Her Wolf King

A COLD WIND blew over the dying landscape of ice and snow. Far above, the sky was the palest shade of grey, yet it shed no light on the barren hill. Withered branches and shrivelled flowers peeked through their suffocating blanket of white, and Lenore waited.

Waited, as she did during every dream, for the faeries to arrive. The little twinkling golden lights that never took any real, tangible, human form as the fairy tales said they did; instead, they wrapped around her hands and fingers like so many glittering bracelets and rings.

Her breath caught, as it did every night of the full moon, when they shot down from the pale sky, bathing Lenore and the lifeless scene in a rich, amber glow. The fairies, she thought with a child’s delighted awe, finding herself enchanted even after all this time, even though she knew what would happen to them. They darted almost shyly around her, catching in her hair and then flitting away, before settling to twine around her arms, rest on her fingertips. She flung out her arms, and the snow around her began to melt. Beneath it, instead of the cold, dead earth she expected to find, was lush grass. Interspersed between the blades of soft green were the buds of flowers opening, blossoming. The hill slowly came back to life.

Lenore turned, beginning what she always thought of as the happiest point of the dream. She danced, laughing, and raised her hands above her head, twisting this way and that. Out of the corners of her vision, she could see the white and grey turning to ochre, then to verdant as she spun. The golden lights were dancing with her, to music only they could hear, forming a cloud around her, leaving green and growing things wherever they landed.

And slowly, when the hill had been completely transformed, the fairies began to leave. She chased them, her legs moving achingly slow as the luminous specks were tantalizingly close, but still too far for her to reach. Even as snow fell in her hair and drifted over her bare arms, replacing the fairies she longed to see again, still she ran. She ran, and she ran, and she ran, until her lungs burned and her knees gave out and her feet ached, and she fell.

Lenore, as always, had been too focussed on the fairies to notice that she had left the beautiful meadow, with its birdsong and honeyed air, and had tumbled into another frosty, forbidding panorama. Another dying landscape, only she was alone this time. She had chased the fairies, like always, instead of staying put and being happy with the warmth and life surrounding her. And now, there were no golden lights to revive it, nothing to bring it back to life. It was as cold and as dead as her heart, as icy as the tears that ran down her cheeks.

***

EVERETT REPEATED THE words in his head, as he did every night before he slept, and long into the dream. They were all he had left, all that did not change as easily as his skin did, muscle and bone elongating, shifting, sprouting thick fur in place of hair, teeth sharpening as he went from man to wolf. Until he could not tell which was which, and which was worse.

I am Everett Dunstan, he told himself. And I have the heart of a wolf.

That had been true even when he had been a man. Even when he had hunted down those who owed him debts, instead of hounding rabbits and deer, he had had a wolf’s heart. His wife had loved and hated it in equal measure. No, he thought. Marya loved me for it, until she hated me for it. Until she realized that a wolf’s heart was good for greed, was good for gold, but not for love.

That a wolf’s heart beat only to keep beating, to keep its lungs breathing and its body moving, not for the concern of others around it. That a wolf ran to find food or shelter, but it did not bring the weak with it. That a wolf’s heart had no room for weakness, and love was the biggest one.

Lonely. Being a wolf was lonely. Wolf-heart, Marya had called him the last time he saw her, the last time he loved her, the first time she cursed him. You have a wolf’s heart, so why not a body to match. And so her magic bound him to the spot, transformed him forever, the full moon shining bright above, and throwing into full relief the kind of monster Everett Dunstan was: a wolf.

No one wanted to be around a wolf. People slaved to keep the wolf from the door; to throw someone to the wolves was the worst kind of punishment, the cruelest betrayal and torture. He had thought that made him powerful, invincible. But Everett had been wrong.

He paced the cell, not knowing if it was on four feet or on two, only that the walls of it grew closer together with each repetition, with each step. The cell was shrinking, or his sanity was. Perhaps both. He wouldn’t put it past Marya to know how he hated to be caged and, out of spite, trap him like this, in a cell that grew smaller with every pace he took. He howled. A guttural sound, part man and part wolf, but with the agony of both. Wounded in heart, flagging in spirit. Dying, so slowly, dying.

He had not seen the moon in so long. For however long he had been stuck here, he had not seen the moon. Even though its cycles signified the dreaded changes, he would give anything to see it again, to feel its light upon his face and shield his eyes from its accompanying stars. To be blinded by light, and not darkness. Surrounded by good, and not evil.

A rattle at the door. It flew open, and Everett lunged for it. Even knowing what would happen, how this would end, he lunged for it. Everett threw himself at the opening, dying to purchase the freedom that had put itself within his grasp—

And the wolf stopped him. Not the wolf inside of him, no. But a mirror of it, knocking him to the ground with a weighty blow of its paws, mauling his face and clawing at his skin. Snapping his bones, and leaching the blood from his veins, as Everett Dunstan took his last breath, staring into the wolf’s limpid green eyes.