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hyel (hyel) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2008-06-22 09:16:00

Fic: Big Bad Things (Discworld)
Title: Big Bad Things
Author: Hyel
Fandom: Discworld
Characters: Susan and Maladict
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: vampiric attack, spoilers
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Susan and Maladict as characters in a fairytale


In most parts of Discworld mothers know better than to make red riding hoods for their daughters, let alone to let them go into the woods alone, grandmothers or no grandmothers. There are places, however, where the stories haven't gotten to yet, some little out-of-the-way places in the shadows of the magic-heavy Ramtops. Skulk was just such a place. It consisted of five farms and a town hall that tripled as a club house and an inn, all well-made out of strong timber and laid on the solid foundation of Ramtop rock. It wasn't squalid, but you could hardly get more backwards. This was the sort of place that had never heard of a newspaper, and wouldn't know how to read it if it had.

The fairytale had been scared along from the west, towards the witch country it usually avoided, looking for purchase among busy towns and sleepy villages, manifesting lazily in different shapes, from a rape here to a robbery there. It wasn't until Skulk that it found the ideal conditions.

It settled in.

---

Mrs Ploppy was an industrious woman, which meant her servants, all two of them, wished most devoutly that they were working for someone else. There was nothing they could do but put up with her incessant scrubbing and knitting and efficiency, however, as this was the Ramtops, and Mrs Ploppy's mother was a little old lady who lived alone in a cottage in the woods, and you simply did not want to cross a woman whose mother lived alone in a cottage in the woods. So they scrubbed and cooked and worked the fields along with Mrs Ploppy and her fifteen-year-old, trying to keep up with the terror that is a woman of ceaseless energy. Some attributed this energy to the strange, foul drink from distant lands which Mrs Ploppy ordered all the way from Bonk and insisted on drinking daily, but who could ever be sure?

Mrs Ploppy had worn poor Mr Ploppy out years ago, but her daughter, by some miracle of youth, persisted in being plump and healthy and cheerful. When Mrs Ploppy had the sudden strange fancy to knit her a red cape with a hood, why, the thing would be done in two afternoons, from the weaving and dying and setting the wool to the completion. No-one wondered at this. It was quite a lovely thing, and though young Miss Daisy Ploppy was no great beauty, she strutted through the fields as proud as the daintiest flower of Dunmanifestin itself.

It so happened that the girl's grandmother was visiting the family just as Daisy danced in in her new hood, cheeks glowing with health. Old Mrs Crook narrowed her eyes, which always made her seem lopsided, since one of her lids would no longer close, due to a scar that ran across her forehead. 'What is this? What is this?' she enquired shrilly. Mrs Crook had a habit of repeating everything, to make sure it was heard.

'Why, grandmother,' said Daisy, 'isn't it just lovely? Mama made it for me just a few days ago.'

'Red is not a colour for a modest girl, for a modest girl red is not the right sort of colour,' said Mrs Crook. 'Throw it away, throw it away. Burn it, let it burn!'

Daisy's face fell, and she looked to her toes, failing to give an answer.

'You do as I say, or you'll be sorry, sorry you will be,' said Mrs Crook, and got to her feet, mumbling and cursing, and tottered away, leaning slightly on her broomstick.

'Oh, Mama,' said Daisy later to the industrious Mrs Ploppy, 'red is not a bad colour, is it? Just because town girls wear it, doesn't mean it's sinful. Grandmother is just set in her ways.'

'Just as you say, dear,' said Mrs Ploppy, milking a cow and working a curdler at the same time. Perhaps her mind wasn't really on the question. Daisy kept her cloak.

So it came to pass, as was inevitable, that Mrs Ploppy decided to make a basket with the new cheese and some bread and apples and warm socks for Mrs Crook, and bid Daisy to take it to her. It was customary for Skulkers to only go into the forest in twos, armed with heavy sticks and torches, on account of the wolves, but the custom must have slipped Mrs Ploppy's attentive mind somehow. (The leaves in the trees that morning seemed to whisper in the wind: stay on the path, what I tell you three times is true, and the nightingales all mimicked crows. The air bristled with narrativium.) Daisy took her basket and her stick, but it seemed silly to take a torch on such a bright morning, and in any case she couldn't carry all three - stick, basket and torch. She did take Grandmother's wolf-ward talisman, a tiny canvas bag filled with strange herbs that smelled sharp and slightly rotting. Thus equipped she walked through the village in her bright red cloak with the basket of bread, accepting the polite whistle from Farmer Tully's son Fred with a proud toss of her fair hair.

The forest was really intermingled with the village, but the trees grew thicker soon after Tully's farm, and soon sunlight was but a bright glint above in the foliage. Daisy sang and picked flowers on the way, quite happy that the winter still had not arrived and yet it was not raining, either. Of such things are contentment made. Around her, undetected by her unsophisticated nose, the scent scared away all beasts. Wolves could smell it a yard around, and ran yelping in the other direction. It was therefore very quiet in the forest, still but for the rush of wind and the twittering of a few birds.

