Some of the story I wrote (opinions?)

[Peregrine]

Hey guys, this is some of the story I wrote. Only like the first 3000 words or so. I want to know your opinions of it?

I always wanted to be an adventurer. And I used to travel the world with a friend of mine and, one day, he left me alone. I knew I wasn’t innocent. That I did something wrong. But I just couldn’t remember what it was.

And so, for the last few hundred years or so, I lived like a prisoner in a tower. This tower was built at the tip of the peninsula that jut out into the ocean, so narrow and thin it looked like a crooked finger on a map. For a couple centuries, I listened to the crash of the sea against the steep cliffs. And the forest to the west was like an impenetrable wall. Monsters lived in that forest. Not a dragon or anything like that, but creatures human enough to know the weaknesses of man.

It was an event for me when a human being came over. And, I always knew they were coming before I even saw their faces. I could feel that the day was different. The forest would be quieter, and usually, it was a meek little man or woman that emerged. They were so broken by the misfortune they had found in their lives, but I believed that their hearts were kind. Please, they’d beg me. And what they asked for was all the same: Help me.

They wanted answers. They wanted to learn powerful magic. The sort that could raise the dead, cause someone to fall in love, and other things that I alone was left to know. I tried to open the door to let them into the tower, but it was shut with a spell. I tried to tell them the secrets I knew of this world’s magic, but they did not listen. And after a span of time, they’d try to make it through the forest again to return to their lives. I couldn’t imagine them making it out alive this time, with their hopes so thoroughly dashed. Perhaps, they tried to go through the forest to just end their lives, now that I’d thought about it.

Anyways, once, a king came. It was so long ago, but I remembered it. He came with his army and they lost nearly half their men trying to make it through the forest. There was no way to come from the ocean, where the merfolk, storms, and steep cliffs kept the waters unnavigable. The king arrived and he told me how desperate he was, but it was not unlike the stories I have heard before. He told me that he was a great and popular king and that a neighboring kingdom was trying to take them over--that it had taken them over. And all he wanted was a miracle to save his people. And, like always, I tried to tell the king. He merely cleared his throat and looked up at the great, tall tower with his sad gray eyes. They stayed out there for nearly a month and the king knew that his journey here was in vain, but still he asked every morning and every night. Morale was at an all-time low.

They were on constant lookout, for the centaurs and harpies and the sorts of things that lived in that wood. There were nymphs and a small pack of werewolves. And the monsters gradually picked the army apart, taking them in the night. The king was a coward in the end, crying like a baby, begging for the forest to spare him.

I tried to give him his answers until the final day, when he too disappeared, taken by the creatures in the forest.

Sometimes, I’d be visited by a few of those monsters as well. A werewolf cried and howled for days at the base of my tower. I recognized him as one of my human visitors who begged for answers and now he was one of the monsters in the forest. I believe my favorite visitor was the harpy who perched on the top of the tower and told stories to me. Though, her visits had been getting less and less frequent, I remembered each and every one of her tales as I forgot the secrets that I guarded: Secrets about forgotten and forbidden magic.

And I believe that my story truly started on the first day I made a real connection to this harpy.

***

The harpy landed on the top of my tower. She tucked one clawed foot close to her body, and stood on the other one. It was late winter and the chill of the season fluffed out her feathers. “A few more humans were looking for the secrets of dark magic. But this time, the forest ate them up, and I didn’t need to intervene” She and her kin had spent nearly two hundred years keeping men from coming here.

She was a lonely creature and so was I. And I was familiar with her, though I didn’t know her name. She looked forward to coming to the tower and I looked forward to her visits. Perhaps that was how I was able to open the topmost window in my tower. She heard the window open and it surprised her, being a sound she had never heard before. She hopped down from her perch on the top of the tower and flew down to the window. She hovered for a second outside of it before she extended one of her claws and wrapped a foot around the ledge and pulled herself into the tower. When she came in, she heard the sound of clockwork and saw that the golden light was glowing overhead, filling the inside of the tower with warmth.

