Natasha Luepke - The Wolf Now Roams Among Fearless Lambs

I think I run for days. I think. The water invades every pore, trying to fill what is empty. I hope Lir and Richard are safe. I - I stop. I have left them, too. Damn it, Clover, always running. Why am I always trying to save myself? Why do I succeed? I am not warth -
I sigh. My lungs ache. The forest is drying, but all I can hear is fire. I take a few steps forward. I have lost my horse, my companions, my provisions…the ribbon in my hair. My legs are rubber; I bounce them still forward. I think I hear, finally, not fire -

A town.

I emerge from a ring of dark trees into a clearing ringed by bright sunlight. It is a beautiful town, large, teeming, clean. The buildings are made of stone; so are the streets. People carry balloons and laugh, signs are painted in bright colors. I squint: I cannot read the signs. I clear my ears: I cannot understand the language. I grew up with two languages, father and mother’s, that should help me now, a little. I close my eyes and breathe. Ah, that is-- Oh, that is my heart. The people are oblivious, their words fast. I take a few steps forward and see a large sign with its post buried into the ground. “Rougefleur: Birthplace of a Hero.”

I glance from side to side. Now I can hear. My father’s language. I discreetly tuck my tail back into my skirt.

I think - is that a statue? I squint; in the town square I see a large statue of four figures, but I cannot make out their features…
And now it hits me: Rougefleur.

I enter the town, this collection of buildings I have never known. I see a girl, early teens, dark hair pulled back in a pony tail, schoolbooks clasped to her chest.
“Excuse me, excuse me. Where am I?”
She stares at me, takes a step back. I am a wolf; I am a lunatic…
I self-consciously pull at my water-logged clothes, run my hands through my hair, tug at the shrouded sleeve where days ago, weeks ago, a crow had been detached and thrown.

“No one comes here by accident these days,” she says. She takes another step back.
“Pretend I did.”
She rolls her eyes at me. I stretch my hands into my pockets, grasping… I find my last few coins and hand them to her. She straightens up.
“This is Rougefleur,” she says with a flourish.
“I am…am I the Second Kingdom?” I ask.
She nods slowly. “This is the birthplace of Wolf, one of the Four.”
“Ah.”
The girl point to the statue. “That’s them. If you keep goin’ straight, you’ll reach his childhood home. It’s a museum now.”
I shudder. “And where do his parents live?”
“Oh, well…there was a fire, few years ago. Wolf escaped, but… We had to rebuild the town because of it.”

Fire.

“Thank you for your help,” I say. She nods and walks on.

This is not my home. It’s too beautiful, too normal. My childhood was leaves and dust, the sweaty inn and my tired grandmother, chasing squirrels and being chased by the other children. And now they’ve done away with it all and constructed a monument.

I follow the carefully constructed footpaths to the center of town, to the statue. The smoky smithies are gone, the small school house now a large complex. The townspeople are replaced by tourists, and all are cheerful. Everyone has a spring in their step; I feel like I’m moving in slow motion.

I study the statue. I cannot get a sense of the man who was my brother from this hard stone. Is my brother, I mean. I reach out and touch him. Just stone.

I am tired but keep walking. My clothes and skin are beginning to dry. The inn is gone. My grandparents’ inn, where my parents met - nothing. No sign, no building, no ruins. Empty earth. I didn’t know my grandparents well, but I liked the inn. It had been in the family for generations, from what I understood. I look back to town. I do not know where they are buried.

Well. Well. I need to find the forest, see Wolf’s childhood home.

The forest is familiar. How often did we take this briar-filled path from our front door to school or the small general store? But the path was always quiet, save for us and the other animals. But there are people on the path now, talking happily, excitedly.

The cottage is reconstructed. Deor and I left it in ruins, I do believe. Fire, indeed. There is line stretching away from the front door. I fear that I will see carts hawking shirts with Wolf’s face painted on it, or hastily assembled biographies, but luckily commercialism hasn’t gotten that far. I take my place in line.

