Hey everyone! Say hello to the expanded version of Night Plague, chapter one! Been working on this for a long time now; since about the same time that I started the shorter version some of you have read. There's a lot I could say now, but I think I'll just cut right to the chase. Happy reading!
Mammals rushed to and fro about the platform, loading bags and trunks onto a massive black behemoth of a train. Gargantuan creatures from Africa carted parcels bigger than many of the passengers as those same passengers, clutching smaller burdens close to their chests, dashed to and fro among the moving feet wherever an opening presented itself.
Tucked against a wall, well out of the way, two considerably shorter specimens stood observing the goings-on.
"Hey, Carrots," teased the taller, a red fox clad in a suit of dapper yet simple style. "Not every day you see an elephant with three trunks."
A passing pachyderm, catching the jest, threw the fox an unpleasant glance. He bore at that moment two large chests of wood with metal binding; one grasped in his trunk and one between his tremendous forelimbs. He seemed to consider dropping one of them as close to the fox as he might get away with, but an apologetic wave from the shorter mammal – a trim and charming female rabbit – persuaded him to only roll his eyes and go about his business.
"You'd better stop doing that," the rabbit chided the fox as the elephant left. "You won't have me around to make up for your exceptional manners."
The fox – Nicholas Wilde – smiled and patted the doe between her ears. "Okay, Carrots. I'll be careful."
She swatted his paw away. "I've told you not to call me that in public," she hissed. Genuine though her annoyance was, but there was a twist at the corner of her mouth that revealed some enjoyment beneath the annoyance. "Out here it's Judy."
"Of course you've told me that," he smirked. "That's why it's so much fun to call you-"
She stepped on his foot. "A-hem," she grumbled, irritation slowly gaining the upper hand over amusement.
"Fine, fine," he laughed, pulling away the offended part. "I'll be careful, Juu-dithh." He made an exaggerated face at the deliberate over-enunciation, forcing Judy to raise a pawkerchief to her mouth to stifle her laughter. A few passers-by glanced at their repartee, but none made any remark.
"I still wish I was going with you," Judy admitted. "My grandpa went to Romeownia once. He said it's one of the loveliest places in Zoorope, and it sounds like a great place for ideas."
Nicholas nodded, smiling cavalierly. He employed Judy as his secretary and all-around assistant, though she often sassed him in ways the servant girl in The Imaginary Invalid wouldn't try. Her true ambition, however, was to be a writer; a dream inspired by the influence of Harriet Beecher Doe's Uncle Tom's Cowbin. She had all the makings for it too: energy, high ideals, creativity to express them, and an utter lack of feminine tact when it came to speaking her mind. All she lacked was a starting point.
Thinking about Judy's perspective, the fox drew a fob watch from his pocket. "Yeah, well, if this job pays well then maybe I can buy you a ticket there. It'll be nice to have some peace and quiet around the office."
He nimbly flicked his tail away from her foot. For propriety's sake she refrained from making a second attempt. She had been on his case to make sure he was all set for this trip, but it was a big deal. Being a fox, it was tough for Nick to compete in the business world – particularly as the head of his own firm. Most of the time it took all his shrewdness just to win half a chance at making an honest living, and more than once Judy had been pressed to urge him away from stooping to criminal measures just to keep his business running.
Now he had been commissioned by a nobleman, and from another country at that. Someone had summoned him to the eastern border of a small country in the Catpathian Mountain region, there to meet the noblemammal who had hired him and settle the sale of some property in London. Such a trip promised to be most lucrative, particularly as the count – for such was his title – was clearly a generous and open-handed gentlemammal. In his correspondence, he had promised to arrange all of Nick's traveling and lodging at his own expense for as long as the fox remained in his country. With such a significant assignment, Judy wanted to make sure he was absolutely sorted.
Besides, dictating his every assignment – packing, traveling arrangements, brushing up on the local dialects, and so on – helped her not to wonder why this trip made her so nervous. She couldn't explain it for the life of her, but ever since he got the correspondence about this case, something deep in her gut had been bothering her.
The train whistle blew, and the conductor – a bull elk with a deep, throaty voice – boomed out, "All aboooaaaarrrdd!"
Nick smiled and raised a paw over her head, which she dodged. "I'll tell you all about it when I get back," he promised, laughing. Then he made for the nearest set of steps in his size range onto the train.
"Write it down!" Judy called after him, cupping her paws to her mouth to be heard over the rising volume of foot traffic. "I want to know everything!"
He turned, waving calmly. "Okay! You're the boss!"
