Kingdom of Mirrors and Roses

by A. W. Cross

  Hurting Howl’s feelings seemed worse than hurting Jean’s.

  Maybe I should go tonight before Howl could get more attached. Before I could.

  “Didn’t you want to pick some flowers? Here, I’ll get some.” Howl walked toward the overgrown bushes. Rose bushes. Very familiar rose bushes.

  My heart dropped. A slight tremor entered my voice. “Howl? Are there a lot of roses in the woods?”

  “Just these ones,” he said without turning, working his fingers around the thorns.

  I was afraid of that. My father had brought me a wild rose and must have been here the night he died. “And have you ever seen a large wolfdog? Russet with black tips?”

  “A time or two.” He ran his fingers through his two-toned hair. Holding a fistful of blooms, he turned and smiled like we were sharing another joke. “Why? Did you already figure it out?”

  There was nothing to figure out. I already knew what happened. “He killed my father.”

  Howl stopped cold. The flowers drooped in his hands. “He . . . did?”

  “Yes. That’s why I came into the forest. But you’ve never had trouble with wolves hurting people?”

  “I never said that.” His eyes went distant—more thoughtful than I had ever seen him. “They don’t hurt me or my pack, but there are some rogue wolves in the forest separated from any pack.”

  “So, you think the killer-wolf is one of them?”

  “Perhaps. As long as they stay out of our territory, we don’t always keep track of them, but, without the strength of a pack, lone wolves ‘hunt’ like Omegas. They scavenge. And winter gets hard.”

  I nodded. As my father had said, a few raided snares and lost animals were common enough in the winter months. The wolves had to eat. So, we protected what was ours, but I wouldn’t have hated Spin or any other wolf for trying to take it. A shot in the air or even a band of children with makeshift pikes were enough to scare off such a wolf—not much of a threat for a wary shepherdess.

  “They wouldn’t normally go after a human,” Howl said, “but if the human was alone, and they saw an opportunity . . ."

  “But my father wouldn’t have been alone. He was a hunter. And this wolf wouldn’t be like an Omega.” That wouldn’t fit the large wolfdog Jean described at all.

  “Maybe not.” Howl sighed. “I could have my pack look next time we go out.”

  “Thank you.” And if we could work together to solve this mystery, then perhaps that was reason enough to stay one more night at least.

  That night, I didn’t cry, but I still didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to try out my knee and open a few more closed doors. I tiptoed across the floor but ran into the mysterious wolf waiting for me right outside my bedroom. He whined at me with his head cocked.

  I laughed. I had seen dogs take on the attitude and gestures of their owners before, but even squinting at him in the dark, the mysterious wolf and Howl had to be the best match I had ever seen. “I’m not sad. I just think I can walk, and I wanted to try it. That’s okay, right?”

  The wolf ducked his head in agreement and curled up next to another door across the hall. The way was now clear. I looked up and down the dim hallway, but now nothing seemed more interesting to me than my mysterious companion.

  I followed after him toward the other door. “Are you guarding that one too? Can I see?”

  The wolf hesitated, blinking at me, but then he wagged his tail and moved aside.

  “Thank you.” I patted his head, then pushed open the double doors.

  It was the count’s room. It had to be. The canopy bed was enormous, large enough to fit the three wolves who were sleeping in it. Rooster, Frost, and Fern. Ghost and Glimmer had claimed two different wingback chairs and Spin was on the rug between them.

  That was it. There was no mistake. The mysterious wolf was a separate, seventh wolf I never saw in the daylight. I really should just ask Howl about him. Howl already seemed to know everything else. But I didn’t see Howl tangled up with the others.

  I knew he had been here. His clothes were piled on the rug next to Spin, and a book lay open that he must have been looking at.

  I remembered now. Howl said he had looked at a book with pictures, trying to understand their appeal. I bent down and squinted in the dim light.

  This book was full of drawings and handwritten notes.

