Peter & Max: A Fables Novel Page 5

  “Bigby?” Peter said, standing up to look left and right, not entirely certain from which direction the voice had come. Then, with a soft rustle of leaves, a huge shape detached itself from the concealment of rock and root, and padded forward through intervening trees, resolving into the form of a wolf as it did so. And such a wolf it was! It was a monstrous thing, as tall as a grown man at its shoulders. Its coat was black on top, shading to gray under its belly. It had yellow-white fangs as long as daggers, and its eyes reflected the filtered light coming through the overhead canopy, amber one second and then dark red the next. This was Bigby, the legendary monster, the subject of countless nightmares, the Lord of All Wolves.

  “And,” Bigby continued, “I thought it best we had this conversation alone, rather than let you come all the way to the house and risk upsetting my wife and cubs. They’ve had their share of tough times lately and don’t need a new worry to fret over. Especially when it’s nothing they can do anything about.”

  Bigby came closer and Peter took an instinctive step back.

  “Don’t worry,” Bigby said, “I won’t eat you. Haven’t you heard? I’ve stopped doing that, especially to those I’ve invited into my company.”

  “You didn’t always behave so well,” Peter said. In their first meeting, long before either of them had heard about the new world and its status as a place of shared refuge, much less before either had traveled here, the giant wolf wasn’t nearly so generous of spirit. His appetites were at their height then and the encounter nearly ended Peter’s life, almost before it had properly begun.

  “People change,” Bigby said.

  “People?” Peter said.

  “Sure, I’m people. At least some of the time. Hell, most of the time, now that I’ve taken up married life.” In what was arguably the most improbable wedding in Fable history, Bigby Wolf had recently married Snow White. Peter couldn’t understand the match. While it was true that the wolf had learned how to take human form, even as a man Bigby looked like a bad patch of road. In fact he looked just like the sort of fellow who was a wild animal in his real guise. The official story was that Snow and Bigby shared the truest of all true love. Peter had his doubts about that. But he didn’t voice them.

  “You heard that my brother Max was back in the world,” Peter said, wanting to quickly conclude their business, so that he could return to his own wife as soon as possible. “How do you know? Did you see him?”

  “No,” the wolf said. “If I had, I’d have taken him right then and there, and we’d be having a different sort of chat right now.”

  “I doubt you could have killed Max, or even survived the attempt. He’s grown too powerful over the ages.”

  “While I’ve socked away a few tricks of my own,” Bigby said.

  “Still, the question remains. How do you know that he’s here in our world?”

  “The information’s good,” Bigby said. “It comes straight from the witch. I’m not her biggest fan, but if she says a thing is so, you can count on it being so.”

  “She’s far from all-powerful,” Peter said. “She had the opportunity to fight her duel with him and lost. Remember what that cost us?” A chill wind blew down from the hilltop, causing a forest’s worth of leaves to start chattering, all at once. Peter pulled the light windbreaker out of his daypack and put it on. It helped a little. The wolf seemed immune to any sort of discomfort. “And let’s not forget her part in creating this mess,” Peter continued. “If not for her, Max might still be — human.” He’d intended to say Max might still be his brother, but stopped himself at the last moment. He’d be damned if he shared his most personal feelings with an unrepentant killer. Bigby Wolf had been a terror of the Homelands, one of the great monsters in every sense of the word. And that was why he wasn’t allowed on the Farm, even today. Too many of his potential victims lived there, and many of them were certain the wolf would return to his old ways. But he’d taken full advantage of the General Amnesty — that part of the Fabletown Compact that wiped out all previous sins, as soon as you formally became part of the community in exile. All sorts of villains had snuck in under that ridiculous policy, including the witch of their discussion, who was another destroyer of ill repute. No one need repent. It wasn’t required. They only needed to promise to act better from now on. Peter hated everything about the General Amnesty, especially considering how perilously close Max had once come to receiving its protections.

  “It’s pretty clear you still haven’t warmed up to me over the years,” Bigby said. “I can smell the fear and hate coming off you.

  It’s a strong musk I never mistake.”

  “I just don’t trust you is all. Your past record speaks for itself,” Peter said.

  “Apparently not very convincingly, since my record also includes about four centuries of not only keeping my own nose clean, but keeping everyone else on the straight and narrow as well. Doesn’t any of that weigh in the balance?” It was true, Peter considered, that since the very founding of Fabletown, Bigby had served as its sheriff. It turned out he was quite good at keeping the peace among many squabbling factions, still learning how to get along with each other. He seemed to like the job and only quit when he had children and got married. But all that it really proved was that Bigby was the biggest, scariest bully on the block who could effectively enforce his will over any number of lesser thugs.

  Peter said, “You remind me of the killer finally captured, whose defense at trial was, ‘Look at all the people I didn’t kill.’ Any number of good years doesn’t wipe out the bad ones, in my estimation.”

