Kingdom of Mirrors and Roses

by A. W. Cross

  “You’re not my mate! You’re too close.” I pushed at his shoulder, but he didn’t budge. It was like pushing against a wall. Howl just couldn’t be moved unless he decided to move himself.

  “That’s where Spin was, and he’s not your mate,” he said. “I’m helping you now.”

  “Spin is a wolf and you’re . . . you’re . . .”

  “Do you not want me to help?”

  He backed away then, more than I wanted him to. All the way to the far wall. There just didn’t seem to be a lot of range to him. Only the extremes. If I said I didn’t want him pressing up against me, he thought I didn’t want him at all. And it made him so sad and confused, I sighed.

  Yes, I wanted his help. Unlike Spin, Howl had opposable thumbs. He could lift anything I wanted without drooling or tearing the pages. And more than that, I liked Howl, far more than I ever expected to. I knew how isolated he had been and how hard he was trying to please me. I wanted to return the favor as much as I could, to share more conversations and be more of a friend to him while I was here. And, just like he had said about his wolves, I agreed that all friends should compromise. Not in everything, but maybe a bit more than I had been.

  This might be something I could give him. I didn’t have any special aversions to being touched, and he had already carried me so many times, there really didn’t seem any point to keeping up arbitrary boundaries. As long as he understood that a bit more touching did not equal eventual mating . . . it wasn’t fair to always be yelling at him.

  This was his home and this was how he lived for who-knew-how-many years. I wasn’t even planning to stay. I would just have to be more careful over what I let Spin do in the future if Howl was always going to follow suit. No licking allowed.

  “It’s okay,” I said, beckoning him back to the rug. “Not all humans like to touch like that, but for me—it’s really okay. I was just surprised.”

  He didn’t come, glancing up more warily. “You get surprised easily.”

  “I suppose I do, but you must admit that I have been through a lot of changes recently.”

  He finally crept forward and settled back on the rug, looking at my pile of books. “And you think that making this place more like your home will make you less surprised and scared?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I hope so too.”

  I cried again that night. I tried so hard—telling myself again how I would be strong, finding my answers and facing my beast. Then, when the tears came anyway, I tried so hard to be quiet, but that didn’t work either. The wolf came in so fast it must have been listening for me. It walked right up to the bed and whined until I nodded. Then it hopped up, snuggling into me.

  It was so sweet; I couldn’t even remember what had sparked the tears before.

  But I still didn’t know which wolf the large male was. I couldn’t make out much of his coloring or markings in the dark, but I had checked Glimmer during the day, and she was female. She also growled a little when I got too close. Not violently, but just enough to let me know she wasn’t a snuggler.

  I could ask Howl, but then I would have to tell him I had been crying.

  I couldn’t tell him that. He tried so hard and would be so sad if he knew how difficult everything still was. I needed more answers and comfort than he could give me.

  But I could make it one more night—just me and the mysterious wolf.

  12

  Beauty

  I went to the library every day, cleaning and searching through the books. I hadn’t found anything that would tell me the specific nature of the count’s wolf obsession, but I still needed to keep my hands busy. Howl never objected. He brought me water, soap, an actual broom, and anything else he could sniff out, growling at Spin whenever he came.

  Really, I could get used to the growling, but I still felt a little sorry for my wolf companion. Spin was a great help but a bit restless at times—chasing his tail at odd intervals. Sometimes, I would send him to fetch things just to give him something constructive to do. Surely, he wanted to be outside with the others? “How come Spin doesn’t get to hunt with you?”

  “He’s Omega,” Howl said. “I have to leave someone with you and Mother, and he’s the worst hunter. I still run with him sometimes, but if he’s alone, he raids snares and eats the human garbage.”

  So, had my failed hunting attempt contributed to his house arrest? Poor thing. But maybe it was safer for him inside than to have him bothering any more farmers. Wild wolves lasted longer if they stayed wary of humans, and Spin certainly wasn’t. He was always cuddling up to me and Howl—which only made him better suited for the task Howl had given him.

  But I already had learned to trust that Howl cared for his pack and did the best he could for each of them. I just wanted to understand them as well. Learn them like I learned my sheep.

  Howl still seemed to be trying to learn all my habits as well.

  He picked one book off a stack, tilting his head. “Why do you like looking at them so much? I looked at one last night. I liked some of the pictures, but this one doesn’t have those.”

  “Yes, but there are words. That tells the story.”

  “Like when you smell the ground and know where the deer was resting all night?”

  “Sure. It’s just like that.” Except it wasn’t like that at all.

  Imagine being so close to hundreds of books and never learning to read. To never even know what reading was. It was really quite sad, and I had to fix it in whatever time I had left. My research on the wolves and the rest of the count’s dark secrets could wait.

  “I could read it to you. Here.” I reached for the fairy tales, which seemed the best place to start, and sat back on the rug. “Let me find a good one.”

  “All the better to eat you up with!” I cried in the voice of the big bad wolf. “And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up. The End.”

  Howl frowned up at me. “That’s the story?”

