Wolfish
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Christiane M. Andrews
Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Yuta Onoda
Leaf pattern © greenga/Shutterstock.com; vector border © mrs_kato/Shutterstock.com
Cover art copyright © 2022 by Yuta Onoda. Cover design by Jenny Kimura.
Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
Visit us at LBYR.com
First Edition: November 2022
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Andrews, Christiane M., author.
Title: Wolfish / Christiane M. Andrews.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2022. | Audience: Ages 8–12 | Summary: “A young shepherdess, her wolf companion, and a young oracle-apprentice must stop a king’s reign of terror after he receives a frightening prophecy”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056401 | ISBN 9780316496063 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316496070 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Prophecies—Fiction. | Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Fantasy. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A5327 W65 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056401
ISBNs: 978-0-316-49606-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-49607-0 (ebook)
E3-20220920-JV-NF-ORI
For my parents and my sister
I
ELEVENTH, OR COOKED CREAM
Once, long ago, in a distant, more brutish age, lived a boy with a face as flat and blank and soft as a dish of cooked cream.
Cooked cream was, in fact, the most interesting part of his days: He ate it in the humid evenings alone in his chamber while the mosquitoes whined behind the linen-wrapped windows; he ate it, sometimes, in the mornings, on the little shaded stool beside the door, when his governor had been convinced he had learned enough—if not all—of his lesson; he ate it furtively, in quick, gulping bites, in the afternoons in the kitchen when Cook had taken herself off to the ponds to splash water over the redness of her face and arms. He liked to crumble honeycomb over it, or smear fig paste into it, or swirl plum passum around it… he would hold the sweetness on his tongue and close his eyes and listen to the distant sounds of Gardener or Governor or Cook, or, rarely, Mother, moving about the house and grounds. Yes, his flat, blank, soft face hovering over the dish—cooked cream over cooked cream—would nearly smile. Yes.
The boy’s days otherwise were dull and hot, damp and still. It was the burden of being eleventh. No one expected too much of eleventh. When he was younger—and twelfth—and the nursemaid still dressed him, he’d spent his days standing under the hornbeams, poking at the frogs and water bugs with sticks to see them jump and scatter. Now that he was older—and eleventh—and with a governor to dress and watch him, he spent his time staring toward the hornbeam-shadowed waters, wishing he might still go and poke at the creatures on the banks. But no. Eleventh had to know some things. His governor insisted, for example, that he know the letters of his own name. “You are well old enough. Why, I learned to write and read when I was just a child of ten,” he’d say, his nostrils flaring at the boy’s clearly-taller-than-ten height. So the boy’s mornings were spent tracing shapes—sharp mountains, steep valleys, stiff lines and crosses—in case he might ever need to sign, Governor told him, any documents related to the management of the estate when he came of age. “And you are eleventh,” Governor always reminded him, his voice oily and gray. “Eleventh is not inconceivable.”
The boy was not entirely sure what inconceivable meant, but he did not like the way the governor’s thin lip twitched when he said this word.
On this particular morning, the governor’s lip was twitching a good deal. The boy, sitting across from him at the long table, tracing the lines up and over their little mountains, glancing now and again at the ripples in the water and thinking of the frogs swimming there, could not help but notice the lip twitching and the way Governor kept looking toward the road with squinting eyes and furrowed brow.
Up and over the mountain, oh, were I poking frogs, how they’d jump—like that, eep! A splash—and that lip, look, that thin little worm, twitch, its tail, there it goes, twitch, again… and Mother, I hear her step, she is on the stair…
“Might I have some cooked cream now?” the boy asked hopefully. He tapped the just-traced letters. The lines were good.
The governor glanced at the marks. “That is not your name.” Twitch.
The boy looked at the lines, but he was not thinking of the lines. He knew a basket of quinces had been carried into the house; surely Cook had boiled them soft and jammy by now. How sweet they’d be stirred into cream. He tried again. “The shapes are right.”
“But not in the right order.” The little worm of the governor’s lip squeezed the words so tightly that each dropped away by itself into the air between them.