'Good day, dear stranger in your red cloak,' said a silky voice from the shadows.

Daisy jumped so she nearly dropped her basket, but she clutched her stick. 'Oh!' she exclaimed in relief when she saw a lovely young woman in the shadows of a tree, wearing a gown of midnight silk. 'I thought you might be someone dangerous.'

'Did you?' said the woman with a red-painted smile. 'There is hardly a need. I was simply passing through when I smelled your... lovely picnic basket, there. I'm afraid I find myself a little peckish.'

'Well, I cannot share, I'm afraid, as I'm on my way to my grandmother's,' said Daisy, wondering why a woman as well-dressed as this would be lost in the woods without food. She could only assume it was one of the fine folk from Uberwald, come riding or hunting far outside the borders. 'She's old Mrs Crook, you know, and doesn't like sharing.' She said this with emphasis; Daisy could not imagine anyone not having heard of her grandmother.

'Oh, no, I wouldn't dream of imposing,' said the lady, emerging from the shadows. She had sharp and strong features, but so arranged as to make her a beauty of demonic proportions. Daisy sighed at the sight, for she had never had such pale cheeks and red lips, let alone such fine clothes. 'But I have heard of Mrs Crook. Perhaps I could pay her a visit, as a courtesy, since I am in her neighborhood.'

'She lives just down this path, a little way up, in a yellow cottage.'

'Perhaps I will see you there,' said the lady with a smirk, and melted back into the shadows.

Dazed, Daisy continued up the path, dreaming of dresses, and forgetting to wonder why she had not seen a horse anywhere near.

---

Old Mrs Crook had never been a great witch. Usually, of course, Maladicta stayed away from witches, as did all vampires; they knew and would test many of the species' little weaknesses, and there were few families in Uberwald who were immune to them all; but this time, something had pulled her towards this one, an inclination, perhaps, or the words spoken in the last party at the Kahkals about what the de Magpyrs' mistake had been.

You could make a vampire out of a witch by letting out the blood and giving a little of your own without taking in the witch's own poisonous essence. If she did this little thing, she could never be Crooked, as the de Magpyrs had been Weatherwaxed.

She raised a fog, and left the little girl to wander in it until she was done and satisfied.

---

When Daisy finally reached the cottage, candles were already burning at the window. She sent a little prayer to Herne the Hunted that there had been no wolves after all, and hurried up the slope to the yellow-painted door. She knocked three times.

'Come in, come in,' said her grandmother's voice, and Daisy went in. The room was lit by candles, but candlelight is never bright, even when it seemed the old witch had exhausted her supply. There were several candles on the table, at the window, and over the fireplace, but not at the bed, where old Mrs Crook sat in the shadows, her nightcap pulled low over her brows. There was a beaker and a glass set on the table.

'Ah, Daisy, dear Daisy, what have you brought me, what have you there?'

'Cheese and bread and warm socks, grandmother.'

'Have a glass of wine from the table and come sit by me, dear, there's wine on the table and an empty chair by my bed.'

Daisy put her basket down and filled herself a glass of sticky red wine. It tasted salty and not at all strong, and it wasn't pleasant, but Daisy drank the glass empty to satisfy courtesy. She picked up her basket and sat in the chair next to old Mrs Crook.

'Now...' She looked closer, peered into the shadows, and exclaimed, 'Grandmother! What bright eyes you have!' for her grandmother's eyes were glowing yellow in the dark.

'Yes, my dear, I can see much better now, much better,' crooned Mrs Crook, and cackled ever so slightly.

'And what pointy ears you have! I never noticed.'

'Yes, my dear, I can hear much better with them.'

'And...' she peered closer in the flickering light, 'your teeth... they are much longer than I remember.'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Crook, her sharp smile maternal and kind. 'Lean closer, my dear, and I will show you why.'

There was a scuffle and a scream, and the rustle of bedclothes, and dark stains splashed and spread on the checkered cover, seeping into its bright colours. Maladicta peeled out of the shadow in the cabin's corner, and joined the feast.

After they were done, she licked the salty tears from the girl's cold dead cheek, and smiled.

SQUEAK, said a voice like a tiny death toll. Maladicta's head snapped up. Old Mrs Crook was cackling, gone somewhere beyond sanity.

'Shut up, Grim Squeaker,' said a clear voice. 'I am not my grandfather.' Out of the wall, through the candles and into their light strode a woman made of black and white and reflected gold of candlelight, with eyes as cold and sharp as icicles, and a shimmering scythe in her right hand. 'I interfere,' said Susan.

Maladicta rose, reflecting the ice. 'Grandfather, you say? I've heard of you.'

'Really? I have never heard of you, vampire. But Mrs Crook did me a favour once.'

