A.N.D. - Wolf Woods

Pleading a headache, Red swept into her bedroom for a nap, barely giving Madeline time to turn down the bed before she shooed her lady-in-waiting out. As soon as Maddie was gone, Red turned the key and walked with measured royal dignity to the vanity. Sitting precisely on the edge of the red velvet stool, she leaned forward...

...and banged her head repeatedly against the mirror.

Rubbing her forehead-well, at least now she really did have a headache!-Red dropped her face into her hands. What was she going to do? The economy was in ruins, half her subjects had defected, and all the cautious, careful, meticulous plans of two lifetimes had crashed around her ears.

Curse Wendell! Everywhere she turned, she heard “Wendell did this” and “Wendell did that” and “Wendell’s so clever.” He shouldn’t even be on the throne! He hadn’t passed the three tests of royalty, that stupid dog had! Guiltily avoiding much thought over her role in that disaster-well, how could she know that it was speaking literally and not metaphorically? Building up reserves was wise!-she gritted her teeth. He should have been retested. He should have been checked for traces of other evil, controlling magics. But noooooo, it was Woof! Poof! Happily Ever After!

And her mother’s dying wish had been for her to marry that, that... lucky mutt!

Burying her face in her arms muffle the sound, Red burst into tears. She’d never been all that attracted to Wendell, and everyone knew about how close his “friendship” was with Lord Rupert. But she had been raised to do her duty, and her mother was convinced that duty lay in a marriage of alliance if not love. It made sense. His mother was Cinderella’s daughter, his grandmother Snow White, and she was the granddaughter of the first Riding Hood. Their child would be the combination of three of the Five Great Women, and therefore destined for great things.

Only now, such a child would be totally outshone by the Lewis brat, already revered as the blood of three of the Four Who Saved the Kingdoms. (Privately, she wondered how Wendell counted at all. Even by his own admission, his part in the “saving” appeared to consist of complaining and being turned into a statue. Oh, if only he’d stayed one!) Now that... that... creature would get all the glory. And if she did indeed fulfill her mother’s wish to marry Wendell, sooner or later someone would think it would be Just So Romantic if a child of their line would marry a Lewis, and then...! Her head shooting up for a moment, Red directed a watery glare to the portrait of her grandmother that watched over the bed. “Never, grandma! I will never disgrace your memory by making it possible for a wolf to join our line! I’ll-I’ll-I’ll marry a troll first!”

Which might indeed be her fate. Her kingdom was bankrupt, their reserves long since gone into the army for the ceaseless wolf war. Their main exports had been wood goods and wolf hides-and now with so many of her people gone, there weren’t enough woodcutters, carvers, hunters, or wolves to keep the budget working. About the only asset left was her royal hand in marriage. For a brief, giddy moment, Red fantasized about cutting it off and auctioning it to the highest royal bidder so long as she didn’t have to go with it.

With a shuddering sigh, Red leaned against the cool glass, then squinted sideways at the portrait. The backwards reflection showed something wrong with the bed, something was poking out from under the mattress...

The papers! Lucinda was wonderful for finding entertaining gossip, but she also tended to censor the news she passed on. So as soon as she threw the newspapers away, Red had another servant secretly steal them and bring them to her so that she could find out what Lucinda was leaving out.

So she could find out what the other kingdoms said about her.

Red dug them out from their hiding place. Lucy and Maddie were always in her desk and wardrobe as part of their duties, but neither one of them had reason to check under her mattress. So they would never find the old papers and steal them back “for her own good.” Like everything else these days, the papers were full of Wendell, Wendell, Wendell. It was hard to tell what the dwarves thought (their papers never came outside their mountain now that they were no longer scattered through the Fourth Kingdom) or what the trolls were up to (because they were too illiterate to have newspapers). But six other kingdoms couldn’t say enough good things about the Puppy Prince. All of them praised his foresight, his kindness, his nauseatingly generous treatment of the wolves.

