
Ambrose asked, upon entering the drawing room and sensing that his wife was
distressed. Angelina looked up from her perch on the window seat. She had a
handsomely decorated piece of pressed paper in her hands.
“It’s the Marquis de
Cyr’s gala,” she responded morosely. “He’s set it for the night of the full
moon.”
The werewolf sighed.
The Marquis de Cyr was barely twenty-five, and his generation hadn’t
experienced the mass hysteria caused by the magical influx from Ravenloft some thirty years earlier. For them it was like
dark whispers and superstitious beliefs that held no real merit; even those who
believed those terrible times had really happened thought of them like an old
war–something to be studied by historians and generals, and nothing that might
concern them.
Ambrose himself was
one notable exception in the minds of this young generation. The old Captain of
the Musketeers had long been the subject of hushed gossip. He was one of the
few surviving werewolves. While most of the others had been killed by terrified
and misguided villagers in the years following Timothy’s short reign in
That was the
problem: no one had even seen proof that the nobleman Ambrose Maurlias was indeed a werewolf. Oh, they’d tried to get
proof. Daring visits and invitations to parties on full-moon nights had been
fruitless. It wasn’t that Ambrose was ashamed of his lycanthropy; it was simply
that he didn’t want to make to make a spectacle of himself. A seven-foot
werewolf arriving at a party or greeting guests would certainly be a spectacle.
“I won’t go,”
Ambrose said with finality. “You may go if you wish.”
Angelina shook her
head. “That’s not it. The invitation says the king of
“I guess the
Marquis’s influence reaches farther than his title would suggest,
that he has a king attending his gala. Anyway, Arman
will understand if I’m not there,” the werewolf muttered. But even as he said
it, he knew he was trapped. The unspoken code of gentility demanded that he, a
gentleman and Captain of the Musketeers, should attend at least long enough to
pay his respects to the foreign king, even if that king was a close personal
friend. To do anything less would be a major social faux pax
that might reflect badly on the entire country. After mulling that over,
Ambrose spat, “Damn that de Cyr.”
Angelina watched her
husband carefully. “Does that mean you will go?”
Ambrose sighed. “I
will need new clothes. Nothing acceptable for a gala will fit.”
--
The next few days
flew by. A tailor was called in, and a new suit of clothes was crafted for
Ambrose. Preparations were made. Friday, the day of the gala, approached very
quickly. On the morning of the event, a letter arrived. Recognizing the seal,
the servants rushed it to Ambrose. It was from Arman.
Tearing open the
envelope, Ambrose found the following note enclosed:
Ambrose –
I just found out
that you accepted that damn de Cyr’s invitation. You don’t have to come. I will
think of some excuse for your absence. I wish I had known about this sooner,
for I fear this might be a plot on the young marquis’s part to draw you out.
I’m very sorry for whatever part I played in it.
My runner has
been ordered to wait for a response from you. Let me know your intention,
Ambrose! I will react accordingly. After all, we must stick together, right?
Arman
Angelina, who had
been reading over her husband’s shoulder, clucked her tongue. “Well, you’ve
officially obtained the King of England’s permission to skip out tonight. What
will you do?”
“I’m going.”
Angelina’s eyes
widened. “What?!”
Ambrose set his
teeth and crumpled the note. “I said I’m going. I’ve been preparing all week, and hell if I’m backing down now. De Cyr will get his
werewolf, and that shall be that. But remind me not to invite the little swine
to our next event.”
--
A round-shouldered
youth glanced at his pocket watch. “Are you certain you invited him, de Cyr?”
The Marquis nodded
irritably, and responded for probably the twentieth time that night, “Yes, yes,
I invited him, and he said he was coming, too! I don’t know where he is.”
Almost as soon as he
finished speaking, however, the sound of hooves clattering on the graveled
drive caught the crowd’s attention. A crier bellowed, “Ambrose Maurlias, Captain of the Musketeers, and his wife!” for the
benefit of those who could not see.
A carriage was in
the drive, and the door opened to reveal...Angelina. The footman stepped around
to offer his hand to the woman, who had more layers of skirt on that she could
easily climb stairs in. Then a clawed hand gripped the edge of the doorway, and
a wolf’s face peered up at the crowd clustered at the entrance to the house.
A shocked gasp ran
through the assembled nobility as the tall, powerful form of the werewolf
emerged fully from the carriage, dressed impeccably in blue. The light of the
full moon caused his yellow eyes to glow as he looked at each person in turn. A
few of the ladies seemed close to fainting. No one said anything as they stared
down at what they perceived as a dangerous monstrosity.
From someone in the
group came an urgently whispered, “Do something, de Cyr!”
The Marquis, who was
one of the closest to the werewolf at twenty paces, muttered back, “What would
you have me do? That thing could have me ripped to pieces in an
instant!”
Ambrose heard these thing, and involuntarily his lip lifted just slightly
in a quiet, mostly-controlled snarl. He should not have come...
Trembling, the
Marquis de Cyr opened his mouth to say something. Before he could, the crowd
parted as the King of England quickly descended to the drive. “Ambrose! How was
the drive?”