  The count’s journal. It was here in his room. “I’ve been looking for this,” I told the mysterious wolf. And it wasn’t the only book in this room either. A short row of journals was under the nightstand with an empty slot where this one belonged. I itched to look at it more, but I couldn’t take it back to my room. Howl would notice, and it felt like stealing, though Howl would certainly give them all to me if I just asked him.

  So, I decided to wait for him. I sat on the rug next to Spin and the mysterious wolf, flipping through the pages of the journal until I determined it was a wasted effort in the dark. But I noticed a few more things about the room. It wasn’t as dusty as the others. Howl must have already tried his hand at cleaning it, just like he tried his hand at reading. He really was the sweetest thing.

  I wanted to read the count’s journals, but I also wanted to make this room another project—continuing on his efforts. The drapes and metal finishing must have been stunning, and piecing together the shadows of the surrounding furniture, I found an open wardrobe, a tub, and a tarnished hand mirror on the vanity that could all be put into use.

  I really couldn’t wait. It was easy to forget with Howl, who shook himself off like the rest of his pack and still told me I was beautiful at every turn, but I hadn’t been able to wash much since coming here. A whole layer of dirt and oil had overtaken my skin and my only set of clothing. My frizzy mane of hair must look like a rat’s nest. But we could fix it. We just needed to bring in more water to wash the clothes and have proper baths.

  I grinned at the thought. Howl would hate that, but he would do it for me.

  And we really needed lamps—some kind of fire. I hated being so blind at night and it got cold without my blankets. I crawled on the rug to cuddle closer to Spin and the mysterious wolf.

  Still making plans, I fell asleep happily curled up between them.

  14

  Beauty

  The next morning, I woke up in the count’s bed which had been emptied of wolves. I had a blurry memory of Howl picking me up to put me there, but I had been too tired to care. Howl might smell my hair and watch me sleep more than was technically proper, but he wouldn’t hurt me. And now that he had come and gone, I was alone.

  Whether I could walk or not, I didn’t want to be alone.

  I howled, expecting Spin.

  Howl burst through the doorway instead. He grinned, openmouthed. “You howl? That was so good! Just needs to be louder. Stronger. Then you can fill the whole room.” He threw back his shoulders and howled himself, demonstrating. “And you slept with the pack!”

  He bounced around so much I scooted back against the headboard. The glare of dawn stung my eyes. My tongue felt like wool. It was still so early; I had no time to shake all the sleep from my brain and form a proper response.

  “I . . . I just wanted to see the book.” I frantically looked for it, still resting on the rug.

  Too far to shield my burning face.

  And Howl just stepped over it like it didn’t matter. “I already said you could have all the books, but you howl and you slept with the pack. You like it here.” He leaned on the bed, walking his hands closer until our noses touched, staying longer than he had before. His movements seemed more focused, his tone deeper. A hunter on the prowl. “I like you here, too. Are you going to stay?”

  “I . . .” I couldn’t answer. Watching him had me mesmerized, and I had no more excuses. All my secrets were exposed and open. I felt trapped against the headboard, but also something else. Something even more vulnerable.

  Something protected. Something desired. Something . . . like home.

  My face burned hott
er. My lips tingled. This was so wrong. Howl shouldn’t know how comfortable I had become here because . . . because . . . I lost track of the reason.

  But there still had to be one.

  Howl kept moving closer in my silence, my lack of protest. One knee was up on the bed with me. “Are you sure you don’t want to be my mate? I think you would like that too.”

  That one brought me back with a sudden jolt. I pushed him away and straightened my back. “Wha-what are you even doing in here? Shouldn’t you be out?”

  The boy danced back on his toes. All his focused intensity evaporated in the single movement, his energy spilling out in random spirals of excitement with the change in subject.

  “Mother wants to hunt with the pack today! She said we could watch the pups.” He grabbed me without asking and ran out the door. I could only laugh. Howl was already firmly fixed in another direction, but I had to do something to bring down the tension building in my chest.

