By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle Page A

that day that I don’t have a name anymore because I’m dead just like my folks. The bite took my life away even though I seem alive. He said I have to stay away from the living because I can’t ever live again. My kind kills people that we love.”
    Maddie stared at that white face, too shocked to speak. She thought of the little boy left alive in a pool of his own parents’ blood.
    â€œI didn’t want you to know,” he whispered. “Not you, most of all. I’m something horrible, Madeleine. I don’t mean to be. I know what you think of me now.”
    Maddie felt tears come to her eyes. But it was silly to cry, she told herself firmly. This was something crying wouldn’t mend.
    â€œNo, I don’t think that,” she answered slowly. “I’m not sorry I know, Paul.” She slipped out of the house and left him alone, still staring up at the ceiling.

9
    All that rainy day, Maddie and her cousins sat on the floor of her uncle’s empty forge and peeled rushes while the short black chickens scratched through the peelings and clucked over small bugs. It took a knack to strip the fibers from the pulp so that it would give a good light when soaked in fat, but even the little children knew how to do it. Soon they would need these lights. Darkness was coming, the time of year when the days were short and stormy. Maddie felt that those dark days were already here.
    As she sat there, working mindlessly, absorbed in horrifying thoughts, a voice in her head kept laughing at her. You wanted to know all about him, it taunted. He was so exciting and mysterious. Well, now you know the mystery, don’t you, you and your stupid curiosity.
    You’re in trouble, she told herself fiercely as she split and peeled the rushes. This is real trouble, big trouble, and it’s bigger than you are. It belongs to big, worldly men like Father Mac and Black Ewan. But as she worked, she imagined what the men would do about it. It was just like the old Traveler had told her. Paul would be dead that same hour.
    â€œI’ll bet you’re glad the wood-carver’s back,” remarked Bess as she shooed away a chicken.
    â€œWhy?” asked Maddie absently.
    â€œYou know why,” prompted Bess with a grin, but Maddie shook her head.
    That evening, Maddie swept Lady Mary’s dusty corner as the old woman ate fish soup.
    â€œIf a werewolf’s not a wolf, what is it?” she wanted to know.
    â€œWhy do you ask a question like that?” demanded Lady Mary. “Because of your book about them,” answered the girl. “Who can tell, I might meet up with one.”
    Lady Mary finished her supper. “I doubt it,” she remarked, “if you stop chasing shadows. I was just rereading that book, as a matter of fact.”
    She picked up a small volume from one of the stacks and handed it to Maddie, watching the girl turn the brown vellum pages and run her finger over the black strokes of the crowded letters. “I should have taught you to read Latin,” she sighed.
    Maddie looked up from the puzzling page. “Bless you!” she laughed. “As if I could read anything!” She handed back the book.
    â€œBut no one else asks the questions you ask,” observed Lady Mary. “You’d like to read, I think. What is a werewolf? It’s closer to being a flea or a louse than a wolf. Fleas, lice, and werewolves are all parasites. They live on a host. A werewolf is a spirit or being of some kind that lives with a person. On the night of the full moon, it takes over entirely, making the person do what it wants. It’s related to the undead. It may even be the same type of parasite, except that the undead inhabits a corpse.”
    â€œBut if it’s there all the time, why doesn’t it always make the person do what it wants?”
    â€œThe undead seems to do that,” admitted Lady Mary. “It walks whenever it pleases at night.