A.N.D. - Wolf Woods

Wendell held his breath as the mirror showed Wolf scooping up his baby with infinite gentleness. The infant squirmed, blowing a few bubbles, then grabbing at a paternal finger to suck the blood off. There were gagging noises from people in the crowd, but Wolf did nothing more threatening than curl around his sleeping wife, placing the baby between them. Wendell squinted. Yes, now that he’d been told by Anthony what to look for, he could see a tiny red mark around Virginia’s neck. Whatever had happened to her had happened when Wolf was not there.

The mirror flashed again and once more reflected Wolf in his chains.

“So. You speak the truth. You did not harm the baby.” Wendell leaned back in his chair, relieved.

“The truth is that he did not harm the baby at that time,” Red pointed out. “Mirror! Show us the truth! Did he ever hurt that child?”

No flickers, no flashes. The mirror reflected only everyone looking at it, then turning to look at her.

“I think that means no,” Cinderella said.

Now that he knew the answer, Wendell no longer feared asking the next question. “Did you bring poisoned apples for your wife?”

Wolf rolled his eyes at the insanity of the supposition. “I’m telling the truth,” he recited, “I never brought apples for her. I brought her good meat!” For a moment the mirror showed the kitchen table piled high with bloody kills, but it never showed a single apple.

Wendell turned to Cinderella. “That’s enough for me. He’s innocent of both charges.”

“There were three charges against him,” Red muttered.

Cinderella quirked an eyebrow, pointedly ignoring her to answer him. “I agree. He is innocent of these two charges.”

Grinning broadly, Wendell nodded to Lord Rupert, who made it official by banging the royal staff three times and shouting to the crowd, “WOLF IS INNOCENT OF HURTING HIS WIFE AND CHILD!”

Howls and applause drowned out the hissing as Wolf wheeled around, shoving out his manacles towards the guard, who stepped back nervously. Wendell nodded, pointing sharply at the keyring on the guard’s belt, and the guard unlocked him with shaking hands.

With two bounds, Wolf cleared the distance between the witness platform and the royal judging stand, where he was held, growling, at bay by the swords of the soldiers. Women screamed, and Queen Red’s companion jumped to her feet, shrieking, “He’s come to get her now! He’s after us!”

Lady Virginia also got to her feet with a fierce deliberation. She gathered her baby up from her father, marched forward, and neatly kicked the knees out from under the nearest guardsman, who fell with a clatter. Wolf was through the gap in a flash, and then they were all three wrapped in a hug so tight they looked as if they were melded by magic.

At last, that dratted baby was silent! It hadn’t been wailing, but that constant not-quite cry had been getting on Red’s nerves, and there was quite enough getting on her nerves already. When Wendell’s precious beauty finally let go of her beast, the infant was in his arms, and he was babbling over it like the lunatic he was. “You didn’t think I did anything wrong did you? No! Not you! Not woo. Ah roo whoo? Ah roo woo woo!”

It was totally nauseating. Particularly since he still hadn’t been cleared of the charge of rape! But Red was apparently the only one on this podium who could count.

Cinderella turned to the couple with a simper. “Wolf, if it was not you, who do you think did do it? Are we to believe a stranger came to your home that night?”

He shook his head. “No. I would know if a stranger came into my room any night.”

“Even during the full moon?”

“Especially during the full moon!” Wolf appealed to Wendell. “You’ve been among wolves. Can you imagine what one of us would do to a stranger who appeared on our territory in the night? Especially one that came too near our family pack?”

Wendell obviously could, shuddering at the vivid thought. So did Red.

“So. You did not do it, and a stranger did not do it,” Cinderella said, imperturbable.

“And since I doubt your own old nursemaid did it,” Red snapped, “That leaves the last wolf in the household. Still betting on the innate goodness of your animals, Wendell?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“I am about to change your mind.” Red lifted her eyebrow at him. “Lucy, give him the book.” Lucia jumped up, rummaged in her bag, and handed over the thick, leather-bound book. Benjamin had given it to her long ago, after he’d found it hidden by one of the staff wolves. There had been a short trial followed by a wolf shortened by the executioner’s axe.

“What is this?” Wendell asked, tumbling over the Wolf Four Seasons Cookbook as Cinderella squinted nearsightedly over from her chair.

“The true face of your beloved animals. Read the one on Shepherd’s Pie, it’s particularly illuminating.” She turned to smile with false charm at the now-glowering Wolf. “Don’t you know a little song about shepherdesses?”

“That book is a lie from beginning to end!” Wolf shouted.

“That book is a true testament to wild wolves. They just see us as ingredients!”

Wendell was cringing as he flipped through the stained pages. “... and wash down with a glass of her tears,” he read. “Ugh! This is awful!”

