The Lover: A Short Story(6)

He agreed to it. When they walked in, she lit a fire and watched as he sat down in one of the chairs and took off his coat. A tiny gray cloth bag dangled from a cord around his neck.

He pulled out a book from one of his coat pockets, setting it on the table. Judith bent over it and turned the pages. There were indeed many hideous monsters jumping from behind doors and ghosts shaking their chains in the illustrations of the little book.

“What’s your favorite fiend?” he asked.

“Monsters from the lakes,” Judith said. “The kind that snatch children when they walk by the water.”

“You’re a wicked creature.”

“What’s your favorite one?”

He turned the pages and tapped a gloved finger softly against an illustration. “Lycanthrope. Shape changer.”

Judith looked at the picture. It was a man who was tearing his chest open with both hands as a wolf’s head emerged from under his skin, ready to devour a woman with long, flowing hair who lay in bed screaming.

“Bah. That’s not frightening.”

“Care for a bite?” he asked, offering her the half-eaten apple.

“No. What are you really doing around here? Are you a thief?”

“First I’m a vagrant and then I’m a thief?”

“You’re not a hunter,” she said, thinking of Nathaniel sprawled naked upon the bed in the corner. “Or any decent thing.”

“I’m a nobleman outrunning a dire curse,” he said.

“What sort of curse?”

“A curse of hunger, where one can never be satisfied. You taste the blood of a fresh kill and then you must hunt at nights. It boils through your body, the evil, because you stole a relic from a faraway land.”

“There, you see?” she said. “You are a thief.”

“If it pleases you better, I’ve been enchanted by a warlock who dwells in a cave.”

She laughed at that and stood up. She’d been out for too long. Her sister would be wondering where she was, and if not her, then perhaps Nathaniel. She did not want him to find her with the stranger.

“Be gone by the morning, you hear me?”

“I will,” he said. “But I’ll meet you again, some other time, Judith of the Black Hair.”

The stranger had finished eating his apple and threw the core into the fire, leaning back placidly against his chair. She stepped outside.





Nathaniel cornered her in the kitchen that night. He looked bitterly unhappy and spoke in a low voice. His handsome face was racked with grief.

“What have I done? What is it?”

“You know what we’ve done,” she said and looked down at her hands, which shook a little.

“You don’t love me, Judy?”

Love! What a simple word that could not encompass her feelings, so deep and turbulent she feared she’d drown just by looking at him. Her every waking hour was yearning; the nights were sleepless sorrow. From the first moment he’d spoken to her, she’d loved him, then had to endure the agony of his loss. Now she knew a new agony, both the pleasure of his embrace and the weight of sin.

Judith could hear her sister coming down the stairs, the boards creaking with a familiar rhythm.

“We cannot speak now,” she said.

“Meet me tomorrow, at the hut.”





She agreed to meet him, partially because she was curious to find out if the stranger would still be there. She didn’t wish for a confrontation between the two men, but she wanted to see if the outsider would keep his promise and exit the hut upon the morning. It seemed that was the case, and he had not left a trace of himself behind. The book on the table was gone, and the fire was out.

No sooner had she walked in than Nathaniel opened the door. He immediately had her on the bed, tugging at her skirts.

“It’s wickedness,” she told him while he kissed her neck. “We should stop. You’re married to my sister.”

“I should not have married Alice. I had not felt like I had a home in such a long time, and you were all so kind, I did not wish to lose that. She made it clear if I didn’t wed her, I must leave. By God, Judith, I made a mistake, but I love you, not her. Alice and I are scarcely together, you know that.”

There was truth to that statement. Nathaniel was polite to his wife, but not particularly affectionate, and they had separate rooms. Alice and her first husband had also kept separate rooms, but it was because he snored. Nathaniel and Alice had not even honeymooned together, even though Alice had grumbled about this: she’d wanted to travel, to buy pretty trinkets at a seaside town.

Oh, Nathaniel was happy enough to sit at Alice’s table and to help in the shop. He seemed to enjoy his higher position in the village, where he was now a merchant instead of a common hunter. But he had never seemed enamored of Alice as Judith would have imagined a new husband would be. The townspeople said Alice had bought him. Perhaps she had.

“If I could pick again, I’d marry you,” he said.

The thought of Judith being preferred over her sister made her feel a little proud, even if she shouldn’t, just as she shouldn’t desire Nathaniel.

“It’s still a misdeed,” she muttered.

“We ought to run away together,” he said. “Alice will find another man, she’s young enough. She’ll do fine and we can begin anew, where no one knows us.”