by E. D. Walker
Alisoun looked sullen. “What can a werewolf know of humanity?”
The room fell into a silence positively thrumming with tension. The king spoke again. “What do you know of it, Alisoun?”
Llewellyn rubbed his forehead, his brows knotted in a frown.
“If I have done wrong, see how I am repaid.” Alisoun lifted her maimed hand and turned the grotesque mask that her face had become toward the king and Garwaf.
A tremble passed through them both.
Obviously sensing their revulsion, Alisoun laughed in triumph, a mad light in her dull eyes. “Almost at once my iniquity was rewarded with the contagion that reduced me to this. Within a week of stealing the clothes, I stabbed myself with a needle. The point went clean through my finger, and I didn’t notice until the blood stained the cloth.
“By the end of the first year I had sores all over my body. I saw the flesh liquefy from my bones, my bones dissolve and fall like dead leaves.” She twitched the covers aside to reveal a disfigured foot, bereft of all but the two largest toes. “My foot first, then my hand, my face, my hair—all putrefied. My eyes went last, so I was privileged to behold every deformity and relish the sight of my beauty laid to waste.” A delighted rictus of a smile crossed her face. “I bedded Reynard for months after I first noticed my symptoms. He threw up for a whole day when he finally realized the truth.”
Sick at heart, Garwaf trotted over to the king. He gazed into his lord’s eyes and gave a small keening whine, willing the king to understand him.
King Thomas sighed. “Llewellyn,” he called softly. The magician looked up. “Let us leave them alone for a moment.”
Alisoun sat up. “What? You’ll leave me to the wolf?”
“No wolf, madam,” King Thomas gritted out. “Only your husband.” And then the king and the wise man left.
Garwaf sat there for a full minute, willing himself to move but unable to get his limbs to obey. Alisoun leaned back and stared fearfully around with her sightless eyes. After a moment, he padded as slowly and as loudly forward as he could so as not to startle her. He watched her eyes the whole time, ignoring the ruin her face had become. Her eyes were sightless now, but some of the lovely brown tint remained. He focused on that, on the familiarity in her eyes.
His anger toward her had abated. He had lived a horrible life these past two years, cut off from family, friends, and all the world he had known. He had been cold, hungry, miserable, but he would recover. Mend. Alisoun never would, which made him sorrier than he could say.
He leapt up onto the bed. She recoiled, drawing back and lifting her hands to shield her face. “Don’t. Don’t.”
He whined and crept toward her, at last resting his chin on her good hand.
She remained stiff for a long moment, but then her expression softened. He rubbed his chin on her hand, wondering if she could even feel his fur. She hesitated, then blindly reached toward him. He tilted his head into her palm, and she caressed his ears. “Oh, Gabriel, it is you in there.”
I did not do right by you, Alisoun. I should have told you. I should have told you from the first, I should have given you a choice. I am sorry.
She sighed and leaned back, letting her hand fall. “What have I done to you, Gabriel? What have I—” For a long moment, she did not speak, and Garwaf let his presence comfort her. He could say nothing to ease her guilt, but he could show her she was forgiven.
She reached out to him again, and he met her questing hand, ducking his head into her fingers. She touched his jaw, and her sightless eyes somehow found his and gazed into them, unseeing. “What Reynard stole from you, what I stole from you, you will find it amongst my things at Dorré. In my clothing chest, the one you had carved for me at our wedding. Your things are underneath my old bride clothes.”
Garwaf nodded.
“I tried to burn them once,” she spoke dreamily, almost conversationally, her thoughts wandering. “They wouldn’t burn. And I meant to drop them in the river or bury them but, whenever I went to rid myself of them, I would pause, and I could not finish the deed.”
No, Garwaf thought, you would not have been able to. No one could destroy them for good but me.
The light in Alisoun’s eyes faded. Garwaf sat on the bed for a long while with the body before he went to the door where King Thomas and Llewellyn waited.
Llewellyn went to Alisoun first and checked her. The magician shook his head. “Reynard is a widower now.”
“And you.” The king addressed this to Garwaf.