She did her best not to be unsettled as the train took Nick off to parts distant and exotic. He'd come back a richer mammal with wonderful experiences to relate.
So why was she so anxious?
Two days of train travel with brief stop-overs put Nick in Batstritz, journaling as he went. He had not been blind to his aide's concern about the trip, but he did think pretty lightly of the matter (bunnies were, after all, prone to be emotional). The way into Romeownia could hardly have been more picturesque, and parts of it – such as the abrupt shift from a western-style bridge over the Danube to starkly Turkish culture on the other side – were very interesting if one were at all interested in traditions. He noted these details in shorthand for Judy's later enjoyment, and amused himself also by noting trivial minutae like what he had for breakfast and dinner at various places: Paprika hendl, imletata, and mamaliga. He even went so far as to get the recipes for some of the dishes. He dared to guess that some of it would be useful in Judy's writing, but she had often made it clear that she wanted to write about things less domestic; to get outside the areas where society expected females – especially of small prey species – to remain. So of course he had to dwell on those for a lark.
During one of his less contrary moods, he wrote, 'As fun as it is to annoy you with all these details, I guess I should thank you for convincing me to read up on Transylvania at the British Museum while I was in London. I'm sure it'll come in handy dealing with a local nobleman, after all. As I told you back in England but will tell you again now, he's called me to the far east side of the country, right near where it borders on Mole-davia and Buckovina, smack in the middle of the Catpathian Mountains. It's a pretty wild country; one of the least-known parts of Zoorope. None of the maps in the museum library told me exactly where to find the castle, though. I guess no one ever told them how important it is to have a good Ordnance Survey Map (you can hear my sarcasm, right?). I did, however, find Batstritz, which my client mentioned as a post town in his letters. It's pretty well-known, so I should be able to find it without much fuss.'
The places he passed through were not as varied in their biodiversity as Zootopia, but the locals had a charm about them one just couldn't get tired of. They came in four basic groups, each living in their own respective communities though they mingled and did business together freely enough in other respects. To the south lived tribes of Saxon horses, mixed in with Woolachs who were comprised of goats, sheeps, and – in a truly strange alliance – wolves who seemed to trade security services for some measure of authority. It was, he dared to guess, a system about which Judy would have had some choice remarks, but he made it a rule not to stick his nose in where it wouldn't be welcome. West largely belonged to the Magyowls, a tribe of Podolian cattle with some beech martens and polecats. In the East and the North – where he was going, lived the Snarlzelkelys. They were, by far, the most exotic group to be found in the region. Local tradition named them as scions of the Huns, and their species makeup seemed to fit the boast. Though one or two local species – deer, wolves, and some rabbits – had mingled into their number, the better part of them came of ancient lines of swift horses, majestic tigers, and hoary-headed musk oxen.
With such ancient bloodlines and settlements thereabout, it was small wonder that, as Nick had read, every known superstition in the world was gathered there. It was, as he put it in his journal, 'like some kind of whirlpool of imagination.' 'I should ask the Count about it,' he penned. 'Ought to make for some fun conversation.'
"What is it with wolves and the howling?" Nick complained on his first night there as a nocturnal chorus shattered his rest. He shifted back and forth, trying to sink deeper into the mattress as he folded the pillow over his head.
"You know," he called as if the pests could hear him, "this bed would be really comfortable if I could actually sleep in it."
Even without the wolves, he had to get up several times to relieve himself during the night. The paprika hendl had been a very thirsty dish, compelling him to drink all of the water in his carafe at dinner and still want more. At some hour around three he slept at last, the howling still in his ears to make him dream about train whistles and the winds pouring through the Canyon District back in Zootopia.
The next day's train journey found him writing again, relating the events of the night before. I asked the innkeeper about it, he recorded, over a breakfast of more paprika, eggplant stuffed with forcemeat (they call it imletata) and a maize flour porridge called mamaliga which you'd probably like. I think my German must not be as good as I thought, because it sounded like he tried to tell me that the wolves were howling to scare off evil spirits – or maybe appease them or some such nonsense. Anyway, I didn't have enough time to check what he was saying or to really enjoy my breakfast, which I guess I can blame on the howling. They had to knock pretty loud and long to wake me up (I guess I did sleep soundly towards the end), and then I had to rush to get to the train station on time. Go figure: the train was late heading out. It was supposed to leave a bit before eight, but after I rushed in at 7:30 I sat on board more than an hour before the thing moved. What is it with these trains anyway? The further east I get, the later they are. Heaven help me if I ever have to take one in China.
