A.N.D. - Wolf Woods

Rupert poured some of the potent local ale out for him. “Assuming Wolf is innocent of rape-”

“He is,” Wendell grunted. If Wolf hadn’t run amuck in Little Lamb Village with all those tarty little shepherdesses bouncing around offering what Virginia steadfastly refused, then he had all the less reason to turn rapist now that his lady love was his lawful wife.

“Then why so glum?”

“What bothers me is that it looks like Mrs. Comfort is neck-deep in all this,” Wendell confessed. “I hate to think it of her, but who else could it be? Wolf testified that no strangers were in his house. Oh!” He smacked his palm to his forehead. “We should have asked Elizabeth the same question!”

“You still can,” Rupert pointed out, poking his bowl of stew as if he expected something to jump out of it. Wendell simply ate, trying not to think about it. Ever since one fateful night on their journey when Wolf had offered them all spit-roasted mouse for dinner, he’d learned to not pay too close attention to the ingredients of lupine cooking. Rupert gave up on the stew and took a second helping of bread. “You’re going to have to question Elizabeth again anyway about the murders.”

“If she killed those people in defense of the baby, it wasn’t murder,” Wendell pointed out.

“But do we know that for sure?” Rupert asked softly. “All the mirror showed us was that she killed people and she did not hurt the baby. If they were trying to protect the baby as well when she tore into them...”

Wendell had no answer for that, so he bent to his lunch.

Unable to place his trust on anyone else in town, Wolf found himself trying to pull together a quick meal for the whole Lewis pack out of what was in his house. The kill from the full moon hadn’t been properly stored, so much of it had to be buried, followed by every apple in the place.

“That might be evidence,” Tony pointed out as Wolf tumbled them down the hole that had been the privy before plumbing had been added to the house.

“If anyone wants to look at them, they know where to find them,” Wolf told him, dusting off his hands. “Cripes! Do you think I’d keep poison near my mate and cub?”

“At least you and your sister have all been found innocent.” Tony was trying to look on the bright side as they went back into the house, and Wolf found himself irritated with his father-in-law’s usual blindness to the obvious.

“No, we haven’t. There are still charges against both of us.”

“You’ll be acquitted,” Virginia said, nodding a greeting as they came through the kitchen door. “I’ve been thinking about it. It had to be Edwina.” His tender mate’s expression turned feral. “I can’t wait to get her up in front of that mirror! She fed me that apple tart-and if she’s so innocent, why didn’t she see what it did to me? Someone cleaned up before you came home!” She touched Wolf’s healing nose with gentle fingertips. “And she hurt you. I could kill her!”

“If she is the one who hurt our cub, you’ll have to stand in line,” Wolf told her.

“I can’t believe that one of Wendell’s trusted servants would do something like this,” Tony protested. “I mean, he sent her here just because she was one of the ones who saved him from his own stepmother. Why would she help Wendell and try to hurt his namesake?”

“Our Wendell has a tail,” Wolf pointed out bitterly.

Charles Hardleather gnashed his teeth as he stormed back to the farmhouse where Edwina and Betty were locked in separate rooms. That troublesome Wolf had slipped through his fingers once, and now it seemed that he would slip away again. Considering that Hardleather had been soothing himself to sleep by planning the punishments for all the damage Wolf had done to the reputation of Snow White Memorial Prison, the thought of different prisoners was cold comfort. Particularly since it seemed that everyone who went in front of that cursed mirror ended up innocent after all. If things kept up at this rate, everyone would get off scott free and dance off into the sunset for a Happily Ever After.

How nauseating!

He knew something was wrong before he even walked in. A warden from the prison and one of King Wendell’s guards were supposed to be on duty at the door. Instead, they were missing and the door was wide open. From inside, he could hear a rhythmic thumping.

Sometimes, surprise and fear could be as good as three armed men at your back. Rather than sneak in to find out what was happening, Hardleather stomped in, roaring “What’s going on here?”

“Governor! Sir! There’s a problem with one of the prisoners!” his warden shouted down. Hardleather ran up the stairs to find the missing men trying to break down the door to Edwina’s room, along with the door guards from both Edwina’s and Betty’s rooms. “She shouted once, didn’t answer our calls, and now the door won’t open,” the warden gasped as they all slammed their shoulders once more into the door.

Growling in anger and frustration, Hardleather joined them. On the second rush the door finally shuddered open a few inches. They hit it again, finally pushing it open just enough to squeeze through.