Garwaf shook his head. No, our marriage ended the day she sent for Reynard. Alisoun and I might have lain and lived together, but we never had a true union. We said the words in church, we went through all the motions of love, but our union was never what a marriage should have been. What love is supposed to be, what it is ordained to be.
I will do better next time. I must do better. My beauty deserves that. If she’ll have me. The werewolf looked up at the king.
“She told you where we may find your clothes?”
Dorré was but a half day’s ride. Garwaf blinked in wonder.
Llewellyn hazarded a guess and directed himself to the wolf. “Somewhere at your home, my lord?”
Garwaf nodded.
King Thomas slapped his thigh, stomping with deliberation from the room. “Then to Dorré we ride.”
Chapter Eighteen
The ride to the Dorré estates was not a long one but still seemed to last an eternity to Garwaf. He could not ride alone, obviously, and it was uncomfortable to go on horse, so the king and Llewellyn rode with him in a carriage.
As the day darkened, they clattered up to the Dorré estates—there to tear the house down about their ears if such an action would help them find the lost clothes. Clothes that, through some magical property unbeknownst to even the king’s wise magician, would somehow restore to Garwaf his human form.
Garwaf was apprehensive and restive, shifting perpetually in his seat, absently whining. The past few days, from the feast onward, had passed in a dizzying whirl. Everything had moved so fast, and now, if all went well, he could be a man again by the end of the night.
A shudder passed through him. He thought his heart might explode for the happiness swelling inside his chest.
They had brought Reynard with them, thoroughly tied and gagged. King Thomas was challenged at the gates of Dorré but, once he identified himself, their party passed through unmolested, led off to the inner bailey of the castle with due deference.
When they arrived in the castle’s inner sanctum, Garwaf longed to bound up to Alisoun’s room at once. Still, he was wise enough to realize that a strange wolf galloping unescorted through the castle would be a wolf with a very short life expectancy. He stifled his anxiety and waited for the king to sort matters out with the castle steward. Eventually King Thomas was given free rein of the castle and leave to search the grounds to the smallest jar of seasoning for what they sought.
King Thomas waved this generous offer away. “That will not be necessary. I believe we have a fair idea where to seek what we desire.” He patted Garwaf’s side. “Don’t we, lad?”
Garwaf shuffled forward and whined. He wanted to go.
“All right, all right.” King Thomas smiled indulgently, but the expression wavered on his face, and he trembled. “Let us go.”
Garwaf charged into the castle keep, navigating with ease through the many corridors and rooms. Scents came back to him—the musty smell of smoke, the cool chill of the stones, the dust of the tapestries. Home.
On the threshold to Alisoun’s bedchamber, Llewellyn and the rest of their party hesitated. Garwaf, a lifetime ago, of course, had been there many times before. He didn’t hesitate to enter. Not much of the décor had altered, and Alisoun had not moved the wedding chest from the wall that had ever been its accustomed place. Regret filled Garwaf for the ruin Alisoun had become, and he paused for a moment to grieve.
With a sigh, he scratched his dead wife’s trunk. Llewellyn pic
ked up on his hints and lifted the intricately carved lid. The magician shuffled back the fine gowns to find a package of dirty wool wrapped and carefully folded, tucked securely at the very bottom of the chest. He pulled the parcel out, presenting it to Garwaf for his inspection.
Garwaf’s nostrils flared as his gut churned. He barked and jumped. He could barely breathe from the anticipation.
“My king.” Llewellyn grinned from ear to ear. “I believe we have the items.” Llewellyn laid the clothes in front of Garwaf and waited expectantly for him to make some move toward them.
Garwaf only sat there, giving them all an impatient look, growling low. Llewellyn understood first. He pulled King Thomas aside and dropped a discreet word in his ear.
The king, likewise, looked abashed at his own stupidity. “Of course.” He shook his head and winked at Garwaf. “So sorry, lad. We weren’t thinking.”
