Natasha Luepke - The Wolf Now Roams Among Fearless Lambs

That night, as we shiver in the dark, Dun repeats all of the words Isabella has taught her. Every other word, though, is love: “Hello, love, chair, love, door, love, fire, love, mail, love, letter, love…”
I would scoot away from her, put some distance between us, but it’s too cold.

Dun does not dream. She has no past to draw from, she tells Isabella; she has forgotten how. Even babies dream.
“Do you dream about the future?” Isabella asks.
And placidly, passively, Dun will say, “My future is with Clover.”
I dream all the time, of course, though I usually forget what about. Sometimes - most times - I dream about weaving, about prickly cloth that keeps growing and growing, till it is bigger than I, till it consumes me. I pull myself awake, drifting into consciousness. It is nice that Dun is there. But she does not dream.

With no ghosts to distract, my tablet weaving goes quickly. Soon enough I’ll be able to cut the “fabric” into pieces and sew a shirt.
There is something in the air today, though. A different smell on the wind. I cannot quite place it, though it is familiar.
Lir is with me when I finish. I cut it and tie it and hold it against his back; it will be just wide enough.
As I cut, as I sew - hastily, clumsily - Isabella joins us on the porch, sniffing the air.
“Do you know what that is?” she asks me. I shake my head. She taps me on the arm and points up the street - my brother, Deor, walking towards us. And it is strange for him to leave work in the middle of the day, but he is not the cause of the disturbance Isabella and I detect.
I stop working and listen; we all listen. There are footsteps, birds, horses, and carriages. Nothing unusual. Dun joins us on the porch.
A black carriage, pulled by two black horses, slows and stops in front of the post office. It is the source of the smell, that familiar, buried-in-the-back-of-the-mind-smell. The driver hops down, moves as if to open the door, but he is too slow, already the door is flung open, already the carriage’s occupant is standing in the snow in the street, bounding past the balustrade - my brother, Wolf.
The air leaves my lungs, my heart stops, my brain freezes over. My brother - my big brother! He is dressed in black, he matches the carriage, but bright against his gloved hand is the gleaming coin, the one I left with King Wendell so long ago. I drop Lir’s shirt and run to my brother, joyously shouting, “Wolf!”
“Huff puff! Clover, Deor!” he gets out, and then the three of us are in each others’ arms, pleased as pups.
I can feel our circle grow larger: Isabella joins us. I open an eye; I can see a woman emerge from the carriage. I close my eye as she joins us. As we dance across the wooden slats, we bump into Dun, and she is caught up in our love.
We cannot really disentangle - if we let go of even one person, they will disappear. We pull back, though, from our small orgy of family; just enough so we can breath. Lir finds a spot on my shoulder. Dun’s cheeks are flushed - she glows, she belongs.
Wolf stares at us all for a moment, then speaks, gesturing with his head: “My sweet sausage, my wife Virginia.”
We all smile and welcome our new sister - not only is she one of the Four who Saved Nine Kingdoms, but she is Wolf’s chosen mate!
Names are listed like a schoolyard game. Deor, Isabella, Clover…
“This is Lir,” I say, not sure what to add; I have forgotten how to speak again. “And this is Dun, who joined us in the Eighth Kingdom.”
And all are welcomed and all are loved.
A few flakes fall and Isabella breaks the spell. “Let’s go inside,” she says, laughing.

Dun grabs me, holds onto my arm as the others enter. She looks at me, opens her mouth to speak. But she closes it again and lets me go.
I smile at her. “Come on, Dun, come in.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” she says.
Lir and I do not look back as we join my family.

We huddle at the hearth, delirious, beside ourselves.
“I have been looking for you for so long,” I tell Wolf. He takes my hands, absent-mindedly pulling out the thorns.
“Huff puff, I never thought I would see you again. When Virginia and I returned from the Tenth Kingdom, Wendell gave us your message. We set out as soon as we could.”
“How long will you be staying?” Deor asks.
Virginia smiles. “We have to return to the castle soon. We barely saw my dad and he worries…” She pats her belly.
Isabella reaches over, placing her hand on Virginia’s - two women connected by life, connected with life. “But you will return.”
Wolf grins. “Try and keep us away.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dun enter. But my attention is drawn away, as Wolf asks me about my adventures.
“Oh, the trolls? They were nothing. Let me tell you what was really difficult…”

Sometimes, a clueless patron will interrupt us, actually wanting their mail. Dun handles it. Isabella gets us refreshments, but even she cannot stay away from Wolf, my charismatic brother.
And sometimes, as I talk, and sometimes, as I listen, my breath catches in my throat: my brother is home!

