Her Wolf King

Everett paced the forest floor in front of his house and felt lonelier than he ever had in the past half-century. Twigs crunched beneath his paws, the smell of the crisp leaves reaching him through his more sensitive sense of smell as an animal. The forest was enchanted to include three seasons: autumn, spring, summer, but not winter. A parting gift from his former wife, who knew that winter was his favourite season...even as a wolf.

But he was alone now. No wife. Not even a bitter enemy.

How was it that being alone all these years had never had such a mark on him as it did now when she was gone? How could it be that he had so easily fallen into the habit of her company--the wit of her banter, the gentle teasing, the keen inquisitiveness that shone in her eyes? It was impossible to think now, that he had spent a day with her, that he could ever go back to his life before. Monotonous. Bland. Empty, endless days of the past stretched out like a yawning abyss, and they threatened to swallow him whole if he did not get her back.

This girl was only a girl. Only human. Surely it was better that she left. Surely it was better that she ran away from him instead of binding her life to his. She would go and marry a nice man, a baker or a farmer, and lead an ordinary existence. There was no need for her to suffer with him, to wallow in the broken mess that he had made of himself.

He had no one to blame but himself, after all, for who he was now.

Everett recalled the night it had happened. The night his body, as Marya had put it, had come to match his soul, his heart.

He had returned from a hunting trip, crawled into bed next to his sound-asleep wife, and when he had woken, it was to a wolf’s head staring back at him in the mirror. Thinking himself attacked, he’d struck the mirror and found that only glass shattered, cracks splintering out from his fist.

A true irony. Marya had a devilish sense of humour, he would admit. The night before, he had killed a wolf. He’d thought that was mounted on the wall, yet it made no sense. He reached up to touch his face; it was prickly with shaggy fur, his sense of vision keener than it ought to have been, letting him see in the dark the monster he had become...

Claws had poked through his fingertips, a painful sensation that left the sheets shredded and gouged scars into the walls and bedposts when he righted himself. He’d let out a cry, meaning to talk, but it had been nothing more than a great and terrible howl, blood-chilling. His body and torso were still mostly that of a man, but his head, his hands, his feet... all of them bore animalistic features.

A growl escaped his throat, echoing through the small hut that he shared with his wife, Marya. At that time, he’d thought her nothing more than a widow, whose husband had been lost to a tragic farming accident.

Now? Well, now, he had other suspicions about his wife’s origins.

Her name was a strangled cry in her throat. He called, and she stepped into the bedroom like the answer to a prayer or the beginning of a curse.

“Are you enjoying the fruits of your actions, dear husband?” she said. “You do, after all, have the soul of a wolf. Cold. Unfeeling. Heartless.”

Everett lunged at her. She sideswiped him with a blow of magic that was like the strongest wind or the heaviest wave, knocking him to the ground.

“I’m afraid, dear husband, that you chose the wrong wife,” Marya said, her voice like the calm before a storm, the deadly silence in the forest before the hunter closed in on its prey. “You wished for one who would be soft, obedient, pliant to your wishes, no?”

Even now, in the faint rays of done that bled through the window, her face was changing. She had been pretty before, brown-haired and dark-eyed, slim, with a pleasant smile. Now, she was something else, all her features sharpened into deadly beauty: her hair like curtains of silk, her eyes hooded, darkening, her mouth cherry-red, her skin alabaster. She was not the woman he might have loved once. She was a witch.

He would have said the words if he could say anything at all. Instead, propped up on his elbows, he could only stare in horror at his lengthening claws, at his wife’s own transformation. She shed the plain white linen gown, and it darkened into the deepest black, with swaths of lace for sleeves, and a belt of obsidian spikes; her pearl necklace became a matching collar.

Everett scrambled backwards, scuttling like a crab when the tide came in. It was just as futile, his movements just as ineffectual against the black tendrils of shadow that swirled around Marya’s ankles.

“I am the Queen of Curses,” she intoned. “I have come into this mortal realm to seek justice--”

Vengeance, he thought.

One of the shadow-tendrils snapped at him, leaving a bite on his finger that bled black blood. His eyes widened--his wolf’s eyes--and he withdrew his hand, cradling it to his chest and landing flat on his back.

“Silence,” she snapped. “I have come to this mortal land to exact retribution onto its people.”

What did they do to you? He wondered.

“Years ago, my mother was born here.” She paused. “She was seduced by the fairies and slipped into an immortal sleep. All while her body lay here, wasting away, her soul danced with the fairies, perfectly preserved. Her poor family did all they could to save her.”

Were they successful?

“There was nothing they could do. Until one day, a very wealthy man came to town.”

Everett tensed. The story was vaguely familiar to him.

“They offered him anything to save her. Anything. And the wealthy man said that he would save their daughter, but only on the condition that when she was well, she would become his wife. For she was very beautiful, and young still, despite it all. So they agreed, desperate to have their only daughter back.”

He didn’t hold his breath. Wealthy men who took unconscious wives were hardly ever good people.

“He brought in a fairy healer to save her,” Marya said, the shadows creeping up her body, from her ankles to her calves, her thighs, her waist, encircling her neck like a leash. “The healer spirited away her body, to reunite it with her soul. But her soul did not wish to return from the immortal lands, you see. Thus, the wealthy man ventured into the fairy realm to take what he thought was rightfully his. Her parents had promised him, after all, that he would have her. That she would be his.”

The black blood oozed from his wound, dripping onto the floor. It sizzled like acid and was no more.

“So, they were married and came back to town. She was very unhappy, for once stepping foot into the fairy realm, one cannot help but think the colours, the tastes, every sensation of the human world, to be quite dull. She longed to go back, but her husband would not let her. He would not release his prize. So she conspired against him.”

He pressed his bloodied finger to the stone floor, wondering if he could chisel a way out, or claw his way free. There had to be an escape somehow.

But even if you left, where would you go? To the woods? What would become of you?

“When he went away on a business trip, she went back to the fairylands and conceived a child. That child was half-fairy, half-human. But of course, it became quite obvious to her husband that the child, growing up, was not normal. He beat his daughter, cursed her, locked her in the closet... Until the dark was all that she knew.”

And that child was you, he thought. A sliver of pity wedged into his heart, looking up at her.

“Finally, when the child grew old enough to marry, she refused. She would have no man for a husband but a fairy, but the fairies were not forgiving, either. She could have no place in either world... But it would be better, in her eyes, to rule in the land of magic and curses and darkness, the land of what she had become than to try to take power from a world that did not want her. That had cast her aside.”

But why me, Marya? Why afflict me so?

Her bloodred lips curved into a smile. “You remind me of my father, Everett Dunstan.”

She raised her hand, her nails like ebony talons in the moonlight. He prepared himself for the killing blow...

But there was a great flash of light, and he was no longer half-man, half-beast, but fully wolf. He landed on all fours on the stone floor, pawing the ground.

And his wife was no longer standing there, but his horse was in the room, only it was not his horse, it was hers. Snow-white coat, golden mane, larger than most animals of its breed. It whinnied, tossing its head, and gestured toward the broken-down door of the hut as if telling him to get out before it was too late.

He had run toward the castle and never looked back.

For many years after, he had tried to find the horse again. To see why it had saved him, or perhaps simply if the horse was like him, a cursed creature. Every time he’d spotted it and tried to go near, however, it had always shied away, disappearing in a blur of white and gold.