  We had gone through dozens of stories that week. He listened to them all with his head in my lap. I wasn’t sure how he convinced me to let him do that. But I let Spin do it, so he thought he could too when he came in to replace him as my helper.

  I really wasn’t sure what to do in the face of that kind of logic.

  Besides, Jean had girls hanging on him like this all the time. He always swore it didn’t mean anything. Just because I had never done it myself, didn’t give it any more significance than that. I didn’t want to move Howl anyway. He really was just lying there, like Spin had, and it was kind of sweet watching him puzzle everything out—hearing the stories for the first time.

  “Yes, that’s how Charles Perrault ended it,” I said. “My mother fancied the version where a woodsman saved Little Red Riding Hood by chopping the wolf up.” Though looking at Howl, I wondered if that made the story seem even more ghastly. “It’s just supposed to teach young girls about the dangers of talking to strange men. They could be monsters in disguise.” Father always said the worst sort of wolves were the ones who could dress up nice and open the front door.

  “Then it’s better the first way. It doesn’t teach anything if the girl gets saved.” Howl pushed up onto his knees. “Are wolves always the monsters?”

  “They are a lot.” I flipped through the book, but I couldn’t think of a single story where the wolves were good. I put it down as a lost cause. “I suppose it’s because they’re so powerful. One bad sheep wouldn’t be much trouble, but a rogue wolf . . . well, they could become another Beast of Gevaudan.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned and showed his fangs. “I’d just eat a sheep if it was mean to me.”

  I laughed. “Me too.” In fact, I had.

  I would take Old Rose’s mutton back in a heartbeat now. Howl tried, but berries and wild onions weren’t all that filling—I still hadn’t figured out how to cook the meat here.

  Or how to stop Howl from tearing into it raw. I just had to tell him to eat somewh
ere else, and it made me feel like an ungrateful shrew.

  “But you would like a wolf if it was tame?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He crawled closer. “Would it have to be completely tame?”

  “I suppose not.” I giggled again, more nervously. Breathlessly. I liked the shiver I felt in his half-feral gaze, and it became harder to string my words together. A completely tame Howl would be a tragedy. But we weren’t talking about him. We were talking about wolves, right? “Just tame enough that we could understand each other and work together. Like your pack.”

  “My pack is awesome,” he agreed. We bumped noses, and he flopped back down onto my lap. “I don’t think I would mind being a tame wolf for you.”

  As he moved his face away, it seemed part of me was still attached, drawn after him by invisible strings. My hair cascaded around us, and I rubbed his shoulder.

  “But you’re not a wolf. You’re human.” Though I certainly had noticed him do that before—talk about his pack like he was really one of them.

  “The wolves say I’m human. Humans say I’m something else.”

  That stopped me short. The count had kept Howl locked up. I had heard of freaks held in curiosity shows almost like animals, but I never would have made that connection or would have thought to put Howl in that category. Even if he were, the whole practice was barbaric. Anything the count had done had to be just as bad or worse.

  And when the fires came, and Howl finally was able to leave the castle, what kind of reception would he have gotten in the village? A child might have teased him about his fangs. Even an adult might say something unkind. My breasts had prompted more looks and conversation than I cared to receive, and they couldn’t be that unusually sized.

  Any difference could become an insecurity.

  “Humans can be cruel sometimes. When I was little, a whole herd of them used to pick at me and steal my books. Until Jean got them to stop.” And Howl was . . . different. His face didn’t bother me at all anymore, but I couldn’t deny my initial reaction. That didn’t mean the rest of the village couldn’t get used to it, given time. They allowed my father and me to live in their periphery with all of our eccentricities, and I expected Howl would do better with a similar arrangement. Not alone, but still able to sneak away to his wolves and trees just like I squirreled up with my sheep and books. Mostly, Howl was unkempt, but nothing I couldn’t fix if he let that be my next project.

  I would just have to find the best way to convince him.

  It wouldn’t be easy. “Then why do you want to go back there so badly?” he asked.

  “That’s just kid stuff. Most of us grow out of it. Or you learn not to let it bother you so much. Just keep around the ones who are kinder. Your friends. Your family.”

  “Like a pack?” He looked up at me and suddenly frowned, his skin growing pale under the unshaved scruff on his face. “Do you have a pack? Do you miss them?”

  Did he really think I had grown up all alone? Though I supposed I didn’t talk of my family or any of the other villagers very much. It had only been a couple weeks.

  “Is that why you cry sometimes at night?” he asked.

  So, he had heard me. It didn’t happen very often anymore, and I had hoped it would stay a secret between me and the mysterious wolf.

  But keeping a secret from Howl in this place seemed impossible. He might as well know.

  “I miss my father.” Part of me still pictured him safe at home, just waiting for me. Remembering was like a fresh tear on my heart. “But he died, and I wasn’t close to a lot of other people. Jean was my best friend.” He would probably have been the first to notice me missing.

  He would have come the next day and, hopefully, done something to take care of the sheep.

  “Did he want to be your mate?” Howl still refused to call it courting. He won that round because I barely noticed anymore. It was okay. I had my own victories.

