A Dance of Demons - Chapter 2

Metal scrapped against metal as Urbain sharpened the sickle’s new blade. It was the only sound in the cabin, other than the clucking of chickens that came from outside. Jeanne and Claudine had made their way to madame Annette Legrand’s home for laundry not long after Martel’s visit, leaving Urbain to work alone. As much as he enjoyed their company and missed them when they weren’t around for many hours, there was something to be said about the silence.

The sickle’s old blade had broken right in two when Robert Blanchet had brought it down against a rock. Urbain hadn’t asked why he’d done it. While the original metal had been sturdy enough, it had been made to cleave through wheat, not stone.

It was an easy enough thing to replace the blade. He’d learned to repair all manner of tools from his father. Vieu Maurice had been a master taillandier — an edge-tool maker — in Argenteney. While his passion had been in crafting instruments, there was more money in making and repairing tools. He’d passed the craft on to all his children with varying results. Vivienne could make the best plows in Argentenay. Josette and Albin made picks and axes that would never dull. People came from all over the province to purchase Charline’s lanterns. Urbain had brought one of the pots Gustave had made nearly a decade ago from France, and it didn’t have so much as a dent in it.

As for Urbain himself, he’d always liked making instruments the best. Unfortunately, there was even less demand for it than there was in Argentenay, which made it a pastime he quite literally could not afford. A few half-finished instruments he’d cobbled together from scrap wood that was good for nothing else but kindling sat in the corner of the cabin. Every day he told himself that tomorrow, he would make the time to work on them. But every tomorrow, there was something more important that had to be done.

Making instruments wouldn’t feed his family.

Replacing the sickle blade wasn’t such an awful task. It was tedious, but there was something to be said for tedium too. It gave him the chance to imagine everything he would make when they survived another winter.

Now that the sun was fully up, there was more sound coming through the half-open door. Even though the days were growing colder, the cabin itself was still hotter than he would like while he was working. The noise from people and livestock was a welcome change from the noise of the wilderness. Steady hoof steps outside gave him a rhythm to work to.

Urbain sat upright and groaned in pain. He was getting too old to be sitting in the same position for so long. It was beginning to wear on him.

He traced his thumb over the bottom edge of the blade. It was so sharp, he didn’t even feel it breaking his skin. Blood ran down the side of his hand, catching in the sleeve of his shirt. He glanced toward the open door. Even though he could hear scattered chatter, none of it was close enough to the cabin that he had to worry about being overhead.

“À la claire fontaine

M’en allant promener,

J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle,

Que je m’y suis baignée.”

The spell’s original wording wasn’t in French. In fact, it was in a language much older than French. His great-great uncle Michel had actually been known as Frère Michel de Marolles. In his early life, he had been a troubadour who found his calling with God’s people. Most of his writings were in Latin. It wasn’t a language Urbain had much understanding of. Most of what he had been able to translate came from the notes in various different handwritings.

Urbain was fairly certain that if he didn’t speak any Latin, the people living in the settlement spoke even less.

Still, it felt safer to bury the words in the middle of folk songs just in case.

“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,

Jamais je ne t’oublierai.”

Jeanne was going to have his head for casting spells not one day after he had promised he wouldn’t do it anymore, but she didn’t need to know. Spells like this, little fixes and cures, never hit him as hard. It was the curses that always made him unbearably sick. The amount of blood needed to make the magic work seemed to be proportionate to how bad he felt after.

If Jeanne were here, she might also point out that if no tools ever broke, he would run out of work. He doubted that would ever happen. Even the best spells wouldn’t last forever. At most, it would help the tools last a few more months. Hopefully by then, another forgeron would have moved in and he wouldn’t have to keep patching the same tools until even magic couldn’t keep them together.

As he whispered the words from the book in between the lines from the song, the markings he had drawn along the side of the blade shone red. The glow faded as his blood sank into the iron. He could have used plain ink, but it wouldn’t have been as effective. Never mind that it was also much easier to get his own blood than it was to get black ink.

The power was in his blood.

It was in his family’s blood.

Whether Frère Michel had been the first to discover it or whether it had been passed down to him was a mystery to Urbain. He had a vague recollection of his grandmother telling a story about Frère Michel consorting with demons, but she also said that about nearly everybody she knew.

A ripple of pain ran through Urbain’s skin, originating at the point where he had cut himself. Though, calling it pain was perhaps a bit dramatic. It was more like a scrape, as he he was running the edge of the blade against his arm to test its sharpness. In a moment, it was gone.

“Try breaking it now,” he muttered.

Urbain set the sickle down. He couldn’t help but look longingly at what he’d hoped would become a lute. Maybe one day. For now, there was no time to waste on anything other than survival.

At least he could sing while he worked, though there were certainly some in the settlement who thought that might as well have been consorting with demons.

The sun set earlier than Urbain expected it to. It always caught him off guard this time of year. By the time Robert Blanchet had come by to retrieve his sickle, Jeanne and Claudine were tending to the small fire heating the cabin and stirring the large pot of what was mostly water and potatoes.