Llewellyn chivvied the other nobles, guiding them off to another part of the castle. The king acted as Garwaf’s servant and carried the package of clothes to the old room Gabriel had used when the castle of Dorré had been his. Reynard, miraculously, had not taken the suite over when he became master of the fortress, and the room had been left almost untouched since the rightful duke was last in residence. King Thomas laid the clothes on the end of the bed, patted Garwaf’s shaggy, fur-covered head, and left to give him his privacy.
***
Garwaf stared at the parcel for an hour without moving. The thoughts in his head were eddies of turmoil, barely coherent. He just kept thinking, remembering, pondering, wondering, worrying, and the thoughts in his head would not still long enough or make themselves rational enough to allow action.
After an hour of perching in silent indecision and fretful inaction, he finally bestirred himself. With difficulty and regret, he pawed at his neck until the golden rose necklace slipped off. Then he padded to the bed and tore away the wrappings of his bundle.
To someone who did not know their secret, the clothes were innocuous enough: a pair of dark leather breeches with worn patches at the knees, a stout linen shirt, a green woolen cloak with a heavy hood, and hardy riding boots. A leather pouch lay among the clothes too. Garwaf grabbed the bag in his teeth and tilted out its contents: an ornate cross etched in gold on a delicate chain, a length of three braided ribbons, and…nothing else.
The wolf growled. The smell of Reynard was all over the pouch.
***
When Garwaf burst forth from the chamber still—well—a wolf, the king looked surprised and understandably dismayed. Garwaf ignored him and all others as he galloped through the castle—all thoughts of caution thrown to the wind. He bounded out of the keep and into the courtyard. Reynard leaned against the gate with his guards.
Reynard let out a muffled cry and threw up his hands to ward the wolf off. The guards, no fools, threw themselves out of the path of the furious animal. Reynard was not worth dying for.
Garwaf knocked Reynard to the ground, bouncing Reynard’s head on the cobbles, so the knight lay momentarily stunned.
The king’s retinue recoiled in horror, and the archers on the walls drew their bows. Llewellyn and the king ran into the courtyard together, winded and pale.
“Hold,” King Thomas bellowed to the archers, his voice cracking from fear. “Hold.”
Garwaf continued to ignore them and sniffed furiously all about Reynard’s hands and torso. Letting out a snarl of rage and triumph, the wolf struck at Reynard’s neck. The watching crowd gasped.
Garwaf sensed their fear, but he had no intention of ripping Reynard’s throat out. Instead the wolf delicately drew a leather cord between his teeth from the man’s neck and bit the string in two. Carrying the leather thong and the gold ring dangling from it in his jaws, Garwaf cheerfully trotted away from the prone Reynard and back into the castle.
***
Shut up in solitude in his old bedroom, Garwaf laid his ring out on the bedclothes. The heavy signet was bright gold with a flat lapis lazuli set into it, a wolf passant chiseled into the stone. He had not seen the ring in more than two years. The signet had been his father’s, crafted in the far southern city of Ordinobl and brought back to wear in all honor as the Duke of Dorré. The ring had passed to Gabriel at his father’s death.
The delicate cross had been his mother’s, brought home from the distant southern colonies by her father from the then newly conquered city of Anutitum. The Lady Phillippa had gifted the bauble to her son on his naming day. There was a heavy cross in the middle, with four smaller crosses bordering it to symbolize the four paths down which the will of Fate guides man.
The grimy braided ribbon had been a gift bestowed on Gabriel by Alisoun. She had braided it in her hair, then given the ribbon to Gabriel as a sign of her favor afterward. The ribbon had frayed at the ends, dirty and discolored now. The colors of the three strands had once been red-orange, dark purple, and yellow, though the third ribbon, which had been bright yellow, had faded now to a dingy mustard hue.
Garwaf gazed at the cross, the ring, and the braided ribbons. They had been the most precious of all his belongings. These treasures, and not his clothes, defined his humanity. Without these three items, he would have been stuck forever as a wolf.
He jumped onto his bed, and with some frustration about his lack of thumbs, he managed to get the signet onto the toe of one paw and twist the chain of the cross around his leg. He went to get the ribbons and found he was loath to touch them. Before they had been a reminder and a comfort to him. Now they served only to remind him of his incredible folly—first in marrying and then in trusting poor Alisoun.
