Malgrave Wolves

  This story continues the adventures of Anthony Delleroe in the strange, otherworldly land of NeverEarth. All people, all children, have adventures in fantastic, magical worlds of talking animals, living legends, and myth. But all children, eventually, grow up and forget. Anthony remembered. This tale follows “Alabaster Emissaries” and marks Anthony’s return to NeverEarth where an old foe awaits and a dark curse bubbles just beneath the pristine surface. The world-setting (containing NeverEarth, Kellen, Talismere, the Alabaster Palace, and other landmarks within this story’s context), and the specific contextual characters of Anthony Delleroe, Karl, Queen Allasande, Duchess Malgrave, Wiste, and others, are owned by myself.

  Malgrave Wolves

  Table of Contents

  Frontispiece

  Beginning

  Midpoint

  About the Author

  Malgrave Wolves

  ©2013 by Sylvan Scott

  Anthony put his foot down both figuratively and literally. He knew it made him look petulant but he was getting frustrated. Karl’s suggestions about how to make their Midwinter holiday “more special” were getting annoying.

  “Look, a camera would just be a … a violation! NeverEarth’s pristine: their most advanced technology is the clock! Seriously, I thought you understood how special the place is; I don’t want to despoil it.” He tried not to sound irrational.

  For months Karl had been stepping on his psychological toes; breaking in on the private conversation Anthony’s childhood had with NeverEarth. They’d been through a lot together. What had started as nothing more than a few days and one-night-stands had blown up into something … complex. Of all the people in the world, only Karl knew about Anthony’s otherworldly home-away-from-home.

  “Yeah, well, I like taking pictures of special places. And it’s not like it’s going to hurt anyone. Cameras don’t really steal souls, you know. Stop being so dramatic.”

  Anthony grew increasingly steadfast in his refusal. “I don’t want my childhood refuge littered with Coke cans, cigarette butts, and tourists. Leave the damn camera behind!” His gritted teeth made the pronouncement a bit difficult to understand. Why did Karl have to be so annoying? As he watched, his boyfriend’s expression melted into one of begrudging understanding.

  Or perhaps it was just acceptance. It was hard to tell.

  His boyfriend was already dressed for a walk in a winter wonderland. Like Anthony, he wore a heavy winter jacket, gloves, boots, a scarf, and a stocking cap. Both had backpacks: Karl’s at his feet and Anthony’s over his shoulder. They had filled them with food and clothing for a week-and-a-half. Not that they’d be gone that long: time flowed differently in NeverEarth. In the nine days they’d spend celebrating Midwinter with Anthony’s childhood friend, Wiste, only three would pass on Earth.

  “Okay; I’ll leave it behind.”

  Karl knelt in the middle of Anthony’s dorm room and started rummaging through his pack to remove the offending technology. While he was in there, he also removed four cans of soda. Anthony bit back a biting comment and turned to the closet door. No need to agitate his boyfriend any more than he already had. He’d let the cans slide without comment. They were going on a holiday, after all, and he wanted it to be fun, like his childhood.

  He stepped up to the white door and closed his eyes. He conjured images of deep forests, fearsome dragons, and—most of all—the satyr they were going to visit. With the argument confounding his thoughts, he didn’t get it right, immediately. After rapping on the door four times and turning the doorknob counter-clockwise a few times, Anthony had to try again.

  ...And again.

  It was the only way to open a doorway into NeverEarth: find one that had been prepped to go there, focus on your heart’s desires enough for the emotions to reach through the aperture, knock four times, and turn the knob counter-clockwise.

  That always did the trick.

  Being rattled, however, interfered with his emotions. He tried for a sixth time and finally got it. The closet door creaked open upon a wintry forest of evergreen and birch.

  “What happens if a door has its lock changed?” Karl asked.

  Anthony, just about to step across the threshold, sighed, and turned around.

  “I mean, what if you pulled out the rotating knob and put in one of those latch-style door handles?”

  “Jesus, could you stop talking for five minutes?” Anthony said.