She had a strongly angled face and an aquiline nose. Her eyes were dark and feral. Her face and neck and chest were human. Her breasts were bare. She had black, wild hair that had a touch of red to it. The rest of her was feathered and patterned like a falcon. She had powerful, yellow feet and cruel, dark claws on the end of them.The harpy had large wings. Her tail was long and she could fan it wide to stabilize herself while she flew, but inside the tower, she had it folded into a rectangle behind her. Altogether, despite her savage appearance, she displayed polite manners and simply took in the sights inside of the window, looking to and fro with curious eyes.

She saw books upon books against the wall, pressed close together. She saw the turning core of the tower, a machine, and the working cogs and the springs and the small and large pieces moving smoothly. “So you are still alive? They speak about you like a legend or a myth: The clockwork tower that holds all of the secrets of magic and men, built by the greatest wizard to have ever graced our world.” She walked across the floor and I noticed she had a limp in her right foot.

“And here, I thought that perhaps I had been talking to myself. Though, honestly… I always hoped that the story was true,” she said. “Because, in the end, all stories are true.” She had three claws on the bend of her wing. They were curled against her long flight feathers. She picked up a book with her awkward hands and opened it up. She flipped through the pages, but the pages were blank. She frowned. Her face was harsh, but that frown made her look so beautifully sad. “Had you finally opened up because you died inside here?”

I felt myself looking into her head. I wanted to know what she knew. I wanted to hear her story because I felt that she knew a little bit of mine. But all I could feel was her fear and sadness and pain.

“Are you going to stay mute?” she asked the dead air between us.

I wanted to say that I was here and happy that she had come in, but I didn’t know how to make my words apparent. The only answer she could hear was the incessant clockwork ticking, filling the silence.

“Will you ever answer me?” she asked.

I knocked a book off of the shelf. She startled and whirled around to find it. When she found it, she half-walked-half-flew over to the book and picked it up. It was a heavy book. Thickly bound and well-crafted. She carefully turned the pages with her strange hands, not wanting to ruin the book. In it was every story she had told me over the ages. She looked at the books along the wall and at the glorious machine in the core of the tower that rose up to the ceiling. She seemed to understand a little bit more about me. She understood that something alive lived between the cogs and wheels and gears and springs. That my memories were the pages of these books. That my heartbeat was the ticking of the clockwork.

“I have forgotten some of these stories myself,” she said as she skimmed over the pages. Her flight feathers brushed upon the pages of the book. I hadn’t expected that the one who told me these stories would ever hold them in her claws. She smiled so genuinely that her snaggletooth didn’t detract from her grin. She looked around, trying to figure out if there was any specific place she could look at to talk with me. Not finding any, she looked down at the book in her hands. “I suppose the stories I’ve forgotten are the ones I haven’t found the occasion to share in a long time. I’d imagine it’s the same with you.” She flipped through the book until she found the last story she had told me and the pages after that were blank. I could feel the story she wanted to tell me today, stirring in her mind.

The harpy had told me tales of kings and princesses. Of the men she had warded off. Of the ones she let come to my tower and why she chose to do it. She told me stories about strange creatures and about the drama of nature and man and magic. She looked around and found a desk, which she placed the book on. She pulled out the chair and perched upon it. She was lightweight, being a flighted creature, and sat upon the back of the chair without tipping it. She tucked a foot into her feathers and balanced on only her good leg. She looked down at the book, the first naked page. She tilted her head in an avian manner, staring at the page as she began to speak.

I could tell it was going to be a story, and that made me excited because I liked hearing about and learning new things. But it also seemed like what she was telling me was very important.

“I hurt my foot last week, but it was quite interesting what came about it.” She watched the words appear on the blank page, filling in the blanks and revealing the story as she spoke. I could see she was intrigued.
“I was traveling in the skies above the Indilee Floodplain. My wings were weary, so I stopped to rest in a lone tree near the crook of a river. I woke up to a man hitting me hard on the head and when I came to, I was shackled and in a cage.

“They were a circus of some kind and I behaved, for the most part, because every time I refused, they’d beat me and starve me. However, they never hurt me too badly, so I was simply biding my time, waiting for the opportunity to attack.” She gave a small chuckle.

I marvelled at the casualness of which she explained such a horrific ordeal in her life. Was that the reason of her weariness? Of her injured foot?

