The other ran on all fours to its brother, nuzzling its soft skull against Heinrich’s chin.
He scrambled to his feet, knocking the one on his chest to the ground. Its mouths opened and began bawling in union, its eye filling with tears. He saw the indentation of his hand on its cheek and pity consumed him; he knew at once this must be Brennen and the other Magnus. Retrieving the tongs, he picked the shimmering pelt out of the mud and offered it to them. They fell upon it instantly, growling and snarling as each tried to wrestle it from his brother.
The hide tore in half and Heinrich witnessed their final transformation. Steam rose from them as the pelt came alive and adhered to their bodies, the boys rolling in the snow and wailing from every mouth. Heinrich noticed Magnus’s face had acquired two more round little eyes from the dead rat, although they had grown significantly larger in the boy’s face. One was set in the appropriate socket, the other bulging out in place of a second nostril. The strange skin spread over their clay flesh, and their myriad tongues turned pink and wet as they frothed and spit. Their limbs lengthened and twisted, pudgy hands now furry claws, knees snapping backward and feet lengthening.
The boys wailed even when they had ceased smoking and twisting, and Heinrich knelt between them, stroking their coats. Unlike those who had worn the pelt in earlier ages neither had fully abandoned his human shape, but neither did they retain a singularly human appearance.
Magnus’s black fur covered every bit except the mouths peppering his small body, and while his legs were distinctly rodent-like he managed to stand and walk like a man. His third eye glistened with snot dribbling from his disfigured shard of a nose. In place of his left hand he wielded the giant snout of a rat, its nose snuffling, its growl emanating from every maw save the proper one.
Brennen’s coat shone brown and red and white and every other color his twin lacked. Under his bristly hair the handprint on his face remained, finger-sized grooves sunk in over his empty eye socket and where the other nostril would be on a natural creature. His legs were less bowed than Magnus’s but his arms and hands bulged with muscle, his long fingers sprouting hooked brown talons.
Heinrich took his boys into his arms until they stopped mewling, whispering his devotion to them. They horrified him, but not as much as he horrified himself, and with the marked difference that they were innocent. Their growling brought a smile to his lips and tears to his puffy eyes.
In fairness to his memory, the Heinrich who left the valley the next morning bore little resemblance, save the physical, to the yeoman who had shared his hearth with his plow horse on rainy nights before building the barn. Despair had yielded to optimistic loathing, an abiding conviction that they would locate the Grossbarts and enact their vengeance. Even when the wind cut and the snow swirled they were warm in the burrows Brennen dug, the twins tightly wedged in the blankets with their arms and legs wrapped around Heinrich, tickling him with countless kisses from uncounted mouths.
XVII
The Difficult Homecoming
Several days after besting the Road Popes, the Grossbarts and company found themselves arriving in Venezia long after dark.
“Real choice swap you rigged for us there,” said Manfried, staring down the black canal where the skiff had vanished before the seasick Brothers could raise a fist to stop the boatmen. “A tidy wagon and four strong horses for a one-way trip to an island. Choice, my brother, choice.”
“Mary’s Sweetness, those cheats done cheated us,” said Hegel when he regained his composure. “Pardon me for puttin my faith in my fellow fuckin man! When that mecky mung-gargler said slaves and a boat we all know he meant for the long term and not the short!”
“No matter,” said Manfried.
“No matter?!”
“Nope, no matter at all.” Manfried flashed his teeth. “I’ll allow it might a been nice to keep the boat, but I had a witch-touch a my own on the ride over, meanin we’s vindicated true at present, lack a wagon and boat notwithstandin.”
“How’s that?” Hegel screwed up his face more than nature already had.
“Figured it all went too smooth, yeah? So in such an event as just transpired, I took me a precaution and left that bottle a apple-water in the boat.”
“Why’d you do a thing like that?” asked Hegel,