Despite his dissatisfaction at the night he had passed, Nicholas did at least enjoy the view when he wasn't napping to reclaim the night's lost rest. The countryside was adorned liberally with little towns, castles on steep hills like something in an old missal, and rivers and streams whose wide, stony margins bespoke of frequent flooding. The stations where the train stopped were excellent for mammal-watching, with groups and sometimes whole crowds in every species and mode of dress the region had to offer. Some looked just like the peasants of France and Germany, with short jackets, round hats, and home-made trousers.
Others were of greater interest. There were a number of females who were pretty at a distance, but on the chubby side and not particularly attractive at closer accquaintance. They all had full white sleeves, and most of them wore big belts with strips of something hanging from them like the dresses in a ballet he had seen the previous year (of course, they had petticoats underneath). His eyes – even as much as they had seen – nearly popped out of his head, though, when he saw the Slothvaks. They were larger than bears and wore big, wide-brimmed hats, baggy dirty-white trousers, white shirts, and huge lizard-skin belts studded with brass nails. Nick, noting that their belts must come from monitor lizards or crocodilians to be so large, wrote, Their boots are almost knee-high, and they wear their hair and mustaches so long that I'll bet they're a scream to watch eating soup. If I saw them on stage I'd take them for some kind of bandits from the east, though I'm told they're harmless and even a bit shy.
It was evening when he arrived in Batstritz, but though the light in the west was starting to fade he judged that there was time enough to walk around and see his surroundings. He noticed at once that the locals cultivated a number of roses, and wild ones seemed much more prevalent than usual just outside the settlement. The air was laden with their perfume wherever he went, mingled here and there with herbs hung from the windows or grown in little gardens.
As the twilight deepened, Nick began to look for someone who could tell him the way to the Golden Krone hotel, to which the count's letters had directed him. After one or two failed attempts to catch mammals too deep in conversation to notice him, he caught the attention of a passing stallion who carried several rose cuttings.
Wonder what he wants with that many, especially around here, Nick wondered. "Uh, excuse me, sir," he asked in his best German. "Which way is it to the Golden Krone?"
The stallion looked around, apparently unused to mammals Nick's size.
"Down here," the fox added, a little annoyed.
The horse looked down and blinked. "Oh, sorry. You were asking about the…?"
"Golden Krone," Nick repeated slowly and clearly. Evidently he needed to work more on his local dialects.
"Oh, yes," the horse replied, transferring the cuttings to one arm and pointing down the street. "Go three houses down, turn left, and it should be right in plain sight. You'll know it by the symbol."
Nick dipped his head. "Thank you." Glancing around, he added conversationally, "You get much excitement around here?"
The stallion shrugged. "Oh, we get our share," he replied, gesturing with a hoof in the direction of Boargo Pass. "We're right on the border with Buckovina, you know."
"Trouble with the neighbors, huh?"
"Oh, not so much nowadays, but it happens. About fifty years ago we had, oh…" he looked at one of his hooves as if counting on it – obviously purely by social convention – and then shook his head. "Five pretty bad brushes with fire."
Nick could sympathize. Fires were a pretty serious concern in Zootopia, and it looked as if the buildings here contained a lot more wood. "And you think that's because of trouble with Buckovina?" he asked.
"Well, that not so much. But my grandfather told me that back… oh, around the start of the seventeenth century, we lost thirteen thousand mammals in only three weeks. War, famine, and sickness took them during a siege."
The fox shook his head, trying not to show how much that thought impacted him. Thirteen thousand in three weeks? "Well," he said, "I've gotta hand it to you; you folks have guts living here." In an effort to lighten the mood, he added, "With all those deaths, it's no wonder you've got so many spooks in the neighborhood."
The horse chuckled and shook his head. "Oh, are you of that frame of mind?"
"No sir, not me," Nick assured him. "But I did hear that this place is pretty thick in the superstition department."
"Well, yes," the horse admitted. "Every time a child wanders off around here, there's talk of strigoita and whatnot. I don't take it so seriously myself, but my wife, now, she swears on the Testament to every bit of it. That's why I was out collecting these. They're supposed to keep devils away." He chuckled.
Nick laughed too. "Well, thanks. Three houses down and a left?"
"Right. I mean yes, left."
"Thanks. Watch out for the strigoita!"
They shared a chuckle, oblivious as several passers-by crossed themselves and stared in shock and disapproval.
