A.N.D. - Wolf Woods

If one more person cried “wolf,” Wendell was going to just cry. Not one of his hoped-for solutions had been implemented yet, not a single one. They kept getting pre-empted for more lupine problems.

Villagers and farmers all across his kingdom were sending messages and delegations begging him to tear up the pardon. According to them, the wolves were responsible for everything from eating up entire flocks (possible) to causing crop-destroying droughts (improbable). The wolves were also besieging him, claiming to be Wolf’s father, mother, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, and seventeenth cousin six times removed on his great-grandmother’s side. The petitions and petitioners were bad enough, but his dungeons and prisons were filling to bursting with back cases for trial. Wolves accused of attacking humans, humans accused of attacking wolves, humans accused of attacking other humans thinking they were wolves... the only thing his courts weren’t asked to adjudicate were wolf/wolf cases. Those were taken care of internally. Wendell shuddered. Every now and then a casket was brought to the palace with a note nailed to the top saying something like “Sorry about that flock of sheep. I guarantee it won’t happen again. The one at fault has been punished, please do not persecute my pack.-The Wolf of the Deerhunter Pack”

He’d learned to stop looking into the coffins. It took weeks for the nightmares to abate from the first couple of “viewings.”

The lack of cooperation didn’t stop there. Lord Anthony’s idea had looked so good in theory-he needed an army and the wolves needed something to do. They owed him! But nobody else seemed to see the elegant simplicity in it. Some wolves had answered his call for soldiers, but they couldn’t seem to train properly and didn’t trust his human commanders to treat them fairly. The humans were equally distrustful-several of his guardsmen went so far as to quit rather than follow his orders. One of them was a third-generation White guard; losing the grandson of the man who had protected his grandmother broke Wendell’s heart, but the guard point-blank refused to have anything to do with wolves.

But he couldn’t-wouldn’t!-destroy the pardon. It would make him look weak and ungrateful. He couldn’t afford the former and he refused to be the latter. Somehow, he’d find a way to make it work. Somehow!

“What do you think?”

“I’m sorry?” Wendell snapped back to the present, focusing on Rupert.

“What do you think?” Lord Rupert’s expansive gesture took in the entire wall. “They’ve just finished hanging them all. Quite an impressive display!”

“Yes, it is. Inspiring.” Wendell surveyed the wall with satisfaction. At his command, portraits of the other four Women Who Changed History had been hung opposite his throne, flanking the larger picture of his grandmother. All right, ladies. You turned chaos into Happily Ever After. Show me how! He’d already written Aunt Cindy for advice, but the best she could offer was, “Follow your heart. It will lead you in the right direction.” Crap like that sounded wonderful in the stories, but it didn’t tell him how to solve his problems!

“Did I tell you Lord Anthony has heard from his daughter?” Wendell mused out loud to his friend. “I must commission a portrait of the Four Who Saved the Nine Kingdoms soon.”

“Yes, you’ve told me. Did Snow White really go into their dimension to give them a magic talking mirror?” Rupert’s eyes were wide with wonder as he stared at her portrait. “Truly she is great and powerful!” A guarded expression crossed his face. “It was Snow White, wasn’t it? I mean, the heroine Virginia’s mother was... was... you know...”

“Lady Virginia is a heroine and quite probably the Sixth Great Woman, no matter who her mother was.” It was a declaration and Rupert nodded.

“The problem is that the only known portrait of the Lady Virginia and that wolf are the copies of the copies of the souvenir portrait done at Kissingtown.” Rupert made a face. “You know how awful those things are. Certainly a knockoff would not be good enough to hang in your throne room.”

“I know. I shall have to invite them both back. Perhaps Wolf would have some insights into how to handle his kind.”

“It would probably be most helpful.”

“Yes, it... wait, are you referring to the situation or to Wolf?”

“The wolf, of course. It was extraordinarily well behaved, considering, wasn’t it? It-”

“He.” Wendell corrected. “He is male.”

“Quite the magnificent example of the male of the species, too, your Majesty,” Rupert fluttered, missing the point. “It -”

Wendell cut in again. “He. Wolf is a man.”

Rupert stared at him in horror. “Sire, Wolf is not a man. ‘He,’ if you insist, is a male wolf.”

The sad thing was, Rupert had no idea why he was upset. Wendell closed his eyes and prayed for strength. Why had Wolf saved them all? If he had spent his life facing this kind of unthinking prejudice, he would have been happy to see all the kings and queens die. Why had Wolf been different? Why had he rescued them?

Something to ask later. For now, he had entrenched attitudes to change, starting with his closest friend and occasional lover. “He will be the husband of the Lady Virginia. He is the one who switched the poison for troll dust. He found me and let me change back.” Wendell gulped a deep breath, finding the words harder to say than he realized. Was it because he hated yelling at Rupert or because he secretly didn’t believe what he was about to say? “He is a hero and should be treated with the same respect and humanity as myself, Lord Anthony, and the Lady Virginia.”

Rupert had gone white, and Wendell wanted to hug him reassuringly. But he couldn’t let this go, he couldn’t! He couldn’t ask the people to change their attitudes if they weren’t shown an example.

Rupert started to say something, took a breath, stalled out, put a hand to his mouth, gulped, and tried again. “Wolf is a man and will be treated like the hero he is.” Rupert reached out to trail fingertips down his face, his voice becoming more sure and natural. “If he did not have the soul of a man, you would not be here now. The queen would have poisoned the Pup Prince and you would never have been able to change back.” The next breath came out as a sob. “If it weren’t for him, I would have lost you forever.”

And then they were both in each other’s arms, hugging tightly.

Changing one heart wouldn’t be enough. But it was a start.