Deor and Isabella give up their bed to Wolf and Virginia for the night. As all four get ready to leave, Wolf pauses, flicking his fingers at his ear.
“Huff puff, Clover, I forgot to return this to you.” He holds out our mother’s coin. Perhaps it is a three-step process, perhaps it is simultaneous, I do not know. But I do know: I smile, take the coin, and hug him. I hold my wolf brother in a fierce bear hug, animal and human all mixed together.
And finally, we part; it is late, and it is time to rest.

Lir has disappeared for the night. Dun follows me upstairs to our chilly room. Dun usually tends to the fire, but since my hands have been picked clean of thorns, I decide to take over. It’s nice to be doing a normal activity, instead of trying to cure enchantments.
“What a day,” I say, half to myself and half to Dun. Out of my clothes, into my pajamas, then under the covers, trying to minimize the exposure of my skin to the air. Dun has been awfully quiet, but I figure it is because of all the excitement from earlier.
From earlier! From all day. How many years? What have we missed? And now, never again, now we are reunited…
Dun turns over, brushing my hand as she pulls the covers. A few (new) scratches appear on my skin: Dun’s hand is covered with thorns.
I sit up, dragging her with me. I examine her palm - a misfortune reader.
“Dun - have you…were you…” I sigh. She nods in response. I see it now - the loom is sitting on a table in a far corner of the room. The weaving is nearly finished. Such a shame, such a waste.
“Do you plan on finishing it?”
She nods.
“Oh Dun…”
She takes her hand back and lies down.
So do I. It has been a long day.

The next morning, Dun and I walk to my brother’s house. I am exuberant that our occasional family breakfasts can now include the whole family. Dun brings the loom with her. Finally, Lir finds us on the walk; this morning will be complete.
“Dun, how sweet to carry the loom,” the crow says as he lands on my shoulder. She does not answer, of course.
“Wolf is pretty amazing, yeah?” Lir keeps on. “It seems that one of us really did have a happy ending.”
I smile. “Oh, Lir, I’m sure we all will.”
He lets out a puff of air in response - a laugh, a sigh, a lot of disbelief.

The breakfast table is covered with bacon and toast. I don’t think I have seen a spread like this since - since we were still cubs in our parents’ den. House, I mean. Virginia looks a little green as she takes in the meat and burned bread.
“Do you have any fruit?” she asks Isabella. “Something…healthy?”
Isabella smiles. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“So, Dun, tell us about yourself,” Wolf says before ravishing his breakfast.
I talk around my food. “She can’t understand you. She only speaks the language of the Eighth Kingdom. The language our mother spoke.”
Wolf looks thoughtful. He opens his mouth to say something else. Isabella interrupts him, however - she has more acceptable food for Virginia, and talk turns to the baby.
“Have you picked out names?” Deor asks.
Virginia smiles and rolls her eyes. “We haven’t been able to agree yet.”
Wolf shakes his head. “I think Lamb or Sausage or…or Bacon are all perfectly fine names.”
Virginia’s gaze takes in Isabella, Dun, and me. “Sometimes I think he thinks with only one part of his body…”
“Have you thought about naming the cub after our parents? Or yours?” Deor asks.
“It’s a boy,” Wolf says. “We only need one name.”Isabella nods in agreement.
I look out the kitchen window. I have forgotten our father’s name. Did I ever know it?
“ ‘Lir’ is a fine name,” says the crow, scratching my shoulder. “Of course, I think ‘Clover’ could work for a boy, as well.”
“Wolfgang!” I burst out.
The room is silent; all heads turn my way, wolf eyes and fox eyes and corvid eyes and human eyes glowing. Glowing with confusion.
“That was our father’s name; I remembered,” I say.
Deor smiles and takes my hand. “Yes, it was.” He turns to Wolf. “It seems our sister is in charge of looking after all of the things we forgot.”
Wolf hugs me and another hug-fest begins. Lir’s feather’s fly in the family fray; Dun’s braids bounce between the bevy of embraces.

“How long will you be staying?” Isabella asks as we linger over tea and coffee. I notice that Dun keeps glancing at the loom as her fingers curl around her cup.
“Huff puff, not much longer,” Wolf says sadly.
“My father worries about me when I’m away,” adds Virginia.
Isabella nods. “But now you can always find your way back.”
Wolf smiles at me. “Yes.”