What do I expect? I know what I want: I want to cross the threshold and be, oh, twelve or five years old again, and all my family will be well and happy. And, most importantly, alive. Well, that’s what I’m really expecting: resurrection.
Positioned to the right of the door was a tall, narrow box. A young woman was inside, accepting money behind a wide counter.
“I don’t have any money,” I tell her. “Please let me in.”
“Sorry,” she says. Her face is hidden in shadows.
She twirls a finger through her hair. Oh, I could leap through that small hole, I could use the counter as a springboard, I could charge through the door, my door, I could sneak in at night, steal into my house, as they have stolen my childhood…Maybe her blood would mend my broken heart.
“But I…” I spread my fingers through my pockets. My money is with my horse. “I have nothing. Surely…”
I can sense movement in that dark room of wood. “What is that around your neck?”
I move a hand to my throat. “It is a coin - from my mother! You should know. You should all know.”
No. I remain silent. I want to go home. Very slowly, I slide the ribbon around my neck, until the green knot is at the hollow of my throat. I can feel each breath as I fumble. What will Deor say? This is stupid, I should leave. This place must be a mirage, or some form of madness. Maybe I’m asleep?
“C’mon, c’mon,” I can hear people behind me mutter. Finally, the ends of the ribbon are free. I hold it out to the clerk, this heartless capitalist. The coin sways at the end of my green ribbon.

This - young woman - this slip of a girl - this, this pornographer of history, this memory madam - she grasps my green ribbon with grubby fingers, dirt staining the tips; she pinches the metal as though she would break it, she stares at it critically, Lir’s feather left fluttering -
“It’s got a hole in ‘t,” she says.
“Well -- ”
“Two, actually.”
I sigh. They overcame from that… I blink. I hadn’t thought of that phrase in years.
“Well,” the girl says, “if you let me have the feather, I’ll let ya’ in.”
“Deal.”
She slips the feather from the confines of the ribbon and places it smartly in her hat.
“Don’t tell,” she says, passing me the coin.
What’s there to tell? “Thank you.”

My beautiful coin, twice lost and twice restored. For ten years, it has sat demurely at my throat, even as its leather thong decayed. I keep it in my right hand.

The house is full of people, as I think it was when I was a cub. It has been rebuilt well; that is solid, but I am not sure anymore how much is accurate. As I stand just inside the door, I try to picture it the way it looked when I was five or twelve, but all I recall is the vague idea of wood, the suggestion of hearth fire. It is as if I am remembering a picture in a book.
A few people look at me quizzically. All around me, I hear the speech of my Rougefleur, and the speech of the Fourth Kingdom (which I learned in Avon) and - perhaps my mother’s language? But maybe am I just imagining something else, wishing for something else.
“Dear, I hate to stare,” an older woman says, taking me by the arm. I jerk away, but she just smiles. “But this painting; you look just like it. Are you a local girl? Did they hire you for the portrait?”
She hauls me before a large painting on the wall, the small wall as the door and opposite the hearth and bed. She looks nothing like me, this woman; she is beautiful. You can tell, by her slight smile, that she was intelligent and wise, that if she wasn’t a heroine, it was only because the Author ran out of tales to tell. Her eyes and hair are painted dark; that, I suppose, was what the old woman had been alluding to. But the woman in the painting, her hair is very long, and done up in a complicated set of braids. At the ends of the plaits hanging in front of her shoulders are two coins.

Two coins.

I don’t know if I should scream, or cry, or faint. Who is this human woman, this usurper making a mess of the one part of my identity I was absolutely sure of -- But maybe, maybe it is a mistake.

I open my right hand, the palm reeking of blood-tinged metal. The designs on the coin are too worn to be identified; the paint swirls too vague to be identified. There is a sign beneath the portrait, a handy guide. I kneel and trace the words with the fingers of my left hand, the right ones busy clutching the coin.

Buttercup. Affectionately called “Coin.” Wolf’s mother.