  Karl looked hurt but defiant. He always started jabbering like a monkey whenever excited or nervous. Going into NeverEarth, together, for the first time in half a year had clearly rattled him. Still, Anthony didn’t feel very forgiving of Karl’s usual patter.

  “I was just wondering aloud—”

  “Well stop it.”

  Anthony turned and walked through the door into NeverEarth.

  The World Labyrinth was the name for the collection of mystic pathways that criss-crossed the various lands and kingdoms that made up NeverEarth. The Kingdom of Kellen was foremost amongst these although the paths were available—if subtle and nigh-unseen—to any traveler. It was like walking along the threads of a spider’s web: delicate and tenuous. Only by focusing on your emotions could you be sure you were still on course. Otherwise, getting lost was a very real possibility. Circumventing hundreds of miles in the matter of a few hours could drop a traveler just about anywhere in NeverEarth. Anthony had travelled the Labyrinth’s contours dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

  This time, it was agony.

  Passing into NeverEarth wasn’t supposed to hurt. Stepping across the boundary of worlds had never produced much of a sensation at all, really, save for a faint tingling as Anthony’s body caught up to the faster rate of time flowing in the parallel reality. This time, however, as he set foot into the mystic forest, his body burned. He felt the agony surge through him making his muscles contract and his breath catch in his throat. Everything spun as he lost his footing and fell. He screamed as he rolled in the snow.

  “Anthony!”

  He didn’t see Karl race through, but soon his boyfriend’s concerned face filled his vision. He didn’t seem hurt or even inconvenienced. The pain was only for him.

  His bones felt like they were bending and cracking; his muscles burned. His vision blurred obscuring his view of the transformation that wracked his body. The shadow of his face pushed out into a muzzle beneath his eyes. Fur, grey and black, sprouted up and down his arms. His fingernails and toenails curled into claws while a tail pushed its way over the waistband of his pants in back. The colors of the world faded to a bluish wash. On his last trip through the closet—his last adventure that took place within NeverEarth—something similar had happened. A chill that had nothing to do with the season ran through him.

  He was changing into a wolf.

  As Karl hovered over him, looking frantic and unsure of what to do, he realized that the biggest difference between now and then was the lighting. The sky beyond the snow-covered branches was clear and bright; the sun shone all around. The werewolf’s curse had only changed him at night, before, and even then only under a full moon. Plus, he’d been cured upon leaving NeverEarth before the enchantment could become permanent.

  Hadn’t he?

  “Anthony! Anthony: what do I do? Do I … do I drag you back—?”

  “Get … away!” Anthony snarled. His sharp fangs cut his lips as he barked out the warning. He could already feel his rage mounting. The beast within was coming out and it snarled as it emerged. But there was a difference. Unlike the last time, the fury felt muted; it grew but didn’t consume him. His hunger, likewise, stayed in check. There was no drive to stalk, hunt, and devour living prey as the metamorphosis progressed; his mind remained clear. His emotions came closer to the surface, bu
t he was not their slave.

  In less than two minutes, the transformation was complete. Shaking, he stood on large, lupine paws.

  The bright white sunlight reflected off the snow and hurt his night-maximized eyes. He squinted against the illumination and fought the urge to run back through the door to Earth. The aperture stood open between the narrow birch trees, nearby. His clothes were stretched and ripped, stitches popped and fastenings, opened, across his changed frame. His feet ached, trapped partially within the boots he’d worn; each of them having ruptured from within by his expanding feet. Their rubber soles flopped in the wet snow as he shifted his weight back and forth.

  “Jesus: what the hell happened?”

  Anthony just shook his head, uncertain how to answer Karl. “I don’t know.”

  His voice growled from the depths of his throat,shaped into something hollow and guttural by his long muzzle.

  “You should go back; head through the door before—”

  “You’re not in danger,” he snapped. “It … feels different this time.”

  “How?”

  Anthony just shook his big, shaggy head.