After breakfast, Isabella leaves for the post office, Deor for the newspaper, and Dun hides with the loom. Lir sits on my shoulder as I take Virginia and Wolf on a tour: the inn, the boarding house, the library, the hill where I helped defeat the trolls. But soon Virginia is tired, and we retire to the hearth at the post office.
“How did you find this town?” Wolf asks. “Cripes, I had never heard of it before.”
“Luck?”
Virginia smirks. “That wouldn’t surprise me here.”
“Hello,” says Wolf; Virginia and I look at one another, confused, until I realize Dun has joined us from whatever recess she had been hiding in. She sits in the shadows at my feet, and she is finishing off her coarse cloth.
Dun merely nods to my brother.
“The Eighth Kingdom?” he says. “Mama hid so much…”
“What’s the Eighth Kingdom like?” Virginia asks, though I am not sure if she is asking Wolf and I or Dun.
“Cold, yeah?” Lir pipes in.
Wolf looks thoughtful; finally he says, “Nice to meet you” in our mother’s language.
I see Dun’s head move, but I cannot see her face.
Lir cackles, a fine bird call, then says, “So, Virginia, tell me about the Tenth Kingdom.”
“Oh, well…” My brother joins in the conversation, and Dun is safe.

That night at dinner, Wolf informs us that he and Virginia are leaving the next day. I had expected my heart to be torn in two when I heard that news. But I have finally found my brother, I have finally been found, and I will be found again. I was lost, I think, and - and no, it was not Wolf who saved me, it was not any one person who saved me; it was everyone and no one at once. But now I know that I have the strength to follow my own path. And I have the peace of mind to know that I will see my brother again. My heart does not break because it is too busy rejoicing.
“A toast,” Wolf says. We raise our glasses. “To my sister, Clover.”
“Clover!” is echoed around the table, and then we eat.

In the morning, I sit on the post office porch and watched Wolf and Virginia leave, just as I had watched them arrive a few days before. Dun sits next to me, brow furrowed as she sews pieces of thorny fabric together.
Deor joins me, too, and then we three cubs hug each other one last time, and one last time we integrate Virginia and Isabella as well.
“Come back soon,” I say. Or maybe Deor does.
“We miss you,” Deor says. Or maybe I do.
“We’ll be back,” Virginia says.
“Huff puff,” Wolf says.

And then they are gone.

I pull my wrap closer around me as I rejoin Dun. My thorns have become her fabric; her fabric is fast becoming Lir’s shirt. She is finishing the sleeves now; a neck hole and it will be complete. I feel a presence behind me; Isabella is at my shoulder.
And now she is done. Dun holds it out to inspect it, holds it to me to fit it, nods to me to call Lir.
“Lir!” I scan the cloudy sky for him; find him in a tree nearby. “The shirt is ready; Dun is done.”
Lir lands in the porch railing. Dun slips the shirt over his head. I glance at my hands as she does so; the palms are still red, still swollen from those damn thorny pricks. I do not want to see Dun’s hands. She tenderly pulls his wings through the sleeves, her fingers as graceful as his flight. I do not want to see her hands, but I must look: they are red and swollen, too, and thorns pierce them. Lir stands before us on the railing, wings spread: his black feathers outline the white of the star wart, and the spots of blood decorating the shirt.
He hops backwards onto the strip of land dividing the post office from the street. Black feathers turn to pale flesh, wing-tips to fingertips, curved beak to curved lips, scales to skin, talons to toes.
A pale boy with red hair stands before us now, shivering in his starry shirt.
I hear a gasp, and a loud thump -- Dun has collapsed onto the wooden porch, two great wings growing from her back.

The passerby of my shining town, the citizens of this half-world: they take no notice.

“Dun!” I cry as I go to her. I kneel and pat her face, but she does not come to. I look at the wings - black crow’s wings; their blackness stark against her tousled blonde hair. The back of her bodice is ripped, threads trailing.
“Go inside, Lir, before you freeze,” Isabella says.“Clover, I will help you with Dun.”
Little Isabella, delicate Isabella, carefully takes Dun by the armpits; I take the ankles. The wings have changed her weight, and Dun is now a bit unwieldy (not that it’s ever easy to carry a prone body). Lir holds the door open for us; a handsome young man, but I shall miss my crow.
We place Dun by the fire and Isabella takes Lir to find some clothes. Dun is on her stomach; slowly, she begins to stir and push herself up. She looks tired, wan, sad - but then, when has she not, at least recently?
“Dun, are you okay?” I ask her.
Sitting now, she reaches behind her and feels her new limbs.
“You can love me now,” she says softly.
“What?”
She looks at me, a tear in the corner of her left eye. “You love your brothers, and they are wolves. You love Isabella, and she is a fox. You love Virginia, and she is human. And you love Lir, and he is a crow. You did not love me as a human, but maybe you can love me now that I am a crow. Not full-anything, not half-anything, but just pale and dark Iduna.” She begins to cry, and I put my arms around her, though her wings make this awkward.
Oh Dun, my gloomy girl of doom. Of course I love you. More than I thought, maybe… I should tell her this.
“Dun, I do love you,” I whisper.
“I would do anything for you, Clover. I hope I proved that.”