'It doesn't matter,' Maladicta said, trying not to sweat blood beneath that stare. 'These are no special circumstances. Your only job is to take the soul. Go to it! The remains belong to the one who claims the kill.'

STAND AGAINST THE BACK WALL AND DO NOT MOVE, said Susan. Maladicta found herself flattened against the wall before the echo of the words had died. Susan turned to the vampire that had been Mrs Crook, and the cold bloodied thing lying across the bed. She lifted her scythe and sliced open the old witch. The scream was terrifying, animal, and full of fear and despair.

'Hey!' said Maladicta. 'That was mine!'

Mrs Crook's soul shimmered in the air, young and plump and healthy, laughed in delight, and disappeared. In a single swipe, Susan sliced open Daisy's body, and the image of a confused girl in her red cloak had just enough time to say, 'Oh dear, what will Mama think?' before she, too, shimmered and disappeared.

'You do interfere,' spat Maladicta. 'I hope Himself hears about this.'

Susan turned coldly towards Maladicta. 'Frankly? I don't think he would mind.' She raised her scythe a third time.

'Wait! You can't do that!' shouted the vampire, though she would be hard-pressed to say why. 'You can't just kill me!'

'I don't always kill monsters,' said Susan with a hint of a smile. 'Sometimes I just domesticate them.' The cold blade passed through Maladicta's chest, slicing her shrivelled heart in two.

---

Maladicta woke up feeling cold, hungry, dry, thin. Her belly felt like ice, and her skin burned. She struggled through a dream of flying over a world of burning glaciers and into the half-light of an oak cabin. 'She's waking up!' said a relieved voice. A human voice.

Maladicta's eyes opened further, and she saw the young woman's neck temptingly bent towards her. She was about to lunge when another person swam into focus - Susan, smiling coldly over the maiden's shoulder. Maladicta hissed.

'It's all thanks to your good care, Mrs Ploppy,' Susan said. 'She should be able to tell you more about what happened at the cottage.'

'She looked so pale and still I was sure she was dead,' said the third woman, who now entered into Maladicta's vision. She was as round and solid as Susan was thin and unworldly. 'And all that blood down her front! There, dear,' and she pushed Maladicta back on the cot and tugged up the covers. 'You shouldn't try moving, though it's a blessed thing you were only scratched by the wolves.'

'The wolves,' repeated Maladicta, with a quick shrewd glance at Susan. 'The wolves... that attacked the cottage?'

'Those would be the ones, dear. But you just rest, now.' Maladicta noticed for the first time the bags under the woman's eyes, and their red rims of sorrow. She suppressed the ghost of a smile, and fell back into the bed, only half-faking the faint.

Susan stayed by her as the grieving household eventually settled down to sleep. 'What are you up to?' Maladicta whispered, then.

Susan leaned closer. 'You will stay with these people,' she said. 'They will take care of you, thinking you are a noblewoman who was hurt by the same wolves who took the girl and the grandmother. You will pretend to eat and drink and you will take blood only from woodland creatures and perhaps, discreetly, the farm animals. You will not take human blood for thirty days. I will be watching.'

'After thirty days, when I slaughter this whole village, will you then come and slice my heart in two again?'

'No. After thirty days, I will no longer interfere with you in any way.'

Maladicta smiled, her teeth glinting. 'It's a deal.'

It is not quite the same as a belly full of stones, Susan mused, but I expect it will be a lesson, nonetheless.

---

'So what happened then?' said the youngest of the young recruits gathered around their vampiric corporal. 'Did she really slaughter all the people in the village?'

'No, she did not,' said Corporal Maladict. 'A month without human blood is torture for a vampire. Torture also tends to bring forth some revelations, if it doesn't break you. Coffee also helps,' she added, and as if the emphasize the point, took a swig of the thick black stuff out of her regimental mug. 'She came to regret the murder of the girl and her grandmother, and a number of other murders besides, and began to appreciate the difference between what are rights and what's right. And it just damn well didn't seem right to keep killing people, when people were what made coffee, and pretty maidens, and those little cakes with cherries in the middle and a crunchy crust.'

'No way it was that easy!'

'Well, Mr Dunkin, perhaps you will want to tell the story then.'

'Sorry, Corporal. It just seems a little easy. I bet really there was a wolf and not a vampire, and he swallowed up the wimmen whole, and a man with an axe cut his belly open and rescued them. That's how I'd tell it.'

'I hope you don't hold to that as the most realistic re-telling if you ever encounter hungry wolves, Dunkin. You'll be legless before they tear your throat, and once you're inside them there won't be much left to sew back together. Well!' Corporal Maladict stood and stretched. 'Looks like it's time for the new shift. Get a move on, layabouts.'

The gleam in the horizon widened as the recruits scattered. Corporal Maladict pulled down the peak of her hat to shade her eyes, pulled on her gloves, and pondered upon stories as she walked up to the rising sun.