“For ‘modesty’ they put me in a dress, which didn’t fit well and made it hard to move and fly. I was asked to sit on a perch and open my wings when asked. And recite poetry. They found that I could play the harp rather well and taught me a few songs. A harpy playing a harp! They really loved that. They gave me a few cooked meals and as long as I listened, I ate enough to live. I must admit, I do love cooked meals more than a cold raw dinner.

“Anyways, the last week, the circus came round to Eckerflax. There were so many people there, the most I had ever seen. And that was when I saw her, the blonde haired maiden. She looked young. She laughed at the trained dogs and horses. She marvelled at the acrobats and the wizard. And when I came out, she watched me with wide eyes and was silent and prim--I suppose she was afraid of what I might do to her. I’m a monster, I am. The circus stayed in town and she came nearly every afternoon to watch me. The last day, she came to see me when the show was over. She snuck to my cage and asked me a question.

“She asked me if harpies were as vicious as the stories say.” The harpy looked down at the page and saw her words appearing on the page.

“So, I told her ‘Yes’ because I am no liar. I showed her my claws and flapped my wings. I put a little bit of magic in the air to make the gust more powerful, like a gale in a storm. My dark eyes were fierce and I knew she was afraid because I could taste her fear in the air. And her fear made me wonder if she would scream if I ripped her to shreds, though I never shared that sentiment aloud. But I did tell her that a harpy had several ways to kill a human, and she grew more frightened.” The harpy smiled, proud because she had frightened that young woman.

I wanted the harpy to abandon this part of the story and continue with what happened next because I found the sport of terrifying others to be quite distasteful.

“Then?” the harpy said, but was a little confused as to why she had said it the way she did, more like a prompt than anything. It did unnerve her enough to cause pause. However, she moved on by laying claim to that orphan word and resuming her story with it. “Then, the young woman approached me anyway. She was trembling with terror, but I could see that she came with a certain mission in mind. She had a knife in her hand. Most knives would not kill me, but I could smell the magic on that knife. She told me to promise that I would not hurt her or the humans who captured me or any human at all. That I had to hold still.

“However, I was not a stupid harpy and had been tricked by humans before. Perhaps she would ask me to hold still and would plunge the knife into me when she got close enough. Perhaps the enchantment on that knife would paralyze me once it so much as nicked me. ‘A knife cannot cut through Dwarven steel,’ I told her.

“She said to me that her knife could. She put the small knife against a bar of my cage and it cut through the metal like it was soft butter. I asked her to hand me the knife. ‘It doesn’t work unless I hold it; it’s bound to me,’ she told me. I growled, but she let me take the small knife and I pushed it against the metal bars, but it didn’t leave even a small indentation. ‘Do you want out?’ she asked me.”

“Well, I did. So I handed her the knife back, but I did not trust her. I believed she was the same as the men who captured me. She worked quickly through the metal bars and then went to the shackles at my feet. She put the knife against them, but I flinched. The knife was so sharp that it sliced through the metal and cut into my foot.”

Something about that knife seemed familiar to me, but I didn’t have time to dwell much on that thought, as the harpy continued her story.

“The girl just apologized over and over again. Genuinely enough that I decided to trust her. And I saw my blood smeared on her hands and there were drops on her face. I’ve heard stories that a harpy’s blood feels burning against a human skin, but she asked for my other leg. I saw that the pain made her eyes water. I offered my other foot freely and she cut me free quickly.

“I ripped the dress the circus ringleader had me wear and offered her some of the cloth. ‘Wipe your hands, girl’ I told her, ‘before the stains scar.’ She nodded quickly and started to wipe the blood off, but already there were burns on her hands.

“‘Why was it so hot?’ she asked me. I told her because we’re full of wild magic. That dragons and harpies are cut from the same cloth and that fire loves the wind. She nodded her head, as if to understand. She reminded me again that I had promised not to hurt any humans.

