Her Wolf King

She took the winding staircase with a candle, her steps quick and sure on the stone. Lenore shivered as the sunlight leached from the underground space, which was completely devoid of illumination. Her candle was the only thing illuminating the round room, casting flickering shadows on the earth-packed walls. Her own silhouette looked eerie, and she ventured further into the space.

Her footsteps were silent against the dirt floor, the stone having given way to nothing more than the most rudimentary of constructions. The candle’s weak light revealed crisscrossing beams that held up the ceiling, and they looked sturdy enough, to her relief. She hardly wished to die before noon, under the collapsed weight of a rotting building.

“What have we here?” she murmured aloud, gazing upon the racks of wine bottles. Glass containers lined the shelves that in turn covered the round walls. The cramped space made her feel as if she were in some giant’s mouth, the bottles rows of teeth, and a wave of dizziness washed over her. She blinked, trying to steady herself. The air seemed to be escaping with each breath she took.

Just as she had asked the question, her candle blew out, and unable to resist, she screamed. Taking a deep breath, she felt in her pocket for a match, which she knew she had brought down. Footsteps rang in her ears, each one like an alarm bell. She whirled around, forgetting the match and hunting for a weapon. Perhaps a glass bottle would do?

“Did I say you could come down here, wife?” Everett’s voice was ominous, yet behind the threat, she knew somehow that he was teasing.

“You never said I couldn’t.” She lit the match, illuminating his face. In the near-darkness, he looked terrifying, yet his presence was more assuring than anything else. “Do you keep the bodies of your former wives down here?”

“There’s only one former wife that I’d like to reduce to nothing, and she has eluded me at every turn, I’m afraid.” He took a step closer. “What brings you to my wine cellar, Lenore?”

“Perhaps I wanted a drink of...” she pivoted, letting the candle illuminate the labels. “Slivovitz? That stuff is revolting.”

The plum-based liquor burned going down, even more than any wine she had ever tried.

“One gets used to the taste,” he said.

“It’s sour, acidic, and without redeeming qualities,” she retorted, having stolen a sip from her father’s glass once, years before. Just the smell had been enough to nearly knock her unconscious.

“It reminds me of myself,” he joked. “What were you hoping to find here, wife?”

“Your past,” she said without thinking. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out his expression.

“And have you found it yet?”

Her candle’s flame moved along the rows of bottles. “Is this arsenic?”

“No, it’s a love potion.”

“Right next to the bottle labelled ‘potion to make your enemies’ blood curdle’?”

“Marya must have left that here. Her parting gift to me, I suppose.”

As they moved along the racks, Lenore fell silent. There was a gap between the metal shelves, which had been screwed to the wall, it seemed, but one of them looked like two shelves ended and a crack was in the wall. “Is this a trapdoor?”

In lieu of a response, Everett curled his fingers around the shelf and pulled, sending the bottles rattling.

It opened.

“I never knew that was here,” Everett said.

“You’ve lived here for fifty years, and you’ve never come to the cellar?”

“I swore off of it after trying slivovitz,” he said drily.

“Should we...” The portal widened, and it shimmered with a fierce light that scalded her vision after the constant darkness of the cellar, making her candle look pitiful in comparison. Beyond the blinding light, she could see nothing.

“What have we to lose but our lives?” he asked.

Not wishing to respond, for fear she might be too truthful, she took his hand, and they stepped through the doorway.

***

Lenore felt herself being tossed forward with rough force, gravel hitting her knees through the tangled fabric of her gown. Pain lanced through her as her palms landed on the ground, and she looked up, straightening. The sky above her was... blue.

Not just any old shade of blue, however. This was... iridescent. It twinkled and glowed with an ethereal, magical quality that had no resemblance at all to the skies she had grown up under. She glanced down at her palms, expecting them to be skinned and bleeding. There was nothing more than the imprint of rocks as if they’d barely hurt her at all.

Everett stood next to her, his trousers dusty. He offered a hand, hauling her to her feet. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.” She took his hand, fingers lacing with his. “Where are we?”

The gravel beneath her feet crunched and looked as if it had been raked into perfect, even lines. It shimmered with a faint glow, each tiny pebble like a bead of water. It, too, was blue-tinged as the sky. Had she hit her head too hard in the cellar and begun hallucinating?

“Welcome to fairyland,” he said, his tone dry. A bird squawked overhead, diving down and fanning out its magnificent wings, which were tipped in gold and red feathers. It circled their heads a few times before disappearing into the trees. At least those looked normal.

“Have you ever been here?” she said, before feeling foolish. He hadn’t been to the cellar. That was what he’d told her.

“Once,” he said. “The experience was not wholly unpleasant.”

“Damning with faint praise, I see.” They set off along the gravel path, which was lined on either side with waist-high grasses that sussurated like whispers in a foreign tongue on the gentle breeze. “So, why would your house have a portal to fairyland anyway?”

He sighed, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “Marya is the ruler of this realm.”

“Of fairyland?”

“Of the human realm that lies above it. Fairyland is directly beneath it.”

She shuddered at the thought of an entire world existing underground, even if it was kept alive by magic.

“She runs her courts here, as the Queen of Curses. A bit of a tyrannical queen, to be quite honest.”

“Is this passageway the route she sent that poor horse through?” she wondered.

“In all likelihood,” he said. “As well as that monstrous creature that seemed so afraid of you.”

“Have we ascertained why, exactly, that beast was so frightened of me?”

“I know next to nothing about my own wife, so I was relying on you to tell me yourself if you’d ever shown any signs of magic, Lenore.”

“I haven’t,” she said automatically. But was that what she knew, or what she had believed for so many years, that it became the truth to her? “Never.”

“Any strange dreams?” he said conversationally. “Dreams can be an indicator of magic, or so I’ve been told.”

“I...” Did he know about the dreams? The thought chilled her for some reason, these dreams that she’d kept secret for so many years that she couldn’t bear to let them see the light. “Nothing particularly... fantastical...”

How could she tell him that despite the strangeness of this place, these waist-high grasses and those rolling green hills reminded her of the very lands she had roamed in her dreams when she’d chased those lights, chased those fairies?

Didn’t it sound like insanity?

“Hmm.” Just as he opened his mouth to speak, he was interrupted.

A fairy, dressed in a white, flowing robe with matching white, waist-length hair, appeared on the path in front of them. “Wolf,” she said, nodding in their general direction. “We have been waiting for you.”

Tension spooled in her stomach, coiling tightly. The fairy’s eyes looked a thousand years old and childlike all at once: ageless. An emerald diadem rested on her forehead, set in a silver band, and a matching belt sat at her waist. “And for your wife.”

Everett’s fingers tightened around hers, his arm shifting in front of hers. “And I’m afraid I don’t have the pleasure of making your acquaintance...”

“Samara,” she said. “I have lived here for centuries before that little so-called queen took over this place, poisoning our rivers and drying up our earth.”

As she spoke, her voice was like rushing water, and the grass no longer looked as green, but it seemed... drier. Brownish. Decaying, not flourishing.

“Why have you been waiting for us?” Lenore asked.

“That, you shall soon see. Come with me.” She turned, not waiting for them to follow, her white robe swirling around her ankles.

Unsure of what else to do, they went after her.