The werewolf smiled
a toothy greeting. “Arman.
It is good to see you.” He grasped the monarch’s outstretched hands, and said
quietly, “Thank you for welcoming me.”
Arman’s eyes twinkled. “It is no trouble. I daresay some of
those women up there are going to need smelling salts, though. Ah, Angelina!
How are you?”
Seeing the king’s
acceptance to the creature, the crowd drew him in almost instantly. The young
men clustered around Ambrose, asking him about his condition and remarking
about his custom clothing. They asked for shows of strength, which Ambrose
politely declined, and tried to guess the length of his teeth. The showing of
those teeth when the werewolf spoke, however, was enough to check some of the
more brazen youths from making comments too freely.
The women absorbed
Angelina into their groups and pelted her questions about being married to a
“beast.” Feeling slightly insulted, but retaining her good manners, Angelina
chose to simply not answer most of these questions.
In all, the
all-night gala was tremendously successful. No one doubted the validity of
Ambrose’s lycanthropy from that night forward. It would have been nice to say
that the other nobles respected his feelings about appearing in his hybrid form
in public afterwards, but that simply wasn’t the case. He was still bombarded
with invitations to full-moon parties, all of which he turned down. Ambrose Maurlias was never seen in his werewolf form again in
society, but that didn’t affect his appeal. He was treated with a mixture of
awe and caution by the vast majority of nobility, but became very popular with
the younger men, and the Marquis de Cyr was always able to boast afterward that
he had played host to Ambrose Maurlias, Captain of
the Musketeers and werewolf.
Notes on The Suit: I had a
lot of fun with this one. There’s only one name given in the whole story, and
that character never evens shows up. Setting is the second half of the
seventeenth century. This story ties in with “Marquis de Cyr’s Gala.”
--
Story 4: The Suit
--
The tailor rubbed
his hands together nervously. “I don’t know, sir, I don’t know. I’ve never
tried something like that before.”
The servant stared
the man down relentlessly. “I didn’t ask if you had tried. I asked if you
could. My master needs clothes, and you are the only tailor in the area who is
not to busy to complete a suit by Friday.”
Spluttering, the
balding tailor replied, “But...the money! That much cloth,
and an entire ensemble in four days...”
The servant sighed.
“Money is no object, sir. Will you or will you not fashion clothes for my
master? I am sure Gianno could be persuaded if you
will not...”
The tailor swallowed
sharply. Lately the Italian had been stealing all of his business. The
foreigner was faster and cheaper, certainly, but he simply didn’t have quality
on his side. The tailor himself made clothes to last, not cheap things made of
second-rate fabrics. But the public simply refused to see that. Swallowing
again, the tailor nodded his acceptance of the task.
–
Within the hour, the
tailor stood trembling in a large, sunlit room. He was not a strong man, or a
brave one. His true height was about 5'8", but years of stooping for
fittings and leaning over whatever piece of cloth he happened to be working on
had shrunken him considerably. His fine brown hair had begun to thin in his
mid-twenties, and now there was more scalp than hair showing on the top of his
head. His face was kind, if a bit pinched by constant worry over deadlines and
decreasing business. But his hands and his eyes were steady and sure, and that
is the most important trait in a tailor.
Soon the ornate door
to the large, sunlit room opened. In strolled a man, approaching sixty in age,
broad-shouldered and tall. His eyes, hidden by a pair of blue glasses, swept
over the smaller man in an instant. “So, you are the tailor?”
“Y-yes, my lord, ” the tailor breathed in relief. Perhaps this task
wouldn’t be so difficult after all.
The tall man with
the odd glasses walked toward the center of the room and began to take off his
outer clothes. “Why did you sigh like that, tailor?”
“Oh,
nothing, sir. It was only that
your servant described you as very large. I’m afraid I got a rather monstrous
picture in my mind,” the tailor chuckled, a little embarrassed.
After disrobing to
an appropriate level, the other man turned his hidden eyes to the
permanently-cowering tailor. There was exasperation in his gaze, but also a
little good-humored pity. “You have heard of my condition, have you not, tailor?”
Rubbing his hands
together nervously again, as he was wont to do whenever he was uncomfortable,
the tailor responded, “Oh, yes, yes, my lord, but I never put much stock in the
rumors. Nasty things, rumors.”
A deep-throated
laugh bubbled up in the other man. “Is that so? Well, my dear tailor, perhaps
you had better start putting more stock in rumors.” And with that, he pulled
off his glasses, showing yellow eyes rimmed with black: the eyes of a wolf.
Before the tailor’s
horrified eyes, the man shifted and changed. His feet elongated while his legs
shortened, forming haunches; his fingers thickened and the bottoms blackened;
his vertebrae enlarged, and a tail formed; his ears pointed and moved higher up
on the rapidly changing head; the nose slipped down and darkened as the jaw
grew and the space between the eyes widened; and finally a thick pelt of fur
covered the man’s entire body. The tailor barely checked a petrified gasp.
There, standing before him, was a werewolf.
Suddenly serious
again, the wolf commanded, “You are to make me a suit of clothes for the
Marquis de Cyr’s gala on Friday. They must fit precisely; they must not be
unsightly, but they cannot restrict my movement in the least, do you
understand?”