“She asked if my leg was hurting. I said it wasn’t, though it was. I didn’t want her to pity me. I’m much too proud to have pity. I took to the air and the circus folks saw me soaring high above them. I tossed the rest of the dress down and cackled in glee at my newfound freedom. They would be chasing me, I knew, but I was hurrying to the woods where no man but the most desperate dared to go: The forest of Hannoving. They saw the direction of my flight and, after a short chase, stopped because they knew that they would not be able to catch me. I flew non-stop until I made it to the top of your clockwork tower. I hoped that the winter’s chill in the open wouldn’t kill me because the harpies here wouldn’t help me. We aren’t a very kindhearted creature, to tell the truth. With my foot, hunting is going to be harder and I haven’t been eating as well as I should. And so, I flew here with the hope that everything was going to work out. Ah, it took everything I had to fly here.

“I suppose I am not much different than the humans who begged at the base of your tower that you denied access to: No definite answers and no clue whether or not the trip over here would all be in vain.” She huddled her wings closer to herself. “At least I don’t have to worry about the cold any longer. Though, if I somehow manage to live through this winter, I hope to find that young woman again; there’s something I forgot to ask her.” She peeked at the book in front of her and saw that her words had stopped flowing on the page. The harpy had finished her story, after all.

She politely put the book back before she hopped back onto her perch on the chair and tucked her face in the crook of her wing to start to sleep. The bend of her body made her ribs easy to see. She was thin, so thin. It was hard to see through her fluffed out feathers and she had been hiding it well with the way she stood and moved.

The days passed slowly as I watched her start to fade. She would tell me stories, but she never told me if she was going to die or not. However, I knew she expected to die here and was content with finding a comfortable place to do so, but I wasn’t happy with an ending like that to her story.

[Peregrine]

The past few nights, I knew that there was a creature prowling outside of the tower. I hadn’t made mention of it because there was always something emerging from the woods. But night after night, it was the same creature, which was unusual.

Usually, it kept its distance, but this time, it was coming closer. I could feel it: Desperate as any man who came at my door and as the harpy who was nestled inside the walls. The creature circled the tower like a predator and I wondered if its desperation came from anger or frustration.

As it closed in, I could see that it was a werewolf: A cursed creature. Its breath fogged in the night air. Snow glittered in the moonlight on its dark pelt. It was in its winter coat, which was thick and shaggy. Werewolves were an interesting looking beast. Like a wolf, but there were differences in its form, the way it moved, and its anatomy, which made it look a touch more vicious, frightening, grotesque. It was a monster, after all.

The werewolf snarled and scratched at the door at the base of the tower. Its pointed ears were almost hairless and looked between a wolf’s and a man’s. Its paws were long, almost like fingers, and ended in cruel-looking, dark claws. I recognized this wolf by its cry when it howled. It was a lonesome sound that cut to the heart. His bawling woke the harpy up.

“What is that infernal racket?!” She said as she hopped off of the chair and hobbled over to the window. She hopped onto the ledge, landing lightly on her good foot, and peered down at the werewolf below. It saw her and I saw that its rage intensified.

It growled and jumped up, its long claws scraping against the stone of the tower. Leaving marks that disappeared within moments. This was a tower that was built to stand forever, after all. It snapped at the air and fell down upon its back, giving a sharp and painful yelp. It whimpered and the harpy laughed.

“Serves you right!” she said. She shuddered and said aloud, “I hate when they came into the forest, but I suppose they, too, keep the men at bay. I believe the first werewolf was one who sought the cure for his curse at the tower. Now he’s infested the forest with his kind.”

The wolf continued to stay near the tower, whining and desperate to hurt the harpy in the tower. I looked at the beast and remembered the man he used to be.


It wasn’t too long ago. Probably five years ago. A young wizard emerged from the forest, ready to complete the final stretch of his journey. He wanted to learn about magic as much as he could. He wanted to know the answers to all of the questions that were burning in his head. And I remembered that he was quite kind and came on the back of a spotted mule.

The wizard dismounted and walked up to the tower and was so excited to see that it truly existed. That he hadn’t come here in vain. And, I felt that perhaps he started his journey with companions, but they were gone now. I believed that because there was something heavy and sad about his expression, although he was smiling and truly happy for having found the tower.

“Finally,” he said in a soft breath. He only had to see the door to understand that there was a seal on it and that nobody could pass it.