  “Suit yourself,” Bigby growled. “I don’t insist anyone love me, but I do require a reasonable degree of respect, even in my retirement. In the future, if you can’t summon the real thing, it’s best you learn how to fake it. I set up this meeting as a courtesy. Way back when I was still sheriff, you made it clear to me that you wanted first crack at Max, if he ever surfaced again. And while I no longer have any official authority to give you that chance, I think that Fabletown’s new sheriff might take my advice in this instance, seeing as how I’m the one he just asked to track Max down and do him in. If we have nothing else in common, I understand the importance of settling family business inside the family. So, even if the bureaucrats down in Fabletown bitch and moan, I figure I can guarantee you at least a week’s head start. Hell, I can waste that much time just saying goodbye to my wife and cubs. But know this, Peter, in a week I will step in, and once that happens I won’t let anyone get in my way.”

  “I understand,” Peter said. “I haven’t forgotten that you vowed to kill me once.”

  “I vowed to kill a lot of folks back in the day,” Bigby said. “I was a kill-everyone sort of wolf back then. Being one of the good guys now puts quite a collar around my neck. Many oaths are of a necessity on hold, pending further developments. But chafe though it might, I think it’s a collar worth wearing — for now.”

  “Do you know where Max is? More specifically, I mean?”

  “I’ve told you all I know. If you need more information, ask the witch. I suspect she’ll be trying to pin down his location.”

  “Any idea why he’s here? Why now?”

  “Like I said, go ask the witch.”

  It was cold and occasionally treacherous going back down the hill, which seemed on consideration much more mountain-like after all.

  “I’LL HAVE TO GO to Fabletown first,” Peter said. “Then I could end up going anywhere from there. It all depends on Max.” Instead of returning the Range Rover to Rose Red, as he’d promised, Peter first drove directly home to his wife, to have the conversation he least wanted to have. Best to get it out of the way, he thought. The cottage was filled with the aroma of the coming dinner. Resisting the many and constantly changing influences of modern mundy culture, which had affected most Fables in more ways than they cared to admit, Peter and Bo Piper resolutely, some might say stubbornly, continued in as many of the old ways as they could, including the habit of
eating their big meal in the afternoon, rather than evening. There was a fat roast, with carrots and onions, cooking in the wood-burning oven. They didn’t have electricity out here and didn’t particularly want it. Another pan of red potatoes, in a butter and tarragon sauce, bubbled and sizzled on the burner above. An unbaked apple pie sat on the butcher counter nearby, waiting to be popped into the oven as soon as the roast came out. Peter and Bo sat at the kitchen table, opposite each other. They’d pushed the two place settings out of the way, so they’d have room to lean on the table, or pound on it, as needs must, without fear of breaking anything. Bo always cooked a big dinner, full of his favorite dishes, when she knew they were going to fight. She also brought out the good china. It’s as if she calculated that it was something nice she could do to partially offset all of the horrible things she might end up saying. Of course, like most men, Peter didn’t care what quality of dinnerware he ate from, so that part of her gesture was always lost on him. The good dinners helped, though. He noticed those.

  “One way or another I’ll be back in a week,” Peter said. “That’s as long as Bigby’s given me to settle the matter. I hate having to leave you, even for a short time. And I know I promised never to leave your side, but …”

  “But this is the one absolute exception,” Bo said, finishing his sentence for him, since he seemed so reluctant to do it.

  “Yes,” he said, not quite able to meet her gaze.

  “You realize he’s going to kill you, don’t you? You won’t be back in a week because you won’t be back at all. We barely survived him the first time, when he wasn’t nearly so powerful as he is now, and we were both fit and whole and at the top of our training in every dirty sort of business that Hamelin’s underworld could teach us.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re still going to try it, Peter?”

  “Yes.”

  Bo backed up abruptly from the table and wheeled herself over to the oven. Putting on a thick, quilted mitt, she pulled open the oven door, leaned forward in her chair to furiously and silently examine its contents. Then she closed the door, not quite slamming it, stirred the potatoes for a few seconds and then wheeled back over to the table.

  “Ten more minutes,” she said, as if she were an ancient sea captain pronouncing some draconian ship’s punishment on a member of her crew. “Maybe fifteen.”

  “I’ll come back to you,” Peter said.

  “Is this such a terrible life we have? Is it so bad?” Bo said.

  “No, it’s good, and I wouldn’t trade it away for anything else, except —”

  “Except in the fantasy version of your ideal marriage, you never imagined it would include the grotesque hell of my body from the waist down. You never thought we’d have to live strictly platonically for — how many centuries has it been now, and counting?”

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “I was going to say: Except that I can’t pass up the chance to end this with Max, once and for all. We can’t just hide out here and hope he never finds us. He got close once and look what happened. In this matter, time isn’t on our side. And once again, I promise you that I’ll come back.”

  “What a grand gesture,” Bo said. “That’s such an easy promise to make, which is why it’s both insipid and unfair. It’s a no-lose deal for you. Either you do come back and you’re the big hero who’s kept his promise, or you die horribly, and I have to instantly forgive you, because I’d be a heartless bitch if I didn’t. I couldn’t even remotely resent the fact that you failed to keep your word. You get out of any consequences scot-free!”

  “Well, except for the part where I die horribly,” he said, trying on a crooked smile — the one she liked best.