  Karl looked about a foot shorter, now. Anthony and he had never been the tallest of people before. Both were five-foot-nine. But with his biology shifted to an approximate cross between human and wolf, his torso and legs were elongated, putting him over six-and-a-half feet. His weight felt about the same with aching muscles in his limbs having replaced the small amount of excess weight he carried around his middle. As with the last time, the world had been drained of most colors before his large, golden eyes. Sounds and smells exploded in clarity and intensity, though, so his visual changes were hardly the foremost on his mind.

  “I’m under … control.” He looked up at the sun and shaded his eyes with one arm. “Maybe it’s because it’s day, but—”

  “But if the time of day meant anything you shouldn’t have changed at all,” Karl said.

  Anthony scowled at the interruption. He didn’t normally like people finishing his sentences and, given his recent arguments with Karll, was even less tolerant of the annoying habit.

  “We’ve got to figure this out,” he finally growled.

  Karl looked dubious. “Are you sure? Maybe you should go back through the door while I go on and meet up with Wiste. If he’s on time he should have a carriage and horses, nearby.”

  “We should find him, yeah,” he said. “But I’m not going back; not yet.” With that, he turned and walked back to the door, reaching through to pull it closed. He half expected his clawed hand to drop its fur and revert to human for the moment it was on the other side, but it stayed as wolfish as the rest of him. He turned to face Karl.

  His boyfriend just shook his head. “This is just petulant: you need a doctor, not a quest.”

  “I need someone to back me up on this, not question me at every turn,” he barked.

  An arrow shot through the air and embedded itself with a pain like that of a hot brand in his left shoulder. With a roar that sounded half cry of pain and half profanity, he spun with the impact, lost his footing in his tattered boots, and fell to the snowy ground. Karl, likewise, swore and whipped around to face the source of the attack.

  A woman strode briskly towards them, moving carefully between the trees with a bow in her hands, nocking another arrow. She was dressed in a heavy, brown cloak against the cold and her high, leather boots provided her the footing that had escaped Anthony. She kept her distance, though, only taking a few steps to gain better aim.

  “Get out of the way,” she called.

  Anthony heard this as he struggled to rise against the pain and injury. His heart was beating wildly and rage began to cloud his vision. Had the shot been only two inches down and to the right...

  He realized she was shouting at Karl to move when she repeated herself.

  “I’m … not a monster,” he growled.

  Karl, a bit slower to react to what was going on, nonetheless stood his ground and withdrew something Anthony had never seen him carry before: a taser.

  Where he’d gotten it Anthony didn’t know. That he’d brought it to NeverEarth despite Anthony’s comments about technology only made him angrier.

  “Keep back!” Karl shouted.

  Anthony put his hand on the shaft sticking out of his shoulder in front. He could feel the wedge-shaped tip of the arrow sticking out of his back. Snarling through the pain, he reached up and snapped the shaft off about an inch outside of his flesh. “I’m not a monster!” he repeated, this time shouting.

  The woman held her ground and positioned herself with a thick birch tree between herself and her quarry. She was about fifteen yards away and had her next arrow trained on Anthony’s face. She looked … familiar.

  Something about her long, brown hair and deep, brown eyes stirred a memory in Anthony. It was an old memory, though; something dusty with disuse.

  “If you’re no threat then back away from the boy,” she shouted. Her voice was warm, despite her tone, and was suffused with an Irish brogue. Suddenly, both face and voice clicked. Anthony, despite the pain, felt a sense of awe wash over him. The woman was middle-aged and fit but the last time he’d seen her, she’d been a child as he had been.

  “Moira.” His startled gasp sounded like a snarl.

  She kept the bow trained on him. Her brow furrowed as she looked him over. Anthony raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. His baggy, transformation-torn clothes hung from him like vines in a swamp.

  “Oi! You there!” She shouted to Karl. “Step back an’ over here.” She nodded to her side but still didn’t fire the arrow. “I’ve got some questions about big-n-fuzzy, there.”

  Karl looked at Anthony nervously. Sensing that things were ramping down, the large wolf just nodded his assent.

  His blood was boiling and he wanted to run over and embrace his childhood friend. The years had been kind in that she was still the strong, fit person she’d been as a child. But she was so much older and, as a human like him, the only way that would be the case was...