He pulled a key out and I remembered being so excited that perhaps this man out of the hundreds I’d seen in my life would be able to open the door and connect. As soon as he put the key into the keyhole of that wooden door, I felt like he was twisting my insides. Of course, I locked up.

He attempted to turn the key and found that it would not turn. “Funny,” he said. “I made this key. It should open anything.” And then he tried again.

I felt a strange sensation. Sometimes it felt painful and sometimes it felt only like a deep and unrelenting pressure. But whatever it was, it felt like it was trying to evict my notions, change what I thought or why I thought it.

“No!” the man said suddenly. He pulled the key out and I saw him cover his mouth with his hand, like he was shocked or flabbergast. His eyes looked lost and sad as he slowly lowered his hand. The wizard glanced at the small, gold key. “No…” he said again, but in a different tone. He put the key back into the keyhole. “I think I felt something happening there.”

He left it in the keyhole and I felt more vulnerable. He walked up to his mule and opened one of the bags and pulled out an axe. He was approaching me and I saw him start to swing the axe.

“No!” he said again. He stopped and let the axe drop down. “And then, there’s that again,” he said. He looked up at the tower and I saw the sadness in his eyes. “I just want something. Anything to make this journey worth it.” And he looked at the door, half expecting it to slowly ease open. His very soul was nothing but inquiry.

He worked on the door for a week, begging for it to open, before the werewolves got him. And the saddest thing, I thought, was that he had almost figured the door out.

The harpy looked down at the werewolf and shook her head. “Such a sorry creature.” She hopped back into the warm tower and I shut the window behind her. Her dark eyes looked up at the ceiling. The lights were dimmer now than they had been earlier that day, when she first came into the tower.

She hopped onto the chair again. She heard the wolf attempt to bang the door in and it sounded fearsome. There was the splitting of wood, but I could also feel the wood mending. And there was the claws scraping against the stone walls of the tower, but they were also coming back together. “We’re lucky,” the harpy said. “That all the werewolves have are their brute strength. They can’t do magic like real beasts can.”

And that was when I realized why he had mourned his humanity more than any other werewolf before. He had been the most promising wizard to ever choose to come to the tower. And he had chosen to come to the tower with nothing more than the desire to know more and to use his knowledge to help others. He was so close to opening the door using his knowledge of magic that all that he needed was someone to unlock it from the inside. And now, he couldn’t use magic at all.

As morning broke, the wolf became a man. The scratching at the door became a man’s fist banging and knocking against it. The howls and snarls gave way to sobs. And instead of the fierce beast that was there in the night, there was a naked man who was lean, but muscular. He had long, ash-brown hair. His eyes were no longer gold. They were now a clear blue-green, but a touch of the wild remained in them. An unkempt beard completed the scraggly look. He was still hunched on all fours. It had been a long time since he had stood on two legs. And I wondered what had allowed him to turn human again when he had been lost as a wolf for years.

The harpy was still asleep, but I felt sorry for the werewolf.

I tried to open the door at the foot of the tower, but the spell there was much too strong. I opened the window, letting the cold in and waking up the harpy.

“Why’d you open the window?” she said with a scowl. She went to the window and saw the shivering man. Her mouth curled into a smile. “Ah, is that our night’s werewolf? Why did he make himself to look so weak? It isn’t every day that a werewolf becomes a man in this forest.” She hopped onto the windowsill and filled the entire opening. She glanced down at the man below.

“Werewolf.”

He looked up. “N-no.” I wondered if the past five years as a monster took anything away from him. Seeing his naked body, I saw that he looked stronger than he did the first time I saw him. He was nothing but a reed the last time. Now, he seemed fit and built like a working man. He no longer looked like he subsisted more on books and studying than on actual food.

“I’m, I’m…” He looked at his hands and took a deep breath. He shut his eyes and I knew he was trying to remember. “My name is Kiver.” He used the door to support himself onto his feet until he got his bearings again. He felt drunk with how off his balance was, but he didn’t want to be four legged. He shivered and was covered in goosebumps.

The harpy looked down. “Kiver, eh? You don’t belong here.”

“You realize the tower is alive, do you not? It’s not some idle place to live.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve known this tower longer than you have! You werewolves weren’t even supposed to be here. Just a blight in the forest, an unnatural curse that showed up and there’s no way to be rid of it.”