The boy, staring into the space where the words had fallen, was silent, thinking of the quinces.
“Go!” Governor waved violently.
The boy stood. He hesitated. “Cooked cream?”
“No! No cooked cream! Just go!” Governor waved again.
The boy, glad to be done with the shape tracing, wandered away and sat on the stool by the door. From here, he could watch the workers digging a ditch by the pond, trying to coax the water away from the house. This, and not shape tracing, as far as he could tell, was all that was required for the management of the land. The estate.
His mother did not use the word estate. She used the word swamp. It was part of being eleventh, this swamp. When he was very small, and still twelfth, he had once seen his mother stamp her foot and beat her delicate fists against his father’s chest and cry about eleventh. A swamp! she’d sobbed. Must we live here? Could we not be granted a home away from the wilderness? Could we not be done with mud and mosquitoes? Could you not somehow be ninth or tenth? Could we not live somewhere more refined? More civilized? Are we animals to live in this way?
There was not much more he remembered about Father after this, for the man had simply nodded and taken Mother away. The boy stayed with Nurse and Cook. For ages, it was just him and Nurse and Cook and the workers digging ditches. Where did they go? he’d asked Nurse a hundred times. They are fine people, Nurse had answered, with finer places to live. When the property is more suitable, then they’ll return. They do not need to be here to watch every ditch dug. Later, when Governor arrived, he had explained more: They are fine people. They don’t need to be here to watch a boy eating his meals.
The boy had liked this, liked to imagine fine Mother and fine Father sitting in fine places while he scooped his cream, liked to imagine he, too, one day might be fine enough to sit with them. But then one day, not too many months ago, Mother had returned all alone. Where is the master? Cook had asked. Mother’s face was gray. He went to see if he might become tenth, she answered shortly, and did not return home. Cook’s eyes were wide. Is he…? she said. She mouthed a word beginning and ending with d. Yes, said Mother, her voice flat as swamp water. And now… She gestured sourly at the gray pond overhung with hornbeams. I’m here.… Her mouth dropped as low as the branches.
And that was how the boy learned he had become eleventh.
He could hear his mother now in the kitchen speaking to Cook. “The dishes, I think… perhaps… yes… so…” Her words were soft and dull. They were always soft and dull. The boy thought if he had to trace her letters, they’d surely be just a flat line. But the sound of her voice reminded him how much he wanted the cooked cream and quinces. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine feeling full of the sweetness.
A distant thudding of hoofbeats, a strident gallop coming down the path, brought the governor running from the house. Opening his eyes, the boy watched Governor pacing back and forth next to the workers and the muddy ditch. Even from here, the boy could see the little worm-tail lip twitching.
A rider appeared out of the deep greenery and, seeing the governor in the path, brought his horse up short. Without dismounting, the rider leaned over his horse.
“Is it…?” the governor asked. Twitch.
“Done.” The rider patted the horse’s damp shoulder.
The governor glanced toward the doorway and the boy. “All ten?” Twitch. Twitch.
“All.” The rider looked toward the boy as well. “All ten heirs gone. Such accidents you arranged!”
“And did anyone see?”
The rider smiled. “No. None saw the men who did the pushing, the poisoning, the clobbering, the smothering. All as you planned. The new king”—he glanced again at the boy—“will seem to rise to his throne by misfortune. By accident. By fate or by chance.”
The thin little worm stretched itself then up the governor’s sallow cheeks, and the boy, still watching, wondering, forgot for a moment all about the sweetness and comfort of cooked cream, having never in all his life seen a worm twist itself about in such a brutish and terrible way.
II
INTERLUDE—THE DAY OF ACCIDENTS, OR HOW ELEVENTH CAME TO BE FIRST
Eighth was first. Stung by bees, a swarm, that somehow came in through the open chamber window. He was found swollen, pink-mottled, collapsed on his sheets, by the maid, who might have thought him still sleeping but for the crunching of bee carcasses under her feet and the overall disorder—the bed curtains having been torn from their posts, the water having been spilled from the pitcher, the chamber pot, even, having been heaved against the wall.