  Not all the tension was unpleasant. I just couldn’t deal with it yet. Puppies were safer.

  He carried me downstairs to the kitchen. We moved past the chipped teacups and dust-covered tables to where he had already set a chair for me by the hearth. I had a puppy in my lap before I could blink. Three more rested in a mix of blankets and leaves on the brick surface of the ground-level stove.

  They kept the pups in the stove? I supposed that the chimney over it might look like a small cave or den. To an animal or someone else who didn’t know what it was.

  And the pups were such darling little gray fluff balls. They yawned and showed their baby teeth, stretching and stumbling into each other to wake themselves. Howl hopped foot to foot, watching them with so much pride it seemed he birthed the whole litter himself.

  The proudest father I had ever seen.

  “You can name them! Mother doesn’t name things, but she said she wouldn’t mind.”

  They certainly needed names, but I couldn’t just pick them out of thin air. I would have to get to know them and find the perfect ones. Though, as I watched two of the pups wrestle together, I was already smiling. They might end up named in honor of Opal and Onyx if Howl truly let me have my way. Then the rest of the litter would have to be stones as well.

  I always picked a theme for the year when naming the new lambs. Then my father and I would sort through which ones we would breed and raise, which to sell, and which to eat.

  But I wasn’t quite so sure what traits Howl would look for with new pups. I snuggled the one on my lap, and she tried to lick my face. “She’s so sweet. Will they all stay in the pack?”

  “Some of them will. Spin was the runt from last year’s litter, so he stays, but this one will be an Alpha.” Howl took back the female and handed me a larger male from the pair that had been nipping at each other. “He’ll want to make his own pack.” Howl rubbed noses with me again while making the transfer. This one only lasted a second, but my lips tingled and instantly all the previous tension returned. I realized in a blink what he had been doing. Howl didn’t know how to kiss. He might not even know what it was, and he was doing the wolf-nuzzle-version.

  How dare he wolf-kiss me without me knowing! It was so cute, and I hadn’t even realized it was happening! I would have to pay him back one day. I would be the one to teach him to really kiss. He would have to know—if he ever was to court another girl properly.

  And he would need to know how to feed a girl. That might be the only thing this castle truly needed, and I wasn’t going to leave this kitchen until it was set right.

  I examined the stove full of wolf cubs, leaves, and cobwebs. There was even the small door to a beehive oven behind them. “We’re going to have a fire.”

  “Fire?” Howl went white and snatched back the wolf cub, cradling it against his chest. “You don’t like the pups?”

  “I love the pups!” I crawled to the floor and pulled another pup from the stove. “But now I hate berries. I want to cook something. We’ll move the pups and clear the leaves out. I swear, humans have fires in the kitchen all the time, and no one gets hurt. The bricks on the stove keeps it from catching on anything else.” I handed him my pup to add to the two he already held.

  He crouched down next to me. “Just in the stove?”

  “Just in the stove. I promise it won’t hurt the pups or anyone else.”

  “Mother might not like it,” Howl said, but I could tell I was wearing him down.

  Good. The fact that he let his mysterious mother have so much sway was one of the few things I still didn’t like about him. Besides, we were just cooking. Most mothers would be thrilled. “She’ll love it when she sees it,” I said and pulled the last pup out.

  Howl still looked unsure, so I used my final trump card.

  I nuzzled his nose, knowing the power it held. “Please?”

  He quickly started to nod. Good boy.

  “What’s wrong?” Howl hovered behind me in basically the same useless position he had this whole time—pacing like a nervous mother hen. He held all four wolf cubs with their hind legs dangling because he refused to put them down. “Do I need to take the pups outside?”

  I coughed on smoke and pulled out the scorched wood that I had used to test the heat of the oven. “Nothing is wrong. I just need to figure out how to clear out more of the chimney. But it’s only smoke; the fire’s already out.” And really, expecting no smoke in a working kitchen was like expecting water not to be wet.