While I was busy looking for myself, I never realized Dun was lost. I should have. She was my responsibility, once she woke up on that hillside at Elsinore. I had thought her memories would return, or that she would find a new life here in Avon. But my discovery has very nearly led to her destruction.

“Dun,” a voice says softly. “How can I thank you?”
Dun sniffs and pulls away from me, just a little. Lir is crouching beside us.
“You, too, Clover,” he adds. He is dressed now in some of Deor’s old things, and is trying very hard to keep his balance, crouching on all-fours on the floor.
“I didn’t do it for you,” Dun says. “All thanks go to Clover.”
I look beyond Lir - this is a post office, after all, and now there are people in it. Some stare at us and some do not see us.
“Let’s go upstairs, Dun,” I say, helping her to her feet.
“Take this,” Isabella says, appearing out of nowhere. She hands a bowl and cloth to Lir. “For her thorns. I’ll be up in a bit.”

“I had forgot what it’s like to be human, yeah?” Lir comments as we take the stairs. “I nearly fell three times when we went up to get clothes.”
I translate for Dun and she smiles, just a little.
“My balance is off,” Lir continues. “And everything looks different, smells different. My senses have changed. It’s almost frightening. I don’t know if I’m ready to be a man again.”

Sitting on the bed, I carefully remove thorns from Dun’s palms. Lir sits beside us and stares at his own palms.
“I thank you both again,” he says. “What I owe…”
“It’s not about that,” I say. I chuckle. “It’s about helping. We’ve all helped each other when it was the right thing to do. So, go on and help others.”
Lir smiles and plays with his hair.

“How are you doing?” Isabella asks Dun when she joins us.
“Can I fly?” is Dun’s response.
Isabella smiles. “I don’t see why not. You’ll need a little practice first, though.”
“Isabella, why did this happen?” Lir asks.
“I don’t know. Perhaps it was a flaw in the magic - whoever broke the spell would be punished. Perhaps it was a result of the weaving changing hands. I do not know. But then, magic is a dangerous and uncertain business.”
Dun nods.

Dun - Iduna, she calls herself now - has a natural ability for flight. Isabella guides her in this, too, and Lir, Deor, and I smile at the pidgin language of Avon and Eighth Kingdom terms they have created.
The first shaky attempts into the air involve nothing more than running and jumping up. Then climbing trees and jumping, then jumping from the roof of the post office.
And finally, Iduna can take flight from where she stands, and she is beautiful. Her wings are dark against the sky, her hair is golden against her wings, and her smile lights her way.
And it only takes a few weeks. Lir would have left as soon as possible to claim his princess, to gain his Shallot, but Iduna has a plan.

Once more, I dress in traveling clothes, in bruised boots and stained skirts. Henry comes to see me - I think he knows, as I do though, that even if I return to Avon it will not be permanently.
“What can I do to make you stay?” he asks.
And I look at him and I say, “Nothing.”

We saddle up my horse - and let Lir ride, as he is not quite used to walking yet. We travel for several days, and once more find the valley of death and the sparkling glass mountain.
“Shallot!” Lir cries joyfully. The princess, on her throne, merely stares down at us.
“It sounds like…Lir. But…” She actually rubs her eyes.
Lir grins. “I’m a man again.”
Now, for Iduna’s plan: she takes flight, her skirt swirling slightly, a strange bird if ever there was one. Her hair, no longer held back in braids, flows, and she looks like a mermaid out of water.
And on top of the glass mountain, Iduna gathers up Shallot, a most heroic tableau. The girls return to earth, and the mountain melts.
“All this is yours, for rescuing me,” Shallot says.
Iduna smiles, surveying the gold and jewels. “I only need half. You deserve the other half.”
Shallot grins as she takes Lir’s hand. She looks down at their entwined fingers, laughs, and kisses him.