As if she had accomplished nothing all these years! The Elf Glade had a huge article quoting Leaffall as saying that Wendell’s policies had “made her rethink for the first time our policies regarding magical animals.” That vine-twined hypocrite! The Second Kingdom was the only one without a shoot-on-sight law-had been for years, ever since she ascended the throne. If it weren’t for her, Queen Red III, their precious hero-wolf would have never survived to save anyone, including himself. She was the one who had mandated prison instead of execution for wolves who attacked only livestock, in the hopes of rehabilitating them. And it had worked! The wolf who had ravened through an entire flock of sheep had indeed learned his lesson and changed for the better. He certainly wouldn’t have fared so well under Leaffall! Rumor had it that if one wolf marauded on her farms, she’d turn the entire pack into crocuses and run sheep across the land.

Nobody ever stopped to think what Red had done to contribute to the fate of Wendell the Wonderful.

Red sniffed once in self-pity, then went on to see what The Evening Shoe had to say. Cinderella, of course, fawned nauseatingly over her grandchild, but she was also bitchy enough to add a direct dig at Red in a quote about how “enlightened and unrestrictive” Wendell’s new wolf policies were. Old bat! Tattooing identification numbers and issuing travel papers to wolves was for their own good! Once upon a time, townspeople and farmers executed any wolf they could get their hands on in reaction to any misdeed. Now it was possible to prove in a court of law that Wolf 117923 could not possibly be guilty of eating the sheep or stealing the chicken or seducing the daughter because the wolf’s papers had been stamped at curfew in a town 30 miles away on the night in question. Wendell didn’t give them that protection! Well, at least Cinderella didn’t say anything two-faced about changing her laws. Wolves still died in the First Kingdom the moment they waved their furry tails.

The Fourth Kingdom Gazette was the most depressing of all. Even their bad headlines were another stab in Red’s heart. “Delegation Sends Petition of Complaint to King, Asking About Wolf Problem.” She had just received a petition too. But where his came from loyal humans, hers came from wolves. They asked her to meet with a peaceful delegation to “discuss possible changes in the Wolf Code to match those in the Fourth Kingdom.” As if she’d fall for that trick! Her father’s final act had been to go to a wolf delegation under a flag of truce, and they'd eaten him! If they wanted to live like Wendell’s wolves, they could go to Wendell’s kingdom. Her system worked, and sooner or later, everyone would know it!

“Tourism Down 10% in Kissingtown” was another heart-breaker. The year was young, but Kissingtown complained that 5000 fewer tourists had come when compared to last season. Five thousand! She was lucky if 200 tourists visited her grandmother’s famous cottage in a whole year. It just didn’t have the same draw. Oh, granny was a Great Woman and all that, but her story lacked the romance that Snow’s did. People went to Kissingtown not just to see Snow White’s artifacts, but to fall in love themselves. What would people go to her grandmother’s cottage for-to pretend to be eaten by a wolf? She had tried to get a more heroic aspect to the visit by allowing women to pretend to be “rescued” by their boyfriends, but it didn’t bring in enough new people to pay for the increased manpower, and at least one person had gotten carried away and tried to really chop up her tame wolf.

Red sighed, putting the papers down and looking up her grandmother. “Well, other people may think Snow’s story is more romantic than yours, but I’m still proud of being your granddaughter. Snow had it easy; she had a civilized kingdom to marry into! You didn’t. You accomplished more than she did.” The Second Kingdom had been a random collection of warring villages and principalities, but Hood and her husband had brought order to the lands, and a lasting peace-at least between the people. The wolves were another matter. But even they had not stopped the establishment of a kingdom and a lineage-not bad accomplishments for a farmer’s daughter and a woodcutter!

A tentative knock on the door brought her back to the present. “My liege, you asked me to wake you in two hours?” Maddie called softly thought the keyhole.

“Yes, let me freshen up and I’ll be right out.” Red dashed to the vanity and started reapplying her makeup and tidying her hair. She didn’t even like makeup, but she refused to leave the room until she looked perfect. Her people needed someone to look up to, someone to give them the security of knowing that someone was in charge. She was that symbol of strength. So even though the blood-red lipstick always made her feel like a wolf fresh from the hunt, she applied it with care. If she couldn’t control circumstances, at least she could control her own appearance.

At last, she swept to the door, every inch again the cool, regal, queen. Unlocking the door, she instructed, “Bring me Benjamin.”