A WOLF CALLED WORMWOOD BY JOEL TAGERT ART BY OKSANA DROZD AKA LUMITAR Remember to shut the door. Jon did not remember very much at this point. There had been a time, he knew, when his memory had been truly capacious, a prodigious palace whose pillars were a host of recondite systems and abstruse techniques for recollection. He had written books on the subject, entertained dinner parties, won trivia shows, educated the already erudite in hallowed halls. Now his memories were few, and precious, and threatened. Remember to shut the door. He was sitting cross-legged upon a large square stone in the courtyard of his house. The house was unusual in many ways, built by him for an unusual purpose. Constructed in the ancient Roman style, the courtyard was surrounded by exactly twelve rooms, with a hallway that ran around its inner perimeter. The memory palace method was also called the Roman house method, as this was one way the ancients had recalled their speeches and whatever else, by mentally placing each item sequentially in the house’s room. Previously there had been four doors from the hallway entering the courtyard, but three of these had been first screwed shut and then bricked over. The remaining door, the one he faced now, was a storm door of heavy steel. Little pig, little pig, let me in! In his hand he held an eight by ten photograph. A light mist was falling, as it so often did in this part of the state — what was its name? — glistening on the thick paper. He still remembered why the photo was important; he would remember this to the last, because he had placed this single memory in the courtyard with him. Once it had shown Llew and himself walking hand in hand through a meadow bordered by yellow aspen and deep green pine. Now, however, the photo had changed. Though only five years old and stored in a photo album, it looked much older, its surface pitted and flaked. Over the last six months its color had first faded to sepia, then deepened No. 130 into an unnatural crimson, as though the forest were ablaze. The two human figures had turned to patchy silhouettes, then grown diffuse, their shapes shifting. At first he had wondered what new form it would take. Now, as the legs, body and tail became clear, it was obvious. He focused hard, boring into the paper, and was rewarded by two new blister-spots appearing, red as rubies. The wolf called Wormwood opened its eyes. A low sound, less a howl than a disquieting subliminal vibration, neither human nor lupine, shivered through the air. It was equally loud in the inner space, where the mental image of the house, his memory palace, resided, and he cringed. The wolf was at the door! He focused on the first room, plumping up the memory like a juicy slab of steak. * * It was Eoghan who first brought it to his attention, Professor Eoghan Ó Cléirigh (Owen O’Cleary, but Eoghan was very Irish and would certainly not spell his name like a damn Englishman). He was attending a seminar on medieval manuscripts at the University of Washington (that was it, that was the state) and they met for coffee. Eoghan was distracted, even distraught, taking off his glasses again and again to rub at his eyes and temples, running his fingers through his thinning blond hair, staring out the windows. After some preliminary small talk, he burst out, “Do you remember a woman from the Trinity conference? A blond, I think. You dated her.” Like an accusation. Jon cocked his head. “Are you thinking of Mallory?” Whom Jon had dated for six weeks or so toward the end of his stay in Dublin. “No, no, no. She was at the conference. She gave a presentation. There was some controversy.” “Maybe, but I certainly didn’t date anybody there.” “Fine, forget the dating. But do you remember her? This is your area, right? ‘Elephants never forget’ and all that.” This was a reference to Elbert
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