The Devourers Read Free Page A

smug.
    “It is.”
    Even as he says this, I see the look in his eyes and know that his heart has been broken by someone with black hair that melted into night, someone whose crippling revulsion toward him, whose grease-stained kiss, still linger in his mind. I give him a moment of silence, surprised by this realization, as mundane as it is. After all, whose heart hasn’t been broken by someone? He seems suddenly too old to look so young, with his smooth face and lush, long hair (touched though it is by the occasional strand of gray). We share a long silence for the first time. It disturbs me, the ease with which I feel sad for him after he’s told me a story steeped in carnage, not to mention a rather romantic outlook on kissing people in their sleep.
    “What happens afterward?” I venture, too curious not to ask.
    “You’re not a professor of literature, but you are a professor of history. History has all the stories. Make it up. Guess. A variation on the tragedy, I suppose. The woman is neither immortal, nor willing to forgive her kidnapper, this rakshasa, this monster. He leaves her in the village of Kalikata, or at the banks of the Hooghly at Sutanati, where her fellow travelers were bound.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. He continues.
    “Or even if he charms her with a shape-shifter’s magic and they wander off and get married, she dies and he lives on to survive and tell his story to a random wayfarer centuries later. Either way, he is alone. His pack is not forgiving of intermingling with humans, nor sabotaging a hunt, making him an exile from his own kind. They can smell his betrayal from a mile away.”
    “This isn’t too far from a story about a chosen one rising to lead his tribe to salvation, is it? Lone exile, wandering into the future, unable to die, shifting between shapes, all that.”
    He nods. “I’m just giving you some options. But I knew you had it in you, Professor. You can tell someone the rest of the story. Or tell it to yourself. Romance, fantasy, horror, realism, moralistic fable, history, lies, truth. It’s all there for you. Pick and choose, my friend.”
    “You’re the first Indian werewolf I’ve ever heard of.”
    “
Werewolf
is one word. A European one. We’ve been called many, many things. You can call me anything you like. The shape-shifter is a common thing in the end, and our stories are told here as everywhere else.”
    “And yet you used the European word,” I say.
    He nods. “You’ve got me there.” I see him shift a bit in his chair, and wonder if I’ve made him uncomfortable.
    “So if shape-shifters are so common, how come nobody knows about you?” I ask.
    “Everybody knows about us. Most of them just don’t believe that we’re real anymore.”
    “Why don’t you tell them you are?”
    “Maybe in this day and age we just want to be left alone.”
    “And occasionally tell a story to a random wayfarer?”
    “Exactly.”
    The kitten squeals and leaps out of my lap. The stranger has caught the animal before I can even react.
    “Once everyone leaves, the dogs outside will chase this kitten down and tear it to pieces. For sport,” he says, running his long fingers through the little creature’s dirty fur. ‘ “And humans have the arrogance to say they’re the only animals capable of cruelty.”
    “Humans?” I try to laugh. “You’re generalizing just a bit.”
    “Apologies.” He looks at me. The crowd bursts into applause as the bauls finish. Chairs clatter against one another as several spectators stand, some drunk. I didn’t even notice that the song had ended. The stranger speaks despite the cacophony, and his voice is clear enough that I can hear him. “You know what distinguishes us from the dogs out there?” he asks me. I nod, despite myself. I want to give him a laundry list of things, but I don’t.
    “We can tell stories,” I say instead.
    “Well done, Professor. Perhaps my story did not fall on deaf ears after all.” I say