Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 55: How the Echo Shouts Aloof

Chapter 55: How the Echo Shouts Aloof

Charles Brauner lifted his head from the large metal basin with a triumphant if muffled shout, an apple in his mouth, water streaming down his face and soaking into his collar. Abigail was there immediately with a towel, laughing as the boy dropped the apple out of his mouth and into her hand before drying himself off. It was her turn next to chase the apples across the surface of the water, hands clasped behind her back.

"It's harder than it looks," Will told Hannibal as they sipped cider and watched the festivities that enlivened Carfax's grand lawn, the house beyond lit up and welcoming. The late afternoon was golden with promises of real autumn once this brief return to summer had worn out its welcome. In the meantime, Hannibal's guests enjoyed the mellow weather, lawn games, apple-bobbing, and early fall refreshments like apple tarts, chilled cider, and spice cake. The occasion for the party, allegedly, was to celebrate the next phase of Carfax's renovations, but Will felt the weight of an ulterior motive. The shadow it cast was in no way unpleasant.

"You're cheating!" Charles accused through hearty laughter as Abigail put her hands on the edge of the basin. He snatched up the soft scarf on the table and loosely tied her hands behind her back while the girl, cheeks as red as the apples that were her quarry, pretended to protest. She tried again, afraid to dunk herself too deeply, then gave up, prevented from victory by uncontrollable laughter.

"Does she like him?" Will asked softly as the party moved around them. He and Hannibal were partially shielded by the trunk of a thick old oak tree on the edge of the festivities, and anyone who tried to find them never quite made it somehow, distracted or somehow deterred.

"In her way," Hannibal replied, slipping his fingers along the back of Will's hairline, stealing a moment with the curls there.

"She's too young for marriage." Will said it like it was a fact, but he glanced at Hannibal to verify.

"Certainly," Hannibal said. "Abigail wants to study at the Sorbonne."

"It'll break his heart when she goes," Will said, nodding toward Mr. Brauner's son, who was cheering Abigail on as she nudged an apple closer and closer to the desired position.

"You've got it, Abby, you're so close!" the boy cried.

"Abby, even," Will murmured. It was so hard to reconcile the girl bobbing for apples with the one who had gutted a boy in the woods of Transylvania.

It was easier to imagine once she captured the apple and began to peel it in a spiral. She held her knife with a practiced surety, a grace, that Charles Brauner very obviously did not possess as he was only able to peel off little shards of red. She took his apple when she'd finished and helped him get part of a spiral peel.

"Are you ready to know your future?" Charles asked as Abigail giggled. It made Will nervous to see she still had the paring knife in her hands. "All right, stand here." The boy took the apple peel from Abigail's apple and held it over her head. "Ready?" She nodded. "One, two..." The boy drew the coiled apple peel around her head, tracing an invisible halo. "Three!" He flung it over her shoulder onto the lawn.

"I'm not familiar with this custom," Hannibal admitted as the pair bent over to examine the apple peel where it had fallen.

"It's, ah... a form of divination. You peel the apple you bobbed and toss it like that. When it lands, it's supposed to... reveal one of the initials of the person you're going to marry."

"That looks like a C to me," Charles said, a confident lift to his chin even as high spots of color appeared on his cheeks.

"Could be an O," Abigail teased. "Could be a Q. Do you know anyone whose name starts with Q?"