“I hear you won’t be joining the watch for this wolf tonight, Croteau,” Blanchet said.

His vision was going, which made him squint in a way that made it seem like he thought everything was suspicious. Of course, he did think everything was suspicious, but that was unrelated.

“Not tonight,” Urbain said.

He didn’t miss the way Jeanne lifted her head in his periphery, but she didn’t say anything.

Blanchet sniffed. He held his sickle right up to his face, looking at it so intently that Urbain was almost terrified for a moment that he could see the blood he’d used to draw the sigils with. He finally looked back up at Urbain.

“I suppose you wouldn’t be as bothered, seeing as you are the only one who’s livestock has been spared,” he said.

Urbain gave him what he hoped was a sympathetic look. He couldn’t let Blanchet see the unease in his gut.

“The only one so far. A wolf can only eat so much in one night, monsieur Blanchet.”

Blanchet scowled up at Urbain, but his huff sounded like agreement. He lowered the sickle.

“Come by tomorrow. The madame has a new coat for your little one.,” he said.

Urbain gave Blanchet a grateful smile and shook his hand when it was offered out to him.

“You’re sure you won’t be coming out tonight? Monsieur Gagne has killed many wolves, but it would be nice to have a younger, stronger man out there,” Blanchet said.

As much as Urbain wanted to, Jeanne’s eyes drilling holes in the back of his head made him shake his head.

“I will see you tomorrow, monsieur Blanchet.”

###

Rain pelted against the roof of the cabin. The noise kept Claudine awake for several hours, which in turn kept Jeanne awake until neither of them could keep their eyes open. Even when both his wife and daughter were fast asleep, Urbain was not.

It wasn’t the rain that kept him up, though, but dreams of wolves and demons.

Urbain imagined he could hear them howling through the night, which may not have been as imaginary as he wanted to believe. For the second night in a row, he kicked the sheets off and resumed his vigil by the door with his grimoire. He didn’t think it was paranoid to worry that Jeanne would burn the book if she knew he was flipping through the worn pages again, and he wouldn’t blame her if she did.

Maybe it would be for the best. It might be the best way to protect them all. Burning it might finally free him from the curse in his blood that kept drawing him back into witchcraft.

It didn’t always feel like a curse. Most of the time, it didn’t feel like a curse at all.

God only knew what manner of demons lived out here, so far from civilizations. The Iroquois people had stories that would keep anybody awake, and that was nothing to speak of the monsters the Algonquin people spoke of. Whatever demons they had were no less terrifying than the ones the French had brought with them.

Was his blood truly cursed if he could use it to protect his family from these evils? Would it do him any good when it would have his neighbours hunting him for it?

Urbain sighed and rubbed his face. The spells seemed to call out to him, making his skin itch with a craving not unlike a craving for strong alcohol.

The ink was barely visible in the candlelight. It wouldn’t be long until the sun would rise enough that he wouldn’t need the candle. His grandmother’s neat print laid out both symbols and words in a way that anybody who knew their letters would be able to read, even though they might not be able to understand it the way Urbain did.

Some of the spells were written out as recipes. Some were buried into songs and rhymes the same way Urbain liked to hide them. He hummed softly to himself as he strained to make out the lines in the dark.

“Sous les feuilles d’un chêne,

Je me suis fait sécher.

Sur la plus haute branche,

Un rossignol chantait.”

Once the snow started in a few weeks, nobody from the settlement would be going into the woods anymore. If only they could keep the things in the woods from coming into the settlement. This wasn’t the first wolf to wander in for easy prey, and Urbain didn’t expect it to be the last.

Urbain didn’t need the book to know the symbols. By now, he could draw them from memory. Most of the time, he did. Though, every now and then, he liked looking at the lines drawn in his great-grandmother’s hand. It was like having her here with him, guiding him in how to cast these spells the same way Vieu Maurice had guided him in how to repair tools.

He wished Vieu Maurice were here, or that he was back in France with the rest of his family.

There was no going back now. They had made the decision to leave, and they had to live with it.

Urbain took another look at Jeanne and Claudine to make sure they were still asleep. Jeanne was on her back, and Claudine had turned around so her feet were where her head had been. They were both fast asleep. Still, if he wanted to do this before they woke up, he had to do it quickly. He set the candle and book on the table and moved as quietly as he could. He ground herbs, grave dirt, the film from the inside of a chicken egg, and some of his own blood together in a small mortar until it was a fine paste.

The brush he had used to make the original markings had been discarded a few weeks ago when he couldn’t get the smell of old blood out of it anymore. Instead, he dipped his fingers into the bowl and used them to reapply the wards on the walls. He sang the Latin words printed under the pictures in the grimoire to the same tune as the love song under his breath. The rain drowned him out.

While there were wards meant to protect against specific demons and spirits, these were more generic. So long as he reapplied them every few months to keep the magic from running out, they would keep any lesser evils from entering the cabin.

It was the best he could do.

