"And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion."
Roses. Her mother's favorite. As she laid against her father's shoulder, tucked in the crook of his arm, the scent came on the wind to meet her. The breeze from the ocean picked up strands of Bryoni's thin auburn hair and carried it over her shoulders, then back. Her mother would tell her that the spirits of the air delight in playing with the hair of pretty girls, but Bryoni took her skepticism from her father. Regardless of how fanciful the idea was, it brought a smile to her lips.
"I would I were a careless child, still dwelling in my Highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild, or bounding o'er the dark blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain's craggy side, and seeks the rocks where billows roll."
Liam's voice was that of a lamb. He was hardly an imposing man; he was, in fact, shorter than her mother. Even so, his physique was hardened and gruff, and Bryoni thought it funny that he found such joy in Byron's poetry. As they sat there on the bench in Bethany's rose garden, the heads of the flowers bobbing and weaving in the stormy wind, night began to close in around them. The candle light from the wide kitchen window behind them now illuminated their book better than the sky above.
Gregory, not yet in his 9th year, stood on a footstool beside his mother in the kitchen as they washed the dishes. Together, they sang some familiar folk song that Bryoni would one day wish she could remember. The slight girl looked at her father. Once again, the festering thought returned to her. In her mind's eye, Bryoni saw barbed wire and a black sinuous shape capering in dark delight. It left her feeling unclean.
"Fortune! take back these cultured lands, take back this name of splendid sound!
I hate the touch of servile hands, I hate the slaves that cringe around.
Place me among the rocks I love, which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;
I ask but this - again to rove through scenes my youth hath known before."
Inside the house, Bethany's dish washing slowed to a stop and the song fell silent. She stared at the far wall of the kitchen.
"Mum?" Gregory asked as he clutched the plate in his towel, but he received no reply. His mother took several slow steps towards the silence on the other side of the wall. Her hand retrieved a sharp knife from the kitchen table. Finally, a subtle noise issued from the wooden planks of their cabin. Something outside had brushed against the timber.
"Fain would I fly the haunts of men - I seek to shun, not hate mankind;
My breast requires the sullen glen, whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.
Oh! that to me the wings were given which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of heaven, to flee away, and be at rest."
The wall was splintered as the monstrosity threw itself into their home, bringing with it bedlam. It's claws ripped at the floorboards as it hurled itself forward in blind fury towards the harvest witch and her child, their shrill cries lost to it. Bethany shoved the boy to the floor and covered his body with her own.
Liam rose from the bench at the hollow snap of breaking wood. Leaping towards the door, he told Bryoni to stay put, and the intensity of his eyes left her feeling unarmed as she stood alone in the dusk of the garden. Three wide strides is all it took her father to travel the distance to the door to the kitchen.
There were wails, so animalistic that Bryoni could not tell who or what it came from. She watched silently the shadows thrown on the amber glass of the kitchen window, until finally a thick spray of blood splashed across the panes. Though she had not intended it, a miserable cry came from her lips and she found herself failing to breathe, failing to look away, failing to think. Her eyes fixated on the red stain that flowed down the window and pooled at the sill as she tried to rationalize what could be unfolding beyond it. Shadows still danced as the turmoil continued.
Every noise from inside the home sounded wet.
Then there was an deafening howl and finally silence, all but for the heavy breathing of something inside.
Bryoni ran for the kitchen door, nearly pulling it from its hinges as she tore it open and stepped into full view of the horror. There, her father stood staring at the cadavers around his feet. The overturned and shattered kitchen table lied over the corpse of a hulking beast of fur and jagged teeth. The hellion, equally wolf and man, was motionless and staring, its eyes fixated on something, anything, nothing. Across the room, Gregory's lifeless body was strewn next to his mother's. Parts of her were missing.
No words came from Bryoni. As her breath finally returned, she quaked at the sight before her. A tortured sob escaped her thin lips. Liam's eyes met hers, snapped from his daze. He rushed to her and held her tightly, turning her head away from the room. She nevertheless heard the creature's body emit sickening cracks as it transformed back into Ethan James.
"Dad..."
"Let's go."
Bryoni moaned, unable to move. Her grief immobilized her.
"Bry-" Her fathers words were cut short as a pair of strong, furred arms broke through the kitchen door and ripped Bryoni by the shoulders back through the fragile boards and into the garden below. As her body hit the cobblestones beneath her, the wind was taken from her lungs. She wanted to scream as the thing's jaws clamped around her thigh and its fangs sunk into her flesh, but she was unable.
Another wet noise sounded from above her as her father's blacksmith hammer made contact with the beast's skull. It howled in pain and received howls in response from others of its kind, lurking in the woods. Another impact, then another, each accompanied by Liam's frenzied heaving. He picked Bryoni's body up from the pool of blood on the stoney ground and stomped through the roses as he ran for his life and hers to the small marble shrine on top of the far hill.
