Nine

The twins would not apologize.

“This is not Laura,” they cried. “Laura is upstairs! She looks nothing like her.”

“Stop it!” cried Herr Graf. “Stop it! I want you to stop all this nonsense right now. What will Miss Laura think of you?”

But Laura sat quite unmoved on the sofa, a strange look on her face. She remained quiet.

“But what about the story she told us?” the twins suddenly realized. “If we made all this up, then how could we know the story about Merle, and Erik? And about how they fell in love, but they weren’t allowed to? And how Erik drowned and Merle went mad and then turned herself into a hare? How could we know that?”

Now their father was really angry.

“You have made it all up. You could make up any story and tell us a stranger told it to you! How dare you! How dare you embarrass your mother and me like this?”

“Children,” said Frau Graf, with one eye on their guest. “I think perhaps you should go to bed now, and we can talk about it in the morning. When you’re less tired. When we’re all less tired.”

The children were about to protest, when the lady who was really called Laura spoke.

“But, you know, Herr Graf, Frau Graf. There is such a story, though I haven’t heard it in a long time.…”

She stopped, looking puzzled.

“Only it was … rather different … from the one your children have just told us. It all happened just so, except that the reason their love was forbidden was not because Erik was poor. Merle was rich, but so was Erik. He wasn’t a fisherman, and … well, he wasn’t Erik. He was a she—Erika.

“She was a nobleman’s daughter. Their love was forbidden, because, well…”

She broke off, looking at the children. It was not the sort of thing they should hear. Laura remembered the story a little better now.

“Erika was beautiful, too, they say. And always dressed so well, though she always wore the same dress, a favorite one.”

The children were silent.

*   *   *

Outside, a lady in a black and purple dress listened to the silence of the house.

From somewhere, a long way away, came the scream of a wounded hare.

It sounded so human.

The lady shook her head, thinking of her lover who had lost her mind, and become a lithe creature of the shadows.

“Well,” she said, sadly. “So it is.”