Kiver’s nose wrinkled and the ferocity of the wolf made his eyes turn gold for a moment. “I thought the tower was dead until it opened up for a harpy.” He said the name of her species like it was an obscenity.

I didn’t want them to fight. Please stop fighting. I could scream it as loudly as I could, but I knew they wouldn’t hear me. How could they when I had no voice?

I remembered the small, off-hand comment that the harpy gave me when she was telling me about her time in the circus. I pushed a book from the bookcase. This time, a slim journal. I knew she was smart enough to figure out what it was I wanted from her.

The harpy turned around to find it and picked it up. The book was a cookbook, with various recipes in it--recipes I remembered a wizard to make in a small kitchen in Solbrook, about a hundred miles from here.

“Food would be nice,” the harpy said. “You don’t want me to die, but I don’t know if a werewolf can save me.” She thought quickly of how it could be helpful to have someone who could hunt and cook. And how convenient it would be to have someone who couldn’t magic a poison or a curse in her dish either. “I suppose I have nothing to lose, as I’ll die anyways,” she said to me. “But you’ll protect me, won’t you? I’d rather die from starvation than be ripped apart by a werewolf.” I pushed the book full of her stories off of the shelf as an answer. She glanced down at the volume on the floor and picked it up and put it back onto the shelf. “That’s right: you better or I won’t give you any more stories.”

She hopped back onto the windowsill. Her claws wrapped around the ledge and she looked down at the man below, at the base of the tower. “Kiver?” she asked, using his name. “Can you cook?”

The man shivered and seemed to understand where this was going. “I can,” he said in a voice that trembled because he was freezing. He felt the wolf inside his head trying to claw its way out. It would be easy then.

“And can you hunt?”

“Yes.” He opened and closed his hands. They were tense. I could see that his body was at the brink of transformation, but he kept his cool. His will was too strong when he was so close to coming into the tower.

“I’m letting you in.”

“Thank you,” Kiver replied. He seemed to relax, so I felt it would be fine.

The harpy hopped from the windowsill and across the floor to the staircase. She moved down and past the doors to the third and second floors until she made it to the ground floor. She unfolded her wings and stretched her strange hands forward. She wrapped her clawed fingers around the knob and turned it easily. Kiver’s work on the lock so many years ago had made it easy to open from the inside.

Kiver walked through the threshold tentatively, and I shut the door behind him. He looked back at the closed door and knew that it meant the tower was truly still alive. He rubbed his arms and wished he was dressed, but he honestly had no clue what had happened to his clothes.

He tried to keep himself meek and quiet, but there was a note of frustration and anger to him as he followed after the harpy. And of sadness. I kept a close eye on the both of them, remembering my promise to keep the harpy safe.

She was noticeably uncomfortable when they came up to the third floor. I opened the door which led to the main part of that floor, which was a small living quarters. More of the spinning clockwork core filled the middle of the room. A hay-filled mattress sagged near the edge of the rounded wall. There were scattered trunks and a wardrobe. A blanket chest sat at the end of the mattress.

The air between them remained tense as they looked around the room. Soon, Kiver found the clothes. When he opened the trunk, he sniffed the air. His sense of smell was still quite sharp. The clothes seemed freshly laundered, as if the hundreds of years in the trunk had done nothing to the quality of them. They smelled clean. He picked up the shirt and held it up, looking at the article of clothing. I remembered seeing that color cloth before--a clean dyed sky blue, but not the shirt itself. His eyes were sharp and he stared intently at the way his hands held the shirt, and marvelled at the feel of the cloth between his fingers.

“Are you going to stare at it or wear it?” the harpy asked.

Kiver blushed in embarrassment before he quickly got himself dressed. He put on the long sleeved shirt, then the finely tailored vest. He put on the underpants he found, and the slacks. He remained barefoot, not wanting to bother with shoes at the moment. He pulled back his hair, which was wavy and shoulder-length, with a small piece of ribbon he had found.

The harpy looked at him and had to note that he wasn’t a bad looking human. And I could attest that he did look more handsome than the bookish, thin man who had arrived here five years ago.