  Karl and Moira talked in hushed tones for several minutes. Anthony trained his ears in their direction almost without consciously deciding to. It was a marvel his lupine form could hear so well. He listened as the two talked and Karl tried to convince Moira to put down the weapon. At the same time, he kept hold of the taser. Eventually, he heard the story of how he’d become a werewolf get described and their current surprise at his reversion.

  “Tony.” She slowly lowered the bow and stepped forward, boots crunching in the snow. Anthony lowered his arms. “Heissis, Tony: you … you’ve changed!” She didn’t smile but her eyes were glad as she came closer. A second later and they embraced, the smaller woman held tightly in Anthony’s shaggy arms.

  “I’d forgotten you,” he rumbled. “I’m … sorry.” He pulled back and looked down at her, cocking his head to one side to move his muzzle from direct line-of-sight. She smelled like the forest and the honest sweat of someone used to walking in it. Her cloak was dark green. “You’ve changed, too.”

  She blushed, the faint remembrance of freckles showing on her cheeks. “Well, if we’re comparing, I think you win,” she said. Then, with a glance towards Karl, nodded deeper into the woods. “Wiste sent me to fetch you,” she said. “The trees are too close, here, for a carriage. I’ve got one and a team of horses about a quarter mile that way.”

  Moira had been one of two human friends who’d also found NeverEarth when he’d been a child. From Ireland, near Shannon, the two would never have met had they not both found doorways into this magical world. She’d been at his side on many adventures and each time they were reunited they’d talk endlessly about their regained memories. But he’d never expected to find her, again. Once a person crossed the magical threshold between twelve and thirteen, the memories came back less frequently and, eventually, traffic between the two worlds ended.

  “I waited for you, you know,” she said. She didn’t sound wis
tful; more like she was recounting something that happened long before. “You said that on our next adventure we’d investigate the Blood Rapids of the Alismar River.”

  “I remember; the missing kids from along its banks.”

  “It was a troll, actually,” she said. She grinned slyly. “I took Castori Phane to check it out after you never came back. For years everyone thought it was the ghost of this captain—a talking river otter named Yarsmin—but the troll was using the myth to cover for his decades-old slave trade mining mystic gems out of the Twisted Heights.”

  “Sounds like quite the adventure.”

  “It was.”

  Anthony didn’t know how to broach the subject he most wanted to ask but Karl did it for him. He bristled as his boyfriend asked, “So, why are you so much older? I mean, if you’re human—”

  “I stayed behind.” Her curt tone cut him off and she flashed her brown eyes at him, warningly. “When Tony didn’t come back, well, what was there for me to go back to?” She looked at Tony and smiled shyly. “I hadn’t told you at the time, but I’d decided to stay even before the whole mess with the Umbral Knight. I’d sworn Wiste to secrecy and stayed.”

  “But what about your family? Your parents and siblings?”

  “Only child, remember?” she said. “And the less said about my parents...” She trailed off and continued leading them. “But I wasn’t the only one who stayed.”

  Anthony blinked as more memories came back. “Jeremy, too?”

  She nodded. “The door he took home to New Jersey was always near the one I used to reach home. We’d usually see each other off. When I went with him to say ‘good-bye’ I let it slip that I was staying. He looked worried about me but promised that he’d come back more often and made me promise I’d come fetch him, too.” She took a turn by a large, snowy boulder, and led them towards a broad, forest road. “He was always a year younger than us,” she said, “so he had more time, I guess. We had four more adventures that year which, for him, must have been every month or so.” She looked up at Anthony’s face and sighed. “His mum: she died in a car accident just before his thirteenth birthday. His dad was still overseas and he didn’t want to live with his grands so, well, I arranged for him to come here.”

  Anthony breathed long and slow through his nostrils. The three of them had been inseparable. Ever since their first adventure together during the Underbrush Wars, they’d been a trio. When almost everyone in Kellen of royal blood had been shrunk to mouse-size and scattered by the army of Lord Avartail, the three of them had organized the resistance. They had quested to gather forces to fight back to retake the Alabaster Throne, even after they, too, had been made fun-size. In the end they had put the mouse Prince-Regent, Whiskervane, on the throne before getting everyone returned to normal height.