The tailor nodded
silently in what he hoped was a cool, calm manner, but his quivering belied his
reluctance to even be in the same building as this living nightmare. But his
need for business for once outweighed his desire to flee, so he reached into
his small bag and produced a measuring tape and a scrap of rough brown paper
for notes. Soon he had all of the measurements he needed, and prepared to
leave.
The werewolf had
shifted back to his human shape, and as the craftsman was escorted out by a
servant, he called, “I like blue, tailor. Not this light green that is in
fashion now.”
The tailor bobbed
his head in ready acknowledgment as he was ushered back out onto the road.
–
Later, sitting in
the back of his shop, staring at his measurements by candlelight, the tailor
began to have serious second thoughts about this new enterprise. He had no idea
where to start; none of mannequins even came close to the build of the
werewolf. And an entire suit–and for a nobleman to boot!–in four days... The
tailor decided it could not be done. He resolved to announce his surrender in
the morning.
Then he glanced
around his tiny workspace. He had not had a serious commission for a month; his
tools had begun to grow dusty. The store was cramped and dingy, but he could
not afford a larger shop. Hanging about him were half-finished designs for
regal gowns and dashing coats–his own creations that he had given up on because
he had grown discouraged. The Italian had flashy pieces hanging in his shop
window, and the Italian had customers.
From there the
tailor’s thoughts grew broader. He had married a pretty girl a few years
back–not stunning, but pretty enough. They had been happy at first, but now she
seemed distracted, disappointed. She seemed to be feeding off his own frustrations, and the two barely spoke anymore. This
caused him to spend more time in his shop, where he only became more depressed.
Suddenly it seemed
to the tailor like the only way to improve his rapidly sinking life was to
complete this suit. In that late hour, in the candlelight, those bizarre
measurements seemed to hold the key to something better. A deep determination
gripped the timid tailor. The suit would be completed.
–
The next few days
passed like a frenzied dream. Concept sketches, fabric selection, rough
fashioning, fitting, adjustment, refitting, more adjustment, refitting,
finishing touches, and the final showing all seemed to pass so quickly. The
tailor, once he had set his mind on success, never looked back. He chose the
finest silks and linens, the smoothest weaves, the most delicately dyed cloth.
Nothing was too good or too rich. He sewed a suit the color of bluebirds and
the sky in moments after sunset, with accents the color of richest cream and
heirloom lace. The tailor poured his soul into that suit, and as he stood
watching the werewolf inspecting the fit of the final product, he was afraid
his heart would burst. The beast stretched and crouched and tested every seam.
At last, after
several gut-rending moments, the werewolf turned to the tailor and grinned
toothily. “It is good, tailor. This is much better than most of the clothes I
have for my human body. But it must pass a final test,” he said, but the tailor
thought he caught a bit of a laugh in the last sentence.
The door opened, and
in walked the nobleman’s lovely wife. She gasped lightly upon seeing her
husband, then walked forward to inspect the suit
further. After a few seconds she smiled. “It’s beautiful.”
The wolf nodded its
large head and grinned. “Then I am satisfied. I think you shall have to make
all of my clothes from now on, tailor.” Then he turned to speak with his wife.
The tailor felt that
he was excused, but his plucked up his courage and managed to stutter, “Uh,
s-sir?”
The werewolf turned
back to the tailor, who had never felt smaller. “Yes? What is it?”
“I was wondering,
sir, if perhaps...perhaps when you are not wearing this suit, sir, if
perhaps...I might have it in my shop? To display? If
my lord wouldn’t mind, of course...” the tailor gasped. There, he had asked.
Regardless of the answer, he had asked, and that was something for so timid a
man.
The nobleman
contemplated the tailor for a moment, and the smaller man suddenly felt as
though the werewolf could see all of his motives and troubles, all of his hopes
and ambitions. For a moment the tailor imagined that he was amused by what he
saw, then the nobleman dipped his head. “I don’t see
why not. Keep it clean and in good repair, for I may need it again. My servant
will deliver it Sunday.”
The tailor beamed.
“Thank you, sir! I will certainly care for it! If you ever need more clothes, sir, please, do not forget me!” And then he walked
backwards, bowing, out of the room.
--
The suit went on
display that Sunday after a very talked-about incident at the Marquis de Cyr’s
gala. It seemed werewolves didn’t often attend social functions, especially
dressed in such finery. Business increased exponentially; indeed, news of the
tailor who had created such an unusual set of garments brought the curious and
the wealthy from as far as
The tailor would
always say later that the werewolf’s suit was the most unusual garment he had
ever crafted, and the pinnacle of his career. No great lady’s gown, no rich
fop’s exquisite coat could ever match up to the werewolf’s suit. It didn’t
matter how jewel-encrusted a garment was, or how high his commission was. His
personal pride was in the suit of clothes that had turned his life around.
If you visit
But he won’t let you
touch the suit.
He has to keep it
clean and in good repair, because someday the werewolf noble might need his
clothes. The boutique owner never takes chances, because legends, especially
the good ones, never die.