“What’s awful is that you could possibly think...” Wolf began.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Virginia snarled, stomping across the stage in a most unladylike manner. “This is a deliberate attempt to prejudice the judge! Did you find this in our house? No! Do you know if either Wolf or Littlebit read it? No! So why bring it up unless you want to blacken the name of all wolves?”

“They don’t need my help,” Red frigidly told the interloper.

“Augh!” Virginia’s growl was almost wolflike as she snatched the book out of Wendell’s hands. “Mirror!” she snapped, holding the book out to it at arm’s length. “Show us the true authors of this!”

Everyone craned, both in the audience and on the platform as the mirror flashed and shimmered, finally focusing on a dim room where several men gathered around a table. They took turns dictating to one who was painstakingly writing down the recipes.

His pen was the stiff finger of a part-wolf, the full moon claw sharpened to an extra point.

The mob gasped. Wendell went as white as his name, Cinderella looked away, and beside Red, Lucy became noisily sick over the edge of their platform.

Virginia sneered at Red. “I guess it’s not a wolf book after all.” She threw it over her shoulder. There was a scuffle in the crowd as it fell; several wolves pounced on it and shredded it to bits with their teeth. “Let’s get on with this!”

“Yes, let’s,” Wolf repeated, more softly. “I want my sister to be cleared too.”

“She is the next most obvious suspect,” Wendell stated. “The baby was found in her possession,” he explained to Cinderella and Red.

“No, the baby was found in a pumpkin plant,” Lord Anthony called from his seat. “The same plant that saved Elizabeth’s life.”

Elizabeth? Surely not THAT Elizabeth! Red craned to see the next prisoner shuffle out. It was her Elizabeth-embroideress, thief, fugitive. Oh, you silly girl! If you’d just stayed to take your punishment, you wouldn’t have ended up like this. But no, first you had to try to lie, then to run away. Red sighed. Nobody sewed like Elizabeth, but she just couldn’t be trusted-and now she had been caught red-handed with that baby! It wasn’t like her to attack anyone... she must have been getting steadily worse over time.

Well, this was going to be a very short trial. As soon as Elizabeth had been put in position, before Wendell even had a chance to read off the charges, Red shouted, “Mirror! Show us the truth of the child she hurt!”

“No! I never hurt Dell. I never, I never!” the wolf woman cried, even as the mirror behind her shimmered and tuned to a new picture.

Littlebit? His embroideress? Wendell leaned forward in his makeshift throne, his hands clenched on the armrests to keep them from shaking. She was so nervous and gentle, surely she couldn’t have really plotted this? But the mirror was showing something.

“I would never hurt Dell! This wasn’t about him! I didn’t hurt him!” She tried to jump in front of the mirror and was poked back at the tip of a sword.

Wendell frowned. The scene in the mirror wasn’t the inside of Wolf’s house; it looked like a camp, but of a kind Wendell had never seen before. People appeared, mouths moving soundlessly, so he shouted, “Mirror! Show me all the truth! Sound!”

“...Promised!” Littlebit cried in the mirror. “You promised if I gave you a babe, you’d let me go!”

“It’s just a girl. Give me a boy, and I’ll consider lifting the curses,” an old gypsy woman ordered scornfully.

In the background, a gypsy man was leaning over a basket, smiling foolishly into it. “Look, a new sister,” he told an older girl, who was too busy glaring at Littlebit to pay any attention to the child. As soon as her father looked back down, she came up to Littlebit, grabbing her by the arm.

“He’s my father! I’m not sharing him with any more of your brats and I’m not sharing him with you! You better not pick him for the next one, or I’ll make those curses seem like a picnic in the park!”

“I picked none of this,” Littlebit told her sorrowfully.

“What does any of this have to do with anything?” Cinderella asked. “Did this happen here?”

“No,” the wolf on the witness platform muttered, staring downwards. “It’s from a long time ago.”

“Still, it must be important, or the mirror wouldn’t show it to us,” Red pointed out.

“It hasn’t shown her hurting a child,” Wendell objected. “That must be the truth! That she doesn’t hurt children!”

The mirror flickered again, fast forwarding to the same campsite, only now the gypsies were all sound asleep, some of them with the pink of troll dust on their faces. Littlebit was awake, sitting next to (but looking away from) the basket.

“I can’t take you with me,” she told the air. “They’ve cursed me. You’d die slowly of starvation because I can’t hunt, or quickly in pain because I can’t fight. I can’t leave you here, not to a life like they’ve given me. They’ll treat you like your life is worth less than a dog’s. Than a horse’s. You’re prey. You’re a tool to be used. So here’s my birthday present to you. You’ll never cry. You’ll never, ever cry.”

There was still a little troll dust in her hand. It didn’t take much to make whatever was in the basket stop making that little cooing noise. When it was quiet, Littlebit picked up a pillow.

Tears were flooding down Littlebit’s face, but the baby never cried.