The Silver Collar Read online



  THE SILVER COLLAR

  by Kate Policani

  Copyright 2011 by Kate Policani

  Thank you for your support.

  CHAPTER 1

  At first I think Mistress could have loved me as a daughter. I think she wanted to, planned to. She did love me at first. My young heart bonded to her because she loved me. I tried so hard not to change. I tried so hard it hurt. But I couldn't hold it back for long. Horror at my hideous form killed all her love for me. But her disgust didn’t kill my love for her.

  I don't remember my life before I came to Mistress. I know I did not come to be when I first looked in her face, but I can remember nothing else of my life. She named me Lyneth on that day.

  A sore blow struck me later when she saw my ungodly form and hardened her heart against me. I suppose I was fortunate she didn’t kill me or turn me out. But she kept me. Though her rejection tortured me, I preferred it to isolation. She never called me by the name she gave me after that. She only called me “Girl”.

  My world was within the inn and the stable, and the wood behind them. Even though I dreamed of escape almost every day, I knew that escape would mean my death.

  “We are too far from anywhere for you to travel on your own, girl, anywhere except the village. Folks there would give you a beating and send you back. Any other direction you’d get lost. You’d die. Don’t wander more than a few minutes away, hear?” Mistress said on a frequent basis.

  Mistress loved to say things like that to me again and again. She believed that it did me good. She also loved to say, “Listen to me, girl. It will do you good.”

  I wouldn’t leave, either, because I belonged to her. Mistress had bought me on that first day of my memories. I existed to help her run the inn. She couldn’t seem to decide whether she got me for a bargain or was cheated. Sometimes she felt one way and sometimes the other, depending on who she spoke to and how well I had behaved.

  My life revolved around the inn and the commands of Mistress. I lived to do everything she said—hard work to make the inn “A decent place”. I scrubbed every inch of that inn from top to bottom, and then when it shone, I started at the top again. I cleaned the stables and kept Horse (that was its name), and any other horses that visited.

  I could clean and scrub, but I could not touch the beds and I could not cook. Mistress said, “That would be disgusting! I wouldn’t let my enemy sleep in a bed that such as you had touched, nor eat a morsel of food you’d cooked. Horrible!” She told me that often, too.

  I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom inside the inn. Mistress sent me outside and into the woods to “do my business”. As time passed, I surrendered to my fate and made a little latrine out there for myself. Summer or winter, warm weather or foul, I went to the woods like the animal I was.

  I grew expert at my chores. By the time I reached eleven years, or thereabouts, I could do it all without Mistress’ instruction or correction. She only corrected me after that when she felt cranky, which was frequent. But she could never find real fault with my work.

  At about that time too, my eleventh year, Father Miller cured my terrible change.

  Father Miller was the only person I had ever known who cared about me. Mistress cared for me but only because she needed me. When she bought me, she had almost grown too old to do all the needful work. Father Miller cared about me. He spoke to me and taught me scriptures. He taught me to read the scriptures and each night before I went to the stables to sleep, Mistress made sure I read ten pages of scripture—at Father Miller’s order. You see, Father Miller brimmed with care for me in the form of profound pity. He had met me the day Mistress bought me and while she still loved me. He was the one Mistress called when I first changed. He held the responsibility for my soul, he said, because I suffered from such a profound curse.

  Father Miller longed to save my monstrous soul, if I had one.

  In the spring, Father Miller brought a strange object: a ring encased in cloth and open at one end. A bright metal gleamed from the opening.

  “I believe this will stop the Cursed Transformation, Mistress. I have studied with diligence and discovered a particular book of curses and their cures. The book called her affliction ‘Werewolf’. It instructed in all manner of ways to kill a Werewolf, but I don’t think that is what you wish right now.”

  Mistress considered. “No, not now. Maybe later though….”

  My blood ran cold.

  “This will not kill her, but it should prevent her from turning into the beast,” he declared.

  The beast that overtook me came with unpredictable frequency when I was small. Any violent emotion could cause me to shift. Hair sprouted all over me. My ears became like a wolf’s. My nose and mouth stretched to form a snout. A tail sprang from behind and my body transferred to a four-legged gait. It all happened in moments and sometimes resembled an explosion. When it stopped, I retained the same size as a beast that I had as a girl. My fur was the same pale blond as my hair. My eyes stayed the gray of my human form, but that alone remained girl-like.

  I felt the same as the beast that I did as a girl. I could understand things the same way. But I couldn’t speak.

  That day, long ago, in my human form, Father Miller pulled open the circle and maneuvered it around my neck. He took care not to touch me with the gleaming metal. He then fiddled with a clasp and secured the silver collar to my neck.