  Even before then, when he’d first met Moira during his quest to stop the Door Warden and his army of clockwork dwarves, he’d known they’d be friends for life.

  They arrived at the carriage and Anthony felt a wave of nostalgia.

  It was white, befitting the season, and large enough to carry four trolls. When he had been a child, the royal carriages had seemed like tanks. They were incredibly elegant, each clad in wooden panels carved with intricate filigree and set with tiny, precious gemstones. Six white horses pulled the winter carriage just as he knew that, come spring, the emerald stallions would be put to the task with a green carriage. Each held part of an enchantment that ensured the horses never got lost and no weather could harm its contents. Inside there would be food and drink for a month.

  He ran his furred hand over its curved contours in fond memory. The horses nickered and stamped, though, as he approached. They looked back at him, ears folding back while showing the whites of their eyes.

  “Careful,” Karl said. “I think they don’t like the big, bad wolf coming up on them from behind.”

  “Yeah: I get that,” Anthony said.

  “Just get inside,” Moira advised. “I’ll get them started then come back.”

  Anthony nodded and opened the door to get in. Karl followed and soon the carriage was on its way.

  “What did she mean ‘come back’? Who’s going to drive?”

  “Magic,” Anthony said.

  A few minutes later and the side door swung open and admitted Moira, standing on the coach rail and using the hand-holds to keep steady. She joined them and kicked back, comfortably, across from Anthony. The interior was warm and dry; they took off their heavy outer-clothes and she helped Anthony get out of his tattered remains.

  “It’s not as bad this time,” Karl remarked. “Most of this can be salvaged.”

  “Except the shoes and stockings,” Moira observed.

  “If something like this is going to happen to him everytime he comes to NeverEarth, he’s going to need magic clothes.”

  “I’m more concerned about why it happened,” Anthony snarled. “Maybe because it was sunset back home when I came through or something...”

  “The moon is far from full,” Moira added. “It’s definitely something to talk to the Heississian Order about. Minister Salbard ought to be able to tell you what’s wrong.”

  Karl laughed and shook his head. “Salbard? He’s a diplomat!”

  “He’s also adjunct to the Order,” Moira chided. “He may not be a wizard but he knows all their tricks. He’s been magical advisor to the throne for twenty years.”

  “Just after I left,” Anthony observed.

  “Just so,” she agreed.

  They rode on.

  Moira spoke at length, telling them about her adventures in the kingdom of Kellen and its surrounding lands. She talked about Jeremy, how he had built himself a house out in the wilderness by the Susurrus Woods, and would be joining them for Midwinter. He’d had less adventures as he’d grown older, preferring the rustic life on the edge of civilization to life in the palace. Moira loved all of it: the deep woods, the far-flung mountains, the high seas, the royal court, the bustling cities: each aspect of NeverEarth was her favorite. She couldn’t choose just one.

  The commute was long despite following the World Labyrinth. Nearly a full day passed as they followed the well-maintained and manicured roads. The World Labyrinth was the framework that the royal road followed. The intent of the carriage’s spells kept it true. By foot, without the enchanted way to follow, it would have taken weeks. By sunset they were skirting the farms that dotted the edges of the small hamlets on Kellen’s edge.

  Darkness had fallen as the road turned out along the Tallasine Bluffs overlooking vast plains, below. Here and there icy sheets stretched between hillocks of brown grass and stretches of snow where, in a few month’s time, rice would be planted for harvest. The few stilt-houses amongst them were lit from within by candlelight. Anthony looked out the carriage windows at the tableau and felt a sense of peace wash over him.

  In the distance rose a mournful wail. They all heard it.

  “A wolf,” Karl said. He looked nervous and took Anthony’s hand.

  Moira did not look as concerned but Anthony felt his blood run cold. They had heard the sound but not its meaning. His wolven ears deciphered it well, though. It had been a single word, rising high in the night air.

  It had been his name.