Lightning crackled through Urbain’s veins in a rush that filled his entire body. He inhaled sharply, closing his eyes and tipping his head back as it moved through his body. The hairs on his arms and neck stood on end. His breath trembled. There was something so undeniably intoxicating about the power moving through him.

The symbols on the walls glowed red before fading into the wood.

A loud bang of a hunting rifle rang out over the rain.

Urbain jumped. The bowl fell from Urbain’s hand. The blood paste splattered over the floor and onto his sock-clad feet. He cursed under his breath.

“Papa?”

Urbain whirled around. Claudine was sitting upright beside Jeanne, who still seemed to be asleep.

“It’s just thunder. Go back to sleep,” Urbain said.

A second shot rang out. He couldn’t tell if the howling was the wind, a wolf, or screaming. He grabbed a rag hanging over the fire to wipe the blood off his hands, then knelt on the floor to wipe up the mess.

Claudine sniffled and whimpered.

“I’m scared,” she said.

Urbain wiped his forehead on his sleeve. Sweat made his shirt stick to his skin. Nausea made his gut churn and his head spin as the spell began to work. He braced one hand on the back of a chair, breathing heavily.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said.

His legs gave way beneath him, and he crumpled to the floor. Claudine’s shriek was followed immediately by Jeanne’s. Both of them scrambled to reach Urbain’s side. Claudine’s little hands grabbed at his shirt. A moment later, Jeanne’s hand rested on his lower back.

“What did you do?” she hissed.

Urbain pushed then back gently and straightened. He used the chair to pull himself up to his feet and sat down in it. He gathered his crying daughter and set her on his lap.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Jeanne folded her arms across her chest.

“You promised, Urbain.”

How could he make her understand? How could he explain to her the deep, visceral need to practice magic, that no matter how may times he would promise to stop, there was no denying the thing that sang through his blood?

He kissed the top of Claudine’s head.

As quickly as the rush came, it disappeared, leaving Urbain feeling weak and boneless. He could barely stand, let alone pick Claudine up again. With a sigh, Jeanne ushered Claudine off his lap. She swept her hand through Urbain’s hair and kissed his sweaty forehead.

“I can’t lose you,” she said.

He squeezed her hand.

Harsh knocking at the door made them both jump. It took Urbain two attempts to stand, and Jeanne had to help him. The knock came again, louder this time. He grabbed the hunting rifle and moved toward the door, motioning for Jeanne and Claudine to stay back.

“Urbain! Jeanne, Urbain! Open the door, please! For the love of God, open the door!” a man shouted.

Urbain threw the door open. In the bright moonlight, the whites of Edgar Gagne’s eyes were visible. He gasped and wheezed for breath. There was blood on his face and jacket. Most of it didn’t look like it belonged to him, but it was hard to tell in the dark. His entire body was shaking.

“My God, what happened to you? Jeanne, get me some wet rags and make some of that spruce drink.”

Jeanne was already moving. She shoved the grimoire on the shelf and ran across the cabin to grab the rags.

Urbain looped one of Gagne’s arms across his shoulders and led him inside despite the way both their legs shook. A ripple of magic ran through the wards as Gagne crossed the threshold, making Urbain shudder.

“The wolf— The wolf,” Gagne gasped.

Urbain eased him into the chair he’d been sitting in moments ago and sat in the empty one beside him. There was still blood on the floor, but Gagne seemed too shaken to notice it. His eyes met Jeanne’s. She dropped one of the rags onto the floor, then crouched to pick it up, wiping as much of the blood off the floor as she could.

“Did you kill it? I heard shots,” Urbain said.

Gagne shook his head violently. He choked over a sob and grabbed at his hair with both hands.

“It— God help us, Urbain, I have never seen anything like it! It killed Robert Blanchet.”

Urbain’s blood ran cold. The shudder that ran through him had nothing to do with the wards. He swallowed hard.

“It— It killed him?” he repeated.

“Tore him apart like he was nothing! I shot it, put two bullets into the damned beast. It didn’t matter. It just— Thank you.”

Gagne took the drink Jeanne offered to him and drank it down. He hunched forward, hanging his head between his knees, and let out a half-hysterical laugh. He looked up at Urbain.

“You’ll think I’m mad,” he said.

Urbain shook his head slowly.

“I won’t,” he said.

Gagne swallowed and laughed again. He rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand. When Jeanne refilled his cup with more ale, he drank it just as quickly as the first.

“I swear to God, Urbain, I’ve never seen anything like this. It was a wolf, but it— Dear God, the thing stood up on two legs like a man. And its eyes— I’ve killed many wolves in my time, but I have never seen one with red eyes like that.”

Urbain’s entire body went rigid. His stomach tightened until he thought he was going to be sick, and his mouth went dry.

“You need to rest,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m not mad,” Gagne insisted.

“I know, I know.”

A wolf wouldn’t have Gagne so shaken. And Gagne was right. Wolves didn’t stand on two legs. No matter how different this land was to France, that much had to stay true. Which meant that whatever this beast was, it was much more than a wolf.