Fifth came next—a terrible fall. Terrible luck. The balcony rail gave way just where he was wont to lean, mornings, listening to birdsong, and he tumbled through the air, a big bird himself in his dressing gown, great white sleeves flapping, past the servant opening the shutters to clear away the fetid nighttime airs.
Seventh ate something disagreeable. Eggs, it was, only, the cook protested. Boiled in their shells! Still, he took to the privies, and then to his bed, and never saw noon after that.
Tenth followed fast. Kicked by his horse. At least it must have been so, for the stable boy came upon him laid out on the floor of the stall, a great red lump on his head, and the old mare half-saddled chewing hay in the corner.
Fourth never woke from a nap in the garden. Adder bite surely, said the doctor called to the body. Might those be fang marks there on the ankle, perhaps? I don’t know—don’t ask me—I’m sure they can bite through a boot.
Ninth so unwisely went swimming, and yet could not swim. Tunic spread wide all around, he was found floating in lilies—a flower in flowers—and the maid who discovered him could not stop wailing as she rocked the boy’s body. Why would he take to the water? she cried. What made him think he could swim?
Third after that—a ridiculous gaffe: He tripped on his own lace and fell on his own sword. Hidden by weeds in the field, too far away for his cries to be heard, he died a slow death surely full of regret for the lace he had too hastily tied.
In much the same way, sixth was done in by a strap come undone, but so off balance was he in his fall that he tumbled all through his room and then out his window and down to his death in the courtyard below. Sentries resting there heard him curse the wayward strap as he fell through the air, Oh, traitorous! I am betrayed!
Second, wee babe, died in his sleep, napping in the half-light of late afternoon.
And such was his grief on the loss of his child that first, who died last, smothered himself in the depths of his pillow late in the night as he sought to silence his cries.
A brutish age. A brutish day, with accidents like that.
When the chroniclers of the age wrote about this day, none thought to question the terrible misfortune that had befallen the first through the tenth, for, yea, though the misfortune was great, it was not inconceivable for such a series of accidents to occur, despite their large number in so short a time. None thought to record how a rider galloped away from each accident to carry the news to a man with a wriggling worm for a lip. Instead, they focused on the tremendous good luck that eleventh, in all his wisdom, had sat himself on a stool outside a door to watch a pair of ditch diggers all through the day, and thus, through intelligent idleness, brought the succession of accidents to an end. So wrote the chronicler Agnolo the Flat-Footed:
And the palace guards that arrived did find eleventh—now first—eating alone in his chamber late in the day. And when they knelt before him and called him king, he lifted a spoonful of cooked cream and asked whatever did they mean. And his tutor, the great, good governor who entered the chamber then in a hurry, did have to explain, with much wriggling of his mouth, that eleventh was now first and should be king of all the land. And the guards who looked on were well amazed that the new king showed neither astonishment nor bewilderment upon his pale cheeks but finished the scraping of the cooked cream from the sides of his dish, which he did then eat slowly and with much contentment.
III
THE ORACLE AND THE APPRENTICE
A man will become a bird.
A boy will become a lily.
Bees and eggs and feathers stuffed make eleven one.
Terror—there’s no adder in the garden!
Horror—no lace will cause a man to fall!
Oh, one, oh, king, oh, one.
For days now, the oracle had been wailing the oddest laments as she puttered up and down the mountain. The oracle’s apprentice, who had grown well used to the strangeness of the old woman’s mutterings, nevertheless found these lamentations particularly unnerving. When they knelt at the pool to wash and moonlight shimmered on the water, the oracle would suddenly cry, The mare would not kick her master! Or, climbing the hillside, she would pause and hold out a handful of stones. His own sword in another’s hand! Whenever the apprentice asked the old woman what she meant, though, the oracle would simply shake her head: She was not aware of the words coming from her mouth. Or, if she was, she would not say more to help her apprentice understand.