  Howl nodded, still bouncing foot to foot. He was way too old to be this afraid of a little cooking fire. But once I figured this thing out, I would cook him something amazing, and he would love it. All the plans I had made last night returned in earnest as I had already found a working pump in the kitchen. Once I figured out the stove, I could boil enough water to have this whole place cleaned in a blink. We would be washed and scrubbed, and we would start having meals together, making this place into a proper home.

  Even better than a proper home. A castle. What would it look like if experts from the village could really restore the place? I imagined the ballroom, the clock keeping the right time and the candelabra glowing in the moonlight. Teaching Howl how to waltz.

  Perhaps I would never go that far, but I smiled at the image. Strange how all those silly romantical things sounded so right and heavenly with the right company.

  I bent over the chimney. I had never worked with one so large before, and it took me awhile to hunt down the steel lever. It was only partway up. I cranked open the flue the rest of the way as something growled behind me.

  Yellow eyes glimmered through the smoke.

  “Mother,” Howl said. “No.”

  The beast pounced, backing me onto the hot bricks of the oven and burning my toes.

  That was bad, but what I saw next was worse. As the silver wolf snarled and turned to leap at me again, Howl dropped the pups and ran to my side.

  Cloth ripped, bones cracked, and a large wolfdog stood growling in front of me.

  In a frenzied show of claws and teeth, the new creature pushed back the one who had attacked. As the silver wolf growled and whined, the wolfdog looked back at me, and I knew it was Howl. I knew it was the unknown wolf that let me hold it when I cried.

  But I also knew it was the russet wolfdog who killed my father.

  15

  Beauty

  “Get away!” I yelled. I tried to stand, but my back hit the brick of the chimney. I was trapped on the ground-level stove and my feet were burning. Charred wood smoked near my toes.

  The wolfdog whined and stepped nearer to me.

  I threw a piece of charred wood in his face.

  He yipped, and the silver wolf charged for me again. I leapt off the stove, this time hitting a table. The teacup tipped over and shattered. Bangs and howls built to a mindless cacophony in my head. The two beasts crashed together behind me. More wolves growled and yipped in the outer hall, stirred into the same frenzy.

  Out. I just had to get out. I tried to steady myself with the wo
rd, and finally felt a breeze coming from my left. A door to the garden stood open. The forest lay beyond it.

  I ran.

  I didn’t feel my feet as I raced through the forest, but each beat of my heart pounded the truth deeper into my breast. Howl was a wolf. An actual wolf. How was that even possible?

  How could he be the monster of all my current nightmares, the one who killed my father?

  I stopped when I reached the edge of a stream. Panting. Shaking. Every cut, every strained muscle caught up to me in earnest. Both my feet stung from running barefoot through the brush, and the damp soaked through my skirts. I had left my boots and coat behind, and I didn’t know where I was. Was I running toward my home in the village or away from it?

  A wolf howled in the distance. Howl? One of his pack?

  I started at movement in the brush. I held my breath, but nothing appeared.

  Even without a visible threat, my chest heaved and I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t know where else to go, but I needed to get away from that noise. I forged my way across the stream, sinking in mud. When I reached the other side, I collapsed. My weak and previously injured leg burned from the strain. Looking up at the trees, I gasped and choked on air, shaking away tears I didn’t remember crying.

  Howl was a wolf, and all this time, I had been living with a deadly monster. I had let him hold me, talk with me. We spent hours and hours together, until just seeing his smile made my lips tingle, my heart flutter. He had swooped in, his silent strength making me feel—not weak, but like I didn’t have to be so guarded, so in control. Like I could just rest for a while. Safe, protected, and desperately wanted. I had started thinking he truly loved me and maybe, just maybe . . .

  But it had all been a lie. Now I felt wrung out and spoiled in a way that water could never clean. Everything burned. Everything ached. I couldn’t run anymore, but I didn’t know what else to do. My heart still raced and all the branches above me swayed and blurred into meaningless shapes and shadows.