The Golden Krone proved to be thoroughly old-fashioned; the sort of place he imagined Judy might well choose as a mystery setting. A cheery-looking elderly red deer doe met him at the door with the air of someone waiting on an honored guest. When he got close, she bowed. "The Herr Englishmammal?" she inquired.
Nick nodded, putting on his most winsome smile. "That's me alright. Nicholas Wilde, at your service."
"Oh, on the contrary," she replied. "We and our house are at yours. Welcome." She turned to an old stag in white shirt-sleeves who had followed her to the door, and whispered something in his ear. He went, but returned immediately with a letter, which read in the following manner:
My Friend,
Welcome to the Catpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well tonight, and at three to-morrow take the diligence for Buckovina. A place on it will be kept for you. At the Boargo pass, my carriage will await you and bring you to me. I trust, of course, that your journey from Zootopia has been a pleasant one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.
Your Friend,
DRACULA
In honor of a couple of other writers who have done restyled classics (namely one to be mentioned at the end), I will be following up these chapters with notes to explain real-world references and some of the other particulars of the story. These notes are not necessary to enjoy the stories, but they will – I hope – enrich the experience a bit. This first one, admittedly, is very long.
My first impulse in writing this story was to role-cast pretty specifically, as I did for example with Balto's Treasure Island. After further thought I decided that the main strength of Dracula was never really its characters, save for the title villain himself and perhaps Professor Van Helsing. So instead I tried to translate the Zootopia characters as best I could into the world of Victorian London, there to pit them against their undead enemy. The main difference this led to, on both sides of the mix, was making Judy a writer. Although hardly as adventurous as being a police officer, writing was one way women in that time period could leave their mark in spite of sexual (and in this case species) boundaries. One of the most powerful such works was of course the one cited as having inspired Judy; a story about the lives of slaves in pre-Civil War America so powerful that I challenge anyone even today to read it through with dry eyes and an unstirred heart. As a precursor to equal opportunity, abolition seemed a perfect cause to capture Judy's imagination in this setting.
Moving on, it's worth noting that in the original Dracula Stoker (through Jonathan) made extensive note of the people groups present in his settings, which I have here translated into animals. For the Snarlzelkelys I chose horses because the Huns were legendary horsemen, tigers because tigers are (like the Huns) regarded as powerful fighters, and musk oxen because they are often bred for food and wool/hair in Mongolia, where some historians believe the Huns originated. I have skimmed over the other groups for the moment – that is, the Magyowls, Saxons, and Wallachs – since they do not play as much of a role in the story. However, I dare say the Magyowls would have some kind of wild cats among them, and the Wallachs would have canines since they are descended from the Dogtians (as you can see, I kind of cheated by defaulting to the animal puns with them). The Dogtians would also probably include bears and boars, since my research has turned up that they lived in the vicinity of the Black Forest sometime during the reign of Rome.
I decided to base the Slothvaks on the ancient Megatherium, or giant ground sloths, since today's tree sloths would probably not survive in the wilds of Transylvania. Also, it is fairly traditional to mingle ancient real animals in with fictional ones in fantasy, though I have seldom done it myself. Megatherium fossils are found in South America, and it might be that they too would die in cold weather, but they are associated with the ice age and are therefore a somewhat better fit for this setting. I do not know if they were as mild-tempered as the Slothvaks, but creatures very much like them in South American legends are held in considerable dread, and it is believed that a Megatherium's claws could have gutted a saber-toothed cat with one swipe.
In describing the Slovaks/Slothvaks, Stoker mentioned leather belts. Since mammal leather would obviously be a huge no-no in Zootopia, I decided on reptilian leather. Monitor lizards, such as the famous/infamous Komodo Dragons, are very large and, unlike crocodiles, can be just as much at home out of the water as in it, so I figured they would be easier to raise for hides and other uses. Also, they are very large and have more uniform hides (that is, their backs are not knobby like those of crocodilians, and I believe their bellies are much like the rest of their bodies).
The locations referenced are Bistritz/Batstritz (obligatory bat joke: check), Mole-davia/Moldavia, Bukovina/Buckovina, Carpathia/Catpathia, Borgo/Boargo Pass, Vienna/Vixenna, Budha-Pesth/Boar-Dapesth, and Clausenburg/Clawsenburg. The groups, respectively, were Magyars/Magyowls, Dogtians/Dacians, and Szelkelys/ Snarlzelkelys. As you can see, I did not come up with jokes for all of the groups or places, but if anyone has good ideas I'll be glad to put them in.
Special thanks to WANMWAD for helping with historical advice on the people groups.
