With the trapdoor in the ceiling open, I could finally get an accurate count. There were fifteen cockatrice in the room. That was fifteen cockatrice too many.
“We’re not missing any, if that was going to be your next question,” said Walter, reaching down and picking up the cockatrice that was currently trying to intimidate us. It hissed and struck at his arm. He responded by wrapping one big hand around its muzzle, effectively removing the threat of its teeth. It locked eyes with him, continuing to stare as it waited for him to turn to stone. Cockatrice aren’t very bright.
“This is . . . a lot of cockatrice,” I said, trying to mask my discomfort. It wasn’t working.
“We’d have more if we could get them to breed,” said Walter. “Cockatrice meat can be quite tasty, and their eggs work well in anything that you’d use chicken eggs for.”
“Pass,” said Shelby instantly.
Walter snorted, sounding more amused than annoyed. “Can’t get them to breed, though, no matter how much we try. I’m starting to think it’s a matter of space—they want more territory before they’re willing to reproduce. As it stands, we have to buy new pullets every time we eat one.”
“How much do they taste like chicken?” It was an odd question, on the surface of things. It was also a serious one. People say that everything tastes like chicken, but they’re quite wrong. Rattlesnake, for example, is spicy even if prepared with no seasonings at all, and goat tastes more like venison than anything else that people regularly farm.
“I don’t know,” said Walter. “What does chicken taste like?”
That was the answer I was afraid of. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,” I said, “but someone’s been stealing your cockatrice.”
Silence reigned . . . but only for a moment. Shelby put up her hand while the gorgons were still staring at me and asked, in a small voice, “Could we maybe have the earth-shaking revelations somewhere that isn’t in the coop filled with demon chickens? Because I come from the deadliest place on the planet, and these things are giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
Walter blinked at her. Then, ruefully, he laughed.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s take this inside.”
Walter’s home was quite nice, and would have fit right into most Amish farmsteads, as long as they were willing to overlook the terrified cage of fancy mice in his pantry, next to the potatoes. He saw me looking and closed the pantry door.
“Every man’s allowed his little vices,” he said, in a challenging tone. “I trade for them with the community.”
“White mice taste better,” said Dee. She smiled at me, a slightly frayed air behind her apparent cheerfulness. She didn’t like being here, on the fringe, in the home of a man who represented an ideology she didn’t believe in. But she was trying, and I respected that.
“I’ll take your word for that,” I said, and turned back to Walter. “When did you begin keeping cockatrice?”
“Three years ago,” he said. “We get them from a family of Bigfoot who live upstate. They trap cockatrice for us, we give them organic produce. They’re very fond of ‘organic.’ I didn’t know most people grew inorganic tomatoes.”
Lecturing this man on the local and organic food movement seemed like a bad idea. Instead, I nodded, and asked, “When did you start trying to breed them?”
“Right from the beginning. It hasn’t worked yet, but we keep trying.” He shot a poisonous glare at Frank, the snakes on his head stirring themselves to hiss. “It might go faster if we could get some books on animal husbandry to reference.”
“Buy them yourselves,” snapped Frank. “Or get on the Internet and order them like normal people.”
“You’re allowing human culture to corrupt you,” Walter snapped back.
“You want human books. How is that any different?”
“We don’t need them!” Now the snakes atop both men’s heads were standing erect, hissing loudly and showing their fangs.
“You may not need human things, but you’re both doing an excellent job of embarrassing yourselves in front of the humans,” said Dee quietly. The men turned to look at her. “This isn’t their fight. Perhaps we should stop providing them with a free demonstration of why it’s ours.”
“Ah.” Walter leaned back in his seat, composing his expression. His snakes kept hissing, but otherwise stood down. “My apologies to our guests.”
“But not to your brother-in-law?” asked Frank.
“No, Franklin. Never to you.” Walter looked to me. “Why do you think we are so incompetent as to have lost a cockatrice?”
“I don’t think you were incompetent,” I said, trying not to react to the revelation that Dee was Walter’s sister. “I think you were tricked. If you don’t know what chicken tastes like . . . the bones are similar. It would be easy to purchase a chicken or small turkey at a grocery store, make soup, and claim that it was cockatrice. With enough wild garlic and onion, the flavor would be even more confused. You’d never know. The count in your aviary would remain accurate, and whoever hatched the plan would be free to do what they liked with the cockatrice.”
“None of my people would enter your city, or attack in such a vulgar way.”
“No. But they might be willing to trade a cockatrice for something they wanted and couldn’t otherwise have.”
Walter stood abruptly, his chair legs scraping against the wooden floor. “Come with me,” he commanded, and strode toward the door. He didn’t look back. Shelby and I exchanged a glance, and then we followed after him.
There was a brass bell outside Walter’s door, old and battered and streaked with verdigris. When he rang it, it sounded like it should have been audible all the way into the next county. The echoes were still fading when the fringe gorgons came, walking in from the fields, from the houses, and from the various outbuildings. They were all dressed like the ones we’d already seen, in home-stitched clothes and plain, simple colors. The impression that we’d wandered into the world’s strangest Amish farmstead kept growing, even though I knew it was wrong.
“These people,” said Walter, in a booming voice, “have come from the community, with news of the human cities. One of our cockatrice is loose. So I ask: who has given a cockatrice to an outsider? Do not lie to me. I will know.” He scanned the crowd, focusing his attention on a group of teenagers who stood slightly apart from the others. One of them was staring at the ground, the snakes atop her head virtually braiding themselves as they twisted together.
Walter stepped away from the porch, walking over to her. “Marian,” he said softly. “What is it that you want to tell me?”
“I . . .” She raised her head, biting her lip before she said, “I’m sorry, sir, I’m so very sorry, I didn’t know he was going to keep it, and he offered . . .”
“Marian.” The gorgon girl stopped talking. Walter crouched down so that his eyes were level with hers. “What did you do?”
She took a deep breath. “A man came through the forest, past the lindworm. He said the community had sent him. Said they needed a cockatrice, but that they were ashamed to ask it of you. He brought payment. A dead bird in a bag for the stew, and sweets for the children, and good yarn for the knitters. All he asked was one of the young males, and we had too many . . .”