  “Well, yes, except for that part. Don’t you dare try to make me laugh, or like you again, Peter Piper. I’m not done arguing and I don’t want to like you yet.”

  “Then by all means, please do continue.”

  She thought for a bit. It was obvious he was determined to leave, and just as determined not to be talked out of it. He spoke soothingly and diplomatically, but he’d already dug his heels in. Then again, there was one argument she felt would almost certainly stop him, except that it was cruel and cheap — a truly low blow. So she took a long moment, weighing whether or not she actually dared use it. Then she said, “Someone will have to come out here to take care of me.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ll be arranging that when I see Rose Red again, before I drive down to the city.”

  “Some stranger will have to change me and bathe me and help me with all of my bathroom functions — all of the stinky, messy things I no longer have any control over. He’ll see my shocking and lurid disfigurements — everything that no one else but you has ever seen. And sooner or later he’ll let something slip. He won’t intend to. He’ll try to do the right thing and keep it to himself, but one day he won’t be able to help it, because there won’t actually be a compelling reason to stop him. He’s not my husband. He’s not family. He has no real obligations towards me and no duty to preserve my very reasonable shame, much less my modesty. He’ll tell someone, who’ll tell someone else, and pretty soon everyone will know our most private secrets. We’ll be a lovely bit of gossip then, the subject of a thousand hushed conversations. And even though I can keep hiding here — even though I won’t have to go out and actually confront the effects of it — you will, because one of us still has to pick up supplies and interact with the rest of the Farm. You’ll hear the sniggering and see the quick, behind-the-hands whispers wherever you go. ‘Yes,’ they’ll say. ‘He’s the one. He’s married to her, the living horror show. Not really a marriage, mind you. Couldn’t be. Probably has to sneak out into the mundy once in a while for a little bit of the strange, just to release the natural pressures, don’t you know.’ And that will be our lives from now on — for every single year of every single century that we continue to exist.”

  She could see right away the devastating effect her speech had on him and she hated herself for it. She’d been cold and calculating and brutal, even to the extent of intentionally using the male pronoun in referring to her unspecified caregiver, so that he’d be forced to imagine another man doing all of those things she described. She’d never before played the cripple card like this, and though she’d done it for a perfectly justified reason, to save him from throwing his life away in a noble but futile gesture, she regretted it instantly, even as she saw that she’d won. She’d defeated him thoroughly — in detail, as the military men like to say. She could see from his expression that he’d stay here now if she wanted him to, to preserve and protect the agreed fiction of their lives, even at the terrible cost of letting Max go. She’d won, unless she turned it around right now and gave it back.

  Should she let him go?

  Could she?

  She leaned her elbows hard on the table, putting as much weight on them as she had, and clasped her fists tightly in front of her. She stared down intently at her whitening knuckles. Peter didn’t try to say anything, because this was her “I’m trying to think of how to say something really important in just the right way” pose. Even while he was as miserable as he’d ever been, torn between two absolute but conflicting responsibilities, he was content to give her the time to conjure whatever it was she needed.

  She looked up at him and fixed his eyes with hers, which were red and swollen with unshed tears, but there was a cold anger in them too.

  “When you find him you’re going to have to kill him,” she finally said, low, controlled and without emotion.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You know, Peter, but you don’t really absolutely, down-in-your-ugly-depths know. You can’t hope to kill him only as a last resort. You can’t try to reason with him first, or look for one tiny scrap of potential redemption. You can’t even talk to him, because I know that’s what you desperately want to do. You want to find out why he did the things he did a
nd why he let himself become the creature he turned into. You want to understand him and have him explain everything in a tidy, storybook denouement. But that will never happen and you need to know it. If I let you walk out that door — and believe me, I can still stop you if I need to — then it will only be because I have your solemn promise that you won’t try to talk to him first. You’ll use every dirty thing I’ve ever taught you and just do the bloody business and walk away.”

  “I think I can make that promise,” he said, after considering her words.

  “I think you can, too. I just wish I was more confident you will.”

  Peter looked down at his hands, studying them as if they’d only recently grown out of the ends of his arms. The cottage was full of the cooking aromas and he savored them for a moment, realizing that they added to the weight that held him there in their home that he never wanted to leave. Finally he said, “Who’ll we get to come out here then? Who can we trust?”

  “No one,” she said and there was adamant in her voice. “You said you’d only be gone for a week at most? Well, I can hold out here alone for a week. It won’t be pretty, and you’ll have a hell of a mess to clean up when you get back, but what’s left of our stunted dignity and reputation will remain intact.”

  He started to speak again, whether to protest or to comfort she’d never know, because she cut him off. “Not now,” she said. “We’re done arguing now. You’ve got too much to do. You have to pack and get Rose’s truck back to her, before she sends her fire-breathing raven out to burn our house down. And if you think there’s a chance in Hell that I’m letting you go before you do justice to this massive dinner I’ve cooked, then you’re truly living in a dream world.”

  So they ate and they played at small talk, as if a silent pact had been struck to speak only of inconsequential things from now on, until he left and came back and they could take up their lives again as before.