She led him up the stairs to the topmost floor of the tower. Her clawed feet were large and barely fit on the steps. I had seen them snatch men by the shoulders easily. I had seen her lift them high and then drop them to their deaths, cackling in glee all the while. I never held it against her, though I found it distasteful because I knew that it was just what harpies did.

“Why did the tower open for you?” he asked. It sounded like it took every ounce of his being to try to make his question sound civil. He just felt that it was unfair when he had to sacrifice everything to make it to me and just be left, stranded in the woods, cursed to be a monster until the day he died.

The harpy shrugged her wings, though I knew she was glad to have an excuse to tell him a story. “I’m an odd harpy, you can say. Once, on my travels, I perched outside a tavern. There was a man inside who told stories so well that I could picture them as if I had lived through the experiences myself. I stayed outside the tavern, keeping myself hidden from view, until he moved out of the tavern to continue his journey.

“I followed him across the country. When he would notice me watching, he would shoo me away and move on. Sometimes, I’d lose him. But I always found him again. One day, he asked me what I wanted. And if he gave me what I wanted, would I be able to leave him alone?” The harpy smiled widely, her snaggletooth giving her a mischievous look despite the sincerity of her smile. Whatever the memory was, it was a happy one for her. “Anyways, I said I wanted to learn to tell stories like he did. He taught me about stories by telling me about a clockwork tower that was guarded by harpies and centaurs and merfolk and storms and magic.

“But nobody wants to listen to the stories a harpy tells. And it’s so rare to find someone who would. I thought the harpies close to the tower would understand because they were close to the subject of a great story. But… they had no love for me: I was a harpy who cared more about tales than killing men. So I took to telling my stories to the tower.

“I didn’t know for certain whether the tower was listening or not, but I hoped it was. And it’s been years. I’ve come and gone, collecting stories and telling stories, and practicing telling them to this tower. I live a life now, werewolf, in which I always consider whether or not what I’m doing at this moment would make a good story down the road.”

“I see.” Kiver said. He looked around, where the books were. He wondered if the treasure trove of knowledge within this library was worth his humanity, the loss of his friends, and hardship of his journey here. He walked over to one of the many bookshelves and picked up a book and opened it. He saw that the book was empty. “What’s happened here?”

“What do you remember of who you are?”

The man was distracted, his eyes taking in the sights of the gold-lit room around him. The blank book laid open in his hands. I could feel that his heart was fast and his senses were sharp.
“What do you remember of who you are?” the harpy asked again, but this time, more forcefully.

He snapped his attention towards her. “Sorry. Okay… um, what do I remember? I remember I was a wizard. Ah, I was called Professor Kiver. And… And I was good enough to teach at the university and work for the king. But I have forgotten the name of the university and the king I worked for. I cared more about learning and teaching and crafting new spells to better the kingdom than I did which kingdom I worked for.”

The harpy nodded. “It’s like that for those who live a long time, too. You forget the details and remember the big picture. That’s five years for you. Imagine hundreds.”

Kiver’s face fell. He pushed the book back into the shelf quietly. “Will there be any way to get it back?”

The harpy shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

He wiggled his toes and watched them. It had been a long time since he had seen his feet. The bones on top were prominent and the shape of his feet were lean and long. Kiver then looked to the harpy. “I know that werewolves can’t make magic, but can they make use of enchanted objects?”

“I don’t see why not,” the harpy said again. Her tone of voice seemed bored. But looking at her gaunt face, perhaps she was just tired and weak.

Kiver looked down at her, as she was about a foot shorter than he was. “I’ve never been this close to a harpy before,” he told her. He studied her bare skin of her face, the slender neck, and her small, naked breasts. She had her wings folded and she stood more upright than most birds. Her yellow legs were long, something between the legs of a bird’s and a woman’s. Her feathers were patterned with dark stripes against cream on her belly, and it thinned up her chest to give way to her pale skin. He looked at her with the eyes of a scholar, taking notes on her appearance.

“What are you staring at, werewolf?” the harpy asked. Her feathers puffed up a little in annoyance. A small gust picked up the loose papers and dust in the room.