He nudged the ribbons off the bed with his nose, letting them fall to the floor. Better to continue a wolf forever than to remain indentured to the memory of Alisoun and their disastrous marriage.
A glint of gold caught his eye. The rose necklace lay in a glittering pile. He had taken the necklace off to create the clean slate required to transform, but he realized he needed that bauble more than all the rest, after all.
He smiled to himself. Not the past but the present, his future, his hopes, were what he needed now. Even if he had been able to bring himself to take up the ribbons, he doubted very much whether they would have worked for him any longer. That life was over and his new one just beginning.
Breath shallow, muscles tense, he shrugged his head into the gold chain with surprising ease and waited…
…and then the world changed.
***
Two hours later, the king could bear the tension no longer. Garwaf had been alone quite long enough. If anything was going to happen, it would have happened. The king went to the room and knocked. When no answer came, he pushed the door open a crack to peek inside.
His nephew sprawled on the bed, bathed in the fond caressing beams of moonlight, sleeping soundly, snoring loudly, with an odd assortment of items draped over various limbs and the old clothes tangled all about him.
He was still a wolf.
King Thomas clenched his jaw and shut the door with precision to stop himself from slamming it. Then, to avoid having to contemplate the repercussions of this failed experiment, the king staggered off to get quietly and thoroughly drunk.
***
Dawn arrived next morn as vibrant and brightly pink as a maiden flushing with delight at a pleasant surprise.
Llewellyn managed to rouse King Thomas with difficulty. The magician had spent most of the morning already looking for the silly bugger. When Llewellyn did find his king, Thomas sat hunched in a corner of the great hall with a bottle snuggled under his arm like a nubile lover. Llewellyn was by then very impatient and beyond fed up. In consequence, he was not gentle in rousing his liege lord.
A few industrious dunks in the ice-cold water of the horse trough did the trick.
King Thomas, sober now but not entirely awake, aimed a blow at the magician’s head, which he ducked. Llewellyn grabbed the king by his shoulders and gave him a hard shake. “My lord. We must check on Gabriel. Se
e how he does.”
The king’s face fell. “I have.” He collapsed into Llewellyn’s arms, nearly knocking Llewellyn down, and sobbed as only the extremely hungover can do. “The clothes didn’t work, my friend. He remains a wolf. We’ve lost Gabriel forever. I’ll never see the damned boy again. He’s doomed to spend the rest of his days as a house pet. And Kathryn. Poor sweet girl.” King Thomas moaned and held his head, sniffling.
Llewellyn shook the king again, gripping the other man’s shoulders. “Did you check on Gabriel this morning?”
King Thomas blinked, eyes red from sorrow and drink. “No. Last night.”
Llewellyn rolled his eyes. “Am I the only one who noticed the full moon last night?”
Befuddlement, comprehension, then a piercing hope flitted over the king’s face. Llewellyn barely had time to absorb any of these emotions before King Thomas broke from him and bounded away up the stairs to Gabriel’s room.
In his delight, the king was not entirely considerate, and he threw open the bedroom door so hard the heavy wood collided with a bang against the wall.
A long lad lay stretched out on the bed. Sometime during the hours of darkness, the clothes, which had lain discarded, had been put on. The young man lay coiled among the thick blankets with one hand curled under his tanned cheek like a child. The glint of the signet ring on his finger caught dawn’s early rays.
King Thomas stood in the doorway and simply stared.
The man in the bed stirred, long lashes fluttering against tawny cheeks, and looked up. Dark blue eyes opened at last and stared at the king. The sleeper frowned and raised one strong, well-muscled arm to run his fingers through unkempt black hair. He passed a hand over his handsome human face and scratched with his knuckles at the long white scar along his cheek, black-shadowed now with a dark beard. The apparition grinned impishly, and said in a voice a trifle raspy from lack of use, “Good morning, Uncle.” He nodded brightly to the king’s magician too. “Llewellyn.”