Rumors in the Alehouse

“Give me another one…,” Max slurred, staring at the empty mug he had drained only seconds before.

“Just look at him…,” a voice muttered from one of the corner benches.

“How can a man sink so low…”

But Max did not react.

Instead, he wrapped his hands around the new, cool mug the innkeeper had set before him.

He turned it slowly, a motion that had long since become habit.

The same gesture, every evening, with every drink.

“I can almost understand him,” another voice remarked. “Not only did he lose a fine girl like Resi, but also the apprenticeship her father had secured for him. And he was nearly finished, too…”

“I’ve no pity for the fellow!” a third voice cut in. “Anyone who makes such grand claims, and then clings to them even after being proven wrong, has no one to blame but himself!”

The speaker took a deep pull from his beer, lit his pipe, and added:

“…Resi is better off with Hans. It was only right of him to step in after such humiliation. A proper man, that one!”

Nods of agreement went around the table as more pipes were lit.

Max’s fingers tightened around his mug.

He had heard those words so often by now that he sometimes caught himself finishing them in his head before they were spoken.

Though he had endured such talk for weeks, it still cut him anew each time.

The tobacco smoke hung heavy in the air and stung his nose as his next beer neared its end.

“Say…,” the innkeeper began as he took the next order, “word is you’re working as a day laborer at the sawmill now…”

He hesitated.

“Wouldn’t it be wiser not to drink away your entire wage?”

Max forced a crooked smile and slowly shook his head without replying.

His wages would never suffice for a place at the Polytechnikum, let alone the journey to Vienna, even if he'd saved most of it.

And after the bet, the town’s workshops wanted him no more as an apprentice than he wanted them as employers.

Much had passed through his mind these past days.

But the answers he sought, Max now searched for only at the bottom of mugs.

As his thoughts kept on wandering over poor choices and missed chances, the talk at the nearby corner table continued.

“A Wolpertinger…,” someone scoffed. “Utter humbug!”

Laughter followed.

Then a voice rose from the neighboring table.

A grey-bearded old man turned toward them.

“True enough, that Wolpertinger…” he said, nodding toward the counter where Max sat, “…was humbug indeed.”

His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

“But they say that travelling fair that passed through here not long ago caught a real one nearby! For their menagerie of curiosities.”

The men at the table laughed again.

“Oh, Sepp, don’t tell me you believe that rubbish as well? That gypsy rabble probably just made off with Kuno’s pug!”

More laughter broke out.

At the counter, Max barely listened. 

“Idiot,” he muttered, his fingertips clinking against his mug.

But old Sepp would not relent in his story and shook his head.

“Normally, I’d agree with you!“, he ensured. “But cooper Daniel is an honest, God-fearing man, and he swore he saw the beast bite one of those showmen clean through the finger!”

“Oh, do be quiet,” another waved him off. “Keep talking like that and you’ll soon be sitting beside that drunkard over there!”

Max merely sighed, as he could bear the talk no longer.

“I think that’s enough for me…,” he whispered.

As the discussion went on, Max drained his mug in one long pull, let a few coins clink onto the counter, and pulled on his coat, before turning to the door.

“…They say the beast was far more demonic than anyone imagined,” Sepp continued. “Even once they finally locked it in a cage, it shrieked at its captors with those devilish, emerald-green eyes, as though trying to curse them!”

As Max was almost at the exit, something inside him tightened.

For a moment, the noise of the alehouse seemed to blur.

The clatter of mugs, the rustle of clothes, all of it fell away.

Only that word remained: emerald-green.

Some listened now more eager, rapt as if to a ghost story, while others laughed and waved it aside.

And as the details grew ever more embellished, no one noticed someone drawing close to the table.

“But the strangest part of it all was...”

Sepp got no further.

A fist slammed down on the table, making mugs jump and voices fall silent.

For a heartbeat, there was absolute stillness, save for the faint rattle of glass.

Heads turned.

Max stood there.

His expression hard, his body taut.

“Where?” he barked at Sepp.

“Eh… what do you mean, lad?”

Max struck the table again, harder.

“Where did that travelling fair go? Tell me!”

Sepp and the others exchanged startled glances before he answered:

“…South. Up the valley, toward the high country. I don’t know exactly where.”

Before the last words had fully left his mouth, Max had already turned away, striding for the door.

And as the cool autumn air struck his face outside, only a single thought filled his mind:

Please. Let it not be her.