  The weight of the silver collar became enormous as soon as he let it rest upon my shoulders. The collar pulled me down and seemed to drain my energy and my joy. I felt ill. It weighed on my body and on my heart. I repulsed others and needed a bizarre accessory to suppress me.

  “Beneath the cloth is pure silver. I covered it with cloth, because the metal is said to burn the Werewolf’s skin. Now, this silver belongs to the Holy Church and that holiness makes it stronger. I cannot give it to you because it is worth a fortune. It is, however, a responsible use of the metal to quell the transformation of the cursed beast. You may use it for as long as you live. Aren’t you glad to be free of your curse now, Lyneth?”

  My breath came out in a whoosh of amazement and terror. “Yes, Father.” Father Miller used the name Mistress had given me to address me. The sound of that name brought me joy and pain each time I heard it. The feelings melded right into all the others that surged through me at that moment.

  “Are you sure this will cure her?” Mistress doubted.

  “I believe it will. The silver represses the curse and prevents its flowering. She will be weakened for a time, but she will learn to bear it.”

  Mistress huffed her skepticism.

  Father Sullivan was right. The collar did stop my transformations. Instead I convulsed with pain whenever a change began. It was fortunate for me that as I grew older I had learned to hold the change back so that only the strongest emotions affected me.

  I did grow accustomed to the collar, though it always pained me, more when I felt strong emotions. So I began to teach myself to quell my emotions.

  I worked from sunup to well after sundown to maintain the inn. My duties never changed, and I never transformed in all that time.

  When I grew older, boys from the village nearby began to notice me. Gossip always revolved around me, for I represented a figure of horror in the village. At first I would discover the boys who peered at me from hiding. Occasionally one would throw a rock or a pinecone at me, but they seldom hit me. Later, they grew bolder and watched me from a safe distance. They inched closer as I grew more womanly.

  If Mistress caught boys near me she gave them a thorough scold. Until one day.

  I pumped water into a bucket on the side of the inn when four village boys came by. Just as I had grown older, so had they and they approached manhood now.
They no longer kept their distance and they often spoke cruel words to me, though not when anyone could hear. They knew the Holy Pity that covered me like a veil, supplied by Father Miller. They knew it brought retribution on them when someone else witnessed their harassment of me.

  They circled me. They used this tactic frequently to try to agitate me. My bland demeanor irritated them, but it prevented the pain of transformation stopped by the silver collar. I knew I deserved their derision and disgust, so I could not be angry at them. I set down my filled bucket and waited for their abuse.

  This time they were bold—perhaps a little drunk. Then one of them touched me, with a grab of my wrist.

  “Hey there, pretty puppy! Come ‘ere and show us that soft tail….” he mocked. They closed in, and my panic quickly turned into agony from the collar.

  “Aaay!” came a welcome screech from the kitchen door. Mistress had caught them in the act. I remained frozen in the knot of boys.

  “You boys…you want this girl? You want to fornicate with my servant here?” she challenged. I had not expected her to say this. She startled the boys too.

  The boldest of the boys who still held my wrist paused in surprise for a moment and then jeered, “Aye, Madam Innkeeper. We want to fornicate with your servant. What’s the charge?”

  I could feel the sharpness of her gaze at the vile boys. Somehow her disgust included me, but she said, “Oh, there’s no charge, boys. I don’t care to take money for that kind of thing.”

  They all looked at me at the same time, different expressions on their faces. Two were shocked and shamed. One looked shocked, but intrigued. But the boy who’d spoken the abhorrent words, the one who still held my wrist, looked victorious and hungry.

  “Oh, but if you do, boys, don’t blame me if you end up the father of a litter of bastard puppies!” crowed Mistress. Then her cackle rang out over the yard, spreading to every corner of the clearing. It mocked the boys, mocked me.

  Three boys ran off. Without his gang, the boy who had behaved so brazen, who still held my wrist, didn’t feel as eager to dally with a cursed girl. He couldn’t run off like the others. He had risked too much. So he grinned at me, cocky but with an underlying humiliation. Then he dropped my wrist and sauntered away.

  I had escaped the immediate danger, but I could tell something dangerous had begun.

  I lifted the bucket and proceeded toward the kitchen door where Mistress still stood. I tried not to see her face, but her disgusted glare blazed into me. I met her eyes for just a moment, but I could see that she felt I deserved the mockery and insult. She felt as if I couldn’t become more debased than I already was.

  “Aaay, Girl!” she spat as she permitted me to pass. “Don’t think that just because you’ve grown so pretty that you’re clean, not cursed…human. You’re still a monster under that soft skin. Take off the Priest’s pretty silver collar and you’re just a dog in a dress.”

  I have thought long and hard about why she said those things. I marveled that she thought me pretty. It horrified me that she thought of me as a dog in a dress, but it didn’t surprise me.

  And just as life does, the next day changed my entire life forever.