Kiver brought his fist to his mouth. He put the bend of his index finger between his teeth and nervously started to pace. There was a heavy purposefulness to his pacing like a wolf on a hunt. “Why did I think…”

And I realized he was trying desperately to keep his humanity intact and not transform into a wolf this entire time. That those moments of spaciness and distractibility were moments when he was trying to compose himself. He was gasping for breath now, in a panic, and unbuttoning his vest with uncooperative fingers. He was quickly losing the fight.

I opened the top-floor window and the harpy understood it as an opportunity to escape. I promised to keep her safe and it was the only way I knew how. I had no weapons or ability to do much of anything.

She hopped to the ledge and the winter’s chill made her reconsider going outside. She looked back and saw Kiver working on getting the clothes off. He didn’t want to ruin them. I could tell that that single-minded mission was what was keeping him human--for now. The harpy knew she couldn’t stay any longer and flapped her wings, ascending to the top of the tower.

“Damn werewolf,” she said at the top of the tower. She fluffed out her feathers and looked miserable. “We shouldn’t have let that cur inside.”

I wanted to apologize, but I hoped that getting her back inside as quickly as I could was close enough to a ‘sorry’ for her to accept.

Kiver was sweating and naked again. I opened and shut the door to the third floor bedroom. He followed the sound, but I could tell it was hard for him to do this favor for me. He used the wall as a guide. He looked sick. He was whining. It was an inhuman sound that came from his throat and nose. He put his hands on the third floor door, but found that it was locked. I opened and shut the second floor door. He groaned and then fell down the steps. He tumbled down past the second floor. He crawled up it and put his trembling hands on the knob, but this door was also locked. I opened the door to the ground floor and shut it.

“Wait…” He glanced up and down the winding staircase and realized that I didn’t want him in any room in particular, that I wanted him out. Every room here was too precious to risk a werewolf.

He winced in pain, knowing that he couldn’t possibly make it completely downstairs. He stumbled again before he sat on the steps. “I can’t make it. My legs can’t work.” He gave a shuddering, breathy sigh. “Let me transform in the stairwell.”

I didn’t like that plan.

“Listen… a werewolf isn’t all chaos. There’s a mind in there. It just gets confused. Wait til the wolf settles, then let me out. I’ll be more focused.” Kiver looked down at his hands. They were already claws. He looked up and heard the window opening again for the harpy to come back inside. “Please. Just do that for me.”

I chose to listen to his plea. It felt good to do a favor for someone.

The harpy was thin and hungry. It was easier to sleep than it was to stay awake. The werewolf, however, was rampaging up and down the stairwell and she couldn’t drift to sleep. I had promised to keep her safe and I wanted to uphold my end of the bargain.

She was on her favorite chair, but was unhappy because of the monster in the stairwell. I kept my eye on the werewolf. He was an interesting creature. He was about the same size as a man. He had long legs and I knew he could run fast--I had seen him sprint along the edge of the cliff. His wedge-shaped muzzle was a tad shorter than one would expect from a wolf, but it looked more powerful; he could easily crush bone. His hair was thick and wooly, as it always was in the winter. During summer, it was sleek and short enough that you could see the muscles working underneath his hide as he moved.

The werewolf ran up and down the stairs. He snarled and whined the whole time, frustrated and confused. He slammed himself against the walls of the stairwell and scratched at the doors when he chanced upon them. Smelling the harpy, he focused on the door at the fourth floor. He put long scratches on the door, but I kept my focus up and remembered the favor he had asked of me. He wanted to kill her, as it was his instinct to. I almost regretted allowing him to stay in the tower because I couldn’t see an end to it. There was no telling when he’d be a man again.

But, after an hour of obsessive sniffing and scratching and biting at the fourth floor door, he finally tired of the futile hunt, and so, I opened the door to the ground floor to let him out, as he had asked me to.

Somewhat calmly, he descended the stairs. I opened the door to the outside and he rushed into the snow face-first. I thought he would be gone for good. And I was happy that he was out. I felt like I could finally relax and the doors didn’t have to be locked. The scratches in my walls and on the doors were quickly fading and I could feel the tension just leave the tower. He stopped and looked up at the tower. I could have sworn there was awareness in those eyes. And then, he hurried to the woods, swift as an arrow. The harpy finally slept.