A wardrobe and a chest had been braced against the inside of the door, with Edwina’s body draped across the chest as if to add more weight. Exactly how she’d been killed was hard to tell. There was blood everywhere, and her face had been caved in.

Wendell’s young guardsman stumbled to the chamber pot to lose his breakfast while Hardleather glared around the room. There was a messy splotch on the wall around head-height; that must have been how her skull had been cracked. With an elaborate, contemptuous show of walking around the sick guardsman, Hardleather strode to the opposite wall. The window had been shoved to but not locked and some of the ivy growing up the wall had been pulled free.

“Someone broke in?” a warden asked.

“No,” Hardleather replied pensively. He swung the window open, examining it from both sides. “There are no scratches. She let whoever it was in.” He turned to his subordinates. “And can any of you tell me why there was no guard outside as well as inside?” he asked in a voice as cold as midwinter snow.

He expected his warden to gulp out an apology for an oversight. Instead, he knitted his brow in confusion. “Where’s Fred? He’s supposed to be out there.”

Hardleather leaned out the window, looking all around. “Did Fred have big feet?”

“Yessir, but why...?”

Hardleather slammed the window in frustration. “Because a pair of unusually large boots are sticking out from one of the bushes down there. “You two!” He pointed at Wendell’s guard and his door guard. “Go down there and see what happened to him. You two, come with me. What’s happened to that girl?”

Her door opened with ease, but the room was so dark it was hard to tell if she was in there at all. Furniture had been moved here as well-only this time it had been piled in front of the window. They found her, trembling, hysterical, and alive, hiding under a blanket in a chest.

A few minutes later, the men outside found what was left of her window guard dragged under a tree.

Any hope Wendell harbored that the afternoon would be easier than the morning died when he saw the prison governor hauling a tearful teenager up to the witness stand.

“I was going to call for her testimony in the matter of the molestation later,” the king frostily reminded Hardleather.

“Take her testimony while you have her to testify,” Hardleather told him shortly. “The other one’s dead. Rest assured that I will be punishing my guards for their lapse.”

“What happened?”

“Someone appears to have killed the guards behind the house and tried to get in. The elder one let him in and was murdered for it. This girl blockaded the window instead.”

Wendell wanted to say “Smart girl!” Instead, he frowned and asked her, “Who did this?”

“Someone bad,” she sobbed. “That’s all I know, someone bad. He wants me to do bad things.”

Cinderella made a distressed sound, and even the cold Riding Hood looked sympathetic. Wendell pulled his handkerchief out of a pocket and passed it hand to hand through the crowd over to the trembling girl on the platform. “Can you tell me what bad things he wanted you to do? Did he want you to hurt the baby?”

“I didn’t hurt the baby!”

“But this has something to do with that, doesn’t it?”

She sobbed for a little while, then reluctantly nodded.

“Betsy...”

“Betty,” she corrected.

“Yes, Betty.” Now why do I have such a problem with that name? “Betty, I need you to say ‘I’m telling the truth.’ Then I want you to tell me what you know of what happened the night the baby was hurt.”

She sniffed, sniveled, and finally gulped enough air to speak. “I’m telling the truth. I don’t know what happened. I was in the root cellar all night long. First thing I knew something was wrong was when Ed-I mean, mummy-started shouting.”

The mirror showed her in the cellar and nothing more.

The next question came from Virginia. “What do you know about the apple tart that was cooked that night?” Wendell should have been insulted at her butting in, but he could see how she would take a personal interest in that particular answer.

Betty shook her head. “Only that there weren’t a lot of apples so I was told to leave ‘em special for you, ma’am. I don’t know where they came from. They were just there that morning.” Behind her, the mirror placidly reflected the square.

It was Queen Red, of all people, who jumped on the inconsistency. “If you spent the night in the root cellar, is that were you were molested by Wolf?”

“I... uh, I...” The girl blushed to the roots of her hair, and Wendell felt sorry for her. She didn’t even have the courage to look at the kings and queens, instead focusing her frightened gaze into the crowd. “Sir? King Wendell?” Even while she petitioned him, she still stared at the same distant spot. “Do I have to discuss this with the mirror so everyone can see my shame?”

“I’ll stand in front of the mirror to prove you’re lying!” Wolf snarled, and the girl jumped.

Something was off here. Something was wrong and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Still, he wasn’t a voyeuristic troll. If the child would be more comfortable with some shred of privacy left, then he’d give it to her. Wolf could, if he insisted, use the mirror to prove his innocence, so why expose the poor child?

“Shroud the mirror,” Wendell ordered.