“That is not my mother! She had a wolf’s head, and a big grin and taught us stories and - she was more than three half-hearted half sentences, more than some half-drawn, half-assed picture! And, and…she was my mother.”

But I say nothing. My hands shake, but I cannot move. My knees wobble, but refuse to let me sit or stand. I am anger without action. Without voice. Rage without reaction.

“Dear, are you all right?” The voice of that troublemaker breaks through the mist, but I snarl at her, baring my fangs. She gasps. I finally find my feet and run for the back door, displacing tourists. Door, door, door, all wall, thick sticks, piled plaster, full floorboards.
“Stop her! Get her!” I hear behind me.
Trapped! Trappedtrappedtrapped.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. This is my house, and I should do now what I refused to do then: defend it.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl, and twist away. The crow scratches re-open on my shoulder. Slowly everything disappears. I hope I will feel something, my parents’ presence, but…I…faint.

(No I don’t.)

All is black and white spots. What’s going on?
I am surrounded by concerned patrons, these thieves who seek glory by proxy. I should tell them, I should tell the world, I should-- Do they deserve it? Do they deserve to know? Should I grace them with my story?
“Are you okay, dear?” asks the lady who started all of this. Such a prole in her modest skirt and feminine shawl. “What’s wrong?”
I shrink, feeling solid wood in my back. Comforting.
“Did I faint?” I ask, voice trembling.
A guard, a young man in Rougefleur livery, appears at my side. “No, you didn’t. C’mon,” he says, hands gripping my arms.
I shift my weight to my legs, willing myself into the floor. “What happened?”
“You went a little crazy, dear,” the women says. “None of us knew what was wrong.”
The guard crouches beside me. He is my age, not so young, not so old. What happened to him that he is now patrolling this gingerbread house? Is this…noble? For him? “C’mon,” he mutters again.
“It’s all wrong,” I say in response. I actually say this; I can hear the words echo off the wooden walls.
All I hear, though, is the echo. Then a laugh and a whispered “Wrong!” Scornfully said. The guard succeeds this time in getting me to my feet. I keep my coin clutched in my right hand.
We walk through the small house, a procession, just the guard and I, under a canopy of stares and silence. And then it catches my eye once more, that painting. Those treacherous brushstrokes-
“That’s wrong!” And I say this aloud, too. I dig my heels into the floorboards. “That is not my mother.”
The guard forces a laugh. “Of course it isn’t; it’s Wolf’s.” I have everyone’s attention now, regained those whose minds had wandered. And this time they are looking at me, taking me in, peering beneath my water-logged clothes, trying to see my blood, my darkness.
“But she is,” I whisper, “Wolf is -- ” Should I tell? There is something noble in silence, something romantic. Do these thieves deserve my story? Or am I denying my mother by not telling? “Wolf is my brother.” That brings chuckles.
The guard drops his hands, crosses his arms. “Prove it.”
Time stops, and now I am watching myself. A bedraggled woman, with wild hair and torn clothes, this woman who should be home with her children, her family, this, this stranger! She tightens her right fist, and pulls her left hand behind her, wincing, and there is blood at the shoulder; a sad Snow White, dark and light and blood. And the waist band slips a little, and there is this monstrosity, a hideous dark thing.
The heat of the coin in my hand brings me back.
“You should know. You should all know -- ”
The guard gets his arms around me and drags me away. People in line to get in watch this business until I am deposited under a tree out of earshot.
“Fix your skirt,” the guard says.
It’s true, I say. Or do I? There is no echo.
“You see,” he says, crouching next to me, “you see our problem, right? If we acknowledge you, we have to - We know you, don’t look surprised. I remember you; we were in school together. Clover, right? Clover. But if we say, Yes, this is the sister, and Yes, this was what their mother really looked like, then we, then we have to say, Well, we did this and it doesn’t look so good for tourism.”
I swallow. “Were you there? Can you tell me what happened?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t you see? It didn’t happen.”
I watch him leave and tie the coin back around my neck.