I hear the boisterous laughter coming from beyond the brightly lit windows of the country innโthe only sign of life in this dark, dark night in the middle of the Black Forestโas a kiss is stolen from me. I accepted the coupling in the back of his carriage as fair payment for the ride this far from the provincial capital, but the kiss was a surprise. I had not discerned any affection in the heat that had risen off him as he was taking me on the leather seat in the dark of the carriage. As I stepped down from the carriage, my embarrassment was heightened by the sense of eyes watching from. . . somewhere. . . perhaps from that convivial chamber between the lit windows.
All laughter and talk skip a beat or two when I enter the barroom in search of supper and a pint, but I wait for it to resume before looking around. A surly crowd, wedged in the nooks and crannies of the small, low-ceilinged room crowned with smoke from their pipes. No doubt settled in for the ages, each to his own hard-won position until death snatched him away, to be replaced by a son or some other twin of the slow, close-to-the-earth existence of the forest people.
The need for food and drink fulfilled, the barkeep allows that the inn does have a room for the night but that it would need to be prepared before I could occupy it. My answer that it's quite all right, that I plan to take a walk in the forest before retiring, draws the disapproving attention not only of the barkeep but of all of the gnarled or hulking, depending on their ages and their lot in life, men within hearing.
"Best not be walking in the forest this evening, young sir," says the barkeep. "It's the night of the sheathing of the moon. No one goes into the forest on this night."
"Oh, vampires and werewolves, do you mean?" I say, somewhat too loudly and playfully, I fear. "Have I traveled as far as Transylvania? And shouldn't that be a full moon I've to fear, not a lunar eclipse?"
General silence in the room again. I have obviously touched some raw nerve here.
"I'll just be saying it has been proven unwise to tempt the fates of the forest on a sheathing of the moon night," the barkeep answers quietly, evidently not interested in pursuing that topic further.