The Devil_s Garden

FIFTY-FOUR

There had been other suitors over the years, many interlopers in their lives. Once, in a small village in Livonia, a young boy had dared speak with him about his daughter, Marya. The boy claimed to be the son of the town’s bailiff. This was after the second siege of Reval. Led by Ivan the Terrible, there was a sickness in the air, a state of lawlessness that swept the towns of Dunaburg, Kokenhausen and Wendenthe, and Aleks had dispatched the boy with no consequence.

Marya had been nearly seventeen at the time, a young woman of incomparable beauty. As she and Anna flowered to womanhood, they had begun to manifest small differences, not only in their personalities, but also in their looks. From a few yards away, to most people, they were indistinguishable from each other – their honey-colored hair, their flawless skin, their clear-blue eyes. But a father knows his children.

And now this man. A man who claimed to be their father. Another intruder.

Aleks stood outside the church, a bitter wind cutting along the ridge that led to the banks of the river. Anna sat before him, wrapped in fur. At her feet was a bundle, a swaddled, stillborn infant.

Aleks looked at the imposters.

Next to the dead child sat the grey wolf; primordial siver eyes set deep into the smooth dome of his head.

“Do it now,” he said. “Or I will do it for you.”

The gray wolf bayed.

The man raised the weapon, and pointed it at the woman’s head.