  Everyone now had to use a chamber pot or go outside.

  “He did,” I said. “I just—wasn’t sure if we wanted the same things.” Jean wasn’t a shepherd. His version of “taking care of the sheep” was probably dividing them with all the neighbors. He still might be looking for me, but probably would have figured I would be coming home to live with him and wouldn’t need them.

  I might not have a real home left. But I supposed I already knew that.

  I knew I couldn’t provide for the whole flock alone the moment my father died. But would Jean or anyone know the special spot under the ears where Jolly liked to be scratched and that Royal refused to eat grass if it was wet? Would he know that Opal and Onyx butted heads all day long but bleated and cried if they were ever separated? Would he even care?

  Howl sighed. “Human mating is very complicated.”

  He didn’t press me, but I still wanted to explain. Maybe just to myself.

  Howl could be so still and silent sometimes that he really was the perfect sounding board.

  “Growing up, Jean always stood up for me. It was kind, but . . . I also think he liked being important. That maybe he got something from being the hero? If I felt like I owed him? I don’t know. But if someone offended him, he’d push back so hard that I learned to make certain that I wasn’t the one making him angry. I let him lead. I never disagreed with him. I don’t think I noticed so much before he left, but when he came back, he wanted to marry me, and I just realized—he didn’t know a thing about me, and he didn’t want to. And I couldn’t even tell him. So, my father . . .” I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about my father and the ill-timed wolf hunt.

  I skipped to the end.

  “My father died. I wasn’t sure what to do, but Jean still wanted me to agree and follow him as I always did.” He tried to comfort me about my father, but he didn’t try to understand what losing my farm would mean to me on top of that.

  “So you left?” Howl finished for me. “Well, that’s not so complicated.”

  “It isn’t?” Then why was I still so confused?

  Howl nodded and sat up again. “You weren’t his mate. You were his Omega. And if Omegas or Betas don’t like their Alpha, they leave and find their own mates. Somewhere they can lead.”

  “And that’s what you think happened?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  I frowned. I certainly hadn’t run off to find Howl or any other man. I was just angry and scared, and there was a wolf right at my snare that I thought I could release those emotions on.

  But that was Spin. What if I really had shot him?

  I didn’t even want to think about it. But it was no wonder that Howl feared the competent hunters coming here so much. He loved his pack like I loved my sheep.

  We had always been the same that way.

  And if I told Howl about my flock, I was sure he would have understood. But I didn’t want to release the tears welling up within me. I stood to put the book away instead. I lifted my foot but realized with a jolt that it was only out of habit. I didn’t feel any pain at all.

  And if I didn’t feel it, maybe I could walk home soon. Home to where I would be a sheep-less shepherdess or an innkeeper’s wife. I would have to face all the problems I had left behind.

  I caught myself blinking, and Howl circled in close like one of his wolves.

  Concerned but confused.

  “What is it? Does it hurt?” He picked me up, and I wasn’t about to tell him to put me back down. But I had to tell him something.

  I looked over the library again for inspiration. It was steadily becoming cleaner, but it had also become clear that the count was very sparse in his choice in decorating. There was nothing in the library but books, his portrait, and the required shelves and tables.

  I doubted he had been married.

  I wrapped my hands around Howl’s neck and tried for a smile. “You know what this place really needs? Flowers. Can we go outside?”

  13

  Beauty

  As soon as Howl had carried me to the overgro
wn gardens, I looked through the green shoots and dried leaves to stare back at the castle. The oranges and reds of sunset shone behind the white stone. It was my first time seeing all the towers and ramparts. I quickly focused on a large chimney.

  “You have a kitchen?” Of course a castle would have a kitchen somewhere. Howl just never showed it to me. Maybe he didn’t know what it was, like the library. But I would love to find a way to cook something other than berries. “Can I see it?”

  “That’s where Mother keeps the pups.”

  Even better. “I would love to see the pups!”

  He laughed, his chest rumbling under me. “I’ll ask Mother. She should be ready for more visitors soon.”

  I went back to counting towers. The castle might be bigger than I ever realized. “Are there any other secret rooms you are hiding from me?” Maybe there was a study or bedroom separate from the library, a place where the count might not have just kept books, but his own notes as well.

  That might be the key to finding out about the Beast of Gevaudan and the new mankiller.

  Howl thought about it. “Not a room, but I do have a secret.”

  He could keep a secret? Deliberately? “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure you’ll like it, but . . . Maybe you’ll figure it out.” Howl put me down on a rusted garden bench and turned away.

  Now I wanted to know what that secret was so badly! Was it hidden in the castle somewhere? Maybe it was a good thing that Howl didn’t know I could walk yet.

  I could explore the whole place while he was gone.

  But I wasn’t supposed to be using my legs for exploring the castle. I was supposed to be looking for a way to leave. Maybe use this time in the garden to pick out the proper route. Think of a time when Howl wouldn’t be around. I didn’t think Howl would break our deal and force me to stay, but somehow, leaving without saying anything seemed like it would be easier.